Wednesday, January 14

Catching Up On Some Hot Stove Items

-Rob Bradford of WEEI is reporting that Alex Cora is close to a 1 year deal worth $2 million with the New York Mets. Unless Theo can get real creative it looks like Julio Lugo is going to be splitting time at short stop with Jed Lowrie. The thought of having to watch Lugo play baseball again this year makes me want to do things I can not type here. Just give the guy his $18 million and tell him to go home, if we trade him I suppose we could get some batting practice balls and a fungo.

-Michael Young, shortstop of the Texas Rangers, requested a trade last week. Young is apparently unhappy about being moved to third base this season to make room for a highly coveted prospect Elivs (that's right, Elivs) Andrus. Young will enter the first year of a 5 year $80 million dollar deal, couple that with the fact that the Sox would have to trade 2-3 prospects of their own and Young will be 36 when the deal ends, I think you can put this in the category of unlikely.

-Former Red Sox legend Derek Lowe signed a 4 year $60 million dollar deal with Hotlanta. After losing out on AJ Burnett and Smoltz signing with the Sox the Braves were desperate for pitching. This isn't a bad pick up at all, Lowe keeps the ball in the park, avoids the DL, and his era was 3.24 last year with the Dodgers.

-Tony Mazz wrote yesterday that the Arizona Diamondbacks
(I call them the Snakes for fun) would be willing to deal catching prospect Miguel Montero straight up for one of the Sox young studs. The deal is apparently out there if Theo wants to pull the trigger, my hunch is that he's waiting for Tek and Boras to come crawling back for $2 million/year. Also, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Sox deal for a catcher come spring training when other teams take inventory of their pitching. Peter Gammons actually said that, but it's definitely a thought I could have come up with on my own given enough time.

-Another note from Mazz, the Sox "have every intention" on attempting to sign Jason Bay to a long term deal before the start of the season. Bay is in the last year of his contract that pays him $7.5 million. The Sox could be waiting for the market to develop fully on outfields, thus waiting for Adam Dunn and Bobby Abreu to sign deals allowing them to judge Bay's worth to them.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh geez, I'm not comforted by that news about Cora. I mean, I guess a decision was going to be made soon enough, but how hard did they try to move Lugo?

DVicino said...

The Sox have been sold on Julio Lugo for years...They, for some reason, were scouting/in man love with Lugo years before actually signing him.....they can't possibily be holding out hope...can they?

Anonymous said...

Lugo was actually SECOND in the league in OBP for shortstops (bet no one knew that)...the knock offensively is he has no power at all.

In the field he projected to score the most errors and for the time played he has a worse range factor then every other shortstop but for one...Jed Lowrie.

Anonymous said...

Alex Cora's OBP was .371. Granted about 100 less at bats, but still.

DVicino said...

Dale...so are you behind the idea of letting Lugo play it out?

It's tough to tell if you are actually one of the two people in all of Red Sox Nation who actually defend/like him...or if you're trying to wow everyone who thought a player that bad/overpaid can't possibly be second among AL shortstops in any category (third in the AL if you count Cora...and Lugo's 07' OBP was .294 in a full season).

Anonymous said...

I was trying to see if there was an irrational correlation between Lugo's wretched '07 and the hard-on hate people have for him. I'll call it 'The Drew Effect'

Offensively there is some correlation. Sox do stress OBP , but defensively people's memories and eyes are quite correct. He's got an iron glove and iron cleats.

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