Dojji

he was one of the all timers. He's one of the guys we'll be talking about generations from now, right next to guys like Yaz and Williams who won us over with a combination of attitude, hard work an extreme production. The Red Sox need to retire this man's number regardless of the size of the stick up the baseball writers' butts on the subject of the Hall of Fame.

Don't forget Swihart in the LF mix.

Yes, facts are facts. And the fact is we got beaten by a better team in the playoffs. HFA might have made it a 3-1 series rather than 3-0, but it was hardly the deciding factor in who advanced to the next level. You are making a mountain out of a molehill.

A 3.7 WAR is excellent

Seriously. There are years where we would have committed bloody murder to get a shortstop as good as Bogaerts. The extended slump towards the end of the year was troubling, but he still finished with excellent numbers for a shortstop. I can only assume that people are being critical of Bogaerts because that early flash of success got their appetite whetted for a new Nomar Garciaparra, which the kid is not and may not ever be. What he is though, streaks and all, is a very valuable asset in a position that has been a thorn in our side to try to get a quality player for, since the aforementioned Garciaparra. Seriously, 20 HR .800 OPS and flashes of all 5 tools at shortstop? That's a dream for most franchises. We were hoping he'd taken a big step forward when he was setting franchise records for hitting streaks in May/June, and it turns out the step was somewhat smaller, but even with the later slump, he still advanced himself, he maintained the OBP progress from last year, this was his first 20 HR year, and the first year his OPS was over .800. X is getting better. Just not as MUCH better as the ridiculous hot streak in the first half led us to hope.

Can I just say this? I don't want Joey Votto. I think he's exactly the wrong player to bring in for the same reason I'm lukewarm on Encarnacion. I want a player that's either young, or has been to the top, one of the two. That's why I'm more interested in Morales and Moustakas than I am in Encarnacion and Frazier even though the latter two are better players. Encarnacion and Moustakas helped their team win a WS. Recently. We just suffered a HUGE drain in our memory banks as a team, losing the guy with the most playoff and WS experience of anyone on the team, possibly among the most of anyone in MLB. Don't underestimate the significance of that loss, it's at least as great as our loss of raw offensive numbers. Our World Series veterans right now are pretty much Dustin Pedroia, Xander Bogaerts and Koji, and that's it. And we might lose Koji too this offseason. As much as we want good on field numbers, we also need as much of that experience back as we can possibly get. Unless EE wins it all with the Jays this year, signing the guy won't make up that deficit in championship cred. That sort of thing concerns me from a continuity standpoint. If we lose any more of our champions, when we get to the postseason again the team will have to feel their way around again like they did in 03. The franchise will have to more or less start over. In fact I kinda worry that that was part of the problem this postseason -- we need to figure out who the leaders are in the new generation and I don't think we're quite there yet. I don't think that's a great way to get back to the top of the world anytime soon. The big thing is playoff experience, the Royals guys are just my first idea of where to find it. Beyond improving on the field, I would really like an infusion of leadership into this team, I think were going to be hurting for the lack of it if we don't.

Yet another example of a trade that you'd think would have returned decent value but instead spat in our face and gave us the worst possible outcome. Lots of trades and signings went that way between 2011 and 2016. Amazing that in the middle of all that sourness, the team managed to scrape together the success in 2013.

See that's where you're wrong. There's nothing deterministic about baseball. When the numbers come out in favor of the probable outcome, that's just as random as when they don't. It all comes down pretty much to the probability spread. Very very very few things in baseball don't come down to exactly that kind of calculation. The issue is that sometimes we only know well after the fact exactly what the numbers are.

It seems to be all we're talking about, and posts of this type are peppering every currently active thread. Also let's face it, the season as far as we're concerned is over, so it's time for this thread. Like last year, I'd like to establish a ground rule, see if we can manage to completely ignore it just like last time. I'd like to request that any time you might feel tempted to say someone's trade idea is "stupid" instead say "That trade is improbable." Or something similar. I'll probably forget the suggestion in 15 minutes or so myself, because dead brain blargh arrgggh, but I've put forward enough insane ideas that I know how it feels to get them trashed by all comers, and there's feelings I like better. A bit of moderation in language will make this a friendler forum. Thanks!

I don't see how the reward is worth the risk. Why screw with something that works? Just for the chance to feel clever? This team has ended players' careers prematurely trying to be that "clever." Bring in a full time professional DH like Encarnacion or Morales and call it a day unless you can shape a reasonable deal for a good two way 3B like Moustakas or Frazier.

