moonslav59

Funny.

Many catchers have their best seasons from age 28-32. It remains to be seen how good Eyanson, Witherspoon & Azocar will do. I remember thinking many of those prospects DD traded away were going to be really good, and basically none did.

BTV now has KMarte underwater at -$7.2M, and accept the trade of Casas -$1.7M as a moderate overpay by BOS.

I wanted KMarte, but I don't think trusting Romy/Mayer and adding back-ups IKF, Seigler and Monasterio was a bad plan in isolation. Overall, I think we were mistake not adding an elite bat. Waiting for teh deadline ends up costing more- usually.

Yes, regardless of division winners.

From day one in MLB he never came close to his minor league OBP. That's not uncommon, particularly for high K prospects. Casas has a good eye. He may take too many pitches, but I'm not so sure he hits or does any better by swinging at close pitches. I'm always hesitant to get players to change their approaches, especially if they are having successful production. IMO, Casas was doing that. Dalbec was mashing homers and a .305 OBP is bearable when you hit 33 HRs, but the writing was on the wall with Bobby Dee. I don't feel the same about Casas, but his injury concerns are frightening.

I do think the AR trade was a major overpay. How necessary it was is also questionable, but a .550 Narvaez needed a major upgrade. You seem to really be down on Brez trades. Can you give me your grade on these trades- knowing some have large elements of TBD in them? Devers for Harrison, Hicks, Tibbs and Jose Bello Crochet for Meidroth, Montgomery, Teel and Wikelman Gray & Cash for Clarke & Fitts Contreras & Cash for Dobbins, Fajardo & Aita Bennett for Perales Rutschman, Rogers and cash for Eyanson, Witherspoon & Azocar Durbin, Seigler & Monasterio for Harrison, Drohan & DHam Mead for Early Miller & Gutierrez for Mayer Oviedo, Samaniego & A Guzman for Jh Garcia & Travieso Sale & Cash for Grissom Fitts, Weissert & Judice for Verdugo O'Neill for Robertson & Santos Priester for Yorke Slaten for Ammons ________________ Minor deals: Narvaez for Elmer Rodriguez Sandlin for Schreiber Ziehl for Sandlin & Hicks E White for Uberstine J Jones for Ingrassia Baez, Watson. I Jackson, Ro Hernandez, B Ward, L Heyman for T Gray, Reimer, Grissom, L Guerrero, Murphy, Bernardino, Hoppe Matz & DMay for Blaze Jordan, Tibbs and Ehrhard Moran for Gasper (got Gasper back for nothing) Booser. Vogatsky for Fajardo, E Valdez Danny Jansen, Paxton, Lucas Sims & Luis Garcia for Kavadas, Zeferjahn, Lugo, Vargas, Paulino, Coffey, Batista, Bolivar & Portes I Campbell for Urias

If he does not do all that well, maybe no extension is even better. He should not be extended based on what he did from 2022 to 2023. That wasn't even 1000 PAs. His career numbers are also greatly affected by those two seasons of 3 and 4 years ago. .808 OPS '22-'23 (<1000 PAs) .709 OPS '24-'26 (1400> PAs) A career .753 OPS for a catcher is very nice. He turns 30 before his first FA season. How much do you offer and for how many years? I hope we extend him, but within reason. $66M/3? $82M/4? $96M/5?

Yes, I think they felt Narvaez would be "good enough." He got worse than even his second half 2025 numbers. My point was, it's usually cheaper to make those type of trades in the winter not summer. BAL thought they might be better this year. Some posters had them ahead of us. They did get Alonso and made some bold though questionable trades, I didn't mean my comment to suggest we could have done it in DEC. Many times a team lest things play out a little before realizing a change should be made. There were some posters questioning Narvaez a lot more than I was. I thought other slots were higher need, too. While 2B was passed over for an upgrade, too, I can understand why they felt Romy (.826 and 7th in team PAs) was a good hedge on Mayer not working out. On top of that, we got Seigler and Monasterio to replace our utility man in DHam and also added IKF. As it turned out, mayer sucked, Romy got hurt and we still need to trade early for what we felt was a major add in mead.

