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Indians higher-ups say they aren't likely to trade hitting star Victor Martinez. Not only is Martinez one of the better hitters in baseball, with 14 home runs, 57 RBIs and .313 batting average, but the Indians hold a bargain 2010 club option on Martinez for $7 million.
BOSTON (AP) -- Red Sox left fielder Jason Bay married an American, has two American daughters and makes his living playing America's pastime.
It is fitting that Tim Wakefield throws the slowest pitch in baseball, because no major leaguer better represents the Tortoise. Slowly and surely, one knuckleball at a time, Wakefield has become, perhaps, the most unlikely legend in Red Sox history.
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Boston Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell was placed on the 15-day disabled list Tuesday with a strained right hip.
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell had fluid drained from his ailing right hip Monday in Boston, and received an injection that might relieve inflammation in his surgically repaired joint.
While waiting to pitch for the first time this season, and the first time in his storied career for anyone other than the Atlanta Braves, time stood still for John Smoltz. He was done with his pregame warmup session early and all he could do now was wait. For the man who had already waited through more than a year of surgery, rehab and minor league tuneups to get back to this moment, the delay felt interminable. "Each minute seemed like 10 minutes," he would say later.
BOSTON (AP) -- The Boston Red Sox are going from the diamond to the display case.
BOSTON (AP) -- Struggling Red Sox starter Daisuke Matsuzaka went on the 15-day disabled list Sunday and could be sidelined much longer.
BOSTON (AP) -- Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka will skip his next turn in the rotation with weakness in his right shoulder, and the Japanese phenom could be headed to the disabled list.
BOSTON (AP) -- The Boston Red Sox are throwing a party for the 500th straight sellout at Fenway Park.
Indians higher-ups say they aren't likely to trade hitting star Victor Martinez. Not only is Martinez one of the better hitters in baseball, with 14 home runs, 57 RBIs and .313 batting average, but the Indians hold a bargain 2010 club option on Martinez for $7 million.
BOSTON (AP) -- Red Sox left fielder Jason Bay married an American, has two American daughters and makes his living playing America's pastime.
It is fitting that Tim Wakefield throws the slowest pitch in baseball, because no major leaguer better represents the Tortoise. Slowly and surely, one knuckleball at a time, Wakefield has become, perhaps, the most unlikely legend in Red Sox history.
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Boston Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell was placed on the 15-day disabled list Tuesday with a strained right hip.
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell had fluid drained from his ailing right hip Monday in Boston, and received an injection that might relieve inflammation in his surgically repaired joint.
While waiting to pitch for the first time this season, and the first time in his storied career for anyone other than the Atlanta Braves, time stood still for John Smoltz. He was done with his pregame warmup session early and all he could do now was wait. For the man who had already waited through more than a year of surgery, rehab and minor league tuneups to get back to this moment, the delay felt interminable. "Each minute seemed like 10 minutes," he would say later.
BOSTON (AP) -- The Boston Red Sox are going from the diamond to the display case.
BOSTON (AP) -- Struggling Red Sox starter Daisuke Matsuzaka went on the 15-day disabled list Sunday and could be sidelined much longer.
BOSTON (AP) -- Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka will skip his next turn in the rotation with weakness in his right shoulder, and the Japanese phenom could be headed to the disabled list.
BOSTON (AP) -- The Boston Red Sox are throwing a party for the 500th straight sellout at Fenway Park.
The Red Sox beat the Yankees on Wednesday night [Recap | Box], which in and of itself is not an especially remarkable occurrence. But the stunning regularity with which it has been happening this season, the alarming ease that has accompanied virtually every one of Boston's seven consecutive wins over their longtime rivals, and the ripple effect that domination is having on the American League East standings and the balance of power in the game's premier rivalry, has been quite remarkable.
