jacksonianmarch

Your payroll is cooked for the next 5 years assuming you keep the band together. Any savings from Hanley will be re-allocated towards arb raises and keeping/replacing Kimbrel and Pomeranz. Pablo's savings from the following year will be allocated towards re-signing/replacing Sale and the other arb raises as well. With JDM in the fold, I highly, highly doubt you can go much further in the "adding" phase. Now you are just trying to keep the band together

Didn't see this mentioned anywhere. MRI shows a mild flexor tendon strain. The average length of DL time last year for flexor tendon strains in pitchers was 6 weeks, although Pom has had this before and returned faster. This will likely keep him from breaking camp in Boston as he won't be stretched out.

40 days might be a bit much, to be totally honest. A couple weeks for a prospect to get a rolling start, 40 days takes us into early May. If Andujar is indeed the better player, then he should play out of the gate

Cashman maintains that service time will have nothing to do with his decisions. I think he’s full of s***. There’s no way you forgo a year of control for 2 weeks in the minors.

DD came in with the stated plan to win now and he did. You cannot fault him for executing the strategy that he told John Henry he would employ. Some of the prospect huggers wont like it. Some of the people on here thought Ben was building for a 10 yr run of dominance. Well, DD comes in, makes your team win the ALE twice in a row and a strong contender for a 3rd. Yes, he created a window, but JH wanted a winner after 2 yrs of apathy towards the sox. He delivered.

The sox advantage is that their starting pitching, if it reaches its potential, could be scary. Sale and vintage Price would be sick. The question is whether vintage Price still exists

Pom says nothing major, just forearm tightness. We shall see

Everyone will be in on next years FAs except for Boston. The market will explode again. The Dodgers and Yankees will drive the market

How was the velocity? To be honest with you, for pitchers expected to start for my team, I don’t care about performance in ST. I do care about their velocity. Many a pitcher came to spring down 3-4 mph and it turned out to be a serious shoulder issue

It might turn out to be genius. We have two hot shot kids at two positions in the infield on a team expected to contend for a WS title. Why not bring in a young veteran who can hit for power and handle the defense at both positions?

This is the genius behind getting Drury. The kid can play. He’s a natural 3b who played a flat UZR/150 season last yr as a regular second baseman. He can cover either position of need. If one player pushes the envelope, he switches to the other

I think it is an easy choice as well. The easy choice from a GM perspective is to roll with Drury and Wade out of the gate. Have both be supplanted by May 1 by Andujar and Torres and move Drury to the supersub role, while sending Wade back down. That is unless Wade or Drury dominate or Torres and Andujar tank in the minors

He did it again!

Andujar is taking this seriously. Drury might be the 2b out of spring

Holt will be temporary. Once Pedroia comes back, Nunez will shift into Holt’s roster spot and Holt will be cut

A “rising fastball” doesn’t rise, it just doesn’t drop as fast as a normal fastball. It has a lot to do with high spin rates

Isn’t that special

Andujar has a very quick bat and generates strong exit velocities. He’s a hitter, period. If he played defense like Torres, we wouldn’t have gotten Drury. If the kid can show improvements with the glove, he’ll be manning the hot corner for a long, long time in NY

Also, I guarantee that most of these guys got initial offers elsewhere. Tyler Chatwood was the only one with enough sense to take one. He’s likely to be the second highest paid starter on the market this year.

It also shows you the power of the Yankee and Dodger spectre. It was out there early that the Yankees were staying under the cap. Once they got Stanton before the winter meetings, they were out on nearly everyone else. The Dodgers, shortly after the winter meetings, make their salary shifting deal and make it clear that they are out. The Giants then make a series of deals for players under contract and push them to the cap. Once the really big markets are out and Boston is one of the only ones left, they can modestly outbid other teams and have their picks of the litter. The cap is a very big penalty. If you’re over the cap and sign a QO player the following year, you lose INTL bonus money and an extra pick in the draft. The lost INTL bonus money attacks the team’s base, meaning that it also severely impacts the 85% extra they can deal from. You lose $1 mil in INTL funds from a large market budget of $4.5 mil and the penalty in actuality takes you from an $8.325 mil budget down to a $6.475 budget. That’s either one top 5 signing or upwards of 8-10 near 6 figure bonuses on INTL players (and these are the ones NY and LA hit on for some reason). The extra 5th round pick loss is another $320,000 loss to your draft pool which also hits the 5% overage on that money as well and takes your 5th rounder away also. They need to re-do this because now only the truly elite, game changing players will get big money while the second tier guys will have to settle for sub arbitration level contracts on short terms

