Red Sox sign Jake Bauers

[NHNative]

Hey we need a 2 run homer---you're up.

[Hugh2]

11 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

We still can, but most see him as a DH. 

We don’t need any more DH’s we have about 3-4 on the roster now

[jad]

To quote Dorothy Parker, Brezlow is always looking for the next rhinestone in the rough.

 

[moonslav59]

It's one thing to take a chance on Mead- a guy with just a half season of really good hitting, but he just turned 26.

Yes, we gave up Early, and the draft picks and Int'l money lost on Bauers may not turn out better than Early, but he just turned 31 and costs almost $15M a year up to his age 34 season.

Maybe this guy is something special, but it just seems like all these players we've added have a high degree of "dice roll" to them. I've suggested what their upside might look like, and it's something to be optimistic about, but what I haven't talked much about is how almost all of our players have too high degree of a chance ar failure or decline. Even if we put the chances at decline or steep decline at just 15-25% for most of them, it's make it not all that unlikely we end up with too many doing poorly all at once. (Some of these guys might have chances of decline more like 33-50%... maybe most of them do.)

Would it shock anyone if....

Rafaela ends his nonstop trend of improvement by having a bad year, highlighted by a god-awful August-September slump?

Abreu never has that "bust out season" and actually has a bad one?

Contreras finally sees his age catch up with him in a sudden and steep matter?

Anthony's promise turns into what we saw from KC and Mayer?

Mead and Bauers turn out to be flash-in-the-pans?

AR saw his best days a few years back and never comes close, again?

And these are our best and most hopeful 7 bats going into 2027.

Now, take a gander at Gasper, Romy, Jones, Wong, Sogard, Seigler, Monasterio and even somewhat promising players like Durbin and Arias.

I left out Duran, Story and Yoshida because their recent records speak for themselves.

 

 

[moonslav59]

5 minutes ago, Hugh2 said:

We don’t need any more DH’s we have about 3-4 on the roster now

Agreed.

That's been my point, and when I spoke of signing Sato, it was linked to trading Duran and Yoshida and possibly upgrading SS, too. That would lock Anthony into LF and Mead into 2B, at least for a while.

We could decide to downgrade our defense with Sato at 3B and go with a glove SS like Arias, too, and then use Mead, Anthony or some sort of promising DH platoon with Gasper, Romy, Yoshida and others.

[moonslav59]

5 minutes ago, jad said:

To quote Dorothy Parker, Brezlow is always looking for the next rhinestone in the rough.

The avoidance of just going all in a bonafide stud has been explained away by budget limitations, but when you add up all these "rhinestones" we coulda signed the great 45 carat "Hope Diamond."

[JimEd]

2 hours ago, Hugh2 said:

Alonso has more power and is more of a proven commodity.  Two draft picks and one million of international money would have been a much smaller price to pay for Alonso

yep....this is what i said earlier about the Sox not going after Top Tier players because they don't want to spend the money. Alonso is most definitely a proven commodity and who i wanted last year. Bauers is a journeyman nobody that had one decent year and was just rewarded for that by a cheap Boston front office. Aim for the middle is their motto. and where they almost always finish the season.

[moonslav59]

Just now, JimEd said:

yep....this is what i said earlier about the Sox not going after Top Tier players because they don't want to spend the money. Alonso is most definitely a proven commodity and who i wanted last year. Bauers is a journeyman nobody that had one decent year and was just rewarded for that by a cheap Boston front office. Aim for the middle is their motto. and where they almost always finish the season.

Even Pablo Sandoval had a longer track record of success.

Had this guy not had the QO, it might make more sense, but we are betting on rolling snake eyes too many times.

[NHNative]

9 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

It's one thing to take a chance on Mead- a guy with just a half season of really good hitting, but he just turned 26.

Yes, we gave up Early, and the draft picks and Int'l money lost on Bauers may not turn out better than Early, but he just turned 31 and costs almost $15M a year up to his age 34 season.