Out of those guys you named for your dream team, I wonder how many will be playing for the Yankees in three years? -- Joe, New York
Now that Manny Ramirez can no longer be considered that great feel-good story of the poor, goofy kid who rose from Washington Heights, N.Y., to become one of the greatest hitters of all-time, what are the best remaining feel-good stories in the game? Some might suggest Manny was never an honest-to-goodness feel-good story because he forced his way out of Boston with bad behavior, and there's a point to be made there. Yet most folks still looked at Manny as the happy-go-lucky hitting savant, not the conniving fool he was in Boston in early 2008. Anyway, here are the remaining contenders:
When Jason Bay first found out Thursday that Manny Ramirez, the man whom he had replaced in left field at Fenway Park, had been suspended for failing a drug test, his first reaction was "I'm going to get a lot of questions about him and I don't even know him."
Tony La Russa topped my list of best managers in the game two years ago. But last year I switched to Mike Scioscia. This year I am back to La Russa. It's nothing Scioscia has done wrong. In fact, under impossible and tragic circumstances he's kept his Angels team together as well as anyone possibly could have. I am just back to recognizing the true genius of La Russa.
On Monday evening, Red Sox slugger David Ortiz stood in the visitor's dugout at new Yankee Stadium wearing short sleeves and a big smile, seemingly oblivious to both the cold rain that had cancelled batting practice and would delay the start of the game and the .208 batting average he lugged with him to the Bronx. "You know why I came out here?" Ortiz asked. "Because I got lost in the clubhouse like three times and I said, 'I'm done.'"
Earlier this season, Padres closer Heath Bell caused a stir when he said that ESPN "only cares about promoting the Yankees and Red Sox and Mets and nobody else." And after last weekend's Yanks-Sox series, readers were playing a familiar tune.
As the Red Sox and Yankees renew their rivalry with tonight's first meeting of 2009, Boston fans have been preparing their wrath for New York's third baseman.
The Red Sox can blame the World Baseball Classic all they want for the shoulder fatigue of right-hander Daisuke Matsuzaka, and to a certain degree, they do have a point. It wasn't so much that Matsuzaka threw 65, 86 and 98 pitches in his three WBC starts -- with seven and six days of rest between his second and third starts, respectively. That workload is not excessive.
Welcome to the season's first mailbag. Technically it's the second, but I'm putting an asterisk next to the one from February about Alex Rodriguez. Speaking of which, let's put aside any A-Rod or steroids talk now that the games are (finally) here and providing plenty of other discussion points, including the Big Apple's two new stadiums, the upside-down standings and baseball's continuing efforts to have every player sport ridiculous looking facial hair. Let's dive in.
BOSTON (AP) -- The Boston Red Sox are in discussions with the NHL to hold the next Winter Classic at Fenway Park.
One of the saddest ironies about the possible demise of the Boston Globe is that most of us in Boston got the news when we woke up last Saturday morning and read about it in the Globe. "Times Co. threatens to shut Globe, seeks $20m in cuts from unions," was the front-page headline.
On the first day the entire Baltimore Orioles team gathered for spring training, club president Andy MacPhail spoke to the players about the importance of being especially mindful of their paying customers. "In these times," MacPhail said, "it's even more important to recognize and appreciate the people who do decide to use their discretionary income at the ballpark."
Like anyone else who writes about baseball, I like to think I know what I'm most accurate about, which makes it a good thing for my self-esteem that I don't spend much time going over old predictions. A quick review shows that over the last two years I've called just six of 16 playoff teams correctly. There are likely circus animals who did better.
TAMPA, Fla. -- The man sitting in front of Alex Rodriguez's corner locker at Legends Field on Tuesday afternoon was most decidedly not Alex Rodriguez.
1) All quiet on the Red Sox front. The home clubhouse at the Red Sox's City of Palms Park has been an unusually quiet place so far this spring, due largely to the World Baseball Classic. An MLB-high 15 members of the organization (both major and minor leaguers) played in the WBC for 11 different nations. The missing players include the presumptive two through five hitters in the batting order -- Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis and Jason Bay -- plus Daisuke Matsuzaka. "Some of our personality's not here right now, missing David and Petey and Youk and Jason," catcher Jason Varitek said.
