If only they could just...

Trade Manny and pitching for Abreu/Tejada and Crisp/Reed/Gathright. Use the freed up cash from Manny and Damon to sign Clemens for a year (oh, the Sox drama) to join Schilling in indirectly "tutoring" Beckett, Paplebon, Lester, Delcarmen, et al. And then use part of the Clemens cash to sign Papi back.

The Red Sox NEED, and I certainly hope this is their plan, to acquire pieces to not only compete with next year, but also to bolster their current foundation. It was just a couple months ago that all the otherwise frenzied radio personalities were fine with writing off '06 for the promise and lure of '07-'09 and perhaps beyond... Damon's age and clubhouse personality was, in all evidence, detrimental to this future-centric franchise process. It's no accident that the Idiot and the Cowboy are gone.

...bad trends...Pedro Martinez left. So did Derek Lowe. Now Damon is gone, too

The Pedro departure was the only one of these you could reasonably argue was a bad thing. Lowe is still giving up tons of unearned runs. Damon doesn't even hit as well as Mueller (where was the uproar over him being dropped, btw?)

the Sox overpaid for Matt Clement

$8.5m for an average (~100 ERA+) FA SP w/ good K #'s? I know plenty of teams that have paid more...

took on the $18 million due Lowell.

So that they could obtain a 25-yo SP with 600+ big league IP and a 117 ERA+? Dumb. Real dumb.

im just not sure why we're surprised the bosox front office is a mess and making bad descissions. they've been doing that for years. remember duquette!??

The New York Rangers spent about 10 years trying to win and rebuild. So have the Knicks. It's not a good sign for the BoSox.

Ironically, Red Sox fans won't be happy until the Red Sox turn into the Yankees. If the average Red Sox fan had his way, we'd be paying Pedro $13 a year, DLowe $10 a year, Damon $13 a year, we'd keep Manny's $20-$22 for the next 3 years, etc etc etc.

I thought the one thing the Indians proved is that you CAN'T rebuild and compete at the same time. If you want to keep competing you generally can't work in more than one rookie a year, and that means you have to depend instead on free-agent signings to plug the holes that inevitably develop (or were exposed during the previous season) due to injury, retirements, free agent losses, declining ability, etc. That's the Yankee way, and it ought to be the Red Sox and Mets and Cubs and Angels and Dodgers way, too, because they can afford it. Everybody else has to live with the boom and bust cycle.

If the Red Sox were following the model of the Rangers or the Knicks, they would've resigned Lowe, Pedro and Damon. It's called overpaying for old, overpriced, on-their-way-down veterans.

The Sox' payroll allows them to make some mistakes like Renteria. And then allows them to eat some of that money to get back Marte. It allows them to overpay for Clement, and overpay Lowell to get Beckett.

There are limits of course, so they let Lowe, Pedro and Damon go. And in return, they get six more draft picks over the next two years. Two more from Mueller.

It's not even Christmas. Last year, Varitek was still unsigned. Randy Johnson was still in Arizona. Pierzynski had just been non-tendered. And Beltran was still a FA. Patience.

Two more from Mueller.

Gotta love it. Once again the baseball world will be crying foul come June when the Sox end up with more than their "fair" share of draft picks. Picking up obscene #'s of draft picks by letting go of class A FA's is a great way to run a ballclub. I'm just disappointed that they didn't offer arb to Myers, a class B FA. He would not have been very expensive and would have been cheap and easy to pawn (maybe the Sox could have gotten Crosby for him! :-P

He would not have been very expensive and would have been cheap

Oops... you get the point...

Btw, Jim Callis has an updated compensation/draft chart, plus commentary on the recent Sox moves a bit lower down:

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/columnists/askba.html

"At this point, Boston looks like the winner in both deals."

The Sox are a moneyball team with money. They will always be rebuilding and they will always be competing. Until the game changes, they transcend whatever the Indians and Rangers, et al, have "proved" about winning/rebuilding because they will have the cash.

2much drama for one team. 2 gms what?

What about Atlanta. They seem to be doing just fine with the rebuilding/win now scenario. I would go so far as to say exceptionally well.

Gregory,

Yes, they do it well. With them, they never turn over much. It's always one or two players. They're very good at removing the weakest link and improving that position.

They've also been great at finding guys who can pitch.

If you remember, however, Atlanta had very lean years before they started winning. That allowed them to build the farm system. The Red Sox have not had the chance to build from within like the Braves did, so I think it will be tougher for them. I thought they should have rested on their World Series laurels and used the goodwill to build the farm system. Then they could have dominated like Atlanta after two or three lean seasons.