jacksonianmarch

Not at all. Henry is a calculated guy. This was probably coming for a month

With DD going out the door, this thread is moot. No more money will be thrown at JBJ. He is a goner

I agree completely here. While the sox have had a great GM, a build GM, and a win at all costs GM, the steady constant has been Henry. He is probably the best owner in baseball right now, and he knows who he wants.

Seeing as my prediction skills have been top notch of late, I’ll give you a synopsis Henry, at the press conference, will thank DD for his 3 year run of success and awful year this year. He will use the term “bridge years” coming up with a heavy emphasis on building “depth” (read as prospects). He will then go on a GM search and grab a guy who is known to build farm systems. The Sox will sell off parts that are popular leading to backlash from the fans. Those die hards will understand. Those pink hats won’t. The revenue will fall off, but he will actually be helping the long term health of the team. It will take 3 years to rebuild the farm, but the fire sales of Mookie and ERod will help. Just when the farm is back in good shape, he will open the wallet and give his “build” GM a year to get on top. If they fail, he’ll bring in the next Dombrowski type to rise again

I was at work, otherwise I would have!

This also puts Cora on notice. The Sox will open a GM search and any time a GM comes on with a manager they didn’t pick, it leads to a potentially dicey relationship

Tauchman strains his calf, Urshela and Estrada return. One more rehab start from Sevy

This isn’t about the Sox not making the POs this year. This is about the extensions and the money spent and not making the POs. If DD said to Henry, hey, we might take a step back this year. Let’s add to the pen, let Eovaldi walk, let Sale play out his contract and scale back a bit, he’s still in the GM chair. But he hasn’t learned from his history. He had some damn good Detroit teams, but he gets enamored with his teams and ends up extending them stupidly beyond their usefulness. He left a wretched mess in Detroit and it’s heading that way here. I think Henry is smart enough to know that they have to rebuild while they have pieces that will get a return rather than pay their guys top dollar again. This absolutely means Mookie gets moved, IMO. And it also validates Shaughnessy who called this two months ago

Welcome to the rebuild

What happened to Tauchman. I’m working but saw he exited

They’d have to add him to the 40 man and they’d add to service time. If he ain’t gonna play, send him to instructs and don’t burn the clock

And my Paxton comment was on his last month. He was dominant to start the year. He had a knee issue that cost him three weeks. He was awful for a month or two after and has been nails since his bad Yanks-Sox start. He’s also young and his velocity is premium still

Health is a huge question. As is age for Price. As is declining velocity. Pitchers don’t accumulate WAR if they cannot pitch. And now you inject ERod into the discussion. Lol. Your initial point was Sale-Price-Eo over anything we had. Now you add in your best guy. I like ERod, he’s pretty good.

As a matter of fact, I think the Rays have shown the way to develop rookies. I hope we go about this for next year. We are likely to see Garcia and Schmidt provided good health at some point in 2020.

I actually like the opener strategy if you’re bringing along a rookie or trying to use a starter that needs to develop a third pitch. They did it masterfully with Chirinos and Yarbrough. Chirinos really blossomed and graduated from needing an opener. Yarbrough the same way. My bet is they use that same strategy going forward with kids who are incomplete but capable of going through an order twice.

What Cora did yesterday is NOT what TB does. It's not even what the Yanks had been doing. We have been using Cessa, Cortes, Hale, or Adams as the "bulk guy" with the intent that they'd go at least 3 and preferably 5 innings

Didn't say that at all. Listen man, you're just butthurt that your window closed and you're staring at the abyss. Have fun with that. I have said that Happ has closed well the past few seasons and he had a really solid 4 year run prior to this season. His velocity has been down all season and is finally spiking now. Maybe that portends good things, who knows. But he's thrown two straight shutout starts against solid offenses, so that helps. He could regress to the slug. He could stay useful. I still don't trust him in the POs and my hope is his end of year hot streak can stoke the flames of a trade in the offseason.

TB has been doing it using a starter as the second guy in. The theory behind it is sound. Teams usually have their best hitters batting 1-5. Having an opener go 1-2 innings then having a guy throw 5 innings allows the actual “starter” to avoid facing the better hitters three times

And the other thing you’re missing here is that Paxton has been getting better. He’s here next year and has absolutely lights out stuff. And we will have money available with a lot coming off the books and two big contracts coming off after 2020, one that’s entirely useless (Ells). We are going to be in on the Cole sweepstakes. I know Cash took heat for passing on Corbin, but Cole is the type of guy you break the bank on.

Sale had the same procedure Tanaka did. Inflammation (read as small tear) in the UCL, PRP and shutdown for 6-8 weeks. He returned without the upper part of his velocity. Looking at fan graphs, you’d think Tanaka lost nothing as his average bell hasn’t changed, but that’s not true. Tanaka had a fastball that he could throw from 90-97 when he came here. He’s locate 90-93 early in counts and then juice up for the K. When he came back after the rehab of the small tear, he lost the 95-97 range. His top FB velo was now 94. Losing the upper range on that FB took away the FB as a K pitch and turned him into a junker. Sale already has been having trouble attaining that upper level velocity that he needs to succeed. And the other thing you need to realize is that the PRP doesn’t always work (see Garrett Richards). He very well may end up with TJS. He was a question mark from the shoulder coming into this year. Now he’s a major question mark with the elbow going into next year. And that doesn’t even take into account that the Yanks have used him as a whipping post this year And yes, Severino has his question marks, but he’s throwing with velocity (95-97 in his rehab start) and had a non surgical injury. He’s likely to pitch for the Yanks this week. I’d take the healthy guy throwing hard over the guy on the shelf any day. You have to be kidding me with Price. He’s missed considerable time two of the last three seasons. This year, he couldn’t even average 5 inning per start. He’s perpetually hurt with arm related complaints and now will likely head into the offseason coming off surgery on his wrist at 34 with velocity falling. He’s done being a top level contributor. And it doesn’t help that we own him too. I’ve seen the Eovaldi stuff before. He had a magical playoff last year, but I’ve seen him dominate for a month at a time before. His stuff is great and at times he can overwhelm guys with it. But he loses command or bite and he gets slaughtered then he gets hurt. He’s a middling pitcher on a middling team heading downward.

