Jason Bay could hit home runs in Seattle

(Rain delays make writers think about all sorts of strange things.)

As Red Sox left fielder Jason Bay nears free agency, the possible suitors for his services will begin to line up. The Red Sox, of course, will make an effort to retain him. The Yankees, too, will make a play for him given the vacancy they'll have in left field.

One dark horse, however, could be the Seattle Mariners. Not only does Bay maintain an offseason home in the Seattle area, but the Mariners are the type of franchise that could make a lucrative offer for the outfielder's services. On top of that, the Mariners have a spectacular center fielder in Franklin Gutierrez who might mitigate Bay's defensive shortcomings.

The only question, really, is this: Would Seattle's Safeco Field be somewhere Bay would want to hit for the next six or seven seasons of his career?

Safeco Field has a reputation as a pitchers' park -- thanks in large part to its deep alley in left-center field. Ken Griffey Jr. reportedly asked out of Seattle back in 1999 and 2000 in large part because he didn't want to have to hit in the Mariners' new park.

Bay might share the same concerns -- but they'd be unfounded.

Here's where Bay's home runs have landed this season -- adjusted for wind, humidity and other outside factors:

Here's where all the home runs hit at Safeco Field this season have landed:

As you can see, it's less than 350 feet down the left-field line -- 331 feet, to be exact -- but gets close to 400 feet out in left-center field.

Bay, however, has demonstrated often this season that he's capable of hitting the ball 400 feet to left-center field. It's already 380 feet to the spot at Fenway Park where the Green Monster meets the center-field fence, and Bay has cleared the Green Monster at that spot a couple of times this season.

Bay also played close to five seasons in Pittsburgh, another graveyard for righthanded hitters and lefthanded opposite-field hitters. Bay, as strong a power hitter as there is in the major leagues, hit 11 of his career-best 13 home runs at PNC Park in 2006 to left field or to left-center field:

(Click on the photo for a larger view.)

Bay will have plenty of options when he files for free agency in November. Safeco Field's deep alley in left-center field shouldn't eliminate Seattle as one of those options.

Dice-K's Tuesday start as much about next year as this year

Daisuke Matsuzaka will make a start for the Red Sox on Tuesday, his first major-league appearance since a terrible start against the Braves in mid-June landed him on the disabled list for the second time this season.

All his focus now is on that start. When a reporter asked if he had any aspirations of pitching in the playoffs, the third-year righty brushed it aside.

"I don't think it's really necessary to think that far ahead right now," Matsuzaka said through a team translator. "I'd like to focus everything I have on my upcoming start."

The Red Sox, though, can't take that mentality. In some ways, anything they can get from Matsuzaka this season is a bonus. The goal all along has been to make sure the two-time World Baseball Classic MVP is pitching at full strength in the final three years of his contract.

This season might be all but a lost season for Matsuzaka -- but next season, in a way, starts right now.

"Short-term, we're hoping it will be really beneficial," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "Long-term, it will be tremendous. Regardless of how he pitches Tuesday, long-term, this is something that needed to be done."

Here's the translation: There's still a chance Matsuzaka could flop on Tuesday. There's still a chance that one bad start might be enough to prevent the Red Sox, neck and neck with the Rangers, from reaching the postseason.

There's more to it than that, though.

Even a bad start would bring positives with it. Even a bad start would mean Matsuzaka and the Red Sox would have taken a huge step forward together in completing a long and occasionally friction-filled rehabilitation process. Simply working his way back to the major leagues is a victory for a pitcher who didn't seem to be on board with the team's program both over the winter and earlier this season.

Since that time, though, Matsuzaka has done everything he can do to pitch like his old self in his return. That hasn't gone unnoticed by those who sign his hefty paychecks.

"I know that it took me some time to get here," he said, "but I also feel I was able to use that time to get prepared really well. I just hope I can apply all those things I was preparing for in my start."

Said Francona, "He's done everything we've asked him to do -- and probably a little bit more."

That's why the Red Sox see Tuesday's start as more of a win-win situation than others might. If Matsuzaka looks once again like a No. 2 or No. 3 starter, that could go a long way toward assuring the Red Sox a playoff spot.

If he looks once again like the disaster of April and May, well, he'll still have an entire winter to get in shape and work on his pitches and resurrect his major-league career.

"There's a lot more to be gained than to lose," Francona said. "If he pitches bad, sure, that wouldn't help our short-term goals. But if he can pitch good -- or show that he has some left this season -- it can really help us."

What to do with Casey Kotchman?

The Red Sox have a young, talented and cost-controlled first baseman on their roster, the type of first baseman who makes it far easier to spend money on more glaring holes in the roster.

But Casey Kotchman has just 49 plate appearances in the five weeks since the Red Sox acquired him from the Atlanta Braves. He's a perfect defensive infielder late in the season for a playoff-bound team, particularly because he's not going to gripe about his role. But to keep him on the roster as a part-time player next season will be a waste of resources.

Kotchman, just a couple of years ago the No. 1 prospect in the Angels' farm system, will have far more value in trade to another organization than he'll have as a part-time player to the Red Sox.

(If there's one rule every general manager display prominently on a poster in his office, it's this one: If a player has more value to another franchise than to yours, you should trade that player and get that difference in value in return for him.)

The Red Sox have Mike Lowell, Victor Martinez, David Ortiz and Kevin Youkilis under contract next season. Jason Varitek is likely to pick up his option for 2010 even if the Red Sox decline theirs. If form holds, all five figure to receive more playing time than Kotchman in some sort of rotation -- and that means Kotchman once again would be a reserve player for the Red Sox.

The Red Sox could trade Lowell or trade Ortiz, but if they did that, they'd likely go shopping for a Prince Fielder- or Adrian Gonzalez-type bat to fit into the middle of the lineup. Kotchman, like Doug Mientkiewicz before him, is more of a bottom-of-the-order hitter than most contending teams prefer their first basemen to be.

Even those who share a locker room with Kotchman expect the Red Sox to resolve the logjam before next season begins.

“It’s tough when you are a contributing every-day player and you’re not playing every day,” Lowell said a couple of weeks ago. “But all parties believe this is more the short-term. Things have a weird way of happening.”

Not many teams, though, will go into next season needing a first baseman -- and free agents like Carlos Delgado, Aubrey Huff, Nick Johnson and Adam LaRoche figure to make the market a little more buyer-friendly than it ordinarily might be. Here's how the market likely will break down:

* More than 20 teams seem to have a first baseman in place for next season. That ranges from the Phillies (Ryan Howard) and Yankees (Mark Teixeira) to the Athletics (Daric Barton) and the Giants (some combination of Pablo Sandoval and Travis Ishikawa). Even the Indians, who recently promoted former top prospect Andy Marte, would seem to have little motivation to give up quality prospects for Kotchman.

* With Delgado injured, the Mets have played Daniel Murphy at first base for much of the season. But his production -- for instance, his .310 on-base percentage -- doesn't make him someone upon whom the Mets are going to build their future around.

* The Dodgers expected James Loney to develop into the same type of star as Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, but it doesn't seem to have happened. Both Kemp and Ethier are OPS'ing better than .850 this season, but Loney is mired at .751. Loney has fewer home runs (11) than Casey Blake.

* The Braves (LaRoche) and the Mariners (Russell Branyan) both are playing free-agents-to-be at first base, but both figure to make an effort to retain their incumbents. Branyan revived his career in Seattle, and LaRoche seems far more comfortable in Atlanta than he ever did in Pittsburgh. With the Braves more than competitive this year and building around a young core for next year, it shouldn't take much money to convince LaRoche to stick around.

* That leaves three teams with vacancies at first base after this season -- the Marlins, the Orioles and the Rangers.

All three actually would fit naturally for Kotchman. All three are relatively young teams who either already are competitive or who expect to be competitive in the near future. A 26-year-old first baseman who's played in a pennant race might be just the right type of fit for any of the three.

The Marlins traded for Nick Johnson at the deadline but might not want to pony up the money to retain him as a free agent. The Orioles, who have spent a couple of years accumulating a Rays-esque trove of young talent, traded Aubrey Huff in August and have made Ty Wigginton their temporary first baseman. The Rangers will have to decide whether to bring back oft-injured Hank Blalock or whether to give Chris Davis -- whose strikeout ratio of 38.5 percent would lead the league if he hadn't been sent to Triple-A for two months -- another chance to earn the full-time job.

Any of those three teams likely would swap a young pitcher to the Red Sox for the rights to a slick-fielding first baseman who won't be eligible for free agency until the 2011 season.

A year ago, Theo Epstein turned a glut of center fielders into relief pitcher Ramon Ramirez. Expect him to do something similar with his glut of corner infielders, and Kotchman is the most likely to go.

Francona, MJ and the Partridge Family

Much of the legend of Michael Jordan -- his competitiveness, for example -- Terry Francona saw firsthand when he managed His Airness at Double-A Birmingham and in the Arizona FallLeague. Be it at baseball, basketball, ping-pong or Yahtzee, Francona saw an off-the-charts competitiveness he's never seen in any other athlete he's ever encountered.

But the legend of the bus, Francona said, is a little overblown.

