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.
I didn’t say he was the only option at 1b. What I asked, purely as speculative scenario was, what do you think Theo would do if Gonz decided to hold out for 8/$200 mil. Considering the price they paid to get him do you think Theo would give it to him or conceed the deal as a one year rental and collect the draft picks and go after someone else? What would you do?
Ummm…who so far signed for less than market other than their own players who weren’t on the open market? You say some silly things at times.
Vmart, Beltre, Bay, etc left for more money than the Sox offered.
Crawford, Lackey, Cameron and Scutaro signed for the best deals. You can argue that the Angels might have offered the same but certainly it wasn’t more.
Paps and Ortiz seem to be looking for the best deal possible when their time is up.
Beckett got a deal I think he would’ve been hard pressed to get from any other team other than the Yanks.
So while the Yanks have certainly paid the best offer I don’t see examples of where NON-FREE AGENTS signed for less than the best offer. Guys like Pedroia, Youks and Lester obviously traded security for the right to test the open market. Will they do that the next time? We’ll see.
I would like to think that Theo would pony up the extra year and money. Theo during his tenure as GM hasn’t really been one to deal his top prospects for rental players.
I doubt he would do it, he would likely let Gonzalez go out on the market and not get 200mil. That would never happen though unless Gonzalez is a complete fool, he has made known the basic parameters he was looking for and said publicly that he wouldn’t raise the asking price on them now, so if he now turned around and did exactly that it would only serve to make him look bad to everyone.
I’m not going to defend the second half of his post but he was responding to someone else who was saying that Gonzalez is taking less than market value to play for the Sox so your first question should really have been directed to dickylarue.
a) I can’t see Gonz accepting less than 22mil per. Why would he?
b) That’s only 1 player. Bcourt is acting as if that’s the norm. We can’t really say what Agonz is going to sign for because neither side has publicly or behind the scenes discussed anything regarding the numbers.
Correct me if I’m wrong but are you talking about the extension to Beckett from last year or was it something that happened a few years ago? Because there is no way Beckett would make more anywhere else than what he is now (perhaps NY but that’s about all)
Beckett was never on the open market so you really can’t say he accepted less money to stay there. He sacrificed the oppourtunity to hit the open market for whatever reason. Maybe he felthis health was suspect and tool the security. If he had not signed he would’ve been a free agent this year. Based on what he did in 2010 Idon’t think anyone would’ve jumped to give hime $15 mil per year. Yanks might have, but that’s debatable.
I don’t use Pedroia, Lester and Youks as examples because clearly they were several years away from free agency and do what most non-Boras cleints do and they sacrificed security for getting the best open market deal.
And please stop with the bull of comparing things to NY. I wasn’t making this a NY thing. However….
a) Look at the roster. Between free agents and the homegrown vets, not too many homegrown young players to extend.
b) It’s usually been their policy to NOT extend anyone and wait until the last year of the deal and then sign them.
c) Of the recent homegrown stars the Yanks signed Cano years before he was set to hit the market. They DECLINED to do so for Wang because they had concerns about his health and productivity. The only other candidates for extensions are Hughes, Gardner and possibly Joba. All of them are 2 or 3 years away from free agency and haven’t established themsleves as stars yet.
Stop being a homer.
He was probably talking about the extension shortly after he was traded to the Red Sox. The last deal was not team friendly.
I wasn’t saying whether he would or not, just that dickylarue said he would which is what blackcourt was responding to. So again you should be asking dickylarue that question.