Red Sox: Off Season 2024-2025

[Old Red]

19 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

Skubal & Crochet both have 2 arb years left. Unless we extend them after a trade, I don't think a 2 year window is big enough to trade so much young talent for.

Deals like Luis Castillo and Pablo Lopez do come up, here and there: both were extended after the trades.

If I'm giving up two our top 4 prospects (Anthony or Campbell plus Mayer or Teel,) I'm looking for longer team control pitchers like...

Logan Gilbert (3 arbs),  George Kirby (4 arbs) or 2 pre-arb guys like Bryce Miller & Bryan Woo, who might take 3 top prospects to get (only 1 from Anthony & Campbell.)

We could also look to trade for a higher salary guy like Luis Castillo ($21.6M AAV through 2027 w option for 2028,) and it wouldn't cost as much in prospects to make happen. This, of course, depends on SEA's willingness to trade pitching for hitting. We'd likely have to WOW them to get a deal.

Mayer, Teel, Abreu and Winckowski might be enough.

I don’t see the Red Sox trading much young talent away for any starting pitcher.

[Bellhorn04]

22 minutes ago, Nick said:

Let's take another shot at the Detroit ace who has two years left on his contract.

With Giolito coming back along with Houck, Bello and Kutter, and no additional money needed (the Detroit ace may command something like $10M for his arbitration 2 contract), would it be worth giving up Teel, Mayer and Anthony just for the priviledge to chase down 2 world series titles?

 

At my age, 68, I'd say lets gamble. We'll have full year of Casas, Trvevor is coming back. Or would Detroit want someone like Kutter in place of one of three top prospects?

 

So, Kutter, two out of three of Mayer, Teel and Anthony. Would that do it and would you do it?

I'd say why in the hell not?

 

My Captain Obvious response would be this: what if we do that, and Skubal gets injured, like a huge chunk of his fellow pitchers have, including the "unicorn" Yamamoto?  It would be instant devastation for the Sox.

[Nick]

Obviously it's a big gamble.

I know majority here wants  consistent playoff caliber teams. I would love that but I also don't care to be the Atlanta Braves of 1990's.

So do we stay the course? Stay the course knowing our top 4 prospects are more than likely all positional players? What's on the pitching horizon?

My GUESS is that the management has not given up on Whitlock starting. So we're back to that.

In THEIR mind, a rotation of Bello, Houck, Giolito, Kutter and Whitlock represents reasonable starting rotation for 2025. Obviously they would add several journey man type such as Criswell to back up the top 5.

Is that enough for you? I am certainly not trying to be a jerk. Just watching yesterday's game reinforced the thought that great pitching will always win out in a short series.

 

 

 

[notin]

57 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Where did this come from, other than inside the writer's head?  I see nary a quote in it. 

Edit: I think what probably happened here is that the guy who wrote the story didn't write the headline.  A clickbait headline was chosen by the publisher.

 

If so, the inclusion of the word “shockingly” does surprise.

 

i mean, that would mean the headline writer fabricated Mayer being on the block, and was then shocked by it.

 

[Bellhorn04]

1 minute ago, notin said:

If so, the inclusion of the word “shockingly” does surprise.

 

i mean, that would mean the headline writer fabricated Mayer being on the block, and was then shocked by it.

 

You seem to be able to get away with a lot in the world of clickbaiting!

[notin]

1 minute ago, Nick said:

Obviously it's a big gamble.

I know majority here wants  consistent playoff caliber teams. I would love that but I also don't care to be the Atlanta Braves of 1990's.

So do we stay the course? Stay the course knowing our top 4 prospects are more than likely all positional players? What's on the pitching horizon?

My GUESS is that the management has not given up on Whitlock starting. So we're back to that.

In THEIR mind, a rotation of Bello, Houck, Giolito, Kutter and Whitlock represents reasonable starting rotation for 2025. Obviously they would add several journey man type such as Criswell to back up the top 5.

Is that enough for you? I am certainly not trying to be a jerk. Just watching yesterday's game that great pitching will always win out in a short series.

