jacksonianmarch

This is dumpster scraping

What is it with New England teams and suspended players....

When your team hired DD, you knew what you were getting. You were getting a guy who is willing to pay for top tier talent with either cash or prospects. In comes Price, Sale, Kimbrel and JDM. Second tier guys come in like Eovaldi and Pomeranz. In comes Thornburg and Smith via trade. In Miami, he restocked that team in a tear down. In Detroit, no such tear down existed and that team, while good for an extended period of time, is now in the middle of a LONG rebuild. DD will bring you to relevance but the back end cost will be very high. For three years now, your squad has won the east and you have a title. The Sox are poised to be a title contender again in 2019. If the cliff hits and the team sinks into mediocrity, can you really say it wasn’t worth it? This was the trade off.

I just looked at his numbers again. I’m baffled as to how a guy who sits at 99 and routinely throws well over 100 mph gets hit as hard as he does. Wow.

The more I read into this move, the more I think this move is about 2020. We identified a guy we could get rather cheaply who has a good hit tool and is developing a bit of a power stroke who hits the ball the other way. His offensive profile fits our ball club well as aside from Andujar, we have guys who K a ton. His contact approach will fit well here. He’s also an elite defender. After 2019, Tulo will move on and we’ll know more about Andujar’s ability to stick at 3b. The Yanks will have an FA replacement on the market in Rendon or Arenado should Andujar prove he cannot play the position. If he can play the position, then Lemahieu becomes Didi insurance. He can slide to 2B, Torres moves to SS and the band keeps rolling.

The pen being fixed by trade will only deepen the cliff. Let’s say you move Chavis to find a pen arm, then who takes over 1b on the cheap for 2020? Maybe Dalbec? Maybe Ockimey? Chavis is your best option for cheap production. I do see a reset coming. I think the Sox re-up Bogaerts and put all efforts into re-signing Betts and rolling with them as the center of a strategic rebuild. The problem for DD will be to find veterans on the cheap to replace expensive all stars and that is the riskiest of propositions. Heck, the Yanks had the benefit of a single rebuild year where we dealt off good players for talent that turned into Torres and Paxton whilst not shedding talent like Sevy, Judge, Sanchez, Andujar, etc. I doubt the Sox have that as I feel the Sox will be a playoff team this year. With them being way over the cap, though, they won’t get the draft benefit that they’d enjoyed in the past. They’ll offer QO’s to Sale, Porcello, and JDM, but all of those guys will move on and the Sox will get 3 fourth round picks. Nothing to sneeze at, but nothing like the years where the Sox would get a first and a supp or even just a supplemental pick

Guerrero isn’t the type of guy to get hit hard. He’s got an issue finding the plate

But the other thing is, losing Sale, Porcello, Xander or JDM radically alters the setup of your squad. My guess is you re-up Xander and let the others fly away. That team would be vastly inferior to the one that took home the title in 2018 and the one taking the field this year

Betts is the superior player to Harper and Machado. He wont see the length Machado and Harper will eventually get, but he should beat their AAV

The CBA concludes after the 2021 season. The sox are going to run into a major conundrum financially after 2019. It will be compounded when Jackie and Mookie hit FA after 2020. You're 2 years too early in terms of window for the CBA to help you

I saw Guerrero pitch in Fenway. The guy s*** his pants. He couldn’t locate to save his life

If you’re gonna live with an offensive hole at catcher, make sure it’s not a defensive one too.

All guys with promise. Rodney won’t take much to get but he’s being paid more than the theoretical limit would allow. The other guys will require a ton of talent to pry loose

You cannot deal either Leon or Vaz going into this year. Neither is good enough to be a starting catcher. Both are good defensively. If Vaz ever gets his act together on the pitch calling and framing aspect, he would win the job, but he hasn't. Leon seems to have the best relationship with the pitchers.

Who are you trading for with the theoretical cash limitations? I know people like to throw Iglesias out there, but he has a big contract now. You're not getting Leclerc. Throw out a name worth mentioning

There are, but the ones who give you more than Hembree are rapidly dropping in number. The last one I would consider an upgrade is Kelley

The Yanks don’t have a glaring hole. They have spots that could be upgraded, but there’s no glaring hole. The Sox have a glaring hole in the pen. Reasonably good pen guys are going for $5 mil or less on 1 year deals and elite pen arms are going for between $8 mil and $13 mil AAV over 2-4 years. If you’re willing to invest $240 mil in your team and a glaring hole could be adequately filled with another $5 mil, why not go that route?

If you transplanted the Babe from 1925 to now and make no caveats for nutrition exercise, etc, yeah he probably would have. That being said, if he was born in 1990 or so and had access to nutritionists, gyms, analytics, etc he’d be amazing

Probably not. I’m just saying we don’t necessarily have a hole where you say we do. And the fix you’re proposing will cost over $200 mil. Also, the Yanks aren’t the ones staring at a cliff coming after this year

Voit put up a 1.9 WAR in 47 games

Andujar did put up a near 3WAR season, so that’s not a hole. Cmon man. You have admitted your hole. Guys are coming off the board at less than $5 mil. This isn’t like a $30 mil AAV guy like Machado

I am still baffled by the process. If you’re gonna push your chips to the middle for one more season, then do it. Don’t tiptoe up to the line and stay behind it when you’ve got a hole. Right now, you’re pushing a good reliever into a role he’s never been in before (Barnes). That’s fine, he may be really good there. But anytime you do that, you have to have another guy who is capable waiting in the wings. The only other “capable” guy from last year was Brasier, and he has no track record and peripherals that point to a vastly different pitcher than the one you saw. For everyone pointing at Voit on the Yanks as a SSS warrior and touting Brasier, you’re being a hypocrite. But let’s say Brasier is what his peripherals show, a guy with a high 3’s ERA who ends up being good enough. What happens if the workload causes an injury and Barnes or Brasier miss time? Let’s say it’s early in the year, before deadline deals materialize. Who’s your 1-2-3 in the pen then? You’re gonna rely on Hembree? Workman? Your pen has no contingency. Kimbrel’s durability allowed you to play around with your bridge. Yeah, Kimbrel has a bad stretch in the playoffs, but he was good during the year. Who’s taking his durable effective reliever role? It isn’t like your team is built on a bunch of SP horses. The only guy you can pencil in for 6IP+ per start is Porcello until Sale proves he’s healthy. And those two guys are the only two capable of continually handing the ball off in the 7th or later. The other 3 averaged less than 6IP per start. You’re gonna have to get 10+ outs 60% of the time at least from your pen.

Greg Holland lost velocity and has sucked of late. Wilson was a homer machine last year with two straight years of high FIP. Vincent has pitched in two very good pitchers parks yet he’s still a high homer rate guy. He’s never posted an xFIP below 3.94. If that’s the best you got, then that makes me smile

Clearly he does. But Strickland is the most likely of the rebound group to do so, IMO. His stuff is great, he just lost command

I thought Strickland would have been a good buy low candidate. At this point, it's clubhouse cancer Kelley or bust it seems