jacksonianmarch

Also, the sox got good grades in the draft due mostly to Scherff. Houck and Brannen got selected near their talent level. Scherff should have been a second rounder and getting him fifth was where a back end selecting team can make up ground. I don’t think the sox draft was overly ridiculous. I think DD just ensure he extracted the pick value without many reaches. That’s how draft experts love your draft.

It’s more dealing with temptation. You win a title, you wanna stay on top. Staying disciplined is important. Decimating your farm and spending big is how you close a window. He did that with Boston and he’s done it again with Chicago. The thing about Boston that he did do was leave the lower levels stocked and they all hit at the same time after he left. That’s rare

The Cubs peaked in 16, clearly, but last year they didn’t get the step forward from their kids and the older guys looked really old. Darvish will help keep the window open, but the Cubs have a downward trajectory. They’ll crash harder than the sox

Let me clarify. Theo is near or at the top of the pantheon of GM’s. He won in 2004 with an inherited club. He basically put the finishing touches and they won it all. His build started in 03 and the fruit was born in 07. Come the end of his sox tenure, the vets started fading and he shelled out big money to stay on top. Wasn’t worth it. He built the Cubs when he got there. He reached the pinnacle 15-17 and now he has to keep it going after decimating the farm and spending big. It’s called propping the window open. They’ve got 1-2 years before they’re upside down again, but I’m sure Cubs fans won’t care

Trending up and trending down is an unreliable actual predictor of system health. If you’re a farm with prospects at the top of the minors, you’re trending down since the expectation is you’ll graduate them. If you’re an absolutely abysmal farm like SF but are staring at a top 2 pick, you’re trending up since you’re about to get a potential generational talent with that pick. Any team banking on their farm to be carried by the years most recent draft, especially when that draft started with a pick near the end, is hoping and praying more than actually staying in reality. I did like the sox draft, to be totally honest. It was a very pitching heavy draft with Houck and Scherff at the top. The thing I don’t get at this point, though, is the system love for Brannen. I get he’s an intriguing talent, but he’s effectively an athlete they hope will hit. Those guys shouldn’t be top 10 in a system until they start hitting unless the system is very weak.

I am hoping we can break the curse I put on Yankee prospects with my avatar. I have had Mason Williams, James Kaprielian and recently Jorge Guzman as my avatars. 2 got traded and one faded into Bolivian /Tyson. I have moved onto Matt Sauer. Let's see if he can break the avatar curse

Theo has always had issues with the back end of the build. He knows how to rebuild. He knows how to bring the rebuild into the now. The sustaining the success part is where he overspends to keep a good thing going. The Heyward signing was puzzling from the start. The Lester signing was necessary to win the title they did. This signing is a great one. I think Darvish stays for 2 yrs and dominates

Everyone thinks they have a good looking draft. The sox draft is predicated on pitching, which we all know can change in an instant.

We don’t deal Gardy this year. We might exercise his option and move him for next year if we get Harper.

What I am wondering at this point is what will be the rotation in the OF. Gardy and Hicks are the best defensive options, but one is old and the other is oft injured. The other two guys are more average corner OF defensive types. Do we rotate them all through DH? Do we christen someone as the regular DH? I'd be willing to think we would probably split everyone evenly through the OF. Figure there are 162 games with each guy capable of playing 150 apiece should they stay healthy and fresh. That's 600 games between the 4 guys with only 486 to go around on defense. Maybe everyone sees the field 120 times in 2018?

I think we are speaking the same language. I am saying max of $7 mil per year, which means it could be $5-$6 mil. As it stands right now, if he was on a reasonable contract, he could be cut from this team. Dealing him for $15 mil of cap relief over the next 3 seasons seems like a better idea than outright cutting him. If all things were equal, he wouldn't make the team. Judge, Stanton, Gardner and Hicks would be the OFers with Frazier sitting in AAA awaiting injury.

Depends on the prospect. We got SD to eat all of Headley’s contract by giving Mitchell.

$21 mil per year for 6 years. A full year less and $10 mil per year less than Price got. Wow, the FA market has fallen a bit

I’m thinking a team that loses out on the trade market would be willing to pay around $7 mil max per year. If we include a prospect, that figure could skyrocket

It’s a type of seizure

I was responding to the “inability to win the division” comment, which is pretty irrelevant anyway. I do like the 2001 cutoff though. Nice cherry picking! The fact that the Giants have actually been the cream of the crop the past 6 years or so (minus last year) is disheartening for Yanks and Sox fans. The game is always at its best when the Yanks and Sox are fighting it out. That being said, we are back and ready to take the AL East and we are legit title contenders for the first time entering a season in a long time!

He seems like he is ancient, but he is only 34. He looked slow last year. The sox cannot take the risk that he doesn't come back healthy, so they need to add some other offense

Morrison or Duda would be a great signing as they would allow you to platoon Hanley and keep that option from vesting. I wouldn't be surprised if the sox have a contingent offer already squared up with LoMo

How many playoff games have you won the last two years?

I’ll take the number 1 spot and 4 in the top 28 while still having the number 2 farm

The sox have him by the balls right now. He's trying to elevate his market

I am not going to disagree with you. I am just saying we could tear apart practically anybody from 60 years ago when it comes to the standards set in our current place and time

Needed to liven this graveyard up a bit. You are welcome for getting reinvigorated

Judging times decades or in this case 7 decades in the future is always going to put a different slant on things. Yawkey was no different than 90% of America at the time, he just had the power to hate and suppress while others just had the power to hate. Doesn't make it right, but to judge now with 60+ years of progress beyond his time is short sighted I think. Go back even further. The guy who wrote our constitution owned slaves (Madison). 2 of our Declaration of Independence writers owned slaves. Heck, one of them had 6 kids with a slave. Our first president owned slaves. What I think people need to do is never forget our history but also stop going back and vilifying people for living in the times they lived. We should celebrate our progress rather than ripping down those who made this country what it is. We have a sordid past for sure, but it is how we became what we have become. Yawkey is a product of his time

You fired up yet? Any time someone says they're going to stop watching because the players are greedy don't truly understand the economics of the game and on a larger scale, our country. This is a capitalist economy. The goal of capitalism is letting the free market decide. I have literally no issue with the players making insane amounts of money. They are getting what they deem and what the market deems is their actual value. Degrading a player from getting their value is effectively un-American. What field of work do you do? When you got into the work place, did you get multiple offers? Did you ask for more money? Did you ask for different benefits? Did you have a lawyer pick apart the contract? This is the same thing the players are doing but on a much more lucrative scale. Also, any money JD leaves on the table ends up in a business man's pockets. It isn't going back into yours. Ticket prices won't come down if JD doesn't sign. I am all for the players, the guys who actually are the product of the MLB, getting money over some business man who owns the team and may have never done an athletic thing in his life. I am also okay with the business minds finding ways to maximize their profit margins. People don't buy baseball teams as charities, they buy them to make money. Baseball is a microcosm of the richest and best (my humble opinion) country in the world. We all get caught up in the fandom and it is fun as hell, but we also need to understand the cash involved and whether the guys who are working their asses off to be in peak physical shape who are throwing balls 95 mph or hitting balls 110 mph get the money or the guys at the top are. Throwing up empty threats of abandoning your team over the capitalism of baseball is just that, an empty threat and it makes you sound petty