A Realistic View at 2017 Part II

[moonslav59]

Lay off the Tacos, refried beans and conronas. Remeber all that weight you have lost.

 

It's hard to avoid the Tacos and Tortas, but I can do without the beans and beer.

 

I'm going to have to work out some routine to exercise and avoid the midnight meals that are so common here.

[a700hitter]

It's hard to avoid the Tacos and Tortas, but I can do without the beans and beer.

 

I'm going to have to work out some routine to exercise and avoid the midnight meals that are so common here.

i didn't know that midnight meals were common there. Full meals or just snacks?

[Spudboy]

Mexico City is a known Mecca for street food.

 

I'd love to sample it.

[cp176]

Ding, Ding, DING!!!

 

The winner is....

 

MVP78!

 

the trade for Pomeranz made perfect sense when it occurred and continues to look better and better with every pitch Pomeranz throws. Drafting pitchers is always risky. Drafting them when they are teenagers is more so. This trade can't be really assessed until Espinoza makes someting of appearance at a higher level than he was at before his injuries. Pomeranz will never be in the ace category - most people never thought he would. A solid number 3, maybe a number 2. Espinoza - who knows? Is he throwing again yet?

[S5Dewey]

This goes back to what I've always said, that I'll trade prospects for established players nearly every time. The exception is guys like Mookie & Bogaerts who stick out like a sore thumb even in the minors. They're the keepers.

 

This is one of the benefits of being a large-market team with a big budget. The Sox don't have to take the risk of having a prospect be a flop. They can take the established player and pass the risk on to the team they traded with.

 

Ya, I'll get my ass kicked once in a while but I'll be right more times than I'll be wrong.

[Kimmi]

the trade for Pomeranz made perfect sense when it occurred and continues to look better and better with every pitch Pomeranz throws. Drafting pitchers is always risky. Drafting them when they are teenagers is more so. This trade can't be really assessed until Espinoza makes someting of appearance at a higher level than he was at before his injuries. Pomeranz will never be in the ace category - most people never thought he would. A solid number 3, maybe a number 2. Espinoza - who knows? Is he throwing again yet?

 

I agree that the trade for Pomeranz made sense. I didn't like giving up Espinoza for him, but I felt like the trade was necessary.

 

I am still unsettled about Dombrowski not backing out of the deal when he found out about Pomeranz' injury. That leads me to wonder if maybe the Sox knew something about Espinoza's medicals that wasn't quite right.

 

At any rate, I like what I'm seeing from Pom lately.

[Kimmi]

This goes back to what I've always said, that I'll trade prospects for established players nearly every time. The exception is guys like Mookie & Bogaerts who stick out like a sore thumb even in the minors. They're the keepers.

 

This is one of the benefits of being a large-market team with a big budget. The Sox don't have to take the risk of having a prospect be a flop. They can take the established player and pass the risk on to the team they traded with.

 

Ya, I'll get my ass kicked once in a while but I'll be right more times than I'll be wrong.

 

For me, it's not the issue of trading prospects. Part of the reason for building a farm is to use the pieces to fill in holes. I have no problem with that. The issue for me is twofold.

 

1. Trading prospects and not getting an adequate return. In other words, overpaying.

2. Trading prospects in an extreme fashion. In other words, depleting the farm, a farm that Dombrowski did not build, I might add.

[cp176]

I agree that the trade for Pomeranz made sense. I didn't like giving up Espinoza for him, but I felt like the trade was necessary.

 

I am still unsettled about Dombrowski not backing out of the deal when he found out about Pomeranz' injury. That leads me to wonder if maybe the Sox knew something about Espinoza's medicals that wasn't quite right.

 

At any rate, I like what I'm seeing from Pom lately.

 

I'm going to give in on this one - inside my little mind, i would have liked to see something happen when they found out about the injury. I agree

[S5Dewey]

For me, it's not the issue of trading prospects. Part of the reason for building a farm is to use the pieces to fill in holes. I have no problem with that. The issue for me is twofold.

 

1. Trading prospects and not getting an adequate return. In other words, overpaying.

2. Trading prospects in an extreme fashion. In other words, depleting the farm, a farm that Dombrowski did not build, I might add.

 

It's difficult to immediately tell if a team has overpaid since when prospects are involved it may take years to determine their value.

 

IMO there are two trades that right now are not overpays because of where we'd be without them:

 

Chris Sale - We gave up Moncada, Kopech, Basabe, and Diaz. I could be wrong but I don't see any one of those being the impact player that Sale is. Maybe two of them will equal one Sale, but at the same time.... you don't pass on Chris Sale.

 

Craig Kimbrel - We gave up Margot, Guerra, Asuage, Allen. How much is the best closer in baseball worth?

