sk7326

Bogaerts has been a 5-6 win player each of the last 3 seasons. The thing with Bogaerts is that he has been a really good player - just in a totally different way than scouts expected!

A good piece by Kiley McDaniel at ESPN on the firing

There is a lot silly here - Bloom deserves to be held accountable. That said, ownership has been weird and shifty with its priorities.

I'd also think - with his kids grown up, and the team moving pretty soon that you might as well shoot your shot with Billy Beane again.

Olney speculates moving Cora upstairs might make sense also - he has a very broad range of experience clearly.

Duquette landed one of the greatest players in Sox history. The team was legitimately competitive - he went crazy in 2001 like everyone else apparently.

One of Bloom's important roles was as a spokesperson for the organization - for better or worse - and he was fairly poor there. His firing was not some wild miscarriage of justice - but it definitely had a lot of PR impetus behind it. Since Epstein left, ownership has lurched between extreme visions of the big league club which included creating a juggernaut built to win now vs a near Dalai Lama-like eschewing of top of the market players. They have not had that sort of near/far term view together since Epstein (and to a certain degree) Cherington were there. Bloom was hired to bring Tampa North I suppose - but "Tampa with money" is what the Dodgers do - and the Red Sox seem allergic to large aspects of that. Bloom did a nice job restocking the farm with position players - and honestly some of them might need to move to boost pitching. The cupboard is not bare for the next guy - but Henry has to trust him and not spend so much time focused on what talk radio says. Obviously former South Shore League All-Star Mike Hazen would be the top choice (I am dismissing Epstein wanting to run a team again). But Sawadye or McLeod from Arizona would be good fits also. Getting Chernoff from Cleveland is intriguing - they clearly are the role model for developing pitching industrywide.

The Dodgers are Tampa North!

The points are valid but if a guy can be a 70/80 center fielder, the threshhold for offense is not high at all. Really where the team is in so many positions, the floor doesn't concern me all that much.

Rafaela could be a more sustainable version of what Kike brought to the table at minimum. But he has the chance to be one of the best CFs in the entire league.

They will need an extra outfielder - whomever it is. Rafaela is unproven - but I think it's clear at this point that the team should just put him in CF and let it ride. Yoshida can play LF at Fenway, but nowhere else. They really should just trade Verdugo.

I think this gets the causation backwards. I mean, Bloom spent a LOT of money on a closer last year - which seems very out of character for a Tampa guy. Ownership has clearly felt burned by the Price and Sale contracts - but never going to the well ever again ever is not answer either. The lack of organizational attention to pitching and defense has been wild - that was the entire Tampa Bay oeuvre!

Ramirez was already purchased when Henry took over, and David Ortiz was the greatest "non-tender" scrapheap pickup in baseball history.

I disagree slightly. Bloom and the front office should have made a decision - either sell (like you said) or go hard after Verlander/Scherzer/(insert reliable starter here). The choice of "let's see if this team that has not put together a real surge all season will put together a surge when Story and Sale return" was the worst of all worlds.

The Rangers didn't fix anything ... Eovaldi in 2021 was one of the best pitchers in the American League. When Eovaldi's arm has remained attached to his body, he has been one of the best starting pitchers in the league. The problem has been how infrequent that has happened.

If you get into the tournament, you can win it. That is why baseball is awesome. The team in 2021 was terrific, but also had a number of right-tailed outcomes ... Kike in particular, as well as a healthy Eovaldi season. But if you went into 2021 with the ex ante feeling that Dodgers fans have felt every day for the last 6 years or so, you are much more of a Nostradamus than I.

I'd go before - the attitude heading into 2019. The team was one of the greatest teams in baseball history - full stop. But the moves and instincts were - at least from my keyboard - of the ilk of "we need to squeeze every drop out of this superstar core for as long as it is possible". There was not that instinct like the 2005 Red Sox who (granted, the move did not work) took that team and still decided to try to fix its weakest positions with an All-Star. And of course, if they were going to make the moves they have made/not made in the interim, they should have traded Mookie at the deadline.

Lucchino took (and invited) a lot of flack ... but the team could use that combination of baseball and baseball business acumen.

When the org and its fans pay what they do - it has been a number of years without true boss-level contenderdom. There have been times in the past where the front office understood the balance between present and future - but that has been a long ways in the rearview mirror.

Honestly, given the prices of the players they let go, it looks much worse. Like, Eduardo Rodriguez at that price and Nathan Eovaldi for even a bit above what the Rangers got him for (and that even programs in his annual injury) does not look shabby now.

I will say that I have trouble blaming Bloom too much. That the Red Sox have more banners than any team over the last 20 years is kind of remarkable when you see how the organization has lurched from one direction to another with almost no sense of continuity at all (particularly since Theo's departure). I always found the firing of Dombrowski to be tawdry - since he did exactly what management wanted him to do ... cash in the prospects and deliver a World Series. Henry making a shocked face when discovering the team had a high payroll and a spent farm system was downright silly. Bloom is obviously not blameless for the last few years - as much as hitters have higher floors than pitchers and are safer bets, pitcher is still like a position that you have to staff on a major league ballclub - but he has done what management has wanted, rebuild the farm with some real star ceiling. (well as long as the ceiling isn't working from the pitchers' mound) And of course, Bloom has fulfilled one of his key roles in this group - as a human shield for ownership. He has done that admirably.

If he is canned, it'd make sense to happen the day after the season. Jason McLeod or Amiel Sawadye would each make a ton of sense, the latter in particular. Eddie Romero would be a great story and solid hire also.

It's a position of strength. And I do think they need to get a runway to get Rafaela out there full time.

Yoshi is a little rich but not crazy. But he really should be a full time DH.

Without a doubt. It is why I am still a little bit optimistic. He can't be this bad a hitter for real. The thing is - the hard contact is still there, but the "bat hitting the ball" bit is not. Is that timing or bat speed. We'll have to figure that out in 2024.