(An interjection: Before you keep reading, click here for a "This is why YouTube exists" video featuring both the "Jordan Cruiser" and a 35-year-old Terry Francona -- with hair, even.)

(All set? Here we go.)

"We got a new bus because he was there," Francona said, "but what it was was a new bus. It didn't have a minibar or a jacuzzi. It just didn't stink as much as the old one -- and it didn't break down nearly as much. It was just a bus. It was kind of pretty. We looked a little bit like the Partridge Family. But it was still a bus."

As pretty as the bus was, that's not what Francona remembers most about his days managing the greatest basketball player in history. What he remembers most is the competitiveness and the desire to win.

"That's why he is who he is," Francona said. "I know the talent is there, but he's the most competitive person you'd ever see. That doesn't mean he wins at everything he does, but he's the most competitive."

The equipment, of course, sometimes paid a price.

"I saw him break a ping-pong table," Francona said. "I saw him break a tennis racket. He didn't take losing very well."

As far as Francona is concerned -- and keep in mind that this isn't a guy who would sugarcoat something like this -- Jordan could have played his way into the major leagues.

"He hadn't played since he was 18, and that was high school," Francona said. "He was thrust into Double-A, what, 14 years later? It was tough for him. He's big, tall, lanky, long arms, so he had to fight to keep his swing short. He was actually a good base-stealer. I think he actually stole 30 bases. He found a way to drive in 50 runs, which, in Double-A, is not too bad. ...

"If he was willing to invest a couple more full years where you're looking at 1,000 at-bats, I have a feeling he'd have found a way to get to the major leagues."

It wasn't just a circus, either. It meant something to him.

Jordan's competitiveness backfired on him in some ways. Baseball is far more of a game of failure than basketball, and that particularly was the case for Jordan. The greatest player in the history of the game, after all, hit .202 and struck out 114 times.

That meant Francona had to do some work to do.

"One night in Memphis, we were pretty deep in the season, and he was getting a little frustrated," Francona said. "He wasn't hitting very well, and it was taking a toll on him. We stayed there one night, me and the coaches and Michael, and we talked about, 'If you're going to do this, don't look back on it and hate it.' I think he listened because he showed up the next day a little bit more refreshed. It was starting to wear on him.

A little later in the season, Francona roused Jordan off the bench during a scheduled night off and sent him to the plate to pinch-hit in a key spot. Jordan dug into the batter's box, the game on the line -- and he didn't deliver.

After the game, though, Jordan stuck his head into his manager's office.

"Thank you," Jordan said.

"I hadn't done it as a favor," Francona said, looking back. "At that point in his career, that was every bit as exhilarating as him trying to hit a 3-pointer, the game on the line and his at-bat.

"It was a time in his life when that was what he needed to do."

Daniel Bard throws a changeup

Daniel Bard had thrown five fastballs and two sliders to Cesar Izturis in Wednesday's eighth inning, and four straight foul balls had left him searching for answers a little bit.

He then threw a changeup down and in that Izturis waved at and missed. He threw another changeup to Brian Roberts before walking the second baseman on a fastball inside.

Bard came out of college as a starting pitcher with three pitches, but he's all but ditched the changeup this season to focus on his 98-mile-per-hour fastball and his biting slider that disappears against righthanded hitters.

According to FanGraphs' PitchF/X stats, Bard this season has thrown 72 percent fastballs, 26 percent breaking balls and just 0.6 percent changeups. His changeup doesn't even show up on his game-to-game charts.

"I throw it every day in my warm-ups and my side sessions," Bard said, "and I keep it in my back pocket for whenever I need it. The main time it comes into play is when I get deep into an at-bat with a lefthanded hitter and I’ve shown him two or three fastballs and two or three sliders."

The reason it works so well against lefties is because it tails away from lefties, a screwball-type effect that's a stark contrast to his slider. Bard used that movement effectively in striking out Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins back in May, but he hasn't yet done it in four appearances against the New York Yankees. It'll be interesting to see if he breaks it out later this month against the Yankees' lefty-heavy lineup.

Swinging at first pitch pays dividends

The Red Sox are not a first-pitch-swinging team.

No team in baseball swings at fewer first pitches -- 21 percent -- than the Red Sox. No player in bseball swings at fewer first pitches -- seven percent -- than Dustin Pedroia. Of the first 21 hitters to come to the plate for the Red Sox on Wednesday, only two swung at the first pitch.

One was Mike Lowell, and he immediately regretted his hack at a slider on the inner half of the plate. The result was an error on a long throw from Melvin Mora at third to Ty Wigginton at first, a throw Lowell beat out when Wigginton couldn't dig it out of the dirt.

"I didn't want to swing at that pitch," Lowell said. "But speed never takes a day off."

The other was Jason Varitek on the very next pitch, and the only reason he swung was because the Red Sox had called a hit and run. It didn't go quite the way it was drawn up, but it worked out regardless. Lowell, in fact, ended up with his first stolen base of the season.

As the not-so-fleet-footed third baseman pointed out after the game, he now has at least one stolen base in each of the last 10 seasons.

"I stopped halfway because I didn't think 'Tek swung, and then he swung after it hits his mitt," Lowell said. "What do you want me to do?"

Said Jason Bay, "Speed kills. A straight steal -- and without a throw. That's pretty impressive."

Fluke stolen bases aside, those two examples represented the only instances the Red Sox swung at the first pitch in the first 4 1/3 innings of the game. In a stroke of irony, when Bay swung and missed on the first pitch of his fifth-inning at-bat, he ended up striking out looking on a slider on the inside corner.

The Red Sox just don't swing at the first pitch.

"That’s one of the few pet peeves I have as a hitting coach: Unless you’re doing a lot of damage on the 0-0 count, I don’t want guys swinging at the first pitch," hitting coach Dave Magadan said a couple of weeks ago. "Now, I want guys up there ready to hit on the first pitch. If you get a good pitch to hit, I want you to hit it and drive it. But if you’re hitting .270 on the first pitch with a .500 OPS, you’re not doing a good job. If you’re hitting .270, that’s what your on-base percentage is because you’re putting the first pitch in play."

One guy who has done a lot of damage on the 0-0 count, however, is Victor Martinez. So far this season, entering play Wednesday, the catcher was hitting .341 and slugging .526 when he swings at the first pitch. Since his trade to the Red Sox, he was hitting .375.

But that's not the only reason he took a hack at the first pitch he saw in the bottom of the seventh inning. He was pinch-hitting for George Kottaras with the bases loaded and one out and a back-and-forth game tied at 4.

Sure, righty Danys Baez had just walked Mike Lowell on four pitches to load the bases. But that only gave Martinez more reason to swing away: If there ever was a time for a pitcher to groove a first pitch, this was the time.

"Pinch-hitting is not for everybody," Bay said. "I was once told by somebody who pitch-hit quite a bit: 'There's no working the count as a pinch-hitter. You've got to be ready right from the get-go. You've got to hit that first pitch because it might be the only one you get.'"

Martinez got a fastball on the outer half of the plate, and he stroked it right up the gap in left-center field to clear the bases and hand the back end of the Red Sox bullpen a three-run lead.

(The last time Martinez pinch-hit, he came up against Chicago's Matt Thornton on Aug. 25 with Nick Green at second base. He took a rip at the first pitch he saw from Thornton, another first-pitch fastball, and drilled a line-drive single to left field.)

“Mikey Lowell walked on four straight pitches,’’ Martinez said. “I told myself that he’s going to try to throw a strike right here and just look for the good pitch to hit."

The Red Sox aren't a team that likes to swing at the first pitch. When they do, though, they're dangerous: No team in the major leagues has an OPS higher than their 1.067.

On Wednesday, it won them the game.

Secondary's elder statesman had eventful rookie year

Not to give away how old Shawn Springs is, but it's a little more difficult for him to remember his first career game in the NFL than for, say, Jonathan Wilhite.

But there's no question Springs has vivid memories of his first NFL game, and that's why he still is able to dispense some advice to rookies Darius Butler and Patrick Chung about what to expect when the Patriots host the Bills on Monday night. Butler and Chung have experienced preseason football, but they haven't yet experienced regular-season football.

"That's one of those things, as a rookie, you just have to experience for yourself," said Springs, a 12-year veteran cut by the Washington Redskins in the spring. "You've got to go out and see for yourself. It won't take you but a couple of plays to realize that the speed changes from preseason to regular season to postseason. I ain't never been deep in the playoffs, but in the Super Bowl, I hear it changes, too."

Springs didn't get any kind of grace period to ease his way into the NFL. In the same way Butler and Chung had to contend with the Bengals' Chad Ochocinco in their second preseason game, Springs had to deal right away with one of the best the game had to offer.

"My first NFL game, preseason, was against a guy named Jerry Rice," Springs deadpanned. "I don't know if none of y'all have heard of him."

And his first regular-season game?

"My first regular-season game was against a loud-mouthed guy named Keyshawn who sat out there and talked trash to me the whole time," Springs said. "But it was fun."

