Five Things We Learned on Thursday
February 20th, 2009 at 6:49 am ET
Posted by Alex Speier
The Sox will follow a truncated workout schedule today in order to attend a fundraising golf tournament for The Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida. The team will wrap up on the field by about 11:30 this morning, so updates should be coming relatively soon.
As for yesterday…
1) Apparently, the angst about J.D. Drew’s still-uncomfortable back was somewhat exaggerated. Drew has been free to take part in all aspects of workouts, and has thus far been unrestricted in his activity. The Red Sox underscored to Drew the significance of his presence on the field in a recent meeting. “When he’s out on the field, we’re a different team. There’s no getting around it,” Francona said. “We have a different look.”
2) David Ortiz missed Thursday’s workout. According to Francona, the decision to hold him out occurred after Ortiz slept awkwardly on his shoulder, but the slugger is expected to be fine.
3) Thursday marked the first live batting practice session of the spring, with Red Sox pitchers (yesterday, it was the relievers) throwing to hitters. Many batters are content to swing casually or not at all, using the exercise more to calibrate their timing than to actually start swinging. But one exception was Jed Lowrie, who offered further evidence of the progress of his return from a left wrist injury. Batting left-handed, the 24-year-old was able to generate power to both fields, hitting balls off the fence in both right-center and left-center on hanging curveballs spun by Manny Delcarmen.
By the end of last year, it was nearly impossible for him to produce those kinds of drives while batting left-handed, even in batting practice. Now, the strength of his left wrist nearly matches that of his right. Lowrie expects the disparity in strength between his wrists to eventually disappear.
4) The Red Sox are in regular contact with Daisuke Matsuzaka as he prepares for the WBC by training with the Seibu Lions in Japan. The team speaks with him by phone frequently, and had also deplayed Pacific Rim consultant (and former Seibu Lions and Sox minor-league pitcher) Denney Tomori to monitor the pitcher’s program in Japan.
5) It is a dangerous thing to pay Dustin Pedroia a compliment. Sox manager Terry Francona learned that lesson when he introduced last year’s MVP winner to Pirates skipper Ken Macha (for whom Francona served as bench coach in 2003, when Macha helmed the A’s).
“Mach was just making conversation and he said, ‘You know, you remind me of Chad Curtis,’ and he meant it really as a compliment,” Francona said of a player who was noted for his immense intensity. “Pedie was like, ‘Are you (expletive) me?’ Maybe (Pedroia) is right. I went from just introducing a friend to I had to hold Pedie back.”
For more, visit Full Count.
Red Sox non-roster invitees
February 8th, 2009 at 10:44 am ET
Posted by Alex Speier
The Red Sox announced the complete list of 19 non-roster invitees to their major-league spring training camp in Fort Myers. Notables include first baseman (and top prospect) Lars Anderson, outfielder Josh Reddick and pitcher Daniel Bard, among others:
Pitchers (8): Daniel Bard, Fernando Cabrera, Enrique Gonzalez, Kris Johnson, Marcus McBeth, Dustin Richardson, Billy Traber and Charlie Zink
Catchers (1): Carlos Maldonado
Infielders (6): Lars Anderson, Jeff Bailey, Angel Chavez, Nick Green, Ivan Ochoa, Gil Velazquez
Outfielders (4): Chip Ambres, Zach Daeges, Paul McAnulty and Josh Reddick
Of the 19 invitees, all except Anderson, Bard, Daeges, Johnson, Richardson and Reddick have major league service. Bailey, Velazquez and Zink all saw some action for the Red Sox in 2008.
Transcript of Theo Interview
February 4th, 2009 at 2:53 pm ET
Posted by Rob Bradford
Thanks to Newman the Intern, here is the transcript from Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein’s appearance on the Dale and Holley Show this afternoon. (Listen here for audio):
What was your interest and what was your view with how things turned out with Mark Teixeira?
