Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

Did the Red Sox front office really think Joel Pineiro could have been a top closer in the extra tough AL East? That's the only question I have after the announcement that Jonathan Papelbon will return to the closer's role. I have no doubt that if a top closer was available as a free agent this offseason that the Red Sox would have been first in line to sign them. I guess as Shakespeare said, "all's well that ends well"... Everybody who's paying attention is worried about Jason Varitek's offense. Last year Tek hit just .238 with a .725 OPS. Sure he hit a HR yesterday but that broke up an 0-17 skid. Everybody is saying that Varitek came to camp in the best shape of his career but every spring you read those stories about players who are over the hill. I really hope that I'm wrong and that Varitek isn't turning into the offensive equivalent of Brad Ausmus... Just as it is wise to take Varitek's 0-17 skid with a grain of salt - it may also be wise not to get too excited about the A's Rich Harden who has a 1.32 ERA and 25 K's in little over 13 innings this spring. It seems like Harden has been around so long that it's easy to forget that he's just 25-years old... Again - remember its just spring training numbers - but it looks like Mike Piazza may thrive as a DH. So far this spring he's hitting .425 with 3 HR and an OPS of 1.228... Going back to Joel Pineiro for a moment - did you realize that he's the highest paid pitcher in the Red Sox bullpen? At $4 million for the year (plus $2 million in incentives) - he makes almost as much Mike Timlin ($2.8 million) and Brendan Donnelly ($1.4 million) combined. I wonder how that sits with the other guys in the bullpen? The highest paid guy in the bullpen will probably only be used in mop-up situations... Twenty-years ago in 1987 the Red Sox had two starters (Roger Clemens and Bruce Hurst) who combined for 33 complete games. Do you think we will see 33 complete games in the entire American League this year?