Red Sox Re-Sign Jason Varitek, Saltalamacchia To Start?

I like this approach.

LA gets some salary relief and a potential replacement

If Salty isn’t the odd man out, ‘Tek would be a great mentor for him and it would certainly help Salty’s prospects as a catcher.

Red Sox caught up in Russell Martin dealings – Boston Herald

Comes before the Tek deal, though.

if they move him to the 60 day DL tomorrow and don’t reactivate him until one home game in September, and then immediately pop him back on it.

starting salty, may not be, though.

I believe that this points to Sal/Tek as our opening day catching combo. I’ll give that a 90% chance of happening now. Dont ask me where i came up with that number thats just my guess of the likelihood now.

So with these 2 we roughly drop 2.5-4 WAR at the catcher position. Lets just settle on 3 WAR as a number. Thats eats up most of what we gain by having a healthy Pedroia (gain of 2 WAR in comparison to 2010) and Youk (+1.5 WAR) for a full season. We most likely have a hefty drop in production at 3B no matter what happens which will be likely at least 3 WAR and thats with us resigning Beltre. If we sign a stopgap 1B and move Youk to 3B the drop will be even bigger. This drop will eat up what we gain in OF with healthy seasons of Ells, Cam and Drew. So as of now with full healthy seasons out of all our players we havent improved to last season in which we finished with 89 wins. Even with Werth and Bullpen arms I dont see us picking up 6 wins to finish with 95 wins at this moment.

I just wanted to point out what a hard hit to our chances making the playoffs it is to have Sal/Tek start.

Here is the other problem (and I am ranting what we all pretty much know, don’t know or think we know)- if Beltre departs we do have two BIG holes in our lineup.

I am in the camp to resign him even if we eat the back end. But, if he departs we would see Lowrie at 3b (maybe??) he does not have to power of Beltre (but we think he is for real)

And, it also looks like our catcher position will not have a bat now either…

So, assuming (grrr) we lose Beltre too that probably means we are going hard after a power OF – in that case I hope we get young Upton and not the aging Werth or Crawford – (of course, I know the problem of a trade cost versus just FA)…yet, Upton has many years of team control so it is not all downside and he is only 23 years old.

Here is a thought – Maybe the FO is just trying to get the team younger? Dunno just guessing; however, I think this would be true if:
1. Ortiz offered arb (yes)
2. V-Mart departs (yes)
3. Beltre departs (?)
4. Salty starts in April (?-OMG – that hurts to type and probably not likely) I would now add: looks pretty likely and even if the Sox acquire Martin his bat has been AWOL since 2008 and he is coming off hip surgery…
5. Lowrie starts at 3b (?)
6. Upton is acquired (???)
7. In light of all the recent comedy swirling around Beltre I would add at this point – if Betre departs then I hope we trade for Upton and sign either Werth or Crawford. Flat out the Sox will need power in the lineup. Furthermore, having bats in the lineup could provide two plus factors: a. exploit late inning opposing pens b. potrect Sox late inning bullpen collapses with run insurance.

I know there are many more options (I did not list the mythical A-Gon trade for instance) but it is really too early to tell. So, there are still more questions than answers but at least we know what we know, what we do not know, and all the rest is our best estimate on what we think we know…(and, Theo keeps baffling us too WTF over???)

not portrect