« AL West Notes: Rangers, Wilson, Feliz, Angels, A's | Main | Cafardo On Red Sox, Lackey, Buehrle, Epstein »

Davidoff On Red Sox, CBA, Rangers, Darvish

By Zach Links [October 16, 2011 at 9:50am CST]

In today's column, Ken Davidoff of Newsday tackles a number of topics including what's next for Boston. Here are some highlights..

When the dust settles, the Red Sox are expected to name Ben Cherington as Theo Epstein's successor in Boston. While the club could take one step toward closing their credibility gap by hiring an experienced manager to complement their rookie GM, that's not likely to be the case. The Red Sox already view Cherington as having GM experience because of the work he has done with the organization. They'll more likely look to hire someone with a willingness to utilize statistical analysis and work with the rest of the baseball operations department.
This year, MLB and the Players Association had hoped to announced their next collective-bargaining agreement during the World Series like they did in 2006. However, with the World Series just three days away, people in the loop aren't optimistic. The two sides are meeting virtually every day and the biggest rancor appears to be surrounding Bud Selig's desire for hard slotting in the amateur draft. It's hard to imagine that this will result in any kind of a work stoppage, but it does seem like they'll miss out on the great PR opportunity that they were able to capture five years ago.
We don't see the Rangers and Angels as trading partners because there's too much anxiety over being burned. However, the Rangers used to admire Halos catcher Mike Napoli from a distance, and were able to trade for him immediately after the Blue Jays acquired him. Davidoff asked Daniels if he kept an eye on players in the divison whom he couldn't acquire by trade but could hope would get dealt to a different club so he could pounce. For Daniels, it's not that clear-cut, but he says that he checks in when someone he's interested in moves out of the AL West.
Baseball officials are increasingly convinced that righthander Yu Darvish will be posted to the major leagues, and industry folks wonder how much will teams pay. The Red Sox paid more than $51MM five years ago to talk with Daisuke Matsuzaka, and that hasn't panned out for them. The expectation is that in light of Boston's disappointment with Matsuzaka, teams won't bid as much for Darvish.