jung

If I am not mistaken its not like Sam Kennedy's office is on Mars somewhere. I mean what does it take for the left hand to know what the Right Hand is doing. That said, I think I know the answer and his initials are JH.

So there is some goo-gah coming out of MLB Network that both are true. The Sox valued Gatorade as a starter in the deal and the Twins valued him as a relief pitcher. That is a train wreck waiting to happen. If true that each team had its own perspective on the player in the deal how can that be and by what standard is a pitcher deemed a starter or a relief pitcher? What happens if Gatorade ever starts again if the Sox get added compensation in the deal? Seems to me that Gatorade has to be cut entirely out of the deal and another player added as this is leading to an impossible situation. Bloom or Bust!

Ah yes....and we thought the Iowa Caucus was a cluster. The only thing I don't get is that everything I read when the deal was announced was that Gatorade WAS now a relief pitcher. So was the deal structured around him being a starter? Is his arm/shoulder so screwed up that even being a relief pitcher is suspect and by what measure or standard does one determine when a guy crosses the line between reliever and starter? I don't think the Sox are going to get satisfaction out of this. Is there any part of MLB that is not entirely and completely f***ed up other than the fans desire to see them play.

Please....you have got to be kidding. We are talking about the total ballplayers here, not just their fielding. Beni is not in the same league with Conforto.

Would not surprise me entirely to see the Dodgers take that.

I bet you think Beni is more than a so-so OFer too.

It appears that one team was willing to give a so-so OFer with a bad back and somebody else's broken down pitcher with a bum arm. We cannot forget that while we seem to be in the later stages of this discussion, the Dodgers got Price at half his contract cost out of this deal. For a team adamant about taking the title, it is not clear to me that Price at $16M is a bad deal for the Dodgers. The Sox worked themselves into such a corner that they had to trade the best player on their team and the likely third best baseball if not second best in all baseball as a salary dump. Sox make one offer, Betts counters clearly indicating a willingness to talk and........ WE TRADE HIM! We traded the most consistent pitcher we had with all his faults and foibles and are paying half his salary to watch him pitch for somebody else. We are left having to hope Erod can duplicate his 2019 consistency. There were many short strokes that led up to this mess. The last nails in this coffin were the Sale 5 year deal starting this year and the Eovaldi overpay and Henry's recognition that he did not even have the assets to put around Mookie to make another Championship run at this point. That was an entirely logical conclusion on Henry's part. Why should Henry pay the lux tax hit for being three years over when he is not headed to another Championship in the near term and Fenway Group as a business is not dependent on any one player nor winning another Championship in the short run. I do think clearing out any reasonable ability to speculate about the potential greatness of the 2020 edition will hurt the Sox marketing effort but not fatally. The first short strokes were DD constantly overpaying in prospects to get players which stripped the franchise of any semblance of a farm system. Everybody in baseball knows it and everybody in baseball is treating the Sox like a franchise that has no options down on the farm. DD was banging prospects out of this place from the moment he got here, to such a degree that you really have to wonder if he ever put up a fight to keep anybody. Alternately, did DD hold to his well worn reputation that once getting it into his head that he wanted a player he would give you just about whatever prospects you wanted. I don't point here to Moncado for Sale. You had to expect to lose Moncada for a Chris Sale. Should we have put so much value around Moncada? How many deals like that did we see from DD and how often has he done that? Did he not leave Detroit in the same mess. The only dif between DD's stewardship in Detroit and here is that we at least got one Championship out of it and they didn't and as businesses, Fenway Group is far better positioned to sustain itself than Detroit could hope to be. As for Henry's walkbacks.... I don't believe ANY walkbacks whether from John Henry or Mick Mulvaney or anybody else. Walkbacks are efforts to correct moments of honesty that had consequences attached to them. Walkbacks are simply efforts to mitigate the effects of things that on reflection by the person in question would have been better left unsaid.

Thread Title: Mookie Betts and David Price have been traded to Dodgers Essentially FOR NOTHING!!!! Don't want to hear about Verdugo. Couldn't care less. Gatorade does turn out to be have an arm falling off before he has even thrown one pitch in 2020. Now we are hoping for Maeda. Now that I think about it, how many times have mandates from the owner turned out to be a good deal for the team?

If you are going to move Chavis, move him off his 2019 before he starts swinging and missing at everything that is not a fat Slider right down Main St or a horribly located Change in 2020.