Yeah, it’s no secret we had legitimate interest. I think he’s an elite player, a really well-rounded player who’s in his prime and he does a lot of things we like well: he gets on base, hits for power, plays great defense, takes great care of himself. So, he was a good fit for the long term and that was really our interest. Anytime you go after a player who’s going to require a contract of that length, he has to be a good fit for the long term, you can’t to do something like that because you think he’s going to be a good fit for the next one or two years, it has to be a long-term fit. He really would have complemented the core that we’ve developed here really well, there’s no doubt about that. We haven’t yet developed a legitimate power hitter internally, but I think we will. It would have been nice. That was the rationale for our interest. He would have fit into our club over the long haul. We certainly made a run at him. But I’m fine with how it turned out. We didn’t offer him the most money. As it turned out, there was a club that offered more money than we did, and they got the player. Not that that was the only factor in the decision, because there were a lot of factors in it. But you can’t have any complaints when you don’t offer the most money. I thought it was a good sign by the Yankees. Mark did really well for himself. We’ll just have to try to figure out how to get him out over the next eight years. We’ve actually done a pretty good job of getting him out in his career. I hope we continue that.
Did you feel you were running an uphill battle with the Teixeira because of the Yankees presence in the negotiations?
Not necessarily. I think in general that’s how I look at free agent negotiations. True open-market negotiations with players that the Yankees will be interested in, I think they’re going to get that player because they just have a bigger margin for error than we do. I’m not complaining. We have tremendous resources. So many teams look up at us and wish they could be in our financial position, but with respect to the Yankees, history has borne out that they’re going to get the player on the true open market. And that’s fine.
We’re not building this organization through free agency. I don’t think that’s an intelligent way to build an organization. We’re building it through drafting players, signing players internationally, developing a homegrown core from within and complementing it with trades and free agents. I always assume that if the Yankees want a player, that they’re going to get him. That’s why it can’t necessarily be a part of our business model to assume we’re going to land the big-ticket free agents.
With respect to this particular negotiation, I don’t think we were necessarily swimming upstream because he was always going to go back to the Yankees in the end. I don’t necessarily feel that way. I know it can be interpreted that way. But geography played a factor here. He and his family are from the Maryland area. I think that brought the Nationals and Orioles into play a little bit. But specifically with regards to the Yankees, they’re just closer than we are to that area. It’s a quicker train ride or car ride for his family. His wife has some family in New York. To the extent that geography and person reasons played a factor, we had that against us in that important column.
I have no problem with how it turned out in the end. We offered a lot of money but we didn’t offer the most money, so in the end, we moved on.
How much did you find the economic playing field different this year? How much did you find doing business this offseason different than it’s been in the past for you?
It was a little different this year. There’s always the tendency for player salaries to increase each year. I think that’s not going to be the case this winter. Obviously, the truly elite free agents got their money, but everyone else seems to be struggling. That obviously reflects what’s going on with the economy as a whole. I don’t think we should be complaining about it. There are a lot of people out there in far worse positions than those who work in professional baseball. It is what it is. It’s been a market where supply and demand dictated certain positions getting more money than others. In general, teams are watching what they spend. They’re not sure if they’re going to have their normal flows of revenue this year and into the future. They’re just being responsible and disciplined in the way that they spend. That’s made for interesting situations with respect to certain players.
Were you surprised when Varitek declined salary arbitration?
That’s a personal decision. I never would publicly speak about my feelings about that. That was a decision for Jason to make with the advice of those he relies upon. It was early in the offseason, first week of December and at that time the market hadn’t truly defined itself. It wasn’t just Jason. There were a lot of players around baseball who were offered arbitration but were looking for multi-year deals and turned down arbitration. Then the market defined itself and those multi-year deals were harder to find.
With Jason it worked out in the end, I think he and the Red Sox have a contract that accomplished a lot of the goals on both sides, mainly for him, it makes it much more likely that he’ll be a Red Sox not only in 2009 but in 2010 as well. So for the Red Sox, we got a player who, as I said, at the beginning of the offseason we said he was an important part of what we do, and we got him at an affordable price so I think both sides are happy.
Did you go into this offseason thinking you would be able to get Papelbon, Pedroia and Youkilis signed to deals?
