Dojji

You're not looking at the big picture. The big picture is, where do you find the rest of his innings, and how does finding that guy affect the cost-benefit analysis? The better that other guy is, the less you needed Buchholz in the first place. And the worse that other guy is, the more Buchholz' disappearance hamstrings the team in midseason, exactly when it's the most expensive to try and impose fixes. The fact is that his lack of durability means that even bringing Buchholz in carries multiple additional moving parts over other starting pitchers, and in engineering terms, "moving parts" is a synonym for "things that can go wrong." You have enough disasters and setbacks over the course of a normal baseball campaign without deliberately inviting them. No to Buchholz. No, no, no, and yet again, no.

Agreed. Not every upgrade is worth pursuing. Maintaining the financial flexibility to go get the "right talent" for next year, and the year after that, is an advantage all its own.

I don't care if Buchholz paid us to pitch here. No more. As far as I'm concerned he's burned his bridges here. He has ace type stuff, but his body and his brain robbed him of the ability to ever do so consistently. You can call it silly, but if I've put my money on a square and rolled loser after loser, at a certain point, laws of probability be damned, I'm at least going to pick a different square. So you admit that 80 or so IP is a small sample size. That's a step in the right direction. With a bit of luck we might actually get you not to discard Buchholz' lifetime body of work in favor of his most recent 80 inning stretch. But only if you're prepared to actually use your mind. By all means, be my guest, I hear the procedure is painless and quite seriously underrated in today's society I'm not madly in love with Eovaldi either. Personally I would not shed one salty tear if Eovaldi walked in the offseason. Neither he nor Buchholz are a guy you build your roster around. They're both supplemental pieces at best. At least Eovaldi doesn't have the stink of being a supplemental piece that we expected to evolve into a franchise cornerstone and didn't. I wouldn't say "sour grapes," so much as "the burnt hand shuns the fire." Your mileage may vary, but I've had enough of the endless vein of disappointment that is Clay Buchholz. At least Johnson is exceeding his own expectations.

Half an ace is worse than no ace at all. Losing an ace type pitcher can torpedo a season. Why deliberately invite that? When Buchholz was here my biggest beef with him is that he would always be nonexistent around the deadline, meaning that EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR, we had to burn minor league resources for emergency replacements to pitch the innings he should be pitching. You've heard of the gift that keeps on giving. The man was the gift that keeps on taking. A literal white elephant that forced us to bleed talent in order to keep him. No more. All done with that. Even with better SP depth options, I'd rather just give those guys experience and keep the white elephant far from our trough, thank you.

Yeah, funny how nobody is excited to bring in a broken down, badly inconsistent pitcher who wavers maddeningly between adequate, excellent and horrible and hasn't pitched a full season in 6 years... And yet is excited by the young lefty coming into his own, producing at a steady pace and making a serious bid for a bottom of the rotation spot next year. Why it's almost as if stability, consistency and durability were incredibly valuable assets in a starting pitcher as long as the production level is at least adequate.

Buchholz is not our problem anymore. He and his inconsistency are free to do whatever they want to do without aggravating me in the slightest.

Good call on Price. His last couple years have given him a bit of a bad impression, as a bit of a misfit and locker room outsider. It has indeed been nice to see him step up and take a leadership role in the rotation in the absence of Sale.

Solid picks, Moonslav. I agree, Barnes gets the short end here a lot. Probably because of the Kyle Farnsworth vibe he emits.

Challenge: This is a great team that's gotten contributions from a lot of different players. Not all of them are really getting the attention they should have Pick both a pitcher and a position player who have been very effective while flying under the radar and not getting the credit they deserve. Pitcher: Brian Johnson. Has been a revelation as the 6th/7th starter. Showed a lot of improvement over previous seasons and has burned over 80 innings already this year between starting and relief. Has done a great job of stabilizing the rotation in the wake of injuries to E-Rod, Wright and Sale. Position player: Brock Holt. I don't think people remember this, but there was some talk last offseason of trading or cutting Holt. Glad that did not happen. After a tough season last year, Holt has bounced back to vintage form, and has played a huge role in covering for the injuries we've sustained on the infield, especially at second base. Holt has played everywhere on the field but pitcher, catcher and CF. When it's easier to list the positions you haven't played, you know you've been around a little. He's not a superstar but we would have been a lot worse off with just about anyone else taking his place on the roster. Honorable mentions: I considered Brasier for pitchers, but honestly, comparing where we'd be without Brasier vs where we'd be without Johnson, I have to give Johnson the edge. I also considered Moreland as my unsung position player. It was basically between him and Holt, but I had to give the edge to Holt because of the versatility factor, and the fact that Moreland has been tailing off a bit lately.

Swihart needed to distinguish himself on the offensive side of the game to earn more playing time. And he very much did not accomplish this. Right now I'd rather focus on Swihart's utility and get Vazquez a lot of time behind the plate to bring him up to speed on both sides of the ball for the playoffs

I don't honestly care. We have to be the favorite against any opponent right now. Let's just get there, figure out who we're facing, and hope to win one game at a time. Picking and choosing our opponent is arrogant, and if a team is strong, we'll wind up facing them eventually. In other words, if the A's are hotter than hell and steamrolling opponents in September like they are right now, it doesn't matter if we encounter them in the DS or the CS, we'll still have to cool them off and find ways to win. Whoever is still alive, as long as we're in the playoff race, we're going to have to go through them and they through us. I don't think it matters when or where we meet them, especially because we almost have HFA locked up throughout the playoffs anyhow.