1. Rays pitcher Matt Garza throttled the Boston lineup in ALCS Game 3 even though they knew what was coming; his fastball is that good. Garza fell behind 1-and-0 to 19 of the 27 batters he faced, and threw fastballs on 93 of his 116 pitches -- and yet the Red Sox, with little doubt as to what he was throwing, managed only one run and six hits off Garza while he pitched into the seventh inning.
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- At precisely 9:50 a.m. Thursday morning, Manny Ramirez opened the door to the Dodgers clubhouse and was immediately greeted by a sound that has followed him, for better and for worse, throughout his Hall of Fame career: laughter.
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Down here, about 120 miles south of Camp A-Roid, where the archrival Red Sox train, tranquility rules. Everything is neat and orderly. Boredom reigns. Or is it just better?
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The first salvo of what promises to be the most entertaining -- and quite possibly the best -- division race in years was fired at Fenway Park on a frozen January day in the midst of what was supposed to be a relatively friendly roundtable discussion for a charity event.
Small-market teams love salary caps. Or rather, they think they do. At least on paper, caps stop teams in New York, Boston and Chicago from oligopolizing the free-agent market, and should therefore help level the economic playing field. And, to a certain extent, they do; a small-market team in a capped league is more likely to acquire or retain top-tier talent. But there's a catch. That same small-market team will need to win, and keep winning, just to stay financially viable. And sometimes, winning might not even be enough.
Are the Boston Red Sox filling out their roster or casting a Celebrity Rehab spin-off focused on sports injuries?
At one point this winter, the Red Sox made a play to re-acquire Marlins superstar Hanley Ramirez, league sources tell SI.com. But while the Marlins listened to Boston's overtures, talks were quickly scuttled and it appears there's very little chance they will be revived as Florida isn't anxious to trade its best player.
Brad Penny has reportedly agreed to a one-year deal with the Boston Red Sox with a base salary of $5 million and incentives that increase the value of the deal to $8 million. That might seem like a weak answer to the $243.5 million the Yankees lavished on CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, but it's important to remember that it's not the Red Sox who are trying to keep up with the Yankees, but the other way around. The Red Sox have finished ahead of the Yankees in the American League East standings in each of the last two seasons. The last time that happened was 1990 and '91, when the Yankees were among the worst teams in baseball.
The Red Sox haven't given up on the idea of signing Mark Teixeira, according to multiple baseball sources.
With perhaps only days to go, many baseball executives seem to believe the Red Sox have the best chance to sign Mark Teixeira.
1. The Red Sox are intrigued with the idea of a potential postseason rotation of Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Jon Lester and . . . John Smoltz? Despite losing on their gambit last year to bring back Curt Schilling (felled by a shoulder problem), the Red Sox have interest in adding Smoltz, one of the greatest postseason pitchers of his generation. Smoltz, 42, has resumed throwing off a mound after undergoing shoulder surgery in June.
It was 10 minutes until 1 in the morning, and the Red Sox were, somehow, alive. Coco Crisp stood at his locker in the Boston clubhouse -- still in full uniform, down to his dirty pair of cleats -- with the look of a man who had just been through one of the most incredible, unlikely, stupefying comebacks of anyone's baseball-playing career. Which, in fact, he had.
1. The Red Sox showed championship character in Game 6 (Recap | Box Score), just as they did in Game 5, only with more subtlety this time than staging the greatest elimination game comeback of all time. Game 6 featured tremendous efforts by pitchers Josh Beckett and Jonathan Papelbon to find a way to get people out with nothing close to their best stuff.
St. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- They are at their best when they are beat up, lying by the side of the road and barely breathing. They laugh at pain. They feed on adversity. If the Red Sox don't fall hopelessly behind in a postseason series every once in a while and live to tell about it ... well, heck, they just don't feel like they've been true to themselves.