And then act so pissy and disappointed when the random number god has other ideas.

You're putting the cart before the horse a bit. All that money floating around is why salaries are inflating, not the other way around. If MLB took a big hit to revenue like it did after the strikes, salaries would not keep spiking. It's the fact that MLB has made more and ever more money every year that keeps the players' share of that revenue also increasing. For all I care MLB players deserve as big a share of the money pie as they can possibly get. If you think one moment tickets or concessions are based around a need to pay salaries, then I'm prepared to guess you've probably never run a business. Teams charge for tickets and concessions exactly what they think they can get away with, no less, they spend a lot of money on financial analyists to determine the peak revenue point and that point will not change based solely on what the salary is (unless it changes demand projections or something). Anyway, teams saving money on salary won't return any money to our pockets, they'll still charge exactly what they think they can get away with no matter how cheap the salary is, so from my perspective, I'm MLBPA all the way, go gettem for all they got boys, at that point it really, truly is not my money.

Baseball is like that sometimes. You can line yourself up perfectly for the 70% chance, and it'll hand you the 30% and hang up a sign saying "Sorry no refunds."

Moonslav, I want to challenge you -- make at least 15 posts without using the word "sale" in any sentence, form or context before doing it again.

Except that EE is a worse defender at 1B than Hanley.

Panda needs to prove that he's still a big league third baseman at all. The last time he was allowed to play defense at third he was hurt within a matter of a few weeks.

Nothing would please me more than finding out HR could play 3B, but I have to think, as many problems as we've had at 3B, he'd have been tried there a few times, as an experiment if nothing else, maybe in the closing days of one of the last 2 seasons perhaps, if the team thought that it was possible for him to play there effectively.

By "Swihart, Shaw, Basabe, Owens/Johnson" I assume you actually meant "Moncada plus Shaw, Basabe, etc."

I wonder what it would take to bring Mike Moustakas to Boston. He's on the last year of his current deal, and thanks to an injury this year he wound up getting replaced at 3B by one of the Royals' top prospects, Cheslor Cuthbert, who... is a bit raw still but showed some promise this year. Moose is good defensively and had made some progress on offense in the last couple years, and of course he has championship experience from the 2015 run. Since the Royals don't seem to be going anywhere and have a talented young replacement, I think common price point could be reached, and if he can play up to the form he did last year, and this year before he got hurt, he'd solve our 3B problems.

Spuddy, if there was any chance Hanley had the physical ability to play third, he would have done it at least once at some point in the last 2 years where we have had massive issues gaining stability at the hot corner, and likely made the position his own. Shaw had been groomed as a first basemen who could backup at 3B for the years leading up to 2016. If Hanley could handle regular duties at 3B, he would have made the position his own after Sandoval flamed out, and Shaw and possibly others would be jockeying for 1B duties. IIRC there are concerns about Hanley's shoulder if he had to regularly make throws across the diamond again. I think you have to jettison the fact that Hanley used to be a third baseman from your mind, because if there was any thought of him going back to the hot corner it would have been tried by now, and seriously. A Hanley that could play 3B would be incredibly valuable to this team. THe fact that they never tried it tells me that they *CAN'T.* He's too old to move back up the defensive spectrum in that way. Learn the lesson of Kevin Youkilis*, "Used to be a 3B" isn't always enough. Otherwise we could always play EE himself at the hot corner, he totes fershure used to be a third baseman after all! #TotallyNotSerious *I remain convinced that Youk would have had a much longer tail to his career if left at 1B

Oh yeah agreed, he deserved to get fired because he ignored his instructions and got burned by it, and cost the team a trip to the World Series as a result, but if you don't take a second to see the other side in these things you wind up living the life of a hater, I don't want to go there.

I don't think that's strictly necessary. Although I do think Moon's thread is extremely premature.

Hard not to understand the temptation Grady was under. The bullpen that year was extremely questionable.

Good year. Beat by a better team in the end. They can't all be our year. Just means DD won't rest on his laurels in the offseason.

I still wouldn't trade JBJ straight up for Sale or Quintana. I happen to think that what JBJ could offer is rarer. There are not an awful lot of true power hitting CF's in the game. Of course it's only been the 1 year and I'm counting on JBJ not to backslide next year when saying that, and it could happen, but I'm gonna stand by my assessment anyway.