Dojji

Well isn't that exactly what you're doing by highlighting 2-3 months of uncharacteristically BAD performances for each of these pitchers? If you didn't understand the point he was making I'd be happy to explain it to you but I think you do and are just being a bit of a dick today. Odds are Masterson is a complete washout, his velo and command were so far down this year I think he may simply be done. Any of the others could legitimately bounce back and have years much closer to their career norms, and if they did it would put the rotation on pretty solid footing. Although a new top starter would still be a good thing either way. Although I disagree that we also need a #2. I think odds are Eddie is ready to step up and be that guy, or will be by the end of the year. If we could squeeze Wei-Yin Chen into the budget on top of the guy we bring in to be our #1, however, you wouldn't see me complaining. I think Chen is vastly underrated and a very very good pitcher.

DD's plan is probably better than mine. In his shoes the plan I'd put in front of Henry and company would basically say "We're going to have to go into the tank for 3 years in otder to clear the dead wood and cycle in some fresh talent. Here's how I'd prime the roster to make the team as competitive as possible in 2018, and here's why I think you can sell a rebuild to Red Sox fans." I think our fanbase is more realistic than the FO gives us credit for, and we can be excited by just watching the kids play and mature. The storyline every year doesn't always have to be about the Red Sox are going to win it all this year. We Sox fans are in it for the long haul and not going anywhere, we will still come out for a bad year if we know that there's something worth watching if we do, such as the assembling of a young core that might take us to the top later on. For most of us that would be fine, just as long as we know what the plan is and it seems good to us. Not sure Henry, an outsider, realizes this though, remember he came here from a Marlins organziation where the only way to draw fans was to win and that's part of his attitude in Boston, which I think is his mistake. We are not as quick to flock to the exits as he seems to believe. And I think after the last 2 years of aging expensive players not helping the team you can easily sell a partial rebuild to the fanbase, particularly with some of the young guys like Eddy, Betts and Bogaerts showing their potential. If we didn't abandon the team in the last 2 years, a rebuild isn't going to change that -- in fact seeing the team communicate about, and then act according to, a plan to restack the team around that young core would probably be an improvement over the makd-it-up-as-we-go-along plan we seem to see laid out before us right now and may even improve fan response. We know our baseball here in New England, and a lot of us know the difference between shrewd moves that showed foresight and planning and reflex moves, and would respond better to a franchise that did more of the former and a whole lot less of the latter! The only question is can you sell it to the front office, because it will mean a risk of reduced revenue (although not as much as they seem to be afraid of) and they haven't been prepared to accept that risk in the past. I personally suspect that both Theo and Cherington are no longer here because the front office will not accept the logical consequence the old core moving on and/or running out of steam, or of needing to reload and regroup for another run -- they want the harvest season all the time without spring planting and summer tending that sometimes has to go with it. New Englanders know better than that.

I think there's a very real emotion in the Cubs FO that This Is The Time. They had a great finish behind their youngsters last year and I think the Cubs FO sees its contending window as being the next 4-5 years or so -- that's Theo's time window to win at least one World Series with the team they've assembled. I think they'd be very willing to go beyond their budget to build the roster they have now into a surefire contender and Price would be a big part of making that happen. It's not like Theo didn't do the same thing several times when he was our GM. The Cubs fanbase is just as rabid a fanbase as we have and desperate for a bit of glory, that fanbase would go nuts all year long for a team that they thought was primed to get over the top. Even financially it might make sense to go over budget to bring in the pieces that make the fans excited, especially if such a move does also help the baseball side. Price does both for them.

Clutch is irrelevant. Especially when you're only measuring clutch from one relief appearance by a starter

An odd conclusion. This team makes bank. There is no reason -- none -- why they can't shell out some money for a top ace.

I thought my statement was clear. Qualitatively either Cueto or Price are possibly better, but Greinke has been more consistent, is as durable as either of the others, and has fewer current question marks regarding his physical ability to pitch.

And Palodios, you're not technically wrong, but I would like to remind you of a few things. especially Andrew Bailey and Joel Hanrahan. "Good enough but cheaper" mentality brought those men to Boston. Not surprising that the franchise is cool on the concept.

I would be very happy to see him pitch here. In my mind he's not the best SP on the market but he's the SP with the best combination of health, durability, skill and lack of quesiton marks.

Don't think we have the pieces for Fernandez. Given the Marlins MO of looking for big league ready talent, Fernandez would probably cost us Eddie plus a lot more, and that's not a step in a positive direction for the franchise right now.

I suspect that's the reason we went and got Hanley ITFP. He was hinting at retiring this year, bringing in Hanley ensured that if he lost focus or retired we'd have a decent DH. It was a case of Cherington overthinking things of course, but at least that would explain what happened.