 

The upside of these multi-player deals is that most likely not more than one of them will be franchise-type players and there's an even chance that no more than two of them will be regular players. Sale and Kimbrel are the players that a team with the record like Boston has had since 2013 has to acquire if they want to win in the near future. The cost may be high but it fills a need.

 

Wade Miley and Aro for Carson Smith. I guess you'd have to say right now that this was an overpay but since Miley and Aro aren't the type of player to fuel a championship team and Smith could be one of those guys. I'm not unhappy with the trade.

 

Getting Thornburg for Travis Shaw, Dubron and Pennington is the one that looks the worst right now. It's looking more like Thorn is going to be out all season and Shaw could fill our need at 3B. While the Travis Shaw the Sox traded isn't the same Travis Shaw who's currently playing for the Brewers, at the same time Thornburg is giving us nothing while Shaw now looks like a serviceable 3B-man. It looks like we got the worst of this one.

 

We got Pomeranz for Espinoza. At this moment I'd have to say that we got the best end of that trade, but IMO this is the one that has the best chance to turn around and bite us too.

 

I'm not as concerned about "the cliff" as some are because that cliff is 4-5 years down the road. Had I been thinking about the 2017 team back in 2012 or 2013 I wouldn't have surmised that most of our current players would be on the team. Players develop, trades are made. I'll start my hand-wringing in 2020 or 2021 if it looks like we're going to be cellar dwellers again in by 2013.

Edited June 23, 2017 by S5Dewey

[mvp 78]

the trade for Pomeranz made perfect sense when it occurred and continues to look better and better with every pitch Pomeranz throws. Drafting pitchers is always risky. Drafting them when they are teenagers is more so. This trade can't be really assessed until Espinoza makes someting of appearance at a higher level than he was at before his injuries. Pomeranz will never be in the ace category - most people never thought he would. A solid number 3, maybe a number 2. Espinoza - who knows? Is he throwing again yet?

 

He's in a throwing program, but hasn't seen in game action yet.

[mvp 78]

We got Pomeranz for Espinoza. At this moment I'd have to say that we got the best end of that trade, but IMO this is the one that has the best chance to turn around and bite us too.

 

It's not about winning trades. It's about making best use of the assets available. I believe Espinoza could have been saved for a trade to return a much better pitcher than Pomeranz.

[Bellhorn04]

I agree that the trade for Pomeranz made sense. I didn't like giving up Espinoza for him, but I felt like the trade was necessary.

 

I am still unsettled about Dombrowski not backing out of the deal when he found out about Pomeranz' injury. That leads me to wonder if maybe the Sox knew something about Espinoza's medicals that wasn't quite right.

 

I believe that the specific info San Diego withheld was that Pomeranz was taking some sort of anti-inflammatory for his elbow. The Sox obviously decided this wasn't a severe enough issue to rescind the trade.

[Bellhorn04]

It's not about winning trades. It's about making best use of the assets available. I believe Espinoza could have been saved for a trade to return a much better pitcher than Pomeranz.

 

And you're probably right. But Pomeranz was the best starter available at the time and they made us overpay. Teams generally do overpay in deadline deals.

[Jack Flap]

It's not about winning trades. It's about making best use of the assets available. I believe Espinoza could have been saved for a trade to return a much better pitcher than Pomeranz.

 

Yep. It seems like a lot of people's praise for the trade is based on the fact that we got a guy who is contributing in the major leagues for another guy who has not and may never do so...but while Espinoza (like any other young pitching prospect) may never become a great MLB pitcher or even throw a pitch there, that doesn't mean we'd have made a good trade if we traded him for a utility infielder or a 6th inning reliever.

 

Teams value prospects with ceilings like Espinoza's so highly for a reason. I'll grant that the jury is still out on the trade (mainly because Pomeranz is so inconsistent and injury-prone that it's tough to really know what we have in him), but short of Pom turning into a legitimate TOTR starter for us, I'll never be a fan of the deal. You don't trade elite prospects for #4 pitchers.

[mvp 78]

And you're probably right. But Pomeranz was the best starter available at the time and they made us overpay. Teams generally do overpay in deadline deals.

 

Yup, it's why I don't like deadline deals to begin with. I don't think they really needed Pomeranz last year enough to warrant moving Espinoza.

[Bellhorn04]

Yup, it's why I don't like deadline deals to begin with. I don't think they really needed Pomeranz last year enough to warrant moving Espinoza.

 

And of course there are some who didn't think we needed Peavy in 2013.

[Jack Flap]

I believe that the specific info San Diego withheld was that Pomeranz was taking some sort of anti-inflammatory for his elbow. The Sox obviously decided this wasn't a severe enough issue to rescind the trade.

