That was sort of a weird article.

Shame that Daeges had to miss an entire year, though if his injury would have been diagnosed earlier and he had been operated on in, say, May, he probably would still have missed most or all of the minor league season. He's had a lot of injury difficulties in his years in the organization.

But Hazen's comments were really strange. He had proven what he needed to at AA, now it was just a matter of getting AB at AAA. The AB were exactly what he lost because of the injury. But his development wasn't hurt all that much?? Something seems contradictory here.

I think Daeges' status is fairly clear at this point. He has definite defensive limitations, and there's only so much he can improve. He'll never play RF consistently for the Sox because that field in Fenway requires a plus defender. So it's hard for him to be a protection player except in LF, and extra OF generally need to be able to play both corner positions pretty well. He has no IF defense reputation that I am aware of. So unless he hits well enough to hold down the starting LF job, his real position is DH, and he may never hit for enough power to be considered good enough to fill that role in Boston.

But is that really true?? If he showed he could hit .300+, OPS close to .400, and be a 15 HR/40+ doubles guy, could we live with him at DH?? It may depend on who fills the position slots in the lineup. Of course, having missed all of the injury time, he may never really be able to develop into that type of offensive force. But honestly, a couple of years ago I thought he had a reasonable possibility of being that type of hitter. As far as I can tell, the guy is a line-drive pull hitter, and if you are going to be a LH pull hitter in Fenway, that's the type of hitter you want to be. There are a lot of XBH to be had.