Maxbialystock

I think I agree in general with the notion that almost anyone should be tradeable, and that includes the presumed big guns still in the farm system--Mayer, Anthony, Teel, Campbell, whoever. My fundamental disagreement with moonslav and just about everyone else on this board is the overwhelming emphasis on pitching, pitching, and more pitching. The case for pitching seems obvious because Sale is gone, Giolito is a huge question mark, and the current Sox rotation is basically a bunch of no-names: Houck, Crawford, Pivetta, Bello, and whoever. Closer Jansen is definitely a big name, but . . . Interestingly, however, the 2024 Sox team ERA finished 17th in MLB. The best Sox team ever, 2018, was ranked 8th in team ERA, and DD spent a king's ransom to put them together. The 2013 WS-winning Sox team's ERA was 14th in MLB. The 2007 WS-winning Sox team ERA was 2d in MLB. And the 2004 Sox team ERA was 11th. So my first point is that I challenge the notion that the Sox pitching is a complete disaster and needs massive infusions of expensive talent--any and/or all of which could be immediately wasted as it was last February/March when Giolito went on the freaking IL for the whole season. Plus let's not forget the very costly loss of Price and Sale in 2019 and after. And my second point is that the Sox hitting this year was almost as bad as the pitching. Anyone care to guess where the Sox were ranked in runs scored in the four WS-winning seasons? In 2004 they were 1st, in 2007 4th, in 2013 1st, and in 2018 1st. And this year, 2024, they were 8th in runs scored. So my final point is that the Sox need to focus on hitting almost as much as on pitching. Moreover, the Sox need a couple of good righty bats because Fenway Park favors righty bats. Indeed, the Sox finished 43-38 on the road and 38-43 at home in large part because of their over-reliance on lefty bats. Had the Sox finished 43-38 at Fenway Park this season, they would have made it to the postseason--where I believe they would very likely have lost in the first round. When you look at the 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018 Sox stats, you see that the leaders in total bases were overwhelmingly either righty bats or switch hitters. Do I need to remind one and all that 3 of the 4 best Sox prospects--Mayer, Anthony, Teel, and Campbell--are lefty bats? Campbell is the lone righty bat.

Agree of course. Plus Soto is another lefty bat and another outfielder. Despite his excellent WAR of 7.9, I do not believe he would be a difference maker for the Sox. On top of that is your point that the Mets and Yankees will bid him up.

I definitely blame Breslow for dumping Sale--along with $17M for his salary--and picking up Grissom, but I think the OP makes some points about positive things Breslow has done. Plus the word is that no experienced or highly qualified CBO wanted to work for an owner who right now seems directionless. We know why JH hired DD--to spend money and make the Sox real contenders, which happened in 2016, 2017, and especially 2018. But in 2019 the Sox still had the biggest payroll in MLB, didn't make the playoffs, and it was obvious DD needed even more money to keep Mookie, etc. So out went DD and in came Chaim Bloom, fresh the Rays, who seem especially good at developing good players while keeping the payroll in the bottom 10 or even the bottom 5 of MLB. CB had four years, which wasn't nearly enough to fix the Sox system, but during those years one thing was clear: no more big contracts for top of the line starters like Price, Sale, and others before them. The OP is dead right in giving Breslow tons of credit for bringing in Bailey as a crucial first step to fixing Sox pitching. Moreover, it's also obvious that JH decided 5 years ago to stop spending big for starters developed elsewhere. Old Red seems to think that fixing this team is just the easiest thing in the world, and he is dead wrong.

Fascinating about your daughter who clearly is passionate about MLB. I have four daughters, all of them grown up (youngest is 47) and none is a MLB fan although three played softball in HS. I believe I can speak for all four of them in condemning Trevor Bauer, whose sexual assault was investigated and the penalty concurred in by the players union in 2021. After arbitration, his penalty was reduced from 324 games to 194 games, and Bauer was reinstated. However, the Dodgers DFA'd Bauer in Jan 2023, and he has yet to be hired by another MLB team in the 2023 or 2024 seasons. As for the three Houston Astros, including Alex Cora, penalized for stealing signs, they did what so many MLB players (and coaches), including our own Dustin Pedroia, have done repeatedly over the years. It's a form of cheating, but a very popular one that has now been at least partly curtailed by the use of technology. That said, I'm positive every MLB team runs videos of opposing pitchers--and of their own pitchers--to see if they are "telegraphing" their pitches. In addition to that, every team tracks opposing pitchers' tendencies. Despite all those machinations, good stuff is still good stuff and usually prevails. See, for example Chris Sale, age 35, whom the Sox dumped off to the Braves--and gave them/him $17M in the bargain--and who is a candidate for the NL Cy Young award this season. To replace Sale, the Sox signed Giolito for 2 years and $38M--and he has yet to pitch a single inning for the Sox. So of course the Sox should sign Trevor Bauer and ignore his history of sexual assault.

