I guess it's no surprise that Tomase jumped all over Law's #23 ranking as evidence of Bloom's plan being a failure.
What's amusing is that in the very same article by Tomase is a link to a column from exactly 2 days earlier in which he was excited about the Sox having 4 in Law's top 100.
Every potential deal has a tipping point, and they fall through all the time. The Dodgers knew we did not have a lot of other bidders for Mookie because of his $27 million salary, and they knew we were anxious to get under the tax line. They could have turned their backs on the deal and set their sights on signing Mookie as a free agent.
I think we need to face the fact that Bloom got what he could under the circumstances.
Baseball America, on the other hand, ranked our system #11 in August/22.
https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/red-sox/where-red-sox-farm-system-ranks-baseball-america
I think to be totally fair about it you have to admit that the Sox traded Betts for one year PLUS a golden opportunity to sign him to an extension, and no team was in a better position than the Dodgers to do so.
But did any of those graders say exactly what they think Bloom should have gotten?
Betts is a great player, but it was one year at a cost of $27 million. We got Verdugo, 2 prospects and $72 million of salary relief.
And it's probably worth noting that even on this board, there were some who didn't want to give Betts a mega-contract, or who weren't bothered about him leaving.
If you're going to blame Bloom for trading Betts, you should probably be blaming Dombrowski more for not signing Betts to an extension.
You'd be wrong in either case, of course.
Most of this falls at the feet of Henry.
But guess what, under Henry the Red Sox still have twice as many titles as the Yankees and Dodgers do, combined, since he bought the team.
Is it possible we gripe too much about his mistakes?
Price opted out of 2020, of course, so no one paid him for that year...it only muddies the waters trying to account for the pandemic factor.
The ultimate what-if is that with no pandemic, Betts might not have signed that deal with the Dodgers.
I'll say it again and I'll say it forever. Bloom did fine on the trade, taking into account the salary relief. If you want to point the finger of blame about losing Betts, JH is your guy.
As for Graterol, if anything it appears Bloom was 100% right to be concerned about his medicals. He only pitched 33.1 innings in 2021. Last year he pitched 49.2. He didn't pitch between July 10 and August 22, or between August 28 and September 22.