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From Nick Cafardo at Extra Bases:

Mike Lowell’s agents and Theo Epstein could not reach an agreement about an hour before the midnight deadline in which the Red Sox had exclusive rights to negotiate with Lowell.

Lowell will now be a complete free-agent and can negotiate with other teams.

Both sides agreed there’s still room for an agreement to be reached and they’ll continue to stay in touch. Lowell will now be able to determine whether there’s a four-year market out there for his services. Indications are that the Sox would not move off three years.

We all know what’s going to happen here, some team is going to overpay Lowell for his services and offer him a 4-year deal at a ridiculous amount of money that will make it hard for the Red Sox to match.

It is encouraging to hear that the teams will still try to reach an agreement. Hopefully after fielding some offers tomorrow from teams, Lowell’s agents, the Levinson brothers, will ring Theo and work something out. If not, the Red Sox begin to explore other options at third base.

Thanks for putting up with me today, Lou of Sweet Lou’s Baseball Lab will be here to take you through your Tuesday. If you’d like to visit my blog, you can check me out at SOX & Dawgs.

After saying earlier in the day that Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera were going to hit the open market in an hour, the Yankees have signed their 36-year old catcher to a 4-year $52 million dollar deal.

But once the Yankees offered Posada the four-year pact, it was practically a done deal. Posada’s first choice was to stay in pinstripes, and unless the Yankees were unwilling to go for a fourth year, there was little doubt it would happen.

The Yankees probably overpaid, but what choice did they have? Yorvit Torrealba, Paul Lo Duca or Damian Miller were not going to adequately replace Posada, who had a tremendous year both at the plate and behind it last season.

This move doesn’t shock me at all. They definitely did overpay but like the article says what choice did they have? The free-agent market for catchers definitely wasn’t a good one at all.

Hopefully the Red Sox follow suit and give Mike Lowell the fourth year and get this thing over with.

Looking back at the month of April when Dustin Pedroia was barely hitting his weight, you wouldn’t have even thought that he could be the AL Rookie of the Year. Then as the season went on when he started hitting around Miguel Cabrera’s weight, you could definitely see him being the rookie of the year.

This afternoon, the BBWAA (Baseball Writer’s Association of America) made it official, Pedroia is your 2007 American League Rookie of the Year. He becomes the first Red Sox rookie to win the award since Nomar Garciaparra did it back in 1997.

Pedroia put up excellent numbers in his rookie campaign. His .317 batting average was the highest ever by a rookie second baseman, breaking the record of Jim Viox set back in 1913 when Viox played for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

He started out the season with a rough April, hitting .182 and Red Sox Nation was calling for Alex Cora to play second base. Terry Francona stuck with the kid and he responded by hitting .405 in May. He continued the trend by hitting. 333 in June, .299 in July, .346 in August and .302 in September. For the season, he hit .317 with 8 home runs and 50 RBIs. He also made only 6 errors on the season which was good for a .990 fielding percentage.

Pedroia will be holding a press conference later in the day today from his alma mater, Arizona State University.

Continue reading to find out the National League Rookie of the Year.

(more…)

One of the best outfielders in Japanese baseball, Kosuke Fukudome, has filed for free agency from his team the Chunichi Dragons. The move paves his way to explore the possibility of coming over here to play in MLB.

Fukudome does not have to go through the same posting system that Daisuke Matsuzaka had to because he is a free agent. This will be of benefit to the teams who are interested in signing him because they will not have to pay the Dragons a dime.

Fukudome’s play has been compared to Akinori Iwamura’s and he possesses some power and likes to spray the ball in the gaps.

In his career with the Dragons, he has hit .305 with 192 home runs and 647 RBIs. He projects to hit about .280 with 15-20 homers and 80-100 RBIs. Those numbers are pretty similar to what J.D. Drew projected to this year for the Red Sox.

So who is interested and where does he end up? Only time will tell. The Dragons have offered him a 1-year contract and also a multiyear contract.

Well his goatee that is.

From the girls at the Inside Track:

That Red Sox Golden Glover Kevin Youkilis will shave off his goatee tomorrow night to raise some dough for his Hits For Kids charity. Yooooouk will take it all off for a $5,000 donation from Gillette at the Cask ’n Flagon at 5 p.m.

I only wonder if he plans on growing it back for next season. Otherwise, we go back to this Youk.

Also posted on my site

It’s going to be a busy week for the teams in MLB as the deadline looms on the exclusive negotiating period with their free agents. When the clock strikes midnight tonight, free agents can talk to any of the teams about a contract for next year and years to come.

So what does this mean for the Red Sox? It means that they better hope their contract offer of 3-years $36 million is good enough for Lowell or they risk the potential of losing him. I fully expect Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein to be burning up the phones of Lowell’s agents, the Levinson brothers, all day today.

It will be interesting to see what happens with other free agents like Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Barry Bonds, Francisco Cordero and others.

There is a fantasy baseball impact on this as well as many of you out there participate in fantasy baseball leagues. Some of you participate in AL-only and NL-only leagues as well as mixed leagues. With some of this AL and NL-only leagues being keeper leagues, your hoping that your star free agent on your team doesn’t switch leagues. I’ve had this happen to me when Jim Thome was a free agent with the Indians. He ended up signing with the Phillies and it hurt my team for the following season.

Today also marks the start of the big four awards in MLB, the AL & NL Rookie of the Year, the AL & NL Cy Young, the AL & NL Manager of the Year and the AL & NL MVP’s. This is how the schedule breaks down this week and next.

Nov. 12: AL and NL Rookies of the Year
Nov. 13: AL Cy Young
Nov. 14: AL and NL Managers of the Year
Nov. 15: NL Cy Young
Nov. 19: AL MVP
Nov. 20: NL MVP

Just wanted to introduce myself to everyone. I am Ian from SOX & Dawgs and I will be your second guest blogger in a short list of great ones.

It should be an interesting day of posting as unlike my predecessor Sooze, I do know a little something about fantasy baseball, having won my fantasy league this year on a tiebreaker. My team made a miraculous run the last week of the season to tie the first place team and force the tiebreaker. I’d say I’m pretty good at it but the moves I made to help me actually hurt me a little bit. But needless to say after my 4th place finish last season and first year in the money, it was good to win it for once.

I’ll do my best to give you news about all the players and teams today but you should expect a little Red Sox flavor as they are the main baseball team I blog about. I’ll spare you the UConn Huskies stuff over here at Crooked Pitch since this is a fantasy baseball blog and not a college sports blog.

If you have any questions or comments for me, just shoot me an email.

So sit back, relax, grab your favorite morning beverage and enjoy.