Contract Year

OK. I've been out of the loop a little bit, was on vaca, blah, blah. Trying to get back into the swing of things here as the Sox have done so well over the past few games. I'll admit that I fell asleep during the game last night, but hey we were up 4-0 and the game seemed to be in good hands.

It was nice of the Yankees to complement our win last night with their third loss in a row, bringing our lead back to a comfortable 3 1/2 games. I've been thinking that not only is this the year that we win the division outright, but could this be the year that we make it to the playoffs without a nailbiting end-of-season dogfight...I'd like to think that it is.

I'd like to echo Aaron's distaste for the likes of one Mister Jerry Callahan. That guy is a boob. Usually I hate him for his politics, but acknowledge that he is pretty smart on most things sports. However, I agree with Aaron, that in this case he's on the total wrong side of the argument.

On that note, it's nice to see the Sox signing guys BEFORE they're contract is up. I just never got that strategy. If the guy has a bad year, ok, you get to cut your losses, but if the guy has a good year you have to pay through the nose to get him back or watch him waltz over to another team, ala Pedro. Even given the horrible outing he had against the Sox, tell me you wouldn't want Pedro stepping up to the mound during the postseason this year. Wouldn't it have been better to have signed Pedro for a 2-3 year extension after the '03 season, or sometime in '04? We could have signed him for a lot less money than he's making now and we would've got to see Pedro retire a Red Sox. Instead they wait until the contract year is done and let someone else swoop in and woo him away...and we end up trying to replace him with Ooh-My-Head Clement. That worked out well.

We probably could have wrapped up Johnny Damon for a lot less cake than we ended up offering him. Yes, I hate him now. But his numbers sure look a lot better than Coco's at this point (though he definitely could not have made That Catch), and for '03-'05 I had him on my list as the second most clutch hitter on the Sox behind you know who. There are many, many other examples of how the wait-till-their-contract-year-is-over strategy sucks, but I know you have your own list in your head too.

That's it for now. Just wanted to get something up and get used to writing again.

Cheers,
-JS