mvp 78

One great month followed by one bad month in MLB and 4 mediocre to bad months in AAA.

Since going to Gradum: Durbin 23 G, 4 HR, 7 2b, 303 BA, 891 OPS Will he keep it up? Definitely not. Where will his OPS end up? Hopefully close to 725.

Their whole approach stinks right now. This team used to churn out offensive talent. Now they have no clue. All the turnover since Ben Cherington has finally started to take its toll IMO.

Narvaez - Breslow acquisition Anthony - Breslow extension Crochet - Breslow acquisition/extension Bello - Breslow extension Nothing may have changed, but Breslow's still in charge of running the overall team. If the team is in last place, it's still his fault.

Yup.

If they didn't think his swing was a problem, why completely break it down this offseason?

Some of it could be SSS, but the injuries PLUS lack of performance PLUS lack of offensive talent above AA PLUS trading away guys that have done well outside of the org. Not a pretty picture.

"Hi, what injury are you hiding with Duran if he's not playing? Even if he is healthy how can he be ready to play for us if he hasn't been playing nearly everyday? How good is he if he can't start for a team that is dead last in nearly every offensive category?"

They gave the big extension for the old swing's results.

It wasn't a Driveline guy who yelled at Jim Rice for talking to a prospect.

In general, his moves worked out well here. Sure, there were the Tyler Thornburg trades, but none of them really came back to bite him. His problem was that ownership decided to tighten the purse strings after they signed the Sale and Eovaldi extensions and didn't want to put money towards their franchise player. Ownership went in a direction that was the antithesis of how DD was running the team.

I have big questions about the hitting development right now and it has nothing to do with driveline.

I don't care about his non-Red Sox trades TBH.

If anybody takes back that Pearce trade, they're an idiot.

They wanted to tinker with his swing the first time it failed him. The swing is what got him to the bigs. Now he can't hit! Just give him his old, ugly swing back.

The entire season for the Giants hasn't been a good look for that org.

I'm sure a lot of these guys will eventually get promotions. I think the Sox are now in the mode that a callup to WOO means you're ready to be sent to BOS at a moments notice. Brian Abraham has said as much a few times. I think that's why they seem to be slower with some of the promotions. You need to make sure that all these moves leave playing time for everyone. Arias is probably moved sometime around the MiLB ASG. Primera could get called up as nobody is going to stand in his way. I think everyone else is just biding their time and waiting for spots to clear up. Once the FCL season ends and the draft happens, the Sox will make some moves to clear room for guys to move around the org a bit more. Again, I don't take too much stock in the overall offensive numbers at GRE this year. You can tell how they feel about a player with where they bat him in the lineup. If a guy has a 900 OPS, but is still hitting 8th, they probably have him on a lower tier than the guys they keep putting up at the top of the lineup. They are definitely not going to call someone up just because of how their boxscore looks that's for sure.

Uh, that just sounds like a real poorly pitched game?

Don't play Duran until you trade him? That's a choice.

119.2 Innings at SS in the minors only, 5,386 Innings elsewhere. Must not be terribly good at it.

1 game ahead of dead last in AL.

That ratio is the reason FSG will never sell the team. Cha-ching....

It's not the promotion that destroyed him. It's probably the hitting dev program TBH.

AS Espinal's career high fWAR was 2.4. Buttrey was traded so that the Sox could have a 2b for a WS team. He slid into the role in '18 and got 4 saves. He retired after 2020. Not a big loss there.

Exactly! The Sox won 4 WS since 2000. I know many people said they would die happy if they could live to just see one, but how's that helped the Red Sox this year?