The deal is pending a contract extension agreement, but it appears that the New York Mets are the winners of the Johan Santana sweepstakes, a bittersweet final chapter to the story which has dominated the hot stove season in Boston and New York.

USA Today

The elite left-hander will be dealt for 4 Mets prospects: Carlos Gomez, Phil Humber, Deolis Guerra, and Kevin Mulvey.

My ultra-brief reaction to this as I head out the door to class: it’s disappointing, but there is a silver lining.

Santana in Flushing is better than Santana at The Toilet.

Okay, I got a little excited last night.  24 hours later, Erik Bedard is still an Oriole.   But, if he’s still an Oriole Wednesday morning, Omar Little is gonna have a new target.

If he blocks this trade, Peter Angelos must be eradicated, and I know the perfect man for the job.

“I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase. It’s all in the game though, right?”

As anticipated, Erik Bedard appears to be headed to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for a package centered on OF Adam Jones. LHRP George Sherrill and prospects are rumored to be included.

This from Geoff Baker at the Seattle Times (quoting Jones):

On the actual deal itself: “(Bill Bavasi) called me yesterday and told me the news. I’ve got to go to Baltimore tomorrow morning and handle things there. I’m the centerpiece of the deal on the Mariners side. It’s an honor to get traded for such a highly talented pitcher as Bedard is. He’s one of the best. Last year he finished up as arguably one of the top candidates for the Cy Young. He’s that good, so for me it’s an honor. You know, I like Seattle, but if I am in Baltimore, as I think now I am, I’m going to embrace it and have the best time of my life in Major League Baseball.”

From USS Mariner.com

We’re not fans of this deal because we believe that the team will regret giving up Adam Jones. That said, Erik Bedard is awesome, and we welcome him to Seattle.

But this still sucks.

I think USS Mariner is suffering from delusional attachment syndrome. We’ve all been there. It depends on the other players involved, but assuming it’s less than Jeff Clement (reportedly it’s Tillman+), Bedard is a unique talent whose performance has improved dramatically every since 2004 and should be acquired at almost any cost. He’s entering his age 29 season and should be one of the game’s top pitchers for years to come. That is, assuming he’s still a Mariner. He’s got 4.7 years of service time and is due approximately $7m in 2008. If Bavasi locks him up for four years in the $60m range it’s a steal. Losing Sherrill thins the pen, but his 45 IP last year, while excellent, are replaceable.

For the O’s, its a remarkable change of philosophy, and executed well. Right now, this trade is mutually beneficial. It sets up the Mariners to contend with the Angels in the West, and adds another piece to the Baltimore rebuilding effort.

Jones will be a star, but Bedard already is. Bavasi escapes the tar and feathers, for now.

On March 25th, when fans groggily slam their alarm clocks, wake up at the sphincter of dawn, and turn on their televisions to watch the Boston Red Sox play their Opening Day game in Japan, they will be greeted with an unfamiliar sight: a corporate logo on the players’ uniforms.

Boston Globe Link

A new precedent will be set when the Sox take the field wearing the small blue EMC logo on their sleeves, as the historic franchise has never had a non-apparel sponsor on their uniform.

While I don’t have a problem with this on a small scale, I can see some of the old guard wringing their hands over this one. It cracks open a door that was previously locked, one that might eventually be forced open by the ever-growing demand for profit. Nearly every major professional sport in every other country in the world features heavy corporate advertising on their threads, one might wonder if it’s just a matter of time before America’s Pastime follows suit.

As our country heads towards a possible recession, the average consumer will spend less money on luxuries (such as MLB baseball games). While the consumer won’t be ponying up for that extra $7 beer or that extra month of MLB TV, the corporate sponsorship money will be available.

All the team will need is a sewing machine.

While crawling through the interweb tubes this beautiful MLK Day morning, I ran full force into an intriguing new way to bet on baseball.  Real Sports Investments.com offers you the opportunity to buy shares of young players for a percentage of their future salary.

This is not an entirely new concept, the now defunct WallStreetSports.com (and a number of imitators) offered the fake money version, but failed to monetize their traffic and folded despite wild popularity around 2002.  As a former obsessive WSS trader, I’ve been waiting to pounce on an able successor.   The combination of the excitement of fantasy sports and the elegance of a market system is the heroin to my Lou Reed.