The Jets scored 27 first-half points and cruised to a 41-3 victory in that game. Wayne Chrebet caught two touchdown passes, and Jeff Graham and Kyle Brady each caught one. Keyshawn Johnson caught six passes for 68 yards but didn't get into the end zone.

The next week, though, Springs lined up against Ed McCaffrey, and that was a different story.

"I did OK," Springs said. "I did OK. It wasn't the first game they got me. It was the second game and Denver when (John) Elway got me. I took my lumps. That happens to everybody in the NFL. You're going to come in and learn and take your lumps. That's part of the maturing process."

That, though, wasn't what drove home to Springs the fact that he'd arrived in the NFL. That came at a Seattle-area T.G.I. Friday's when the first-round draft pick was out to dinner with a friend. Across the restaurant, he spotted fellow Seahawks Cortez Kennedy and Brian Blades, a pair of defensive stars nearing the end of their careers.

When he looked at them, he saw veterans who had made plenty of money in their NFL careers. When they looked at him, they saw the bonus he'd received for being the No. 3 overall pick out of Ohio State.

"They were smiling," Springs said, "and next thing you know, the lady brings over the tab. I saw their drink bill, and that was my 'Welcome to the NFL' moment. It was like $1,500 worth of alcohol. I was like, 'These guys are alcoholics. Welcome to the NFL.'"

Springs then started to laugh.

"I was like, 'Holy smokes, I just got here!"

Focus on the hitter has Buchholz rolling

Clay Buchholz lost his perfect game with one out in the fourth inning on Tuesday, walking Felix Pie on a fastball in the dirt. He then came within a whisker of losing his no-hitter as Nolan Reimold hit a ground ball between third base and shortstop that a sprawling Kevin Youkilis turned into a force play at second base.

The Red Sox already led by an 8-0 score on the strength of home runs from Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Alex Gonzalez and Dustin Pedroia again. The game, the epic collapse two months ago notwithstanding, was well in hand.

Buchholz missed with his first pitch to slugging right fielder Nick Markakis, a curveball in the dirt. He then threw over to first base to keep Pie close.

Even before Casey Kotchman could throw the ball back to Buchholz, catcher Victor Martinez already was sprinting out to the mound, his mask in his hand. The message?

"'Don't throw over,'" Buchholz said with a chuckle. "He just said, 'Hey, it's 8-0. Come on. Focus on the hitter.' I knew exactly what was going to happen right when I let the ball go to first base. I knew he was running out. He's told me that a couple of times, to try to focus on the hitter. Pitching is hard enough as it is, to just face a batter, let alone to have 50 percent of your attention on the runner and then the other 50 on the hitter. He wants me to stay 100 percent on the hitter."

Buchholz still gave up a hard-hit single to center field to Markakis, one of the best young hitters in the American League. But with runners on first and third and two out, Buchholz threw five straight fastballs to Melvin Mora and eventually broke his bat on a groundout to third base.

The 25-year-old righty then retired nine of the final 11 hitters he faced, leaving after seven innings having allowed just three hits and no runs. In his last two outings at Fenway Park, he's allowed six hits and just one earned run in 15 1/3 innings.

He mixed all four of his pitches with spectacular effectiveness: He fanned two with his changeup, two with his slider and one with his curveball, and he threw his fastball for more strikes than any of the other three pitches.

"They had to respect every pitch that he could throw for strikes," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "He was able to pound his fastball in and expand the plate away with his curveball, slider, changeup. That's a nice mix. When he pitches like that, I'm not trying to get ahead of myself, but it's amazing how good the organization feels about the future. You look at him out there putting up zeros, and the way he can do it, it's very exciting."

It helped, of course, that the Red Sox scored more in the first three innings than the Patriots scored in their second preseason game.

"He probably looked like a combination of Don Drysdale, Warren Spahn and Sandy Koufax when he got an 8-0 lead," Orioles manager Dave Trembley said.

But Buchholz knows as well as anyone how quickly a lead can disappear. It was against these same Orioles a month ago that Buchholz gave back an early seven-run lead in a game the Red Sox eventually won by an 18-10 score.

"I try to keep that out of my mind as much as possible," he said. "I try to stay as if the game was still tied and pitch the same way I would if it was a 0-0 game or a 1-1 game. I think that kept my pitches a little more crisp than they were last time against these guys."

The biggest difference? You guessed it: His curveball.

A month ago, Buchholz had next to no feel for his best pitch and instead was throwing his changeup almost exclusively when he wanted to throw an offspeed pitch. In that rough start against the Orioles on Aug. 2, Buchholz threw five curveballs and four wishy-washy sliders, his breaking pitches all but blending together in terms of movement and speed:

Against the Orioles on Tuesday, though, Buchholz threw all four of his pitches -- including the same type of knee-buckling curveball he's started to unleash in the last couple of weeks:

"The last three starts, it's been a pitch I can throw for a strike," he said. "When I want to throw it in the dirt, I can. It's the pitch it was in 2007 for me. I feel really comfortable throwing it in any count and throwing it for a strike. It's just another pitch they have to guess on or sit on, and it's helping out my repertoire."

Most importantly, though, Buchholz is pitching with confidence. He's pounding the strike zone, and he's not throwing over to first base every time a runner reaches.

Take out an aberrational start against the White Sox on Aug. 24, and Buchholz has a 1.79 ERA since his Aug. 2 start in Baltimore. Even if you include that tough outing against the White Sox, opponents are hitting .212 off Buchholz in that span.

All of a sudden, he's the No. 3 starter the Red Sox always hoped he'd be.

The good, the bad and the Uggla

(There's a new feature on the right side of the blog designed to group a series of related posts together: Potential offseason acquisitions for the Red Sox. Those who have already been discussed include Marco Scutaro, John Lackey and Prince Fielder. In theory, the group will grow as September and October turn into November and December.)

With his contract numbers destined to climb and keep climbing, there's a middle infielder with the Florida Marlins about whom the Red Sox might consider inquiring this offseason. His defensive numbers aren't spectacular, but he's among the best in the game with the bat at his position.

Oh, and it's not Hanley Ramirez.

FoxSports' Ken Rosenthal floated a rumor on Tuesday that the Marlins might have to consider dealing Dan Uggla this winter thanks to an arbitration number that figures to hit $7 or $8 million. (He's earning $5.35 million this season, his first since he became eligible for the arbitration process.)

The Red Sox, of course, don't need a second baseman. Dustin Pedroia isn't going to win another Most Valuable Player award this season, but he remains one of the best second basemen in the game. (He's on pace to hit 50 doubles for the second straight season, something no one could have foreseen.)

But Rosenthal drops in an interesting nugget in the middle of his bullet-point list of rumors: "The Orioles are among the clubs that would prefer him at third base."

Well, that's interesting.

The Red Sox, as has been discussed here ad nauseum, have quite a few decisions to make this winter related to third base. Mike Lowell remains under contract, but his defensive numbers this season have been so atrocious the team has to consider making him a full-time designated hitter. Jed Lowrie could play third base, but his health remains such a question mark the Red Sox can't go into next season depending on him being able to play 150 games.

Uggla might be an intriguing option.

Like several of the other options previously discussed, Uggla would fit nicely within the Red Sox lineup. His on-base percentage climbed from .326 to .360 from 2007 to 2008 and has hovered right around .360 this year. His walk rate has increased in each of the last three seasons, and his strikeout rate has dropped from 27.6 percent last year to 21.6 percent this year.

His ability to work the count has improved in each of the last three seasons as well: He saw 3.72 pitches per plate appearance as a rookie and has seen that rate climb from 3.92 as a second-year player to better than 4.10 in each of the past two seasons.

Oh, and he's a perennial threat to hit 30 home runs.

The question mark, of course, is his defense. Uggla has been an inconsistent and generally below-average defender at second base throughout his career: His Ultimate Zone Rating this season is minus-9.1 this season and was minus-9.3 two years ago. According to the Fielding Bible, he's about as bad going to his left at second base as Lowell is at third base.

But playing second base traditionally is more difficult than playing third base and requires less range. There's a chance that playing third base might make Uggla look like a better defender.

If that's the case, it might be worthwhile for Theo Epstein to see what it might take to bring Uggla to Boston.

Drawbacks of DH'ing

Many Red Sox analysts -- this one included -- have theorized that Mike Lowell might fit nicely as a full-time designated hitter for the Red Sox next season. The Red Sox could sign Chone Figgins or Marco Scutaro to play on the left side of the infield alongside Jed Lowrie, and David Ortiz could shift from designated hitter to designated over-the-hill power bat off the bench.

Lowell then could play the field once in a while but DH most of the time, coming up to bat four times a game and hitting line drives and home runs. It's a role that perfectly fits a veteran who can't run and can't move laterally in the field but who still can rake.

Here's the problem: Lowell doesn't necessarily want to be a designated hitter every day. He sees himself as a guy who should play third base as often as possible, and he sees DH'ing more as a chance to take a break than as something he wants to do on a regular basis.

"I think I'd pull my hair out if I had to do it all year," Lowell said back in late July. "But here and there, I enjoy it. For me, it's really a half day off."

