For most of his eight-year tenure with the Dodgers, General Manager Ned Colletti had to mindful of the budget and the bottom line. Now, Colletti has the financial freedom to make bold moves, such as the trade with the Red Sox which brought Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Nick Punto, and Carl Crawford aboard. Colletti has no doubt that Crawford is ready to regain his old form. "He’s still a dynamic player," Colletti said. "A couple of years ago, he was one of the most sought-after free agents in the game for good reason. People in Tampa saw it a lot. People in the AL East saw it a lot — a combination of abilities not many players have. In this league, the ability to hit and steal, doubles and triples — this is a tough park for home runs sometimes — his ability to create things offensively with speed and ability to hit." Here's more from today's column..
- There’s mounting evidence that the Brewers could be one of the teams that emerges in the market for Josh Hamilton. Milwaukee is at least looking into the possibility, though their top priorities are still finding a starting pitcher and revamping their bullpen.
- The Cubs appear to be players for 18-year-old pitcher Shohei Otani, but Theo Epstein recently expressed trepidation about plunging back into the Japanese market. Otani was recently taken with the first-overall pick in the NPB draft and the Nippon Ham Fighters have until March to try and sign him. A major league club can still sign him at any time, but it would likely irritate Japanese baseball officials.
- Bobby Valentine declined to say whether he'd like to be considered for the managerial openings with the Rockies, Marlins, and Blue Jays. The manager also clarified some of his recent remarks on the Red Sox and noted that his line about leaving a note for incoming manager John Farrell was merely an old-time baseball joke.
- After removing himself from the interview process with the Astros and declining to meet with the Marlins, it's possible that Brad Ausmus only had his eye on the Red Sox job. However, teams will still try to lure the former catcher who quickly found himself in high demand.
- Terry Francona did speak with the Marlins earlier this year, but he wanted to be with the Indians all along.
Otani’s not worth going over the international signing allotment for the Cubs.
So, did your extensive scouting of the Japanese high school leagues lead you to this conclusion?
No. I’ve been reading other people’s evaluations. Otani’s being pegged as a late first round talent if he were eligible for the June amateur draft, and we all know what the suggested slot money is for those.
Even if your evaluation is true – that he is a late first round talent – I don’t think the slot is really relevant for a few reasons. First, it’s an arbitrary number assigned from the MLB and not a true market value (which this signing would be – a free market signing). Second, if you put an extra late first round draft pick pick up for auction,so all MLB teams could bid to acquire an extra first round pick – they’d likely pay quite a bit for that opportunity. In this case, if you’re right, they can do that.
Again, not my evaluation. I trust the Cubs’ FO to do what they believe is best for the long-term future of the franchise. We’ll see how the Otani situation plays out.
Valentine will never manage again. What a disaster. He needs to retire and find a nice black hole to crawl into and disappear.
In fairness, Valentine was the powder keg to the Red Sox’s volatile substance. In other words the Red Sox were a mess when he got there and they are a mess after he left.
Disagree. Valentine made things way worse. He took what was a bad month and turned it into a bad year.
Never said he didn’t make things worse just that situations were already bad before he came in.
Valentine didn’t turn guys like Beckett into pumpkins though. Veterans sometimes crash because they’re worn out. I’d put Boston in this bucket.
The Red Sox brass knew who and what Valentine was when they hired him. They wanted someone to come in who would make the much-needed changes to the country club culture of that team and clubhouse. But when guys like Dustin Pedroia respond to Valentine by defending that very destructive culture, telling Valentine, “That’s not how we do things here,” then it was am impossible task for Valentine and something that cannot be accomplished by any manager, only an ownership more determinied to change the culture.
I found it hilarious that notoriously dim Rangers fans were clamoring for Texas to fire Ron Washington after 2011’s World Series disappointment and replace him with Bobby Valentine. I almost wish they would have done that, if only to help these narrow-minded haters get a little bit of karma for their incessant, unfair attacks on Washington. I’ve never seen an area universally despise and belittle a manager who wins as much as Washington does.