There is one way we could restock the farm quickly. We could pull a Chapman trade at the deadline using one of our remaining stars. But now that Mookie is gone, who would that be? We are not moving X or Rafi for anything. Beyond those two players unless Sale gets all the way to the deadline looking sound who would give up a haul for the end season of one of our other stars? Maybe somebody would give up solid prospects for Erod if he just rolls into 2020 like he rolled out of 2019. JD, Maybe.....Vaz, NO.......Beni, No.....JBJ, NO......Eovaldi......NO

As I posted much earlier....the Dodgers are risk takers for one and they are as devoted in this ownership group to winning it all as the previous ownership group was. That is why I said it would be the Dodgers early in this process. I don't think they really care if they resign Mookie particularly if they win it this year and they are willing to gamble on Price for half his salary to win it this year. The Dodgers will likely be as disinterested in signing Mookie for 10-12 years as we will be.

Geezus you usually read the threads pretty thoroughly. Swi for one.

Because other posters are suggesting the possibility of the 2020 team being the 2013 team.....NOT

Well there is actually a "team" in contemporary MLB. Its called the MLBPA. My point was that there is little sense in claiming some sort of 2013 opportunity for the 2020 Red Sox. Not happening.

Quality down, prices up.....an American tradition by now. Frankly, I don't care how Henry spends his money. I would have just as soon seen Mookie in a Sox uni for one more year because it is going to be hard to justify bringing him back as a FA with all the fixing this franchise needs. It literally has nothing to draw from down on the farm. We have no players that can come up and actually play in an MLB uni while making the league minimum. We are going nowhere that way. You have to have those components that can actually come up and play at league minimum to put around your big stars pulling down the big bucks. Right now we have a bunch of likely underperforming big paychecks and not much else. IMO, Henry offl-loaded salary not just to get rid of the lux tax burden but because he knows he is not going anywhere in 2020 and not likely to be going anywhere in 2021 either. In fact, we have one "vet" that acts like the 2013 vet team.....and that is X. X will have enough to do dealing with the players to his left and right in the infield, particularly bolstering our potential budding young super star, Rafi. The rest of them appear to me to be the usual 25 players, 25 limos Red Sox regardless of Red Sox PR's strained efforts to suggest otherwise.

Is that Bruiser Eovaldi or Bruised Eovaldi. Getting him through a season without some sort of break down is a pipe dream. Sale can get through a season now since he is being protected. Erod has to go 30+ starts and 200+ innings this year. Something he has done all of once so far, 2019. I would say there is a better chance of that than Sale getting through a season without being protected or Eovaldi getting through a season at all.

That is interesting phrasing. Are they saying he is already so much of a fat f*** that he can only go out there and throw 20 pitches? Are they saying his arm/shoulder are so screwed up that he won't be able to do anything but relieve? This is going well.

The sky is not falling. We just are not going to really compete for a little while. In 2013, we had tough hard nosed vets up and down the bench and lineup and a perfect blend of very talented players earning league minimums integrated with them. We have neither at this point. We have a couple of almost vets like X and Moreland and we have JD. X will have his hands full taking care of the guys to his immediate left and right in the infield. JBJ can barely take care of himself. He is not an example to anybody. Vaz is not the sort of catcher in the mold of our Fisk or Munson of the Yankees. He can barely keep up with the pitching staff. Holt is gone. We have virtually nobody that is to this team what X, JBJ, Moreland, Wright. even Middlebrooks were as young guys making league minimums in 2013 other than Rafi. I would suggest that Chavis will have a difficult year because he can only hit one pitch and the league knows it now. Verdugo is simply nothing to be excited about and does not represent what we had for the 2013 younger players. Beni will have a hard enough time fitting into a batting order that does not have Mookie in it. For the older vets we have nothing that is the equivalent of what Steven Drew, Pedey, Napoli, Gomes, Ventorino, ORTIZ for God sake, the last really good year of Ells were to this team in 2013.. That was one hell of a veteran group. You want to put JD, Moreland, Vaz, X, JBJ in their league as a group? Good luck with that. Plus assuming that any pitching staff and particularly THIS one is going to be healthy is simply wishful thinking. Sale WILL be protected because he has to be protected. Eovaldi will not be protected but neither will he get through a full season. ERod absolutely MUST pitch a full season and start 30+ games this year. Something he has done one time so far, 2019. The 2013 pitching staff was possibly more talented as a group than what we have today and they were tough. They took the ball even when their arms were ripped to shreds. So no, I see no comparison between the 2013 team and anything we will field in 2020. Nor will there be any comparison between the 2020 edition and what we put on the field in 2018. Do we have a Kimbrel on this team? We are stuck in the worst place for an MLB team. No depth in the minor leagues that can come up, and really play MLB while getting paid league minimum and nobody that will come close to filling the hole Mookie leaves in his wake. Christ we don't even have Sam Travis any longer. We have Chavis who can only hit one pitch and Lin who regularly falls asleep right in the middle of plays. We shuffled the deck constantly through 2016-2019 and we are now stuck with a pair of twos every time we reach down to find a player in this organization. Well you don't win many hands with a pair of twos. Won a championship in 2018. Buts its the kind of Championship that left us a bit short. And THEN we signed Sale to the deal that starts in 2020 and paid Eovaldi too much money for a guy that simply cannot get through a season.

