Boston Red Sox Starting Pitcher Hunter Dobbins Hits 15-Day IL With Elbow Strain

Ouch.

Our top priority, IMO, is to add a solid #2 pitcher to slot behind Crochet.  At minimum, get a solid #3.

At what cost?

Even 2-3 month rentals are overpays. Do you give Arias & Valera for a top rental?

What can we get for Romero, Bleis & Mullins?

21 hours ago, Nick said:

Getting a second ace like pitcher is the fastest way for this team to become playoff bound.

Pitching rules.

It's too bad that we have been so unsuccessful in developing our young pitchers into top rotation guys.  Pitching is so expensive and a hard commodity to come by.  Why can't we develop our own Tarik Skubal?

The cost of getting a #2 pitcher may be prohibitive for the Red Sox.

21 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

Skubal was drafted in 2018 and had .4 ERA in 2018. Moving up to AA for 2019, he had a .168 batting average against and rocketed up everyones prospect chart.

They didnt develop anything.  Skubal was going to be an all-star regardless of who was telling him stuff he didnt need to hear.

The most important thing in a baseball player making/breaking is his talent level.  You can have the best developers in the world, and you arent turning Bello into Skubal.

Fair enough that the talent has to be there.  Then perhaps the question should be why we can't draft pitchers like him?  If I'm not mistaken, he was not a high draft pick.

7 minutes ago, Malcolm White said:

Jack Flaherty. Clay Holmes. Matt Boyd. Nick Pivetta. Yusei Kikuchi. Jose Quintana. Tomo Sugano.  All making less than Buehler OR Giolito this year; any of them would fit nicely into a #2 slot.

I get not backing up the truck for Burnes, Fried or Snell, but I had higher hopes for the Pitching Lab than Walk'Em Buehler for $21M.

And Toro-Narvaez-Romy are the 3-4-5 hitters. Hard to trust Breslow to get a good pitcher, or anything else of value, at the deadline.

I was really hoping Pivetta would be back, though I'm guessing I was probably in the minority there.

Yeah, who in their wildest imagination would have guessed that Toro, Narvaez, and Romy would be batting in the middle of our lineup.

5 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

Correct, he was a ninth round pick (which means the tigers passed on him in rd 8). Lot of that is luck

For whatever reason, we seem to have had some terrible luck in drafting and developing top of the rotation starters.  For the first time in a long time, I actually felt pretty good about the group of young MLB level starters in our system, not to be aces, but to be solid contributors to our rotation.  They haven't panned out, largely due to injury.

11 minutes ago, Kimmi said:

For whatever reason, we seem to have had some terrible luck in drafting and developing top of the rotation starters.  For the first time in a long time, I actually felt pretty good about the group of young MLB level starters in our system, not to be aces, but to be solid contributors to our rotation.  They haven't panned out, largely due to injury.

Brez deserves some time to prove his moves at improving the focus on farm pitching will work out or not. Not many GMs show instant success in just 2 years.

Brez has moved decisively to make major additions to the ML club, especially adding a young pitcher like Crochet and then extending him. He's made several trades to bolster the pitching at every level of the system from MLB down to the lower levels. Almost every trade involved a pitcher, and if it included a pitcher, it resulted in getting back a younger pitcher as part of the package. The only significant trade that did not do this, as far as I know, was the two marginal pitchers we traded for O'Neill. One trade (Dugo) was for 3 pitchers.

He drafted more pitchers than I've seen the Sox do in maybe forever. He also paid overslot money to a few of them. He also spent more money on IFA bonuses than Bloom did. In just 2 years, he added all these arms:

Crochet

Chapman, Wilson, Sandoval and yes, Buehler, Hendriks & Gio, too.

Slaten, Fitts, Weissert, Sandlin, Criswell, I Campbell, Priester (since traded) & others

Harrison, Hicks, J Bello, Judice, Fajardo, Moran, Vogatsky and other.

Okay, he swung and missed with Chase Anderson, Luis Garcia, Lucas Sims and James Paxton, mong several other low risk/low cost deals, but I gotta say, the effort is clearly front and center.

I get Drew's point about quality trumps development, and I'll add trumping quantity, too, but I think Brez has added some quality. Now, give it some time.

