sk7326

You can only control so much. But you have a 90 win team - you gotta give it a chance. Would I pick them to win the AL East? No. Could they pass ONE of New York/Boston? Maybe.

That call "we're NOT rebuilding" is an owner's call - not a GM's one. And I DO understand to a degree. The Mets have a championship caliber starting rotation. Could a few moves change their "best case" scenario to 93-94 wins? Sure. But there is still quite a bit of hoping. It's a weird decision to make ... but given that I did not think it was a terrible trade. The future of the Cano deal is not good, but he's still going to be a useful player for another 3 years or so - and it's not my money. (frankly Mets fans should be incensed at how cheap the Mets are historically) Semi-related, it was good to see Tampa lean into contending too. (with much more justification) You have a 90 win team, shoot your shot.

Betts was their best hitter last year - your best hitter should be batting 2nd. It's a sensible move. Benintendi has plenty of on-base and base running skills already.

True with the former. I would not be surprised if Swihart and another guy could get close if the Sox were serious about Cervelli. The Pirates would have a direct replacement with a job opening and lot of control left - which is the sort of thing they probably want where they are.

The Mets are trying to contend. And if they want Realmuto that badly, it is just as sensible to deal with Miami directly.

The Sox catchers are basically a case of range of outcomes ... Leon has the smallest range of outcomes - a good receiver who is just a poor hitter. A team with our offense otherwise can carry him, but he is a weak spot. It is what it is. Swihart has the largest range of outcomes - just a lot of natural talent and injuries have gotten in the way. There is a better chance he can be a plus offensively and a solid defensive catcher. But between injuries and a lack of major league performance, we're just going on eye test Vazquez is somewhere in the middle. Defensively, he is excellent. He is a good enough receiver/gamecaller. Is it possible that he can hit more like the guy who we had late in the season? If so - then he is a well above average starter. That a streak like that is inside of him (and that he has flashed it multiple times) makes him at worst an okay starter/excellent jobbsharer. The one thing I see offensively is that he does put good at bats together, and he is a tough guy to strike out. What varies is whether he can make hard contact consistently. I would suspect Cora and Dombrowski would prefer if the offensive form Vazquez showed in October was relatively sustainable. A .270/.330/(who cares) with his receiving would be a terrific outcome.

Let's put it this way - we could be exactly as good as we were this past year and win 10 fewer games. Last year was special - no need to pretend otherwise. Getting Eovaldi helps relieve the pressure of having to source another starter. The interesting question is whether to bring Pomeranz back ... which I'm still interested if it can be a short hitch. As far as the bullpen goes I laugh in the face of any pitcher who demands more than 3 years.

4/68 ... it's a fair price. Years are risky - curious what sort of injury protection is there.

Arizona got themselves their 2019 starting catcher, a not-insignificant amount of slot money and a couple of guys with major league projection. Really it comes down to how you assess Carson Kelly. I can see it from their PoV. It made a ton of sense for the Cards obviously.

I am curious of years - given the injury history, I am sure some of the haggling was around vesting options and so forth.

I too hope the reserve clause comes back. (I keed)

To a point. We know the team will enter the spring with a Thornburg and a few others of the same ilk - you expect one or two to hit, but you don't know who. For a bullpen it is a useful approach - performance fluctuations year to year are pretty large. It is very hard to expect and get more than 2-3 consecutive good seasons from any of them.

The entire 1995 team would qualify for this thread ... I don't know if it was because of the sweep or it being the season coming off of the strike, (if you are a Supreme Court follower - it was the first place you would have heard of Sonia Sotomayor) but that is an easy good Red Sox team to overlook. Erik Hanson had a 15 win season for us iirc.

Same here - not just in salary but structure. Both of them are young enough that they might want to get deals with opt outs after 4 years or something to take a swing again.

Your instinct here is right - the Red Sox can't offer much in prospects, but they could offer a dumping ground for a bad contract. But Cano's deal is a lot for any management to swallow.

There is a level of bias in save %. If somebody's save % is low, he is not saving games for long ...

His body fell apart. It's that simple.

Valentin is a terrific choice. He had a 5 year stretch (1995-2000) where he had 30.5 bWAR. There are exactly zero 2018 Red Sox to have done that. Fun trivia: using the old Game Score heuristic ... who had the best pitching performance (in a single game) for the Red Sox this century?

I think he got a lot of credit, but like in 2008-2010 he was like 3rd in the AL in OPS+. I mean we knew he was good - but he was actually better than that. I would not have picked Youk - but there is a mini version of my case for Dwight Evans in this thread.

2.92 FIP with a 13.6% walk rate is ... an above average Fernando Rodney season. That is not worth eight figures.

The trick with Betts is that he will be 29 on opening day of his next contract. Now, that is certainly young for a UFA ... but there is a question of how much peak you are buying. In that way a Bogaerts extension is a potentially less risky. Betts is obviously a better player but Bogaerts will be buying more premium years.

Yook was one of the league's very best offensive players. His injuries/decline was a development the team never really recovered from - and still hasn't (though Devers is on his way)

(whispers) he wasn't' very good in 2016.

This is pretty obvious - Dwight Evans. I mean everybody loved him - but he's 4th in team history in bWAR for position players. It is easy to overlook how extraordinary his career was and he warrants a harder HoF look.

That is a fair question - and now you start wandering out of efficient team building vs franchise players and so forth. Ultimately with Betts I'd prefer a long deal with an opt-out (like the Price deal).