"These guys are professionals": and yet whenever I bring up Zach Greinke you beat me over the head with a social anxiety problem that hasn't reared its head in half a decade.

That does not mean that you load up on very cheap relievers and wait for lightning to strike. Not when you're a big market club

All the more reason to stack another elite arm on top of the aging Koji.

No one wants to pay full price. We just had a postseason where the bullpen proved to be a key element in who won the World Series, and this happened at the time when we were in the market for relief pitching. It's just bad timing but bad timing isn't an excuse for a big market team to accept another cellar year so you pay what it takes.

In the sense that only someone with no brain would do it.... Seriously, I do not get the cult of Buchholz in the front office. The man is practically a sunk cost at this point. He's completely unreliable to actually give you innings and his quality of performance isn't even that good anymore. Over the last 2 years he's given you a 4.51 combined ERA and less than half the innings he should have, and now he's over 30 I don't see that improving. Due to his now-legendary fragility you frequently have to wind up overpaying at the deadline to get someone to do the innings Buchholz was supposed to be dependable for, every single year, and they just keep walking into the punch over and over and over again when it comes to this guy. His constant tenure on the DL costs you more money than he actually earns and talent into the bargain just to find ways to get those innings pitched bercause these guys just can't seem to learn from history when it comes to Clay Buchholz. You had an opportunity to make him someone else's problem simply by not exercising the option, why not do exactly that and bring in an actual durable pitcher for the same money? The only answer I can come up with is that either someone's got some ego in play with this kid, or they're still seeing stars based on his "potential." The man's 31, he is what he's always going to be and I'm not happy with what that means for him. If I had my druthers he'd break camp in the bullpen just to see if that might help us get a full year out of him. As it is the best news I can say about Buchholz is that we know there will be about half a season's worth of innings that some rookie is going to need to pitch.

That's three times you've committed the false dilemma fallacy in this thread alone. Acquiring a proven starter and a proven closer are not mutually exclusive unless you make the bizarre assumption that we have to acquire a starter in a trade and can do so in no other way. We still have tons of potential minor league talent, so the choice of whether to make big trades or to build the farm system is your second false dilemma (in fact the only guy I'm even worried about losing is Margot and he's by no means a lock to be a superstar). And pretending that doing ANYTHING with Joe Kelly in the offseason would be a sufficient move to form an alternate to bringing in battle-proven relief arms is the kind of ridiculous ersatz substitute thinking that got us in this trouble in the first place. Nothing we do with the retreads will make the top arms unnecessary. That's why they're retreads. pretending you can use retreads instead of proven arms in key late innings situations is exactly the kind of failthought that got Ben fired.

In other words would it be fair to say that the world is literally upside down?

Ahh. I take it you're one of those people who's under the delusion that the bullpen is like the positional bench and like the bench should be full of retreads, failed starters, has-beens and second stringers. Buddy that may be how they used to do it but that ain't how baseball's played these days. Relief pitching *is proven* to be as critical to a world series run as starting pitching and the lineup Quality relief pitching is enjoying a renaissance because good teams have discovered that having a great bullpen is what turns a good team into a championship team. Feigning shock when the price of talent reflects the significance of that renaissance helps no one

It's an example of a principle. The bigger the example the more obvious the point. Is it really so hard to love a result but hate what had to be done to get there that we have to mock Kimmi for saying it out loud?

And what value was actually given up? None of these guys are in any way locks to make the big show.

Can one really not love the result and hate what it took to achieve the result? I mean the end of WWII was a pretty objectively good thing, whether you lost the war or won it the fact that it was over did increase your standard of living and life expectancy, especially if you were a military age male, but I think we would have all appreciated it, especially the Japanese, if a way had been found to achieve that result without becoming the only nation ever in the history of the world to actually deploy nuclear weapons.

Exactly. I'm a bit of a prospectophile myself but you can't get attached to any one guy before he's touched the big leagues. We've seen some guys who looked like sure fire big leaguers just disappear from one year to the next (anyone remember Garin Cecchini when he looked like the second coming of Wade Boggs?) so if you can return big league value for prospects it's usually wise to move on it. (This is also why I like to try to keep my eyes open for potential pleasant surprises. Every now and again you get a guy who turns out to be a significant piece of the puzzle for a year or two, who everyone overlooks because he wasn't hyped -- prospect uncertainty runs both ways and people forget that sometimes)

And what is a top 5 relief arm in all of baseball worth? Ask the Royals what Wade Davis is worth! Ask the Mets what they would have been willing to pay for a closer who made his saves! Do not underestimate what a top shelf bullpen can do for a team. The Royals just won the World Series with neither an offense nor a rotation that was in any way elite, simply because the bullpen didn't give up runs and allowed the team to keep fighting back in late innings.

Greinke has the least health concerns. He's the one I want.

I would be very much interested in Matt Harvey if I thought the price was right.