On 6/24/2025 at 5:14 PM, drewski6 said:

Its really hard to say what % of recent failures is due to bad luck bug, which certainly exists and can get ya.  BUt I see so many other teams lose their aces , or their best hitters.  We tend to lose not top tier guys, so Im not sure that weve been on the wrong end of the injury luck.

I dont dwell on the pitching though. To me, its just a pure crapshoot.  Give me 9 elite hitters and 15 #4 pitchers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming our team struggles this year on injuries.  As you said, all teams deal with injuries, some far worse than what we've dealt with.  I just thought our rotation this year would be better than it has been, and some of that is due to injury setbacks.

That's an interesting take on having an elite lineup along with 15 #4 pitchers.  I tend to disagree with that, but at the same time, I don't want to have a rotation of all #1 and #2 pitchers and a light hitting lineup.  My preference would be to have a top pitching staff and an average lineup as opposed to the other way around. 

On 6/24/2025 at 5:23 PM, moonslav59 said:

Brez deserves some time to prove his moves at improving the focus on farm pitching will work out or not. Not many GMs show instant success in just 2 years.

Brez has moved decisively to make major additions to the ML club, especially adding a young pitcher like Crochet and then extending him. He's made several trades to bolster the pitching at every level of the system from MLB down to the lower levels. Almost every trade involved a pitcher, and if it included a pitcher, it resulted in getting back a younger pitcher as part of the package. The only significant trade that did not do this, as far as I know, was the two marginal pitchers we traded for O'Neill. One trade (Dugo) was for 3 pitchers.

He drafted more pitchers than I've seen the Sox do in maybe forever. He also paid overslot money to a few of them. He also spent more money on IFA bonuses than Bloom did. In just 2 years, he added all these arms:

Crochet

Chapman, Wilson, Sandoval and yes, Buehler, Hendriks & Gio, too.

Slaten, Fitts, Weissert, Sandlin, Criswell, I Campbell, Priester (since traded) & others

Harrison, Hicks, J Bello, Judice, Fajardo, Moran, Vogatsky and other.

Okay, he swung and missed with Chase Anderson, Luis Garcia, Lucas Sims and James Paxton, mong several other low risk/low cost deals, but I gotta say, the effort is clearly front and center.

I get Drew's point about quality trumps development, and I'll add trumping quantity, too, but I think Brez has added some quality. Now, give it some time.

 

I agree that Breslow deserves more time.  IMO, part of the problem has been the quick turnover of GMs or CBOs or whatever you want to call them.  It takes time to allow plans to come to fruition, unless you're Dombrowski and you're given the green light on winning now at any cost.  But Dombrowski wouldn't have been able to do that without the time put in by Cherington and even Theo.  And Dombrowski was fired too after only a short stint.

I've said it before, I think Henry needs to have more patience in whatever team building philosophy strikes him when he hires a GM.

1 hour ago, Kimmi said:

I agree that Breslow deserves more time.  IMO, part of the problem has been the quick turnover of GMs or CBOs or whatever you want to call them.  It takes time to allow plans to come to fruition, unless you're Dombrowski and you're given the green light on winning now at any cost.  But Dombrowski wouldn't have been able to do that without the time put in by Cherington and even Theo.  And Dombrowski was fired too after only a short stint.

I've said it before, I think Henry needs to have more patience in whatever team building philosophy strikes him when he hires a GM.

I thought Ben deserved at least one more year with a push from above to make at least one big prospect deal.

The only way I see keeping DD longer was to keep spending. I thought it made sense to let him go, if the idea was to gut the team and budget.

While Bloom was handed a near impossible situation, he failed to do what he was hired to do; Namely find diamonds in the rough and keep us nearer to contention than he ended up doing.

I like that Brez had made serious moves to change the farm culture towards pitching as a higher priority, but that takes time- maybe longer than JH has patience for, and for all we know, maybe the changes will not help. I admire the effort, anyway. Bloom kept the priorities on everyday players and tried to trade and sign for pitching. He failed on that.

I happen to think Brex built a nice core to work with as a foundation. I thought he did enough over the winter to make us a playoff contender, and I guess 3 GB is not really "out of it," but it seems we have fallen much short to expectations than many felt we would, so far.