Terry Francona has given Lowell plenty of half days off and full days off in the last month and a half. The extra rest, coupled with a stint on the disabled list, appears to have done Lowell some good. The third baseman hit .282 and OPS'ed .789 before the All-Star break, and he's hitting .328 and OPS'ing .959 since.

Even better, he's OPS'ing .829 as a third baseman but OPS'ing 1.110 as a designated hitter. According to the numbers, he's a better hitter when he doesn't have to play the field.

The average American League hitter this season is OPS'ing .763. The average American League designated hitter is OPS'ing .783. You can expand the hypothesis. Not having to play the field allows a hitter to flourish. Make Mike Lowell your designated hitter next season. Game, set and match.

Wait a minute. Hold on. Not so fast.

The sample size we're using is unbelievably small: Lowell has just 23 plate appearance as a designated hitter this season. You can't draw any conclusions based on a sample size of 23 plate appearances. Joe Mauer went 2-for-23 as recently as mid-July, and he's still going to win the American League batting title.

The idea of using designated hitter splits has its problems, too. For one thing, teams routinely put subpar hitters in their lineup because they bring other attributes to the table -- namely an ability to catch the ball when it's hit to them. Those players drag down the overall numbers. Designated hitters, on the other hand, have to hit and thus would be expected to have better numbers.

For another thing, comparing the way David Ortiz is hitting this season with the way Jason Bay or Jason Varitek is hitting isn't going to tell you anything about how being a designated hitter would affect Mike Lowell. Those players all hit the ball differently and are affected by different things that have nothing to do with what we're trying to determine here.

Another small sample size, in fact, seems to indicate the opposite. Edgar Martinez, the greatest designated hitter in the game's history, played third base full-time and DH'ed 28 times in 1992. He OPS'ed .948 that season -- including 1.002 when he DH'ed, a run not unlike the one Lowell is enjoying now. When he suffered a career-threatening knee injury, though, the Mariners made him their full-time designated hitter -- and he saw his OPS drop to .869, including .823 when he DH'ed. He hit worse as the designated hitter than as a third baseman. It wasn't until the next season, his first fully healthy season, that his numbers began to rebound.

With all of that in mind, let's expand the sample size and eliminate the background noise and draw some conclusions.

Here's the question: Does DH'ing improve or detract from performance at the plate as compared to playing in the field? Does an average hitter put up better numbers as a designated hitter than as a position player?

Here's the method: Let's look at players who played a substantial number of games in a season -- let's say 30 percent -- both in the field and as a designated hitter. That eliminates much of the background noise because that player ought to be similarly able to hit a fastball and ought to be enduring the same types of ups and downs whether he's playing in the field or not.

There were 33 players between 2000 and 2008 who played at least 30 percent of their games in the field and as a designated hitter. We're ignoring 2009 because the season isn't over yet and thus the statistics are still in flux, but the rest of the decade is fair game.

Let's sort those 33 players by what we'll call the "DH Advantage": The number of points their OPS improved while they were DH'ing as compared to their overall OPS for that season. Starting from the top:

1. David Ortiz, 2003: .961 overall, 1.089 as a DH: 128 points
Well, that should be no surprise. The slugger who will go down as one of the best designated hitters in the game's history saw his performance spike when the Red Sox took him out of the field and allowed him to focus on hitting clutch home runs against the Yankees.
2. Vladmir Guerrero, 2008: .886/.969: 83 points
3. Scott Hatteberg, 2002: .807/.885: 78 points
As detailed by Michael Lewis in "Moneyball," Hatteberg was terrified of playing first base when the Oakland Athletics signed him before the 2002 season. It makes sense that he hit better when he didn't have to worry so much about fielding throws from across the diamond after having spent his whole life as a catcher.

Let's skip ahead a bit past Randall Simon and Garret Anderson and Jason Kubel and Dmitri Young:
8. Lew Ford, 2005: .716/.739: 23 points
What's amazing isn't that Ford saw his OPS improve by 23 points when he wasn't playing in the outfield. What's amazing is that Ron Gardenhire saw fit to make Ford his designated hitter 44 times. What's not amazing is that the Twins finished in third place and finished last in the American League in runs scored.
9. Mike Sweeney, 2005: .864/.882: 18 points
10. Manny Ramirez, 2001: 1.014/1.029: 15 points
You forgot that Ramirez spent so much time DH'ing back in the day, didn't you? Manny Being Manny actually appeared in more games in 2001 as a designated hitter (87) than as a left fielder (55). (Who says Jimy Williams didn't know what he was doing?) Remember some of the other players who had at-bats as the designated hitter for the worst Red Sox team of this decade? Among them: Dante Bichette, Morgan Burkhart, Israel Alcantara and Calvin Pickering.
11. Raul Ibanez, 2005: .792/.792: 0 points
It's somehow fitting that one of the streakiest and most inconsistent hitters in the game today once managed to put up the same OPS in 234 plate appearances as a left fielder as he did in 425 plate appearances as a designated hitter.
12. Garret Anderson, 2008: .758/.756: -2 points

That's right: This list has 33 names on it, and only 11 of those names either saw a benefit when they were the designated hitter or, in the case of Ibanez, broke even. Let's keep moving on down the line:

16. Aubrey Huff, 2007: .778/.765: -13 points
17. Jack Cust, 2008: .851/.829: -22 points

Still going:

23. Jason Giambi, 2006: .971/.904: -67 points
24. Bernie Williams, 2004: .795/.726: -69 points
25. Tim Salmon, 2003: .838/.762: -76 points

And still going:

31. Jason Giambi, 2002: 1.034/.886: -148 points
32. Jim Thome, 2000: .929/.764: -165 points
33. Jason Giambi, 2005: .975/.771: -204 points

If you tally up all the numbers and average them out, the 33 players on this list lost an average of 28.45 points off their OPS numbers when they DH'ed as compared to their overall numbers. Two-thirds of the players in the study saw their production suffer when their managers took their gloves out of their hands.

There might be something about the rhythm of the game affecting a player's rhythm at the plate. If a player has grown up playing a position in the field, as every player has, it's a big change to sit in the dugout and effectively pinch-hit for the pitcher four times and then go back and sit down. He can't atone for a strikeout with a big defensive play. He can't go run around and keep his body warm. He can't do much except chew gum and spit and take some swings in the batting cage every couple of innings to try to stay loose.

Research has indicated that managers should expect pinch hitters to lose something from their typical performance when they come in cold off the bench. The above numbers demonstrate that many hitters lose something from their typical performance when they're employed as a designated hitter.

Lowell might stay on the same type of run he's on now if the Red Sox make him their full-time designated hitter. It's more likely, though, that he'll see his numbers suffer quite a bit if the Red Sox don't let him play third base and stay in the rhythm of the game. If the numbers are right, Lowell should expect to lose 25 or 30 points off his OPS.

Then again, if Lowell continues to play statue-esque defense at third base, it's worth absorbing that hit at the plate to make a huge upgrade in the field.

The difference between baseball and football

(No, this isn't a George Carlin routine. This is serious.)

Every football team spends an entire week preparing and studying and game-planning for its opponent. Every team watches video, examines statistics, boils down tendencies. Coaches and players might -- might -- get a day to take a mental and physical break but otherwise go from a game to the film room to practice to the film room to the meeting room to practice to the film room to the meeting room to practice to a game. Coaches see their families about as often as their families see the mailman.

Football teams have a week.

Baseball teams have a day. Sometimes they have two.

Every defensive player in football has to figure out what the team with the ball is going to do. He has to draw upon his studies and his preparation and anticipate, to the best of his ability, the strategy the team with the ball is going to employ. He then has to use his natural athletic ability and the work he's done in the gym throughout the offseason to thwart whatever it is the team with the ball is trying to do.

Every offensive player in baseball has to figure out what the guy with the ball -- the pitcher -- is going to do. He has to draw upon his studies and his preparation and anticipate, to the best of his ability, the strategy the guy with the ball is going to employ. He then has to use his natural athletic ability and thet work he's done in the gym throughout the offseason to thwart whatever it is the guy with the ball is trying to do.

Football players have somewhere between 10 and 30 seconds, most of the time, to assess the situation based on the personnel on the field and the way that personnel is lined up and the way the quarterback is gesticulating at the line of scrimmage. If a wide receiver goes in motion, there usually are three or four seconds for a safety or a linebacker to bark out final instructions and make final adjustments.

Baseball players have less than a second.

Baseball players watch the pitcher wind and see the way the ball comes out of the pitcher's hand -- something most pitchers, if they're any good, do precisely the same way every single time. They then have to look at the spin of the ball and try to gauge the speed of the ball and decide if it's a fastball or a curveball and if it's a ball or a strike and if it's worth swinging at or not. If they hesitate for even as long as it took you to read the word "hesitate," they're toast.

Many have hypothesized that football has supplanted baseball as the nation's most popular sport because baseball lacks action, takes too long to resolve its confrontations. Baseball, many have said and will continue to say, is too slow.

Maybe it's just the opposite. Maybe baseball is too fast.

***

The above thoughts made this writer wonder about something: Isn't it interesting that the team with the ball is considered the "offense" in every sport but baseball?

