sk7326

Oh heavens no - but he has the most ceiling on the staff, and young enough that legitimate improvement is expected. You don't pencil him as a #1, but it's okay to expect to see better from him next season. I absolutely have him in the rotation plan next season. Owens you can argue more, but to me he has shown quite a bit both in tools and mentality. Just having a 2nd year versions of those guys will improve the rotation - now the staff needs more improvement than merely that, but that is a reasonable source for optimism.

I also think the cost control allows him to be a useful trade asset - which would not stun me ...

I think Cueto or Zimmermann are both on the radar - or a trade. (as noted, the White Sox have to ask serious questions about their timeline and whether Sale is best as one of theirs or as a way to get the farm beefed up) Selling Betts would be stupid. He is a future star, cost controlled. Those are not the guys you deal - those are the guys you build around. The speculated idea of Sandoval for Shields makes sense, mistake for mistake. Shields might only be a #4 at this point (his flyball tendencies are going to piss of Nation fans) but he has AL East experience, and can crank out 200 innings without much issue. Shields would not be the #2 on this staff, but he would serve a useful Tim Wakefield like sort of roll as an innings-eater who can keep the bullpen on schedule over a long season.

Really the move is Hanley to 3B and try to deal Sandoval ... I just don't see Sandoval's ceiling after 1 year. I did not love the sigining when it happened, but I could see some of the logic - his spray charts were very Fenway-friendly, and there seemed to be a good amount of raw power if he focused on it. (of course this raises questions about the hitting instruction, which has been there all season) But Hanley at 1B could work too. Clearly the LF travails have seeped into the offense, which has created a vicious cycle. Regardless of the position, he was brought in because he could hit and he had a good approach. The latter has gone completely to seed this season.

I think there is a little bit of exaggeration here. The ownership group is capable of good - the payroll has not shrunk, and the team has had a first class baseball operation for the entire time they have been here. (the results have sagged clearly, but there is not evidence that the operation has cheapened or what have you) Where they have been annoying is the hyper-attention to PR which manifests as smearing people as they leave, obsessing over NESNs ratings. Now, there is a bit of a paradox with TV ratings I understand - in a sense it is not good for business if the team is winning all the time, because even good seasons that weren't amazing (say a season like 2010 where they squeezed 89 wins out of a MASH unit) cause interest to dip. (the way someone who is used to a Maserati would be bummed out by a BMW possibly) But trying to squeeze more ad revenue at that end is the height of greed for guys who are sitting on stacks of money and residuals from Roseanne episodes. I'll take the winning.

As @richarddeitsch noted, in particular, Dave O'Brien signing off on the press release was very poor optics. I am not sure whether it was his call, but it was very poor form. At this rate I am half expecting Tom Werner to hire his old buddy Bill Cosby to host Sox Appeal

It's possible - it happened with McDonough around 2000 or so ... viewers have great pull. That said, if the brass were afraid of losing O'Brien - who has a high national profile - it might not matter.

I am almost certain it wasn't Jerry's call for sure. Orsillo (like Mcdonough before him) made him look good - and chemistry can't be that bad when they are both dying over that dude going for the grope.

He belongs in the picture (although Matt Kemp has a good case without the excuse of a new gig) ... and it doesn't change the reality that the bat is what has made the package untenable. It would be easy to overlook the defense then - Sox fans have had plenty of practice with that.

I think Harvey though is more spitballing ... from what I've heard New York has many baseball fans in it.

Don was great. I remember being a bit bummed when Sean was let go - who originated the RemDawg stuff and berated home plate umpires - and he's still my favorite. (Ned had lost his fastball by the time I got to it) But Don was a terrific foil and I've watched the boob grab clip on youtube a few times today since the word.

If you look at 2014, you had the defending champs and you were basically counting on kids for two positions ... CF and SS. 3B was a giant sucking sound in 2013 too, so whatever you got there was going to have to be worked around, and the same goes for catcher to great degree. That should not have required rebuilding, or some branding that we were lowering expectations. Hell they might have STILL signed Castilo or promoted Betts (Betts was so good he forced them) since Victorino turned back into a pumpkin. But you don't walk away from an eval because of March.

Since discussing Manny, Mike Greenwell, Jim Rice, Albert Belle will lead down the inevitable Old Man Yells at Cloud sort of revisionism ... I'll just stop by noting that Hanley's performance has made me sad too

Indeed. Ortiz is probably the best non-tender in baseball history.

$88M was invested on his bat - as noted many times before the Benny Hill soundtracked performance in left field would be tractable (and the subject of some funny fan limericks) if you were looking at a guy who was putting up a .270/.350/.450 sort of thing ... if there has been a failure, it's on the former end as much as anything. That said, he has always had a good approach - and he did not take stupid pills overnight. The bat should recover reasonably next season.

It is all about what ownership priorities are. Dombrowski was worked at varying levels of aggression. Could trading Betts for a Harvey work? Sure, although since New York ... from what I've heard ... is a large city ... that might not be the most gettable target. Chris Sale would make sense continually since while Chicago is not small, the team is bad. I think the alignments you have here makes sense - and Justin Upton would be a good corner OF to go after - but for the most part trading future stars is not a great idea. Of course, Dombrowski has had a knack for identifying them.

We had the league's two worst defenders on the left side - that has to get better. Catcher will be fine, no matter how it turns out. But decent starting + good defense + good bullpen works. I don't think the team is actually that far away.

