Three Realistic Moves the Red Sox Could Make This Offseason

18 minutes ago, notin said:

Every time someone mentions Bauer, there’s the (understandable) response of “would you want to explain to your daughter what this guy did?”

I’ll going to answer that prematurely.  I have a 17yo daughter who’s old enough to understand sexual assault.  She’s also a baseball fanatic, easily as bad as me, and makes some observations I never thought of, like “Christian Vazquez clearly has some form of albanism.”  Diehard Cubs fan who was visibly upset when they traded Christopher Morel.  Her statistical preference is OPS for any player, always eschewing BA and RBI and only discusses HRs as a rate rather than a total.  She also thinks Alex Cora, Carlos Correa, and Alex Bregman should be banned from MLB, but not Jose Altuve as he did not participate in the scandal.
 

On Bauer, she asks me “why is MLB doing him dirty?”  And she mentions players like Julio Urias, Marvell Ozuna, and Aroldis Chapman, who were just as bad and punished minimally in comparison.  She’d probably freak out if she knew about Bret Myers, who once beat up his wife on Lansdowne Street in full view of numerous witnesses and was allowed to pitch again.

Bauer is a PR problem, but not more of one than numerous others.  Yet he doesn’t get a second chance.  

If only he had stuck to more wholesome hobbies, like using his interpreter to place his bets…

Fascinating about your daughter who clearly is passionate about MLB.  

I have four daughters, all of them grown up (youngest is 47) and none is a MLB fan although three played softball in HS.  I believe I can speak for all four of them in condemning Trevor Bauer, whose sexual assault was investigated and the penalty concurred in by the players union in 2021.   After arbitration, his penalty was reduced from 324 games to 194 games, and Bauer was reinstated.  However, the Dodgers DFA'd Bauer in Jan 2023, and he has yet to be hired by another MLB team in the 2023 or 2024 seasons.  

As for the three Houston Astros, including Alex Cora, penalized for stealing signs, they did what so many MLB players (and coaches), including our own Dustin Pedroia, have done repeatedly over the years.  It's a form of cheating, but a very popular one that has now been at least partly curtailed by the use of technology.  That said, I'm positive every MLB team runs videos of opposing pitchers--and of their own pitchers--to see if they are "telegraphing" their pitches.  In addition to that, every team tracks opposing pitchers' tendencies.   

Despite all those machinations, good stuff is still good stuff and usually prevails.  See, for example Chris Sale, age 35, whom the Sox dumped off to the Braves--and gave them/him $17M in the bargain--and who is a candidate for the NL Cy Young award this season.  To replace Sale, the Sox signed Giolito for 2 years and $38M--and he has yet to pitch a single inning for the Sox.  So of course the Sox should sign Trevor Bauer and ignore his history of sexual assault.  

33 minutes ago, Randy Red Sox said:

the problem with Bauer runs deeper than just the assault situation. He was actually found to be not guilty so that in itself should not be killing his career as it is. The guy is a bad apple on the field to boot. Ask Tito what he thinks of Bauer. I remember when he came to pull Bauer who then in disgust turned and fired the ball into the CF bleachers. The Dodger players all voted to get rid of him after the charges even though the team was on the hook for his $$. I feel for the guy but he kinda made his own bed.

MLB is loaded with immature players.  I saw Milton Bradley fire a (plastic) beer bottle into the stands once.  I’m sure if any of us did the research, we could find plenty of incidents of player behavior annoying the team.  (I also doubt the Dodger players cared if Bauer got paid or not.) How do you think Ozzie Guillen really felt when Chris Sale destroyed the White Sox throwback jerseys?

Bauer is an a-hole, and upfront and proud of that.  But being an a-hole has never lead to this kind of collective banishment before.  
 

Those same Dodgers that discarded Bauer also killed a trade for Chapman due to his incident.  Bauer is in purgatory, never to escape, but Chapman has pitched for an additional dozen years for four different teams, likely to be five in six months.  Why?

11 minutes ago, Maxbialystock said:

Fascinating about your daughter who clearly is passionate about MLB.  

I have four daughters, all of them grown up (youngest is 47) and none is a MLB fan although three played softball in HS.  I believe I can speak for all four of them in condemning Trevor Bauer, whose sexual assault was investigated and the penalty concurred in by the players union in 2021.   After arbitration, his penalty was reduced from 324 games to 194 games, and Bauer was reinstated.  However, the Dodgers DFA'd Bauer in Jan 2023, and he has yet to be hired by another MLB team in the 2023 or 2024 seasons.  

As for the three Houston Astros, including Alex Cora, penalized for stealing signs, they did what so many MLB players (and coaches), including our own Dustin Pedroia, have done repeatedly over the years.  It's a form of cheating, but a very popular one that has now been at least partly curtailed by the use of technology.  That said, I'm positive every MLB team runs videos of opposing pitchers--and of their own pitchers--to see if they are "telegraphing" their pitches.  In addition to that, every team tracks opposing pitchers' tendencies.   

Despite all those machinations, good stuff is still good stuff and usually prevails.  See, for example Chris Sale, age 35, whom the Sox dumped off to the Braves--and gave them/him $17M in the bargain--and who is a candidate for the NL Cy Young award this season.  To replace Sale, the Sox signed Giolito for 2 years and $38M--and he has yet to pitch a single inning for the Sox.  So of course the Sox should sign Trevor Bauer and ignore his history of sexual assault.  

Stealing signs is NOT illegal, unless done with the use of technology.  Pedroia absolutely broke that rule.  As did Cora and the entire Astros organization.

Of course, breaking actual MLB game rules is another matter of inconsistency with its acceptance and a subject that gets off the rails of Bauer.

But if a change of direction is needed, why is Gaylord Perry in the Hall of Fame?  That one will always confuse me.  He admitted to cheating, defied authority at every turn, and even gave his illegal pitch top billing in his autobiography “The Spitter and Me.”  And the BBWAA found all this amusing and enshrined him for cheating.  But then decided to crack down on anyone even suspected of steroid abuse, even if the closest thing to proof was questions on Internet forums like this…

The PR situation in Boston is a mess. Adding Bauer would not change much. You can't get much worse than the worst.

For a team that has constantly used smoke and mirrors as its pitching acquisition plan, I say, why not?

He'd be cheaper than his upside talent level, and that has been the Sox mantra since 2019.

3 hours ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Bauer has 4 strikes against him:

-The rough sex/assault thing.

-The throwing the ball into the stands thing.

-The old school right wing views on social media thing.

-The sticky stuff controversy thing.

He is literally a problem waiting to happen for any team that signs him.

The Red Sox got blasted for signing Matt Dermody, who only had the social media strike against him.

 

And every negative post about Matt Dermody was one less comment or not complaining about John Henry.

Who gives a s*** about right wing views on social media?? What’s next?  Will Bauer’s staunch pro-choice views be a reason not to sign him? If he buys an EV, should the Sox not sign him because he has clearly surrendered to the liberal media climate police?

2 hours ago, Duran Is The Man said:

one's political views shouldn't be a reason to not sign someone.

Sure.  Say it succinctly and with clarity while I go type rants on the subject ;)