Batting average is useless without context. There's a lot of low average hitters who made very good careers for themselves. Guys like Gene Tenace, Jason Giambi, Ryan Howard, Adam Dunn, Vince Coleman, those guys hit to a pretty poor average, but they were good hitters. Heck, Dwight Evans tended in that direction more years than not, and he was at least good enough to be a Hall of Fame candidate, even if he didn't get in. The problem with JBJ isn't the low batting average. It's the complete package that lacks power or top end speed. Singling out the AVG component as *the* problem isn't any more useful than singling out the lack of HRs. That, and if the problem were simply "make more contact," I'm sure that JBJ would have figured it out by now.

I hope Sale isn't feeding us a line. Right now, I'm very satisfied with the rotation we have. It doesn't always look pretty but we have a chance to win every game, that's all I can ask. The depth is stepping up, and if that affords us the luxury to phantom-DL our ace, I'll take it. The ability to afford that luxury IMHO comes down to 1 guy on this team who has stepped up like a man. Brian Johnson has been doing work in his last several starts. He looks like a man who deserves to be a big league starter. Every team in this league has at least one starter on their team that's worse than him (including this one in the person of Drew Pomeranz). I'm convinced that if there's justice in the world, BJ has pitched his last Minor League inning. He reminds me of a lefthanded Bronson Arroyo. For a spot starter, the dude has thrown 80 innings of decent ball, not counting what he did in the minors. He deserves to take the ball every 5 games. This guy is only our 7th starter and he's as good as many #3s. Johnson has done a great job of positioning himself either as a cost controlled option for the bottom of our rotation next year, or a useful trade chip for something else we want from another team. I think he has definitely established some legitimate trade value for himself with his solid performance this year. I know if I was an executive on another team looking for solid depth arms upgrade my rotation, Johnson would be one of the pitchers I'd be asking about.

For the record: Brian Johnson's splits Against RHH .771 Against LHH .670 If we need a LOOGY, chances are he's already on the roster

All the less reason to be interested in Liriano. I don't believe in LOOGYs personally, if I'm going to spend a roster spot on a reliever I want them generally effective, not situationally effective. And frankly most of our rivals are RHH heavy at the moment anyway, with the exception of NYY.

Francisco Liriano makes no sense at all. There is no reason to bring that man onto this team. He's an incredibly inconsistent aging power lefty with dimished stuff and no command who hasn't had a good season in 3 years. Does that sound like our savior to you? I have every confidence in Brian Johnson to outperform Francisco Liriano down the stretch.

I don't think the game should be sped up. Half the excitement of this game comes from tension and anticipation. I would, however, be fine with rules that prevented the shortstop from taking a pre-pitch position to the right of the bag, and the second basemen to the left, if the league wanted to go that far breaking up the overshift. Let the outfield shade however they want to. That would still allow the shortstop to take a position behind the bag for a more diluted form of shift, while opening up some field for pull hitters. Seems like a reasonable compromise

I disagree with this. The farm was largely "eviscerated" by the graduation of Betts, Beni and Devers. Other than Shaw, most of what DD traded were A ballers who were multiple years from contending for MLB time. If those are the guys near the top of our prospect charts, that's already the sign of a pretty weak system. The fact is that the real damage was done because Cherington's drafts didn't work out very well, especially on the pitching side of the game. lol I still think BC would make a good GM for a mid to small market team. He didn't understand what the Boston Red Sox are all about, but his management style might work with a team like the Reds, or the Rockies, or even a hard-luck midmarket like the Mariners. Partially agree. But, if you need a good closer, and don't have a good internal option then your only options are to leave a festering sore at a key position, or pay the price free agent closers will agree to.

No one is suggesting otherwise. However, if you're not prepared to pay what the market will bear, you'd better be a lot better at developing pitching from within than we currently are.

There are many ways to build a great bullpen, and for the best bullpen possible you need to be employing all of them

No, but if internal development is slow, being willing to spend does give you more options in building the best bullpen possible

I will too, but it's not completely out of the realm of possibility.

Neither Vaz nor Swihart are healthy at the moment, and at the moment we have a space filler (Butler) in the backup catching position. If both Swihart and Vazquez manage to have setbacks we could wind up exposing Leon pretty badly in the runup to the postseason. Besides, I'm not exactly satisfied with either of our two options for second catcher in the playoffs at the moment. Vazquez had a dismal year this year and Swihart made a game effort but was hamstrung (literally) by yet another injury. I want someone who can be a little more consistent than that. I'm wondering if it's time for DD to hit the waiver wire and look for a deal on a good backup option such as A. J. Ellis, just to ensure we have some quality behind Leon if he happens to get hurt. Can't imagine that SDP would turn down an offer for Ellis, and I want maximum options in the playoffs in terms of a catching tandem, rather than riding everything on one solitary not-used-to-starting-fulltime Sandy Leon

The highest paid closer this year is Davis at ~17M, but Jansen has already signed a 3 year extension that bumps him to between 18-20 mil for the next 3 years. Kimbrel's agent is going to use that as the negotiating point with the Red Sox I agree that 100 mil is not out of the question if Kimbrel wants 5-6 years.

It's a huge problem guys. A massive dilemma. We just have too many quality starting pitching options. Which is a thing that if you told me 2 years ago I'd be saying to anyone about this team, I'd have looked at you funny