Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox slipped only a little in 2008, reaching game seven of the ALCS after entering the year as defending World Series Champions. But even if the Sox hold their ground again in 2009, others appear to have gained on them.

Though Boston returns virtually the entire roster from a team that has been the class of the AL over the last two years, it failed in its pursuit of No. 1 offseason target Mark Teixeira, who signed with the rival Yankees.

(If you haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, read this.)

This is gonna be a little experiment driven by necessity.

I'm borrowing the idea of joint and several liability from law to solve an irritating little glitch. The idea is to write a single article, lop it in two, and have the two parts work autonomously. More accurately, it's to write two articles at the same time that are the product of a single thought process.

It may work or I may thoroughly confuse myself and end up writing about the National Football League by the end. We'll see.

It seems like everyone is making their picks for who wins the AL East. I'm going to take it one step further and look at both the AL and NL East, arguably baseball's best divisions.

Lets start in the National League. The East is a powerful division. Will the defending World Champion Phillies again take the top spot? Will the Mets suffer another late-season collapse? Can the Marlins overtake them both? Will the Nats actually look good this year?

Barring major injuries and some fluky miracle season, here are my picks for the NL East.

With the news that Julio Lugo is undergoing arthroscopic surgery tomorrow, the question becomes who is going to pick up the slack. Lugo may return in time for Opening Day...He could return a few days after...Or his injury could be worse than currently thought.

Either way, the backup infield job is now officially a competition. If healthy, Jed Lowrie and Lugo are the two victors...But who could the job fall to if Lugo can't make it back in time?

Let's look at the four candidates.

As a preface to this article, please read my previous article: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/139760-report-red-sox-break-off-contract-talks-with-jason-bay

It was reported on Sunday evening that the Boston Red Sox and left fielder Jason Bay have been unable to reach an agreement on a contract extension, and that the Red Sox are backing away from the negotiating table.

Time for a big time trade idea!

ESPN is reporting that the Boston Red Sox attempts to extend the contract of left fielder Jason Bay have stalled, and the team is backing away from the negotiating table.

Now what?

Last year, when the contract situation of Manny Ramirez became one of the ugliest situations between a team and a star player in recent memory, the team traded him in a blockbuster deal that brought in Bay from Pittsburgh.

Now, with Bay's contract expiring after 2009, the team faces the same situation this coming season.

“Mr. Epstein,” said the ace reliever, Jonathan Papelbon. “There is a cancer on your baseball team.”

It sounds like something out of the Nixon Administration so many decades ago.  Back then it took a brave man named John Dean to go into the lion’s den and tell the President of the United States that his Administration was suffering from a fatal disease.

A failure to act condemned Nixon and his tenure in office.

A few years back, 2007 to be exact, I used the term "effective" to sum up what Tim Wakefield was as a pitcher.  It was a debate about whether or not the Red Sox were good enough to win the World Series that season. 

And as any Red Sox fan knows, the pitching staff was a very important reason why we as fans thought the team to be good enough to win.  And I'm talking about the beginning of the season, when they took off with the division and left the Yankees behind.