Rangers sign Kevin Millwood

sorry, i don't share your enthusiasm.  The Rocket is a great pitcher, but hes got to break down one year, and I'd just prefer that that year wasn't with us.  Imagine if we bring him in when he's not a 100%.  He puts in maybe 10 starts of 5.xx+ ERA, and starts to sour.  Boston, in the meantime starts jeering him.  The Yankees are laughing at us for making their mistakes (bringing in old pitchers on huge contracts).  All while we have six starters on our payroll (Schilling, Wakefield, Clement, Arroyo, Papelbon, Wells), four of them making #1-2 money.

I would prefer going into the season with the rotation that we have, and trade Wells for a centerfielder.  The pen is looking strong, the infield is okay (SS going to Cora/Pedroia, Youk at 1st).  I think the front office needs to start Prioritizing things a little better.  Why go after a pitcher we can go without when we have no one on the roster for one position?

As good as Clemens is, we have seven starters (forage forgot Beckett).  I'm not sure it's worth our while to pay the Rocket's exhorbitant ransom, given the risk of breakdown on his part, when we have much bigger needs (CF, RF, SS).

Before we failed in our supposed highest priority of resigning Johnny Damon, "dismantling" comments and all, I had thought we had a pretty good chance of getting Clemens---not as good a chance as the Astros, but it seemed like a possibility, and potentially a nice way for him to end his career.  And when our only problem was finding a shortstop, and we still had the Damon-#2-Ortiz-Ramirez offense, it looked like a pretty good team hitting behind a dominant pitcher all the way through the playoffs.  What's not to like---or rather, what wouldn't have been to like?

Now, however, the Red Sox look like a team with problems.  Just because Damon says something don't make it true, obviously, but we do happen to need a CF and SS, and our left fielder's giving us problems again.  I live in New York and read the Yankee-rooting papers, so perhaps I'm getting a skewed view, but to a lot of people that don't cheer for the Red Sox, it looks like a troubled team.  If Roger Clemens was going to end his career in a Boston uni, I thought, it would be because he wanted to win a World Series ring and Boston would have offered him a very good chance to do that in his final season.  Now, whether or not we actually are a WS champion team, we don't really look like one to outside observers.  

Normally, I'd agree with the cautionary statement above--that we don't want to make the Yankees' classic error of signing aging All Stars for too much money.

But this is Roger Clemens: one of the greatest pitchers ever to wear Sox laundry, or any laundry, of all time. He is better than anyone his age, including Randy Johnson (or any of the other Yankee mis-trades). He had a truly stellar year last year.

And I even think he would help with other trades by reversing Damon's devastating line about "dismantling," by showing that the Sox are still in it to win, not just nickle-and-dimers in the midst a slow decline.

Arguably best of all: Clemens is the probably the only person who can get Curt Schilling to shut up and listen for a second. (Just think of what help that would be to Josh Beckett.)