I am surprised that it is so late in the year and still no startling news from the Sox front office.  No one buys season seats because Bobby Valentine is manager, and we are getting very close to the deadline for our checks (this allows the club to have our cash interest free for several months; always pleased to help out the poor fellows).  By now, we should have had a couple of breathless announcements of signings, perhaps as fortuitous as our signing Carl Crawford.

And the Sox are in trouble in the American League East, make no mistake about it.  We have lost the best closer in the game to Philly; you many not like Papelbon but based on performance, age and durability he is the best closer around, and if he is overpriced by a few million we should not care, we have spent more than that on pure speculation.

One of the folks with whom I correspond privately about baseball is very knowledgeable [and indeed I assiduously keep private my interchanges with truly knowledgeable folks lest my own ignorance become (even more) publicly known.]  My secret correspondent notes the paucity of replacements for Papelbon, replete with analysis of records, age, salary and value placed on these closers by their present teams; the picture is not pretty.  K-Rod, Madson, Lidge, Cordero are all in the hunt but two are 35+, two are with the Phillies who nonetheless opted for Papelbon, three already made Papelbon-type money last year, one has only one season as a closer; the list goes on.

Can Bard close?  I thought this was his year to grow into it and I did not see it.  My expert tells me he has only two pitches which is one more than I noticed.  He does not seem to have a thirst for the ball.  Papelbon reminded me of Larry Bird, or Y. A. Tittle:  “I know the game is on the line and there is no room for error, so why the hell are you delaying, just give me the friggin’ ball.”  When Bard picks up the ball I think he is thinking “ouch, this thing is really really hard….”

We are likely also to lose our second-best hitter last year, Big Papi; the Big Man was grateful that Valentine flew to the DR for that golf tournament, but if you scrolled down Papi’s pronouncements you found, buried in the back pages of the Boston Globe, the admonition that it was still indeed all about the money.  Such candor could be lauded were it not so painfully venal.

We don’t have a left fielder you would have walk your dog.  We don’t have a right fielder who does not yet look different from your dog.  You have a ninety year old, much-loved starter who wants another year to watch his knuckler flutter up the plate and thence flutter up into the Monster seats (okay, he is only fifty-ish).  You have a hospital ward for the rest of your starters except for those headed for Weight Watchers (do you know how many points there are in fried chicken, guys?  it’s as bad as Twinkies).

What?  Oh, yeah, I did send in my check to the Sox for next year….