Jason Bay

You (probably) can hold out for more than the $15 million a year Boston is reportedly offering you, Jason Bay.

Based on his hitting, Jason Bay would be a "five win" (above replacement, or WAR) player. At $4 million a WAR, (the going free agent rate), Bay should be worth something like $20 million a year, at least for the first two years. (Maybe with third and fourth year cuts to $18 and $15 million to reflect his aging.)

The Mets need an everyday left fielder—on that we can agree—but the question of who Omar Minaya will make the effort to acquire and who he is willing to give up in the process is what fans are concerned about this winter.

Free agent acquisitions are obviously a big issue with the winter meetings in December, but trade opportunities will no doubt also present themselves, and Minaya needs to be aggressive but not further deplete the Mets' anemic farm system in the process.

Something caught my eye the other day while surfing the Internet—an interesting piece of sports gossip I had yet to come across.

This article said Boston Red Sox All-Star left fielder Jason Bay currently lives about 15 minutes from Safeco Field.

On the record, let me say that Bay is most likely staying with the Sox, who have a better record and a pair of recent titles compared to the Mariners' lack of a World Series appearance.

Acquired by the Red Sox at the eleventh hour of last season's trade deadline as part of the three-way deal that sent Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers, Jason Bay has more than filled the shoes vacated by his predecessor in Boston. 

In 184 at-bats for the Red Sox in 2008, Bay compiled a solid line of .293 AVG/.370 OBP/.527 SLG.  He continued to perform in the playoffs, and unsurprisingly, the Fenway Faithful had high hopes for their new left-fielder coming into the 2009 campaign. 

It's time for another editorial shift before I finish up my fantasy approach to the 2009 Major League Baseball season. Having assessed the infielders, attention now moves to the outfielders and pitchers—two groups that I tend to dismiss to a degree, so my analysis will be a tad superficial.

I'll deal with the pitchers separately. Here, I'll focus on the guys roaming the big real estate.

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.

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.