Going to the pitchers... 1. Sale vs Severino. Sale has the track record and by all accounts had a career season last yr. Severino burst on the scene in 2015, but struggled in 16 before becoming an ace in 2017. Sale and Sevy finished 2 and 3 in the Cy Young. Sale had the better year, but ZIPS projects them both to be around the 5.5-5.7WAR mark for 2018. I think the likelihood is Sale outperforms Sevy with the potential that they are a wash. 2. Tanaka vs Price. The tale of the dominant veteran arms who were neither dominant or dependable last season. Price was coming off a durable, albeit career worst 2016 to develop a "tear in his elbow" and finish the year unable to start. Price had an alarming velocity dip in 2016, but rebounded to his prior levels in an injury filled year. If Price can sustain that velocity and stay healthy, then he could be 1A to Chris Sale's 1. There's also a strong likelihood that the elbow goes altogether and he needs it fixed. Heading to Tanaka, he hit 30 starts for the second year in a row, yet didn't reach 6IP per start for the first time in his career. This was due to a disastrous May where he pitched to a ridiculous 8.42ERA with 11HR in 31IP. After May, Tanaka dropped the percentage of his FB/sinker and increased the slider/splitter and returned to prior dominance with a 3.54ERA and a 1.05WHIP in the last 101.2IP. Tanaka set a career high in K/9IP last yr, up to 9.8K/9, yet the HR rate was insane at 1.77/9IP. After the adjustment, his HR rate dropped down to 1.24/9IP, which is around his career norm. Outside of an odd month, Tanaka has been remarkably consistent from 2016-2017. Durable, strong K rates, low walk rates, high HR rates, solid ERA's and WHIP's. My anticipation is that we will see a 30 start mid 3's ERA, 1.00-1.10WHIP with a high K rate again. Price has the upside to be better than that, but a bit more injury risk as his elbow issues aren't as remote as Tanaka's are. Also, Tanaka finished 2017 on fire and lit things up in the playoffs. I'd go Yankees here with upside to the sox. If Price is healthy and rediscovers his velo for good, he will outperform Tanaka. I think the likelihood is Tanaka outperforms Price but the potential is there for Price to be better should he regain his heat and his health 3. Pomeranz vs Gray. Pomeranz is your prototypical high performing short outing performer. Dominant numbers wrapped in a 5.4IP per start package. He displayed 30+ starts for 2 straight years as well leading to durability without length. Gray had been an ace with a lights out playoff history. Then 2016 hit and he was injured. He didn't fully recover until May of 2017. He returned as a better K pitcher than he displayed previously with his prototypical good but not great command. He posted a mid 3's ERA while reaching 6IP per start almost on the nose. At his peak, Gray was a 200+IP performer who could hold an ERA near 3 for a whole season. If Gray returns to that, he will be far better than Pomeranz, even if Pom is blowing people away in limited outings. The current Sonny Gray, though, is an interesting comp to Pomeranz. I think the likelihood is a wash as Sonny is moving to NYY and his HR rate already doubled after the deal. The potential is there for Gray to regain his Oakland form and really take off in this rotation as the #3. 4. Porcello vs Sabathia. This is another battle of durability vs effectiveness, although the roles were reversed. CC came up huge in the playoffs for NYY and had a resurgent season, which earned him another payday. CC seemed to wrestle one more year out of father time and even saw a resurgent fastball in 2017. Knee issues and a lights out pen caused CC to miss time and be pulled early in games by trigger happy Joe Girardi. They'll still have to handle him with kid gloves and don't discount the strong chance he ends up on the DL at some point in 2018, either due to a need for maintenance or a real issue. Porcello followed up a Cy Young season with a clunker. Yes, he reached 200IP, but his 4.65ERA was validated by the advanced metrics as not being a fluke. As bad as CC's HR rate was, Porcello had his beat by nearly 33%. Who knows who the real Porcello is. Is he the Cy Young contender who turned in an absolutely dominant 2016? Is he the guy who posted 2 seasons out of the last 3 with ERA's over 4.50? Looking at his history, Rick has posted ERA's over 4 in 6 out of his 9 seasons with one of the sub 4 seasons being 3.96 in 2009. One cannot discount the possibility that Rick is more an innings eater than a real effective starter. I think this one is an interesting wash and probably mostly dependent on CC. I think Rick posts a 4-4.5 ERA but stays healthy. CC could post another sub 4ERA, but he might miss half the season with knee issues. 5. Montgomery vs E-Rod. Right now, it is advantage Yankees since ERod is looking to miss a month, but the timeline might be moving up. Even when healthy, J-Mont posted a WAR in his rookie year that E-Rod never reached (2.7). E-Rod is more powerful, yet J-Mont has more command and a deeper arsenal. Both are left handed. I think ERod has the type of arsenal that could become ace-like, but his injury history and maddening inconsistency stand in the way of reaching that. Montgomery doesn't have that kind of ace like potential, but he projects as the safer and more reliable middle of the rotation pitcher that he already showed he could be. I think likelihood goes to NYY but upside is clearly in Boston's favor So, of the 5, I have likelihoods going to Sale, Tanaka, and Montgomery with washes being Porcello-Sabathia and Pomeranz-Gray. The upsides, I have a wash with Sale-Severino, then decidedly going to Price, Gray, Porcello and ERod.

Fangraphs also thinks Judge is going to turtle and barely reach an .800OPS. He was terrible from the ASB to the last week of August and still ended up with a .938OPS in the second half. The guy has superhuman strength and an incredible eye. I think the eye will come in handy to a ridiculous degree this season as umpires should start calling his actual strike zone

The CBA was different when Hanley signed. I think MLB pitched what was supposed to be a sweetheart deal to MLBPA and convinced them that all teams will try to win, etc, etc, etc. but once the big teams reloaded through the farm and avoided the big penalties to reset their lux tax, it left the middle level players without homes. This will continue without some easing from the MLB. The s***** part in all this is the fact that we are going to see another work stoppage. The owners are absolutely raking it in with NYY and LAD re-setting while still being super teams. The fact that there are 3 stacked teams in the NL and 4 in the AL has led everyone else to either try for a token wild card spot or rebuild. It’s the perfect storm and the free agents of this year are feeling it

I’m not sure there are many non sox fans who’d have the Sox ahead of the Yanks offensively.

I’m more talking about last year only