The Bill James-fueled Moneyball revolution has changed the way many baseball people look at outs. Outs, many now believe, are a more important currency than runs. The more difficult it is for a team to record outs, the more difficult it will be for that team to win. Scoring a run, in a lot of ways, is a byproduct of avoiding outs.

That's not a new thought. Many have made that point before.

But here's something that might be a new thought: Might baseball have screwed up the ideas of "offense" and "defense" long ago? Might it be more appropriate to consider the team trying to record outs the "offense" and the team trying to prevent outs the "defense"?

Would that change anything about the way you look at the game?

The long-term and the short-term

"Any transaction we make is with the goal of what is best for our team and, as difficult as it is to part ways with a player of Richard's stature, many factors were taken into account when we considered this trade. As an organization, we feel the trade with Oakland brings sufficient value and is in the long-term interest of the club. We are extremely grateful for the huge impact Richard's elite level of performance had on our success and we wish him the very best during the rest of his career."
-- Bill Belichick, in a press release

The Patriots traded Richard Seymour to the Oakland Raiders on Sunday for a draft pick they won't cash in until Tom Brady is almost 34 years old -- and that's only if they don't flip it ahead for a couple of draft picks in 2012 the way they'll almost certainly be tempted to do.

First things first: Nothing about this deal makes the Patriots a better team this season. Nothing about trading Richard Seymour for a future draft pick gives the Patriots a better chance to win this season. Ron Brace and Myron Pryor might have spectacular rookie seasons, but the Patriots still would have been a better team with Seymour part of the rotation on the defensive line than without him.

Second things second: Everything about this deal positions the Patriots to be a better team down the road. Seymour wasn't the only player whose contract was due to expire after the season -- defensive tackle Vince Wilfork has made quite a bit of noise this offseason about his desire for an extension -- and the Patriots likely made the decision they were unlikely to re-sign Seymour after this season. Rather than allowing him to walk away for nothing, they acquired what likely will be a draft choice in the first half of the first round.

There aren't many who are skeptical that the Raiders' draft pick will turn into a key contributors, but for those who might be, here's a look at the players who still were on the board when the Raiders drafted in each of the last five years:

2009 (No. 7): B.J. Raji, Michael Crabtree, Malcolm Jenkins.
(The Raiders chose Darrius Heyward-Bey.)
2008 (No. 4): Jerod Mayo, Chris Johnson, Steve Slaton, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie.
(The Raiders chose Darren McFadden.)
2007 (No. 1): Calvin Johnson, Joe Thomas, Adrian Peterson, Patrick Willis -- and every single other player available.
(The Raiders chose JaMarcus Russell.)
2006 (No. 7): Jay Cutler, Haloti Ngata, Antonio Cromartie.
(The Raiders chose Michael Huff.)
2005 (No. 7): DeMarcus Ware, Shawne Merriman.
(The Raiders traded their first-round pick plus a seventh-round pick to the Minnesota Vikings for Randy Moss. In true Al Davis form, the Raiders flipped Moss to the Patriots two years later for a fourth-round pick.)

That's a stunning amount of talent.

We probably can agree that if the Patriots don't get an impact player with the pick they receive for Seymour, it's their own fault and not the fault of the trade not working out.

Back then, to the point of this discussion. The Patriots did not make themselves better this year by trading Seymour. They did make themselves better down the road -- keep in mind that they still could flip the 2011 first-round pick for a 2010 first-round pick and assorted other stocking stuffers come April -- by trading Seymour.

That's the dichotomy every personnel director in every professional sport must consider: Is the goal always to win the Super Bowl -- or is the goal to set your team up for a high level of success year in and year out?

Theo Epstein faces the same dilemma Belichick does, and he comes at it from a similar perspective. Both Belichick and Epstein have won enough championships in recent years to ward off any fan revolt if their teams fall short of the ultimate prize -- or even short of the playoffs every once in a while. Both Belichick and Epstein operate in a market and within a budget that renders rebuilding almost impossible. Red Sox fans and Patriots fans don't expect to win a championship every single year -- but they expect to go into every single season with realistic aspirations of a championship.

Epstein had a chance to bolster his team for a short-term run at a championship in July. He did trade for Victor Martinez, surrendering Justin Masterson and a pair of minor-league pitchers, but he had a chance to add then-Cy Young Award front-runner Roy Halladay at the expense of half his farm system. There's almost no question a deal for Halladay would have improved the Red Sox's chances of winning a World Series this season, but it also would have set the Red Sox back a few years in terms of player development.

The Red Sox might not win the World Series this season.

The Patriots might not win the Super Bowl this season.

If either happens, it would be easy to blame Epstein for the move he didn't make and to blame Belichick for the move he did make.

But both did what they could to set their team up to contend every year. Both have won championships in the recent past, and thus both have to focus more on perennial success than on going for broke in any particular year.

Some franchises -- the Cleveland Indians, for example, or the St. Louis Rams -- have endured roller-coaster rides over the last decade or so. The Red Sox and Patriots have turned their philosophies into a steady diet of consistent success, and the trade of Seymour to the Raiders is just another example.

Richardson could break out in Arizona

A year ago, Clay Buchholz went to the Arizona Fall League and reinvented himself as a prospect, emphasizing his fastball and developing his slider and and rebuilding a confidence that had taken a serious hit in his first full-time stint in the major leagues.

Dustin Richardson won't need the Arizona Fall League to reinvent himself. What his stint with the Mesa Solar Sox might do, though, is put him on the map as a prospect.

The 6-foot-6 lefty right now ranks No. 25 among Red Sox prospects at SoxProspects.com -- behind Kyle Weiland, Stephen Fife, Alex Wilson and Madison Younginer. He's done something that's difficult to do when you're drafted in the fifth round by the Boston Red Sox: He's climbed to within a step of the minor leagues without becoming a household name in New England.

A big season in Arizona, though, could change all that.

"I'm trying to hold myself back on this guy because I've really been writing down some nice stuff in the game reports, but it's been well-deserved," Pawtucket manager Ron Johnson told broadcaster Dan Hoard. "You're looking at an explosive fastball from the left-hand side from a very large human who also has what they call a slider, but to me, it's a power curveball. He's been so dominant that you almost have to make a Daniel Bard comparison from the left side. He's a pretty impressive guy."

Part of the reason Richardson has flown under the radar is because he has one important thing in common with Bard: He completely washed out as a starter. He went 7-10 with a 6.33 ERA in 22 starts at Double-A Portland a year ago, and while he struck out more than a batter an inning, he allowed 19 home runs in 22 starts.

Like Bard, who had his disastrous year in 2007, Richardson embarked immediately for Hawaii. It was with the North Shore Honu that fall that he converted to the bullpen, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio immediately jumped from 2.24 to 4.33.

(Bard pitched for the Honolulu Stars in 2007 and had a 1.08 ERA in 16 2/3 innings pitching out of the bullpen. He didn't quite harness his stuff until the next spring, as evidenced by his 1-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, but his stint in Hawaii was the first indication the Red Sox didn't just have another hard-throwing washout on their hands.)

Richardson isn't the same type of pitcher as Bard. For one thing, he doesn't have the same raw stuff: His fastball tops out at 92 miles an hour when he's pitching out of the bullpen. His curveball, though, reportedly is coming along, and there's no reason a relief pitcher can't get by with just a fastball and a curveball -- especially when he still can miss bats like Richardson can.

Here's why a Bard-Richardson duo in the bullpen, a towering lefty-righty one-two punch, has to be making Red Sox decision-makers giddy:

K/9 IP
Bard in 2008: 12.3
Richardson in 2009: 11.5
(Richardson faced 109 lefties this year. He struck out 45 of them.)

BB/9 IP
Bard in 2008: 3.35
Richardson in 2009: 5.30

Batting average against
Bard in 2008: .159
Richardson in 2009: .186

Home runs allowed
Bard in 2008: 0.45 per 9 IP
Richardson in 2009: 0.25 per 9 IP

Richardson, like Bard, cut his ERA almost in half this season after moving from the starting rotation to the bullpen. He earned a late-season call-up to Triple-A Pawtucket and allowed just one run in 8 2/3 innings, striking out 13 and walking just two.

He's no lefty specialist, either. Righties hit just .190 off him, and he struck out 46 of the 183 batters he faced -- about 25 percent. He even had a better walk rate rate against righties (4.9 per 9 IP) than against lefties (6.0).

Buchholz rediscovered himself in Arizona a year ago, and several other pitchers made the leap from top prospects to can't-miss, get-me-to-the-majors-now prospects -- including Atlanta phenom Tommy Hanson, whose 0.63 ERA in seven starts launched him to the major leagues this season and into contention for the National League's Rookie of the Year award.

Richardson will be pitching against some of the top young players in baseball starting in early October. Names like Dustin Ackley, Yonder Alonso, Jason Heyward and Buster Posey already have appeared on preliminary AFL rosters. (Richardson won't have to throw to Florida megaprospect Mike Stanton simply because he'll be sharing a dugout with him.)

If the big lefthy can acquit himself well against competition like that, he'll be a household name like Bard before too long.