You have absolutely no sense of history. John Henry ended the 86 year drought and then won 3 more WS's by hiring smart guys and underwriting one of the top 3 payrolls in MLB for roughly 20 seasons. JH hired DD after the 2015 season and let him spend, spend, spend to produce the 2018 Sox, the best team in Sox history. They still had the highest payroll in MLB in 2019 when they failed to make the postseason. Even worse, however, was that DD wanted a whole bunch more money to keep Mookie from the Dodgers--a far wealthier franchise than the Red Sox--and to replace Price and Sale while also continuing to pay them around $50M a year for not pitching. That's why DD got fired--there was absolutely no limit to the amount of payroll he wanted/needed to keep the Sox "competitive." People also forget that John Henry had MLB ownership experience before he bought the Sox in 2002 and that after buying the Sox he hired sabermetrics expert Bill James. Even though JH has shelled out a lot money for payrolls, he has also been interested in the cost per win. Thus was Chaim Bloom of the highly efficient (in terms of payroll cost per win) Tampa Bay Rays hired in 2019. But JH decided last year Chaim Bloom wasn't the right guy either and hired Breslow, Right now I think it's fair to say the Sox lack direction in terms of how much to spend on players. So allow me to hypothesize why. The 2012 Sox were dreadful and finished dead last in the AL East with an abysmal 69-93 record. Want to guess what their attendance was that season? 37,567, which is basically max attendance for Fenway Park. The next year, 2013, when the Sox won the AL East with a 97-65 record and then won the World Series, the attendance dropped to 34,979. Then it went back up to 36,494 in 2014, another losing season (71-91) and was 35,564 in 2015, also a losing season (78-84). Care to guess the Sox attendance in 2018, the best Sox season ever? Try 35,747. The next year, 2019, it went up slightly to 36,106 when the Sox failed to make the postseason but still had the highest payroll in MLB. Then came covid when attendance plummeted in both 2020 and 2021. Since then, for 3 straight seasons, the Sox have not made it to the postseason and have averaged about 32,500 in attendance all 3 seasons. While all of the above--winning 4 WS, having good attendance regardless of whether the Sox were winning 108 games in a season in 2018 or winning just 69 games in 2012--the overall value of the Red Sox franchise has risen to somewhere around $4B or $5B, compared to the $660M JH paid back in 2002. And this. Right now the best and by far the most exciting player on the Sox is Jarren Duran, whose WAR is 8.6, which the 5th highest in MLB. Duran is being paid the MLB minimum of $750K. The 2d highest Sox WAR, 3.7, belongs to Devers, who has played in 19 fewer games than Duran and is paid $31M/year for 10 years. 3d highest WAR is Abreu's 3.4, and he too is paid the MLB minimum. Ditto the next two, Rafaela's 2.7 WAR and Hamilton's 2.6 WAR, are worth the MLB minimum salary. Wong's WAR of 1.7, 7th best on the Sox, earns him the MLB minimum. Yoshida is paid I think $18M/year for 5 years and his WAR this year is 1.5. Story's WAR is 0.9 (which is fantastic for just 24 games) costs the Sox $22.5M. So, if you are JH and sitting on a proverbial gold mine worth $4B-$5B and you can see that the fans just don't care how good or bad the team is, why should you compete with the Dodgers for whoever--or the likes of Mookie, Price, Sale, etc, etc? Plus those WAR's on the 2024 Sox suggest that shelling out big bucks for anybody is just a waste of money. And I forgot to mention the pitching! 3 of the 4 top WAR's belong to Houck (3.7), Crawford (2.6), and Bello (1.7), and their total combined salary is less than $3M. The 4th starter, Pivetta, also has a WAR of 1.7 and he's paid $7.5M. And the closer Jansen, WAR 1.4, is paid $16M.

Wise words. Better than mine. Fraser might be right about what the Sox need, but he's an idiot about how to get pitching, whatever.

