Dojji

After being ridden like a rented mule for the entire postseason, yes he ran out of gas at the last second. He was basically replacing 2 different starters for an entire month. The amazing thing about that performance isn't that his arm blew up, it's that his arm didn't blow up much earlier.

If Hanley could handle third base don't you think they'd have done it at any point last year, especially in the last couple months when Shaw was struggling so badly? Don't you think they'd have groomed Swihart as a 1B (a far easier transition for a catcher) rather than outfield if they were comfortable with moving Hanley to the other side of the diamond? Heck don't you think they'd have at least cameo'd him there when Sandoval was struggling so badly in 15? Hanley Ramirez is done as a big league third baseman. He never really played all that much third base in the first place anyway and it's abundantly clear that the team has no plans whatsoever to try and squeeze him back into that role.

Have you guys seen Votto's contract? It's a much heavier commitment than I'm comfortable taking on on top of an additional price in top prospects. The Reds owe Votto 8/172 if all options vest. That's a lot of money for a player we technically don't need.

It's not that much hindsight really, it just depended on him to continue to show the progress he'd already made. It's not like he had to be what he became for NYY/CLE to justify a hefty contract.

I have no problem with that, especially given my opinion of the media. Just as long as you're not holding it against a guy when he used the best available information to reach a judgment call.

And we couldn't do better than 8M a year. Why? Because "You don't overpay for middle relief." More stupid, hidebound thinking based firmly in a long-gone era where all relievers were starter rejects rather than specialists. Apparently this "conventional wisdom" holds true even if you need to groom a closer of the future, Miller was clearly one of the best available options, and you are one of the richest teams in baseball and could EASILY afford it. This decision left a hole that we had to panic-buy Kimbrel to fill. That decision cost us 4 prospects over $1M/year for an elite relief talent-- pocket change for this franchise. And it forced us into acquiring an even more expensive reliever so it didn't save us a dime. -- in fact the decision not to acquire Miller cost us 4 prospects and an extra 2-3 million over the next 3 years above and beyond what he would have been paid if we matched NYY's offer "Idiotic" is the only word in my vocabulary that comes close on this one. A GM needs to look ahead better than that.

THen we should have outbid it and let Miller know we'd match. Judging by his performance this postseason anything short of about 4/50 wouldn't have been a complete overpay.

Oh and a word about "bububububuuuuuut he wasn't a closer." DON'T FREAKING CARE. There's no reason to care at all about that. Absolutely none. A closer is a valuable role within the bullpen but it isn't the only possible valuable role for a reliver or the only one worth opening a wallet for. If a guy wants to close, that's one thing, but if he doesn't care, if he's willing to play "fireman" and work the middle innings? GREAT. And that's exactly what Miller is. He's the perfect "fireman" and he played that role to perfection this year, especially this postseason, and in the process demonstrated exactly why you DO pay for a guy who can play that role, if you can get one. And if more teams were willing to entertain that role and pay a fair price for it, you bet your last dollar more relivers would be willing to pitch it. "closers" want "saves" BECAUSE ultraconservative GM's won't pay beans for middle relief. The only thing they'll consistently pay for is "saves" and relievers know that. If you want more Millers, we need to ditch that way of thinking and pay for actual performance regardless of role. We do it everywhere else. Why is the bullpen different?. So take that "not a closer" talk and put it some place dark and warm. It has less than nothing to do with the discussion about whether to pay for your bullpen in money or talent. And if that's the reason you chose "talent" rather than paying for an equivalent if not superior arm and keeping your minor league reserves intact, on a FREAKING BIG MARKET TEAM, there's no word for that that is not some kind of synonym of the word "idiot."

I don't care if we outbid them, WE SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST BEEN IN THE BIDDING! We should have at least been close enough to the leading offer that if he decided to go for us, no one would be scratching their heads as to why. I heard no evidence that we even TRIED to bring Miller back. If he had Boston on his list that's freaking gross negligence, and a huge indictment of Cherington's limited thinking.

