mvp 78

I don't believe Breslow was expecting to trade Priester for 3 All Stars so I don't know why you think I believe Holobetz would be in that conversation? We're not even sure Priester will sniff an ASG appearance.

With Mayer, it's ALWAYS been a question about injuries. He's been very smooth in the field and looked natural at 2b, SS, 3b. If he could stay healthy, he'd be a starter in the league for a long time. He struggles vs LHP and offspeed stuff, but has a few years to figure it out.

Rafaela since the ASB: 508 OPS The dropoff from CF defense (one of the two best in the game) to average 2b is too much to give up as well. He's been David Hamilton out there. Maybe worse!

It was interesting that on Yophery it said "bad May, bad June, great July" but suspiciously left off August. Let me give you the 4-1-1 on why that was the case. His OPS was 411.

Rafaela has NEVER played a professional season where he didn't play the IF. He began his career as a MIF guy. He tried CF as an experiment in '19 that worked. Blaming his offensive woes on Cora is wild. Rafaela will always be a rollercoaster offensive guy due to his whiff rate. He has sky high talent and can reach nearly every ball, but has zero idea what to lay off of. It's been that way for years and isn't going to change. Not Cora's fault. Campbell played 5 defensive positions prior to even showing up to Spring Training this year. Cora never put him at a position he had never played before. Be upset at the org, not Cora. Not sure Cora is at fault for Campbell's terrible defensive performance at 2b/SS, which caused the Sox to move him around the field to begin with. I don't even know what to say about the Duran stuff. There is such a small difference between LF and CF that if his production falls off because he's shifted over, he needs to go elsewhere. He hasn't been very impressive in CF this season anyway. Duran has always had some questions about his defense. He's just not a natural out there. They've worked on it for years and he doesn't really track balls well or get good jump. He uses his quickness to catch up to balls, but that is going to eventually not be there.

This year he is 0 DRS, 0 OAA!

It would have been a great idea to trade Chapman if the Sox wanted a massive haul at the deadline and weren't looking to have an effective bullpen down the stretch.

At 1b: 0 DRS, 1 OAA

-5 DRS, -5 OAA this season FWIW

They need someone better than Campbell on the roster. Cora isn't at fault for cooking with the groceries he was given.

Priester isn't done with ARB years until 2030. We have such a small sample to go on for all these young players that I tend to agree. It may look horrible this year, great next year, so so the following year...

Yeah, an ownership and FO problem. Ruth was ownership slamming the breaks on the franchise. The franchise didn't get gassed up again until '67 really. The 40's was by accident/luck TBH.

Just make Bernardino the low leverage Campbell guy and go easy on him.

With Mookie and Ruth, I think it was more than just the players. They were symptoms of a bigger rot. It was about ownership going in a non-competitive direction for Ruth over a few decades. They had been a storied franchise with the most WS titles of any club and then just punted every season for years. Prior to 1967, they were only respectable from 38-51. With Mookie, the ownership was coming off 4 WS titles in 16 years. Ownership had been very successful, but believed it could move the payroll in a new direction. After years of success, it was like having the rug pulled out from under you. If the Sox found immediate success, maybe it wouldn't have been so bad, but the 2020 season was delayed and terrible. Sox played well in 2021 and I believe there was less talk about Mookie. However, after all the contracts expired in '22 and the Sox didn't buy any new contracts except for Masataka Yoshida, a move generally panned across the league, many fans were rightly concerned. Seems like Mookie was the hinge point. It wasn't about Mookie per se, but about the direction ownership took the team: inexperienced CBOs, smaller payrolls, mediocre MLB seasons while the franchise waits for prospects to mature. This just isn't the Boston Red Sox of 2003-2018. Will it work? We don't know yet.

It's clearly time for a Campbell DFA. They need Bernardino back even though it'll be a 85% lefty pen.

1.75 WHIP in August for Whitlock. Just feels like the bullpen needs an extra guy out there. Maybe Slaten gets back soon and becomes that guy? Maybe it's someone else? Maybe it's a hole that isn't fixed and we wish it was acquired at the deadline? IDK.

Seems like other people have moved on and aren't worried about the Giants? 🤔

I understand the criticism of Campbell for today's game, but I think Weissert needs to be able to lock it down. Sox need to be able to have more than one high leverage arm in the bullpen. If it's only Chapman back there, they are really screwed come playoff time.

I trust the Sox drafting at 33 now in '25 more than I would have back in the Lou Gorman days, that's for sure.

Just wild that you're obsessed with the Giants for some reason? I guess they really miss Jordan Hicks!

I liked the pitching only and felt it would keep them in the discussion for a while (Eovaldi/deGrom). I said IF the bats got hot, they could make a run. Semien is a guy who plays like dogdoo for months and then goes nuclear. Adolis Garcia has a very similar profile. Just those two guys heating up would do wonders for that team and we've seen it in the past. They've been awful/mediocre this year. I said that if those guys got hot, they could make a run. They weren't going to make a run if those two guys were going to still have wRC+s in the 80's. I don't trust Adolis or Semien to be good or bad. They are rollercoaster players. Just a weird profile and hard to predict. It's why I didn't want Semien signed here when he was a FA.

If Dobbins doesn't get hurt, maybe the trade isn't bothering some people as much as it is?

Looking at a draft position and saying "well, only a certain % of guys from that pick got a certain WAR" is wild to me. Phillips may never make the bigs. Maybe he has a few great MiLB seasons and the Sox spin him in a trade? After that, why would the Sox care about his future potential? Also, we already know the draft is complete guesswork. There's no guarantee on any of these guys, including Witherspoon.

He's been really bad, so if someone claims him, I'm not sure it's a move that comes back to bite the Red Sox.

Breslow didn't make the trade as a one for one for Rodriguez. It was for the value of the whole package: Rodriguez, John Holobetz ('24 5th rounder) and the pick that turned into Marcus Phillips ('25 pick #33 overall). Was it a great move in a year that the Sox are trying to get into the playoffs? Remains to be seen!