What are the chances of Porcello being offered a contract extension?

[cp176]

The rather silent bunch of us who never have believed in a whatever is meant by the "cliff theory" have been bombarded and overwhelmed by the for the most part meaningless garble of statistical data, likely still believe as we did before. Ownership will do what they have done for some time now and continue putting out teams that at least look like they should be very competitive moving forward.

[S5Dewey]

The rather silent bunch of us who never have believed in a whatever is meant by the "cliff theory" have been bombarded and overwhelmed by the for the most part meaningless garble of statistical data, likely still believe as we did before. Ownership will do what they have done for some time now and continue putting out teams that at least look like they should be very competitive moving forward.

 

Yep. I'm not one to participate in negative speculation. I have never believed that there would be a cliff as long as JH is owning the team.

 

IMO there are a couple of ways to look at JH's ownership:

1) He knows how to make money and knows that having a winning team is a money-maker.

2) The Red Sox are nothing but a Billionair's toy. JH likes to win and he wants to have a winning team even if he loses money.

 

Or maybe it's both 1 & 2.

[Slasher9]

The rather silent bunch of us who never have believed in a whatever is meant by the "cliff theory" have been bombarded and overwhelmed by the for the most part meaningless garble of statistical data, likely still believe as we did before. Ownership will do what they have done for some time now and continue putting out teams that at least look like they should be very competitive moving forward.

 

But he has reset the tax once before so it wasn’t out in left field to think he would do it again. Especially with delivering a parade to the fan base and the investment amount it is going to take to avoid said cliff...

[notin]

Yep. I'm not one to participate in negative speculation. I have never believed that there would be a cliff as long as JH is owning the team.

 

IMO there are a couple of ways to look at JH's ownership:

1) He knows how to make money and knows that having a winning team is a money-maker.

2) The Red Sox are nothing but a Billionair's toy. JH likes to win and he wants to have a winning team even if he loses money.

 

Or maybe it's both 1 & 2.

 

 

This team clearly does care about finances.

 

1. They reset before the 2017 season.

2. They spent nearly nothing this past off-season as they were close to the uppermost limit.

3. They keep Rusney Castillo in the minors - where no one thinks he belongs - despite the Sox having no outfield depth, just to keep his contract off the taxes.

 

At some point, the money does matter...

[S5Dewey]

This team clearly does care about finances.

 

1. They reset before the 2017 season.

2. They spent nearly nothing this past off-season as they were close to the uppermost limit.

3. They keep Rusney Castillo in the minors - where no one thinks he belongs - despite the Sox having no outfield depth, just to keep his contract off the taxes.

 

At some point, the money does matter...

 

Sure, money always matters to JH to some degree, but in spite of the reset before 2017 the Sox won their division in and we all know about what happened in 2018.

 

JH isn't going to spend foolishly and do things like paying Castillo to be our 4th OF'er but he's going to spend enough to keep the team competitive.

[notin]

Sure, money always matters to JH to some degree, but in spite of the reset before 2017 the Sox won their division in and we all know about what happened in 2018.

 

JH isn't going to spend foolishly and do things like paying Castillo to be our 4th OF'er but he's going to spend enough to keep the team competitive.

 

Is he?

 

The Sox spending this off-season was about as questionable as I’ve ever seen. No bullpen but a backup 1b?

 

The idea of paying Castillo to be a fourth OF might seem foolish, but Henry is paying Sandoval significantly more to play for another team.

 

He clearly likes winning, but it is not a toy to him where he will spend endlessly to get there. The Dombrowski/Henry duo did break up a WS champion Marlins team immediately after winning a title for purely financial reasons...

[Bellhorn04]

Is he?

 

The Sox spending this off-season was about as questionable as I’ve ever seen. No bullpen but a backup 1b?

 

You can criticize the inaction on the bullpen, sure, but that's really it. 'As questionable as I’ve ever seen' is just wild hyperbole. It was just a few offseasons ago we splurged on Sandoval, Hanley and Castillo.

[Bellhorn04]

The rather silent bunch of us who never have believed in a whatever is meant by the "cliff theory" have been bombarded and overwhelmed by the for the most part meaningless garble of statistical data, likely still believe as we did before. Ownership will do what they have done for some time now and continue putting out teams that at least look like they should be very competitive moving forward.

 

Oh yes, you've been totally quiet about it cp. Not a single sarcastic remark.

[notin]

You can criticize the inaction on the bullpen, sure, but that's really it. 'As questionable as I’ve ever seen' is just wild hyperbole. It was just a few offseasons ago we splurged on Sandoval, Hanley and Castillo.

