I don't know - years of control is a big deal here. 2 years of Chris Sale was bound to be pricey. And the teams dealing them were actually trying to get players back - unlike Miami (the Yelich deal was the first one which got real upside back). The Kimbrel deal was steep, but paid for with a guy who was getting blocked. The Pomeranz deal was again paid for with a low-A pitcher - super talented, but a risk because all pitchers are risks.Originally Posted by moonslav59
Alternative moves - Don't trade for Kimbrel or Sale. That's the gist of it. I am on record as not being thrilled about either of those moves when they happened. They were both overpays, and IMO, the trade for Sale was overkill.
I'm pretty sure we would have won the division in 2016 without Kimbrel. We might not have won the division in 2017 without Sale and Kimbrel, but that would have been due to injuries that were unforeseen at the time of the Sale trade.
My spin has nothing to do with gagging in the playoffs. The playoffs are a crapshoot. My point is that we were likely playoff bound anyway with the signing of Price. I wasn't thrilled with that contract either, but I understand that we needed a top pitcher that offseason, and he cost only money.
But they mostly all become free agents within a year of each other.
We don't have the cost controlled quality to replace them, and we can't keep them all.
And how would we look for 2018 without Sale and Kimbrel?
Like a contending team without a foreboding cliff.
It's hard to know what subsequent moves would have been made. But for instance, we might have focused on Darvish or Arrieta this offseason. Or traded for Stanton, then traded JBJ or Beni for starting pitching. Not that I'd be thrilled with doing that, but my point is that I think moves could have been made that kept the Sox competitive now without so much of the farm.
I think your position is reasonable but debatable.Like a contending team without a foreboding cliff.
It's hard to know what subsequent moves would have been made. But for instance, we might have focused on Darvish or Arrieta this offseason. Or traded for Stanton, then traded JBJ or Beni for starting pitching. Not that I'd be thrilled with doing that, but my point is that I think moves could have been made that kept the Sox competitive now without so much of the farm.
Certainly when John Henry hired DD he was looking for an aggressive approach.
At the end of the day I think the current position can be traced to Henry, Dombrowski, Lucchino, and Cherington all. They all played their roles. You'll never hear me say anything bad about Theo, though. He was great and they screwed up letting him go.
Fair enough. I never said that Ben was without blame. I just feel like he receives too much blame and not enough credit. At the same time, I feel like Dombrowski receives too much credit for getting the team back into the playoffs when they were pretty much already at that point when he arrived.
I have no doubt that Henry was looking for Dombrowski to take an aggressive approach. I blame Henry for not having enough patience to let Ben see his 5 year plan come to fruition.
if Ben’s plan came to fruition, it would have come to fruition without pitching as he was clueless when it came to pitching, and you can’t win without pitching.
The King of TalkSox has Spoken.
We'll never know who he would have acquired, but I'm certain he would have gone large for at least 1 SP'er (Price/Cueto/Grenke?)
While Porcello has been largely up and down, he has given us an 8.8 WAR at a fraction of the cost of Price, Scherzer and even Lester.
Ben also acquired Uehara, Badenhop, R Ross and converted Andrew Miller to a RP'er. This makes him at least not totally "clueless" with pitchers.
Look, there's no doubt our rotation got way worse under Ben's watch, but I am certain he was planning on boosting the pitching the upcoming winter before he quit. He chose to try and boost the offense in 2015 knowing a bunch of pitchers were going to be on the market the following year. Yes, in hindsight, signing Scherzer instead of HRam and Pablo would have saved his job, but had Porcello and HRam had their 2017 seasons in 2016, Ben might still be here now.
His record with pitching-- in particular starting pitching-- was very bad.
The King of TalkSox has Spoken.
No doubt, and when one superficially looks at the rotation he inherited vs the one he left, it's easy to label that part of his judgement "clueless-" the low ball offer to Lester being the lowest of the lows, however, the staff was all nearing free agency and coming off "beergate."
Serious mistakes and blunders were made. I'm not defending Ben's choices on starting pitchers. I hated the Masterson deal, but I liked the Miley deal. I disliked the Dempster deal, but many thought it was a good one. I hated how we treated the Lester negotiation, but once we screwed that up, I felt the trades (staff dump) we made was called for. I had hoped we'd have traded those guys for younger players, but Cespedes did bring us Porcello and Kelly is now blossoming into a quality set-up man. Craig bombed out, of course, but that was hard to know was coming. Peavy brought us Hembree. We got Marco Hernandez for Doubront. The jury still out a little bit on some of our acquired players, but the years of team control we had remaining of the starters we traded away were minimal.
At the time, I argued we should have signed Scherzer over HRam & Pablo, but understood the plan to wait for the stocked free agent class of the following year. Ultimately, it's Ben's fault hardly anybody performed like they had the year before being signed or acquired (HRam, Pablo & Porcello being the most notable), but he wasn't clueless, IMO.
I firmly believe he'd have made a trade or two like the Sale one but not trades like Kimbrel. He'd have spent as large as DD was allowed but maybe not on Price, which probably would have been a good thing. Maybe he doesn't sign Young or Moreland. Maybe he doesn't trade Travis Shaw (cheaper than Moreland's contract). Too many maybes to know anything, but I doubt Ben was going to just keep stock-piling prospects for the sake of it.
Way overstated. Porcello has NOT been a better value than Scherzer or Lester so far in terms of dollars per fWAR.
The other thing about Porcello is that he might be a case of being treated a little too well by fWAR as opposed to bWAR.
If you look at Porcello's ERA+ or ERA-, he has actually been a below average pitcher most years.
I like Porcello and have done so since he plunked and threw to the ground Youk.
Never the less he is a mid-rotation innings eater that had one very good year.
At least the Sox got something for loosing Lester.
"Hating the Yankees like it's a religion since 94'" RIP Mike.
"It's also a simple and indisputable fact that WAR isn't the be-all end-all in valuations, especially in real life. Wanna know why? Because an ace in run-prevention for 120 innings means more often than not, a sub-standard pitcher covering for the rest of the IP that pitcher fails to provide. You can't see value in a vacuum when a player does not provide full-time production."
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