IBC

Dear baby jesus, please have the ruddy drunk in the red suit riding a deer deliver the Red Sox Hanley Ramirez for your birthday.

I gotta believe if Theo was still in Boston Ramirez's return would already be in the works. Now we'll see if Cherington can move quickly when he needs to. He snoozed on Dale Sveum and lost him to Theo, and if he doesn't put together a healthy package in short order, I wouldn't be shocked to see Ramirez manning SS (though 3B may be an option for the right price in a restructured deal) for the Cubs next year with Castro moving or being dealt.

Pujols re-signs, Cardinals trade for Ramirez, win another World Series. Winner winner chicken dinner.

Just heard, Pujols to Angels.

Yuck

This is surprising to me. I didn't expect Pujols to leave.

me neither. but the offer was what, $50-60 million better? it's tough to turn that down I guess. still sucks.

that said, in 5 years, maybe even less, I'll be happy the Cards didn't keep him. He can extend his career with the DH too, so I guess that makes some sense.

Still. He seemed like the kind of man that wanted a statue in St Louis.

Pirates wrote:me neither. but the offer was what, $50-60 million better? it's tough to turn that down I guess. still sucks.

that said, in 5 years, maybe even less, I'll be happy the Cards didn't keep him. He can extend his career with the DH too, so I guess that makes some sense.

This doesn't speak to your point, but I just wanted to say it because of what I'm reading around the internet tonight. The DH may make sense for Pujols later on, but I don't really see how it makes the dollar total make any more sense. If Pujols is so decrepit in his late 30's and 40's that he can't lumber around first, I don't think that he's going to put up 900 OPSs. And if he did, a DH isn't that much more valuable than a moderately below average 1B anyway.

The concept of the DH extending a guy's career, at least from the club's standpoint, makes a lot more sense for the Bryan Downing/Mickey Tettleton type who can swing the bat well enough to provide some team something of value in that spot (and wouldn't have been a decent 1B five years earlier either) at a reasonable value - not for $25 million. Maybe in ten years when he's 45 he'll post the same numbers that he did this year, but it seems like a pretty safe bet otherwise.