Ellsbury for Reyes? Just say no

Jayson Stark this week broke down the Mets' candidates for trade if they decide to blow it up and start over again. Carlos Beltran, Francisco Rodriguez, Johan Santana and David Wright probably aren't options. Jose Reyes probably is:

That brings us to Reyes, just by process of elimination. But he isn't quite the healthiest man on the planet, either. And even if he was, ask yourself this: Could the Mets really convince themselves to trade a player like this -- who is this talented, who's still only 26 years old and who is signed at highly affordable dollars for the next two years?
Well, three of the executives we polled said the Mets have to suck it up and do exactly that. But it was far from unanimous.
"They'd better think twice before they move that guy," said an official of one team. "Guys like that are hard to find. The reputation he's got now is, he doesn't want to play. But look at the games played before this year -- 159 last year, 160 in '07, 153 in '06, 161 in '05. So this guy plays. Sorry. No way I'm trading him if I'm them. Absolutely no way."

Reyes, as you might know, is a shortstop. The Red Sox, as you might know, haven't had a shortstop upon whom they could rely since, oh, 2003.

On the Sons of Sam Horn message board, in fact, a discussion has raged for two weeks about whether the Red Sox ought to explore trading dynamic center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury to the Mets for Reyes. Omar Minaya very well might give Theo Epstein a call sometime in October or November and see if he's interested in such a swap.

A month or two ago, such a deal might have made sense.

But not now.

Ellsbury has looked as good in the last month as he has in any month in his Red Sox tenure. His on-base and slugging numbers weren't as high in August as they were in June or July, but he drew a season-high nine walks and showed a willingness to work counts he's taken two years to figure out. He's actually hitting .297 this season after the count has started at 0-1, and he's hitting .330 after the count has gotten to 0-2.

Think about that: When he stands and takes two strikes and starts his at-bat from there, he's hitting .330. Even when the 0-2 pitch is the action pitch, he's hitting .268.

For the sake of comparison, Dustin Pedroia takes the first pitch more than any other Red Sox pitcher and is hitting .251 if the count starts at 0-1 and .171 if the count starts at 0-2.

Add that to his recent defensive heroics -- his UZR numbers notwithstanding -- and it seems Ellsbury is developing into the type of player the Red Sox imagined he would. There's always a danger in small sample size, but when the thing you're measuring is plate approach and not production, that danger shouldn't be as great.

The only knock on Ellsbury is his on-base percentage: He doesn't get on base the way a leadoff hitter should. The average American League leadoff hitter has an on-base percentage of .354, and Ellsbury right now is at .345.

Reyes, though, isn't an improvement in that area. The 26-year-old shortstop -- he's just two months older than Ellsbury despite his lengthy major-league career -- has never finished a season with an on-base percentage better than .358.

You could argue that Reyes, at his age, has just as much room to improve as Ellsbury. But the arc for a player who already has more than 3,500 plate appearances isn't going to be nearly as signficiant as it is for a player still a few plate appearances shy of 1,200.

Both players are capable of stealing 50 or 60 bases a year. Neither are sensational defenders: Ellsbury might yet be better than his UZR number suggests, but that only would draw him even with Reyes as a slightly below-average defensive player.

But any potential deal comes down to two key points:
1. Cost.
2. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Ellsbury will earn the minimum for another season and only then start to climb the arbitration ladder. Reyes will earn $9 million in 2010 and has either a $11 million option or a $500,000 buyout due him in 2011. He'll be a free agent after that.

Cost shouldn't be too much of an issue for a team that ate $13 million on the contract of Julio Lugo and took $5 million gambles on both Brad Penny and John Smoltz. But it still makes no sense to pay an extra $8 or $10 million on a player who represents only a marginal upgrade over what you have.

The reason Ellsbury represents only a marginal upgrade is because the Red Sox still will have to find a center fielder. If they trade Ellsbury for Reyes straight up, they've filled their hole at shortstop (and left Jed Lowrie without a position) but opened up another hole in center field -- a hole that's going to be even tougher to fill given the hole Jason Bay's departure might leave in left field.

Unless you like the idea of a Josh Reddick-Bobby Abreu tandem or a Ryan Kalish-Mike Cameron tandem -- mix and match if you wish -- the Red Sox probably are better off with Ellsbury in center field and Lowrie at shortstop.

It makes sense for the Mets to trade Reyes this offseason in an effort to rebuild. There's no reason, though, the Red Sox have to help them out.

The impending courtship of Chone Figgins

Chone Figgins moved all over the field for the Angels for the first three seasons of his career: He played second base, third base, shortstop and all three outfield positions at times for the perennial West Division champions. Not surprisingly, he was a pretty mediocre player at every single position.

Since the Angels made him a full-time third baseman, though, here's how his defense has progressed:

(Fielding Bible/UZR)
2007: minus-2/minus-3.8
2008: plus-8/plus-8.2
2009: plus-27*/plus-12.2
*best in the major leagues

He's particularly good at going to his left, something the Red Sox would have loved to have seen this season.

At the same time he's learned how to play third base, he's learned how to be a hitter. Check out his progression in terms of working the count:

(Pitches per plate appearance)
2006: 3.88
2007: 3.99
2008: 4.08
2009: 4.20

You know how this blog feels about the Blue Jays' Marco Scutaro, likewise an free agent this offseason who would represent an upgrade both in the field and at the plate. Figgins, though, might be just as perfect of a fit.

The Red Sox will go into this offseason with a gaping hole in left field -- presuming Jason Bay doesn't sign an extension between now and the World Series -- as well as question marks at third base and designated hitter. David Ortiz might or might not be able to contribute with the bat. Mike Lowell might or might not be able to field his position.

A team with World Series aspirations can't go into a season with question marks that critical to its success. Signing Figgins to play third base, though, would solve both issues.

The switch-hitting speedster immediately would be installed at the top of the Red Sox lineup, hitting just in front of Dustin Pedroia and bumping Jacoby Ellsbury back down behind some of the thumpers in the middle of the lineup. Lowell would play third base occasionally and play designated hitter most of the rest of the time. Ortiz would become the team's Jim Thome or Darryl Strawberry off the bench.

Figgins is no home-run hitter, but his on-base percentage over the last three seasons is .388. Only four players -- Joe Mauer, Kevin Youkilis, Ben Zobrist and Alex Rodriguez -- have a better on-base percentage this season than Figgins' .402.

Oh, and he's one of the best baserunners in the major leagues. He had 39 stolen bases this season and rates as a plus-34 baserunner on Bill James' scale, a tick ahead of Ellsbury and fourth-best in the major leagues.

He's swung at less than 40 percent of pitches he's seen -- including just 16.1 percent of pitches out of the strike zone -- and he makes contact just about 88 percent of the time he swings that bat.

In other words, he's Ellsbury but with Youkilis' plate discipline.

The only downside with Figgins is his age: Like Scutaro, he's on the wrong side of 30 years old. He'd also be more expensive than Scutaro simply because his stolen bases and his longer track record make him more appealing to those teams who might be swayed by traditional statistics.

Speed in particular can disappear quickly: Only four players since 1991 have stolen at least 40 bases in a season at the age of 35 or older. But it's not as if Figgins is 34 years old already -- he'll turn 32 in January -- and it's not as if he's going to be fielding many six- or seven-year offers.

A four-year deal for $40 million, a little bit more than Julio Lugo got when he signed with the Red Sox, might be a perfect fit for both sides.

But if it takes more than that, the Red Sox ought to go for it. Few teams can open up the wallet the way the Red Sox can. Two of those teams -- the Yankees and the Mets -- are locked in long-term at third base. If Theo Epstein decides Figgins is a fit for the Red Sox, there's no reason he shouldn't be able to go get him.

History not on Green-Ellis' side

At some point, BenJarvus Green-Ellis will have to prove he can run against a first-team defense in the NFL.

(No, last season's Buffalo Bills doesn't count.)

In the meantime, though, he'll stick with the statement he made on Thursday night against the New York Giants. The second-year running back, a former undrafted free agent whose roster spot is far from secure, rushed for 125 yards and three touchdowns as the Patriots came from behind win their final preseason game.

He was the first Patriots' running back to gain 100 yards in a preseason game in the Bill Belichick era. Michael Cloud rushed for 93 yards in Week 4 of the preseason in 2004 -- and he promptly was released during final roster cuts that same preseason.

(Let that be a word of caution to all those who will declare triumphantly that Green-Ellis earned himself a roster spot with his performance on Friday.)

With Sammy Morris still sidelined and Kevin Faulk, Laurence Maroney and Fred Taylor virtual locks to make the roster, Green-Ellis received all but one of the Patriots' rushing attempts in the game. If that was a surprise to him, he wasn't going to let on.

"I wasn't sure how many reps I was going to get tonight," Green-Ellis said after the game. "I was just going to go out and play every play hard and do my job."

He didn't do much in the first quarter against some of the Giants' first-teamers, but he dug the Patriots out of a hole on his first carry of the second quarter, squirting free on the left side for a 16-yard gain behind rookie George Bussey.

He then scored the Patriots' first offensive touchdown of the game, a one-yard dive to the right behind Alex Smith, Ben Watson and Billy Yates in the final minute of the second half.

