Brock Beauchamp

This is from our very own Davy Andrews and it's bloody brilliant. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/introducing-the-we-tried-tracker/

As a Brewers fan, I've paid a lot of attention to Adames and his defensive drop-off is baffling. You expect a guy to lose a step, some twitch, etc. and it's entirely possible that happened to Adames in 2024... but what tanked his defensive metrics is kicking the ball around the diamond. And that doesn't seem like a loss of skill or a new standard going forward, that sounds like a defensive slump. So while his defensive metrics are concerning, I'm not entirely convinced it's permanent.

This one doesn't really make any sense to me, honestly.

I believe that's his average contract value (for CBT purposes) but this year, his actual pay is $1.25m.

Testing comments from front page.

If the White Sox are truly interested in Abreu headlining a deal for Crochet, I do that all day.

Every offseason, we offer our You’re The GM! tool (formerly the Payroll Blueprint) to build your ideal Red Sox roster. This year, we’ve updated and streamlined the tool a bit to improve the experience. The idea behind this feature is to give fans a chance to play the role of General Manager (or CBO or PoBO… you get the idea) for their favorite team, the Boston Red Sox. It’s meant to give fans the opportunity to discuss (and, let’s be honest, argue) how they would approach the long, dark MLB offseason. This tool is intended to be informal and fun, so we’ve left it as open as possible. There is a payroll “budget” that loosely resembles the Red Sox's 2024 payroll, but there is no penalty for going over that number. It’s a guideline, nothing more. Second, you can submit as many blueprints as you like throughout the offseason. As the offseason landscape changes, users often return multiple times over the winter and create new blueprints. Before we get into the breakdown of the tool, you can save your blueprint and come back to it at any time. The only restriction is that you must register an account on the site to create a blueprint (so we can save a draft for you and also post the blueprint for others to discuss). Let’s get into the tool itself. It has four quadrants that work best if addressed in a counter-clockwise order (this tool works much better on desktops due to its complexity but will work on mobile devices if need be). Top Left: The 26-man Roster We have created a rough guideline of what the Red Sox 26-man roster looks like today. The roster is flexible; any player can be added or removed as you see fit. We’ve also included either guaranteed salaries or, in the case of arbitration and contract options, the recommendations of MLB Trade Rumors. This section is where you build your roster and make changes based on the following two sections. As you make changes to players and salaries, the total payroll number (right side of the screen) will change, allowing you to track your budget on the fly. The bottom field in both columns is for any dead money you assume during the course of your offseason. Acquiring dead money should be rather uncommon but we want to present users the opportunity to take on dead salary if it suits their purposes. Bottom Left: Arbitration & Trade Decisions Here, you will find a selection of arbitration options and internal options (usually from the 40-man roster or minor leagues) to assist in building your offseason roster. On the right-hand side of this column, you will see Trade Candidates, a list of the 35 players most likely to be traded this offseason, per MLB Trade Rumors. To help you get up to speed with these candidates, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on trade candidates. Bottom Right: Free Agents Here, you will find the top 50 free agents, again per MLB Trade Rumors. These are sorted by position to facilitate quickly finding your desired free agent and include the recommended salary for that player. Because this is a blueprint for a single year, we only include their projected salary for the coming season, not the number of years or anything else. To help you get up to speed with these free agents, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on the best 50 free agents available this winter. Top Right: Dead Money, Your Total Payroll, & Commentary The only unalterable field on the page is Dead Money; it is players to which the team has committed money but has no reasonable way to get out of the contract. Below that, you will see the recommended budget, your current total, and the percentage you are over or under that budget. Again, keep in mind the budget is only a guideline, and you can go above it as much as you like… But defend your choices, coward! The following field is Title, which gives other users an idea of what to expect with your blueprint (e.g. Sign Juan Soto, Damn the Consequences). When your blueprint posts for other users, it will read “Your Username’s 2025 Payroll Blueprint: Sign Juan Soto, Damn the Consequences”. The following field is Your Comments & Explanation, a long-form field meant to type out the rationale behind your decisions. Here is the place to fully explain your trades (including which players are leaving the Red Sox to bring in new players), why you targeted specific free agents, and, any promotions from the minors you advocate or any options you declined to extend to a specific player. This is often multiple paragraphs, you can write up as much detail as you desire. That’s it, you’re done! At this point, you can either publish your blueprint to the forums or save it for later if you feel it’s incomplete. Thank you for joining us at Talk Sox. I hope you enjoy playing the role of general manager, at least for a moment! Start Your Payroll Blueprint Now

Okay, I made these changes, thanks!

What do you consider the default eight-man bullpen to be on OD?

To be clear, ignore my payroll point if you can make a case for it! Really, we just use that number as an outline so people can reference the previous year’s payroll.

Welcome to Talk Sox!

Hahahah, yes it is. Huge influx of users. We've been toying with the idea of expanding over there for months, just kinda randomly decided to go ahead and do it as an experiment.

https://bsky.app/profile/talksox.bsky.social

I thought this would be an interesting conversation piece for over here. Would the Twins Trade Pablo López? Examining a Potential Blockbuster with the Boston Red Sox - Twins - Twins Daily TWINSDAILY.COM The Twins need to shake up the core of the roster this winter. Would the club trade their ace for one of baseball’s best prospects, in a blockbuster deal?

Oh for sure. Lots of people hate on BTV all the time, I think it has a purpose if used correctly.

The Brewers are one of those teams that BTV can be thrown out the window with, at least on the pitching side of things. They're going to target a guy they like and who the Brewers like are often NOT what you expect. They're crazy-good at developing pitching and it's hard to predict what they find attractive.

Because people seem to be transitioning away from X/Twitter, at least in some capacity, I was asked to expand the default embed options for other social media sites. The following sites will now embed natively on the site just as Twitter has since forever. 1. Instagram 2. Facebook 3. TikTok 4. BlueSky 5. Threads 6. Twitter/X

Roki Sasaki has nudged Juan Soto out of the limelight, at least for a day. The young Japanese phenom announced he will come to Major League Baseball in 2025. Sasaki, unlike last year's import Yoshinobu Yamamoto, will post under the minor league rules due to his age and experience in NPB. Remember when Shohei Ohtani came to America to play and all teams were in on him? Same thing here. There will be no $300 million contracts in play as with Yamamoto, meaning most teams should be courting the young right-hander this offseason. Sasaki has been simply phenomenal in Japan. He pitched all of the 2024 season as a 22-year-old and only turned 23 this week. In parts of three seasons in NPB, he has a 2.10 ERA and 505 strikeouts in only 394 innings pitched. View full rumor

Yeah, I think trades are more likely. But hey, going full-on Padres would be pretty fun this offseason (even if it’s maybe a bad idea).

I don’t think the value is bad in the proposal, my quibble is with the players involved. I don’t think the Twins would want to go that route. Lopez is an incredible clubhouse guy on top of being a very good pitcher, it’s going to take a lot to pry him away.

It would take a lot more than Abreu to get Lopez from the Twins. I doubt Minnesota is interested in a lefty bat, honestly.

Yeah, the budget is just a loose guideline because the actual CBT number becomes almost impossible to calculate ahead of time. So we decided to basically ignore it to avoid unnecessary complication.

I accidentally missed Pivetta while importing. I have added him at the expense of Whitlock. I've also added slots so users can add dead money if they need to take on money in trade somehow.

I have the Sox budget set at $200m so when I'm a few percentage points over, it's still well under the CBT. Good point about Pivetta, let me look into that.