I think it's not that unusual, and reasonable. No beer when they're going to be driving, but they can when it's provided by the home team and they're being driven to a hotel for the night.

They were just updated this morning.

Nothing against Edwin Encarnacion, but it's almost impossible to pick a Red Sox rep if you insist on avoiding David Ortiz at DH. Having to stick Jon Lester in makes it almost ridiculous.

Probably a new combo tommorow, too, with Nava and Kalish both starting against a RHP.

Cody Ross says the Red Sox aren't blowing this lead without putting up a fight.

Seriously, why do people keep acting like the Cubs or Epstein are being victimized? If you want something that belongs to someone else, they get to decide how much it costs, and you have to pay the price, or you can't have it. Grow up and negotiate for what you want or shut up and settle for something else.

I believe that's correct, unless it's a replacement for someone being put on the DL during a postseason series.

Also, Drew Sutton did sign a minor league deal with the Red Sox and might have been worth mentioning.

I'm a little confused about Salty, he's been on the Red Sox 40 man roster since they traded for him last July. He might have a split contract, since he has options left, but I don't think he truly signed a minor league deal.

Somehow, Josh Beckett added .2 WARP overnight while the Red Sox were enjoying a day off. Why is it too much for paying customers to expect BP to have and use worthwhile statistics and to update them promptly?

Nope, it's 1.6. WARP seems a little warped on a lot of these.

Josh Hamilton played the first 2 weeks or so of the season before going on the DL.

The Red Sox projected runs scored and runs allowed both seem lower than most people would expect, I think.

That's understandable, since Swisher has to cover the Yankees entire outfield by himself.

I think most fans get used to whatever camera angle their local sportsnet uses, and we probably become pretty good at judging the strike zone with that. But, the networks don't position their cameras the same way, while we're still adjusting to the angle we usually get.

Maybe at that moment no one suggested anything, but lots of people have been suggesting he's using all year, so unless you assume the guy never reads or listens to anything, I don't find it odd at all.

I just wanted to mention, Lars Anderson's fielding at 1st base since he's been called up has looked much better to me than I ever expected from everything I've seen written about him by anyone.

I don't have Insider, but it sounds like Buster Olney just did story about the Red Sox injuries?

Is Jayson Werth younger than Beltre? I thought they were both 31.

Lester's win total could still wind up as bright and shiny as Sabathia's, and if the writers must find a compromise candidate with lots of wins instead of voting for the real best pitcher in the league, he would at least be a better option for them than Price or Sabathia.

Wouldn't signing type B free agent Felipe Lopez at the last minute be a better non-obvious good move, or was that actually obvious?

Buchholz's season doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Maybe this is a stupid question, but how does a guy with a swinging strike % and contact % comparable to Shields and Scherzer wind up with a K/9 like Lackey and Millwood?

Not sure what Francona was supposed to do, the only other player he's had on the roster who plays 1st base was his starting catcher, the only way he's had to even give Lowell a game off is to start Kevin Cash at catcher or a utility infielder at 1st who's never played 1st before.

Their season ends sooner, so they don't have to wait the full 10 days to bring him back.

Seems like the easiest and most painless thing they could do to make this stupid process just a little less stupid would be to stop having the players vote in a reserve DH.

Frandsen's already been optioned to AAA.

In case KPaiceBC wanted a fuller response, and feel free to fix this if I mess it up, it could be either, but usually it's a choice of one(or more) of specified players or X amount of money, and the team gets some time to check out the players before deciding which they want. Occasionally, it's already decided but they don't want to say yet, like when the team already knows they want the money, they might not want to say that right away because they think it won't look good, or after the trade deadline they might need to wait for someone to clear waivers, and sometimes it might even be because they need more time to inform a player before it becomes public. But usually it means they really haven't decided yet.

I don't agree, I just think he didn't take defense seriously enough. I think a lot of people didn't then, and plenty of them still don't now. How much better should they have been than sixth in the league in runs allowed? With that pitching staff?

I'm pretty sure the Red Sox traded BK Kim to the Rockies in what I think was some kind of luxury tax dodge deal.

It seems a little odd that Lackey and Beckett are projected to pitch more innings than Lester, anyway, doesn't it?

I think it's mostly because they're available earlier than some of the others. That's not meant to be a jab, anyone else who might still be working on their own projections, feel free to take as much time as you need to do a good job.

