sk7326

There was obviously a reason - but I suspect our diagnoses were different ...

Cashner's K-rate fell through the floor last year. Liriano has been shaky - but there is reasonable upside for the cost. Lynn is probably the most reliable of that level of guy - but you have to be okay with him turning in 2017 Porcello sort of work ... where the value is in the bulk.

There is ultimately not much history there - almost all the criticisms of Hosmer (and I agree with a lot of them) apply to Moustakas, except with more homeruns, more outs and an extra year of age.

Previous mistakes do not excuse future ones. They absolutely CAN foot the bill ... the question is whether they ought to.

That analysis is sound - I'd offer him (if he doesn't like 5/100) something like 3/80, with the third year maybe even a player option. Or - if it's 5/100, maybe frontload it so the last 2 years are less onerous for the Sox

You look at the best position players who have signed. Lorenzo Cain 5/80 Zack Cosart 3/38 Carlos Santana 3/60 The Red Sox are being pretty reasonable. The Phillies clearly overpaid now once you see the market evolve - first mover disadvantage

No - it's the Red Sox recognizing his market and their position. It's just game theory ... if Martinez had another bidder, nothing is preventing him from taking the higher offer. Indeed if I were Boston, I'd tell JD that I'd do 3/75-80 or something ... more average salary for a much more comfortable time frame. But there is no reason to up the 5 year offer.

oh absolutely - I should have talked about sacrifice in a larger level ... and the leading by example is the stuff that gives some credibility about the other stuff. I am excited about the change in manager - but I think a lot of the change might involve a lighter touch than Farrell was capable.

That is leadership - and how players earn their stripes to actually be able to have the words matter.

One of the tricky things - as a fan ... is that leadership becomes media narrative as much as anything. The guys who talk to the press get conflated with the leaders. I mean leadership in these setting is often not the "inches we seek are everywhere" sort of speeches. Leadership is the 1987 Celtics seeing how hard it was for Kevin McHale to put on his shoes as he was playing the Finals with a broken foot (a foot that progressively got worse). In baseball, the manager can establish a working environment. As I maintain - a baseball manager is the most like a boss someone would have in a real-life job ... delegate, coach the coaches, yada yada

The org's top 2 prospects and 3 of their Top 10 came from the fire sales. That is an incredible return for 2 relievers and a DH.

If Martinez is not coming - fine. Then the question is what do you do? 1. Sign LoMo - who is young and could be a late bloomer. But it could also be major fluke rule. Would you want to go 5 years with him? 2. Sign a CarGo or Joey Bats (or something similar) - who are old and have bloomed already. But it would be a year - and maybe you strike gold (or at least silver). Statcast data would be helpful here - alas. 3. Ride with this group. This would be frustrating - but the team scored the 6th most in the AL without anybody having an outstanding season. There is reason to see things getting better. All 3 are defensible. My preference would be #2.

College is a little more prevalent and the Seahawks have done nicely. Plus (this is true of the West Coast more generally) - you get to be outside more. Nice thing is being able to watch East Coast games and still have time to g out.

Go figger - the current sox GM and his former assistant have made more or less identical offers.

There are just a lot of tough things or Martinez: 1. The Red Sox are really the only customer who has the need and the money 2. The market has been squeezing guys like Martinez for a couple of years. The industry is not paying a lot of years for unathletic sluggers. 3. The Red Sox have short term options. They could go with LoMo. They could go Building 19 style (yes I'm that old) and look at Bautista/CarGo. They could simply say that "we scored the 6th most runs in the AL without anybody having a particularly good year" and just count on some turnaround from coaching and life happening. I think eventually Martinez joins Boston, but I have no problem with a hard line being taken here.

Leadership is hard to import - it comes from the dudes who have done the work ... of course, this is all based on a strawman here, that the team lacked grit or fundamentals or toughness. That is a highly questionable premise - that the kids were lackadasical or whatever.

Harper would be ummm ... unkind about the racism thing in Boston

Maybe - but the Astros were already there, and the Sox were too to a certain degree. The Yankees real magic was pouncing on sell-offs with Miller and Chapman. The rest is not that amazing. And in both cases you can't blame the Cubs or Guardians for doing it - flags fly forever - but there you go.

The Heyward signing made a ton of sense - he was amazingly young for a FA, they got him cheap relative to expectations ... and was capable of being one of the best OFs in the league if he was just okay offensively (he had been a reliably high on-base guy prior to his StL experience). The signing has not worked since he forgot how to hit. But you are right on the basics - you use the farm to craft the bulk of the team and then FAs are for specific openings. Like Lester. Darvish is a bad contract for the years, but a really good price. It seemed a lot of his problems were pitch selection related - the K-rate was still excellent. It seems like there is still some significant upside there at least short run. But some of the things the Cubs needed to keep their window open have not worked out. (Russell being more average than excellent, Schwarber not even that).

Howard Bryant wrote about this https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Out-Story-Baseball-Boston/dp/0807009792

It is difficult to talk draft without the development part. If you look at evaluating kids (this is true in all sports to some degree) it's evaluating ceiling and probability. The top picks usually are pretty good in both. When you don't pick at the top - you are compromising on ceiling or probability. You can see that with Theo's picks. Usually the probability guys were pitchers - Matt Barnes is a perfect example. He projected to be a big league pitcher - which is a good outcome for late 1st, but you're not getting a star there. Other times he chose ceiling - like a Reymond Fuentes or something. Usually that doesn't work - but the method is sound. The Sox are still doing the sound thing - although Dombrowski is much more inclined to draft upside pitching than Theo and Ben were. Theo and Ben always preferred the lower variability that came with great up the middle athletes. The tl;dr is that it's now on the instructional staff and the kids themselves to find the performance to match the skillz. I don't lament the draft position too much when thinking about position guys - for pitching it seems to matter more. It means you trust scouts more - whether it means trusting a cold weather performer (why Trout fell) or a two sport athlete who just needed to play baseball more (Mookie Betts). Or you look for physical projection with some elite raw tools ... those guys will mostly bust, but it's like venture capital, one of them hitting pays for the busts.

With Brannen - there is a lot of physical projection involved. Hauck is fascinating in that he has a reliever delivery - throws across his body. But he consistently got excellent results in the highest amateur level in the country.

I can see that - but it was a team which had an incredible knack for winning close games, and a lot of those long extra inning odysseys. It was a team which even got up off the mat against the Astros. The team had toughness. Indeed - if you read between the lines of the postmortems of Farrell's ouster - it seemed like the exact opposite. He was not laid back enough - just a lot of professional grinding intensity. What Farrell missed was Francona's ability to crack a dirty joke and tell a kid suffering through a slump. "it's nothing that a line drive falling between two fielders can't fix". The kids - if anything - were way way too hard on themselves.

in the long run - yes. But the year's the best team in the league wins are fairly irregular, far more than any other sport. Really, it's the rotating starting pitchers that does it. There is very rarely a matchup where a team is fielding a better 9 players than another team every single day. It's like goaltendiing in hockey but moreso (since hockey teams can still generate tons of chances).

i think it was something like 4 players or something - i need to find a better link, it was stuff that i remember from reporters covering the team in the 70s ... a black ballplayer came in, then it meant one inevitably was sent down or something. Now I do think that is was not all Yawkey's personal preferences - but a read on the market.