The Sox front office has the option of picking up Tim Wakefield's 2009 option of letting him walk as an unrestricted free agent after the year. Barring trade or injury, 3 members of the Red Sox 2009 rotation are already set: Beckett, Lester and Dice-K. It takes 6 starters (at least) to get through a season, which leaves 3 spots still to be filled. The Sox would be wise to give one of these spots to Wakefield. Boston has a $4 million option on their 42-year old knuckleballer, and at $4 million in today’s market, a pitcher who is a virtual lock for 25 starts, 175 innings and an ERA in the 4.50-range is an absolute steal. Not to mention what Wake brings in terms of leadership and clubhouse presence. The Red Sox will have roughly $45 million to play with this off-season, with catcher as the only spot that needs to be filled. Theo would be wise to save money by counting Wake and Clay Buchholz (or another young gun) as members of his 6-man rotation…and then use that excess money to bid big on Yu Darvish, the Japanese star who should be the final member of next year’s starting staff. Wake is consistent, dependable, effective and relatively cheap…preventing him from becoming a free agent this off-season should be an absolute no-brainer for the Boston brain trust.Friday, September 12, 2008
Free Agent Friday: Tim Wakefield
The Sox front office has the option of picking up Tim Wakefield's 2009 option of letting him walk as an unrestricted free agent after the year. Barring trade or injury, 3 members of the Red Sox 2009 rotation are already set: Beckett, Lester and Dice-K. It takes 6 starters (at least) to get through a season, which leaves 3 spots still to be filled. The Sox would be wise to give one of these spots to Wakefield. Boston has a $4 million option on their 42-year old knuckleballer, and at $4 million in today’s market, a pitcher who is a virtual lock for 25 starts, 175 innings and an ERA in the 4.50-range is an absolute steal. Not to mention what Wake brings in terms of leadership and clubhouse presence. The Red Sox will have roughly $45 million to play with this off-season, with catcher as the only spot that needs to be filled. Theo would be wise to save money by counting Wake and Clay Buchholz (or another young gun) as members of his 6-man rotation…and then use that excess money to bid big on Yu Darvish, the Japanese star who should be the final member of next year’s starting staff. Wake is consistent, dependable, effective and relatively cheap…preventing him from becoming a free agent this off-season should be an absolute no-brainer for the Boston brain trust.
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Free Agent starters....
Kris Benson (33)
A.J. Burnett (32) - can opt out
Paul Byrd (38)
Roger Clemens (46)
Matt Clement (33)
Bartolo Colon (36)
Ryan Dempster (32)
Shawn Estes (36)
Josh Fogg (32)
Freddy Garcia (33)
Jon Garland (29)
Tom Glavine (43)
Mike Hampton (36)
Mark Hendrickson (35)
Livan Hernandez (34)
Orlando Hernandez (43)
Jason Jennings (30)
Randy Johnson (45)
John Lackey (30) - $9M club option
Jon Lieber (39)
Kyle Lohse (30)
Braden Looper (34)
Rodrigo Lopez (33) - club option
Derek Lowe (36)
Greg Maddux (43)
Pedro Martinez (37)
Jamie Moyer (46)
Mark Mulder (31) - $11M club option
Mike Mussina (40)
Carl Pavano (33) - $13M club option
Brad Penny (31)- $8.75M club option
Odalis Perez (32)
Oliver Perez (27)
Andy Pettitte (37)
Sidney Ponson (32)
Mark Prior (27)
Kenny Rogers (44)
C.C. Sabathia (28)
Curt Schilling (42)
Ben Sheets (30)
John Smoltz (42)
Tim Wakefield (42)- $4M club option
Kip Wells (32)
Randy Wolf (32)
from that list other than Wake the only guys worth go after would be Sheets or Sabathia. Maybe for short money bring in Glavine he's from Mass.
I thought Wake signed some sort of "lifetime" contract with the Sox a couple of years ago. Is it by mutual annual renewal? I hadn't head about Wake being a free agent or this being his last year.
You are correct Duffman, but part of the mututal annual renewal is the parties have to mutually agree to renew. So he could easily not be a free agent...but he could be.
As for the rest of the list....
* Sabathia is too heavy (300 lb practically) to invest too much money on, which he will clearly get from somebody (Yankees?).
* I've heard that Ben Sheets is of the Edgar Renteria mold and does not have the make up to make it in Boston. He's "too sensitive".
* Nobody else on the list interests me at all.
* Really hoping Darvish posts and the Sox win the bidding.
One pitcher who does interest me from a talent stand point is Burnett. One problem with that is that I'm pretty sure he and Beckett hate each other from their days in Florida. I'm thinking Theo wouldn't want to rock Beckett's boat...though he has said in the past that all of these guys make enough money to figure out how to get along and be happy.
My concern with Burnett is the injury issues. But i've have seen some reports that the Sox could go after Burnett.
Not a free agent but Why not go after Zito. I know he has a huge contract but he hasnt done so well in SF maybe they'd be willing to pay part of his contract(like we did w/ Manny) and take some prospects. NL is not for Zito i think he could be great again and he wouldnt need to be the #1 guy here.
I do 100% agree that some guys are just more suited for one league or the other and maybe that is the case with Zito. But maybe he's just one of those guys that got rich, doesn't really care about baseball that much anyway, and is happy playing out his contract and then living large for the next 50 years. He strikes me as possibly being somebody in that category.
That is why the NFL is so much better in terms of this stuff, because so little is guaranteed that guys always have to earn their dough.
Would really be nice for Wake to come up big tonight...having a tough first so first.
I read an article about Zito and the contract complacency issues was brought up. But what i got from the article was that wasnt the case. Pre-contract he just went out and pitched and didnt over analyze things. He would go surfing and play his guitar. But he said that when he got all that money he felt he needed to grow up and get more focused. This casued him to start over analyzing.
Maybe the article was a Zito effort to bail himself out of a bind. But it was in the New York Times Sports magazince PLAY.
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