By now I'm sure everyone has seen the latest reports that the Red Sox are aggressively pursuing a trade for Roy Halladay. Not surprisingly, the rumors always start with Clay Buchholz. But if you're asking, my advice: do not give up Clay for Halladay, even if it is one for one. It is simply not worth it.

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By now we all know that this team had weaknesses and I'm sure everyone out there has some solution in mind that will bring us our next World Series. But before we all go crazy talking about free agent targets for the offseason let's remember that there is always at least one thing getting in the way of any free agent signing or trade: money. So, let's take a look the payroll situation so we'll have an idea how much money Theo will be able toss around this winter.

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At first glance the answer seems simple. Papelbon has 21 saves, and only 2 blown saves; he is pitching to an incredibly effective 1.70 ERA; he only has one loss. All of these stats would lead you to believe the guy is having one of the best years of his short, magnificent career. But anyone that has been watching the guy pitch all year will tell you that he is not getting batters out as easily as he has in the past. His saves seem to be taking a little extra effort. And looking at the numbers, the way he has been pitching he's lucky that his ERA is not closer to his FIP of 3.93.

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As everyone knows, David Ortiz has been absolutely terrible. And, as we've all been discussing, it has to be about time for the Sox to make some contingency plans. The trade talk stuff has been popping up all over the site, so I thought I would try to consolidate the info a little. Here are the guys I think will be most talked about in the next few weeks.

The Guys That We've Already Discussed:

Victor Martinez

• would take too much considering that he wouldn't be playing a whole lot of catcher for us.

Adam Dunn:

• Seems like a good fit, but the Nats seem to be asking for a lot right now.
  

Nick Johnson:

• Also a good fit, but injury prone and the Nats want Bowden. Too much.

Adrian Gonzalez:

• Absolute pipe-dream.

Other Guys That are in the Rumor-Mill:

Brad Hawpe:

• 09:$5.5M, 10:$7.5M, 11:$10M club option ($0.5M buyout)
• This is an interesting one that we have not yet discussed. He makes reasonable money and is a good (and sometimes great) hitter. He is absolutely mashing this year with an OPS of 1.008. However, how would he do away from Coors? He is about 30 OPS points better at home than away for his career, but that does not seem too bad considering he plays in the NL West and plays a lot of games in LA and San Diego, two of the biggest pitcher parks in the league. He is a true DH, with a UZR of -37.2! last year.
• I think it is a solid fit and the Rockies are an easier trade partner than the Nats. He should come cheaper than Holliday to the A's, so maybe MDC and a lower tier prosepct?

Matt Holliday:

• He's starting to pick it up, but still does not look like the MVP-type hitter he was in the past. My guess is that he would take a lot, but we would get 2 high draft picks if he walked after the year, so we should take that into account.

Prince Fielder, Miguel Cabrera:

• I put these guys in because someone just floated the idea in a Fanpost, but I do not think either are available with the way their teams are playing. Maybe in the offseason for either though. 

Carlos Lee:

• 09:$18.5M, 10:$18.5M, 11:$18.5M, 12:$18.5M.
• He makes a ton of money and is signed for a few too many years. But if the Astros were to pay some of his contract, it might make sense. However, I read on mlbtraderumors.com that he would not waive his no-trade claue no matter what, so probably a moot point.

Mark Derosa:

• 09:$5.5M
• He can play all over the field and would let us rotate Bay, Drew, Youk, Lowell or even Pedroia into the DH spot if we want. However, he is at best an .800 OPS hitter and would probably take a lot to acquire (the Indians seem to like to "win" all of thier trades and might demand a ransom for Derosa).
• I think we could get just as good production by plugging Bailey or Carter into the DH spot everyday.

Austin Kearns:

• 09:$8M, 10:$10M club option ($1M buyout)
• The least desireable of the Nationals options. He has a career .786 OPS, but is at .730 this year and .627 next year. Like Derosa, I do not think he is significantly better than Bailey or Carter at this point.

Jeff Franceour:

• please, no.

The White Sox Hitters

The White Sox were buyers just last week with the Jake Peavy deal, and are only 5 games back, but I think we should all be rooting for an extended slump in the next few weeks because they have some pretty solid hitters who are all playing well this year and fit the "rent-a-player" mold that a lot of us would prefer.

Jim Thome:

• Final year of his deal and currently putting up an OPS of .895. Perfect DH.

Jermaine Dye:

• Also in the last year of his contract (with a 2010 mutual option). OPS of .872 on the year. It would be nice to trade for someone that we could rotate into the OF a little bit. I think this would be a great fit.

Paul Konerko:

• 09: $12M 10:$12M.

• He has another year on his deal, so I would prefer the other guys. But Konerko is hitting well (.870 OPS) and we could rotate him in at 1B to give Lowell/Youk some days off.

