Moose- Shortstop on the Red Sox is a debacle.  Julio Lugo still gets starts.  Nick Green, another terrible player, gets the rest of the starts.  Jed Lowrie will hopefully be an improvement over those two stiffs, but I hardly think you can say the Red Sox “absorbed” Lugo’s terrible contract.  If you had used Edgar Renteria as an example, that would have been more appropriate.

I absolutely don’t buy that the Yankees are successful because they have some sort of magical team culture.  The “Yankee mystique” argument.  It’s preposterous.  The Yankees win a lot of games because they field a talented team, almost every year.  They aren’t improved this year because of the culture or whatever, they’re improved because the starting pitching is better.

Teams that can identify and draft or sign talented players are successful because they field talented teams, not because of some nebulous “mentality.”

Nick - Point taken on the Renteria over Lugo though I think I am just projecting as Lowrie is the SS of today and the future.  Had he not been hurt and had the surgery Lugo would be one the most overpaid utility players in the league.  From what I read he is only a few weeks away from returning and I think they felt Nick Green could only hurt them so much and did not want to give up any talent for a very short term rental player and are saving their chips for other needs.

thank you, greg. surely now we can all agree: tom glavine = vile saboteur

I’m absolutely 108.17% *certain* that my beloved Blue Jays would also have a magical team culture and the best chemistry in all the land (well, Canada, anyway…eh?) if they had a $175 million payroll.

Good chemistry is a term applied post-hoc to successful teams, methinks.  If we can’t use team chemistry for any predictive purposes with any more certainty than any other commonly-used predictors of success, (like on-field talent; managerial and front office acumen; and financial resources) then any discussion thereof is pretty worthless indeed. 

Not Francoeur-level worthless…but close.