2016 Red Sox Hot Stove Discussion Thread

[Kimmi]

And it was definitely a Larry move.

 

IMO, yes. What does that have to do with anything?

[a700hitter]

IMO, yes. What does that have to do with anything?

Nothing Exactly nothing, especially since it cannot be verified.

[Kimmi]

There really is no other side to Pablo in a Red Sox uniform. It has been pure stink.

 

There was absolutely rationale behind signing Pablo. For one, we needed a third baseman.

[a700hitter]

There was absolutely rationale behind signing Pablo. For one, we needed a third baseman.

Oh, I just thought they picked his name out of a hat like other GM's do.

[Spudboy]

You know, I really think Daniel Bard should not have been made a starter.

 

BRILLIANT!!!!!1!!

[jung]

There surely was a rational behind signing Panda....they needed a 3rd baseman. But whatever rational there was for signing him got blown out of the water because they signed him for too much money with no weight stipulations in his contract. Sort of like the same one step forward two steps back approach they ended up with on Porcello. Signing him was fine. But then extending him for all the possible money and then some he ever would have gotten in FA was ridiculous.

[Spudboy]

What is boring is your need to keep telling me how boring I am.

 

It's like they say with the tv. If you don't like the show, change the channel.

 

I was not directing my comment at you!!!! It was directed at those who incessantly reiterate their speculation of how things have been run by the Sox FO.

 

The same old things keep being said month after month.

 

But I suppose I have learned that a couple of guys here have penises. Even if they are dicks.

[User Name]

I was not directing my comment at you!!!! It was directed at those who incessantly reiterate their speculation of how things have been run by the Sox FO.

 

The same old things keep being said month after month.

 

But I suppose I have learned that a couple of guys here have penises. Even if they are dicks.

 

Them's fightin' words.

[SoxHop]

How about them Sox this year huh?

[cp176]

I was not directing my comment at you!!!! It was directed at those who incessantly reiterate their speculation of how things have been run by the Sox FO.

 

The same old things keep being said month after month.

 

But I suppose I have learned that a couple of guys here have penises. Even if they are dicks.

 

It's all about they guys - usually us older ones - we just can't get it figured out. Just kidding. The torment and torture has been equally shared regardless of age or sex. Is what it is. We are just stubborn folk trying to fight through a New England winter.

[cp176]

There surely was a rational behind signing Panda....they needed a 3rd baseman. But whatever rational there was for signing him got blown out of the water because they signed him for too much money with no weight stipulations in his contract. Sort of like the same one step forward two steps back approach they ended up with on Porcello. Signing him was fine. But then extending him for all the possible money and then some he ever would have gotten in FA was ridiculous.

 

 

Money has not been an issue for this team's ownership and won't be going forward. We needed a third baseman. Had to overpay to get him which is what we did. we had no idea he would turn into a turd baseman. Even the Porcello deal was a gross overpay. Now if you wait just a couple more years when every back of the rotation guy is grossly overpaid, even his contract will look sensible.

[jung]

That is not much of an argument for the way we handled either situation.

 

Sure we needed a 3rd baseman. We did not need one so desperately that we ended up saddling ourselves with a known problem without taking any measures to protect ourselves. The man was an embarrassment last year and there is every chance he will continue to be an embarrassment as he has done NOTHING this off season differently. In fact last off season he lost even more weight than his norm as a means of setting the hook on some Baseball Ops organization ( I just can't remember who) and then proceeded to pack it all back on again as is his practice. in fact this man appears to listen to nothing anybody tells him and does nothing relevant to his problem. Instead he batters the people trying to help him on his way out of town. One of the things he has likely been told and ignored is that if you constantly put your body through an annual process of weight reduction followed by letting the flood gates open your body gets used to that cycle and you will progressively just pack the weight back on again even faster year by year. I would bet that Panda can now pack on as much as a pound in a weekend! His listed playing weight is now 255! I suspect that also means that by year end last year he was approaching 290. Almost immediately after signing some of us said that our best hope for Panda was to get a couple of good years out of him before the weight just owned him. In fact we got no years out of him before that happened.