 

 

 

I wouldn’t say great pitching “always” wins out .  I remember Detroit once started Scherzer, Verlander and Price in a postseason series against Baltimore and lost all 3 games…

[notin]

2 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

You seem to be able to get away with a lot in the world of clickbaiting!

It’s also SI.  Sure they’re not as reputable as they once were, but they’re not Barstool Sports either.

i could see the Sox shopping Mayer, especially if they like what Kristian Campbell is doing at SS in Worcester…

[Bellhorn04]

1 minute ago, notin said:

I wouldn’t say great pitching “always” wins out .  I remember Detroit once started Scherzer, Verlander and Price in a postseason series against Baltimore and lost all 3 games…

There are no simple rules that consistently work.  The last repeat World Series winner was in 2000.

Last year Texas won it all largely on the strength of their second-tier guys, Eovaldi and Montgomery, coming through, with the big studs deGrom and Scherzer of no help.

[Bellhorn04]

4 minutes ago, notin said:

It’s also SI.  Sure they’re not as reputable as they once were, but they’re not Barstool Sports either.

i could see the Sox shopping Mayer, especially if they like what Kristian Campbell is doing at SS in Worcester…

It's in the realm of possibility, but a Mayer trade this offseason would definitely qualify as shocking, to me anyway.  

The fact he's on the IL again would have to depress his current value a bit, too, I would think.

 

[Maxbialystock]

3 hours ago, Bellhorn04 said:

If multi includes two it would be Giolito.  If not it would be Eovaldi.

As I keep reminding everyone ad nauseum, JH has been reacting to what DD led the Sox into--the biggest payroll in MLB in 2019, not making the postseason, and not having enough money to compete with the Dodgers for Mookie nor enough money to replace Sale and Price while still paying for their huge contracts.  

So, yes, no big contracts for a starter since Sale.  

Biggest payroll in 2024 is the Mets, who are 72-64.  Next biggest is the Yankees, who are 79-57 and neck and neck with the Orioles, whose payroll is 22d and--wait for it--$200M less than the Yankees.

Does no one on here remember the movie Moneyball and how the John Henry character commended Billy Beane for how little the A's paid per win compared to the Yankees? 

The real JH, who no doubt loved sabermetrics, nevertheless kept the Sox payroll among the top 3 in MLB for roughly 20 years.  Then I think it's possible he just got pissed off.   

 

[Maxbialystock]

21 minutes ago, Maxbialystock said:

As I keep reminding everyone ad nauseum, JH has been reacting to what DD led the Sox into--the biggest payroll in MLB in 2019, not making the postseason, and not having enough money to compete with the Dodgers for Mookie nor enough money to replace Sale and Price while still paying for their huge contracts.  

So, yes, no big contracts for a starter since Sale.  

Biggest payroll in 2024 is the Mets, who are 72-64.  Next biggest is the Yankees, who are 79-57 and neck and neck with the Orioles, whose payroll is 22d and--wait for it--$200M less than the Yankees.

Does no one on here remember the movie Moneyball and how the John Henry character commended Billy Beane for how little the A's paid per win compared to the Yankees? 

The real JH, who no doubt loved sabermetrics, nevertheless kept the Sox payroll among the top 3 in MLB for roughly 20 years.  Then I think it's possible he just got pissed off.   

 

I cannot resist adding that in his very first season, Breslow, who's smart and has 12 years MLB pitching experience, did nothing to assuage JH's lack of confidence in his CBO"s when he did the Sale for Giolito thing.  

And this.  David Dombrowski has been repeatedly successful as a CBO for over 20 years and on several teams.  But even he could not prevent what happened in 2019 when Sale and Price both went down with years left on their pricey contracts.  

[moonslav59]

It is a big gamble to trade top prospects for a pitcher that may get hurt or suddenly decline, but what sort of gamble is it to add no major upgrades to this staff?

I'd say it's near 100% certain we will not win a ring with our current pitching staff and farm pitching, for a long time.

We simply have to roll the dice, and hope we finally hit on the next one.

[Nick]

Great point Moon.