Their run prevention needs to improve. Your call is correct if the starting is all you want to address.

Personally? Rodriguez stays - he's one of our top 5 starters and the best bet to be really special. Has to learn how to prevent innings from spiraling. Owens stays - clear swing and miss stuff, that start last week where he shook off the horrible start to deliver 6 innings was very professional. Porcello stays - Whatever you argue about his ceiling, he is just not this bad. Buchholz stays - for the lack of durability, the cost control is very attractive Wright stays - knuckleballers aren't trade sweeterners to begin with, but he can provide versatility and reasonable bulk Miley stays - durable bulk Barnes goes - his starts have shown there is a big league starter there - not a special one, but a competent one. But he is clearly someone who fits in a trade. Brian Johnson fits here too. But you take the first five, add at the minimum one quality starter (I'd also add another bulk guy) and those seven starters look like a competitive staff. Of course this gets backed up by a good 'pen.

Long contracts are not ideal in isolation. Of course, from a buyer side, you'd like to go transaction to transaction. But we know the practical limitations. Long contracts are sometimes necessary to win an auction - and you have to evaluate whether the end state of the deal is acceptable. The Pedroia deal for instance, you know at the end of it he is not going to be an All-Star, but if you think he can be an average-below average 2nd baseman, the salary (taking into account baseball inflation) is pretty reasonable. (not a bargain, but not a ripoff) I was in favor of a long Lester deal because I thought his stuff aged well enough that by the end you'd be paying $27M for a durable low-end #3, which is still a useful guy. The administration's general belief I think is that longer deals are better bets for position players than pitchers, which is certainly sensible and true, but there are no absolutes. Seeing Cherington's work here as something a bit more complex than good or bad, a devotee or a hater - is also sensible, but clearly some of the angry posters on the topic have a bit of "Hulk Smash!" in their thought process. The biggest mistake Cherington administration made was wussing out on playing the children. Letting Ellsbury walk because you had Bradley did make sense - you knew you were not getting 6 wins out of Bradley, but you also knew that Ellsbury was a very very low likelihood to be that too. What did NOT make sense was signing Grady Sizemore's broken down, past sell-date body and then giving him a starting gig over a spring's worth of at-bats. Moving Bogaerts off of shortstop was another of those things too - although that was a little more sensible seeing what a wasteland 3B was, and Drew was a good SS for us in 2013 - but still skittishness that the kids would not all turn into Mike Trout at-once. AJ Pierzynski was another - although there were sound reasons for keeping Vasquez on the farm. The team has an elite development machine, let it do its thing and be confident in your own evals. I mean, you look at the last few weeks and the team has shown some life. It's fun - the kids are working through things which can only be learned at the big league level - and you get some information. Now, a team like Boston can afford to only want their premium guys playing for the big club - instead of Tampa who needs farm kids of all stripes to be affordable at all - but go ahead and play them. This was something Bobby Cox did to great effect in Atlanta, and something Epstein and Francona knew how to handle as well. (the best example being staying with Pedroia despite how overwhelmed he was when he first arrived)

Stat is not indicative of anytrhing specific. I think 2nd or 3rd is fine for now - so his power can develop naturally.

The system is full of guys who probably can play baseball for a living right now - Barnes, Bradley, Merrero, Cecchini, Travis Shaw, Rusney Castillo ... trick is to figure out who the stars are and who the trade bulk is. I think this run has shown evidence that Bradley could get to the .320 OBP sort of thresshold which would make him a quality starter-fringy all-star level CF. What he needs to be good overall is not a hell of a lot.

He was one of the leads in player development when those players came up. So that counts. All of those players were here AFTER Ben showed up. It's not like he was not here - and so the delineation is silly. 2012 was simply a matter of all their good players getting hurt, and 2013 those good players weren't. It's really obvious.

It's not a crazy idea - but Betts is probably the best choice. On base is not idea ... but average-ish, which is not bad for 22. His approach is strong. For the bitterness that has lined the board as the season has gone down the toilet, kids have kept things fun lately.

It is possible - but the terms of the gig changed ... so leaving is not a surprise. His resume was a mixed bag, but yes the two last place finishes deserve derisive finger wags (as I've noted the 2012 finish was mostly entirely injury driven). As usual, it's reductive to look at his tenure from either perspective. And since the tenure had a World Championship in it, that makes it one of the two most successful regimes in the last 97 years. And as has been noted elsewhere - the real amount of "blame" that exists will be assessed by the market, and how quickly he gets hired (assuming he wants to find a gig for 2016 - that's not television or something). Edes had a good piece on GM candidates. Frank Wren would be a terrible choice. But David Chadd perhaps wouldn't be - Dombrowski's scouting director who came to Boston and drafted Lester and Papelbon prior to being replaced by Jason McLeod. He drafted Beckett and Adrian Gonzalez too (although at #2 and #1, which typically does not require great detective work so much as owners who are not cheap). One hopes the ownership still places a good deal of emphasis on scouting and development, at least as much as they have the decade prior - and Chadd would make a lot of sense there. The GM gig fundamentally changed in Boston now - probably a reason Cherington left as much as anything. It's a genuine job reduction - since there is an El Presidente who will be in charge of - well, the moves you'd think a GM would make. But it makes sense to elevate a scouting director sort of dude - it's a GM title, but really a GM with training wheels.