With Papelbon, he’s an arbitration eligible player, so we knew we’d get him signed sooner or later one way or another and we were glad we were able to get it done before we had to exchange numbers and get into the arbitration process, so that was a positive. With Pedroia and Youkilis, they were among the players we wanted to sit down and have multi-year conversations with and they were really reasonable and so we were able to work something out. I hope we’ll look back and say that was an important part of our offseason, being able to lock Pedroia up for the length of time that we did with him–six years and an option–and then Youkilis four years and an option. We’ve got these guys through their prime years and a club option. They get a lifetime of security. We get cost control, affordability and knowledge that we’ll keep a good part of our offensive and defensive core intact. It’s a win-win there for all sides.
Youkilis is not a traditional cleanup hitter. Are you comfortable with him as your cleanup guy?
Oh, yeah. It’s not my responsibility. I think Tito is open to hitting him all over the lineup. When people say that Youkilis isn’t a traditional cleanup or middle fo the order hitter, I think they haven’t quite noticed how he’s evolved as a player. When he first came up, his clear strength as an offensive player was his plate discipline. He would show power sporadically, only on certain pitches he could drive. He’s really changed. You’ve probably noticed the last couple of years, and last year in particular, that he’s still got an above-average walk rate, still got above-average plate discipline, but he’s sacrificed a little bit of that patience to look to drive the ball earlier in the count. He’s adjusted his approach a little where there are a number of different places in the strike zone where he can drive the ball. If you look at his numbers last year, they probably reflected that. The Kevin Youkilis of 2008, that guy can probably hit cleanup for any team in baseball, any day of the week.
Is Jason Bay on your list of someone you would like to get signed this offseason as well?
We said at the beginning of the offseason that we weren’t going to talk about who we wanted to lock up, we’d just let you know when it got done, so I don’t want to get into those specifics. But the offseason’s not over yet, but with prospective free agents a year from now, or even other players a few years down the line, it makes sense to let this year’s free-agent market determine itself so you have a reliable recent set of data points before you embark on those negotiations. There’s still a lot of good position players out there who haven’t signed yet. That might put some negotiations out until later in the offseason than would otherwise be the case.
What did Bay bring to the team after he came to Boston?
You saw it. He’s an underrated offensive baseball player who has the ability to hit for power very consistently. His consistency of power output has been overlooked. You can write him up for 30 homers every year, he can drive in about 100 runs. He also does his share of working the count, and will draw his walks and get on base, which we like. He’s a very good baserunner, despite not having great speed, and at times throughout his career has been a very good defensive player as well. He’s kind of what you’re looking for in a player. He’s reliable production, and someone you can count on knowing what his output is going to be at the end of the year. You can write him into the middle of your order. He’s just a calm, veteran presence–plays the game hard, plays the game right, and is a really good teammate. He fit in really well on this club.
Were you surprised you were able to sign John Smoltz at reasonable dollars and what are you thoughts about him?
Yeah, I think our assumption a year ago, and the middle of the year when you kind of go through the free agent list and take a look at who might be available, we just assumed he would be back in Atlanta, and even early this offseason, but when we found out that the potential was there for him to be available, that his rehab was ahead of schedule on the video, we thought it was certainly worth a look.
He’s been a guy that any club would love to have. The only checkmarks against him were age, the shoulder surgery and the fact that he wouldn’t leave Atlanta, so once it was clear he would be available to talk to other clubs and that his rehab was going extraordinarily well we went down and saw him throw and he threw a bullpen for us in early December that would have made us really happy if he had thrown it in early March, and that’s really all we needed to see. He is a bit of a physical freak and can defy age to a certain extent, and he’s recovered from surgeries really well throughout his career. He’s a guy that’s never been nothing but dominant whenever he’s thrown a baseball over the course of his career in the major leagues. So those are the types of guys you can bet on to have success, even late in their careers.
Are you concerned about Jon Lester’s innings jump last year?
I think that any time you jump innings you want to be concerned, but there are a lot of factors that mitigate that. The total last year is a little bit artificially high because we started the season so early. His first outing, for instance, in Japan–that counts, but he would have had that anyway in a spring training game. And he was so efficient with his pitching last year that he got deep in games while maintaining his delivery without having stressful innings. Those are things that factor into the equation as well.