So the real cost of not acquiring a top pitcher because he may get hurt is this. In essence you are wasting the $300M contract you gave Devers and the precious controllable years wasting away in the like of Duran, Casas, Houck, Bello, Kutter, etc.

Team has to pick a lane. Hell we maybe going the wrong way on a one-way street and no one realizes it because there's been no oncoming traffic.

PS. I see that Hill gave up a two run homer. We're now down 4-1. It's over man.

[Hugh2]

Everything is a risk. 

There's a risk that we trade away Anthony, Mayer, or others and they turn into hall of famers.  There's a risk the pitcher we trade for becomes injured.  There's risk he can't pitch here or seriously declines.  The same risks come with free agent pitchers you sign as well. There's also the risk of doing nothing and not receiving peak value from guys on your farm. 

What I want.....is a front office with some conviction.  I don't blame brez yet, because he effectively got the keys to the car when it was still a few years away from it's destination. 

But the Sox are in a much better spot today than they have in a long time. 

Are they in a great spot? no, could it be better? yes.  But they have a winning record, a chance to make the playoffs and two young cores.  One already in the bigs (Bello, Houck, Wong, Casas, Rafaela, Abreu, Hamilton, Crawford, and Duran) and another wave on the cusp of contribution (Anthony/Teel/Campbell/Mayer).  They could really jump start this core and compete next year if they would invest in pitching. I believe. 

Even if a 1/2 those guys falter, you conveivably don't have to make any major position player moves for the next several years. So the money is there to pay a few pitchers....if they chose to. 

As stated earlier, theres more than one way to skin a cat, thus, there are multiple ways to bring in starting pitching talent: draft and develop, trade for, and free agency.  I beleive there's a time and a place for everything.  I'd love to see this team bet on themselves, and go out and spend on pitching.  Let the next wave of top prospects coming up be the trade pieces we use to put us over the top, or trade for another pitcher when we lose one of our top ones.  

This is a great way to jumpstart the core, and have a good 3-4 year window of success, but it would go a long way to prolong that window if they could start developing some pitching. 

[mvp 78]

4 hours ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Where did this come from, other than inside the writer's head?  I see nary a quote in it. 

Edit: I think what probably happened here is that the guy who wrote the story didn't write the headline.  A clickbait headline was chosen by the publisher.

 

I’m not moonlighting at SI! All their articles are written by AI, right?

[notin]

2 hours ago, Bellhorn04 said:

It's in the realm of possibility, but a Mayer trade this offseason would definitely qualify as shocking, to me anyway.  

The fact he's on the IL again would have to depress his current value a bit, too, I would think.

 

That sounds like you’re confessing to writing that clickbait headline…

[notin]

3 minutes ago, mvp 78 said:

I’m not moonlighting at SI! All their articles are written by AI, right?

A-something.  Not so sure it’s I…

[notin]

2 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

It is a big gamble to trade top prospects for a pitcher that may get hurt or suddenly decline, but what sort of gamble is it to add no major upgrades to this staff?

I'd say it's near 100% certain we will not win a ring with our current pitching staff and farm pitching, for a long time.

We simply have to roll the dice, and hope we finally hit on the next one.

Henry Ford once said “if you need a machine but don’t buy it, you will ultimately find you paid for it but don’t have it.”

Apply that to pitching…

[Bellhorn04]

15 minutes ago, Hugh2 said:

Are they in a great spot? no, could it be better? yes.  But they have a winning record, a chance to make the playoffs and two young cores. 

The way they're going, they have a great chance to make it 78-84 3 years in a row.

They have made no progress whatsoever this year as far as being a competitive MLB team.

That's a huge failure, and I don't think we should try to sugar-coat it.  

 

[mvp 78]

To me, this team performed exactly how I expected: W/L% similar to last season but overall more enjoyable to watch with glimpses of hope for the future.

[Bellhorn04]

They have become masters at assembling .500ish teams.  I'm sure they can do it again next year.  

[Bellhorn04]

It's great that the farm is looking much better, of course.  But I'm not convinced the guys making the personnel moves are anything but a bunch of bunglers.   