Breaking down tonight's American League Championship Series matchup. All statistics for starting pitchers are for this postseason only.
I had another post more or less ready to go, a congratulatory post to the Tampa Bay Rays. It dies in the same trash bin where my Yankees-win-the-2001-World-Series column, my Memphis-wins-the-national-championship column and my Greg Norman-wins-the-Masters column now have book club meetings.
Jonny Gomes straddled the first base line like a bouncer at a biker bar, Mohawk stretched across his scalp, barbed wire tattooed around his biceps, beard hiding half his face. As the last verse of the national anthem hung over Tropicana Field before Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, Gomes turned toward the third base line and doffed his cap to the Boston Red Sox, who doffed their caps back, baseball's version of an armistice.
Breaking down tonight's American League Championship Series matchup. All statistics for starting pitchers are for this postseason only.
We might forget this now after all that happened next, but it appeared, albeit briefly, that the Red Sox were on the verge of turning things around in the bottom of the second inning of Tuesday night's ALCS Game 4. After he had allowed back-to-back one-out homers to the Rays' Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria in the bottom of the first, starter Tim Wakefield had his knuckler fluttering again, and he had retired Jason Bartlett, Akinori Iwamura and B.J. Upton in order in the top of the inning. The P.A. system blasted the classic Asia song Heat of the Moment in the middle of the inning, to the delight of the fans. Then, after Kevin Youkilis crushed a long liner to center that Upton just barely tracked down, Jason Bay, after having his bat sawed off, reached first due to a double error by Longoria, and Mark Kotsay stroked a hard single over the shortstop. First and third, one out: The Sox were in business.
LOS ANGELES -- There are some early signs that the Dodgers' negotiations involving Manny Ramirez, who almost single-handedly lifted the storied franchise to the postseason, will not necessarily go smoothly. Ramirez is believed to be seeking a six-year deal for as much as $25 million per year, and Dodgers owner Frank McCourt is said to be skeptical that the competition will be keen for the controversial but ultra-productive superstar he acquired for virtually nothing a minute before the trade deadline.
BOSTON -- It is getting to the point now, after a decade of ineptitude and a single season destined for a Disney screenplay, that the Tampa Bay Rays can almost taste it. They can allow themselves to really think about it now, if only briefly, and to maybe even let it creep into their dreams.
BOSTON -- By now the deflated and nearly defeated denizens of Red Sox Nation have seen all they want to see from Evan Longoria, Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton and Carlos Pena. The Tampa Bay Rays are up three games to one in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series, with a possibly clinching Game 5 scheduled for Thursday night at Fenway Park. The Rays' starting lineup is for real. The Red Sox and their fans get it.
1. Rays pitcher Matt Garza throttled the Boston lineup in Game 3 of the ALCS even though they knew what was coming; his fastball is that good. Garza fell behind 1-and-0 to 19 of the 27 batters he faced, and threw fastballs on 93 of his 116 pitches -- and yet the Red Sox, with little doubt as to what he was throwing, managed only one run and six hits off Garza while he pitched into the seventh inning.
Downplay it all you want. After Game 3 of the American League Championship Series on Monday, that's what both the Rays and the Red Sox tried to do.
BOSTON -- It gets a little tiring for the Tampa Bay Rays, trying to prove themselves to everybody all the time. That's understandable, considering that for the first 10 years of their existence they proved nothing except that they couldn't prove anything.
They're going to Boston both tied and dead tired, which is actually good for the Tampa Bay Rays. Even if the way that they got to both of those points wasn't necessarily something you can call "good."
1. Joe Maddon is a terrific manager and should be a unanimous pick for AL Manager of the Year for the job he did with the Tampa Bay Rays. But postseason baseball requires more urgency than he showed in running ALCS Game 1 (Recap | Box Score).
