Bucky wrote:I DETEST the MLB emails with the vague subject lines which make you click the link to get any more info about what the article is about


NOT GONNA DO IT

Instead of concentrating their resources in big-ticket items, the Red Sox steered clear of free agents who required the sacrifice of a draft pick and/or a massive long-term commitment of five or more years. The team never seriously pursued Zack Greinke, Josh Hamilton, or Anibal Sanchez, instead building its 2013 roster (after resigning David Ortiz to a two-year, $26-million deal) through seven free agent signings of one to three years.

Drumroll … Shane Victorino: three years, $39 million; Ryan Dempster: two years, $26.5 million; Stephen Drew: one year, $9.5 million; Jonny Gomes, two years, $10 million; Mike Napoli: one year, $5 million (with incentives that pushed the deal to $13 million); Koji Uehara: one year, $4.25 million; David Ross: two years, $6.2 million.

The team outbid the Rays for Ross (their first signing), the Athletics for Gomes (their second signing), the Indians for Victorino, the Royals for Dempster ... all while identifying players who a) had identifiable on-field value; b) did not cost the team a draft pick, meaning that at no point did the present compromise the future; and c) came with formidable clubhouse credentials that, in combination with the firing of Bobby Valentine and hiring of John Farrell, would permit the team to replace the dizzying and contentious environment of 2012 with restored commitment to nightly preparation.

...

While the Sox avoided using the terminology of “the bridge”—the desperately misunderstood metaphor for the team’s effort to sign veterans who could win while buying time for prospects to develop—it was precisely what 2013 was supposed to be. It was a year of restoration that had some chance of modest success (perhaps even a trip to the postseason if everything broke right), but that was meant to bring the franchise closer to what GM Ben Cherington kept describing as “the next great Red Sox team.” It was a lofty ideal with an unspecified timeframe, a private acknowledgment that modest gains in 2013 could set the stage for significant ones by 2014, when prospects like Jackie Bradley Jr. and Xander Bogaerts and Allen Webster and Matt Barnes might bring Cherington’s goal closer to fruition.

The Sox's internal preseason projections pegged the team's likeliest outcome as 86 wins, with a roughly 30 percent chance of winning 90 or more (meaning contention) and odds little better than 1 in 100 that the team would get to its eventual 97-win outcome. When they clinched the American League East, team chairman Tom Werner acknowledged that “we're all in a bit of shock. I had a projection but it was less than this.”

Grotewold wrote:Derr-rick Jee-ta retiring after this year

1 wrote:

Grotewold wrote:Derr-rick Jee-ta retiring after this year

I hope we get him something nice