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The Red Sox have made quite a splash in the past few days, after a relatively quiet start to their offseason which for the most part consisted of low balling Jason Bay and pissing him off and trading for Boof Bonser to counter the Yankees’ addition of Curtis Granderson. On Monday, the finalized a 5 year 85 million dollar deal with John Lackey, previously of the Los Angeles Angels and then they followed that up by practically saying goodbye to Jason Bay by signing Mike Cameron to a 2 year 15.5 million dollar contract.

I can see the John Lackey signing going horribly wrong. Lackey has a career ERA of 5.75 in Fenway and clearly does not like pitching in the park and has actually expressed frustration at times with the Green Monster. That’s not bad luck because of how many times he’s pitched in the park. That’s a trend, an explainable trend and one I don’t want to see 85 million dollars spent on. Lackey was the one guy in the Angels rotation that I, as a Red Sox fan, used to actually look forward to facing. Now, who do I have to look forward to facing? Lackey also has a injury of history problems, especially recently, and his career ERA of 3.81 is good, but not great, not worth the money we’re paying him. He’s also 31 and will be under contract until he’s 36, a lot can happen between now and then. Remember when the Mets signed Pedro Martinez. He was 33 and they signed him until he was 37, for a big money 4 year deal. Pedro was an amazing pitcher at the time, but age got the best of him quickly and he only ended up winning 32 games in the 4 years he was a Met thanks to age and injury. I don’t like the idea of signing a good, but not great pitcher, who has been awful in Fenway in his career, and is on the wrong side of 30, for 85 million dollars over 5 years.

Cameron is a decent player, decent power, decent speed, amazing fielder, bad hitter for contact, but he’s going to be 37 by Spring Training so he in no way warrants a 15.5 million dollar deal over 2 years. He has 49 homeruns and 24 stolen bases in the last two years, but a .246 average and he did it against inferior NL pitching. He hasn’t played in the AL since 2003 and he strikes out way too much, 298 times in the last 2 years. It’s not that I don’t like having Cameron and Lackey on the team, but the Red Sox gave up 100 million dollars for these two players instead of paying Jason Bay what he wanted, 5 years 75 million dollars. I would have rather had Bay than these two guys and we could have used that 25 million dollars for something nice, like another starter if that was really our problem last year, which I don’t think it was, or maybe we could have used that money and the money we saved by shipping off Mike Lowell, to get Adrian Beltre and add another big hitter to the lineup which we needed more than pitchers.

The one thing I think the Red Sox should do now is go after Adrian Gonzalez of the Padres. He would be a perfect fit for the offense. We could offer a package surrounding Jacoby Ellsbury, who would be a great fit to cover a ton of ground in center field in Petco, and also to hit a ton of doubles and triples into the gaps in Petco. He could offer Ellsbury and a top pitching prospect other than Clay Buchholz plus another 2nd tier prospect and that could be enough to get Gonzalez, who is a 27 year old left handed hitter who can hit to all fields and had 40 homeruns last season in spacious Petco Park and more walks than strikeouts. He could play 1st and Youkilis could move to left field or 3rd, depending on whether or not Mike Lowell actually gets traded, which is not a for sure thing anymore because of his injured thumb. This is a bit of a projected lineup for next year with Gonzalez in Beantown.

2B Dustin Pedroia

3B Kevin Youkilis

1B Adrian Gonzalez

C Victor Martinez

RF JD Drew

DH David Ortiz

CF Mike Cameron

LF Jeremy Hermida

SS Marco Scutaro

Bench: Jed Lowrie, Casey Kotchman, Jason Varitek