It had to come to this, the league's two best teams from the league's strongest division. The Rays as a representation of all that can be right about an organization on the way up, the Red Sox as a representation of all that can be right about an organization that already has it made. Every bit as much as the NLCS, this year's ALCS promises a tight, exciting, and hard-fought matchup.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- It's 2004, and Stanford's Jed Lowrie is taking some ground balls before a late-season game against Arizona State. By this time, Lowrie has heard all about ASU's mouthy shortstop, Dustin Pedroia, a rival for the Pac-10 Player of the Year award. Now, he's about to hear from him.
Breaking down today's two League Championship Series games. All times are Eastern; all stats for starting pitchers are for this postseason only.
They may not be as well-known as the Fall Classic, but baseball's hotly-contested playoffs have an attraction all their own
Baseball history is filled with examples of players who go from clutching their throat in one postseason round to being Mr. Clutch in the next .Or the other way around. Craig Counsell, with the Diamondbacks back in '01, had just three hits in a five-game National League Division Series against the Cardinals. But the Diamondbacks, thanks to a couple of pitchers named Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, moved on, and in the NL Championship Series that year against the Braves, Counsell had eight hits in the five-game win, including three doubles. He drove in six runs and hit .381 in being named the NLCS MVP.
The leather furniture was shoved neatly to the side. Huge sheets of plastic covered the couches and chairs and big screen TVs and everything else that needed covering. The cans of Budweiser were plentiful, the Brut icy cold, the music pumped to a volume that would make the surgeon general consider slapping warning labels on the whole ear-assaulting circus.
BOSTON -- It took everything the Angels had, a couple of things that they'd never had before, a few gifts from the usually ungenerous Red Sox and more than five agonizing hours of playoff baseball. But the Angels finally -- finally! -- got on the right side of the postseason tote board on Sunday.
The possibility of a Subway Series died a well-deserved death a while back, sometime before Phil Hughes came back to continue his winless streak (he's only two behind Ian Kennedy now in the department of winless starts), and the chance for an Alligator Alley fight remains highly unlikely, despite the best efforts of the streaking Miracle Marlins. But some extremely enticing World Series matchups loom -- local and otherwise - including one that would be one "EL'' of a series.
"The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius."
The whole concept of a team getting all fired up to play the role of "spoiler" is probably a little overdone. I'd like to think that professional ballplayers, all of them pulling down nice, healthy paychecks, are going to play hard in September whether it's against somebody angling for a playoff spot or somebody just trying to get this whole thing over with.
There are certain things you learn when you move to the Midwest. For instance, there doesn't have to be a technical reason (like, say, construction or an accident) for a long traffic jam. No matter how hot it may get -- and a Heartland July can melt Volkswagens -- people will still wonder if it's hot enough for you. Slow-moving tractors are always looking for a spot in front of you on two-lane highways.
It is now time, whether all those playoff-privileged East Coast fans want to admit it or not, to face up to the very tangible possibility that both the Yankees and the defending World Series champion Red Sox might be on the outside looking in this postseason.
One big part of the Red Sox championship teams has already moved from Boston to the Dodgers. Could another be on the way?
For Jason Bay, it's been one wild ride. Traded from the cellar-dwelling Pittsburgh Pirates at the deadline and thrust into the middle of a heated playoff race has been exciting and energizing at the same time. The Red Sox left fielder is playing for the most popular team in baseball and that might not even be the biggest thrill in his life. He and his wife are expecting their second child in September -- just in time for the playoffs.
Where in your opinion does Ryan Ludwick stand in any early NL MVP discussions? A couple of stories have pointed out how his offensive stats mirror those of first-half favorite Chase Utley, and the last two weeks have demonstrated that he has worked his way through a June swoon and come back swinging. And if you've seen many Cards games you know that he can play a little defense, too (witness that game-changing double play he turned in the finale of the last series with the Cubs). -- Greg Pils, Madison, Wisc.
