Maybe Sox management will be proven correct in not being willing to come off their four-year, $40-million offer made to Damon during the winter meetings. It’s difficult to imagine Damon — with speed a big part of his game — being the same player at age 35 as he will be in 2006. But that doesn’t solve the Sox’s problems for next season.

They also are guilty of not reading the center-fielder market well enough to know that with the Dodgers settling for Kenny Lofton as a stop-gap solution, and with Baltimore’s interest tepid at best, Damon’s market had been reduced to them and the Yankees — and the Yankees were offering $12 million more over the same time frame.

There are several center-field options for the Red Sox, but none of them can be counted on to match Damon’s four-year production in a Boston uniform. They already have discussed deals for Seattle’s Jeremy Reed and Cleveland’s Coco Crisp, the former an underachiever in his rookie season, the latter who moved to left field with the emergence of Grady Sizemore. Perennial Cubs’ disappointment Corey Patterson is imminently available, so is young Tampa Bay speedster Joey Gathright. The best free-agent option could be Preston Wilson, 31, who as recently as 2003 put up a .282-36-141 season in Colorado, but since has been limited by injuries.

But whatever the Red Sox decide to do, it will be one more change in a chaotic off-season that already has seen: A power struggle at the top that resulted in Theo Epstein’s departure, Manny Ramirez’s trade demand, the losses of Edgar Renteria, Bill Mueller, Doug Mirabelli, John Olerud, Mike Myers (also to the Yankees), and likely Kevin Millar, plus the acquisitions of Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell, Guillermo Mota, Mark Loretta and Rudy Seanez, on top of everybody from Trot Nixon to Matt Clement to Bronson Arroyo being mentioned in trade talks.

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Pain on the skating rink, flying high on the hardwood, upsets on the football field, and more. more photos

Besides Damon, they still don’t have a replacement for Renteria, or a power-hitting first baseman. And they still have to unload David Wells, who wants to finish his career with a California team, preferably the Padres. Just 14 months removed from a World Series title that ended 86 years of frustration, a drastically altered Red Sox team needs to make a dramatic counter-move.

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