Roy Oswalt Rejects Tigers; Boston Bound?

And we upgrade at SS, our only holes are at the corner outfield spots.

I was sure Dombrowski was going to get him.

…are the only real competition, it seems. The Royals are a year away from being truly interesting, and the White Sox and Twins don’t look good. The Twins might have the upside — if all stay healthy — to challenge, but that would probably take the division winner only getting like 86 wins.

Maybe they want Edwin Jackson anyway?

Why wouldn’t the deal just be announced?

Or is it because he has to pass a physical with his back, and Boston doesn’t want the fan base to throw a parade that we’ve signed Oswalt before he’s passed the physical? And how would that news not leak from somewhere?

I feel like there’s no deal with Boston at this point… cannot imagine where else he’d have a deal that they’d keep it secret instead of coming out to say it either.

It legitimately weirds me out that everyone is claiming Boston is crying poor.

I’ll stop my bitching if/when we sign Oswalt, or Jackson, or trade for someone like Floyd.

However, as bad as 3-5 was in 2011, I don’t think we can roll in with where we sit right now and expect to come within a win of making the playoffs, even if we recover April and September to the mean.

At the end of the day, as bad as our 3-5 was in 2011, we started last season thinking we had a legitimate rotation, including 3-5: Lester, Beckett, Buchholz, Lackey and Dice K. We all though Lackey would bounce back, and as frustrating as Dice is, he’d be a solid #5. Behind that, we had Wake, which none of us thought was great, but as an emergency/spot starter was fine. Plus Aceves and Miller had potential. Doubront and Weiland were the kids to come up…

We then lost Dice to Tommy John, lost Lackey to whatever caused his pitching to fall off a cliff, and Buchholz to a broken back that we thought he’d come back from, but never did. Nothing behind them panned out either, leaving us with too many 2 inning starts where guys got shelled, and the bullpen got worn out.

So, this year, we have even less: Lester and Beckett are back (and I’m not worried about even year Beckett), but Buchholz isn’t just due for regression (our concern for 2011) but coming off a serious back injury that cost him most of 2011; #4 is… what? Bard? and #5 is whatever is cobbled together from Padilla/Cook/Wilson/Aceves/Miller/et all.

I’m sorry, but as much as I think it’s not hard to be better than our 3-5 was last year, I don’t currently see enough pieces to believe we have that solved yet. We need at least one more starting pitcher, and that’s assuming that Beckett doesn’t have his usual injury/even year woes; Buchholz is strong and healthy; Bard successfully transitions to starter; Lester remains his workhorse self; and some one in the depth pool actually pans out.

I really think that Lavarnway is going to be getting a good amount of playing time by a couple months into the season

or to actually use Cherington’s face. Only found this

Jocketty did say that they were tapped out with payroll though. Since they signed Madson for right around what Oswalt is going to get, I would assume he wouldn’t say that and then go spend the same amount. You never know in this business though.

Oswalt grew up in Mississippi. Probably 9-10 hour drive from Cincy. Though a few of the teams interested were pretty much the closest teams give or take.