But particularly with our young pitchers, we want to have a more gradual progression. Jon, I think he was just so strong last year and so reliable into the playoffs that we had to push a little bit past where we wanted him to go. I think the good news is that he checked out extremely well with all of his end-of-season testing, had a very productive offseason, he’s already here in Fort Myers. We sent (trainer) Mike Reinold to check on him during the offseason, and he had one fo the strongest shoulders in our whole organization. He’s young, strong, and we’re not going to do anything irresponsible with him. He’s a guy you can feel pretty good about betting on for the long haul with his mechanics, his body, the way he takes care of himself between starts and the way that we’ll use him.
How do you feel about the World Baseball Classic and having some of your players participating in it?
You know, I think it’s a great event, it’s a lot of fun to watch and it’s good for baseball. If you were designing an ideal spring training, you would have all your players in camp and have control over how they’re used, but it is what it is. I think there are pitch count limits in place throughout the tournament that will prevent any serious damage. We’ll just cross our fingers and hope that our players come back healthy. I can’t wait till they get back to camp. But I’m not going to sit here and complain about it. Every club goes through it. In the big picture, it’s a great thing for baseball. Obviously, if G.M.’s had their way, if managers had their way, they’d have all of their players for all of the spring. But we’ll adjust. It’s not the end of the world.
Thoughts about Mike Lowell’s health and the feelings he might have about the rumors concerning him?
As you know he had surgery on the labrum in his hip and we projected him to be ready by the start of the season. That’s still the case. He’s had some really good weeks and some that were frustrating to him. But he’s started swinging the bat and doing some agility work, and he’s pretty much on schedule to be available by the end of spring training and that’s really what we’re focused on, what he’s going to look like at the end of spring training rather than the beginning. If we’re smart about this, he’ll have his limitations early in camp. We’re not going to rush him out there and make sure he can play in the first spring training game. That just doesn’t make sense. So far, it’s been a very routine, normal rehab with some ups and downs along the way.
As far as the feelings he might have, Mike’s a veteran and he understands there’s things organizations have to do when elite players become available, players that might fit for the long haul. Teams that expect to win every year go after those players and that’s the nature of it and I think Mike understands that. Doesn’t mean your feeling don’t get affected a little bit, doesn’t mean that you like it, but Mike’s a veteran and he’s been through it before. We’re talking regularly about his rehab. He’s ready to go. He’s focused on helping the Red Sox win a World Series in 2009. You can not like something personally, but still understand it professionally at the same time.
Is your offseason done or are there move you would like to make if you can?
I think we’re probably done. There are always non-roster invitees that might fit as we round out our spring training roster and there’s always trade discussions as well, so I wouldn’t rule anything out but nothing is that hot or active right now. I think most teams are packing up and heading down to spring training, seeing what they have the first few weeks of camp and then trade discussions will pick up from there. But we’re pretty much set at most positions and I feel good about our depth and redundancy that we have here in camp, and we’ll need it because it’s a long season, and every season we’ve built up depth we’ve needed it to survive the attrition of the season. So we’ll see how we look on the field in a week or so.
Kotsay undergoes back surgery
February 4th, 2009 at 2:48 pm ET
Posted by Alex Speier
Red Sox first baseman/outfielder Mark Kotsay underwent surgery on January 29 for a displaced disc fragment in his back in response to back pain. (Kotsay’s signing became official on January 15, after he had undergone a physical.) Few details for his recovery timetable are available as of yet, but a Red Sox official did say that Kotsay is not expected to miss much of the regular season.
All the same, his injury would seem to offer some clarification of the motivation behind the recent agreement to terms with first baseman / outfielder Brad Wilkerson (reported at WEEI.com yesterday). Kotsay has a history of back problems, and required surgery on a herniated disk in 2007. He has been on the disabled list four times with back problems: in 2003 with San Diego, when he missed two weeks due to spasms; the first two months of the 2007 season following the aforementioned surgery; again in the final month and a half of the 2007 season with the A’s; and for much of last June with the Braves.