Yeah but you're not paying relievers based on past value, but on what you think they will do in the future. If you're grooming him to take over when and as Koji breaks down, 4/40 isn't THAT much. For some reason even as bats and starting arms double in value, people have their head stuck firmly in the past when it comes to relief contracts. That's silly. It's going to hurt you if other teams get over this bizarre holdup over actually paying relievers and you don't. Relief isn't the most valuable thing over the regular season, but we just saw how important a good bullpen can be in BOTH of the last 2 World Series. If Cleveland doesn't run out of gas in game 7, the story is about how great bullpens carried 2 otherwise unremarkable teams in a row, all the way through the postseason. When you can't afford to give up a game, a good bullpen is NOT optional. I don't mind a little bit of contract control, but putting artificial barriers in the way of assembling the best bullpen available is just asinine. We're here to win, let Henry worry about the budget. Especially when the only other way around the problem you just made for yourself is to force trades that cost you prospects. We're one of the richest teams in baseball. If we want our share of wins, we need to be prepared to pay the price along ALL THREE of the critical vectors -- position players, rotation, AND BULLPEN. Usually the only way to fix the bullpen without paying market rate is by paying talent -- which is frankly worse than "just money." See the Kimbrel trade as an obvious example. If you can solve a problem with just money but are so paranoid and timid about breaking convention vis-a-vis actually paying relief arms that you'd rather deal talent instead, on a franchise like the Red Sox, I'll tell you to your face that you're crazy and need to reexamine both your prejudices and your priorities.

Not particularly relevant. We knew he was elite in 2014, and we also knew two other things you are neglecting to mention, 1: Koji is our closer, 2: Koji is old and could break down at any time (in fact he was heavily predicted to break down in midseason 2013). Lining Miller up behind Koji and grooming him to take over as closer was a sensible move, and one that was worth spreading some green to make happen. Once a pitcher breaks out like Miller did, they rarely go straight back into the toilet, usually it takes 2-3 years for the league to really get a handle on them again. It would have been a good use of money, and it would have precluded any need for the Kimbrel trade, if you think that was a bad idea. Ultimately the Yankee thing is irrelevant. If we put up a competitive offer it's ultimately up to Miller. I'm not aware we did make that offer though, and that forced us to panic-buy Kimbrel later on when Koji predictably broke down (the only surprise was that he lasted as long as he did), which is stupid.

See that's stupid, because it's an example of limited thinking. Saying that there's no situations that you'd spend big money on relief just means you're not creative enough to imagine situations where elite relief is important enough to pay big money for. After this last postseason, and especially Cleveland's campaign through that postseason... let's just say I can think of a few. Worse, these uncreative policy decisions have an opportunity cost that is usually recoverable in the very short term only by shedding prospects. Those innings are going to be pitched, they'd better be pitched by someone good. If you "only" get 1-2 good arms out of your "scattershot grab bag" strategy, you're going to be bleeding talent to replace relievers with better pitchers you could have paid nothing but money for in the offseason. That has consequences for a team that wants to build a more or less permanently winning team. If spending money in the offseason stops you from spending talent in the season to accomplish the same damn thing, then it's a good use of money even if it is the dreaded "big contract for a reliever."

CERA is not a valuable statistic. We're moving away from evaluating purely based on ERA for pitchers, I don't know why people think ERA for catchers is such a great idea.

Better ways like throwing Guerra, Margot and others at a closer because you didn't have one and wouldn't pay for the bird in the hand? Come on, you're expecting DD to make a bullpen out of smoke and mirrors, and then complaining when a pen made with a limited budget is limited. Yes, relievers can be found cheap who will be effective, especially over the short term. No, that doesn't mean building a championship strategy out of consistently doing this is anything other than an absolutely stupid idea. El cheapo bullpens are not consistent, sometimes they're great if you're really lucky, but a perennial contender would rather be good than lucky. Small markets on a run can get away with going cheap on the pen because they can afford to only get lucky a few times in any given generation. Champions need consistent relief, and consistent relief costs money. TLDR, if you don't want to spend money on relief, don't be surprised if the bullpen is your greatest liability.