It was in the second half, though, that Green-Ellis came alive. Even though the Giants waited longer to play their practice-squad candidates and thus should have had fresher players on the field at the end, it was Green-Ellis who seemed to get stronger as the game progressed.

He pounded through the line for a two-yard gain on third-and-1 on the Patriots' first possession of the third quarter, riding the blocks of Smith, Watson and Wesley Britt to earn a key first down. Brian Hoyer then found wide receiver Robert Ortiz in the back of the end zone for a touchdown that cut the Giants' lead to three points

But it seems as though fans already know Green-Ellis can be a grinder, a back who can pick up a yard or two behind solid blocking. What remains to be seen is his ability to be a big-play back, a running back who can hit a seam and break through and make the big play.

He did that in the fourth quarter, sprinting untouched up the middle and deking Giants cornerback DeAndre Wright en route to the front pylon of the end zone and his third touchdown of the game.

"There wasn't really that much open field," he said. "A guy came around and got his block, and a guy missed a tackle. The receiver was blocking the corner and the safety was coming, so I just went around the receiver's block and outran the safety."

It still was the preseason, and it still mostly came against the Giants' second- or third-team defenders. But Green-Ellis didn't get much of a chance to rush against the Giants' first team defenders. All he could do was outplay the defenders he was facing.

"I look at every opportunity to go out and play football and have fun," he said. "I love to go out there and compete and play against guys, and that was just another chance."

And all he can do now is wait for the Patriots to decide if his effort this month has earned him a roster spot. The performance of Cloud in 2004 didn't earn the 29-year-old a roster spot, but he did hook on with the Giants that season and returned to the Patriots a year later in a reserve role.

The same fate might await Green-Ellis. Then again, with Morris getting older and seemingly unable to stay healthy, the former undrafted free agent might have earned himself new life.

"I don't think about that type of stuff," he said. "Those types of things are out of my control. I just try to go out every day and compete and work hard and do my job."

Buchholz's slider has become a plus pitch

Ask anyone associated with the Red Sox, and they'll tell you the key for Clay Buchholz has been the command of his fastball.

"This kid was told what he needed to do, what he needed to work on in (the) Arizona (Fall League) and what he needed to do in offseason: He need to command the fastball," said Rich Sauveur, the pitching coach at Triple-A Pawtucket. "That's what he did. He came down to Fort Myers and established his fastball early on and then would go to his secondary pitches."

"He’s using his fastball more effectively, commanding it better, and he has more confidence in the pitch," said Ben Cherington, Red Sox senior vice president and assistant general manager. "His secondary stuff has always been so good that he’s been able to get away with pitching without using the fastball as much, and he hasn’t been as comfortable with it. Against major-league hitters, the margin for error is smaller, and he struggled when he was not using his fastball effectively to set up his other pitches."

But along with that fastball has come improved velocity and command of his slider, and that means Buchholz is throwing four pitches that are or are on the verge of becoming real weapons against major-league hitters.

The last of those plus pitches to come along? His slider.

Against Toronto on Saturday, Buchholz threw seven sliders. Four were down and out of the strike zone but not chased. Two were swung at and missed.

For the sake of comparision, Buchholz threw 19 curveballs and got just one swing and miss, and he threw 52 fastballs and got just one swing and miss.

(The point of throwing his fastball, to fair, is not to get swings and misses. The point is to get weak contact and to set up his secondary pitches so hitters can't sit on anything offspeed.)

His best swing-and-miss pitch was his changeup (a remarkable 12 swinging strikes out of 25 pitches), but his second-best swing-and-miss pitch was his slider.

Buchholz has never thrown his slider with this type of effectiveness. This isn't a contrast between the major leagues and the minor leagues, either: This is a young pitcher mastering a fourth pitch that might just make him a star.

Here's Buchholz against the Royals in early August last season:

There's virtually no difference between his curveball and his slider. The purple dots and the orange dots run together -- it's as slurvy as it gets.

"I would call (the slider) more of a hard curveball last year that came from a different arm angle," Sauveur said. "This year, he went with all of his pitches to the same arm slot, and it became a true slider that he's throwing now. ... His curveball is a hard curveball, a 12-to-6, and to make it a slider, all he was doing was dropping his arm."

Here's Buchholz against the Blue Jays on Saturday:

He's certainly throwing his fastball with better command as evidenced by the tight grouping of the green dots in the top left corner. But his secondary pitches no longer all blend together: His slider comes in at 85 miles an hour with a certain type of movement, and his curveball comes in at 78 miles an hour with a different type of movement.

It makes it very difficult for a hitter to go up guessing -- and it makes it even more difficult for a hitter to find patterns the way hitters seemed to find patterns against Josh Beckett earlier this month.

The last time Buchholz pitched at Tropicana Field, he turned in easily the best outing of his otherwise miserable 2008 season. He absorbed the loss but through no fault of his own: He shut the Rays out through the first seven innings but allowed a two-run home run to Akinori Iwamura with two outs in the bottom of the eighth.

He walked two in the first inning but got out of the jam by striking out Evan Longoria, and he retired 19 of the next 20 hitters he faced.

Another outing like that -- or like his sensational effort against the Blue Jays on Saturday -- would all but solidify his standing as the No. 3 starter in the Red Sox rotation for the indefinite future.

Jason Bay and J.D. Drew

Probably because there's nothing else to talk about -- it's not as if Josh Beckett is pitching tonight and the Patriots are less than a week away from their final roster cut-down -- sports talk radio hosts today have decided, once again, to hammer J.D. Drew.

(Yes, I know: It's better to ignore it. Sometimes, though, it gets absurd.)

Paul Byrd had an awfully nice-looking line on Sunday: Six shutout innings in his first start in the major leagues in almost a year. That line doesn't look as nice, though, if the fly ball Jose Bautista hit into the right-field corner falls for a hit -- a fly ball hauled in on the run by J.D. Drew.

Many fans remember the lunging catch Drew made in extra innings at Yankee Stadium, a tremendous snag that would have become legendary had the Red Sox ended up winning the game. But that's not the only above-average defensive play Drew has made this season.

Here's the Fielding Bible's plus-minus leaderboard for right fielders:
1. Ichiro Suzuki, plus-22
t-2. Hunter Pence and Ryan Church, plus-16
t-4. Nelson Cruz and J.D. Drew, plus-15
t-6. Nick Swisher and Kosuke Fukudome, plus-13

That means Drew has made 15 plays this season that the average right fielder wouldn't make. Most of those plays have been in the deepest part of the ballpark -- he's plus-14 going back on the ball.

Compare that to, to pick a name at random, Jason Bay.

(OK, it's not random.)

Bay plays the game on an even keel. He smiles at jokes in the locker room and laughs with his buddies, but he doesn't express himself much on the field. Whether he hits a home run or strikes out -- something he does more than anyone on the team -- he has the same expression of stoicism on his face. He doesn't throw his bat when he pops up. He doesn't point to the sky when he hits a double. He answers reporters' questions thoughtfully and makes himself available to the media often without appearing to draw attention to himself.

In other words, personality-wise, he's Drew without the drawl.

Bay hasn't been an above-average defensive left fielder for years. He was a minus-11 two years ago and a minus-7 last year, and he's a minus-10 this year. He's particularly bad going back on the ball -- he's minus-16 going back on the ball this season as compared to plus-3 in each of the past two seasons.

That's right: He plays his home games in the smallest left field in the major leagues, and yet he's minus-16 on deep fly balls.

OK, so, defensively, Drew has a leg up on Bay.

At the plate, well, here's how the team stacks up in terms of OPS:

1. Kevin Youkilis, .980
2. Jason Bay, .915
3. J.D. Drew, .879
4. Mike Lowell, .855
5. Dustin Pedroia, .814

Bay has better numbers than Drew. He hits for more power. But would you ever have guessed that the gap between Youkilis and Bay is larger -- much larger, in fact -- than the gap between Bay and Drew? Would you ever have guessed that Drew has a higher OPS this season than Evan Longoria (.859), Ichiro Suzuki (.855), Victor Martinez (.844), Ian Kinsler (.842) and Nick Markakis (.836)?

Drew catches hit, it seems, mostly for his contract. He signed a five-year, $70 million deal that makes him the highest-paid player on the Red Sox.

But while Bay will earn just $7.5 million this season, he'll hit the free-agent market this winter with his eyes on a deal worth $15 or $16 million annually. If Drew can get $14 million, he and his camp will rationalize, why shouldn't he get $15 million or more?

Here's why: Drew, for all the grief he gets in Boston, is the better player.

Another Josh Beckett diagnosis

From the Boston Herald on Tuesday:
Pitching coach John Farrell recently said a video breakdown of (Josh) Beckett’s motion, as well as discussions with the right-hander, revealed he isn’t creating enough of a downhill plane on his fastball. He has allowed 10 home runs in his past 18 1/3 innings.
“The one thing that he won’t back away from is a challenge,” Farrell said. “This isn’t a health-related issue. This isn’t a fatigue-related issue. This is a little bit more just some timing in his delivery to allow that execution at the bottom of the strike zone to be more consistent.”

OK, well, that's an interesting idea. Beckett isn't pitching effectively because he's not getting enough downward motion on his fastball.