Beni can't play our RF nor is he a MLB CFer for that matter. But it might just not matter for one year, especially this year.

I would not give up that X contract for anything. X clearly wanted more than anything to not have contract negotiations hanging over his head. What did X think would happen when he went to the Sox instead of the other way around. Plus, the Sox have a huge budding star in Rafi and you really need X out there to get the most out of Rafi. Sox HAD to do the X deal. That was the deal that they simply had to do. The Sale deal was the deal they should have avoided and they should have let Eovaldi go at his price. I wanted Eovaldi but not at that price as there is simply no way to convince me we ever get a full season nor even close to one out of Eovaldi. Still and all with no farm system to speak of, no pieces to bring up that could fill out a MLB uni at league minimum who the heck are we kidding. The attraction to Bloom might well be the likelihood that he can rebuild that mess we have down on the farm because you cannot realistically expect to challenge for Championships when everybody knows you have nobody you can bring up and pay league minimum to fill out a MLB uni. Then you not only get bent over for prime players, you get bent over for middling players. Where is our next X, JBJ or Workman or Wright? Where is our next Rafi or anything that remotely resembles Mookie or even Beni for that matter? 2018 was Betts first $10M payday. Whoopdie ding-dong....That was sure a ton of money for Mookie Betts. Are we going to deny that players like that were critical elements to both the 2013 and 2018 Championships being paid at or close to league minimum at the time? Am I wrong or is the monster player that is Tzu-Wie Lin going to start the year on our 25 man roster!!!!!!!

They add up. We were ALWAYS overpaying under Cherries and DD until the day Henry says, "Hey we are not only over the lux tax. We are over two and three years running." And this time, that was the end of that. Be happy, we got a Championship out of it. WE OVERPAID for it. But we got it.

Yea well John screwed himself for 5 years on Sale that start this year and Sale was already inside the organization. They got screwed overpaying Eovaldi by at least $3M per year and he was already a part of the Sox organization when they paid him.

When the teams you have to work deals with know that you have NOTHING down on the farm, they bend you over the table even for middling players because they know you have nobody that can come up and fill out an MLB uni for the league minimum. Do you really think we did not get abused even in this salary dump? I have hope for the relief pitcher because he throws heat....I have hope for him if his arm does not fall off and if he does not blow up to 300 lbs. Verdugo???? I could give a rats behind about Verdugo. You cannot allow your farm to fall to this level of disrepair and expect the rest of MLB to take you seriously and nobody cares if your organization is named the Boston Red Sox.

And there ya' go. That is it exactly. But they did not get a resolution to that problem in this trade either. THIS was a salary dump. They still have nothing down on the farm. They have no good young players that they can bring up and be 2013's X or 2018's Rafi or even Beni for God sake or JBJ for God sake. THEY GOT NOTHING, no pitching, no everyday players down there. NO NOTHING and a boatload of money invested in questionable pitching assets at the MLB level. How do you build a winning team by either the 2013 or the 2018 formula without the means to bring up players that can play for the league minimum? I still like the relief pitcher better than Verdugo. But so what. This is also my point about the chances of bringing Mookie back as a FA. How does the Sox position change between now and the beginning of the 2021 season? Are they suddenly going to have a farm system with a few players that can come up and fill out a MLB uni for the league minimum between now and the beginning of the 2021 season? Do they have guys they can bring up and fill in around Mookie and play for the league minimum? Biggest bonehead move that painted them into this corner? IMO, The Sale deal and that deal starts this year for 5 years. They could have absorbed all the other crap deals including Price for what Price was giving them, even Eovaldi. But the Sale deal was the deal that buried them. So IMO, Henry did the salary dump because he does not see a way to a Championship team given the circumstance he is in which he is largely responsible for. So its not a salary dump in the classic sense of "lets just get rid of this money". Its a salary dump in the sense of "what am I spending all this money for because I am not going anywhere anyway". I don't know what they are doing with Sale either except they are stuck with his contract now.

Now that I think about it, they are setting up a great year to bring up Castillo and see if they can hook somebody into his ridiculous contract except they are now on their last year of that mess. Heck I would be happy to off even a half year of that idiot.