You’d take now Sale, now Price and now Eovaldi over anyone in our rotation for 2020? That’s a homer statement and you know it. Sale and Price might not even be available for 2020. Eovaldi cannot stay healthy. Yes, you’ve got a young core on the offensive side. That’s going to get expensive. Outside of Bogey, they aren’t cost controlled. And you’re already up against it. I know the Yanks haven’t won a title, but they rebuilt from a decade of doing what DD did. Spend and spend and spend and trade off everything in the minors that has a pulse. And we got back to the ALCS with a young core and are currently crushing your squad with our backups! We may not win a title. But it doesn’t mean our march to 100+ wins for the second year in a row and the absolute humiliation of your squad at our hands this year isn’t meaningful. And saying the Steinbrenner’s don’t spend is dumb. They’re just not spending like a drunken sailor anymore. It sustains title contention or so they say

The 3 headed monster going into next year of Schmidt, Gil and Garcia will be fun to watch. Gil will likely be protected and go slow out of the gate in AA, but Schmidt and Garcia will be in AAA from the beginning and should be in the bigs at some point in 2020. The pitching is really, really deep there

And that doesn't count the trades from the farm we had to make to get good. Rutherford was a 1st rounder. He and Polo from the Nova deal went to CWS for Todd Frazier, David Robertson, and Tommy Kahnle We dealt 3 one time top 100 prospects for Gray in Fowler, Kaprielian, and Mateo We dealt Sheffield and a few others for Paxton We dealt Tate and Carroll for Britton We dealt Solak and Widener for Drury We dealt Drury and McKinney for Happ All those guys took years of drafting and developing

Moon, it is gonna be very long. I know you guys think the Yanks rebuilt in a trade deadline, but it took many years for that to happen. We retooled at that deadline and had a dominant farm system already. You have a dead farm system full of puke. You have to bring in the talent AND develop it. When we sold off in 2016, we already had the talent in the system and it was in the upper levels. Judge- drafted in 2013, debut cup of coffee 2016 Sanchez- signed as a 16 yr old in 2009, debut in 2016 Severino- signed as a 16 yr old in 2011, debut in 2015 Montgomery- drafted in 2014, debut in 2017 Andujar- signed in 2011, cup of coffee in 2017 We tore down Dealt Chapman for Warren, Torres, McKinney, Crawford Dealt Miller for Feyereisen, Heller, Sheffield and Frazier Dealt Beltran for Tate, Green and Swanson Dealt Nova for Tito Polo and Stephen Tarpley We also rebuilt with young talent via value type deals Shane Green for Didi JR Murphy for Hicks Gallegos and Shreve for Voit Diehl for Tachman We also dealt veterans or AAA talent for IFA money Warren, Feyereisen, McBroom, Wotherspoon, etc We dealt off Gray for a draft pick and Stowers We dealt Rumbelow for Then. We also dealt Cave for Gil All of these moves were in conjunction with signing talent and drafting talent. DD has done literally NONE of this. Yes, the roster still has talent. But you've got bloated and long term contracts for underperforming players. You have cheaper players headed for big paydays. And you have NOTHING behind them. It took the Yankees 5 years to accumulate their home grown talent. It took more time to develop it. It took years of shrewd trades. It also took major contracts expiring. The sox are in a position that they haven't seen since the departure of Cherington. Your farm is bereft of talent. It may take 5 years just to bring in the talent needed. It will take 5 years for all the contracts to fall off the ledger (outside of Bogey). With the way the sox have done business since DD came, I expect the sox to have a LONG rebuild. And if Henry allows the process to happen, he can actually have a big winner again and open up an even bigger window. Where I think Henry has trouble is when the fans stop coming, then he opens up his wallet again. That is not wise when rebuilding until the process is almost complete

With the cash already on the docket, becoming competitive will be tough. Becoming a WS competitor will almost be impossible. What is the point of spending hard and winning a WC spot and getting shellacked either in the WC game or ALDS while making your farm weaker in that pursuit? Part of the genius of the DD hire was the TIMING. The Jays and O's were the talk of the division and were clearly at their top with a steep fall ahead. Everyone could see it. Nobody thought that this was the age of the birds in the AL East. Both teams had big FAs coming up and their talent was pricing itself out. The Yanks were in the process of winning a WC berth, but everyone under the sun could see that roster was on borrowed time. JH pounced because he saw a power vacuum in the division and knew that he had the money and the farm system to turn a moribund twice cellar dwelling team and turn them into a 3 time division champion and world champ. His timing was impeccable to bring in a win now GM. Now, look at the rest of the AL. The Astros and Yanks are far and away the top talents in the AL. The Yanks are on the upswing. The Astros, with Verlander, their pickup of Greinke, Whitley coming into form and McCullers on the way back have another year of dominance in front of them before they start to take on water with big FA's needing replacement. (Greinke was essentially a Cole replacement). Springer has another year, but maybe Tucker can replace him. Beyond that, Brantley hits the market again after next year and Correa hits the market after 2021. But still, the Astros aren't falling any time soon. The Yanks aren't falling any time soon. The sox don't have the farm to trade for controllable talent. They don't have the cap space for big time talent. Henry is a smart guy. He sees the writing on the wall. He will rebuild. The timing isn't right to spend more