Its a good signing, a great deal for the Sox and Theo should be congratulated.
On a side note, though some of us get stuck into you at times(lightheartedly mostly) your consistent posting will be missed during the season and I hope its not due to any unfortunate circumstances.

Yeah, its kind of soppy, but its a fun place to come and vent during the season...

I was expecting this to be about The Litch.

Sorry to hear you won't be around as often Darren, as you've really become the driving force for ST. But more important, I hope everything is well for you and not the source of your expected drop in visits here.

Thanks guys but it's nothing bad, just a time thing.

Thanks guys but it's nothing bad, just a time thing

Oh, if it just that, then that's a crap excuse ;-) You need to keep feeding the monster...

Well I hope you'll still have time to make fun of the lack of posts at Count the Rings.

Hopefully somebody will at least throw up a new catchall thread every once in awhile or something?

This ST thread has some fun Pedroia comments from a lot of us. MCOA predicts his MVP 2 years early!

From that thread:

I know Pedroia was projected to be a better major league player than Cano and he is 10 months younger (with added value as a back-up SS).

Backup SS? What happened to that?

hmmm... who's next for the keys to sox therapy? mcoa? philly? temple? or maybe a combination of the three?

Levski from that thread:

Not the MVP quality player many expected him to become, but still pretty good.

So much for that.

The next Jeter? No, that can't be right, Jeter never won an MVP.

I hate to do this since he's vanished, but this headline definitely made me think of a deep hole in kevin's basement somewhere.

"It puts the Propecia in the basket!"

Jason Varitek may well be back with the Sox on a 1-2 year deal

I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Digging up some money quotes from Darren's link

with no first rounder managed to snag what looks like an averagish middle infielder in Pedroia

That's Darren himself.

right now there's a pretty reasonable chance that the 02-04 drafts . . . won't produce a single one. Lester because of cancer and general difficulties as a pitcher. Papelbon because of his shoulder and his role in pen. . . . And Pedroia because he just may not be that good.

That's philly, looking for 40 WARP in those draft classes.

I'm still thinking Pedroia eventually will be at least a league-average 2B, with most of his value concentrated in OBP.

OlePerfesser.

I expect Pedroia will become a full-sized Babe Ruth.

Darren's redeeming moment.

I can remember thinking that Pedroia's chief value would be in being cheap and league-average, allowing the Sox to drop a ton of cash on other positions. I think I was underestimating both Pedroia and Boston's financial wherewithal. I was also fairly sure that Cano would turn out to be a better player most years. Whoops.

right now there's a pretty reasonable chance that the 02-04 drafts . . . won't produce a single one. Lester because of cancer and general difficulties as a pitcher. Papelbon because of his shoulder and his role in pen. . . . And Pedroia because he just may not be that good.

That's philly, looking for 40 WARP in those draft classes.

Pretty good chance that Lester and Pedroia were the best players from their draft classes last year. I meant to check that at one point. Hard to beleive anybody topped Pedroia. Maybe Brian McCann topped Lester? Tougher to say that about Papelbon because of the restricted innings due to his role, but he was pretty good too.

Definitely looks like the Sox found their one good player in each of those drafts. Very nice job considering they didn't have a 1st in 02 and 04.

BTW, over at Inside The Book, Tango makes the case that Pedroia left about $40 mil on the table.