Jeremy Hermida signed a one-year deal with the Boston Red Sox bypassing arbitration proceedings. The 25-year-old outfielder was traded to the Red Sox from the Florida Marlins where Hermida played for five years. The deal is worth $3.345 million as left handed batter will add some diversity to the Sox’s batting lineup. Hermida batted .296 in 2007, but also led the league in errors made by right fielders with 9 errors committed. His batting numbers have dropped off since hitting .259 with 47 RBI’s in 2009. On the upside his fielding has progressed since 2007 committing only one error in 120 games last season. Hermida will come into Spring Training as the fourth outfielder behind Mike Cameron, J.D. Drew, and Jacoby Ellsbury. Let’s hope the kid can bring his bat back to 2007 and keep his glove from last year.

The Red Sox have come to an agreement with closer Jonathan Papelbon avoiding arbitration in 2010. The right-hander will be paid $9.5 million in 2010. Papelbon told local media that he would like to end his days playing in a Red Sox uniform likening his ideal career to that of his Yankee rival Mariano Riveria. The Baton Rouge hurler has been one of the best closers in the game in recent memory and it would be a shame should the Sox lose him after next season. Nevertheless, Papelbon’s desire to remain in Boston will hopefully make it easier on management after next season. Here’s to hoping “Pap” stays a Sox for a long time.

What do you expect the Red Sox to do this year? Do you think they’re going to win the Series again? It’s time for us all to put our expectations down. All of you should put your predictions down below in the comments section of this page. I personally expect that the Sox will get back into the Wild Card position. It’s hard for the other divisions to do better than the East to take a division winner and a wild card spot too. So instead, I expect that the Red Sox will get it. I would say that they’ll have about 85-90 wins, second place in the division. Then I would think that they’ll make it to the ALCS, just because they’re due. There have been some weird mistakes during the offseason, but I’d rather have them make the big mistakes now and then have it out of their system before the pivotal moments in the year. So what do you say? Any nay-sayers amongst you? Or any real optimists who expect them to sweep through the playoffs?

There is a controversy that has just arisen about Matsuzaka. He’s been with the Red Sox for awhile now, but it is unfortunate that he didn’t let them know the extent of his injuries last spring after the World Baseball Classic. There were a few suggestions that the team needed to check him out a little bit more. Apparently in an interview to a Japanese magazine, Daisuke Matsuzaka said that he was a little bit hurting, or something like that. The Boston Red Sox just found out about it and they aren’t so happy about it. They will be talking to him, his agent, and many other characters in this event. They want to know if communication broke down and, if so, how.

Yesterday was the Hall of Fame voting for the 2010 class and the winner was, unsurprisingly, a Red Sox player. But it is a little bit surprising which one it was. Andre Dawson, who only played with the team for a year or two and was injured most of the time, is the newest member of baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He will be honored in a ceremony in a few months. He definitely deserves it, although his actual time of performance was really low. He had 12 knee surgeries during his career and it sidelined him for such a long time that most fans only got to see short moments of his legendary ability. When he was playing great, he was amazing. He deserves it, though I suppose the Red Sox can’t take much credit for his election.

There are rising concerns about the level of the roster that the current Red Sox team will put on the field this year. I mean, we play in the same division as the Yankees, but we don’t have the kind of push that they do in their batting. Our pitching is decent and our fielding is getting better. But can’t we get the big bats here too? They have made some big changes over the last few years and especially this offseason. They have invested some impressive resources in their lineup this year, but there’s nothing really big in it as far as the batting goes. Hopefully we’ll be able to make some big changes in the next few weeks before Spring Training begins. Either that, or hopefully someone’s bat will simply light it up again this year. Let’s get ready to see it in action!

Finally, the Mike Lowell issue should be more or less put to rest. After the botched trade attempt and the rough fallout afterwards, the team has finally got their man to have surgery. Happy New Years to him. But some of the damage has already been done and will be tough to change. Lowell, hopefully, will be back at full strength at some point early in the season. His thumb surgery doesn’t appear to be very serious but it is important to get him back on track for the next few seasons. Can we still trade him? Possibly, but I doubt it. That’s about all the big news there is in Red Sox world, so we’ll see you in 2010!

When Mike Lowell hurt his thumb awhile back, it would appear that the Sox should have taken a look at it before it got to the level that it did. Especially if you’re going to shop the guy out. This is the problem. We should have taken a look at Lowell before we started offering him for a trade. If he has a sore thumb, you look at it to make sure it isn’t a problem. Since we let the Texas Rangers check it out and release the news, it’s a bigger problem and becomes a news story. These other teams aren’t going to want to bring him in, or at the very least, they’re going to approach it all very skeptically! If he’s hurt, we need to check for that kind of thing so that the people who want to have him can say “ah, he’s hurt, but we can definitely count on him halfway through the season.” That’s how you can trade a guy like Lowell.

Mike Lowell needs surgery. I know it’s a bit of a surprise for all of you, but it’s true. When the Texas Rangers were looking at him during the trade talks this was not part of the deal. The Red Sox never disclosed that Lowell’s jammed thumb was actually something that needed a bit of operation. So instead, we might not get to play him right away at the beginning of the season, but instead we will have to wait until he recovers. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be something really serious with lots of physical therapy, but it’s still going to be tough. Alternately, the Red Sox have been trying to shop him out recently too, so we’ll have to keep that in mind as the time goes by too, though with a bad thumb it might not be clear that someone is willing to take him.

Matt Holliday was going to get a deal from our Sox before we got Lackey, but it was going to be a big deal for Mr. H. We had hoped that we would get to see Holliday on the Fenway field, but it didn’t work out that way. It’s not that we’re having so much trouble with the pitching, but this is the division where you want to keep your team extra strong to be able to compete with the Yankees, so I can see why Lackey was needed. I read something the other day where they were lamenting that we and the Yankees are looking likely to take the division and wild card for a lot of time in the future. Well, that’s what happens when the teams are that good. I won’t say that the Yankees are good, but the Red Sox are amazing. With their new pitcher and some good new hitting, they’re looking like they’ll be even more impressive this year!