When the Red Sox originally offered Manny Ramirez in trade to the other 29 teams, they went 0-for-29. Red Sox GM Theo Epstein made tens of calls and found no takers.
Early last week I was sitting in my regular spot in the press box at Turner Field when Skip Caray stopped by during a mid-game break. Skip did that often, to say hi to our friend Patty Rasmussen, who writes for the Braves' magazine ChopTalk, or to crack on some sorry play on the field. Mostly, though, it was to tell us his latest joke.
BOSTON -- By 3:15 p.m., five television trucks were idling on Van Ness Street, beyond right field of Fenway Park. A few steps from a statue of Ted Williams and within view of a series of banners honoring Red Sox greats, a local sports reporter led into the afternoon news broadcast and summed up the club's prevailing attitude toward Manny Ramirez: "They loved his power hitting but not his antics ..."
The biggest winner at the trade deadline is an easy call this year. It's the team that dispelled the notion that it was incapable of making a monster trade, that established itself as the favorite in baseball's most winnable division, the team that landed one of the greatest hitters and greatest clutch hitters for nothing more than a song. And for not such a great song, at that.
Ned Colletti has made a lot of -- to put it more kindly than many people in Southern California do -- questionable decisions during his tenure as the Dodgers general manager. And maybe someday, Thursday's deadline-pushing trade for Manny Ramirez will get lumped into that category.
The Dodgers, who appeared to be running second at best for days in the race for embattled superstar Manny Ramirez, pulled a last-minute shocker and acquired Ramirez just before Thursday's trade deadline from the Red Sox, who were determined to unload the unhappy slugger.
The Marlins and Pirates are both said to be haggling with the Red Sox over a prospect or two in a potential three-team blockbuster that would send embattled superstar Manny Ramirez to Florida in what could rank as the surprise blockbuster of the century. But while there's still some back and forth going on, people involved in the talks are still expressing optimism that the deal will eventually get done and that the $20 million player will go to the $22 million team.
The ownership and front office of the Red Sox run a successful organization in great part because they do their best to eliminate emotion and guesswork from the decision-making process. They make money the same way owner John Henry did as a financier: by taking a clinical, fact-based approach. They assign valuations to their properties (i.e., ballplayers) and trust their process. Manny Ramirez is testing that Red Sox operational culture.
Red Sox people don't seem very hopeful they'll be able to trade embattled superstar Manny Ramirez and proceed with a quick divorce between team and superstar -- though if there's a team that Red Sox organizational insiders believe could show interest, it's the Phillies.
Richie Sexson and his .218 batting average are on the way to the Bronx as a part-time player. But the New York Yankees are also canvassing the majors for an everyday player now that Hideki Matsui is all but assured of missing the rest of the year.
The Red Sox will be a player this month in the days leading up to the trade deadline because the Sox, given their financial muscle and savvy front office, can be a player. And they should be. If C.C. Sabathia is going to be pitching for somebody other than the Indians in the weeks ahead -- and that seems pretty likely at this point -- the Sox should have a say in where the big lefty lands. And they probably will.
The player crushing a batting practice pitch 15 rows into the left-field seats on a picture-perfect night at Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Ballpark may have seemed like a giant among men. But what made the feat so amazing was that the blast didn't come from one of the many veteran sluggers in the park that day -- Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Pat Burrell, Manny Ramirez, Mike Lowell -- but rather from a little-known pitcher, Red Sox rookie right-hander Justin Masterson.
Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz and New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter continue to lead all American League players in the latest fan balloting results for the 2008 All-Star Game.
Professional baseball is caught again, as it too often is, in a place between getting it done right and getting it done quickly. So baseball is doing what it always does: It's holding some meetings.
Not all free-agent contracts are as bad as Mike Hampton's or Barry Zito's. Some actually work out. So now, a few weeks after I listed the 13 worst free-agent contracts of all time (and, as I was reminded, omitted some real doozies), I will pay homage to history's big signings that paid off.
