Day: February 21, 2010

Fireside Chats #71: Where Tim holds a presser explaining his recent absence from the show

Everyone has been wondering where Tim's been and why there's been no Fireside Chats as pitchers and catchers reported to Fort Myers. We now have answers. He's been chumming it up in rehab with his pal Tiger Woods. But unlike Tiger, Tim's ready to get back to work! Seriously though, with the Red Sox heading back to Fort Myers, its time to take a look at the team the Red Sox are about to put on the field and decide what we expect out of the local nine in 2010. Starting this week, Paul and Tim will look, first at the infield then outfield and so forth, at Fangraphs' compilation of expert and community projections and give an assessment of their accuracy as well as will those numbers be good enough for this team to compete for a championship in 2010. First up: Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia, Marco Scutaro, and Adrian Beltre. All that and more on this episode of Fireside Chats.

The All-80s Players

Fooled you! Anyway, they only 80s I wanted to talk about were the 80 million dimes given to Johnny Damon by the Detroit Tigers, and how it relates to our favorite rivals 210 miles south. Personally, I was hoping teams would continue to stonewall Damon. With his declining defense, girl-scout level throwing power, and offensive season fueled by a short right field in Yankee Stadium III, the possibility that he couldn't even scrape by a $5M deal was fueling my schadenfreude. My guess was that he'd eventually cave to Kenny Williams' $4M deal the White Sox offered. This deal by the Tigers seems panicked, at best. After trading away Curtis Granderson and Edwin Jackson for prospects, I understand the need to restock the outfield to replace Granderson. However, I'm very curious about the timing.