A Realistic Look at the 2026 Red Sox: Part I

[drewski6]

13 hours ago, JoeBrady said:

Of course they care about the present value.  I can offer Mookie a billion $$$ to teach me how to hit, but I can only afford $100/year for the next 10 million years.

The RS offer was $100/yr or thereabouts or are we drifting from conversing in good faith?

[drewski6]

2 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

I don't think that's the premise of the article. The org pushes exit velo and lifting the ball. If you look down on the farm, they are pushing guys to increase exit velo year over year. GRE is towards the top of their league in HR. Arias has a career high in HR and it's only May. 

The problem is that the BOSTON Red Sox were drawn up horribly. Adding Caleb Durbin was a huge mistake. Keeping Yoshida around doesn't make sense. Roman Anthony has had a tremendously high GB% his whole pro career. You can't rely on him to bring thump to a lineup. Marcelo was promoted too early and is now learning on the job. 

Having half of your lineup be punch and judy hitters (even more when you are relying on called up AAA hitters and Duran is slumping) is why the Sox got to where they are. Sox need to blow it up. DFA/Trade Story and Masa. Trade Duran for parts. Send Durbin to AAA so that he can play every day. There are calls to trade Contreras, but I think he's doing a good job mentoring Rafaela (career high 117 wRC+) and Abreu. The Sox need to keep some veteran leadership around. 

Just ditch Breslow before you "blow it up" otherwise we will be moving Yoshida/Story/Duran for pitchers and signing 3 more this offseason

[mvp 78]

25 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

Just ditch Breslow before you "blow it up" otherwise we will be moving Yoshida/Story/Duran for pitchers and signing 3 more this offseason

Sorry, they're stuck with him! Should have kept Bloom for another year or two.

[Duran Is The Man]

2 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

I don't think that's the premise of the article. The org pushes exit velo and lifting the ball. If you look down on the farm, they are pushing guys to increase exit velo year over year. GRE is towards the top of their league in HR. Arias has a career high in HR and it's only May. 

The problem is that the BOSTON Red Sox were drawn up horribly. Adding Caleb Durbin was a huge mistake. Keeping Yoshida around doesn't make sense. Roman Anthony has had a tremendously high GB% his whole pro career. You can't rely on him to bring thump to a lineup. Marcelo was promoted too early and is now learning on the job. 

Having half of your lineup be punch and judy hitters (even more when you are relying on called up AAA hitters and Duran is slumping) is why the Sox got to where they are. Sox need to blow it up. DFA/Trade Story and Masa. Trade Duran for parts. Send Durbin to AAA so that he can play every day. There are calls to trade Contreras, but I think he's doing a good job mentoring Rafaela (career high 117 wRC+) and Abreu. The Sox need to keep some veteran leadership around. 

meanwhile, Harrison is killing it in Milwaukee. i swear to gawd, we have the dumbest front office in baseball. nice job Brez, you f***ing stiff.

[mvp 78]

Breslow has clearly done a tremendous job reconfiguring the pitching development. However, the hitter side has fallen off the map. I have no faith that they can know how to handle every day players ATM. 

[Maxbialystock]

In case no one else has state the obvious, allow me to.

The problem is Breslow, who has gone after lefty starters with a righty-hitter home ballpark.  Thus are the sox 8-18 at Fenway and 14-13 in all other ballparks.   

When was the last time the Sox were ranked dead last in runs scored?  I ask because it sure looks as though Breslow also failed to get enough good righty bats.  

The Sox away OPS and away ERA are both better than at Fenway.

 

[drewski6]

4 minutes ago, mvp 78 said:

Sorry, they're stuck with him! Should have kept Bloom for another year or two.

😨

[drewski6]

5 minutes ago, Maxbialystock said:

In case no one else has state the obvious, allow me to.

The problem is Breslow, who has gone after lefty starters with a righty-hitter home ballpark.  Thus are the sox 8-18 at Fenway and 14-13 in all other ballparks.   

When was the last time the Sox were ranked dead last in runs scored?  I ask because it sure looks as though Breslow also failed to get enough good righty bats.  

The Sox away OPS and away ERA are both better than at Fenway.

 

We still play half the games on the road and unless we get the 1 seed are going to need to win some road playoff games at some point.  I can give you having a team built bad for Fenway as A problem but I cant give you THE problem

[mvp 78]

10 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

We still play half the games on the road and unless we get the 1 seed are going to need to win some road playoff games at some point.  I can give you having a team built bad for Fenway as A problem but I cant give you THE problem

"I'm going to come up with the singular dumbest way to construct a baseball team and spend a lot of money to do it." - Craig Breslow

[drewski6]

1 minute ago, mvp 78 said:

"I'm going to come up with the singular dumbest way to construct a baseball team and spend a lot of money to do it." - Craig Breslow

See, I still dont think this was the team that Breslow intended to build.  I still think its a team full of fall backs from failed moves.  I think he intended to fix the OF logjam, keep Bregman and not sign 57 starting pitchers.  But he cant execute.  Had the heat in his hand but he couldnt shoot.

[drewski6]

but if we're blaming breslow i dont want to get too greedy

[mvp 78]

18 minutes ago, Maxbialystock said:

In case no one else has state the obvious, allow me to.

The problem is Breslow, who has gone after lefty starters with a righty-hitter home ballpark.  Thus are the sox 8-18 at Fenway and 14-13 in all other ballparks.   

