Red Sox 2025 Season Review/Offseason Preview Thread

[JoeBrady]

11 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

If DD was here, now, would he trade several players from this group for the here and now?

Tolle, Early, Arias, Witherspoon, Valera, Gonzales, Fajardo, Phillips and more?

Tough to say.  DD's true genius was in knowing who to trade and who to keep.

[JoeBrady]

11 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

I never blamed Dave. I praised him and still do.

That being said, it was unsustainable and bound to happen. 

Yup.  It's the inevitable cycle of BB.  You develop a crop of good prospects.  As they get better, you add outside talent.  The crop of good prospects get more and more expensive, while the outside help declines.  You need either unlimited prospects or unlimited money to avoid a rebuild or a reset.

[mvp 78]

40 minutes ago, JoeBrady said:

Yup.  It's the inevitable cycle of BB.  You develop a crop of good prospects.  As they get better, you add outside talent.  The crop of good prospects get more and more expensive, while the outside help declines.  You need either unlimited prospects or unlimited money to avoid a rebuild or a reset.

There are no set cycles, just bad management. 

In the last 30 years, the Yankees have been below .500 ZERO times. They've only missed the playoffs 5 times. The Red Sox have the same finances but REFUSE to use them. 

To blame the success of the Yankees and Dodgers on finances is giving John Henry and easy out. 

[JoeBrady]

5 minutes ago, mvp 78 said:

To blame the success of the Yankees and Dodgers on finances is giving John Henry and easy out. 

For all the heat that Cashman gets, he's done a creditable job.  No WSC's, but some of that is luck of the draw.  Past that, spending has everything to do with NYY and LAD's success.

[mvp 78]

27 minutes ago, JoeBrady said:

For all the heat that Cashman gets, he's done a creditable job.  No WSC's, but some of that is luck of the draw.  Past that, spending has everything to do with NYY and LAD's success.

Aaron Judge is homegrown. Sox could have signed Fried, Rodon or Cole, but chose not to.

LAD and NYY traded or signed franchise level players. BOS trades them away. 🤔 

[Hugh2]

52 minutes ago, JoeBrady said:

For all the heat that Cashman gets, he's done a creditable job.  No WSC's, but some of that is luck of the draw.  Past that, spending has everything to do with NYY and LAD's success.

If spending had everything to do with it the Mets would be better but LA blows them away because they do everything else better on top of spending. 

I'd rather be LAD lite than NYM lite. 

[Hugh2]

58 minutes ago, mvp 78 said:

There are no set cycles, just bad management. 

In the last 30 years, the Yankees have been below .500 ZERO times. They've only missed the playoffs 5 times. The Red Sox have the same finances but REFUSE to use them. 

To blame the success of the Yankees and Dodgers on finances is giving John Henry and easy out. 

Love this post, and it should be repeated every single day around here. 

People have been brainwashed into thinking we HAVE to go through down cycles, lose games and get high draft picks.  Bridging years should never mean becoming a losing franchise. 

[Larry Cook]

[drewski6]

John Henry just sold the penguins. This is huge!  I no longer want to punch him in the face!!!  

Now donate the proceeds.  I take that back.  Keep portion  to invest on red sox (not all this year) , donate the rest.

Still, this is great news!!!  Our owner is no longer the owner of the organization that employed Matt Cooke!!

This is probably bigger news to me than to you guys, but Im sure we have some bruins fans in here that didnt like jh owning the penguins.  Matt cooke, for those who dont know, is a cheap shotting little B who ruined Marc Savard (bruins player) career with a cheap shot elbow.

[drewski6]

Now, Joe Brady and I are on the same side. Enemies can become friends and friends can become enemies in a royal rumble. Dont turn your back on me though (chair shot)

[Kimmi]

17 hours ago, Larry Cook said:

The moron did restock the farm system! 
 

the desperate Dave model of team building was not sustainable!  
 

I have confidence that bres-slow can find a lane between what the dodgers do and what the rays do and we can be very successful on the field with this approach 

Bloom did exactly what he was hired to do.  To be fair, Dombrowski also did exactly what he was hired to do, though I'm strongly opposed to the "win now at any cost" philosophy, which IMO, we are still indirectly paying for.

I have confidence in Breslow.  

[Kimmi]

16 hours ago, Duran Is The Man said:

i miss Dave.

I don't miss Dave.  Nonetheless, I think it's less about the actual GM running the show, and more about Henry's current philosophy of how to build a team.

[mvp 78]

3 minutes ago, Kimmi said:

Bloom did exactly what he was hired to do.  To be fair, Dombrowski also did exactly what he was hired to do, though I'm strongly opposed to the "win now at any cost" philosophy, which IMO, we are still indirectly paying for.

I have confidence in Breslow.  