Beyond the real money returns, RSI improves on the system.  They facilitate a more intimate and mutually beneficial relationship between fan and player.   Their mission is “providing security to players and allowing them to achieve their dreams of playing in the major leagues.  Furthermore, RSI wants to enhance the sports enthusiast’s spectating experience.”

For example, they front $50,000 to the player for four percent of his future big league earnings, which is split into shares and sold as a commodity.  This is geared toward fringe prospects, not bonus babies.  Ideally, the payday advance facilitates the players’ quest to reach the bigs.  With a little cushion between his meager salary and poverty, he’ll use better training facilities and feel less pressure to get a second job in the offseason (link).  The fan can watch his investment prospect develop and root with his wallet in mind in addition to the W column.

This becomes problematic if players sell the majority of the their earnings or fans buy up all of a player; both situations have procedural controls in place.  MLBPA may have a problem with players’ salaries becoming compromised if this becomes widespread, but I doubt much will come of this.

I wouldn’t give up 4% of my future total earnings for $50,000, would you?  The only players I see signing up are those with slim to zero chance of making the bigs, and they will attract few investors.   That will leave RSI with piles of unsold shares and debt from payouts to players who are declining.  It’s a risky endeavor.

It’s a very interesting model, but will only be viable if more players jump on board.  Currently the only traded commodity is the founder, Randy Newsom.  I won’t be investing in Mr. Newsom quite yet, but I will be keeping a close eye on RSI.

While the Johan Santana rumor mill continues to simmer on the back burner, let’s take a look at a deal that will impact the Red Sox in a way (since Boston plays Toronto roughly 371 times per season):

Toronto gets:
Scott Rolen, 3B, 32
Contract: $12 MM through 2010 ($36 MM total)
3 Year Averages: .273/.346/.451

St. Louis gets:
Troy Glaus, 3B, 31
Contract: $12.75 MM in 2008, $11.25 MM player option in 2009 ($24 MM total)
3 Year Averages: .256/.360/.508

Both of these players have some issues that won’t appear on the back of a baseball card. Most obviously, both men are injury prone (Rolen more so than Glaus). In addition to this, Glaus was recently implicated in baseball’s current hot topic: the steroid/HGH fiasco. It’s unclear if this will have any effect on him next season from a disciplinary standpoint, as MLB is still furiously trying to sort out the mess they have unleashed upon themselves.

Rolen is not without certain negative intangibles. On both of his prior teams, he’s had very public acrimonious disputes with management on his way out the door. If you are in the “There’s No Such Thing as a Coincidence” camp, this is a bit of a red flag. Adding him to a team managed by notorious hothead John Gibbons might be a recipe akin to the Anarchist’s Cookbook.

Winner? St. Louis, and it isn’t close.

The Cards rid themselves of a guy the entire league knew they had to trade, and get a little younger and more productive at third base with Troy Glaus, shedding payroll in the process. He’s a big downgrade with the glove, but Glaus has proven he can mash NL pitching, and still has immense power when healthy.

Scott Rolen, offensively, is a shell of his former self. After multiple shoulder surgeries, his power is virtually gone, and will need to rely on his decent plate discipline to be a factor in the Toronto lineup. He’s also guaranteed $36 million, most of which might end up as dead payroll if Rolen’s health issues continue to worsen.

On a related note: has J.P. Ricciardi made any impressive moves in his general managing career?  Mr. Ricciardi, that sound you hear is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays swimming past you.

According to the Boston Herald, the Red Sox have reacquired the services of backup catcher Doug Mirabelli. Coincidentally, Pizzeria Regina, Santarpio’s, and several other local eateries have begun to frantically hire more staff and seek additional warehouse space.

Yawn.

Not an exciting move, but it makes sense. It’s only a one year deal at around $600,000, which means the Sox can easily go in another direction if Dougie is toast. As sub par as he is, Mirabelli is a better option than defensive specialist Kevin Cash, who simply cannot hit.

For better or for worse, Tim Wakefield will likely log around 150 innings in 2008, and having Mirabelli behind the plate for those innings will make things a bit easier for everyone. In the meantime, you can bet that Theo & Co are scanning the trade block for potential heirs to Jason Varitek’s shin guards.

…is good for no one else.

The lone elected Hall of Famer of 2008 is reliever Goose Gossage.

Jim Rice is a near miss, at 72.2% (16 votes short), and will have one more chance at the general Hall of Fame election in 2009.