My understanding is that Beltre's 2011 player option makes the AAV of his contract for 2010 luxury tax calculations $7M instead of $10M, as a player option is counted as guaranteed unless/until the option is declined. Also, trading Kotchman for Hall not only removes Kotchman's salary from their total, it credits them with the money the M's are sending via the Brewers against Hall's AAV of $6M, which means his salary will count as a negative. I don't know if the effect is enough to get them under the limit, but it helps explain their interest in trading for him vs. picking up a RHH utility player some other way.

I don't think so. I think they made him a pretty good offer for the same reason they made Scutaro and Cameron pretty good offers this year, their need coincided with his availability, and, like Scutaro and Cameron, he accepted their price in dollars and years.

And I think they are, maybe closer to about the same than better, but that's why they play the games. The '07 Red Sox allowed 657 runs, I think the '10 roster could match that. I almost think they should better it given some health luck. And you have to go back a ways to find a Red Sox offense that scored less than 800 runs.

I listen to a decent number of Red Sox games, or portions of them, on the radio. Dave O'Brien does quite a few Red Sox games, and he has a tendency to speak quite enthusiastically about Ellsbury's defense in centerfield. But(you knew there had to be a "but" coming, right?), when he's doing PBP, and a ball is hit to centerfield, the first thing he says is, "Ellsbury goes back", and the 2nd thing he says is, "now he comes in," or "Ellsbury takes a step in," then, "now he goes back." It's almost a running joke, pun maybe slightly intended.

I don't know, in the time it took for Sean Casey of 2008 to get thrown out by 3 steps at 2nd base, would Mike Lowell of 2009 have even gotten to 1st base yet?

It's $103M over 6 years, if his next 3 years are like his first 2, he will have been fairly close to worth almost what they paid even with the lost '09. I'm certainly not convinced we've seen the best of him already considering he isn't even 30 yet.

If you have Josh Beckett and 3 starters who are all better than him, and a good defense and bullpen, how many runs do you really need to score?

Pretty cool story in general, reunited with his rookie ball coach 20 years later.

After seeing what Cliff Lee got traded for, twice, I'm not really seeing how Beckett's going to attract "other stuff" that Hoyer's going to like much better than stuff the Red Sox have lying around that they'd be willing to trade for Gonzalez. And I'd be surprised if Hoyer and Epstein disagreed much about the value of the "other stuff", any more than they disagree about the value of the Red Sox stuff. Sorry if this is confusing.

I could be wrong, but I'd be surprised if the Jays were very interested in players who are already into their arbitration years. I don't think 2 or 3 years of control at multi-million dollar prices gets them where they should be trying to go. I'd expect the Jays to tell teams offering up a Saunders or Cabrera to shop those players to other teams for prospects themselves first.

Minus the cost of paying Halladay for another year and the cost of signing the 2 draft picks. Prospects are more valuable than draft picks because they come already signed with their bonuses paid.

As a Sox fan, that's the only part of getting knocked out in the first round that I didn't find too disappointing. I'm just getting too old to survive those all night torture sessions.

Didn't he call Scutaro a FO competence test?

I think the Red Sox may have just failed your FO competence test.

The thing that bothers me most about Holliday is that he's a Boras client, which means there's a good chance that negotiations will drag out until long after all the other free agent options have been signed and anyone available worth trading for has already been traded.

It seems pretty universal to me, who doesn't dream of their team pulling off a ripoff trade? Some people just don't mind dreaming aloud and in public in this particular way, the rest of us are probably just more afraid of looking foolish.

It only took them 2 years to turn Santana into a decent replacement for Jason Bartlett.

Probably best not to give him an actual train, those things are huge, where would he keep it?

I don't understand how the Red Sox '09 payroll could possibly have been under $122M. I'm thinking that figure might not include any of the non-guaranteed money that was earned by Smoltz, Penny, Saito, etc., nor the additions made during the season?

Many of Boston's best players don't fit into that mold, or didn't when they first acquired them.

Drew uses his talent fine, just cautiously.

I can't remember watching a postseason series that had so many bizarre managerial moves before, maybe I just never noticed, but it's like extra entertainment value, like a little quiz show on the side, trying to figure out exactly what the heck Scioscia and Girardi are thinking.

