Kyle Lohse rumors: Boston Red Sox would be a bad fit for erstwhile Cardinals ace

If the Boston Red Sox' rumored pursuit of Kyle Lohse struck you as a plausible 2013 free agency exercise, I am here to suggest that it was probably for the wrong reasons. It didn't make intuitive sense to you because the Red Sox could use a steadying veteran influence in the middle of their rotation, or because Kyle Lohe could stand to move into the limelight--it made sense to you because it would be a terrible move, and every MLB Hot Stove League season is filled with terrible rumors that turn into mind-bogglingly bad deals.

Kyle Lohse is going to be an expensive, average-or-a-little-better starter wherever he goes, and no matter who signs him they'll probably regret the last year of the deal. That's just what the new free-agency landscape looks like. But imagine what the reaction to the Brewers' Jeff Suppan deal would have looked like if it were happening in Boston instead of Milwaukee--by year four there would have been riots on the day of his starts, shirts accusing him of an illicit relationship with Alex Rodriguez, overturned trough urinals.

If you're an overpaid free agent in the Midwest you get booed sometimes, and people write goofy comics about you.

In the ESPN-gilded intensity of the AL East, you become a pariah and have to fight your way out of town. I think that for 99 percent of major league baseball players it makes no difference, psyche-wise, whether they're playing in Boston or New York or Cincinnati, and I consider Kyle Lohse a member of that particular 99 percent. But given the likelihood that he'll be overpaid for the last half of a multiyear deal, he should consider going someplace where being overpaid isn't such a nuclear disaster.