I don't think we are indirectly paying for DD at this point. What we are paying for currently are bad drafting under DD and FA mistakes made by Bloom.

[Kimmi]

16 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

It was worth it- the price to pay was the what came after 2018.

That's the thing.  With a 30th rank farm system, winning is not going to be sustainable.

[JoeBrady]

1 hour ago, drewski6 said:

Now, Joe Brady and I are on the same side. Enemies can become friends and friends can become enemies in a royal rumble. Dont turn your back on me though (chair shot)

I never, ever cared for consensus thinking.  I use to go to meetings where everyone smiled and agreed.  5-10 very smart people, and no opinions.  I appreciate camaraderie, would 100x prefer screaming and yelling, with a good solution, than a meeting where everyone just 'went along'.

Side TL/DR, we had a meeting up in Natick.  The subject was moving our factories in MA, NJ and CT down to a mega-factory in SC.  After 3 hours of speeches, I asked the three VPs of these units if they were going to move down to SC.  To their credit, no one pretended, and they all said no.  My friends from Japan and Germany looked at each other for a minute, checked their flight schedule, and departed.  Had they simply raised the question earlier, we could've saved $20k in airplane tickets.

[JoeBrady]

45 minutes ago, Kimmi said:

Bloom did exactly what he was hired to do.  To be fair, Dombrowski also did exactly what he was hired to do,

I agree.  Neither were wrong.  They simply had different jobs.  Attaching a 5% inflation factor to payroll, we are about $75M below our 2019.  That's just the way it goes.

[drewski6]

6 minutes ago, JoeBrady said:

I never, ever cared for consensus thinking.  I use to go to meetings where everyone smiled and agreed.  5-10 very smart people, and no opinions.  I appreciate camaraderie, would 100x prefer screaming and yelling, with a good solution, than a meeting where everyone just 'went along'.

Side TL/DR, we had a meeting up in Natick.  The subject was moving our factories in MA, NJ and CT down to a mega-factory in SC.  After 3 hours of speeches, I asked the three VPs of these units if they were going to move down to SC.  To their credit, no one pretended, and they all said no.  My friends from Japan and Germany looked at each other for a minute, checked their flight schedule, and departed.  Had they simply raised the question earlier, we could've saved $20k in airplane tickets.

I had a boss who once told me I was too nice while she was holding a stack of papers.  I smacked em right out of her hand onto the floor.

She looked at me puzzled.  I said "Im trying this be a jerk thing you recommended"

[drewski6]

5 minutes ago, JoeBrady said:

I agree.  Neither were wrong.  They simply had different jobs.  Attaching a 5% inflation factor to payroll, we are about $75M below our 2019.  That's just the way it goes.

With an almost 2x valuation.

[Bellhorn04]

1 minute ago, drewski6 said:

With an almost 2x valuation.

Exactly.  Our revenue to payroll ratio is what's really gone down.

[JoeBrady]

25 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

I had a boss who once told me I was too nice while she was holding a stack of papers.  I smacked em right out of her hand onto the floor.

She had to appreciate that.  I never understood the nice/not nice thing.  I've seen a fair amount of meeting meltdowns that I couldn't even process.  To me, everything is a problem that I get paid to resolve.  Instead of a 30-minute screed about someone on the other side that he wanted fired, just tell me what the final product has to look like.  I'll figure it out.

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

1 hour ago, Kimmi said:

Bloom did exactly what he was hired to do.  To be fair, Dombrowski also did exactly what he was hired to do, though I'm strongly opposed to the "win now at any cost" philosophy, which IMO, we are still indirectly paying for.

I have confidence in Breslow.  

I never hated Bloom but hated what he represented as soon as he started shopping Mookie. Then came the bins... and Story and Bogaerts and Yoshida... and Breslow... and Raffy. 

Naturally, I loved what Dombrowski and Epstein represented -- and Dan Duquette, the forgotten man in the glorious history of Boston's 21st century.

All those contracts, all that money, and no opt outs (except for Price and JD Martinez, who never opted out when we needed them to... unlike Bregman, who opted out when we needed him not to).

 

[JoeBrady]

3 hours ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

and no opt outs (except for Price and JD Martinez, who never opted out

One of DD's best moments.  A lot of the RSN wanted DD to give JD whatever he wanted.  DD read the market correctly, and knew that no one was going to top his remaining contract.

[moonslav59]

3 hours ago, JoeBrady said:

One of DD's best moments.  A lot of the RSN wanted DD to give JD whatever he wanted.  DD read the market correctly, and knew that no one was going to top his remaining contract.

DD was damn good at what he did, and he benefited from an owner that allowed a cycle up, when the window opened wide with so many top prospects coming into their own, at around the same time.

I once made a list of the highest sp's rankings each of his prospects traded reached and it was over 20 players who were once top 20 in teh system, yet hardly any amounted to squat. The few that did, still fell woefully short of what the return guy did for us.