With the Devers trade and all the long term injuries, I'm not sure why there should still be much optimism. I'm not for trading top prospects for bigtime rentals, and I doubt we find another Beeks for Nate or Aldo Ramirez for Schwarber deal out there. I guess those two cases do offer some hope, but we need to make a serious mover in the next 5 weeks for me to want us to be serious buyers. (But, again, not too serious.)

21 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

I thought Ben deserved at least one more year with a push from above to make at least one big prospect deal.

The only way I see keeping DD longer was to keep spending. I thought it made sense to let him go, if the idea was to gut the team and budget.

While Bloom was handed a near impossible situation, he failed to do what he was hired to do; Namely find diamonds in the rough and keep us nearer to contention than he ended up doing.

I like that Brez had made serious moves to change the farm culture towards pitching as a higher priority, but that takes time- maybe longer than JH has patience for, and for all we know, maybe the changes will not help. I admire the effort, anyway. Bloom kept the priorities on everyday players and tried to trade and sign for pitching. He failed on that.

I happen to think Brex built a nice core to work with as a foundation. I thought he did enough over the winter to make us a playoff contender, and I guess 3 GB is not really "out of it," but it seems we have fallen much short to expectations than many felt we would, so far.

With the Devers trade and all the long term injuries, I'm not sure why there should still be much optimism. I'm not for trading top prospects for bigtime rentals, and I doubt we find another Beeks for Nate or Aldo Ramirez for Schwarber deal out there. I guess those two cases do offer some hope, but we need to make a serious mover in the next 5 weeks for me to want us to be serious buyers. (But, again, not too serious.)

All of our recent GMs have had their strong points and their shortcomings.  IMO, Henry has been a little wishy-washy with how he wants his GMs to go about putting teams together and a little impatient in letting things play out.  The turnover of GMs, along with the seemingly changing philosophies, makes it difficult to put together winning teams year after year.

I think Breslow did a very good job this offseason.  I know that GMs are going to be judged on results, and the results are not there, but I can't really fault Breslow, except for the lack of communication with Devers.

I'm 100% with you on not trading top prospects for big rentals, even if we were leading the division.

8 minutes ago, Kimmi said:

All of our recent GMs have had their strong points and their shortcomings.  IMO, Henry has been a little wishy-washy with how he wants his GMs to go about putting teams together and a little impatient in letting things play out.  The turnover of GMs, along with the seemingly changing philosophies, makes it difficult to put together winning teams year after year.

I think Breslow did a very good job this offseason.  I know that GMs are going to be judged on results, and the results are not there, but I can't really fault Breslow, except for the lack of communication with Devers.

I'm 100% with you on not trading top prospects for big rentals, even if we were leading the division.

I feel like some of the GM changes were directly related to major shifts in team building philosophy. Ben to DD went with the plan to spend large and long. That makes some sense, although I do think Ben deserved another year. The DD to Bloom change went with the plan to severely cut the budget and switching to a Rays approach made sense for that, too.

I'm not defending JH on these moves and radical changes in philosophy, over and over, but when you look at 2003 to 2018, there were some ups and downs in spending and self imposed rules on how to spend and when to go large and long on key deals. It worked 4 times, and nearly worked in other seasons. 

The major change going into 2019 and more prominently into 2020 was extreme. The slowness in getting the spending back to higher levels was unprecedented. It looked like we were back to pre-2018 times, this past winter, but then we dump Devers. It's hard to know what this winter will bring, and I have told myself to not get expectations too high, in recent years.

I like Breslow's roster choices and focus on pitching from bottom to top. The Devers fiasco, Sale trade results and Buehler signing all ring loudly in my ears, but I see a lot of good moves and signs. I hope JH does not pull the Brez plus, too quickly, and he seems like the type of GM that can handle lean spending and big spending, despite the big swing and miss on Buehler. (The Gio signing is looking better, now, and Bregman looks like a nice choice, despite the injury.)

49 minutes ago, Larry Cook said:

How does buehler look pretty good to start the season, then go on the DL and come back and has lost all command and control????

The problem was he should have gone on the IL instead of the DL.

1 hour ago, SPLENDIDSPLINTER said:

The problem was he should have gone on the IL instead of the DL.

Dumb Brez!

On 7/1/2025 at 4:05 PM, moonslav59 said:

I feel like some of the GM changes were directly related to major shifts in team building philosophy. Ben to DD went with the plan to spend large and long. That makes some sense, although I do think Ben deserved another year. The DD to Bloom change went with the plan to severely cut the budget and switching to a Rays approach made sense for that, too.

