Bellhorn04

Exactly.

Yeah, but we only have O'Neill for one year and he'll be much more costly to retain. I just can't get excited about a move that benefited us for one season in which we miss the playoffs. Getting those pitchers for Verdugo could definitely be a big plus, credit to Breslow for that one.

I guess it's interesting that the 3 wild card system has made this possible for .500 teams? I guess it's interesting that the AL was generally inferior to the NL this year? Who knows, maybe a sub .500 team will make the playoffs eventually.

I see no WOW, other than maybe the deletion of the 2024 NL Cy Young winner. I see plenty of churn at the margins and not much needle-moving. The only significant improvements we had were from Houck, Crawford and Duran getting better.

Now you're just going out of your way to depress us. 😎

"Anyone can be traded in the right deal" posts are the absolute worst. I would rather read 10 posts by Fred Lynn about Rafaela's poor strike zone recognition than one of them. I might have to start deleting such posts, in a shameless abuse of my new powers as moderator. OK, I'm kidding about that part. 😎

The Dugo trade actually looks pretty darn good.

Some actual news: Devers had MRIs on both shoulders, and they indicate inflammation but no structural damage, no surgery required.

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.