[mvp 78]

JH wants to build through the farm. We’re playing a waiting game unfortunately. A lot of pressure is being put on unproven guys.

[moonslav59]

1 hour ago, Hugh2 said:

Everything is a risk. 

There's a risk that we trade away Anthony, Mayer, or others and they turn into hall of famers.  There's a risk the pitcher we trade for becomes injured.  There's risk he can't pitch here or seriously declines.  The same risks come with free agent pitchers you sign as well. There's also the risk of doing nothing and not receiving peak value from guys on your farm. 

What I want.....is a front office with some conviction.  I don't blame brez yet, because he effectively got the keys to the car when it was still a few years away from it's destination. 

But the Sox are in a much better spot today than they have in a long time. 

Are they in a great spot? no, could it be better? yes.  But they have a winning record, a chance to make the playoffs and two young cores.  One already in the bigs (Bello, Houck, Wong, Casas, Rafaela, Abreu, Hamilton, Crawford, and Duran) and another wave on the cusp of contribution (Anthony/Teel/Campbell/Mayer).  They could really jump start this core and compete next year if they would invest in pitching. I believe. 

Even if a 1/2 those guys falter, you conveivably don't have to make any major position player moves for the next several years. So the money is there to pay a few pitchers....if they chose to. 

As stated earlier, theres more than one way to skin a cat, thus, there are multiple ways to bring in starting pitching talent: draft and develop, trade for, and free agency.  I beleive there's a time and a place for everything.  I'd love to see this team bet on themselves, and go out and spend on pitching.  Let the next wave of top prospects coming up be the trade pieces we use to put us over the top, or trade for another pitcher when we lose one of our top ones.  

This is a great way to jumpstart the core, and have a good 3-4 year window of success, but it would go a long way to prolong that window if they could start developing some pitching. 

I totally agree, especially on the part about us being in a "better spot, now" than we have been in a long time. We have a solid and deep everyday roster. We have a few role pitchers that could be major plusses, if we don't ask them to fill roles they are not good enough to fill.

Houck, Bello and Gio should be fine 3-5 SP'ers.

Whitlock, Crawford and Wink should be fine mid to long RP'ers or solid 1-2 IP set-up men.

Slaten & Hendriks could be nice set-up men.

Out of Weissert, Kelly, Booser, Bernardino, I Campbell, Fulmer and a few others, we would be fine with pen depth, but we need to add a closer and solid set-up man to move these guys down a slot on the depth chart- where they belong.

Criswell, Fitts, Priester and maybe Dobbins would be okay as slot 6-9 on the rotation depth chart, but not in any higher role.

In short, while it sounds like adding 4 major pitchers is too much to ask for, with the budget space and trade capital we have, we can pull it off. We can't have any swings and misses, or maybe just 1 miss out the 4 additions, but that is not some pie-in-the-sky dream.

Sign a #1/2 like Burnes.

Trade for a #2/3 or sign one.

Add a closer and solid set-up man.

Maybe trade a lefty bat for a righty bat, and call it a day. 

[moonslav59]

55 minutes ago, mvp 78 said:

To me, this team performed exactly how I expected: W/L% similar to last season but overall more enjoyable to watch with glimpses of hope for the future.

Be careful saying you have enjoyed this team.  It upsets some posters.

[moonslav59]

2 hours ago, notin said:

Henry Ford once said “if you need a machine but don’t buy it, you will ultimately find you paid for it but don’t have it.”

Apply that to pitching…

Teams have proven they can win without a great or even good rotation. Teams have proven they can win with not so good, or even bad pens. This shouldn't mean we strive to be one of those teams. Clearly, teams have better odds, if they have good to great pitching. 