You know what we do here at OneIf land. We go to the charts. As we go through the charts, check out the cluster of green dots -- Beckett's fastball.

Here's Beckett on July 12, his best start of the season:

Vertical movement: Between 5 and 14 inches, clustered around 10.

Here's Beckett on Aug. 12, his last good start before this latest slump:

Vertical movement: Between 2 and 11 inches, clustered around 8.

Here's Beckett on Aug. 28, the start in which he walked five and didn't reach the sixth inning for the first time since April:

Vertical movement: Between 3 and 10 inches, clustered around 9.

There certainly has been a loss in vertical movement since July -- but if you look at Beckett's seven-inning effort against Detroit on Aug. 12, the vertical movement already was diminished.

What else could it be, then?

Could it be his curveball?

If we go back to the charts, Beckett has seen the horizontal movement in his curveball tick upward steadily over the course of the season. Rather than going to the charts, we'll go straight to the numbers:

May 23 (8 IP, 5 H, 0 ER)
Curveball horizontal movement: 4.97

June 20 (complete-game shutout)
Curveball horizontal movement: 5.48

July 12 (complete-game shutout)
Curveball horizontal movement: 6.38

Aug. 12 (7 IP, 3 H, 2 ER)
Curveball horizontal movement: 7.35

Aug. 28 (5 IP, 5 ER, 5 BB)
Curveball horizontal movement: 7.29

(Thanks once again to brooksbaseball.net for compiling the data.)

Check out that progression. Beckett's curveball is getting less and less 12-to-6 (fast-forward to the 0:28 mark on this video) and looking more and more like a slurve or a slider (fast-forward to the 0:16 mark on this video).

There are no pitching coaches around this part of the blogosphere, but when a trend like that coincides with a downturn in production, well, it raises an eyebrow.

Some September call-ups can open eyes

Back when Terry Francona was managing the Philadelphia Phillies, the team promoted a 21-year-old switch-hitter once rosters expanded in September. The Phillies were well on their way to another sub-.500 season. Francona, as it turned out, would be fired shortly after the end of the season. There was nothing to lose and not much more to gain.

Still, though, they didn't play the kid right away. He'd hit .274 with 28 home runs, 11 triples and 12 home runs for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and he'd drawn almost as many walks (49) as he'd absorbed strikeouts (55). But the Phillies had veterans Tomas Perez and Desi Relaford playing the kid's position, and Francona wasn't about to shove them aside out of respect for the way they'd endured such a miserable season.

Both Perez and Relaford were 26 years old, too, so the Phillies had some interest in seeing them get at-bats and some development time, too. It wasn't as if they were 37-year-old journeymen on the way out. The kid, on the other hand, was ticketed for the Arizona Fall League's Maryvale Saguaros and would get plenty of at-bats there.

But Jimmy Rollins just wouldn't let Francona leave him on the bench.

Rollins had two hits, including a triple, and stole a base and scored two runs in his first game in the major leagues. He drew a walk in his first at-bat and scored when Bobby Abreu hit a home run. He then tripled down the right-field line in his second at-bat. (True for form for that Philadelphia team, the next three hitters struck out and stranded him at third.)

He then sparked a three-run inning in the seventh, singling to center field on the first pitch of the inning and stealing second base during Abreu's at-bat. He eventually scored on Pat Burrell's single to center field, and the Phllies scored three runs to put the game out of reach of its shaky bullpen.

(The Marlins still rallied late. A third baseman by the name of Mike Lowell hit an RBI single in the ninth inning, even. But Francona's final reliever of the game struck out right fielder Mark Kotsay with runners on first and second to end the game and secure a win in Rollins' debut.)

Rollins finished his two-week stint with a .321 batting average and five runs scored in 53 at-bats. A year later, he hit 14 home runs and stole 46 bases and finished third behind Albert Pujols in the National League's Rookie of the Year voting.

"Jimmy got called up, and he wasn't supposed to play much," Francona said. "But when we called him up, it was like, 'Holy (smokes), this guy is good,' so we played him a little bit more than we probably were supposed to just because he looked so good."

Don't expect any of the Red Sox call-ups to make the same type of impact this month. Teams always will be less inclined to give extra playing time to rookies when they're in a pennant race.

But if someone like Joey Gathright or Josh Reddick comes up and gets hot with the bat, don't be surprised if Francona finds a few extra at-bats for him.

Opportunity falls into Walter's lap

Bill Belichick wasn't about to go into specifics, but he made it clear that his plan against the New York Giants on Thursday is to give more playing time to those players who didn't see as much last Friday against Washington.

"I would expect that the players that played more against Washington will probably play a little less against the Giants," he said in his press conference on Tuesday, "and some of the players that played less against Washington will play more against the Giants."

That means you, Andrew Walter.

The former Oakland Raiders quarterback saw next to no playing time in Washington on Friday, getting into the game only for one series in the fourth quarter. The bulk of the second-half playing time went to the now-departed Kevin O'Connell, and that means Walter and rookie Brian Hoyer will play virtually all of the Patriots' final preseason game on Thursday.

(If Tom Brady plays at all, it will be in a cameo role for a series or two. Even if he was completely healthy, he'd be out of the game by the end of the first quarter -- such is tradition for the NFL's fourth preseason game.)

Walter started eight games for the Oakland Raiders in 2006, his second season, and the numbers weren't impressive: He completed 53.3 percent of his passes and threw just three touchdown passes to go along with 13 interceptions and an incredible 46 sacks absorbed.

Then again, that was with the Raiders.

Walter was released in late July and signed with the Patriots less than a week later. The release of O'Connell means his spot on the depth chart appears a little more secure, but that doesn't mean his role has changed.

"My role was pretty clear before: Continue to learn and develop," he said. "However it ends up in the end, it's sort of in my control but out of my control. The No. 1 thing that I'm concerned about is, after I'm done talking to you, is to go and have a good meeting and then to go and have a good practice and so on and so forth. It's all short-term right now."

Walter hasn't had many chances to show his stuff with the Patriots so far: He's attempted just nine passes in the team's three preseason games.

"Those are all coaches' decisions," Walter said. "I'm a pro. If they tell me to play, I'll play -- or to watch, watch and stand, stand."

That, in part, seems to have to do with the team's desire to give O'Connell a chance to succeed within the system.

But O'Connell failed to seize the opportunity, and that means Walter will get some of the reps this week that he didn't get last week or the week before that -- or, for that matter, while he was still under contract with the Raiders.

"Andrew came into the process kind of late," Belichick said. "He missed all of the spring and the early part of training camp. We wanted to give him a fair opportunity to pick things up. He's improved in a lot of areas. It's a new offense for him, and he's worked to get those things down and tried to execute our offense.

"There's some new learning going on there, and there's some things that we've asked him to do that he either hasn't had a chance to do yet or only has had a chance to do one or two times and certainly not in all the situations he could see given all the coverages we face. We want to continue to work with him."

Red Sox bats got hot in August

When you look at the way the Red Sox played in July and the way they played in August, it's easy to start by muttering something about Brad Penny. The Red Sox starting rotation did, after all, post a 5.01 ERA in August -- even worse than its mark of 4.54 in July.

But the Red Sox always have been a team equipped to win games 10-9 as easily as 2-1, and that's why they've created some separation in the wild-card race even though their ace has pitched like a jack. (Does that work? No? Never mind.)

Pitching isn't everything. Some of the key hitters in the Red Sox lineup have come alive at exactly the right time:

The Red Sox in July
Mike Lowell, 1.012 OPS (in 36 at-bats)
Dustin Pedroia, .902
David Ortiz, .845
Kevin Youkilis, .822
Jacoby Ellsbury, .810
Jason Varitek, .736
Jason Bay, .689
J.D. Drew, .677
Nick Green, .472
Victor Martinez, N/A (.530 with Cleveland)
Alex Gonzalez, N/A (.173 in 21 at-bats with Cincinnati)

As a point of reference because OPS is still a stat we're all getting used to: The average American League hitter has an OPS of .761. That means two of the key hitters in the Red Sox lineup were well below average in July, and only one everyday player had an OPS over .850

The Red Sox in August
Jason Bay, 1.097
J.D. Drew, 1.093
Kevin Youkilis, .982
Mike Lowell, .963
Dustin Pedroia, .926
Victor Martinez, .877
David Ortiz, .825
Alez Gonzalez, .815
Jacoby Ellsbury, .748
Nick Green, .576
Jason Varitek, .483

It's not your imagination: Bay and Drew are turning it on at exactly the right time. Bay has hit nine home runs this month and slugged .552 during the team's 10-game homestand, and Drew has slugged exactly 1.000 since Terry Francona dropped him into the eighth spot in the batting order for the first time back on Aug. 20.

As a team, the Red Sox's OPS has jumped from .747 in July to .851 in August -- the team's highest in any month this season. Josh Beckett has a 9,82 ERA in his last three starts, but the Red Sox have won three of those starts.

The Texas Rangers, meanwhile, haven't OPS'ed higher than .800 as a team since May. Imagine that: The Red Sox are fending off the Rangers by outhitting them.