Adding A 50 HR First Baseman

Okay, I have had the issue of too many outfielders on my mind far to long now, so I have decided to work out a solution.

Its fairly simple actually and involves just moving one player from Boston, unloading this player shouldn't be too difficult and he has no place in Boston's plans beyond 2007 anyway. You wont get much in return for him, but perhaps just unloading his $9 million salary to clear up space to add Roger Clemens is return enough.

Farewell Mike Lowell, thanks for the great defense at third base last season, we appreciate what you brought to the team, but its time to move on like the Patriots have with so many players nearing the end of there production.

Now for fitting in all these outfielders. First lets assume the JD Drew contract gets finished, without that there's no need for this.

Lets start with moving Kevin Youkilis to third base, this opens up a spot at first base where we get the power hitter mentioned in the post title, insert David Ortiz. I know what your thinking, but seriously he's not that bad a fielder. His career % is .989 not great but not crappy either. In 2004 Boston's accumulated fielding % at the position was .989 so we know championships can be won with his fielding % at the position.

This of course would mean you need to rework his contract a bit, he would be highly underpaid as a first baseman, not that he isn't already anyway.

Now to the outfield. Manny Ramirez becomes the casualty and moves to DH, not that going from playing so much that you need to take sabbaticals throughout the year to walking to the plate four times a night can be classified as a casualty.

This now opens the extra outfield spot to align Wily Mo Pena, Coco Crisp and JD Drew however. I think Pena fits best into center defensively, the Crisp in left and Drew in right, but I'm sure everyone has there opinion on this.

The results would be a small fall off defensively at first, but not so far as that it could have a major impact on the season as a whole. Meantime we add about 22 homers to the lineup (Nixon 8 + Lowell 20 = 28; Drew 20 + Pena 30 = 50). Now I know some are skeptical that Pena would hit 30 in a full season but its a fair number to predict, in fact could be under predicted, also take into account that Crisp in a full season should improve on his 8 homers from his injury filled season.