Some call it luck, but he kept all the right prospects. Sure, many were so low in the system, that their value was not that high, but he kept the best of his farm. His farm ended up producing a few key players- so much for "blowing up the farm."

YES! He knew how to value FAs and his own soon-to-be FAs. He got the Sale extension wrong, due to injury, but after he was traded to ATL, you'd swear some fans suddenly thought he was worth keeping around.

The Porcello trade and extension netted a Cy Young. That was just one of many moves that worked.

His FA hit% blows Ben, Bloom & Brez away. Take all those guy's top signings combined, and they cant beat DD's top 5 or 10.

The guy did what he was asked to do, and I'm so glad he was our GM. This fact does not contradict the fact that the team was bound to reach that escarpment, and no, expecting JH to buy our way out of it was not a reasonable demand. (Going 4+ years has been a bit extreme, but here we are again at a similar window we saw in 2016-17 and finalized the deal in 2018.)

[drewski6]

17 hours ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Exactly.  Our revenue to payroll ratio is what's really gone down.

yes, but it goes beyond revenue.  I know we are 22nd in revenue vs payroll, but guess what, its worse than that.

Someone like henry , a legacy owner vs a new owner.  Forget revenue for jsut one sec (please), Henry has a 6x growth on valuation during his tenure as principal owner.  This has nothing to do with income (profit/cash into his pocket), its purely buy red sox for 700m, they are worth 4b today.  Which means he could (and has) sell lets say 10% (or give it in an asset trade, which same thing) and get 400m back in assets/cash.  Thats selling 10% of his investment for more than 50% of his money back.

The money that Henry has made.  The obscene wealth that he has amassed.  Its more from just revenue.  And we're not even getting into the opportunities that the red sox have blessed him with.  For example, are you aware that JH made 900m (profit) this week?

He bought the penguins for 900m 4 years ago, and sold them THIS week for 1.8b.  How did he come up with the 900m originally (which he doubled up on).  Well, when one of your assets appreciates in value from 700m to 4b you now have 6x the collateral to borrow against.  You can sell a measly 10% of your stake to generate 400m.  The Red Sox have given JH more than he has given us, and thats okay.

My only point here is that the revenue to payroll comparisons dont tell a fraction of the story.  Hes made multiple billions in valuaion increases alone and that exclues any salary/profit-share hes withdrawn, which im sure is at least another billion

And Im sorry but I reject that hes smart.  WEll, I reject that this is an example of intelligence, Im sure JH is smart.  But this is more of an example of how easy it is to make money when you already have money 

[drewski6]

its harder to go from 0 ->2m than it is to go from 2m->20m.  Its easy to make money when you have money.  And Ill stop before I get yelled at for touching up against politics (which is hard to avoid, but im intentionally avoiding it or trying to by stopping here)

[drewski6]

In summary: JH made a billion dollars literally yesterday by buying the penguins for near 1b and selling them for nearly 2b a few short years later.  JH was only able to buy the penguins initially because of his red sox investment.

So the extra bill profit he made off flipping the penguins (and that bill doesnt include any salaries/profit-sharing along the way from the penguins) , he would have never been able to make it without the red sox.

And when you look at revenue vs payroll, which is already ugly, it doesnt even include earnings from side hustles that hes been able to accomplish due to his red sox investment , and said side hustle earnings have been significant to the tune of billions.

[Old Red]

23 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

It could have. They CHOSE not to spend from '22 - '24. They CHOSE not to compete or make moves at the deadline. The '22 team was virtually the same team as the '21 team, they just didn't invest in it. 

When they spent money it was on JBJ, Masa and Story. 🤮

Well said. There was NO cliff.

[moonslav59]

14 minutes ago, Old Red said:

Well said. There was NO cliff.

So, we did great from 2020-2024. LMAO

[Hitch]

16 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

In summary: JH made a billion dollars literally yesterday by buying the penguins for near 1b and selling them for nearly 2b a few short years later.  JH was only able to buy the penguins initially because of his red sox investment.

So the extra bill profit he made off flipping the penguins (and that bill doesnt include any salaries/profit-sharing along the way from the penguins) , he would have never been able to make it without the red sox.

And when you look at revenue vs payroll, which is already ugly, it doesnt even include earnings from side hustles that hes been able to accomplish due to his red sox investment , and said side hustle earnings have been significant to the tune of billions.

A sidebar - as I mentioned in the other thread: nobody should be getting excited that money is going to the Sox. They're trying to buy a second soccer team in Europe.

[JoeBrady]

9 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

Some call it luck, but he kept all the right prospects.

I've said this many times.  DD's primary superpower was knowing which prospects to keep and which to trade.  That's a tough row to hoe.  Many GMs don't even try.  It's one of the things I like about Breslow.