Dojji

Barnes could surprise me but I'm anxious about trusting him to close.

Not sure why Ben deserves that kind of love.. He did a solid job of digging us a strong foundation but he never struck me as a guy who would have made the moves he needed to make to tie the package up in a nice pretty ribbon the way DD did. I think we needed BC to clean up Theo's mess and get the organization back on track, and we needed DD as the closer (in a business sense) to seal the deal. The best GMs are their own closers, but not every GM can walk the tightrope of carefully building up a cadre of prospects while not falling so in love with them that they can't make sacrifices. Kind of reminds me of a quote from General Lee around the time of the Battle of Gettysburg. "To be a good soldier you have to love the Army. To be a good General, you have to be willing to destroy the thing you love." To be a GM, you have to love and believe in your prospects, but you also have to be willing to make bold moves when the time is right, and spend the currency those prospects represent to build the best team on the field you can. BC was a very good soldier, excellent even. DD is a good General.

Closers have a lighthouse fallacy problem. People only really notice them when they fail to complete the save. So it's not necessarily about signing a closer to make the fans love the closer. It's signing a closer that the fans are likely to hate least, because that hate often splashes onto the GM, especially if the team is less successful than it should have been.

Not at all. THe year before Foulke came to Boston he was 7th in the Cy Young voting. He was a premium arm, signed for what at the time was a huge bounty for a reliever (7.5M?year) and signed at his age 32 season and he got us a championship. Then he broke down, but not one person would say he wasn't worth his contract.

They were and he did. After lowballing Papelbon they struggled to replace the closer's role for years until Koji stepped up Which is something to think about. Lowballing the name brand closer that is. NOT everyone can just step up and close, the names you mentioned should be pretty good evidence of this.

I trust DD, but I'd rather phrase it that "he will make an attempt to improve the bullpen." And to me honestly atm that means a trade.

Trading arb years for extra guaranteed years tends to bring the overall AAV of an extension down. The tradeoff for the player is they make the big money earlier

I don't like the idea of counting on our relievers to step up into newer, bigger roles when our bullpen inclusive of Kelly and Kimbrel was not exactly a world beater as it was. This strikes me as an attempt to use hope as a substitute for an actual solution to our bullpen issues, and I can see why that feels like a good solution, because it has the benefit of being very easy. But if you do that you're basically rolling the dice that every single reliever in an average bullpen improves and that's.... how can I put this gently... somewhat optimistic? We were somewhat in need of a boost to the top end of the bullpen even with Kimbrel, I felt that out setup options were underwhelming and there never seemed to be that other guy you could trust in the 9th when Kimbrel was marginal, I'm sure that contributed to his issues at the end of the year. Now picture the same thing with even less depth and one fewer reliable options at the back end. If we don't add to this pen, and add a good arm at that we're running a pretty serious risk of another 2003 campaign. Or perhaps 2012 where we were convinced that we didn't have to pay Papelbon and all we needed to do to have a satisfactory situation at closer is promote Aceves and he'd be fine. How'd that one end? Because that's exactly the mistake we're making now it we convince ourselves that we can go ahead and NOT replace a closer and key setup man in a bullpen that already wasn't fantastic.

And you can say it again and again until you're blue in the face and it will still be truth that the path to the best possible closer involves considering all options, including the expensive ones! You can't take options out of the solution pool arbitrarily and then demand the best possible outcome. And we are NOT in a situation where "good enough" is good enough!

When you're playing an infield position and mobility and speed are a huge part of your game, bone spurs in your feet are pretty srs business.

Some team with a lot less to lose than the Red Sox will sign Buchholz to see if he can have one of his good seasons for them. The Angels are indeed a good candidate for this, other candidates that spring to mind are OAK, MIL, CIN and PHI. Personally I actually think he signs with the Reds. They've been announcing an expansion in payroll and they know the fans aren't happy with their pitching staff. That means they're looking to buy, and Buchholz is an intriguing buy-low candidate. Buchholz is good enough that they could inspire at least some positive response from the fanbase by signing him to show they're doing something, and they probably have the money to sign him and accomplish their other offseason goals. Seems to me like a good fit.