You must not watch football, ever heard of Andy Reid?
love francona but there is no helping the indians unless they get better players and a few decent arms
RedSox need a few starting pitchers a decent first baseman and a power hitting outfielder ok lets make some trades or sign a few agents prefer to do it thru trades though what bout soria as our new closer ? or should we give Bailey another chance?
Bailey deserves a chance. He had a pretty random finger injury that obviously cost him most of the season. Lets see what he can do.
I’m inclined to give Bailey a shot…but at the same time, he seems so fragile that he’s bound to get injured at some point.
They really shouldn’t have to worry much if he gets injured with Tazwawa around, unless the FO comes up with another of those brainey ideas to get a top notch reliever to start and possibly ruin him like the team did Bard.
That’s seems to be true about Ausmus. It’s too bad he didn’t get hired I think if he got hired he was going to make an immediate impact and turn in to one of the games too managers in a short period of time. Regardless, I’m sure he will get his chance but its clear he wanted to be part of something big. Helping turn around Boston was certainly what he wanted.
If MLB teams are going to wait until March Otani can possibly get more suitors by waiting a couple months when everyone gets a new cap pool and teams can trade for space. This would really help the yankees.
Epstein also did pretty decent in the Japanese market, except with Matsuzaka. Okajima was oustanding and Junichi Tazawa is the only Japanese amateur yet to get signed and brought up thru a MLB team’s farm system and produce.
His multiple Taiwanese signings didn’t exactly pan out, but some are still in the system, 1 (Chiang) was a key piece to Seattle in the Bedard deal and Lin was unfortunately just removed from the 40 man roster and now is with Houston.
Not sure why the Hamilton to Milwaukee rumor keeps popping up–It doesn’t make sense for the Brewers at all. They don’t have the money or a place in the OF for him–playing him in CF is a waste of Carlos Gomez’s value, and RF is pretty set with Nori Aoki. They need middle infielders and starting pitching–not an an oft-injured, high priced outfielder.
The Brewers don’t have a need for a middle infielder
Not sure that I’d agree with you on that. They trotter out a bunch of retreads at short when Gonzales went down last year and Weeks is hardly an iron man. Segura was okay, but not spectacular. People here overrate him because he’s not Counsell or Betancourt and because we got him for Greinke. The jury’s still out on what kind of player he will be.
Their system is extremely weak on MI prospects, and just adding Segura doesn’t really change that. After Gonzales went down last year–Cody Ransom, Cesar Izturis, and Jeff Bianchi all played at SS. This is not good.
That’s a draft issue, not a free agent issue. Segura and Weeks will be starting and Bianchi will be coming off the bench. They might need to sign someone to a cheap minor league deal, but there isn’t a pressing need at the major league level.
Can someone provide a reason as to why MLB teams should be concerned about irritating the Japanese officials?
They can throw out scouts from their stadiums? Threaten even scouts/officials from a certain team “persona non grata” like Taiwan did to Baltimore when they kept attempting to sign players who hadn’t graduated from HS..
Pacific rim countries (many) are not like most in the carribean.. They won’t allow MLB to stomp all over them for multiple reasons and most have flourishing economies.
if the NPB starts feeling like MLB is effectively plundering their baseball talent before it can ever be drafted, and thus threatening not only it’s profits but it’s very existence…. you think they’ll just stand back and watch it happen?
The Japanese are very passionate about their baseball, and if MLB doesn’t play nice with the NPB you could see the japanese parliament intervening directly as well, which gives the US government an excuse to stick it’s nose into MLB as well… and we all had so much fun when they did that last time.
So yeah, i’d say keeping the NPB happy is a pretty big deal for MLB.
No link to Carfardo’s article today? I like to read it in full, and it is nearly impossible to find otherwise…
No link? We need the link so we can get around the subscription cost by the boston globe.