I'm not defending JH on these moves and radical changes in philosophy, over and over, but when you look at 2003 to 2018, there were some ups and downs in spending and self imposed rules on how to spend and when to go large and long on key deals. It worked 4 times, and nearly worked in other seasons. 

The major change going into 2019 and more prominently into 2020 was extreme. The slowness in getting the spending back to higher levels was unprecedented. It looked like we were back to pre-2018 times, this past winter, but then we dump Devers. It's hard to know what this winter will bring, and I have told myself to not get expectations too high, in recent years.

I like Breslow's roster choices and focus on pitching from bottom to top. The Devers fiasco, Sale trade results and Buehler signing all ring loudly in my ears, but I see a lot of good moves and signs. I hope JH does not pull the Brez plus, too quickly, and he seems like the type of GM that can handle lean spending and big spending, despite the big swing and miss on Buehler. (The Gio signing is looking better, now, and Bregman looks like a nice choice, despite the injury.)

I feel like, for the most part, Henry's philosophy has been to prioritize the farm system and long-term sustainability as opposed to having a win now philosophy.  I think the team might have gotten away from that philosophy a little bit in 2009(?) under Lucchino's influence.

But Henry did a complete 180 on his philosophy when he hired Dombrowski.  He then reversed course and did another 180 when he hired Bloom.  And then was unhappy when Bloom did what he was hired to do.

If you want a win now at any cost mentality, that's fine, but then you'll probably feel the consequences of that for years to come.

4 minutes ago, Kimmi said:

I feel like, for the most part, Henry's philosophy has been to prioritize the farm system and long-term sustainability as opposed to having a win now philosophy.  I think the team might have gotten away from that philosophy a little bit in 2009(?) under Lucchino's influence.

But Henry did a complete 180 on his philosophy when he hired Dombrowski.  He then reversed course and did another 180 when he hired Bloom.  And then was unhappy when Bloom did what he was hired to do.

If you want a win now at any cost mentality, that's fine, but then you'll probably feel the consequences of that for years to come.

i've looked but can't find where Theo talked about getting away from the farm first philosophy and veering too hard to the win now mentality. I agree the high farm prioritization has been the overall JH goal, and it worked. I like the idea. I liked how JH made strategic choices to spend when spending was needed. Big prospects for stud trades did occur, but they were spread out.

I'm not sure I'd call it a 180 from Ben to DD. Ben spent a lot, and I think JH felt the team was at the spend big cycle point and felt DD was the better man for that. (I agree, but still wanted to see Ben for one more year, with a demand to make at least one big prospect for an ace trade.)

In one sense Bloom "did what he was hired to do,"as in cut salary as directed, but he was also hired to do what the Rays did- keep the farm a top priority while also building a competitive team at the big level, along the way. 2021 was the only success for Bloom on the front, and one major reason he was successful in building the farm was that we did so badly, he got high picks to land Mayer & Teel. He did do well getting KC and Anthony with Comp picks and setting Brez up nicely to get B Montgomery & Tolle in 2024.

I don't think Bloom would have made us better in 2024 or 2025. He would not have made the boold moves Brez made and the team needed.

20 minutes ago, Larry Cook said:

If Henry holds true to his desire for a sustainability model, then what does he have bres-slow do personnel wise by the trade deadline???

I don't see Brez trading any of our 5 rookies: Anthony, Mayer, Campbell, Narvaez or Dobbins.

I seriously doubts he trades some other highly ranked prospects for rentals, and I just don't see many nonrental big deals as deadline possibilities, so I think he does like he did, last year: trade borderline 40 man roster players and soon to be Rule 5 prospects for players he feels will help. The highest prospect he traded, last year was Yorke for Priester, who was close to being a prospect, himself.

Look at the list of other prospects he traded: they were either very far away prospects or borderline Rule 5 guys or players that reeked of becoming AAAA type prospects.

Yorke for Priester

Bolivar (Paxton) & Portes (Lucas Sims)

M Lugo, Kavadas, Zeferjahn, Vargas (Luis Garica)

Coffey, Paulino & Bautista (Danny Jansen)

That's 10 prospects for 4 rentals plus Priester, who he later traded away.

This is what I see Brez, doing this year, assuming we don't sell and are "buyers."

