Wily Mo Pena has agreed to a one-year contract with the Red Sox, making the trip of assistant general manager Jed Hoyer and Director of Baseball Operations Brian O’Halloran to sit in on a potential arbitration hearing unnecessary. Pena was asking for $2.2 million while the club was offering $1.725. It keeps Theo Epstein’s mark of never having the team go to arbitration perfect since taking over as general manager.
Epstein, Terry Francona, and pitching coach John Farrell all sat on a bench, put on a microphone and answered questions for a short while. Here are some of the highlights:
– Epstein and Francona said bullpen was biggest issue facing them.
– Four names who are in the mix for closer role right now are Brendan Donnelly, Joel Piniero, Mike Timlin, Julian Tavarez.
– Epstein was asked about potential free agent-to-be Mariano Rivera coming to Boston. “I’m not going to touch that with a 10-foot pole,” he said.
– Will have one-on-one meetings with pitchers tomorrow (which is something new).
– Manny Ramirez has been in touch with Red Sox medical people. Francona said he is all set.
– Once again, reiterated that medical people think Jonathan Papelbon is better served pitching once every five days.
– About Keith Foulke, who announced his retirement today, Francona said, “We don’t win without him in 2004.”
– David Ortiz is evidently in very good shape, having lost some weight.
– Nothing on the horizon regarding possible trades.
– Farrell talked quite a bit about Matsuzaka and how he will relate to him. Has been taking Japanese lessons, along with downloading instruction onto his IPod. Will most likely carry a cheat-sheet out to the mound just in case. (Just in case you didn’t know, Farrell pointed out that Japanese is an object-verb, rules-oriented language, making it much different than English.)
Keep any questions coming. Will do one more post tonight where I will supply whatever answers possible …