 

 

There is a VERY BIG difference between a bad signing strategy and just signing players that didn’t work out. I was 100% against signing Sandoval, but the Sox spent the majority of the season before with Brock Holt and Brad Snyder platooning at 3b. Was signing a 3b really “questionable”? It was their most glaring need.

 

And CF was right behind, with Bradley one day hoping to reach the Mendoza line and Betts as an OF still late in the experimental phase.

 

Big, big, big difference between trying to address needs and it just not working out, and simply ignoring them and hoping for the best...

[Bellhorn04]

There is a VERY BIG difference between a bad signing strategy and just signing players that didn’t work out. I was 100% against signing Sandoval, but the Sox spent the majority of the season before with Brock Holt and Brad Snyder platooning at 3b. Was signing a 3b really “questionable”? It was their most glaring need.

 

And CF was right behind, with Bradley one day hoping to reach the Mendoza line and Betts as an OF still late in the experimental phase.

 

Big, big, big difference between trying to address needs and it just not working out, and simply ignoring them and hoping for the best...

 

Now you're moving the posts.

 

The 2019 bullpen hasn't even been that bad. It's certainly not why we're scuffling.

[notin]

Now you're moving the posts.

 

The 2019 bullpen hasn't even been that bad. It's certainly not why we're scuffling.

 

Not moving posts. Unless you’re saying that doesn’t make the decisions questionable.

 

And more to the point that your reply loses sight of, not spending on the bullpen does provide evidence that spending matters to Henry...

[Bellhorn04]

Not moving posts. Unless you’re saying that doesn’t make the decisions questionable.

 

And more to the point that your reply loses sight of, not spending on the bullpen does provide evidence that spending matters to Henry...

 

Not spending on the bullpen provides evidence to me that they decided it was a place to save money. I don't think anyone disagrees with that.

 

But you're the one saying that not spending on the bullpen while spending 6.25 million on Pearce is the most questionable allocation of money you've ever seen.

 

BTW Henry did spend a pile this offseason, when you factor in the extensions for Sale and Bogaerts, plus Eovaldi.

 

If anything he reaffirmed clearly that he's more than willing to have the highest payroll and to pay millions in tax.

[jacksonianmarch]

Yep. I'm not one to participate in negative speculation. I have never believed that there would be a cliff as long as JH is owning the team.

 

IMO there are a couple of ways to look at JH's ownership:

1) He knows how to make money and knows that having a winning team is a money-maker.

2) The Red Sox are nothing but a Billionair's toy. JH likes to win and he wants to have a winning team even if he loses money.

 

Or maybe it's both 1 & 2.

 

JH is the principal owner but far from the only investor. He has to make money overall or at least make the investors happy with rising franchise valuations. He cannot just drive the bus down a money pit and expect everyone else with skin in the game to be happy about it, win, lose or draw

[TylerD]

Ryan Weber is a nice story, but let’s not go overboard here.

 

He’s less than 2 years younger than Porcello and still has a ways to go to bring his career total to 100 IP, which is a total Porcello approaches every 3 month stretch of his career...

 

Ya I was more less kidding. Weber has looked good but nothing will change my mind that Porcello should be signed unless he is asking for something pretty outrageous which I highly doubt he will. Depending on his discount it wouldn’t make sense to let him go and search for another pitcher.

[S5Dewey]

Is he?

 

The Sox spending this off-season was about as questionable as I’ve ever seen. No bullpen but a backup 1b?

 

The idea of paying Castillo to be a fourth OF might seem foolish, but Henry is paying Sandoval significantly more to play for another team.

 

He clearly likes winning, but it is not a toy to him where he will spend endlessly to get there. The Dombrowski/Henry duo did break up a WS champion Marlins team immediately after winning a title for purely financial reasons...

 

See, I didn't think JH's lack of spending this year was all that questionable. This is a team that put up 108 wins last year and coasted in September. The infield was pretty well set. The outfield was pretty well set. The bench was pretty well set after bringing back Pearce. The starting pitching staff was pretty well set. When you say there was no bullpen, well, this bullpen has been pretty decent. There was a bit of a gamble in Brazier and Barnes being setup men and closers so the best solution was to overpay for Kimbrel - which he refused to do. As I said, at some point money does matter.

 

Dragging Sandoval's salary in to this discussion for the purpose or comparing him to Castillo doesn't hold water. They're two entirely different situations. One of them has ML talent, the other one doesn't - or at least didn't while he was in Boston. He's "paying Sandoval to play for another team" because Sandoval washed out of Boston. With Sandoval being a 5/10 man the best option was to cut him loose rather than keep him on the 25. He's paying Castillo to play in Pawtucket because the CBA was changed after Castillo was signed, so yes, there's some money involved in it but as I keep saying, at some point money does matter.

