Red Sox: Off Season 2024-2025

[notin]

19 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Re-open that Ohtani gambling investigation!

Wouldn't it be something if some "new facts emerge" on that one...

Ohtani could place a bet on live TV and murder his bookie instead of paying up, and MLB would look the other way.

They changed the rules to accommodate Ohtani.  And they’ve been heavily marketing him for a while now.  The chances that they expel him for gambling are roughly the same as the chances I flap my arms and fly to the moon…

[Bellhorn04]

1 minute ago, notin said:

Ohtani could place a bet on live TV and murder his bookie instead of paying up, and MLB would look the other way.

They changed the rules to accommodate Ohtani.  And they’ve been heavily marketing him for a while now.  The chances that they expel him for gambling are roughly the same as the chances I flap my arms and fly to the moon…

The Dodgers really are almost literally getting away with murder these days.  How many more things can go their way?

[notin]

2 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Ohtani's interpreter might be the key to saving baseball!  

Yes, I'm losing it a bit...

I think we already went down that road.  And MLB 100% believed the interpreter went rogue and had access to tens of millions of dollars.  Because who doesn’t give complete access of their bank accounts to their interpreter?

[Bellhorn04]

12 minutes ago, notin said:

I think we already went down that road.  And MLB 100% believed the interpreter went rogue and had access to tens of millions of dollars.  Because who doesn’t give complete access of their bank accounts to their interpreter?

I can understand the interpreter getting access for a little while.  But this apparently went on for a long time.  

And it was never really explained how the bank let it keep happening without at least picking up the phone to call Ohtani.  We heard about all the checks that are supposedly in place to prevent money laundering etc., but not why they all failed here.

[notin]

1 minute ago, Bellhorn04 said:

I can understand the interpreter getting access for a little while.  But this apparently went on for a long time.  

And it was never really explained how the bank let it keep happening without at least picking up the phone to call Ohtani.  

Maybe they did call him.  But they had to speak to his interpreter…

[Bellhorn04]

Just now, notin said:

Maybe they did call him.  But they had to speak to his interpreter…

A face to face meeting might have been recommended in this case.

[Jasonbay44]

 

[Duran Is The Man]

1 hour ago, Bellhorn04 said:

It was so gracious of the Sox to gift Mookie to the Dodgers to kickstart their period of extreme dominance.  

Now we can see they did it for the good of the game.  They didn't really feel like spending and competing for a while so they sent him to a team that wanted to.

 

yep. s***** deal all the way around. the Dodgers absolutely screwed Bloom and Henry on that deal. with their resources, they could have parted with much more. thanks John!

[Duran Is The Man]

1 hour ago, notin said:

Start by disallowing deferred money on the luxury tax.  I don’t get MLB logic.

Team:  We are signing this 31yo player to an 11 year deal at $30mill per.

MLB:  No you’re not.  That’s a clear attempt to get out of the luxury tax.  No team would pay a 42yo player $30mill.

Team: Ok then.  We are going to restructure it so that we only pay him $5mill per year and defer payments on the rest and avoid the tax altogether while the interest on the deferred payments grows slower than the rate of MLB inflation.

MLB: Oh.  Ok.  That’s different.  I don’t see a problem…

YES! this  will fix it AND bump up the tax penalties to 200%

[notin]

3 minutes ago, Jasonbay44 said:

 

Let’s see if the union steps in…

[Bellhorn04]

Just now, Duran Is The Man said:

YES! this  will fix it AND bump up the tax penalties to 200%

Yeah, they're going to have to make the penalties for going over by a lot absolutely ridiculous.  They tried in the last CBA but it just wasn't enough.

[Duran Is The Man]

23 minutes ago, notin said:

I think we already went down that road.  And MLB 100% believed the interpreter went rogue and had access to tens of millions of dollars.  Because who doesn’t give complete access of their bank accounts to their interpreter?

i wonder how much Ohtahni and the Dodgers paid him to take the fall??

[Bellhorn04]

Just now, notin said:

Let’s see if the union steps in…

This might be a fake message according to some other internet sleuths.  We shall see.

[moonslav59]

Tanner Scott to Dodgers for $72M/4.

To me, he was the best fit for the Sox, out of who was left.

Oh, well. No big surprise on who got him.

[Jasonbay44]

2 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

This might be a fake message according to some other internet sleuths.  We shall see.

It’s a real message by Nightendale. But He’s been know to stretch the truth/be wrong. Thought it was worth sharing regardless 

[Bellhorn04]

5 minutes ago, Jasonbay44 said:

It’s a real message by Nightendale. But He’s been know to stretch the truth/be wrong. Thought it was worth sharing regardless 

No big deal.  A bunch of guys on SOSH were questioning if it was fake and then Rob Bradford posted that it was inaccurate.

[Old Red]

1 minute ago, Bellhorn04 said:

No big deal.  A bunch of guys on SOSH were questioning if it was fake and then Rob Bradford posted that it was inaccurate.

I’d be shocked if the Red Sox offered Scott more years at a higher AAV than what the Dodgers did.