To me, the true oddity here is the non-inclusion of Tim “Rock” Raines, a guy who just might be one of the top 5 lead-off hitters in baseball history. Maybe the writers consider cocaine to be a performing-enhancing drug? Raines earned 23.4% (!) of the vote. Another eyebrow-raising omission is Bert Blyleven, who retired 13 wins short of the magic 300 number, an arbitrary milestone which would have strangely assured his election on his first ballot.

Anyway, better luck next year, Jimbo.

As New England creeps closer and closer to The Annual Sports Depression, that dark and frigid time of year in between the football and baseball seasons, the speculation to news ratio tends to increase, as things are somewhat quiet in the baseball world (except, of course, for Hank Steinbrenner). As we wait for the other cleat to drop in the Johan Santana sweepstakes, among other things, let’s take a look at the current Red Sox depth chart, position by position. Keep in mind, this is extremely preliminary. Some positions are set in stone, while others…not so much.

DH - David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez
Ortiz, the league’s premier DH and a personality orbiting somewhere near the Bobby Orr/Larry Bird stratosphere of Boston sports folklore, will return. His health is a slight concern, but he is coming off of a career year in which he led the league in OBP. Posted a 196 OPS+ in the second half of 2007 with a tender knee, a pretty good sign. I list Manny as the #2 option, because I would like to see him occupy this spot when Ortiz needs a rest. Both players will need occasional time off, and ideally their breaks will be staggered, optimizing the team’s offensive potential.

C - Jason Varitek, Kevin Cash, George Kottaras, Dusty Brown
Varitek, now in the final stretch of his tenure as starting catcher of the Boston Red Sox, will likely provide one more year of league average play as the Sox management prepares for the Post-Tek Era. Interestingly, the Red Sox have not yet brought back he of the ravenous chicken parmesan appetite, Doug Mirabelli, to back up Varitek and act as Tim Wakefield’s caddy. Kevin Cash, defensive stud that he is, might be the worst hitter in recent MLB history, and Dusty Brown is a poor man’s version of Cash. Kottaras might have a future, but he’ll need 1 more year at least. Expect the Sox to sign a veteran backup in the mold of Brad Ausmus and Mike Lieberthal.

1B - Kevin Youkilis, David Ortiz, Chris Carter, Brandon Moss
Youkilis will bring his unique brand of offensive production and stellar glove back to first base, and the Sox will also likely sign someone to fill the Eric Hinske role within the next few months. David Ortiz will typically play 1B in National League parks only, keeping his important bat in the lineup. I have Chris Carter penciled in here out of default, but he has yet to show much offensive prowess out of the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League (posting a .627 OPS in a small Pawtucket sample last season), and will likely return to McCoy Stadium. Moss played a handful of games at 1B last season, but I’ll go into more detail on him when we cover outfielders.

2B - Dustin Pedroia, Alex Cora, Joe Thurston
AL Rookie of the Year Pedroia will retain his spot and look to avoid the sophomore slump. Alex Cora (Stephen Hawking with better range), is the lone infield reserve from 2007 currently signed, and Joe Thurston is an interesting AAAA type with good speed and a decent bat. He’s a hard luck case who was drafted in the 45th round in 1997, and in 2002 hit .334/.361/.506 in AAA at the tender age of 22. While one might assume the next step would be The Show, it never happened for Joe, as he spent the next 5 years in AAA, playing respectable baseball but still not busting his MLB cherry. The odds of him ever making his long-awaited debut in Boston are very long, but he should keep the fans at McCoy stadium happy with his electric brand of play.

3B - Mike Lowell, Kevin Youkilis, Keith Ginter, Chad Spann
Much to the joy of New England women over 40 years of age, Mike Lowell will bring his salt-and-peppery play back to the hot corner for next season and beyond. I swear, every middle-aged female Sox fan I talk to has a schoolgirl crush on Mike Lowell. However, he’s much more than cougar-bait: Lowell is coming off arguably his best season at age 33. Even if he declines, he should still be one of the better third-basemen in the AL in 2008. Ginter is a lifelong AAAA guy with a skill set not unlike that of Mark Bellhorn, and Spann is a fringe prospect attempting to rebound from an off-year (.223/.295/.307 in AAA last season), both will be plying their trade in Pawtucket. Should anything happen to Lowell, Youkilis would slide over to 3B.

