With Atchison at about $440k and Ortiz at $12.5M, I now project the Sox salary cap payroll at about $127M.

Am I reading Cot's wrong? They had the Sox at $100M before those signings (about $68 mil off of 2010, which matches my numbers from above pretty well).

Also, 2 years, $6-7 mil for Takahashi would sound good to me!

Am I reading Cot's wrong? They had the Sox at $100M before those signings (about $68 mil off of 2010, which matches my numbers from above pretty well).

There's another ~$10M for other costs that go into the salary cap payroll (40-man roster salaries, mostly.) On top of that, I'm projecting arb salaries for Ellsbury and Saltalamacchia, and pre-arb salaries for Buchholz, Bard, Doubront, Lowrie, and one of Kalish/McDonald. Those add up to another ~$5M.

Cot's also includes $1.5M in buyouts to Hall and Beltre that I believe are not part of the cap number for 2011, as they should have been included already in Hall's and Beltre's cap numbers for 2010 and before.

FWIW, Saltalamacchia resigned already for 1/750k (split, 250k in minors), so no more projecting for him. Good guess already though. $5mm still looks about right for those 7.

Looks like the Red Sox will throw Taylor Buchholz against the bullpen wall to see if he sticks. They only need to acquire Alex Buchholz to complete the set.

Taylor Buccholz was the main piece of the Phillies deal to get Billy Wagner, IIRC. It certainly looks like Theo's taking the "stockpile arms" approach to building a bullpen.

Adrian Beltre (A)
Victor Martinez (A)
Jason Varitek (B)
Felipe Lopez (B)
Mike Lowell (B)
Bill Hall

So, who do you offer arbitration to? I assume both Type As are no-brainer arb offers. It seems they signed Lopez simply for the draft pick, so I'd expect they'd offer to him.

Lowell? No.

Varitek... Well, why? There's likely no chance he signs with another team; he either re-signs with Boston or he's done. No draft picks are coming. If they get V-Mart back they go with Salty as a backup; if they don't then either they trade for a starter and Salty is still a backup, or Salty starts and they could pick up anyone including Tek as a backup. No point in letting Varitek grab a roster spot before they know they need him for it.

Hall? You know, I might do it. I don't know if they would.

I think they have an agreement with Lopez that they will offer and he will reject.

Beltre, Martinez, Lopez. So that answers my question on whether they'd offer arb to Hall.

I changed my mind about this Ellsbury for Wright thing. We'll take it!