Pieces and Perspective

A couple more pitching questions were answered yesterday, and neither of them were positive answers for the Sox. Keith Foulke, who had been offered salary arbitration by the Sox (after he declined his player option, after the Sox declined their team option), declined arbitration- meaning that either he felt like he could earn more than $7 million per year elsewhere, OR he hated pitching in Boston so much that it was worth giving up at least a couple of million to get the heck away from Johnny from Burger King. Either way, that's not too good for the Sox, who could have used a healthy (and not overly surly) Foulke in the bullpen.

Having been rejected by Keith, the Sox then turned up the heat on their offer to Octavio Dotel, who has been largely effective throughout his career, when healthy. He spurned them as well, accepting a one-year deal worth between $5-7 million from...the Kansas City Royals. This is the second mediocre/promising pitcher the Royals have snagged this winter- the other being Gil Meche, who will be receiving $55 million over five years. Holy cow. Gil Meche. $55 million. Once you get past that insanity, please remember that Meche has been, for his career, slightly WORSE than league average. Scott Boras has GOT to be loving that move. The other thing this points out is that the Royals will actually have a pretty deep pitching staff this year- with Meche, Odalis Perez, Brian Bannister, Luke Hudson, Jorge de la Rosa, my personal favorite Zack Greinke, and Luke Hochevar right around the corner. That's not bad. Of course having even one person in their lineup capable of putting up a .500 SLG would help, too. Mark Teahen? Um...no.

The point that I wanted to make in this market where lots of really unexciting players are getting tremendous money is that several moves the Sox made in-season last year are actually looking pretty good. Last year's offseason wasn't quite as insane as this one, but perhaps anticipating an uptick in the market, the Sox signed three players to extension. Carlos Lee gets 6 years/$100 million? How does 4/$52 for David Ortiz look right now. Consider that he's locked up in 2011 for $12.5 million, and that looks pretty good right now. Gary Matthews, Jr. gets 5/$50 million? How does 3 years/$15.5 million for Coco Crisp look right now? Plus, the team's got an $8 million option for 2010. Jason Schmidt gets 3 years/$47 million? Gil Meche gets 5 years/$55 million? How does 3 years/$30 million for Josh Beckett look right now? How does a 2010 option year at $12 million look right now?

At the time of these signings, the media was saying "what the hell is Theo doing? These guys are under contract already! They haven't proven anything yet! $10 million a year for Beckett? What are you, nuts?" I wish I had the transcripts. Who's crazy now? Well- maybe I should wait until next week to answer that question. There's still the little question of Matsuzaka to address first...