I would imagine that specific variation among major league pitchers is one of the main sources of their effectiveness as a group.

Well, it's a good thing the Red Sox didn't become overly enamored with Youkilis, isn't it? FWIW, I do not think the Red Sox expect Ellsbury to suddenly hit .350, I do believe that the Red Sox expect Ellsbury to start getting more extra base hits and improve his defense in CF to some degree, not necessarily "suddenly" in either case. And if you assume that every 25-26 year old player is already everything that he can become, then you will never be the team that benefits from developing a Kevin Youkilis.

I suspect you may be projecting your own feelings about Ellsbury onto him. Theo talks about Ellsbury the same way he talks about Buchholz, and I'd be surprised if either was traded unless it was for something pretty special.

Why? The original comparison was made to previous Red Sox offenses, who played their home games in the same park. The Red Sox were one of the top offensive teams in the AL in '09 by the same standard that previous Red Sox offenses have been for most of the last 6-7 years. They scored more runs in '09 than they had in any season since '05 and hit more HRs than they had in any season since '04.

It's not as if he doesn't give anyone a reason to wonder, considering he did sign Willy Taveras to a multi-year contract.

I think you have Buchholz backwards, he's had a tendency to shy away from his fastball, not to rely on it too much.

You're very fortunate to root for a team where the one guy who sometimes makes poor decisions sticks out like a sore thumb.

Also, isn't Buchholz getting a little old to worry as much?

Just because the Tigers and Twins, and Angels and Rangers, still play each other 7 more times, I wouldn't completely give up on some drama developing in the AL west and central races.

I find it very hard to believe that a guy who's pitched a whole inning since TJ surgery could be worth that much taking innings or batters from Jonathan Papelbon, Hideki Okajima, Takashi Saito, Ramon Ramirez, Daniel Bard, and Manny Delcarmen.

I could be completely wrong about any or all of this, but my understanding is that, if he has cleared waivers, he can be traded again. If he was claimed, he hasn't cleared, in which case, he'd have to clear now to be tradeable to anyone except the team awarded the claim. But, if he is placed on waivers again, they would not be revokable.

Clearly, some people have no idea what a -40/150 UZR at SS looks like in practice.

Where did you get the idea that it was the Red Sox decision not to include Buchholz in their offer for Halladay? Everything I've read said that Buchholz most certainly was included in their offer.

Well, yes, they can sit Varitek, and Lowell, Ortiz, and even occasionally Youkilis, for Victor Martinez, that is almost entirely the whole point of the trade from their perspective.

I think the main reason the Red Sox have allowed more runs than expected has more to do with their defense going from pretty good to poor than it has to do with the pitching.

Taking Wells to get Halladay would almost be like giving Halladay a 1.5 year/$90M contract and signing a pretty good 4th OFer to a cheap LTC at the same time.

If you were forced to play either Yuni Betancourt or Julio Lugo at SS, which one would you choose?

Halladay isn't young enough or cheap enough or under contract for long enough to get me to take Vernon Wells with that contract. The Jays would do it if they're even the least bit sane at all, it's the other team that would have to be insane.

The trainers seemed to be paying an awful lot of attention to Jason Varitek's shoulder during last night's Red Sox game, so I think that might explain why they chose to borrow Dusty Brown for a few days.

It would be nice to be able to blame Fenway for Lester's problems, but he's allowed more extra base hits, and especially HRs, on the road than at home this season. Lester got lit up in Oakland and Seattle, and had his 3 best starts so far against the Orioles, Yankees, and Blue Jays at home. And, while David Wells was a member of the Red Sox, he pitched better at Fenway than he did on the road.

That's pretty disingenuous. Pedroia was a sept. call-up in '06 who got to make all of 19 starts, while Kinsler was on the roster all season.

Right, so far, Penny has only hurt the Red Sox in 2 of his 7 starts, and, if Buchholz could have managed to show the Red Sox he could do that much last season, they wouldn't have had to give a temp like Brad Penny $5M. He gets another chance when Penny stops giving the Red Sox the chance to win almost all of his starts.

Just an opinion, but I think it's more that Red Sox and Yankees pitchers get more nibbly against each other than that their hitters get more patient.

Kotsay doesn't have to be able to handle the OF on a daily basis, he just would have to be able to do it on days when both Baldelli and Drew or Ellsbury both can't.