mvp 78

Moon, please fix your quoting. It's all jacked up today. Do you just use keyboard shortcuts instead of clicking the reply with quote button?

Slasher made a post a few days ago about players not expressing sadness over the Mookie deal and wondered if Mookie wasn't liked. When the deal was announced this time around, many Red Sox commented on the loss. I think they were holding back last time because it hadn't been approved.

He did say "I'll see you soon."

Now that players are starting to arrive, I figured starting a thread about general ongoings of the team (not Mookie, not manager, not investigation, etc.) would be nice. @PeteAbe Good morning from the Fort. Quite a few players arrived over the weekend, Christian Vazquez among them. @PeteAbe The Red Sox coaches are coming in today. Roenicke, Hyers, Goodwin, and Bjornson among them.

If you had sold it as a speed bump rather than a cliff, I would have been on board. They are two completely different things.

I don't see it that way. Let's see who is right. He was a 2 win player as a 23 year old in his first full season in the bigs. He had plus dWAR and plus oWAR. I think he'll be serviceable. So far, he's started like the beginning of JD Drew's career. Drew had some really great years sprinkled in an above average career. I'd take that all day in this type of trade.

I think we found Tommy Timmons from the Sandlot's account guys.

Can we at least let Verdugo play through a season here before we call him a bust?

If only all of our players were as good as one of the faces on baseball's Mt Rushmore!

The owners are to blame for the CBT. It makes no sense to penalize a team that wants to win and pay players, but to be perfectly ok with what the Pirates are doing to their fanbase.

DD definitely f***ed up at some point. We'll see if Bloom can minimize the damage. If the Sox are over .500 this year, this whole process should be seen of as speed bump rather than a cliff IMO.

That last line is just brutal.

Fangraphs: Jay Jaffe wrote up the previous iteration of this trade on Wednesday, so let’s focus on the newer aspects of this trade. I asked our own Eric Longenhagen for his evaluation of both Downs and Wong. He had this to say about Downs: Downs has been a polished, advanced hitter for his age dating way back to high school. He’s not a shortstop for me and his thicker lower half means his likely future home is as a shift-aided second baseman at maturity, in my opinion. He’s short back to the ball with some pop, and his swing is bottom-hand heavy, which leaves him somewhat vulnerable to velo in on his hands, but he’s selective enough to swing at pitches he can damage. Despite the patience and bat control, I think he ends up with closer to average contact ability but with fully actualized power production, a well-rounded offensive profile that cleanly profiles at second base. His average exit velo was 88 mph last year, and there’s not a lot of room on the body so that might be all. He’s a 50 FV prospect set to be around 60th overall on Wednesday’s Top 100. As for Wong, Longenhagen said: Wong is a multi-positional defender who can also play catcher. His is another swing the Dodgers have tweaked since college, when Wong was more contact-oriented. He has average raw power but lifts the ball. His approach is an issue and I think it’ll prevent him from being a full-time player, but his ability to catch and play on the infield will make him a cool role player who gives Boston’s big league roster defensive flexibility. If we want to compare this deal to the one the Red Sox backed out of — and we definitely do want to compare them — Boston did slightly better in the current iteration. They grabbed a similarly ranked prospect to Graterol in Downs and got an extra player in Wong. Ultimately, the Red Sox got the financial relief they so coveted, as well as a decent, recently graduated prospect, a solid prospect, and a potential role player. In a vacuum, it’s a fair deal, with Boston getting lesser prospects for one year of one of the game’s best players because they attached a lot of David Price’s contract to the bargain. For Boston fans, the deal sucks. The Red Sox didn’t need to back off from contention and trade Mookie Betts. The deal serves principally to increase the Red Sox’s profits with a small increase in their competitive position some years down the line.

They need to pick through Hellickson, McHugh, Taijuan, Cashner and Buchholz and maybe grab two of them? Dozier could have been a one year rental at 2b. Brock Holt seems to make sense. Maybe they are waiting out the market to pay him as little as possible? Seems like if they non tendered JBJ that he'd be sitting along side Pillar.

There was a story floating around last month that stated that he came to camp last year in that shape because he knew he was going to lead off. He's leading off this year. We're getting fatty mcfatterson.

No to Bauer please.

Best deal for each team was when he traded for Pedro.

Unfortunately, not much left to spend on unless he's going to wheel and deal. Beckham Bettis Buchholz Melky Cahill Cashner Dozier Dyson Ellsbury Scooter CarGo Harvey Hellickson Gorkys Brock Holt Kelley Lucroy RuMart Maybin Mchugh Pillar Puig Rodney Addison Russell - lol no Domingo Santana Taijuan Zobrist

The problem with waiting on FA classes is that sometimes the guy you really want is handed an extension before he gets to FA.

Pump up those NESN ratings. It'll also give the racist fans something to bitch about. "He doesn't play the right way!!!!!"

Kill me.

So the cliff isn’t based on who is on your roster and payroll, but just your own projection of how well the team should do? A new wrinkle to your belief system for sure.

This is how I know you’re full of it. The 2019 team had the same roster as 108 win 2018 except for Joe Kelly and Craig Kimbrel. Those two have zero to do with a cliff. You’ve used the cliff as a boogeyman to further all your weak arguments.

Money still doesn’t matter. Henry is ripping you off. They’ll win more games in 20 than 19. Not a cliff.

They obviously weren’t real contenders. Henry’s spin just made the whole situation a lot dumber.