Castro's good

[SoxAce]

I don't really care, at least Flowers has the ability to draw walks.. AJs avg season is about a .320 OBP and like a .740 OPS with very little power.. I don't see any reason why Flowers couldn't match that, for dirt cheap.. Everyone already thinks hes been total dogs*** this season and he still has 20 doubles 2 triples 16 homers and a .771 ops in what most people would consider a terrible season..

 

This is something I would post. Outstanding post Carl.

[iamshack]

Elbow surgery for bone spurs though...that's not the Tommy John, that's the kind of thing you can recover from over a period of months, not years. He shouldn't be feeling the effects of that right now.

 

Limiting Sale's innings isn't a good selling point to me. If Sale is going to be a very good big league pitcher...then the thing we want to do is maximize the number of innings we get from him as a starter in the bigs. This year really doesn't count much because he came up well after the time that he'd lose an arbitration year.

So you would rather have Sale pitch 175 innings in AAA than in Chicago? So that you can get 200 IP from him in 2012?

 

It seems to me like the potential difference in 175 innings he could give us versus say, Freddy, would be much larger than 25 additional innings we get out of him by holding him back a year, especially when you consider he may get pulled into service early anyway because of injury to someone else.

[Balta1701]

So you would rather have Sale pitch 175 innings in AAA than in Chicago? So that you can get 200 IP from him in 2012?

 

It seems to me like the potential difference in 175 innings he could give us versus say, Freddy, would be much larger than 25 additional innings we get out of him by holding him back a year, especially when you consider he may get pulled into service early anyway because of injury to someone else.

Where did I talk about Freddy? When I look at our staff for next year, Sale is already in the #6 slot. Peavy, Floyd, D1, Buehrle, Jackson. Yeah, someone could be dealt, but I'm not comfortable dealing a guy away to clear space for a guy who's never had a major league start.

 

If we didn't have 5 starters next year, then balancing finding a #5 starter versus starting Sale would be a more difficult question. Then I'd still like to bring in some depth, but I'd be trying to find a guy I could steal for $1-$2 million like this year...expecting that Sale could come up in June and start off.

 

The thing to remember...if he pitches 175 innings next year at Charlotte, none of those innings count against his arbitration time, and if that makes him a better starting pitcher for the Sox in the long-term, it's a good move...and it provides nice insurance despite having a really deep rotation anyway.