Brad Mills heads to Houston… was he man behind curtain for Francona?

Little late on this, but worthy of mention. The Sox bench coach, Brad Mills, has departed to Houston for two years plus a club option. All the platitudes out of Sox camp you expected to hear were said. Houston owner Drayton McLane said that -- and Francona verified -- Mills was given a lot more responsibility than your average bench coach. He ran spring training and handled most of the player communication. That's great, and it makes Mills doubly qualified to be a big league manager. But it worries be from Francona's perspective. All along, we've heard that he's a player's manager and players love him. How do they know that if it's Mills doing most of the talking all season? And if it's Mills doing the bonding monotonous exercises in spring training? Has Mills been the man responsible for what Tito supposedly excels at? Is Tito more the game manager, and Mills the player's manager? If true, maybe you start hearing about how Tito's become more stern over the years. All conjecture, but it crossed my mind.

Fireside Chats #65: Where we analyze the blueprints and lay out all the options

This week is a podcast of never-ending possibility. There are no wrong ideas, only bad ones, as Paul and I work through Evan, Mike and I's three part offseason blueprint to turn the 2010-2014 Boston Red Sox into multiple World Series winners. Oh...and as if it needed to be said, Paul tells us why he hopes the Phillies sweep the World Series. All that and more on this episode of Fireside Chats after the jump.

Seeing Straight on Aroldis Chapman

When any new phenomenon arrives, it takes a while for people to adjust their lifestyle and accommodate these changes. Cell phones are the most recent example. The Internet was another. In the baseball world, free agent-prospects are the newest slang, which, understandably, are forcing major league teams to adjust - with varied results. Baseball's newest free agent-prospect phenom, Aroldis Chapman is expected to visit Boston today, on the heels of a visit to New York on Monday. A world-class talent, he is turning baseball economics on its head. On the one hand, he is a prospect – a lean, projectable lefty at a young age, 21. On the other, he will command the salary of a major league free agent – not what you'd expect of a “prospect”. The newest “It Kid” from overseas, Chapman comes fully loaded with everything that makes scouts salivate more than Pavlov’s dogs: a ferocious fastball clocked as high as 102 mph and a long 6-4 frame. As a result, the young Cuban is considered the best prospect to reach the MLB this side of Stephen Strasburg – and he’s a lefty to boot. But there’s a problem with taking this position; mainly, the fact that he’s even labeled a “prospect”. Sure, he has all the traditional markings of one. He’s got exceptional tools, he’s projectable, he’s raw, and, most importantly, he’s young. However, under the modern economics of baseball, with escalating salaries and widely varying budgets, there are two nonnegotiable criteria that give value to and create the allure of the “prospect”...