Bellhorn04

Do you really expect them to be straight with us about anything? Get ready for more soothing platitudes and non-specific gibberish about building out and exploring all avenues to improve.

Juan Soto, Corbin Burnes and Max Fried plus any number of BTV-approved trades, that's what!

He kind of imploded right away, no? It was just not Brez's year with the trades. Better luck next time. We hope.

It was not really a serious comment. Just the bitterness talking again. 😛

Yeah, those are the situations where is a K is just a total fail.

If the Angels can develop pitchers better than the Red Sox, our problems are even worse than we realized.

Yeah, there's still plenty of randomness. The NL had better records than the AL this year.

That's crazy enough to be true.

Right, and the only counter to that is that a K is better than hitting into a double play. But that's not really much of a positive.

But you did say "3rd place and 82-80 would be nice" so I understand Duran Is The Man's response there. I think we absolutely do have lowered expectations now.

We've talked about players who can be very productive even though they strike out a lot. A prime example being old friend Kyle Schwarber. But when you look at Ks as a team stat it's a different story. I haven't dug into it too deeply yet, but I believe there's a pretty strong negative correlation between team Ks and team runs scored. 2024 top 6 teams in Ks, with their position in runs scored per game in brackets. 1 Seattle (T23) 2 Colorado (T18) 3 Boston (T9) 4 Pittsburgh (22) 5 Oakland (26) 6 Tampa Bay (29)

When the other 2 teams in the bidding are the Yankees and Mets, I don't see how that's a good position. Not only because of their money and willingness to spend it, but because they would probably be more appealing to Soto to begin with.

Grissom's stock is probably rising with the Red Sox right now simply because they could use a guy who doesn't resemble a wind turbine.

Right, but the romantic notion of scouts is that these guys know the game inside out, they know what to look for beyond the stat sheets, they see things that others don't, things that will help this particular kid succeed at the highest level even if their stats aren't as impressive as some of the other kids.

In that OTM article I linked there is this: Interestingly, this includes several longtime scouts, such as Willie Romay, who is credited with signing Triston Casas, Kutter Crawford, and Roman Anthony. (The writer goes on to say he doesn't have a clue if this means Romay shouldn't have been let go.)

I can't see it. We have Duran, Rafaela and Anthony, and I'm thinking if they're prepared to make any splashy signings it will be pitching. Soto will command a massive chunk of budget.

We've had a lot of problem areas rear their heads for various stretches of time this year - defense, starting pitching, bullpen...and now the offense. (So just about everything, huh?) It's been shocking to watch the Red Sox offense devolve into game after game of whiff-fests. The Sox are currently third in baseball in strikeouts, and you have the feeling that if the season was 200 games long, we'd be the betting favorite to end up on top. I'm sure a lot of people are wondering how Peter Fatse still has his job or if he will still have it in 2025. Personally, the development that really floored me was this one: https://www.si.com/fannation/mlb/fastball/news/boston-red-sox-hire-former-new-york-yankees-hitting-coach-dillon-lawson-to-help-organization I was shocked that the Red Sox would hire Lawson, after he was fired by the Yankees mid-season in 2023. The biggest knock against the Yankees offense when Lawson was fired was that it was a bunch of guys swinging for the fences, with a large chunk of their scoring coming on the home run ball, a ton of K's, and lousy situational hitting. This is the guy we think has a good hitting approach? The guy whose motto is "hit strikes hard"? Of course I have no idea if Lawson has anything specific to do with our Red Sox rising storm of whiffs. But the very fact the organization thought he had a good hitting approach really makes me wonder what is going on philosophy-wise.

Oh no, the dreaded words, "count on". 😊 (Those words were used a lot arguments about why it made sense for the Red Sox to trade Sale - i.e. they did it because they couldn't count on him for 2024.) Nice article. My take is that we don't have much choice but to count on Story and Casas for 2025. I'm actually more worried about Casas's rib area injury and the long-term effects on his baseball swing. I think we need Story badly now as this team is constituted, for his defense, his RH bat, his smarts and his veteran presence. It's good to see that Casas's defense has improved, that makes him more valuable too. All I can really do is go full Pollyanna and hope for healthy productive seasons next year

100% agreed. And as much as I've been ragging on him, I don't dislike Henry and I'm not campaigning for him to sell. But there has been a change, and it did start with giving up Mookie, and the results so far have been ugly.

And John thanks you for any financial contributions, and reminds you once again to maintain realistic expectations.

I do notice that Cora is talking differently this year. Last year he sent some messages to the front office about being frustrated with the deficiencies in the roster. This year there's very little of that, everything seems much more upbeat and philosophical. I guess that's what happens when you get paid.

Rays catch us at 76-78. Devers likely done for the season. Sox have to go 2-6 for the Three-peat.

What a night for the Boston Wind Turbines.

From Dan Secatore at Over the Monster about the Red Sox latest operations overhaul: https://www.overthemonster.com/2024/9/20/24249910/red-sox-to-overhaul-baseball-operations-department-again-craig-breslow Key line: But of the three successive baseball operations overhauls, this is the only one that seems to be prioritizing cutting costs.

His total numbers for the year are not bad for a good fielder. But the trend is alarming. With an approach like his, MLB pitchers armed with a year's worth of data might just carve him up.