BOSTON (AP) -- The Boston Red Sox jersey secretly buried under the new Yankee Stadium in a failed curse attempt sold Thursday for $175,100 in a charity auction.
There's an old saying, "May you live in interesting times" and heaven knows times are interesting here in New York.
Is Jose Reyes of the New York Mets smoother than David Ortiz of the world champion Red Sox? Who has more complexity and depth - the New York Yankees' Jorge Posada or the Atlanta Braves' Chipper Jones?
Sick and tired of hearing about the Yankees and Mets? So are we, which is why TIME.com presents the 10 storylines to watch this season that don't involve Beantown or the Big Apple
The Yankees and the Red Sox had engaged in two consecutive seven-game American League Championship Series, splitting the Game 7s, when in 2005 they took their rivalry to a new battlefront: the draft room. Until that point both teams had relied on trades and free agency to acquire impact players. But with aging rosters, bloated payrolls and almost no elite players in the pipeline, the superpowers realized they had to change.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci weighs in with his thoughts on the Red Sox threatening to boycott today's spring training game as well as canceling the team's trip to Japan for the season opener against the Oakland A's on March 25 and 26.
TAMPA, Fla. -- The two most talked about pitchers in the Detroit camp couldn't get me out, and Tigers manager Jim Leyland is sick of it. He's sick not about the stuff of relievers Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya, both of whom are sidelined indefinitely with shoulder problems, but the constant chatter about when they might be back or who might replace them.
Much went right for the 2007 Boston Red Sox. They avoided major injuries, received important contributions from rookies at second base (Dustin Pedroia) and center field (Jacoby Ellsbury), and watched their third baseman (Mike Lowell) put up a career year.
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- It is past 5 p.m. on a gray and blustery early March day at the City of Palms Park, the spring home of the World Series champion Boston Red Sox. An hour after a ho-hum exhibition win over the Pirates, stars Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz are long gone from the Boston clubhouse. Daisuke Matsuzaka, this afternoon's starter, has dressed, done news conferences in both English and in Japanese and disappeared into the afternoon. Second baseman Dustin Pedroia, known for his work ethic, wandered off more than an hour ago. First baseman Kevin Youkilis has slipped out.
TAMPA, Fla. -- Manny Ramirez spoke to reporters about his contractual situation Thursday, but when he did he failed to mention one new revelation: Ramirez is switching agents and has hired Scott Boras, a friend of Ramirez's told SI.com.
Once written off as an extreme long shot in the long-running Johan Santana drama, the Mets may actually be the favorite now. At the very least, there are indications now that they are engaging in more regular dialogue with the Twins in recent days than either the Red Sox or Yankees. And Mets general manager Omar Minaya, who loves a big deal but hasn't made one since the winter before last, has told some people in the business, "We have a shot.''
Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling last March correctly predicted, in theory, the winner of the American League East when he said, "The rotation that makes the most starts wins the division. It's that simple." Boston's projected five-man rotation made 140 starts, tops in the division; the Red Sox won the division. The Yankees' season-opening rotation made 105 starts.
The winter meetings came and went with Johan Santana still a Minnesota Twin, but eventually, he will be traded. It might not be this week or even this month, though they would probably prefer to trade him before the season starts. But he will go somewhere, and it should be for something special, not just a package of decent prospects, which is what the Twins have been offered thus far by the Red Sox, Yankees and Mets, the three leading suitors for the two-time Cy Young winner.
The World Series ball is gone, and Jonathan Papelbon has an excuse: My dog ate it.
Also in this column: • Dodgers a possibility for Santana • Top suitors for Gagne • Blue Jays-Giants blockbuster? • More news and notes
With the Red Sox still trying to match names with the Twins, other teams -- including the Mets -- are trying to jump into the Johan Santana sweepstakes, SI.com has learned.
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