 

As for Porcello your argument suggests that leading the market, competing with yourself for contracts makes sense and it in fact it does not. Just because the price is going up does not suggest you should lead the market by so much that it takes two to three years for the rest of baseball to catch up. What about Porcello made THAT brilliant?

[Bellhorn04]

It was boring 1,000 posts ago. What it is now doesn't even have a word in the English language.

 

Stultifying?

[Bellhorn04]

That is not much of an argument for the way we handled either situation.

 

Sure we needed a 3rd baseman. We did not need one so desperately that we ended up saddling ourselves with a known problem without taking any measures to protect ourselves. The man was an embarrassment last year and there is every chance he will continue to be an embarrassment as he has done NOTHING this off season differently. In fact last off season he lost even more weight than his norm as a means of setting the hook on some Baseball Ops organization ( I just can't remember who) and then proceeded to pack it all back on again as is his practice. in fact this man appears to listen to nothing anybody tells him and does nothing relevant to his problem. Instead he batters the people trying to help him on his way out of town. One of the things he has likely been told and ignored is that if you constantly put your body through an annual process of weight reduction followed by letting the flood gates open your body gets used to that cycle and you will progressively just pack the weight back on again even faster year by year. I would bet that Panda can now pack on as much as a pound in a weekend! His listed playing weight is now 255! I suspect that also means that by year end last year he was approaching 290. Almost immediately after signing some of us said that our best hope for Panda was to get a couple of good years out of him before the weight just owned him. In fact we got no years out of him before that happened.

 

As for Porcello your argument suggests that leading the market, competing with yourself for contracts makes sense and it in fact it does not. Just because the price is going up does not suggest you should lead the market by so much that it takes two to three years for the rest of baseball to catch up. What about Porcello made THAT brilliant?

 

Porcello...now this is a fresh topic.

 

One of the arguments advanced on behalf of the Porcello extension is that we paid a premium in annual salary in exchange for a discount in years.

 

The extension price looks bad at the moment. Porcello could make it look a lot better this year. Or he could make it look doubly stupid.

[cp176]

That is not much of an argument for the way we handled either situation.

 

Sure we needed a 3rd baseman. We did not need one so desperately that we ended up saddling ourselves with a known problem without taking any measures to protect ourselves. The man was an embarrassment last year and there is every chance he will continue to be an embarrassment as he has done NOTHING this off season differently. In fact last off season he lost even more weight than his norm as a means of setting the hook on some Baseball Ops organization ( I just can't remember who) and then proceeded to pack it all back on again as is his practice. in fact this man appears to listen to nothing anybody tells him and does nothing relevant to his problem. Instead he batters the people trying to help him on his way out of town. One of the things he has likely been told and ignored is that if you constantly put your body through an annual process of weight reduction followed by letting the flood gates open your body gets used to that cycle and you will progressively just pack the weight back on again even faster year by year. I would bet that Panda can now pack on as much as a pound in a weekend! His listed playing weight is now 255! I suspect that also means that by year end last year he was approaching 290. Almost immediately after signing some of us said that our best hope for Panda was to get a couple of good years out of him before the weight just owned him. In fact we got no years out of him before that happened.

 

As for Porcello your argument suggests that leading the market, competing with yourself for contracts makes sense and it in fact it does not. Just because the price is going up does not suggest you should lead the market by so much that it takes two to three years for the rest of baseball to catch up. What about Porcello made THAT brilliant?

 

Or it could be that I was just being a tad facetious. You want some clarity from me I will say this - You obviously have some inside scoop on Sandoval that I don't have access to you. 2 a day workouts and great cars plus a desire to be better this year is what I have heard. If he in fact has been doing 2 a days and gaining weight, then he is not the only one to blame. i know something about fitness. Before I got to critical, I would have to know what his workouts looked like. Just sos you know - My comment about Porcello was meant to be a joke. I just post here and read the board for something to do. I have yet to see a poster who has stunned me with their brilliance. I have been baffled by the ******** though.

[jung]

Panda has regularly lost 20-25 lbs each off season. This is common knowledge although the best way to go backwards now would be to try to find the older stuff out of SF on him. But he has done at least this much every off season and packs it right back on again once the season starts. We all know he lost at least 30 lbs the last off season and packed it all back on again and then some once the season started. His 255 listed playing weight is now about where he starts each season although, this cyclical process he has been going through regularly usually results in both the lower number and the higher number going up and the middle of the bell curve rising. This is true for all of us. Once you get on that cycle your body recognizes it and it very hard to break. The weight comes back on you for a guy that size in lb increments. He will likely consider 260 a job well done for this off season.

