cabiness42

Isn't there an out here? Yankees agree to pay A-Rod half of the $86M left on his contract, A-Rod agrees to leave MLB and never come back, but does not have to admit to any PED use. Seems easier than the year or longer court battle this is headed for.

Frank is most definitely getting in on the first ballot, but he's going to receive a vote total that is closer to the 75% minimum required than the 100% he deserves.

Also, the Big Ten did not allow any participation in bowl games other than the Rose Bowl until 1975.

Could you imagine if he were actually honest about this: "Yeah, the Marlins offered me the most money, plus I get to live in really nice weather for a while, and then probably get traded to a contender who would never have offered me this much money now."

I don't allow my phone to have sex, so no protection is necessary.

Isn't he out of options? If so then he'll be gone at the end of ST.

I guess your other option is to keep both Keppinger and LGarcia and send Danks to AAA, making LGarcia the backup outfielder and shortstop. You lose a lot offensively and defensively in the outfield by doing that, but if the 2014 win total isn't really that important then maybe it can work.

I think Semien is either earning a starting IF job or going to AAA, and I don't think re-signing Paulie affects that. The harm in bringing back Konerko is that it takes a roster spot from somebody more versatile like L Garcia or Keppinger, which puts more stress on the other infielders to play every day.

Yeah, I'm trying to figure this out also Starters: DH Dunn C Flowers 1B Abreu 2B Beckham SS Ramirez 3B Gillaspie OR Semien LF Viciedo CF DeAza RF AGarcia Bench: DH/1B Konerko C Phegley IF LGarcia OF Danks That squeezes out Keppinger unless you cut one from the pitching staff.

So I guess the Sox are using two roster spots for a DH platoon.

Even better, you could have a Big 10 team from Maryland playing an ACC team from Indiana.

That's exactly what happens. A signing bonus, unless specified otherwise, is 100% paid up front. However, for MLB's formula for calculating annual team payroll, the amount is spread out over the life of the contract. The Sox are never going to push the luxury tax figure anyway, so this doesn't really matter to them.

Uh, yeah, you been under a rock for the last year?

Translation: While the Sox need a catching upgrade, they weren't dumb enough to give up anything of value for Lobaton, so we will wait and hunt around for a different sucker.

Is that the number of felony arrests in each schools' respective athletic programs?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/opera...diacontentstory Because I just can't resist parachuting dead mice stories.

Like I said earlier, if the other moves are already in place to make the Sox a competitive team and a 37 year old guy is the piece that puts you over the top that's fine, but you don't go spending $8.5M on the 37 year old guy first and then hope that you get the rest of the pieces.

OK, forget bWAR or whatever for the moment. The 2014 Sox are still, at best, a 74 win team. Even if you think AJP is worth 7 wins (which is insane, but whatever), that still makes the 2014 Sox a .500 team and you've spent $8.5M just to suck a little bit less and still not have a catcher for 2015 and beyond.

I think we all do, but I don't know if that's possible, at least for 2014. It's an upgrade over what we have, so let's be thankful for that.

I put it in the Lobaton thread.

Well, he was .246/.330/.406 in 198 PA vs RHP last year. Not exciting but Flowers was .213/.268/.393 in 198 PA vs RHP and Phegley was .190/.213/.266 in 166 PA vs RHP so it's definitely an upgrade.

Nobody thinks that AJ is an old hack who can't play, no does anybody dispute that AJ is better than just about any other available option for 2014. What you're failing to see is that the current team is far away from being competitive in 2014 and spending money on any player AJ's age is foolish right now. I guess a better way to look at it is that in almost every case, it's really stupid for a 63 win team to sign 37 year old players. Every dollar spent needs to go towards players who are going to help the team win in 2015-16. Salty is a better option than AJ because Salty will be better than AJ in 2016, not because people think he will be better than AJ in 2014.

I don't know his connection, but I doubt it's with the Jays. He is from the Chicago area and scooped multiple deals involving Sox players that had nothing to do with the Jays. He had the first Peavy trade (the one he vetoed) a full day before anybody in the media had it, and he had the Danks extension well before anybody else as well. My guess is that he has a close friend or relative who works for the Sox.

HC opening has been filled. You're welcome.

OK, the pots are pretty much what I thought they would be, except that they will randomly draw which European team goes into the Africa/SAmer pot instead of just putting the lowest ranked team (France) there.