Maybe this guy is something special, but it just seems like all these players we've added have a high degree of "dice roll" to them. I've suggested what their upside might look like, and it's something to be optimistic about, but what I haven't talked much about is how almost all of our players have too high degree of a chance ar failure or decline. Even if we put the chances at decline or steep decline at just 15-25% for most of them, it's make it not all that unlikely we end up with too many doing poorly all at once. (Some of these guys might have chances of decline more like 33-50%... maybe most of them do.)

Would it shock anyone if....

Rafaela ends his nonstop trend of improvement by having a bad year, highlighted by a god-awful August-September slump?

Abreu never has that "bust out season" and actually has a bad one?

Contreras finally sees his age catch up with him in a sudden and steep matter?

Anthony's promise turns into what we saw from KC and Mayer?

Mead and Bauers turn out to be flash-in-the-pans?

AR saw his best days a few years back and never comes close, again?

And these are our best and most hopeful 7 bats going into 2027.

Now, take a gander at Gasper, Romy, Jones, Wong, Sogard, Seigler, Monasterio and even somewhat promising players like Durbin and Arias.

I left out Duran, Story and Yoshida because their recent records speak for themselves.

 

 

Don't most if not all teams have the same dynamics facing them?

[JoeBrady]

9 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

Although Mead is much younger, it's kinda the same type of dice roll.

The difference with Mead is that he was only about a year away from being a highly-ranked prospect, and had only 445 ABs to prove/disprove himself.  Bauers had 1700 ABs.

[moonslav59]

2 minutes ago, NHNative said:

Don't most if not all teams have the same dynamics facing them?

Of course, and in many ways we have many more players with significant chances or having good to very good seasons, but most of the best of the best teams have a player or two with the only worry being an injury.

While Contreras may have a top 15 OPS in MLB from '24-'26, he's on the wrong side of 34.

I'm not unhappy having 7-8 players with pretty high ceilings, but I guess I'm too worried about their pretty significant chances at declines or off years.

[NHNative]

2 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

Of course, and in many ways we have many more players with significant chances or having good to very good seasons, but most of the best of the best teams have a player or two with the only worry being an injury.

While Contreras may have a top 15 OPS in MLB from '24-'26, he's on the wrong side of 34.

I'm not unhappy having 7-8 players with pretty high ceilings, but I guess I'm too worried about their pretty significant chances at declines or off years.

I mean look at Ohtani!

Its all a crap shoot. Its baseball. If ya don't tighten your batting gloves just right every time...ya crash and burn or run into a wall.

[moonslav59]

2 minutes ago, JoeBrady said:

The difference with Mead is that he was only about a year away from being a highly-ranked prospect, and had only 445 ABs to prove/disprove himself.  Bauers had 1700 ABs.

Indeed, and there are more differences than just that.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Mead trade. I also think Bauers has some decent odds at having 2-3 good years. I'm just not so sure stockpiling dice rolls is a good strategy. You can only play 9 at a time.

Is it worth paying almost $15M x 4 to upgrade from any one of these alternate choices we had at DH?

1. Anthony at DH and roll with Duran/Jones in LF.

2. Mead at DH and Story at 2B & Arias at SS (Maybe Seigler/Sogard at 2B?)

3. Yoshida at DH.

4. A DH platoon involving some mix of Gasper, Romy, Jones, Yoshida and others.

Another option could have been to sign Sato. I'm not sure how much he ends up signing for, but it may not be all that much more than the $14.5 AAV we handed Bauers, and Sato doesn't cost us draft picks and lost IFA money.

[moonslav59]

4 minutes ago, NHNative said:

I mean look at Ohtani!

Its all a crap shoot. Its baseball. If ya don't tighten your batting gloves just right every time...ya crash and burn or run into a wall.

In many ways baseball is all about risk management, and stock-piling more and more higher ceiling players than other teams looks nice on the spreadsheet, I think the lack of starpower is going to come back and bite us in the arse.

I like our rotation.

I think our pen will do well, again.

I like our defense much better than any recent teams we've fielded.

I like our lack of black holes in the line-up.

I like our 26 and 40 man roster depth.

Add it all up, and it can look like a ring year, but I'd feel a lot better with a stud batting 2nd or 4th.