 

At the end of last season, when Hanley was truthful about his weight, Hanley said he was 254. If you went to Fenway before both players were sidelined late last season and got to see Hanley standing next to Panda, those two players were not in the same zip code as to weight. At that point Panda was likely somewhere between 275 and 290 headed for 300! I have to take Hanley at his word for 254 although that is also what was reported at the time. Farrell says Hanley lost 20 lbs which takes you right to 234. Hanley says he is 234 right now but also NOW says he lost 3 lbs from 237 to 234. Right Hanley. But if I take Hanley at his word from last year, Panda was at least IMO 25-30 lbs over that. Also remember through this period Panda had to be removed from a game after going from 1st to home, getting there nearly at the point of collapse.

 

As for Porcello, I think he will end up the pitcher that gets the most benefit out of Price being here. Not only was extending him when we did idiotic from the team perspective but it hurt him as well IMO. We certainly could not expect Porcello not to take the money. But he was clearly ill prepared to suddenly be the highest paid pitcher on the staff right in the middle of all this discussion about who was the Ace. What....we don't think that had an impact on him? Remember this was not just a media discussion...this was a team discussion. Buch had the 5 Aces t-shirts produced, a pretty good indication that they were talking about the vacuum at the top as well.

 

However, I simply do not think he has the talent to be more than a 3 in anything we would consider a solid Boston staff, more likely a 4 but a solid 4, not an up and down, feast or famine 5. I am also concerned that his effort to turn himself into Joe Kelly last year might be a result of his bread and butter pitch being tough on the arm. He has thrown a good deal early in his career. FB's are not hard on the arm comparatively speaking. It might be that the politics of justifying your existence in MLB drove him to this FB mania from last year. There are so many hot young arms in baseball now. I think that as likely as his trying to save his arm a bit. Something drove it though...something other than "gee this is best way for me to pitch". It was not until he went back to a more recognizable Porcello that he started to get some results last year. Anyway, he is being paid like a 2016 rotation 2. He is nowhere near that and IMO won't ever be. So at best it will take two to three years for salaries to catch up to his salary. So tell me again....it made sense to without competition from the FA market advance him to a point where at best the league might catch up by 2017 or 2018???? How much time will he have left on his current contract that he might consider a reasonable salary for him at that point?

 

I will OVER overpay for the real deal before I overpay for a middle of the packer and I will do that every time. Made no sense. Even if they wanted this middle of the packer, had they waited for the off season, I seriously doubt there would be any likelihood of the competition for his services being anything like $20m+ per

Edited January 30, 2016 by jung

[User Name]

TL;DR. Panda's fat, Hanley needs to put up or shut up, Porcello needs to pitch better. That entire thesis in a single sentence.

[Kimmi]

How about them Sox this year huh?

 

Have you heard that Fangraphs projects the Sox to finish with the 2nd best record in MLB, with 92 (now 91) wins?

[Kimmi]

It's all about they guys - usually us older ones - we just can't get it figured out. Just kidding. The torment and torture has been equally shared regardless of age or sex. Is what it is. We are just stubborn folk trying to fight through a New England winter.

 

Well women certainly don't have to prove that ours is bigger than the next gal's.

[Kimmi]

Money has not been an issue for this team's ownership and won't be going forward. We needed a third baseman. Had to overpay to get him which is what we did. we had no idea he would turn into a turd baseman. Even the Porcello deal was a gross overpay. Now if you wait just a couple more years when every back of the rotation guy is grossly overpaid, even his contract will look sensible.

 

Ah, sounds so much like what Dombrowski did with signing Price.

 

As far as the Porcello contract goes, it was in no way a gross overpay.

[User Name]

Homer Bailey and Mike Leake are pretty good comparables to Porcello over their respective careers, and look at how much money they got. It's the fruit the market's bearing.