 

If money truly didn't matter then JH would sign every free agent, throw them all against the wall and see what sticks, whicn would be a stupid way to run a business. JH didn't become a billionaire by being stupid.

[notin]

See, I didn't think JH's lack of spending this year was all that questionable. This is a team that put up 108 wins last year and coasted in September. The infield was pretty well set. The outfield was pretty well set. The bench was pretty well set after bringing back Pearce. The starting pitching staff was pretty well set. When you say there was no bullpen, well, this bullpen has been pretty decent. There was a bit of a gamble in Brazier and Barnes being setup men and closers so the best solution was to overpay for Kimbrel - which he refused to do. As I said, at some point money does matter.

 

Dragging Sandoval's salary in to this discussion for the purpose or comparing him to Castillo doesn't hold water. They're two entirely different situations. One of them has ML talent, the other one doesn't - or at least didn't while he was in Boston. He's "paying Sandoval to play for another team" because Sandoval washed out of Boston. With Sandoval being a 5/10 man the best option was to cut him loose rather than keep him on the 25. He's paying Castillo to play in Pawtucket because the CBA was changed after Castillo was signed, so yes, there's some money involved in it but as I keep saying, at some point money does matter.

 

If money truly didn't matter then JH would sign every free agent, throw them all against the wall and see what sticks, whicn would be a stupid way to run a business. JH didn't become a billionaire by being stupid.

 

I would definitely disagree on the Sandoval/Castillo assessment. Sandoval did nothing in Boston to show he was a Major League talent, which is why he was released with a ton of money left on his deal. Castillo did have some offensive struggles related to injury, but also showed himself to be more than capable defensively (which many metrics agreed with). Of course sometimes his injuries were sustained while performing this defense. (Also, Sandoval was NOT a 5/10 player, meeting neither of the two requirements. He was just awful.)

 

The lineup was etched in stone, but the bullpen wasn’t. Even you admit it was a gamble to rely on Barnes and Brasier. Brasier, who had all of 33IP in the past 6 seasons combined, was a much bigger gamble. As was DD’s longtime man-crush Colten Brewer, who is showing that these gambles don’t always pay off, at least not immediately.

 

 

DD has a long history of “winging it” with bullpens. He has had success stories but has also been repeatedly criticized in Detroit for this exact reason. But history has shown, when he needs to save money, the first thing he cuts is the bullpen.

[S5Dewey]

I would definitely disagree on the Sandoval/Castillo assessment. Sandoval did nothing in Boston to show he was a Major League talent, which is why he was released with a ton of money left on his deal. Castillo did have some offensive struggles related to injury, but also showed himself to be more than capable defensively (which many metrics agreed with). Of course sometimes his injuries were sustained while performing this defense. (Also, Sandoval was NOT a 5/10 player, meeting neither of the two requirements. He was just awful.)

 

The lineup was etched in stone, but the bullpen wasn’t. Even you admit it was a gamble to rely on Barnes and Brasier. Brasier, who had all of 33IP in the past 6 seasons combined, was a much bigger gamble. As was DD’s longtime man-crush Colten Brewer, who is showing that these gambles don’t always pay off, at least not immediately.

 

 

DD has a long history of “winging it” with bullpens. He has had success stories but has also been repeatedly criticized in Detroit for this exact reason. But history has shown, when he needs to save money, the first thing he cuts is the bullpen.

 

We're in agreement. The bold part above reiterates what I said but apparently I wasn't clear which player I was talking about. Sandoval showed little sign of having ML talent while he was in Boston. While Castillo certainly had some growing pains I believed he showed he could be a ML player. However, as things now stand there's no place for him on the roster. That may change next year as his contract gets shorter if DD and JH want to pony up for only one year's salary of $13.5M (or $14.7M depending on how you want to figure it). But that's still a lot of $$ for a 4th OF'er when some people want to replace our GG CF for less money than that.

 

Let's wait until the bullpen fails before we start criticizing DD for not building a BP.

 

"Robbed from Kimmie's post yesterday:

The Red Sox are 20-1 when leading after eight innings. Barnes, Workman, Brasier, Walden and Hembree, the 5 relievers who Cora uses in high-leverage situations, have allowed four runs in 20.1 innings (1.77 ERA), 14 hits and five walks (0.93 WHIP) while striking out 26.

 

If someone wants to say that we don't have someone who will always do the job I'll agree... but ...who does??

