With Bregman it's more about if the team wants to compete next year or not.
If the Sox keep playing like crap the next few weeks it's pretty clear they should trade Chapman and the other expiring contracts.
But even if they do it's only for one year, like Wacha, then it's bye-bye.
That's all part of the cheap philosophy they were following. Hopefully they stay open to spending as the Crochet/Bregman/Buehler investments indicated they were this year.
Depends if he comes back strong or not. If he does, opting out is a possibility, especially if he thinks the Sox are a trainwreck of a franchise. It's $40 mill but it's only 2 years, and he's an elite player.
Hard to predict, really.
Giolito was a risky guy too. In his case it was performance risk after a horrific stretch of pitching.
I was not upset when I first heard about trading Sale. But when the offseason was over and I realized all we had done was swap Sale for Giolito, I was disgusted.
You're right, but look at what it's done to the Sox the last 3 years. They've been very indecisive, knowing the team probably wasn't good enough but not wanting to chuck it all in. This is one of the results of the ever-expanding playoff system.
Manfred and the owners like it because it means more money.
There's still a month left to the deadline, of course. A lot could happen. Or not.
Sox fandom is generally feeling gloomy these days, needless to say. Some of our resident armchair team builders have been talking about selling for quite a while now.
That question is only pertinent if we're working from a premise that all Breslow needed to do was replace Sale.
Objectively speaking, what Breslow did was swap Sale for Giolito and Grissom, and that cost us $36.25 million in AAV.
And before Giolito's injury the projected 2024 WAR's for Giolito and Sale were about equal.
So even ignoring what actually happened, Breslow did absolute zero to upgrade the rotation.
We don't really know what kind of return he would bring. He's on the IL right now, he's guaranteed a lot of money over the next 2 years and he has opt outs at the end of this year and next.
It'd be a PR debacle because it'd be one more sign to the fans that this team still isn't really serious about competing.
Someone else mentioned this idea. It's one of those ideas that seems to make some sense until you really think about it. The problem is that it could only be a verbal agreement, and as such it would be worth less than zero. Let's not forget that one possible scenario is that Bregman's quad injury turns out to be a big deal. You think the Sox would honor their verbal agreement if it is?
Once you trade him you're in the same position as the other 28 teams who don't have any control over him.
The return from the trade stunk, that's for sure, but it'll always be Henry and his cohorts who wouldn't pay up to keep a Hall of Famer in his prime in Boston.