What We Know and What We Think We Know

These are exciting times indeed. I just joined twitter (@t12murphy), Guns N' Roses is back on tour bringing Chinese Democracy to the Asian continent, and the boy genius Theo Epstein is making moves.

Allow me to be the last person to report today that the Red Sox have signed pitcher John Lackey to a 5 year 85 million dollar deal. My initial reaction this afternoon was not one I can share here as we are a PG-13 blog at best. On its surface I'm not a huge fan of signing Lackey; he's 31, has had some elbow problems in the past, and you're paying your #3 starter way more then your #1 starter (if Beckett is still your number 1). I'm not nearly as worried about Beckett's emotional state assuming he didn't become a woman this off season, it's a contract year he needs to bone up. However simple math tells me Lackey will be 36 in the final year of his deal, isn't that the same reason we don't want to give Bay a guaranteed 5th year?

Lackey is a good pitcher, I expect good things, but I also expect awful things. In reality he's the perfect signing for Boston fans.

My second reaction was, "well they must be trading Buchholz." Hardly a ground breaking thought at 11:30pm, however, I had thought of this before tuning into Felger and Massarotti this afternoon. (98.5 the Sports Hub!!!)

So we know they signed Lackey, and are working on trading hot corner heart throb Mike Lowell to Texas for Willy Mo Pena, I mean Max Ramirez. Ramirez can rake but apparently is the real life version of Rub Baker from Major League 2 behind home plate, you know before he read the articles in play boy (PG-13).

Here is what we think we know; signing John Lackey to a terrible contract was step 2 in a 3 step plan to bring a huge bat to Boston. The smart money seems to be on Adrian Gonzalez, I'm still not ruling on Miguel Cabrera for the fact that when you buy a large cheese pizza in Detroit you get a free house.

That line about "Theo's 3 step plan to bring Adrian Gonzalez to Boston" was floated to me by my buddy Chris, who would rather send me viable free agents and potential trade scenarios the Sox could make then he would teach his class. Full credit to him for that, I have gchat history to prove he was ahead of everyone on this one. Chris also told me Gonzalez will win the American League MVP next year, since he hasn't been traded yet that was a fairly bold statement.

What else do we know: The Boston Herald has a sale at your local Toyota dealer, also the Sox have agreed in principle to a 2 year 15-16 million dollar deal with outfield Mike Cameron. Ok, so we don't actually know that for a fact yet but I assume it's true if the Herald is reporting it...

What else we assume we know based on the above being true: Jason Bay is gone. Which is actually good because since we signed Lackey we lose our 1st round draft pick, but since Bay will sign elsewhere (the Mets, just do it, we're all waiting for you to) we'll pick up a sandwich pick between the 1st and second rounds of next year's draft. I believe the Mets 1st round draft pick is protected because they were that bad last year, so we won't score that pick, but the Mets need it, they had a hysterical parody of Monopoly created on their 2009 season.

So let's review, we know the Sox just gave Lackey a god awful deal, but we can hope (we think) they make a trade for Adrian Gonzalez, allowing Youk to move to third base. We pretty much think we know Jason Bay is going to sign else where (the Mets), and we're relatively sure that we think Mike Cameron will be playing left field platooning with Jeremy Hermida.

If all this is true Sox fans have come a long way since we were all talking ourselves into Jeremy Hermida being a great low risk high value pick up.

Couple this with the Yankees not getting Roy Halladay and the Halos signing Hideki Matsui, and both me and Pedro Martinez are sleeping a lot better tonight.