[TylerD]

You know who doesn’t get yanked after the first inning? Porcello

[Kimmi]

I agree, and my cliff dwelling has always been prefaced with the notion that we'd reset the tax before 2021. (I thought we'd do it after 2019, but I'm not so convinced.)

 

My cliff dwelling has also been based on the notion that an owner would not be willing to spend that kind of money to keep a team at the championship level. You need cost-controlled players, or so I thought.

 

I will be happy from a fan's standpoint if Henry is willing to spend, spend, spend, but I can't condone that philosophy of building a team.

[Kimmi]

But he has reset the tax once before so it wasn’t out in left field to think he would do it again. Especially with delivering a parade to the fan base and the investment amount it is going to take to avoid said cliff...

 

He has even said, as recently as this past offseason, that he would need to reset at some point. Nobody likes paying taxes.

[moonslav59]

My cliff dwelling has also been based on the notion that an owner would not be willing to spend that kind of money to keep a team at the championship level. You need cost-controlled players, or so I thought.

 

I will be happy from a fan's standpoint if Henry is willing to spend, spend, spend, but I can't condone that philosophy of building a team.

 

I'd like to see a healthy dose of both- build a nice farm and spend big when and where needed.

[moonslav59]

He has even said, as recently as this past offseason, that he would need to reset at some point. Nobody likes paying taxes.

 

The reset assumption was the foundation of my belief in a "cliff" at some point.

 

If we never reset, we should be able to stay at least somewhat competitive every year, if not, then something is wrong with the GM.

[S5Dewey]

The reset assumption was the foundation of my belief in a "cliff" at some point.

 

If we never reset, we should be able to stay at least somewhat competitive every year, if not, then something is wrong with the GM.

 

According to Spotrac the Sox are now at $231M after benefits are included. They then are allowed a negative $25.6M as "Estimated Tax Space" bringing them down to an estimated tax bill of $8.3M.

 

$8.3M doesn't seem to be an outrageous tax on $231M. Am I missing something?

[moonslav59]

According to Spotrac the Sox are now at $231M after benefits are included. They then are allowed a negative $25.6M as "Estimated Tax Space" bringing them down to an estimated tax bill of $8.3M.

 

$8.3M doesn't seem to be an outrageous tax on $231M. Am I missing something?

 

The tax only applies to the amount over the tax line- morefor anything over the second and third lines.

 

The tax rate goes up each consecutive year going over.

[Kimmi]

I'd like to see a healthy dose of both- build a nice farm and spend big when and where needed.

 

The way to build a strong franchise is to start with a strong farm, then fill the holes with free agency, not the other way around. Spending big should when needed should be a very occasional thing, not the norm.

[Kimmi]

The reset assumption was the foundation of my belief in a "cliff" at some point.

 

If we never reset, we should be able to stay at least somewhat competitive every year, if not, then something is wrong with the GM.

 

Exactly.

 

More power to Henry, I guess, if he wants to keep spending.

 

I won't pretend that I'll be happy about it though.

[Kimmi]

Another shout out to Porcello:

 

Lou Merloni‏Verified account @LouMerloni 1h1 hour ago

 

Lou Merloni Retweeted JustWill

 

For the next 3 years, would you rather have Eovaldi or Porcello?. To me, it’s an easy question. I have come full circle on Porcello. I’d take Rick all day. He takes the ball every 5th day. They invested in the wrong guy

 

[Bellhorn04]

Another shout out to Porcello:

 

Lou Merloni‏Verified account @LouMerloni 1h1 hour ago

 

Lou Merloni Retweeted JustWill

 

For the next 3 years, would you rather have Eovaldi or Porcello?. To me, it’s an easy question. I have come full circle on Porcello. I’d take Rick all day. He takes the ball every 5th day. They invested in the wrong guy

 

 

Merloni always seems to have an axe to grind. In this post he praises Porcello but he does it by taking shots at Eovaldi and the front office. It also sounds like he must have been a Porcello basher before.

 

(Kimmi, none of this is directed at you for posting it.)

[Kimmi]

Merloni always seems to have an axe to grind. In this post he praises Porcello but he does it by taking shots at Eovaldi and the front office. It also sounds like he must have been a Porcello basher before.

 

(Kimmi, none of this is directed at you for posting it.)

 

I am a Merloni fan. I think he is usually spot on with his posts, often times saying the things that no one else wants to say.

 

That said, I don't necessarily agree that I'd rather have Porcello over Eovaldi. I don't necessarily disagree either. I'm glad we re-signed Eovaldi, but I'd like to keep Porcello as well.

[Larry33]

None if there's anybody left who's in their right mind in this organization. Anyone who would consider paying a 4.76 ERA pitcher over 20 mil/year should seriously consider on having himself checked out.