jacksonianmarch

Tremendously top heavy. Lacks depth. Depth gets you good trades and injury replacements. Top heavy leaves you with the ability to bring up potential starters or make a single blockbuster deal then nothing.

Good for him. Maybe the two years off healed whatever s*** was going on in his shoulder

12 in a row with Cole on the hill tonight!

Not true my friend. Not true. My frequency is directly tied to my work schedule.

For 2022, the Sox are in a bit of a quandary. This team is a pumpkin right now. Too many holes. Pen is a mess. Honestly, the only guys who’ve been consistently ok are Whitlock and Sawamura. Ottavino becomes an FA at season’s end and I think Whitlock jumps into your rotation next year. So for pen, you’ve got Taylor, Barnes, Sawamura and DHern. You need to add a closer and a high leverage setup man to that mix to be competitive. For rotation, Whitlock and Sale are locks, IMO. Houck is probably a lock as well, but as you’re seeing now, he’s not a three time through the lineup guy. If he doesn’t add a pitch, he might flip flop with Whitlock and jump into the pen. But for now you’ve got Sale, Whitlock, and Houck. Pivetta likely earns the 5th spot. Eovaldi likely ends up as your 2. There’s your 5. You could live like that, but having two rookie/first time full time big league starters is asking for injury. Bloom will add a veteran starter. My bet is it’ll be a Morton type near the end of their careers on a short term deal, not a high end talent on a long term deal. Lineup, I think JD opts out. I honestly do. He should land himself a 3 yr deal and if he does so, you allow it. You sign Schwarber as your DH and roll from there. Verdugo, Kike, Devers, Xander is a good starting point, but Xander is entering his final year. Bloom is a value guy. There’s no way in holy hell he allows Xander to opt out. If they don’t negotiate an extension, I do think he will be moved. There’s no shortage of good SS’s hitting the market and maybe he can snag one of them cheaper than the cost of Xander’s extension. Devers is also getting up there in service time. My bet is Bloom will try to negotiate something with him, but it sounds like Devers is a one year at a time guy. If they don’t negotiate an extension, 2022 will be his final year in Boston.

s***, thought I was in the other thread.

On July 5, the Sox were comfortably atop the ALE at 54-32, 10.5 games ahead of the Yankees and 4.5 games up on the Rays. Since then the Sox are 18-24 and have given up 13.5 games to the yanks and 11.5 games to the Rays. That’s not a swoon, that’s a collapse

Wow, didn’t see that coming

One thing the sox have going for them is this. Their finish to the season is against bad teams. You want to play bad teams after the deadline. Bad teams get worse when theyve dealt off their talent and waived the white flag

Those teams were also massively talented with expectations on paper of contending.

I meant collapse like this. Total team failure. Starters, pen, defense, hitting, baserunning

A $100 mil floor would mean the $180 mil acts like a cap. They don’t want a cap. And a $100 mil floor doesn’t mean much if the teams struggling to get to $100 mil just signed a bunch of guys on one year deals. The players union wants long term deals. A proposal like above would not meet that goal

Teams don’t collapse like this late and recover. If the Sox make the PO’s it’s because the A’s collapsed as well

There’s zero chance the union play’s that

Pivetta is probably tired. He just popped past 130IP. With the pandemic and an inconsistent 2019, he hasn’t gotten this high in IP since 2018.

This Jimmy Fund week is important, but it doesn’t make for great viewing

Pivetta doesn’t have much tonight

Multiple issues with Barnes. 1. He lost fastball command up. When you throw 99, controlling the upper part of the strike zone is key. Far easier to drop the head of the bat on a ball than rise to catch one. 2. He lost breaking ball command entirely. 3. He’s lost all confidence. He’s not a standard closer. Most closers can get gut punched one day and come out and dominate the next. Barnes is a front runner and soft as puppy poo. When s*** doesn’t go his way, he turtles. That’s not really something you can fix. It’s a mentality that he just doesn’t have. If I was Cora, I’d bring him into a low leverage situation and tell him you can only throw high fastballs. That’s it. Once he regains confidence in his fastball, the breaking ball will come back

Cora and Boone both pulled their closers last night with the save opp still intact.

After the four vs the A’s, yanks go on a stretch of 19 of 23 games vs sub .500 teams. Only 4 games vs over .500 vs Toronto

Chapman trying to blow it

Eventually it’ll be correct. Heaney does suck

Yanks probably gonna lose tonight. Heaney isn’t very good and Morton owns us

My thoughts exactly. Didnt the Yanks lose the first 7 games to the sox in 09 and finished 10-9 against them?

The talent finally showed up. That and the jolt of lightning the trade deadline and the farm gave us should keep this rolling. Now we won't roll off 10 in a row again, I do think this team is capable of playing .600 ball the rest of the way considering their cakewalk schedule