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Takashi Saito
Photo: Icon SMI
The Red Sox picked up another pitcher recovering from an injury, agreeing to a contract with Takashi Saito. YFSF sees this as a reflection of Boston's medical staff:
But I think one of the statements Theo is making with this signing and the others is that he has a lot of faith in the team's medical staff, which is one of the better ones in baseball per BP's Will Carroll. If there's a drawback to the recent flurry of depth signings Boston has made, I don't see it.
The other day I actually got in an argument with a friend over the Yankees and Red Sox moves this winter (we almost always agree on baseball). He liked Boston's moves more because, in his words, they were artful. The Yankees were just throwing money at their problems. I disagreed with the term artful.
There may be no drawback to Boston's signings, but have they really improved the team? Yes, they picked up Ramon Ramirez to help in the bullpen, but that's about it. If Josh Bard ends up the starter at catcher, there's a bit of an improvement there. This, however, isn't a much better team than last season, a year in which they didn't finish in first place nor make the World Series.
The moves they are making strike me as answering the question, "What can we do with the money we didn't spend on Teixeira?" They've decided to go for injured players, who may or may not pay off. Now, if one of them plays well during 2009, the investment in all four will be worth it. However, there's no guarantee that any of them will be decent.
Artful to me is improving the team through smart trades (Beckett, Schilling) or smart free agent signings (Ortiz). Just picking up a bevy of recovering pitchers doesn't do much for me. At this point, the Yankees have a much higher probability of being a better team. And while it's nice to see a team win without spending lots of money, they don't get extra wins for low spending.