SS - Julio Lugo, Alex Cora, Jed Lowrie
Lugo was one of the few disappointments for the Sox in 2007, as we were expecting a bit more at the plate than an OPS+ of 65. He should improve a little in that department, and continue to be solid defensively. Jed Lowrie has recently been a much-discussed prospect with his ballyhooed combination of gap power and plate discipline, and would be a key piece in a Johan Santana deal. If Lowrie isn’t traded, he’ll be Pawtucket-bound.

Next up: Outfielders and Pitchers

Unrelated note: of course I referenced the annual February Sports Depression, but in these parts the Celtics are certainly making things interesting, with arguably the best NBA team in the past decade. However, another basketball team has my attention, and should have yours: The Rams of the University of Rhode Island. URI (Jeff’s alma mater) is currently ranked #22 in the ESPN poll and #23 in the AP, with a 14-1 record. Good luck to the kids as they lock horns with their toughest opponent yet on Wednesday: 12-1 Dayton.

I think New Year’s Eve used to be a big deal. Actually, I can nail it down: December 31st, 1999 was the last time I cared. Really, it’s just an excuse to drink without abandon, why do you need a “holiday” for that?

Some of my associates went to a trendy lounge hosting a “four hour open bar!” for an exorbitant amount of cash. Been there. It’s never a good idea. You enter with one thing on your mind: must…get…money’s…worth. My New Year’s plans usually involve an event, but only one I’d do any other day of the year: concert, party, shooting craps ‘til dawn in a basement in Old San Juan. Feliz año nuevo, amigos!

The hot stove has become a tepid bath, and I’m turning my sights forward. We’re crankin’ up the flux capacitor and setting the controls for the heart of the sun. The best GMs are not only good at keeping a team competitive short-term, but considering today’s resources to set up the future of the club. This was originally going to be a five-year look, but the endless possibility of changes twirled around and left me crying in a puddle of tear-soaked stat sheets.

Ladies and gentleman, I present your 2010 Red Sox. As usual, this is an exercise involving many assumptions, half-truths and voodoo economics. Hopefully it will provide some perspective; at the very least it should make you happy.

CF Jacoby Ellsbury
2B Dustin Pedroia
DH David Ortiz
RF Alex Rios
1B Lars Anderson
LF J.D. Drew
3B Mike Lowell
SS Julio Lugo
C Taylor Teagarden

Notable omissions include Youkilis, Kevin; Varitek, Jason and Ramirez, Manny. The latter has a $20m team option, money that will be better spent elsewhere. Alex Rios is sitting at 4+ years of service time today, making his free agency possible after 2009. Of course, I’m notorious for unrequited crushes on Toronto outfielders (I still love you, Vernon), so Matt Holliday may turn out to be a better option. He’d fill the Ramirez void more completely. Rios’ first four years are frighteningly similar to Coco Crisp’s, another reason to pause. This list is a mixed bag of stars and role players, but contains no one with much hope of replacing the production of Ramirez. I’m waiting for Holliday to prove himself away from Coors and Rios’ power numbers to continue up in 2008. I chose Rios for this exercise because his cost will be lower than the runner-up MVP. The problem with the high upside outfielders in the system (Kalish, Reddick) is their wrong-handedness. Righty Jason Place could be the answer if he cuts out the Francoeur impression, but his 39/13 K/BB in the Hawaiian Winter League is worrisome.

We’ll welcome Texas farmhand Taylor Teagarden with the sad departure of Youkilis, who will become expendable if Anderson tears through Lancaster and Portland in 2008. Youk would be a nice fit in Texas, who will say goodbye to Hank Blaylock after this season and have Chris Davis a few years away. Of course, if the Rangers would rather send us Saltalamacchia, I’d oblige. Among the triumvirate of Texas catchers, I’m less enamored with Max Ramirez’s serious defensive flaws. Teagarden is known as a talented game caller and thrower with offensive questions. Ligament replacement surgery in 2006 hasn’t affected his defense, and in fact he came back stronger at the plate. Last year he posted a 1.012 OPS splitting time in the Cal (A+) and Texas (AA) leagues. You should know to take California League stats with a grain of salt. Keeping Varitek in the fold to coach would be great, ideally he’d be extended after 2008 and phased out of the starting job in 2010. I’d give him the same recurring option deal Wakefield has at twice the salary ($8m) without a second thought.

A lot of things have to go right for this pipe dream to come true, but its not completely unreasonable. Keep an eye on Anderson and Teagarden, with Will Middlebrooks and Oscar Tejeda in mind for the left side post-Lugo/Lowell. Coming next week, the 2010 pitching staff.