Rule 5 borderlines: Sandlin, Uberstine, Castro, Bleis, Jordan, Monegro, Paez & Mullins (not so borderline: Drohan, Hickey, I Coffey

AAAA types (some vets named, too): DHam, Grissom, Wong, Eaton, Sogard, Thompson, Sikes along with some on the Rule 5 list that fit here, too.

Far aways: hard to name, but Cespedes comes to mind.

IMO, not just my likes and dislikes, I do NOT think Brez trades any rookie or top 7 prospects.

The highest prospects he might trade could be:

8. Tibbs

10. Romero

13. Sandlin

14. Bleis

15. Cespedes

17. Paez

19. Monegro

24. Jordan, 25 Mullins, 26 Uberstine, 27 Wehunt, 28 Castro, 37 Drohan, 41 Alcanatar, 46 Anderson and other older prospects not mentioned.

What we can get for these guys may end up like what we got in 2024.

34 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

i've looked but can't find where Theo talked about getting away from the farm first philosophy and veering too hard to the win now mentality. I agree the high farm prioritization has been the overall JH goal, and it worked. I like the idea. I liked how JH made strategic choices to spend when spending was needed. Big prospects for stud trades did occur, but they were spread out.

I'm not sure I'd call it a 180 from Ben to DD. Ben spent a lot, and I think JH felt the team was at the spend big cycle point and felt DD was the better man for that. (I agree, but still wanted to see Ben for one more year, with a demand to make at least one big prospect for an ace trade.)

In one sense Bloom "did what he was hired to do,"as in cut salary as directed, but he was also hired to do what the Rays did- keep the farm a top priority while also building a competitive team at the big level, along the way. 2021 was the only success for Bloom on the front, and one major reason he was successful in building the farm was that we did so badly, he got high picks to land Mayer & Teel. He did do well getting KC and Anthony with Comp picks and setting Brez up nicely to get B Montgomery & Tolle in 2024.

I don't think Bloom would have made us better in 2024 or 2025. He would not have made the boold moves Brez made and the team needed.

Theo said something to the effect of butting heads with Lucchino over how to put together a team.  Lucchino prioritized putting fans in the seats by signing the big names.  Theo caved a little.  They both admitted that they got a little greedy after winning 2 rings and wanted more, thereby not making the best choices.

IMO, both Cherington and Bloom would have made some bolder moves if they had been allowed to stay another year or two.  They had to wait until the plan was in place.

59 minutes ago, Kimmi said:

Theo said something to the effect of butting heads with Lucchino over how to put together a team.  Lucchino prioritized putting fans in the seats by signing the big names.  Theo caved a little.  They both admitted that they got a little greedy after winning 2 rings and wanted more, thereby not making the best choices.

IMO, both Cherington and Bloom would have made some bolder moves if they had been allowed to stay another year or two.  They had to wait until the plan was in place.

I have always felt Ben would have made a bold move or two, if given one more year. He almost had to, just to make roster room for all the prospects reaching Rule 5 status.

I have also always felt DD did not have to trade away as much as he did, but since it worked and hardly anyone he traded away came back to haunt us, I was happy with how it turned out.

DD also happened to keep all the best prospects, even with most being lower ranked or with low to no expectations. It may have been part luck and part good organization men advising him, but he did do well on his trades and keeper choices. It's hard to think another GM would have done better, but the Price deal turned into a massive dead money deal, and was part of the reason we got back so little for Betts.

Ben's farm was highly rated but came up short of expectations, so it turned out well we traded away a lot of it.

Much of Bloom's farm is TBD'd and some was traded for Crochet.

DD's farm included players he inherited and did not trade, like Devers, but also many he acquired, like Duran, Houck, Crawford, Bello, Rafaela, Murphy and more.

1 hour ago, Larry Cook said:

Are we ok with bres-slow being a seller at the trade deadline, if he goes all in two get 2 quality starting pitchers in the off season??

After all, it is not bres-slow’s fault that houck and beuhler regressed beyond anything imaginable!!  And who knows why Crawford was not medically checked up on in the offseason?????

 

If the deadline was today, I'd sell. No half way crap. If we got 15-5 before the deadline, I'm still going to be for buying rentals at a high prospect cost.

If we sell, then acquire as much young trade capital as possible for winter trades.