Schilling

Curt Schilling is, by all accounts, a loudmouth. By many accounts, he is also a jerk. However, I'm happy he's coming back with the Sox for one more year.

I do not subscribe to the notion that the Sox "owe" it to him to bring him back. They've already paid him tens of millions of dollars, so I don't think they owe him anything. But this is a good contract. I think he'll make every "weigh in", earning himself another $2 million, so really it's a $10 million base with $3 million bonuses for innings pitched (his 151 innings last year would result in a $1.125 million bonus).

His numbers are in decline, but hopefully he's got a "crafty veteran" year in him. I don't think he'll convert to a total junkballer, but I don't think he's going to overpower anybody either. I think he's smart enough to know that he's a borderline Hall of Famer. Ten more wins and another good postseason would certainly help push him over the threshhold.

That makes the rotation Beckett, Matsuzaka, Schilling, Lester, Wakefield, and Clay Buchholz. It's won't be a six man rotation. Last year, these six guys made, respectively, 30, 32, 24, 11, 31, and 3 starts. Lester and Buchholz will get more starts; Wakefield will probably have fewer; Schilling, Matsuzaka and Beckett about the same.

Not a bad rotation. Of course, I said the same thing two years ago and consider how that turned out.....