Bringing in Tulowitzki would cost us Holt, so consider me nonenthusiastic. Honestly at this stage in their respective careers I find myself preferring Holt. He isn't a great player but he's consistent year to year and produces at a reasonable level. Why do I think it would cost Holt? because my personal opinion is you can't just cut Pedey without at least giving him a look in Spring, and Nunez brings a better power bat, making Holt the player easiest to cut to make room for him.

Every team is going to wind up with dead money on the payroll now and again. The difference between the big markets and the small markets is that a big market can cope with dead money and still string a winner together.

Yeah, Larry gets blamed for a lot. Back in Theo's day, any move that didn't work tended to reflexively be considered a Lucchino move. The one trade we definitely know was Lucchino and not Theo was the trade for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell for Hanley Ramirez. In retrospect that was actually a really good play on the market. Beckett wasn't consistent but he was hot long enough to win us a World Series trophy, and Lowell was magnificent.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/cabremi01.shtml

I agree, I'm fine with it, we sang the song and danced the dance, time to pay the piper. Make no mistake, Henry made money this year on the team. Team valuations make a huge spike with a new Championship.

If he wasn't expensive he wouldn't be available, Cervelli's an above average catcher, they don't grow on trees.

The only reason I disagree with you, Bellhorn, is that I actually prioritize Bogaerts over Betts. What Bogaerts does is actually harder to find. And I can't help but feel that he has another step forward he's about to take.

You're really reaching. The Swihart that exists right now is extremely replaceable and no one is going to give up very much to put him on their team.

No, I really don't. Catchers like Swihart are a literal dime a dozen, unless he shows he can actually still do what he did multiple injuries ago in 2015

At a certain point you have to ask the mediocricies to play up, But nobody likes depending on them. For a team as good as we obviously were we had some pretty lousy luck in some key areas, especially with injuries to Pedroia, Sale, E-Rod and Wright. DD covered for them brilliantly but one would think that ordinary fortune would suggest that these players produce more for us next year. Personaly I think acquiring a catcher is probably overall a much higher priority than acquiring another SP, and I would also say that I don't expect the team to go out and acquire either one unless they think they have a surefire hit. I also think Brian Johnson will get plenty of chances to prove he belongs in a big league rotation next year, because he's the first starter up when someone goes down and those guys are usually good for between 6 and 15 starts depending on how the season goes provided they themselves stay healthy. Personally I think he's a big league starter, and is going to take a step forward and prove he deserves a full time rule, albeit a full time role at the bottom of the rotation. We'll see if I'm right.

Sure, if you don't like having Brock Holt on the roster.

Honestly all you're going to get from either Ock or Swihart right now is something in the PTBNL range.

Given his current level of production I find I can live without Moncada. In losing Moncada but keeping Devers, I think we wound up with the better player, both younger and more immediately proficient. time will, of course, tell, but his ability to miss the ball tells me that Moncada's got some maturing to do.

The Schilling thing is a little different. Bunting on Schilling as an offensive strategy would have been exploiting a man's injury, and might have been seen as trying to deliberately exacerbate his injury or even end his career, which would be terrible sportsmanship and a can of worms very few players would deliberately open. That's different from bunting on an immobile pudgemuffin. An injury is one thing, but if CC doesn't want to be embarrassed by his lack of fitness there's at least one obvious solution he can employ over time. Not to mention -- the Big Sexy can still get off the mound and field his position and he's several years older than CC. At a certain point if a pitcher doesn't want to field he's just lazy, and should be exploited. For the record I really respect the fact that the 2004 Yankees wanted to beat the Red Sox, rather than injure them. I think it says something good about them as people that they wouldn't stoop that low.