[Kimmi]

So at best it will take two to three years for salaries to catch up to his salary. So tell me again....it made sense to without competition from the FA market advance him to a point where at best the league might catch up by 2017 or 2018???? How much time will he have left on his current contract that he might consider a reasonable salary for him at that point?

 

Take a look at the contracts that comparable pitchers are getting. The market has already caught up to Porcello's contract. In addition to the AAV, keep in mind the length of the contract and Porcello's age.

 

Had Porcello pitched in 2015 like he did in 2014, we would not have been able to sign him for the amount that we did.

[Kimmi]

Homer Bailey and Mike Leake are pretty good comparables to Porcello over their respective careers, and look at how much money they got. It's the fruit the market's bearing.

 

Thank you.

[User Name]

Ah, sounds so much like what Dombrowski did with signing Price.

 

As far as the Porcello contract goes, it was in no way a gross overpay.

 

But Price is actually good.

[SoxHop]

Have you heard that Fangraphs projects the Sox to finish with the 2nd best record in MLB, with 92 (now 91) wins?

 

ahaha... yea. I know quite a bit about the Sox, but don't have the time to know many other teams in depth, so I don't know their flaws. I think some of our previous Sox teams that won around 91 games would have out played our current team, so I'm surprised at the 91 win projection. I could see a really good year for this team, but we'll need some luck and for some question marks to go well. I guess that's pretty par for the course of any year.

[Kimmi]

But Price is actually good.

 

Yes, but Pablo was good before 2015. Not as good as Price, but still good.

 

I know you're going to argue all the "red flags" surrounding Pablo, most of which I agree with, but even with his decline and his weight issues, he was a reasonable risk for the first half of the contract.

[Kimmi]

ahaha... yea. I know quite a bit about the Sox, but don't have the time to know many other teams in depth, so I don't know their flaws. I think some of our previous Sox teams that won around 91 games would have out played our current team, so I'm surprised at the 91 win projection. I could see a really good year for this team, but we'll need some luck and for some question marks to go well. I guess that's pretty par for the course of any year.

 

A lot depends on the rebounds of Pablo and Hanley. IMO, we don't so much need good luck, but rather we just need the lack of bad luck.

[a700hitter]

A lot depends on the rebounds of Pablo and Hanley. IMO, we don't so much need good luck, but rather we just need the lack of bad luck.

I don't think we were victims of bad luck last year. Hanley couldn't play LF, but he had never played it before. That wasn't bad luck. Porcello pitched worse than the #4 which he is, but that should not have been a season wrecker. Miley pitched to expectations. We got a good half season out of Buchholz. That is about the norm. Ortiz had his usual good season. Bogaerts made a big leap forward with the bat and the glove. Betts development was ahead of schedule, and Bradley learned to hit in the second half of the season. ER was a pleasant surprise. Pablo played like the fat load that he is, but I would attribute it to poor conditioning, not bad luck. I am not seeing the bad luck excuse for last season.

[Kimmi]

I don't think we were victims of bad luck last year. Hanley couldn't play LF, but he had never played it before. That wasn't bad luck. Porcello pitched worse than the #4 which he is, but that should not have been a season wrecker. Miley pitched to expectations. We got a good half season out of Buchholz. That is about the norm. Ortiz had his usual good season. Bogaerts made a big leap forward with the bat and the glove. Betts development was ahead of schedule, and Bradley learned to hit in the second half of the season. ER was a pleasant surprise. Pablo played like the fat load that he is, but I would attribute it to poor conditioning, not bad luck. I am not seeing the bad luck excuse for last season.

 

The widespread underperformances and the degree of those underperformances was certainly bad luck.

 

Hanley and Pablo both playing below replacement level is bad luck in and of itself.

 

Masterson, Kelly, and Porcello underperformed by quite a bit. Pretty much every BP arm that Farrell threw out there besides Taz and Koji absolutely stunk.

 

We lost our #1 and #2 starting catchers. Pedroia was injured. Napoli underperformed.

 

I'd say the team had some pretty bad luck.

[User Name]

Yes, but Pablo was good before 2015. Not as good as Price, but still good.

 

I know you're going to argue all the "red flags" surrounding Pablo, most of which I agree with, but even with his decline and his weight issues, he was a reasonable risk for the first half of the contract.

 

Pablo was decent with a chance of sucking. The chance was what we got.