Pointless speculation for when the injured return
by dsharp on Jul 18, 2010 7:31 PM EDT
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PrintThe fact is that some people have to go when the MASH unit that is the Red Sox DL starts sending our troops back to the front line at Fenway. So lets commence with the pointless speculation.
Here are our current 25:
Lester
Lackey
Dice-K
Wakefield
Papelbon
Bard
MDC
Ramirez
Oki
Richardson
Atchison
Bowden
Ortiz
Cash
Brown
Youklis
Shealy
Hall
Patterson
Scutaro
Beltre
Nava
Cameron
McDonald
Drew
So here's where the fun part begins.
Let's say they come back in this order - Buchholz, Hermida, Beckett, Martinez, Lowell (maybe?), Pedroia, Varitek, and Ellsbury, and we make no moves at the trading deadline. That may be wildly wrong, but just suppose.
In comes Buchholz, out goes??? I'm guessing Richardson. Too bad because he's been a decent LOOGY. The first one should be Oki in a trade to the NL whose hitters aren't familiar with his funky delivery.
In comes Hermida, out goes??? I'm guessing either Nava or D-Mac. Nava is clearly the better hitter, D-Mac clearly the better fielder. Given his youth, Nava will probably go back to AAA. It SHOULD be Patterson, even though that would leave us with only Hall at 2B.
In comes Beckett, out goes??? As crazy as it sounds, I don't think it will be Oki, Ramirez or Atchison. I think this is when we say goodbye to Wake by way of the DL for his sore back, which will heal quickly if any of the starters get injured. This is also assuming Bowden pitches well out of the pen.
In comes V-Mart, out goes Brown. Easy one there. Cash has the better defensive arm although he won't be needed to catch Wake anymore.
In comes Lowell (if he doesn't stay on the DL until an injury to Youk, Beltre, or Ortiz), out goes??? Goodbye Shealy.
In comes Pedroia, out goes ??? The one left of either Patterson or Nava says goodbye.
In comes Varitek, out goes??? There goes Cash, and there goes our late inning defensive replacement at C.
In comes Ellsbury, out goes??? If not Cameron to the DL, then either Hermida or D-Mac has to pack their bags - likely D-Mac.
OK, let me have it. Where did I totally miss the boat on this?
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Buchholz – Richardson
Hermida – Nava (I hate this but he has options, Darnell does not)
Beckett – One of Oki/RamRam (with this move Atch becomes more of an everyday reliever than a long man as Wake begins being the long man which will let him heal a little better, less stress)
VMart – Brown
Lowell – Never comes back, that is my story and I’m sticking to it. Lowell coming back creates more problems than it solves by handcuffing our bench roles.
Pedrioa – Patterson
Varitek – Cash (THANK GOD)
Ellsbury – Darnell
Lowrie (You forgot one!) – Bill freaking Hall.
This way we have a dedicated IF replacement (Lowrie) that we didn’t have before since Bill Hall was both that and the OF replacement since Lowell was doing exactly nothing on the bench. And we have Hermida as our designated OF bench player.
Though there are some wrenches, they may bring back Lowell, or the outfield may struggle to stay healthy and the depth there may be at the expense of the bullpen depending on Lowell, Lowrie, Bill Hall etc.
Definitely going to be interesting to see how this next month plays out.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
Isn't Lowell > Shealy?
Unless I missed something, Shealy plays 1B. The Nuiman Incident taught the importance of having a backup 1B.
But Lowell can play 1B or 3B and is a better bat off the bench. I thought Lowell was playing an important role on the bench, he’s no Hinske with 1B/3B/Corner OF, but he covered the IF corners effectively and was a legit bat off the bench.
he wasn't a legit bat off the bench this year
and only played a very very few games. I don’t think he’s gonna make it back on the roster, though if he does, surely it will be in place of shealy.
Lowell’s .213/.308/.350 line this year begs to differ about that whole legit bat thing. He had all of the offseason to get healthy and it didn’t happen, I doubt that a trip on the 15 day DL is really going to the magic cure from him and I wouldn’t really expect much more from him.
Lowell just doesn’t really have a place right now. Lowrie will be the 3B-SS-2B bench player and then we have Ortiz and VMart as backup first basemen if an emergency arises, Tek can catch.
Shealy probably isn’t any better than him (I totally skipped over Shealy on the list, forgot he even got called up) and if I had to make an edit, I would switch Shealy out for Darnell on the roster when Ellsbury comes back. So neither Shealy or Lowell are on the roster.