And yet in the same breath you guys lament that we lack elite relief. Hello? If you want elite talent, pay for elite talent, and by that I mean meet the going market rate, not just what you feel you "should" pay. Lucchino thought Lester "should" be paid 4/70, look how well that worked out. W Moonslav is right -- our parsimonious idea of what relievers "should" be paid, cost us a bill we had to pay in pure talent because we stiffed a guy over nothing but money. That's stupid, especially since we have lots of money.. We could have easily paid for Miller but wouldn't meet the price for Miller, and that meant we needed to panic-buy someone to cover the back end of the pen because we couldn't count on the aging Koji to cover our closer's role anymore. That's the price of being stingy with your bullpen expenses. And we're paying nearly as much for Kimbrel as we would have for Miller in pure cash, as well as the lost talent. And it's pure idiocy for a big market franchise to lose talent over crap like this. if you don't want to pay what elite talent demands, don't complain that we don't have elite talent. That simple, folks. Revenue is up, and that means salaries are up. Adjust your expectations accordingly, or get used to everyone else having the best bullpen arms.

I agree. I was a little vague about it but that's more or less how I feel about things. Vazquez' floor is an excellent defense guy who won't hit much, that's the "floor" I intended to imply he'd "live up to" in the prior post -- I was taking that as given and moving on to the important matter when I felt that the best way to proceed is to give Vazquez the maximum possible playing time to see if his bat could improve through experience. That said I do expect Leon, at least early on, to feature prominently. It's bad odds that Leon is anything much more than an illusion offensively, but his arrival as a sudden 2 way threat put Boston over the top at a key time in their season, he's earned a chance to fail. My position overall is that he will fail, and Vazquez will make himself the superior option. Definitely not in favor of experimenting with Wilson Ramos. To be frank about it, the guy's spent most of his career as a part timer and he's got injury concerns. The man's spent 6 years in the majors and only 2 of them, including this year, were particularly good. That's not great odds for blowing big money on the guy. A true two way threat as a catcher is Salvador Perez, and that guy I'd give my right arm to see this team go get, and you want him on the Yankees just as bad, everyone who really knows baseball wants a guy like Perez. If I was building a Franchise I'd pick Perez over Trout or Betts or Lindor or an ace SP because nothing is as important to a franchise as an elite catcher. Wilson Ramos is not Salvador Perez nor is he an elite catcher, but he's gonna fool someone into paying as if he is. I don't want it to be us.

If I had to pick one catcher from day 1 who I wanted to get most of the at bats from the catcher's position it would be Vazquez, with Leon backing him up. Vazquez is the player most likely to live up to his floor if not his ceiling with extended playing time. He's got the tools to be an adequate hitter, what he lacks is experience and the best way to get it is to play every day, or as close to every day as a catcher can normally handle If pitchers don't want to throw to Swihart, and there were definitely some rumblings about this in the last year plus, I'll take that as a sign that Swihart isn't ready to win their confidence. There's a reason why individual "caddies" or special pitcher-catcher relationships are condoned and even encouraged -- confidence of a pitcher in their catcher is a critical part of pitchers' performance, absolutely essential in many cases, and ignoring it risks wrecking certain pitchers' seasons. Our rotation isn't strong enough to risk having some of our pitchers struggling with their catcher as well as the opponent. If Swihart is not a guy who can inspire confidence in our starting pitchers, he should not be catching regularly. Porcello and Wright in particular seemed to have various issues with Swihart for various reasons. Those two are going to be important in the division chase this year, in fact they both project to be in our top 3 if healthy. The third of the 3, Price, is almost untried with Swihart, but the ugly start to Price's season is... suggestive. The whole pitching staff struggled while he caught regularly with the possible exception of E-Rod who may very well just be that good. Development time for Swihart at the big league level at the catcher's position may very well be a luxury we can't afford, especially since at the very least our defense is locked in with the other 2 guys. There's a reason why I think Swihart would have been better served if he had been drafted by a smaller market -- small market teams have junktime years where they can afford the luxury of letting a guy like Swihart learn on the job. We can't. Not next year and not for the next few, and possibly (hopefully?) not ever. That limits what we can do with a guy whose development is this unbalanced -- the talent is definitely there on the defensive end, but we simply do not have the luxury of time to let him develop the acumen to go with it, not when he has so far to go still, and not when we're trying to win World Championships with a rotation best described as "okay to pretty good." As for what to do with him -- put him on ice in the minors. If he's still having issues as a receiver in May or June, and we could use his bat somewhere else, I'll play him somewhere else. If, and I think this very possible, Swihart has all the physical tools of the catcher and none of the intellectual ones, it's too late in his development to be clinging stubbornly to potential. Get his bat into the majors and into the lineup whatever it takes to get it there.

