ZionrulZ

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1451542...f-aj-pierzynski

From your mouth to G-d's ears (hopefully!).

True! Unfortunately, the Tigers will be better with Torii Hunter and a healthy Victor Martinez, and the Royals have vastly improved. The Sox...not so much.

Starting pitching was not an area of weakness, besides, re-signing Jake only maintains the status quo, doesn't improve the team.

But then the money you save has to be reinvested into perceived areas of weakness! We're not seeing that (yet!).

Oops! And Flowers to Karkovice! I'm fairly certain Flowers is better than Karko ever was. My bad.

This kinda reminds me of when the Sox thought Karkovice was ready to replace Fisk.

I hope you're right. All I see from Flowers is a pretty good defensive catcher who strikes out a TON.

Not a bad investment because A) he's a fan favorite, and B) He's a LOT better than any catcher we have!

I will agree with you IF Bourn signs with an AL team. Hitting in the AL is much more difficult than hitting in the NL.

IMO a 1 year/$4 million offer to AJ is insulting, and sends a bad message as to how some players are "taken care of" by ownership.

I'm curious...why would you prefer to save the money? Is it your money? Are you writing the checks? IMO, Sox ownership owes it to the fans to put the best possible product on the field that it can, by whatever means necessary. And, if they're not prepared to do this, they should sell the team to someone who will.

I never said DeAza will flame out. I said (implied) that there's more of a chance that he will than Bourn will. Bourn has put up consistent numbers over a longer period of time. Why is that so difficult to understand?

If the Sox wanna compete with the Angels, Rangers, Blue Jays, Red Sox, Yankees and/or Detroit, they have to spend more $ to improve the team. If they don't, then rebuild!

IF they spend the money...the key word being IF!

How can you say you have no problem starting Flowers, then say you think he'll be a total bust?

Alejandro DeAza is no Mike Trout! Are you old enough to remember Mark "The Bird" Fidrych? Google him, look at his rookie numbers, then look what he did after. See also Kerry Wood, Dwight Gooden, Jerome Walton, Mark Prior, etc.

The point of the article, IMO, is the message that the re-signing (or not) of Pierzynski sends. If the Sox are not going to do WHATEVER it takes to try to win a WS in 2013, then start rebuilding. They have done very little, if anything, to improve the club. Their FA acquisitions (except for Keppinger) are insignicant at best. Without AJ, the team just isn't as good as they'd be with him...that is the bottom line.

Yeah he would, cuz they wouldn't have re-signed Konerko if they had Adrian Gonzalez. That's not the point anyway...the point was that no player can be ACCURATELY judged based on his first year as a starter.

As I implied previously, after Gordon Beckham's rookie season, everybody labeled him "future superstar". (Supposedly, the Sox were offered Adrian Gonzalez for him and turned it down.) After 3-4 years, would you say he's lived up to expectations? Doubt it. I think after 2-3 years as a full time player, you can kinda sense what a player's career will be like. There are a LOT of anomalies, but for every RA Dickey (who becomes a star late in his career) there are hundreds of Gordon Beckhams (guys who fizzle out/never play up to "expectations".).

Right on! It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad.

I wish the Sox would've signed Soria. That said, I might take a shot at trading for Hanrahan from the Pirates.

Bourn has been a full time starter since 2007, whereas DeAza has been a full time starter since 2012. Thus, it's easier (more logical) to predict Bourn's future numbers than it is to predict DeAza's since you have a larger "sample size" with which to use.

In the late sixties, I was a HUGE Ernie Banks fan, so I followed the Cubzzz, even though my father, older brother, grandfather, uncle were Sox fans. One day I was hanging out with my big brother and some of his friends and they asked me if I was a Sox fan or a Cubzz fan. I answered "both!". They said, "you have to choose one or the other!". Since they were older than me, and I wanted to hang out with them, I said "SOX!"...and I never looked back (or wavered) from that day on.

I didn't mean to be condescending or disrespectful. I was trying to make the point that NOBODY can predict what a player will do in the future, especially one with such as small "sample size" like DeAza. I apologize if I offended anyone, and will be more careful in the future.