Daisuke Matsuzaka joins a growing list of Japanese players who have made donations to fund disaster relief in their homeland. Dice-K donated $1MM to the Japanese Red Cross Society though the Red Sox Foundation, according to Tim Britton of the Providence Journal. Here are a few other Sox-related notes:
- ESPN.com's Buster Olney (Insider-only link) expects the Red Sox and Adrian Gonzalez to get an extension done for the slugger in the second week of the season, sometime during the club's first homestand. Olney points out that it might be in Gonzalez's best interest to nudge the Sox toward finalizing a deal sooner rather than later, since his market value could be hurt by an injury.
- Boston optioned a handful of players to the minors today, including Scott Atchison and Ryan Kalish, as Rob Bradford of WEEI.com writes.
- While the Sox still have a few pitchers whose Opening Day fates are in limbo, it doesn't sound like Tim Wakefield is among them. WEEI's Alex Speier has quotes from Terry Francona discussing how the skipper hopes to maximize Wakefield's effectiveness this year.
“including Scott Atchison”
Looks like that means the final two bullpen spots will go to Reyes and Albers, which was really the only logical decision.
Does Wakefield retire in June (or whenever) if he’s ineffective?
i’m not sure kalish has much less to offer than JD Drew at this point… as long as they are putting the RF spot near the bottom of the order I think it would have been cool to give Kalish shot… unless the sox don’t buy into their own prospect hype. Of course it makes sense to stash him until the inevitable injury in the outfield.
They want Kalish to play everyday. Sox have Drew and Cameron blocking him in Boston. He will be up towards the end of the year for sure though.
makes sense… i was just commenting on the fact that it sucks to be kalish right now. he’s definitely got the talent to make a good regular.
I doubt it would happeen but what would/could Theo do if Gonz decided he wanted nothing less than 8/$200 mil? Theo can’t admitt to having an already agreed upon contract with him. So would he pony up or let Gonz hit the market? They can still offer him arb and negotiate with the rest of the 29 teams. What would you do?
Albert Pujols.
What do you mean by “negotiate with the rest of the 29 teams”?
He plans to pay off the other 29 teams and then sign Adrian Gonzalez for the Major League minimum because no one else will offer him a contract
Maybe I should’ve said negotiate against the other 29 teams. Meaning to bid for him in an open market.
Meaning that they would compete for his services as a free agent with the rest of baseball. Obviously some teams like the Pirates wouldn’t touch himbut you get my point.
I can’t wait for this whole Gonzalez contract farce to be over. They had a deal in December. They’ll announce it during the home stand, pretend it just happened spontaneously, and put out the chips, dip and chowdah for a big press conference.
That being said, Gonzalez is a MORON for taking a penny less than Texeira got not to mention a penny less than the Red Sox offered Texeira guaranteed 2 seasons ago.
Theo must be spiking the punch up there to get these guys to leave money on the table, although it didn’t work on Lackey, Papelbum or Carl Crawford.
Bitter, party of one.