My lineup –
OF-
Ellsbury, Cameron, Drew
3B Beltre
SS-Scutar0
2B-Pedey
1B-Youk
C-VMart
DH-Ortiz
SP
Lester,Buch,Beckett,Lackey,Dice
RP-
Wake,MDC,Bowden,Atch,Bard, Oki OR RamRam, Paps
Bench
OF – Darnell, Hermida
2B-3B-SS – Lowrie
C-Tek
This way Lowrie covers the left side, We can use Ortiz or VMart if there is an issue with Youk and have Tek catch. The OF has two backups, which we will probably need given the health of the starters. And it doesn’t involve Bill Hall which is a gigantic plus. It’s nice that we can put one player on the field in a bunch of positions but if we can just drop Lowell it would be better for the team so we don’t have to have one guy doing a bunch of stuff. We really need dedicated back ups.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
Just ignore the strikeouts, I hate markup and I'm not sure how it got there. The words are right.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
Well, yeah, your "September" roster looks pretty good.
But, it’s going to be a while until that happens. I was just thinking, right now, I’d rather have Lowell than Shealy. So, the sooner Lowell gets back, the better.
But damn he’s slow……
It will be interesting to see what they do with Lowrie/Hall. I know everyone hates Hall here, but what is the real comparison between the two? Lowrie a much better infielder? Hall with more pop but less plate discipline? How, exactly, is Lowrie better than Hall?
I’m not saying he isn’t better than Hall, I really like Lowrie.
The issue with Hall is that while he can play a ton of positions, he isn’t very good at any of them. His value to the team was that he could play both outfield and infield, because Lowell doesn’t offer a whole lot off the bench with the way our 1B-C-3B-DH system works out. If Lowell doesn’t come back, we can have a dedicated IF and a dedicated OF without tying both of those roster spots up in one person in Hall which would complicate things if we lost a MI and an OF around the same time.
Lowrie is a bit of an unknown still, we really haven’t gotten a gauge on him since what late 2008 when he made his debut? Last year the wrist was still bothering him and this year someone tricked him into working the kissing booth. He could suck but he’s been trained to play those positions his whole career and has plenty of potential with the bat, and has been hitting real well so far in his rehab.
Bill Hall has been pretty good for us but he is only managing a .736 OPS boosted by his good slugging, his OBP is only .320, I have faith that Lowrie can manage better than that.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
Lowrie IS a very good defender
I mean, at least from everything I’ve seen. Lowrie is a good hitter with not tons of home run power, but some, and a ton of doubles power.
To be honest,
I don’t think Hall goes anywhere this year, unless maybe he gets traded. I don’t think they’d DFA him at this point after he’s contributed so much- especially because he’s really our backup right fielder once everyone is healthy.
I think the only way Lowrie stays on the team (I do think he will come up instead of Patterson before Pedroia is up (or at least hope)) is if they think that he can be a backup first baseman, and they drop Shealy for him.
Maybe him over Darnell, in my vision of the future, Lowell isn’t coming back. If Lowell does come back than we need Bill Hall because of that versatility and maybe he stays over Darnell. But here we just don’t need him since all the positions have a backup.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
Losing Oki when Beckett returns would save $2.75M.
With all the recent “over the cap” notices lately, this may be more likely than my idea of DL’ing Wake.
I know a lot of people would like that
but Nava is almost certainly the first to go, just because they can stash him in the minors to bring up later if necessary, while the other guys they’d have to DFA.
Is there any trade value for these veterans:
Oki
RamRam
BHall
Hermida
DMac
I would think a NL team may be willing to take a flyer on Oki or RamRam for the stretch run. BHall could be a very serviceable 3B for someone in contention. Hermida is under control for 2011, isn’t there some value there? He’s got 30HR potential if he played every day (I think the Sox took him on trying to find the next Ortiz). DMac has proven to be a very solid 4th OFer, although if he was a treat to steal a late base, he would be much more valuable.
Even if there is little in return for these veterans, they are clogging up valuable roster spots where improvement could be had.
All of this is b/c I think Richardson makes Oki expendable, Bowden/Atchison —>RamRam, Lowrie —>Hall, and another OFer for Hermida/DMac.
Personally, I’d like to see a nice suite of prospects offered to the Royals for Soria and DeJesus. (Do the Royals see value in Hermida?) I’d plug DeJesus into LF this year and next, let Ells and Cam split time in CF this year and consider a Kalish/Cam or Crawford or Werth (DeJesus to CF) solution for 2011. Soria allows them to shutdown the 7th/8th/9th and not depend on MDC/Bowden/Atchison for that 7th inning spot.
Oki and RamRam, absolutely not. Teams aren’t going to trade for crappy relievers, if we find someone to take their roster spots they’ll just be DFA’ed like any other bad reliever and if another team wants them than they’ll sign them after they’ve cleared waivers, just the way that is done.
Darnell and Hermida, maybe, but the way I see our season unfolding with injured players coming back, I still have both of them on my roster at the end of the year, which means that we’d have to trade for two OF which I just don’t see happening because we’ll have all three of our starters back so whoever we get would be bench role anyway, we’ve got that in Darnell and Hermida.
Hall, I could see him getting traded, he can “play” a lot of positions and has hit the long ball pretty well this year. Besides that he has 0 value, but versatility and slugging can be seen as valuable to some team if an injury pops up in the next couple of weeks.
"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.
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