Chicago is an aggressive front office, so if  they do fall out of contention, I think Dye and Thome will definitely be on the trading block. Who will they want back? Probably Bowden or someone good, but maybe we could get it done for cheaper than that.

There should be a lot of options out there, so hopefully we can get something done. Personally, I do not want to give up Bowden or Bucholz unless we get Adrian Gonzalez, Fielder or Cabrera, and I don't think any of that is happening. It should be an interesting next few weeks.

I saw this today on FanGraphs. It looks like Johnny Damon had a few things to say last night about the differences between the Red Sox and the Yankees organizations:

“I couldn’t believe that they were letting [Varitek] walk and try to find a team,” said Damon. “That’s the difference between New York and Boston. … If you’re a part of New York, they’re going to keep you there: (Jorge) Posada, (Derek) Jeter, Mariano (Rivera), it’s the first time in history guys have been on the same team for 15 years.

“It goes to show you something about how the Yankees think, and how many Yankees players have been exclusive with one team. They keep them forever,” Damon continued. “(The Red Sox) were ready to let (Varitek) go. He’s their starting catcher. That’s how the two teams work. You know his days are going to be numbered here. But hopefully not -- he deserves to be here until his career is over.”

Now I've been one of those guys who has kinda given Damon a free pass (same with all the guys on the 2004 WS roster), but we all gotta call BS on this one. The reason Damon didn't stay with the Red Sox was because the Yankees were able to offer more money. There is no such team out there that can outbid the Yankees for players. The reason Posada, Jeter and Mariano have all been there so long is because the Yankees offered each of them more money than any other team was able. Those three cost almost $50 million this year alone. Its not like guys are staying in NY for discounted prices. (Roger and Pettite fled the coop when given the chance.)

Not to mention that the Red Sox seem to have taken the perfect strategy for building a winning team. We have lowered our payroll in the last few years and made our team better at the same time. Basically, I think Damon resents that we won another WS without him. And even more likely, hes already lobbying for another contract from the MFY.

So I know that Bailey used to play catcher. And I knew that he did not stick their because of defensive issues, but I had no idea the exact nature of his deficiencies. According to the answer to the first question in Amalie Benjamin's mailbag: 

[Bailey] used to be a catcher until he got a mental block that wouldn't allow him to throw back to the pitcher's mound.

What?! I had no idea. Is that true? Does anyone have any information about this? That is the exact plot of Major League II. Can't we just get Jake Taylor to give him a Playboy? Basically all of our catcher problems would be solved if Jeff Bailey could just throw a damn baseball back to the pitcher?

On a related not, I would much rather have Jeff Bailey on this team than Brad Wilkerson.

I personally hate steroids talk, so I thought we could steer the discussion towards actual baseball.

Pitchers and catchers report in two days, Youk is already there and we got an exhibition against BC in two weeks so its almost time to start looking at some actual baseball scores and make conclusions about our team. There aren't really too many storylines to follow, but this what I'll be looking at:

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So over the last few days there have been a bunch of discussions in various threads about the new "value" stats over at FanGraphs. I thought we could get a more coherent discussion going here and kinda figure this thing out.

First off, for everyone that is unfamiliar, over at Fangraphs they have put together an all-inclusive type stat that combines fielding, batting as well as positional adjustments to show how many wins a player is worth. Those guys can explain it a lot better than I can, so here are some links to their explanations:

Part 1 - Batting

Part 2 - Fielding

Part 3- Positional

Part 4 - Replacement

Part 5 - Converting Runs to Wins

Part 6 - Dollars

Part 7 - Additional Info

And for Pitchers

So there have been a lot of critiques of the the results in our threads. The biggest problem for people seems to be the money amounts that show how much the player was worth that year. Just to be clear for everyone that didn't read the explanations; these money amounts are what the player would be worth in free agency. More specifically, it is what a GM would pay that player if he somehow knew how the player would perform. Because it is their free agency values, most players are underpaid because most players are not free agents. Many players are also overpaid, usually aging veterans that can no longer cut it.

Other critiques:

For their pitching values, they us FIP (fielding independent pitching). FIP numbers for many pitchers are much different than their ERA's because it attempts to only take into account what the pitcher can control. Thus, Dice-K has a high FIP because he puts so many guys on base. I'm not sure this is the best way to do it because it is not a results-based stat.

They put a ton of value on position, so Varitek was actually worth a full win last year. Also Pedroia last year was better than Manny ever was with the Sox (or at least from 2002 on, since the numbers only go back that far.)

I really like the stat as it puts other stats into much more concrete terms. It has some issues, but overall I hope these numbers become a bigger and bigger part of our discussions around here.