Nick, while I've learned to appreciate and respect your opinion on these pages throughout the years, the Josh Hamilton advocacy is getting old. You made your point months ago, and repeatedly since then yet the fact is there's no way this ownership and front office would've pulled the trigger on such a deal post Crawford, Lackey, Beckett, etc. It remains to be seen how this team will perform but I, for one, at least appreciate keeping prospects and draft choices to reload for 2014 and beyond. Enough of the big signings that have burnt us in the recent past.

What happened to the full Sunday Baseball Notes.  Why so truncated?

Where is the rest of the article?  The Globe.com never put them online.

I liked the article and agree.  But, the essays my son has to do for school are longer than this article.

LaRoche signed a 2-year deal with the Nationals not Arizona.

This is only part of the article.  They left most of it out!!

What happened to BASEBALL NOTES ?  It seems today all we get is baseball notes.

...and Nick's harping on Hamilton ignores the clubhouse issues the Red Sox were trying to resolve.  Putting a guy with his problems in Boston is a recipe for disaster.  Baseball Prospectus has the club as contructed winning 87 games with the postseason in reach,  A couple of breaks here and there (Lester a full comeback year; Napoli up to .270/.280) and we could all be very happy.                                                                              

Please lay off with the Iglesias as starting shortstop shtick. Iglesias' bat hasn't earned its way into a major league lineup, and until it does no amount of fancy glovework will compensate for that.

Although it is probably not the writers' fault, the Herald is starting to become the place I look too first for Sox news.

and of course Nick all these players would magically sign  with the Sox for the same money they got from other places. When have the Sox not had to overpay by 20%-25% for a free agent? That would put the spending north of $80M.

Nick you make a great point. For the same money spent this off-season the Red Sox could have gotten far more bang for their buck.

I have serious reservations on the GM abilities of Ben Cherington. I don't doubt for a second his knowledge of young players (he knew who to target in the Dodgers farm system when ownership agreed to the Dodger deal) but I have SERIOUS questions about his abilities to make trades and negotiate (every FA got 3 for $39 mill????????) contracts.  

Nick, you can have Hamilton.  He's a head case, in addition to his other well-publicized problems.  The ballclub has made a concerted effort to rid itself of high-maintenance players.

Hamilton is to Cafardo as Mark Teixieria is to Massarotti.....what is this, 4 or 5 straight Sunday notes columns where Cafardo laments us not signing Hamilton.  Let it go....have some fun with the players ON the Sox.

josh hamilton would of made a lot of sense but the he had missed 12 games last year and over 30 something games each year the previous 2 years. his production was still outstanding but an addict is always an addict. you are an addict the rest of your life. can josh stay clean for the rest of his life , yes. but he has 2  relapses that we know of in recent years. anything at anytime can send him back. despite that i would of loved having him on our team.  i saw some adrian gonzalez in him last year but i could of lived w/ that. i love mike napoli over laroche. he can't field like laroche but i will take napoli at the plate  everytime. plus laroche is getting long in the tooth he will never have another year like last year again.  drew was one of the better shortstops in all  of baseball before injuries he should bounce back  which gives us needed time on seeing if  inglesia  or  boggey will be our future shortstop. i don't like the victorino p/up only because it is a 3 years contract and will be hard to move if he doesn't pan out. finally i have serious doubts about ben as our gm. i think he did a terrible job last year  and really tied  bobby v's hand  and put him under the bus. and people forget it was larry who got the inital call from the dodgers and it was the dodgers who were desperate and told larry what will it take to get adrian. i could of handle that trade myself. the red sox will be better than most people think but t am very leery about ben. time will tell. oh i am a transplaned new englander living in las vegas area. i will see over 20 red sox games this year  traveling between anaheim , oakland , seattle and la san francisco and  a week in boston because that is what TRUE RED SOX  FANS do. stick w/them thick and thin  not like these fair weather fans.

The Laroche argument doesn't work for me as he has been extemely up and down in his career ... plus I think the Napoli signing is going to make everyone very happy by years end.... But Nick, I'm with you on Hamilton ... at 5 years thats a good deal and the Sox could have dealt with the contract even if it went a bit bad on them ... that said, I think they would have had to outbid the Angels, so I'm not buying that they could have had Hamilton for the same dollars the Angels paid. 

The big signing I have issues with is Victorino.... good guy? Absolutely! But, I would be extremely suprised if he ever performs above the value of a 7 mil a year guy. 

And, Cafardo's love affair with Rick Peterson continues. Nick, if this guy is such a pitching genius, why has he bounced around so much?

Agree with the commenters complaining about Cafardo's continued advocacy for Hamilton.  While I agree that the Sox spent a lot of money -- way too much -- on mediocre players, saying the Sox could have signed Hamilton for 5 years is 20/20 hindsight.  And there was talk that Laroche was looking for a 5-year/$60 mil deal at the start of the winter....  How could they have foreseen the market for him and Hamilton wouldn't materialize as had been predicted?  Perhaps the Sox should have been more patient and waited before they went off and signed Napoli and Victorino to silly deals (thankfully the Napoli deal has been dramatically shrunk).  That seems to be the more salient point -- that the Sox shouldn't get caught up in the winter meetings gold rush when no one else is doing it.

It's true that this is basically a mediocre team that needs a couple major bats who can drive in some runs.  (Can I also point out that our rotation could be good, but it could also be terrible?  If anything, this is what concerns me about the Red Sox.  Not the hitting.)

Would Hamilton have made the difference?  Maybe.  But I have a hard time blaming the ownership for being gunshy about signing high-priced free agents after getting so badly burned in recent years.

I think most Red Sox fans recognize that the 2013 Sox will be around .500, may contend but might not, but the focus is on 2014 and 2015.  And that's fine with me.  

Another recycled column before the fold. Read all these same musings for Hamilton, Peterson and Iggy. Thankfully no real mention of Bobby V or else it would be a whole synopsis of the writing for the past 6 months. Bring on some new thoughts.