[notin]

22 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

The avoidance of just going all in a bonafide stud has been explained away by budget limitations, but when you add up all these "rhinestones" we coulda signed the great 45 carat "Hope Diamond."

And the complete lack of bonafide studs.  I’m not on board with Bauer’s at 4 yrs $58mill, but it’s probably better than giving 5 yrs ($130mill?) to Randy Arozarena…

[JoeBrady]

3 hours ago, Hitch said:

As I mentioned, in isolation I don't dislike it, but that's a steep price to pay.

If he's last year's guy for 2/3 of his 4 yeaes it's worth it. If he isnt...eesh.

I'm curious how many HRs fans project for him.  I'm pretty sure it'll be less than 100 over four years, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was less than 80.

[moonslav59]

Just now, notin said:

And the complete lack of bonafide studs.  I’m not on board with Bauer’s at 4 yrs $58mill, but it’s probably better than giving 5 yrs ($130mill?) to Randy Arozarena…

I can agree with this, as I don't view Arozarena as bonafide studville. I do think he's much more likely to have 2-3 good years, but no, he's not Alonso, Schwarber or even Abrams or DLC.

I'm tired of using the limited budget to explain away why Brez keeps adding players like this. It is what it is, but all these guys add up to what Alonso cost, and we have reached the saturation point on guys like Bauers, and need to think quality over quantity to take the next step forward.

This signing reeks of same ole-same ole.

[NHNative]

So--how many elite bats are even available to us? Isn't it kind of mute?

Ya can't shop for what you don't have.

So we grab a guy like Bauers.

[moonslav59]

5 minutes ago, JoeBrady said:

I'm curious how many HRs fans project for him.  I'm pretty sure it'll be less than 100 over four years, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was less than 80.

It might depend largely on how many PAs he gets from ages 31 to 34, but his career numbers is about 22 per 650.

From ages 27 to 30, he's averaged 25 per 650.

Lefty bats in Fenway are often hard to project, and I think we can all agree that this was a major stab in the dark. There is certainly upside potential, but the downside seems almost equally likely, if not a higher probability.

[moonslav59]

4 minutes ago, NHNative said:

So--how many elite bats are even available to us? Isn't it kind of mute?

Ya can't shop for what you don't have.

So we grab a guy like Bauers.

I could be wrong, but I think DLC and Abrams are elite bats and under 27 y/o.

Maybe Bryce Harper, Schwarber and Alonso could be pried from their current teams, but all these guys would cost us dearly in return package values.

It would start with Arias. I tried to come up with a decent package for Abrams without Arias, but I doubt the Nats would ever say yes.

I'm not devaluing Arias by offering him up for a stud, but right now, we have too much speculative value and not enough proven value. We don't even have enough slots in the line-up for everyone with high or pretty high ceilings.

It's hard to know how much other GMs value some of our players and prospects, and maybe I'm thinking they like them more than they really do, but to oversimplify my position: we need to make some 2 or 3 for one deals, which include some pretty damn good players and prospects.

[NHNative]

1 minute ago, moonslav59 said:

I could be wrong, but I think DLC and Abrams are elite bats and under 27 y/o.

Maybe Bryce Harper, Schwarber and Alonso could be pried from their current teams, but all these guys would cost us dearly in return package values.

It would start with Arias. I tried to come up with a decent package for Abrams without Arias, but I doubt the Nats would ever say yes.

I'm not devaluing Arias by offering him up for a stud, but right now, we have too much speculative value and not enough proven value. We don't even have enough slots in the line-up for everyone with high or pretty high ceilings.

It's hard to know how much other GMs value some of our players and prospects, and maybe I'm thinking they like them more than they really do, but to oversimplify my position: we need to make some 2 or 3 for one deals, which include some pretty damn good players and prospects.

It seems like you have made my point. I do agree we have a pretty good roster and depth. I am optimistic and I keep saying it might make the Ring difference to pony up for an elite bat. And as you say--better a young proven one.

I just think its bad juju to rag on a Bauers.