I think you're overlooking the fact that a lot of the power struggle in the Sox FO spilled into the media. There are moves that we know were "Larry moves." Front and center among them is the Beckett trade -- that one worked out mostly in our favor and helped us win a championship in 2007, but it also cost us some major assets -- the trade cost us Hanley Ramirez throughout his most productive seasons. Anibal Sanchez had a few very productive years at his peak too. The dispute over that trade boiled over and went public, and there had been hints of Larry meddling in on-field personnel decisions for years afterward. The rest is speculation based on common sense and backed by the fact that he DID leave and signed on with the Cubs -- after being promised exclusive control. That's something someone frustrated with executive meddling at his old job would demand. And since we know that Theo did express frustration with executive meddling and even threatened to quit in 2005 over the extent of the meddling... it's not hard to put it together. I mean normally I'd agree that baseless speculation isn't the best way to get to the truth, but this isn't baseless speculation -- the information has been out there for anyone willing to pay any attention at all to the foibles of the FO over that period of time.

I fail to see how Chicago is all that much better a place to live or socialize than Boston. If you're going to be living in a big city, from a wife-of-a-big-name's perspective one city is as good as another, really. Getting away from the relentless, and relentlessly negative, Boston media had to be nice though -- but on the other hand, Chicago media is not exactly gentle either. It is, however, far less utterly negative. Nah, the decision to leave was about professional frustration with the decisionmakers above him in Boston combined with a Cubs franchise desperate to break its curse, offering him the keys to the kingdom if he thought he could be the one to do it. In that environment, if I thought I could fill the job the Cubs asked for, I'd move on too. Having full creative control over a franchise, even one I didn't grow up rooting for, is far more of a "dream job" than playing for the correct laundry but being in a stressful power struggle within the franchise heirarchy year in, year out.

And instead of give him that chance last year, when none of the other catchers were hitting and the team was flailing in May, they moved him off position to get his bat in the lineup The fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, Swihart's bat is way ahead of his glove, to the point that despite possibly being the best option going forward, he's not the best fit here. Our rotation isn't strong enough to carry a raw defender at the dish and we're trying to win right now. If there's a single worst possible position to carry a "project" while you have championship ambitions, it's catcher. There were plenty of reports that our pitchers don't want to throw to him and don't trust his hands and judgment, especially if they could be throwing to Vazquez or Leon instead. Building trust with your pitchers is the single most important skillset of a catcher, more important than hitting and more important than athleticism, and Swihart doesn't have it right now. Also, FWIW, he seemed to struggle badly with Wright's knuckler, yet another indictment of his talents as a receiver. Since Steven Wright is looking like a major part of the rotation next year, maybe even the #3 starter, that's an issue -- hardly insurmountable, but something a manager playing Swihart regularly would have to cope with.. It's very clear the team is reluctant to trust him defensively or turn him loose full-time to learn the catcher's position at the big league level regardless of the fact that the bat is probably big league right now. He's either going to wind up playing at another position to shoehorn his bat into the lineup, or being traded to another team that's willing to give him the full time big league time he needs to straighten out his defensive game out. Moving to a small market that's willing to sink years of big league playing time into developing a potential star would probably be the best thing for Swihart's career right now.

John Olerud Alfredo Aceves (seriously, the biggest reason is that the Yankees are the team most likely to re-sign their stars until they're aged past usefulness)

Yeah, we know they'll eventually bow to reality, and to be fair to them they're better at it than some, but how long is the leash going to be? How long to Pomeranz E-Rod or Wright cool their heels while this guy plays his inconsistent gotcha-game where he keeps tantalizing you with strong performances you know you can't count on?

Theo owed us nothing.

If 3B is a liability at the deadline after we've already given Shaw, Sandoval and others their fair shot, there will be midseason or deadline options in trade worth looking into -- Fraiser and Moustakas spring to mind quickly as possibilities there. There's no need to spend the offseason trying to outsmart ourselves.

Well unfortunately he's gonna be in our face all offseason and probably longer. Once a manager wins the Series, they usually don't go away in a hurry.