While the same could be said about having good to great hitting, to me, it seems like the correlation is stronger with pitching, especially having 2-3 very good SP'ers or a solid 4-5 rotation. To me, it was no coincience the Sox went far or came oh so close to making the dance, only when they had big seasons from Lonborg ('67,) A solid 4 in '72, Tiant, Lee & Wise in '75, Tiant, Lee, Eck & Torrez in '78,  Clemens, Hurst, Boyd & Seaver in '86,  Clemens & Boddiker in '90, Pedro & Saberhagen in '98 & '99,  until the real competitive teams starting in 2002-2003 (Pedro, Lowe & Burkett & Wake), and then the big addition of Schilling leading to our first ring in 8 decades.  Add Beckett by 2007 and another ring. Watch Lester mature and the addition of Lackey garner another ing in 2013. Then the string of 1st place finishes under DD, starting in 2016: you guessed it: we added Price, Porcello and ERod to the rotation before the start of that nice run, but it took adding sale to get the ring. (the in season addition of Nate was huge, too.)

To me, we only win when we have 2+ ace-type SP'ers or 3+ solid SP'ers. We might have one, now: Houck. We'll greatly improve our odds, if we add two.

[Old Red]

2 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

To me, this team performed exactly how I expected: W/L% similar to last season but overall more enjoyable to watch with glimpses of hope for the future.

May be more enjoyable to watch, but that’s setting the bar pretty low if the Red Sox don’t make the postseason for the third year in a row. How’s it been since the AS break? How’s it been since Cora signed his extension? How’s it been since the trade deadline? It was thought the Red Sox did pretty good on the road trip though Baltimore, and Houston even though the Red Sox lost ground in the wildcard standings. Funny thing the standings don’t know, or care who you beat. Finally how’s it been since that road trip through Baltimore, and Houston. The Red Sox are now closer to teams behind them then they are to teams ahead of them like Detroit after taking 2-3 from Boston.

[mvp 78]

My expectations have been met for the year. Not sure many of your expected playoffs back in March!

[Duran Is The Man]

3 hours ago, Bellhorn04 said:

The way they're going, they have a great chance to make it 78-84 3 years in a row.

They have made no progress whatsoever this year as far as being a competitive MLB team.

That's a huge failure, and I don't think we should try to sugar-coat it.  

 

and why i would give Brez and the FO a big fat F this year. 

[moonslav59]

1 hour ago, mvp 78 said:

My expectations have been met for the year. Not sure many of your expected playoffs back in March!

I think the bar being set lower, this year, has something to do with the games being more enjoyable, but I also think the play was plain and simple- more fun to watch. The great pitching in April got the juices flowing and maybe got our hopes up much higher than they should have been.

Al in all, our catchers and OF were way more fun to watch. The stolen bases by Duran, DHam, Rafaela and others added some excitement. Devers has been playing as good as ever. For once, we found a somewhat decent replacement for 1B, mid season (Dom Smith,) and our middle infield did okay, once we decided to use Rafaela at SS and the surprising play from DHam-Romy at 2B and back-up SS kept us from falling too far behind. The pen even did pretty good for about half the season, but when Martin and Slaten both were out, and the rotation began to tax it further, it imploded.

Part of me dislikes saying this team was fun to watch, because in some way, it seems to vindicate what JH, kennedy and others were trying to sell us over the winter, namely, that we could be contenders. A few ifs and buts, and we actually could have been, in reality.

Even if we end up 78-84, again, I think we took a step forward, this season. The 26 and 40 man rosters are better than anytime since 2019. The farm is the best it's been for maybe a decade or more. We actually have some decent pitchers and found out what roles they are best placed in, going forward.

We lose some real and tangible & skilled players in Jansen, Martin, Pivetta and O'Neill. I think we can cover the loss of O'Neill, maybe by trading a LHB for an equally good RHB. We simply canNOT count on Gio, Hendriks, Fulmer and the return of Slaten to even those losses out. IMO, we should not really count ont hem, at all, except for back-end starters and pen depth.

Add 2 TOTR SP'ers and a Closer should be enough. That moves everyone else down into roles they can handle, including Whit and Crawford to the pen as mid-long men. Slaten and hendriks should be fine as set-up men. They guys we counted on, this year as our 4-6 pen guys would now be our 7-9 guys or even AAA depth.

IMHO, we are not that far away from being a solid contender, but one can argue being 2 TOTR pitchers and a closer is a long way to go, too. I guess it's how you look at.