 

Reports at the time were that the Red Sox were furious about the deception, and the league obviously thought it was serious enough to offer to reverse the trade...so it always sat wrong with me that the Red Sox were really offered a non-solution of sending Pomeranz back in the midst of a playoff race with the trade deadline already passed and no way to address the resulting hole in their rotation. I always thought Dombrowski should have pressed for other options beyond the binary choice he was given, such as keeping Pomeranz until the end of the season and being able to reverse or restructure the deal at that point.

[OH FOY]

Sox play 17 straight games without a day off now. This is an important part of year.

[a700hitter]

Sox play 17 straight games without a day off now. This is an important part of year.

And I think they are all night games.

[Hugh2]

And of course there are some who didn't think we needed Peavy in 2013.

 

At least Peavy had a much larger track record of success where is a lot of people were skeptical that Pomeranz was a starter long term (still are). Also, I'd argue that Espinoza has a much larger ceiling that Iglesias did.

[Bellhorn04]

At least Peavy had a much larger track record of success where is a lot of people were skeptical that Pomeranz was a starter long term (still are). Also, I'd argue that Espinoza has a much larger ceiling that Iglesias did.

 

I don't disagree on either point. The real question is how badly we needed another starting pitcher in each of those years. Cherington and Dombrowski both thought it was a fairly urgent need at the time. I think they were both right.

[a700hitter]

I don't disagree on either point. The real question is how badly we needed another starting pitcher in each of those years. Cherington and Dombrowski both thought it was a fairly urgent need at the time. I think they were both right.

Pom has been our second best starter for the last month. he gets paid $3 million or so and we gave up a guy that will not make the bigs before 2020 or 2021. I can live with that.

[mvp 78]

I don't disagree on either point. The real question is how badly we needed another starting pitcher in each of those years. Cherington and Dombrowski both thought it was a fairly urgent need at the time. I think they were both right.

 

It was an urgent need that they filled with an injured pitcher.

[moonslav59]

Craig Kimbrel - We gave up Margot, Guerra, Asuage, Allen. How much is the best closer in baseball worth?

 

He was getting top closer money at the time. We basically signed a closer to top money AND traded away several valuable prospects.

 

That's the part I hated.

 

His money doesn't look so bad, so in hindsight, the deal does not look as bad, but we could have patched for a year and then waited a year and signed a top closer.

[Bellhorn04]

Craig Kimbrel - We gave up Margot, Guerra, Asuage, Allen. How much is the best closer in baseball worth?

 

He was getting top closer money at the time. We basically signed a closer to top money AND traded away several valuable prospects.

 

That's the part I hated.

 

His money doesn't look so bad, so in hindsight, the deal does not look as bad, but we could have patched for a year and then waited a year and signed a top closer.

 

Signed who and for how much?

[mvp 78]

Craig Kimbrel - We gave up Margot, Guerra, Asuage, Allen. How much is the best closer in baseball worth?

 

He was getting top closer money at the time. We basically signed a closer to top money AND traded away several valuable prospects.

 

That's the part I hated.

 

His money doesn't look so bad, so in hindsight, the deal does not look as bad, but we could have patched for a year and then waited a year and signed a top closer.

 

Who would you have signed?

 

http://www.espn.com/mlb/freeagents/_/position/rp

 

Chapman? He makes more than Kimbrel and has lots of baggage.

 

Melancon? He makes more than Kimbrel and couldn't pitch a lick in the AL.

 

There's no shot the Dodger were letting Jansen go.

[a700hitter]

Kimbrel is not making top closer money and until those prospects start to show any promise at a high level, there is no reason not to like the trade for a guy as dominant as kimbrel. Margot is meh so far.

[mvp 78]

Kimbrel is not making top closer money and until those prospects start to show any promise at a high level, there is no reason not to like the trade for a guy as dominant as kimbrel. Margot is meh so far.

 

Margot also doesn't fill a need for the Sox. I'd rather have Beni/JBJ/Betts than any combination that includes Margot and excludes Kimbrel.

[a700hitter]

Margot also doesn't fill a need for the Sox. I'd rather have Beni/JBJ/Betts than any combination that includes Margot and excludes Kimbrel.

He was excess with no future role on the Red Sox. DD maximized the asset.

[OH FOY]

It takes 2 to Tango, we're inclined to look only at the Sox side. Padres probably would have not made the deal without Margot. So at this moment, would Margot make the Sox better, or Kimbrel.

Maybe Allen will d something in the Majors, I doubt the rest in that Trade has a big impact in the Majors.

Edited June 23, 2017 by OH FOY!