Lucchino hits on three hot topics
Back from his fact-finding/Matsuzaka-signing mission in Japan, Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino sat down at Fenway Park last night and discussed three pivotal team issues in the winter of 2006-07:
Daisuke Matsuzaka: "Our interest is obviously sincere. There is a fallacious assumption that this is a defensive maneuver. I tried to squash that while I was in Japan. We have until Dec. 14. Knowing the way the agent [Scott Boras] works, it will probably happen on the night of the 14th."
Possibly signing free agent J.D. Drew: "I'm not going to have any comment on [negative media impressions of Drew]. It would be grotesquely unfair of the media to say that before a new player ever came to town. The last time I remember that happening was for a player named David Ortiz."
On the potential trade of Manny Ramírez: "We like this to be an offseason exploration or transaction, but not a melodrama. There's a danger when we descend on that. This is an active exploration, as we promised Manny we would do in the offseason. Through his agent he has reaffirmed that he wants to be traded. We will need a fair and appropriate deal if a trade is made."
Commissioner Bud Selig said as much Thursday when he indicated: "I think we need to review the process."
Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the Major League Players Association, said yesterday the posting process has "such potential for abuse and fraud. Why should the [Japanese] club receive $51.1 million and the player is only getting, if the numbers in the papers are to believed, $7 or $8 million? That's like saying the Cleveland Plain Dealer wants a Boston Globe writer and the Globe will let him go for $7 million, but $6 million of it goes to the Globe and the writer gets $1 million? What sense does that make?"
Orza said he has discussed the posting issue with Major League Baseball on numerous occasions and has always believed the process was severely flawed.
Asked whether the issue would revive itself and result in change, Orza agreed that given the high bids by the Red Sox and Yankees ($26 million for lefthanded starter Kei Igawa), it has shined a spotlight on the issue.
Even though the commissioner can step in and negate any deal made between the Japanese team and the major league team if everything is not by the book, Orza still feels there's room for something unsavory. He doesn't believe any of it benefits the player.
"There are no side deals in the situation," Jimmie Lee Solomon, MLB's executive vice president of baseball operations, said earlier this week. "Everybody's been assured that's not allowed, and everybody's been made aware of the rules."
Nick Cafardo of the Globe staff contributed to this report. 
