Hitch

I'd be very much on board with this. I also think he's probably in the camp of 'we want at least one of your top 3'.

I listened to that podcast. He didn't outright say it, but I thought he (and others tbf) have been taken aback by the cost of some of the trade targets. As I said the other day, there's no 16' Sale out there ready to be moved, yet the prices seem very much to be asking for a return for that sort of calibre. I don't really know how you get around that if you're not developing pitching yourself. They're clearly not looking to sign anyone off the top of the shelf. I guess one option is trade the second level prospects for pitchers still very much unproven.

Werner speaks....

I don't have a subscription, but for those that do - the full interview/comments are here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/16/sports/craig-breslow-red-sox-interview-globe/

Never a truer word spoken. Until the fans make a stand, they'll keep taking the piss. Liverpool fans stood up to them and they stopped the increases.

Good point.

That's what stuck out to me, too. He very much seems to be hinting this part wasn't mentioned during the interview.

If Cora wasn't nailed on to go at the end of the season, he certainly is now.

Try this one - I can't copy and paste as it's an image.

Jared Carrabis @Jared_Carrabis The Red Sox are a small market baseball team now. That’s basically what they’re telling you. And it’s a slap in the face to all the fans who pay the highest ticket prices in baseball. First reactions as you'd expect.

Oh a lot of you are NOT going to like this.

Yeah, Bloom wasn't a scapegoat. He just failed at too many things within his remit. Simple as that.

He was my pick above almost all the pitchers already gone, before learning about the DV.

I remember (rightly so) there being a lot of anger and bemusement about how Bloom handled the '22 deadline, leaving the team just over the 1st limit. Which cost us in our comp pick. The fact he repeated the mistake of being neither here nor there in '23 deadline as well probably did for him as much as anything. It's one thing having a strategy for how you want to club to operate, you still need to have a person not fumbling things to pull it off.

Just Henry? Did anyone else from the organisation outline why he'd been fired? If nobody did, that's absurd.

Yup.

Oh you're not alone that's for sure. The entire fanbase is spitting feathers, and if they don't make extra moves I'll agree with all of you. If we went that far on Snell, I'd throw up, honestly. Only gone past 120 innings twice in his career. Walking 5 per 9. Giving up 6 hits per game. Anyone that gives him a long term contract is going to regret it hugely. I thought they'd add a starter both by trade and free agency (short term deal here). I think they won't give up the top three because there's no 2016 Chris Sale out there for us right now. Some of the names bandied around come with a certain level of excitement and hope, but there's no absolute killer and so I understand why they aren't willing to sell two of the top prospects either. I'm hopeful (yes still) that we will target a young controllable arm who hasn't quite broken through yet, but the potential is there. And in return we can give up Duran/some of second tier prospects. Grab one of the remaining free agent pitchers and call it a day on that front. I'm also aware, this is far from certain to happen. But absolutely no to Snell.

No, not that incident. I'll see if I can find anything, I could have sworn that they fell out over something. Maybe I'm remembering wrong. I think the trade for another starter is coming. What would you want the Sox to commit to either Snell or Monty?

I hope we keep Rafaela, too.

Didn't Cora fall out with E-Rod? I may have this wrong, but I'm almost certain I read a few articles from the usual suspects saying they relationship was no longer in a good place. Aside from this, does it give you no pause whatsoever, that despite many teams needing a lot of help, Snell, Monty and the majority of free agents are still on the board? Half way through January? Even agreeing on the premise ownership want to win as cheap as possible, does no part of you think - this may not just be a Red Sox/Breslow/Ownership issue?

If your desire is to win. You pick the team that looks certain to be favourite to win it for the next 3 years, over having to guess who might win it in year 4 onwards. Yamamoto is obviously in that camp as he didn't give the Mets a chance to up the Dodgers last offer.

Aww. *ruffles hair*

E-Rod wasn't coming back here. Imanaga might have been okay maybe. But he's proven nothing and is a big question mark. Because I don't think they'll be good investments. I don't want us to be slightly better for just a year or so and then be stuck with a bitch of a contract that'll give us less chance of sustained success.

Impossible to know who'll be in the right place to win in 4 years, but we know who is for the foreseeable. If you're in Yamamoto's shoes you pick the Dodgers if you want to win.

For Yamamoto? I was hopeful very early on. As soon as the Dodgers got Ohtani, I thought it was over. We could have offered another $20/30/40m more and he would still have joined them. Which is what happens when you build a team primed to win.