[Bellhorn04]

Just now, Old Red said:

I’d be shocked if the Red Sox offered Scott more years at a higher AAV than what the Dodgers did.

Same, especially the 5 years part.  

[moonslav59]

This is not sour grapes, but the Dodgers are making a mockery of the system.

[Bellhorn04]

Sign Kirby Yates and David Robertson to 1 year deals.  Do something.

[moonslav59]

The pen looked like the one area the one area the Dodgers looked comparatively weak.

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

The "Dodgers."

What exactly are they Dodging these days, anyway?

... except, of course, LA's schools of lake trout, herds of goats with horns, and dudes wearing crowns and halos trimming their fingernails.

 

[Bellhorn04]

1 minute ago, moonslav59 said:

This is not sour grapes, but the Dodgers are making a mockery of the system.

They are.  They're not cheating, but they're exploiting flaws in the system to an incredible degree. 

I think we can be pretty sure it's being noticed and there will be changes.  But that doesn't help anyone in 2025 or 2026.

 

[Jasonbay44]

The Dodgers now have the following starting pitchers under contraxt

 

 Yoshinobu Yamamoto

Blake Snell 

Shohei Ohtani

Tyler Glasnow

Roki Sasaki

Tony Gonsolin

Dustin May

 

The Highest career ERA of them is 3.49 by Glasnow. This isn’t even including some of the prospects they have such as Bobby Miller. 
 

this is also not including the expected eventual re-signing of Kershaw. 

[moonslav59]

Is anyone else having enormous issues with typing messages on this site?

My cursor keeps flipping to various places within the text I have already typed.

It is happening almost every sentence, for me.

[Bellhorn04]

I think we're going to see a lot of stories about this. 

The Dodgers kind of broke the camel's back this weekend. 

[Bellhorn04]

4 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

Is anyone else having enormous issues with typing messages on this site?

My cursor keeps flipping to various places within the text I have already typed.

It is happening almost every sentence, for me.

I think that's interference from ads.  It's happened to me too.  We talked about it on the moderator's forum, and Brock said it was probably specific ads doing it. 

If the problem persists, I'll let Brock know about it.

[moonslav59]

7 minutes ago, Jasonbay44 said:

The Dodgers now have the following starting pitchers under contraxt

 

 Yoshinobu Yamamoto

Blake Snell 

Shohei Ohtani

Tyler Glasnow

Roki Sasaki

Tony Gonsolin

Dustin May

 

The Highest career ERA of them is 3.49 by Glasnow. This isn’t even including some of the prospects they have such as Bobby Miller. 
 

this is also not including the expected eventual re-signing of Kershaw. 

Their rotation does look very impressive, but like our rotation and many others, these guys all have some serious questions.

Snell: no doubt, he'd be a #1 or #2 every on every MLB team. He's missed about an  average of about 6-7 starts over the last 4 years and just turned 32. His 142 ERA+ over the last 3 years is amazing.

Ohtani: it has to be all about health with this guy. He's coming off a major injury and has only started more than 23 games, once. (23, 28, 23, 0 in the last 4.) He had a 151 ERA+ in his last 3 seasons, pitching.

Glasnow is the poster boy for injury-prone pitchers. Since becoming a SP'er in 2018, he never started more than 14 games, until he managed 23 in his last two. He has a 124 ERA+ in his last 4 seasons (59 GS= about 15 per season.)

Yamamoto is just 26 and showed he can pitch in the bigs (129 ERA+ in 18 GS.) Again, he missed time with an injury, so there are now doubts on that front, but he might be the surest bet of the top 4 Dodgers SP'ers, in terms of health and skills, combined.

Sasaki is a wild card, but one every team would have loved to have had. Hard to find a comp to him.

Gonsolin turns 31 in May and had a great 2022 season, although it was just 24 GS- a career high. He was good before that, too, but had an 87 ERA+ in 2024 (20 GS.) Another injury risk guy.

D May is just 27, but he has never started more than 10 games in a ML season. A 132 ERA+ over the last 3 years is damn good, but it was just about 7 GS per year.

By contrast, here are some cherry-picked sample size of our top 6 SP'ers:

Crochet 128 ERA+ (career, including 33 GS and 73 gms as RP)

Houck 125 ERA+ (137 in 2024)

Buehler 125 ERA+ career (146 from 2018-2021)

Sandoval 108 career (132 '21-'22)

Bello 99 career (101 last 2 years and 107 in 2023)

Giolito 98 career (106 from '19-'23 and 129 from '19-'21)

Crawford 95  (104 last 2 years and 113 in '23)

[moonslav59]

34 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

I think that's interference from ads.  It's happened to me too.  We talked about it on the moderator's forum, and Brock said it was probably specific ads doing it. 

If the problem persists, I'll let Brock know about it.

It's absurd, today.

[Bellhorn04]

13 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

It's absurd, today.

I've had no problems today.  There might be an ad chasing you here from another site you were on.  Not sure.  I'm not much of a tech guy anyway.