Much ado about nothing (or very little). I therefore love moonslav's comment that maybe Breslow will trade Abreu and Hamilton for a couple of nondescript, adequate, maybe even decent bullpen arms. Big freaking deal. In calculating what needs fixing on the Sox I like to look at their rankings in team runs scored and team ERA--that is, hitting and pitching, the two essentials of a MLB team. The 2024 Sox are ranked 9th in MLB in runs scored and need to be 5th or better to be competitive. Therefore the Sox hitting needs fixing as much as the Sox pitching and bringing back O'Neill won't be nearly enough to fix the Sox hitting. In fact, how many times have we all pointed out that his 31 dingers--most on the Sox--have resulted in just 61 rbi's, 4th most on the Sox? As for the Sox pitching, it's ranked 17th in MLB in team ERA. That's actually not terrible. Bailey has made a freaking difference. The monster 2018 Sox were 8th in team ERA, the 2019 also-ran Sox were 19th, the 2021 postseason (where they made it to the ALCS and were therefore better than the 2016 and 2017 Sox everyone stupidly claims were great Sox teams) Sox were 15th in team ERA, Last year's (2023) were 21st, and 2022's Sox were 25th in team ERA. So to me Sox team ERA only needs to be 10th to 15th to be competitive. Right now the Sox four best pitching WAR's belong to four starters: Houck 3.7, Crawford 2.5, Pivetta 1.8, and Bello 1.7. Their four ERA's are 3.12, 4.17, 4.21, and 4.49. And their ages are 28, 28, 31, and 25. Oh, and their IP (innings pitched) are 179, 179, 162, and 139. So, if we throw in THE GREAT GIOLITO, he of the $19M salary this year for doing absolutely nothing, the Sox already have (if they re-sign Pivetta\) a semi-decent rotation for 2025. Were I John Henry, I would make sure Breslow knows he ain't selling and/or trading the farm for still another expensive starter headed for TJ surgery (or the newer version Giolito and Whitlock underwent this year). Instead, I would tell him he could invest--via trade or money or both--in the bullpen. Moonslav is right. As for righty bats, O'Neill ain't enough. Plus two of the Sox biggest salaries--Devers and Yoshida--are already committed to lefty bats. I think there is some hope a healthy Story will hit next year. Meanwhile, headed for the Sox next season or the one after are lefty bats Mayer, Anthony, and Teel. Campbell bats righty, so maybe he will get priority. So, me, I'd be tempted to try to dump Yoshida by paying most of his remaining salary. And I would give serious consideration to trading away one or more of Mayer, Anthony, and Teel to get righty bats and/or pitching help.

I'm not sure I agree "best leadoff hitter" is an important title because to me it's Duran's WAR of 8.7, 4th best in MLB, that's the key stat because it values the whole player. Duran's 8.7 is more than double Devers' 3.7, which is the 2d best WAR on the Sox. That's a huge difference. Someone mentioned Mookie as the best Sox leadoff batter, and there too I would say, "you're missing the point. Mookie is better than a great leadoff player. He's a great all-around player." The one point I will concede is that all of those doubles, triples, stolen bases, etc suggest that leadoff is the right place in the batting order for Duran. Funny thing, however, is that, largely because of the Sox RISP disease this season, Duran has only scored 109 runs. The MLB leader with 130 runs scored? Shohei Ohtani, who also has 53 dingers and 56 stolen bases.

"He just gets outs, glorious, boring outs"--is definitely hype. In his later years Greg Maddux pitched to contact because he couldn't get the K's he had gotten in his earlier years. I think pitching to contact and especially contact that results in grounders is simply smart pitching. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that, virtually without exception, the top 20 pitching salaries in MLB today all belong to leaders in K's. K's are to pitchers what dingers are to hitters.

Well said. I'm sick and tired of reading about Sale/Giolito. We are 30 minutes from September 25, when the Sox will still be in the hunt for the postseason. They should have been eliminated by now, but won 4 straight, including tonight's extra inning game. Bello went 4 IP and the 7 Sox relievers did the other 6 IP. Error by Abreu should have been called on Rafaela--but it did not lead to a Jays run. Rafaela with the big 2 rbi hit in the 7th. I continue to believe that hitting and pitching are the keys to winning, but have to admit I think Story at SS has made a difference this month. On the season the Sox are now 14-9 in games in which Story has played.

The 2024 Sox have been surprisingly good in view of the preseason sabotage by the CBO Craig Breslow who dumped Sale and replaced him with Giolito (who was paid $19M to do nothing)--on top of which he sent $17M to the Braves to pay Sale's 2024 salary!!!! On the other hand, he also insisted on a new pitching coach, Bailey, who has definitely helped. The Sox best hitters and pitchers this year were pretty much the result of Chaim Bloom's stewardship.

I love it! You have just confirmed that absolutely no one except me remembers the 2021 season. One more time: the Sox, also without Mookie (as well as Sale and Price), won 92 games and a ticket to the wild card game, in which they beat the Yankees 6-1 and then beat the 100 win Rays 3 games to 1 in the ALDS before losing to the Astros, 2 games to 4, in the ALCS. The 2021 Sox had no closer in the postseason. Interestingly, the Sox 2021 ace was Nate Eovaldi with 32 starts, 13 quality starts, 182.1 IP, and an ERA of 3.75. This year the Sox ace is vastly underpaid Tanner Houck with 30 starts, 19 quality starts, 178.2 IP, and an ERA of 3.12. In 2021 Nate Eovaldi was paid $17M and this year Houck is being paid $750K.