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

19 minutes ago, notin said:

 it’s probably better than giving 5 yrs ($130mill?) to Randy Arozarena…

I bet someone in the front office said those exact words! 

That and the concern of reports coming out of Seattle that Arozarena was not a team player.

[Old Red]

1 hour ago, moonslav59 said:

Your sliding scale of gobble-dee-goop summed up very nicely.

Stay behind the curtain, and do what you do best. CJ. AND nobody, but nobody regurgitate more gobble-dee-goop in opinions, suggestions, or predictions than you do. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. It’s not a gift either, but a curse.🙈🤭🤮👋.

[Old Red]

3 minutes ago, NHNative said:

It seems like you have made my point. I do agree we have a pretty good roster and depth. I am optimistic and I keep saying it might make the Ring difference to pony up for an elite bat. And as you say--better a young proven one.

I just think its bad juju to rag on a Bauers.

Maybe,but hopes, and wishes on Bauers May be nothing more than a big letdown for those who don’t.

[Old Red]

9 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

I could be wrong, but I think DLC and Abrams are elite bats and under 27 y/o.

Maybe Bryce Harper, Schwarber and Alonso could be pried from their current teams, but all these guys would cost us dearly in return package values.

It would start with Arias. I tried to come up with a decent package for Abrams without Arias, but I doubt the Nats would ever say yes.

I'm not devaluing Arias by offering him up for a stud, but right now, we have too much speculative value and not enough proven value. We don't even have enough slots in the line-up for everyone with high or pretty high ceilings.

It's hard to know how much other GMs value some of our players and prospects, and maybe I'm thinking they like them more than they really do, but to oversimplify my position: we need to make some 2 or 3 for one deals, which include some pretty damn good players and prospects.

You didn’t have to pry Alonso from anyone last year except JH checkbook. What a BLUNDER.🙈

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

6 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

It would start with Arias. I tried to come up with a decent package for Abrams without Arias, but I doubt the Nats would ever say yes.

I would hope and guess that a former pitcher now POBO (President of Baseball Ops) would say no.

Abrams (one less error than MLB leaders) is not the shortstop that Arias is supposed to be -- and if Breslow sticks to his philosophy of building around pitching and D, he has to be leaning to an above-average SS at minimum wage.

[JimEd]

58 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

Even Pablo Sandoval had a longer track record of success.

Had this guy not had the QO, it might make more sense, but we are betting on rolling snake eyes too many times.

i immediately thought of Panda as soon as i heard they had signed him. and yeah...Pablo had done far more before he was signed than this guy.

[Old Red]

3 minutes ago, JimEd said:

i immediately thought of Panda as soon as i heard they had signed him. and yeah...Pablo had done far more before he was signed than this guy.

I’ve just never seen so much yearning for a journeyman .223 career hitter, and haven’t outside of on here.🤔,

 

 

[NHNative]

14 minutes ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

I would hope and guess that a former pitcher now POBO (President of Baseball Ops) would say no.

Abrams (one less error than MLB leaders) is not the shortstop that Arias is supposed to be -- and if Breslow sticks to his philosophy of building around pitching and D, he has to be leaning to an above-average SS at minimum wage.

See--I don't get that philosophy. Baseball needs defense, pitching and batting.

[moonslav59]

29 minutes ago, NHNative said:

It seems like you have made my point. I do agree we have a pretty good roster and depth. I am optimistic and I keep saying it might make the Ring difference to pony up for an elite bat. And as you say--better a young proven one.

I just think its bad juju to rag on a Bauers.

I have some hopes for Bauers. We are a better team with him on it.

There are times I am the most optimistic poster on this site. Today, I'm not feeling it. I'll come around.

I'm not letting go of my belief that we need an elite batter, and of course I prefer a younger one like DLC or Abrams. I fully realize the defensive limitations and the idea that DH might be the best landing spot for some of the names I'm mentioning, and we still have an $18M Yoshida and now a $14.5M Bauers slotted for DH, as well as a whole slew of platoon DH choices up and down the system.

The liklihood Brez seeks one of these players is about as close to zero as can be, and part of the reason I'm feeling sour is that the Bauer signing is a major reason this has come to be.