When was the last time the Sox were ranked dead last in runs scored?  I ask because it sure looks as though Breslow also failed to get enough good righty bats.  

The Sox away OPS and away ERA are both better than at Fenway.

Yes. Where are the Cody Ross, Tyler O'Neilll, Adam Duvall, Hunter Renfroe types? Breslow couldn't even go out and get a Bill Hall! 

Breslow can build a staff, but has no clue on how to find hitters. 

[mvp 78]

1 minute ago, drewski6 said:

See, I still dont think this was the team that Breslow intended to build.  I still think its a team full of fall backs from failed moves.  I think he intended to fix the OF logjam, keep Bregman and not sign 57 starting pitchers.  But he cant execute.  Had the heat in his hand but he couldnt shoot.

If he INTENDED to fix the logjam, he should have just gone out and done it. You don't have to win every trade. Just fix the log jam.

If he INTENDED to sign Bregman, he should have just extended him prior to the end of last year or just given him the no trade clause. 

Intentions don't matter. It's like the last trade deadline where he thought he had a deal with the Twins for Joe Ryan, but really wasn't anywhere close. He had no fallback plan by the time he realized a deal wasn't getting done. The fact that he wasn't working on a fallback plan at least for leverage is embarrassing. 

[bkzwhitestrican]

29 minutes ago, Maxbialystock said:

In case no one else has state the obvious, allow me to.

The problem is Breslow, who has gone after lefty starters with a righty-hitter home ballpark.  Thus are the sox 8-18 at Fenway and 14-13 in all other ballparks.   

When was the last time the Sox were ranked dead last in runs scored?  I ask because it sure looks as though Breslow also failed to get enough good righty bats.  

The Sox away OPS and away ERA are both better than at Fenway.

 

Why don't they just move the Green Monster to right field, are they stupid????

[Maxbialystock]

2 minutes ago, mvp 78 said:

Sorry, they're stuck with him! Should have kept Bloom for another year or two.

On the surface he looks pretty good.  Smart guy, maybe one of the smartest in MLB.  12 years pitching experience in MLB plus a few years in the executive side.  

This is his his 3d season as CBO and it sure looks like his worst, and I think the reason for that is obvious.  Four of his 5 best starters, if we include Crochet in that bunch, are lefties.  Grey is a pretty good righty, but Bello is not.  

Given the preponderance of lefty starters and the lack of good righty bats, it should be no surprise that the Sox are currently 8-18 at the Fens and 14-13 away from home.  

Plus there's the fact that the Sox are currently ranked dead last in MLB in runs scored.

Can anyone remember the last time the Sox were 8-18 (44.4%) at home and dead last in runs scored?  I doubt that that happened in the JH era.  

[Maxbialystock]

25 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

We still play half the games on the road and unless we get the 1 seed are going to need to win some road playoff games at some point.  I can give you having a team built bad for Fenway as A problem but I cant give you THE problem

There are two obvious problems:  no righty arms and not enough righty bats.  

 

[mvp 78]

Sox were 11-20 at Fenway in 2020. They were 13-16 on the road.

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

15 minutes ago, Maxbialystock said:

There are two obvious problems:  no righty arms and not enough righty bats.  

 

Dammit -- Breslow throws left, bats left, and left the roster incomplete!

(why didn't the smartest southpaw in the room realize the majority of TV viewers use their northpaws to change the channel?).

[mvp 78]

47 minutes ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

Dammit -- Breslow throws left, bats left, and left the roster incomplete!

(why didn't the smartest southpaw in the room realize the majority of TV viewers use their northpaws to change the channel?).

[vegasbob]

2 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

Sorry, they're stuck with him! Should have kept Bloom for another year or two.

It won't happen but i would like to hear from 2 people:

Chaim Bloom on where he was going with his team when dismissed , what was his next planned set of moves ? 

Alex Cora, now that he has had a month on the beach as to why the poor start and failure to recover. What is his take on Breslow personally and as a baseball exec.

You will never hear either comment honestly due to the unwritten baseball rule of never crap on your peers because you may work with them again

[notin]

2 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

Sorry, they're stuck with him! Should have kept Bloom for another year or two.

Probably would have if Bloom didn’t waffle his way through two consecutive deadlines when the Sox were in contention.

Bloom did well to add Abreu at one deadline, but just couldn’t commit to either buying or selling so quite often just did neither…

[vegasbob]

2 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

Breslow has clearly done a tremendous job reconfiguring the pitching development. However, the hitter side has fallen off the map. I have no faith that they can know how to handle every day players ATM. 

Breslow's job at Chicago Cubs was VP Pitching .  That he may have a clue about. 

Your comment on every day players is highly accurate and could affect the eventual careers of the Red Sox young , not so developing players

[notin]

1 hour ago, Maxbialystock said:

There are two obvious problems:  no righty arms and not enough righty bats.  

 

The lefty arms actually look really good.  If his best righty bat had more pop than Durbin, this might be different…

[notin]

2 hours ago, bkzwhitestrican said:

Why don't they just move the Green Monster to right field, are they stupid????

Just move home plate out near the triangle and turn the whole field around!

[mvp 78]

4 minutes ago, notin said:

Probably would have if Bloom didn’t waffle his way through two consecutive deadlines when the Sox were in contention.

Bloom did well to add Abreu at one deadline, but just couldn’t commit to either buying or selling so quite often just did neither…

I think he was committed in '22, but the rest of the FO got cold feet. Bloom had no problem with blowing up STL.