Then, in typical fashion under Henry over the last decade, they make Bogaerts the offer of 6/162 that would have been fair earlier, but was now just another joke.
Just use the Bellhorn Ace Identification System.
If he's a slam dunk Hall of Famer or at least a strong candidate, and he's healthy, and he's been in good form recently, then he's an ace.
No boners here, but Wacha has had 2 decent seasons in a row, totalling 5.7 bWAR or 4.1 fWAR.
Wacha's price tag did take a hefty leap this year, though.
The criticism with Bogaerts is that they didn't make a legit effort to retain him so we'll never know if they could have retained him for a price not much higher than Story's. And Bogaerts has been much more valuable than Story the last 2 seasons.
The contract Bogaerts got from the Padres was absolutely absurd.
If we look at the other teams in the AL East:
-Orioles and Rays finished 23 and 21 games ahead of us, respectively, so they probably didn't need to do much to stay better than us.
-Yankees added Soto and Verdugo.
I was patient and optimistic for many years of the Henry regime. I don't feel the need to be so any more, not after the Betts trade and the accumulating pile of sub-.500 teams that have been foisted on us.
To me this signing indicates one of two things:
a) Craig is working through an intelligent and methodical plan to upgrade the team while remaining fiscally prudent.
or
Henry has become a cheap bastard and signings like this are as good as we can expect.
Point was mainly about Red calling Kike Cora's boy. Seems to me you could also make a case he was Bloom's boy.
And Bloom is the one who opened the door to Kike playing SS by not getting a legit fill-in.