mvp 78

It was going to be Hendriks or Slaten, but both are on the IL. Whitlock has not looked good enough to close. I guess Weissert? Yay? That's why he's not going 2 innings IMO.

Yuck

If we pitch Chapman for two inning one game, who do we trust to come in the next to be the closer?

Where the Red Sox failed was mainly playing Anthony in LF all season (66% of GS in field). He should have been 50/50 between RF and LF. He even had 3 times as many CF starts than RF starts this year, which is ridiculous as he should never play there in MLB. They goofed on that IMO.

The fundamentals are bad across MLB when you watch a lot of other games. It's not just the Red Sox. Even the Rays 3b was let off the hook last night by instant replay because he was going to tag the runner, but chose to throw to 1b and Wong was called safe with the bases loaded and 2 outs.

Pitchers taken after Yorke in the 1st round: Bryce Jarvis, Cade Cavalli, Nick Bitsko, Jared Shuster, Bobby Miller (probably should have taken PCA, Jordan Walker, Austin Wells, or Jordan Westburg though) Pitchers after Mayer: Frank Mozzicato, Sam Bachman, Kumar Rocker, Andrew Painter, Will Bednar, Gunnar Hoglund, Jordan Hicks, Ryan Cusick and others (Cowser, Lawlar, House, Frelick, Watson, Merrill also taken in this loaded 1st round) I agree that not taking a pitcher in the first round may be a good idea, my thought was that college bats like Westburg, Wells and Cowser take less time to get to the show and provide more immediate impact to the MLB roster.

Giolito start. Oh boy.

Or is there something else causing the mix the Sox have to just make them be well under .500?

Is this "LOL Baseball random" and like the Padres of a few years ago, the Sox will make a big run at the end of the year?

20 teams with better W/L records than the Sox.

I don't care. He's going to be DH going forward. I'm not going to try to fix something that's not broken.

Nope. If he's under 700, I'm fine with moving on from him if they want to be a serious org.

And Rafaela may not need to be entrenched as the CFer depending on his bat. If he's below 700, I don't believe he's really playable. He's not even the best CFer in the division.

We are truly in the golden era of Abreus.

I think one of Duran or Abreu could be part of OF of a Sox true contender, but it would most likely be Abreu due to age. I think an OF of Anthony/Rafaela/Abreu is most certainly good enough to be playoff worthy. If Mayer takes over and performs at SS and Campbell improves at 2B, the middle of the IF should be all set. We should assume that C is at least decent with Narvaez at 50% of the time, but will need another defensive catcher. They should add top level 1B and 3B to round out the lineup. I'd be happy with that! Right now, it's the starting pitching that's really holding back the Sox IMO. Chris Bassitt (37) Shane Bieber (31) – $16MM player option with a $4MM buyout Walker Buehler (31) – $25MM mutual option with a $3MM buyout Dylan Cease (30) Zach Eflin (32) Jack Flaherty (30) – can opt out of remaining one year, $10MM Zac Gallen (30) Shota Imanaga (32) – $57MM club option for 2026-28 or $15MM player option for 2026 Merrill Kelly (37) Clayton Kershaw (38) Michael King (31) – $15MM mutual option with a $3.75MM buyout Zack Littell (30) Seth Lugo (36) – $15MM player option Dustin May (28) Freddy Peralta (30) – $8MM club option with no buyout Chris Sale (37) – $18MM club option Ranger Suarez (30) Tomoyuki Sugano (36) Framber Valdez (32) Brandon Woodruff (32) – $20MM mutual option with a $10MM buyout

Per bref:

Garcia isn't a CFer going forward. He's a corner OFer at the MLB level. He won't have the speed to play CF. If Rafaela is moved off CF, the only other option is Duran. After that, the true CFers are in GRE and lower: Taylor and Bleis (unless you need a one day call up for Sikes or Rosier).

That's why he should only be DH.

Looking at his 2020 season, I'm going to go with other factors. If there was a full 162 games that year, he may have had 37 errors at 3b. Nobody has had that kind of season since Butch Hobson and Darrell Evans in the 70's BACK WHEN FUNDAMETALS MATTERED BUDDY.

He's like 2023 Duran, but more GB than LD. Should have traded him at his peak value last offseason.

They'll do some sort of OF rotation to limit Roman's at bats so that he doesn't get ROY votes and earn a full year of service. 😬

Good teams win. Mediocre teams play .500 ball. That's just where we're at.

Crochet or Dobbins, otherwise we're sobbing?

What does that matter? A loss is a loss. They are still far behind the other teams and have lots of ground to catch up. It's not like they'll automatically go 17-0 in the next 1 run games or project to be anything better than .500 in those. If anything, you should be fine with the "gut punches" if there are so many close losses. 🤔

Anthony debuted after Campbell, Mayer AND Teel. I didn't have that on my bingo card. Offensively, he was the most ready of any of them. The only reason he wasn't on the Opening Day roster was because of a logjam and that's pretty dang stupid.