Tinkering

Shortly after the Sox announced that they had acquired reliever Brendan Donnelly from the Angels, their tinkering with the bullpen continued with the revelation that they had signed J.C. Romero. I am assuming, and sort of hoping, that this is just one of those low-cost "options" that they can play with in Spring Training. The last couple of years have not looked very good for Romero. His WHIP and ERA have both crept up, and he's racking up nearly as many walks as strikeouts. There was some talk of him suffering from the same sort of post-WBC fatigue as Mike Timlin, but that's not a reason to go out of your way to grab the guy. As far as I'm concerned, what this does is lights a fire under Craig Hansen. If he sees that the Sox are willing and able to replace him, and with a guy who sucks nearly as bad as Hansen sucked, well, he might dig a little deeper to find that slider he's been missing.

The Sox are not apparently done with their bullpen work. Though the Yankees appear to have stepped up their own pursuit of Mike Gonzalez, the Sox are not out of that one yet. Furthermore, there are still rumblings about the Nationals' Chad Cordero. Everyone seems to think that makes sense because the Nationals' GM, Jim Bowden is such a huge fan of Wily Mo- having acquired him when he was in Cincinnati. That seems almost too obvious to me- and I'm not sure if Cordero's not worth much more than Pena at this point. I think it would cost the Sox a prospect or two in addition. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it, but I'd think on it a bit.

The Sox have also not yet signed (or shall we say memorialized) the contract with J.D. Drew- the process apparently having been stalled out on some medical basis. Tony Mazzaroti and some others are speculating that something in his physical raised a red flag and they're now working through the process of protecting themselves- perhaps similar to the process the Tigers went through when they signed Pudge Rodriguez. I still think the deal will be done sooner than later. Maybe I'm just all about personal motivation today, but it's my hope that Drew will use this as an opportunity to prove himself as well.

Finally, Troup is gone. With the shifting of the Sox radio broadcast contract from WEEI to WRKO (both owned by Entercom Boston), someone decided that Jerry Trupiano needed to move on. He's being replaced (mostly) by Dave O'Brien, who used to broadcast Florida Marlins games. Sox front office guy Glenn Geffner will also fill in for several games. The press release made virtually no mention of Troup and why the change was made. I've always thought that he and Joe Castiglione were a terrific team, and had found a very nice comfort zone, with their "All Food Team" or "All Geography Team" asides. Plus, I'll really miss the "WAAAAAAY BACK!" on Troup's homer calls. Radio is a very personal, intimate media- especially summer evening games driving in the car and listening alone. It's not an easy thing to let a strange voice into that place.