I hate articles that are so full of hype--and that's even though I personally like starters who gets lots of groundouts and pop flies and other struck balls that result in outs. It does help to have Story at SS. I'm not sure about his range, which is probably above average but not out of this world, but, boy, do I like his overall consistency and his smoothness on double play balls. The Sox are 13-9 in games in which Story has played.

Agree completely Skenes is far more useful than Ohtani, but I also think getting Skenes from the Pirates would require the Sox to give up a lot--certainly two of their top prospects or two of their best players.

You have consistently made a strong case for offseason trades, especially for starters. What you have left out is that right now the Sox front office and especially Craig Breslow have demonstrated zero ability to acquire a good starter. And, in case you have forgotten, John Henry has 30 years of MLB front office experience, primarily as an owner, and is also the best owner in Red Sox history. For most of his 23 seasons as the Sox owner he underwrote a payroll consistently among the top five in MLB. And that all turned sour in 2019 when the Sox, with the highest payroll in MLB, not only did not make it to the postseason, but needed a major influx of cash to keep Mookie, to acquire first-line starters to replace Price and Sale, and to continue paying Price and Sale's their top-line salaries.

You lost me completely with the tiers and especially the phrase, "really want to keep but would trade for the right return." I think what you are really saying is that the Sox should be willing to trade anyone on the 40 man roster for almost anyone on someone else's roster.

I have badmouthed Breslow relentlessly, but I would have no objection to having him remain as CBO. Bringing in Bailey was a key move. I think he also selected a bunch of pitchers in the last draft.

Your pink glasses are one of your best features, especially given that the John Henry era is the most successful in Sox history. I especially like your "big splash" comment, which I take to mean go after real talent aggressively, but don't sell the farm. This fits nicely with your points about all the other talent the Sox already have in Boston and on the farm. At the same time, however, a "big splash" for a starter is exactly what JH seems to have sworn he will never do again.

Can't disagree with that. "Coulda, woulda,shoulda" is rampant around both Leagues.

Lots of ups and downs this season, including by other teams. This season should have been much worse for the Sox. New CBO Breslow got things off on the wrong foot by dumping Sale, now a candidate for NL Cy Young award, and sending $17M with him to the Braves--and then signing Giolito for $19M/season, after which he went on the season-long IL before spring training ended. In April the Sox also lost Story at SS, Casas at 1b, and starter/reliever Whitlock. However, as moonslav has pointed out, Duran, Rafaela, Abreu, Devers, Wong, Yoshida, Hamilton, Refsnyder, Gonzalez, Houck, Crawford, Bello. and Jansen--all of whom were Red Sox players before the arrival of Breslow--had pretty decent seasons. Plus Story and Casas both returned (Casas in Aug and Story in Sep) and gave the Sox a boost. The season ends six days from today and the Sox are officially not yet eliminated. As for next season, the Sox have some pretty good prospects headed this way--or possibly to other teams in return for pitching help. In defense of Breslow, he took one of the least enviable CBO jobs in MLB because right now it's hard to read JH's intent. He does seem to have soured on big ticket starters, and he seems comfortable dumping salary overall, and that runs counter to what seems to be a definite need for, say, two quality starters and two or more quality relievers. Plus maybe good righty bat or two--over and above O'Neill and Refsnyder.

I think Casas and Story for a whole season will make a difference and said so on another thread.

I blame the hitting coach for the recent bad hitting, but I am the least credible of critics. Today the Sox scored a ton of runs to win both games. In game 1 it was all Casas. In game 2 Gonzalez had 4 rbi's, and Crawford went 7.2 IP while giving up 3 ER. If the Sox keep Sale, don't sign Giolito, and Casas and Story are healthy the whole season, I think the Sox make the postseason.

A couple of solid wins to keep the season alive. Good hitting and good pitching in both games.

Despite the K's and the .669 OPS, Rafaela has played in the 2d most games--145 to Duran's 151--on the Sox this season because he's exceptional in CF and, I believe, the 2d best defensive SS after Story. He also seems to be healthier than Story and/or Mayer. I'm not sure I agree with his $50M for 8 years contract, but I do think he will continue to be useful on defense. Too bad his propensity to swing (and miss) at almost any pitch is apparently unfixable.

I'm inclined to agree with you, but mostly because historically the Sox have never, ever opted for a full time centerfielder who flat can't hit. And guess who currently has the highest DWAR on the Sox? Duran @ +2.6, who only also happens to lead the Sox in total bases, 314, which is 44 more than 2d place Rafael Devers. All that said, Rafaela would be my first choice for SS if Story gets injured again.