Speaking of Casas, the Sox have a few players with resurrection hopes. Romy is one. The guy was 7th in PAs on the Sox in 2025. He had a .305 BA and an impressive .826 OPS. He had done okay the year before (.723,) so it wasn't a total outlier season. He did okay vs RHPs (.718) and had more PAs vs RHPs than LHPs. He was mostly viewed as a platoon guy before being forced into a FT role after so many failures and injuries in '25. I'm not so hopeful he can hit over .800 again as a FT'er or non-platoon bat, but the guy hit .931 v LHPs from 2024-2025. The sample size was not small (273 PAs.) Only 6 batters in all of MLB have that large a sample size and a higher OPS (Judge, KMarte, Jo Ramirez, Vladdy, Refsnyder and Schwarber) in those two seasons. Story is another one, and I'm not talking a return to COL numbers, but 2025 is not that long ago. The guy led the team in HRs (3 more than Abreu,) RBIs (12 more than Duran) and SBs (7 more than Duran but just 1 CS to 6 by Jarren.) While a .741 OPS is nothing to get hyped about, he ended the season with a long (404 PA) stretch of .839 batting with an eye-opening .503 SLG. (18 HRs in 378 ABs) When you consider this year's leaders on the Sox were Contreras (.516) then .446 from Abreu, maybe Story returning at a .475 SLG could give us a big boost. Duran is the easy choice as another hopeful in the same vein. His numbers have already been disected enough. I'm probably going to get some flack for this one, but Kristian Campbell should not be written off. While he shouldn't be handed a FT slot of even a 26 man roster slot, they guy could still come back and do something special. Again, I'm not projecting it to happen, but I am far from giving up hope on him. We have some pitchers in similar shoes, led by Crochet, Houck, Crawford, Oviedo and Slaten,

Dalbec also hit 33 HRs in his first 545 PAs in MLB (just 497 AB!!!) The 195 Ks in that same timeframe was a clue at what was to come, and his massive drop off in OBP from the minors (.359) to the majors (.308) was too. It's hard not to look at Casas and think of Dalbec: both sucked on D and K'd a lot, bu there are some differences: Casas hit 29 Hrs in his first 597 PAs, but walked way more (505 ABs.) He had a .363 OBP in his opening 2 seasons. It was .374 in the minors. Also, Casas had 16 HRs in his next and last 355 PAs, while Dalbec fell of a cliff with just 14 HRs in his last 520 PAs and a putrid .599 OPS. Casas has a .730 OPS since his first 2 seasons in MLB. I may be one of the last Sox fans still holding out hope Casas can contribute again. It may be against the odds, but the guy can hit and get on base. I'm fine with high K rates, if you can do both of those things well.

His great health was one reason I wanted him as much as Schwarber. Getting Contreras was a great get- much cheaper and with no longterm decline in the forcaste. Maybe had we traded for AR and a 2Bman (BLowe?) last winter we'd not be here bitching about the offense. Deadline deals are always more costly and usually for rentals.

Indeed, and 16% by Alonso and Contreras is very good. More homers by Alonso helped but more opportunities was a major factor, too.

I enjoy watching us play better teams more, too, but I also feel like a tougher schedule should be a factor in evaluating W-L records, much like college sports rankings use.

IMO, and I'm not a playoffs are a crapshoot guy, was we had close to zero chance at even making the WS and we should have sold, sold, sold. We let a lor of players go to free agency. The only redeeming factor has been our luck with comp picks.

We had an $18M DH with a .762 career OPS, plus hopes that Casas might return and Romy as, at worst, a short-side platoon with Casas. (Romy actually batted more vs RHPs than LHPs in 2024 198-143 and hit .718 v R.) I wasn't predicting Duran was going to be worse. I've always viewed him as a coin toss. I'm not for pinning hopes on coin tosses. His trade value was still pretty high. Word seemed to be that the hold up was that Brez valued him more than every other GM, and not that no GM wanted Duran. I'm not sure HOU would have given us Paredes for him. I always felt they should have even added to the deal to get Duran, but we may never know if they'd have done a one-for-one. There were other trades mentioned but as usual, never specifics. As for now, I don't think he's worth his projected $10.8M arb. I'm not sure how many, if any GM would take him at that cost. Every article I read says he will be tendered, but unless we have a trade worked out, I wouldn't do it.

Brez also replaced DHam with 2 infielders- both of whom look better than DHam, to me. It was hard to predict Romy would go down. Sogard did come into the limelight.

Wow, I just said as much in 10 times the words! LOL.

I've made this point, too. It also addresses the point made that we put too much hope in Young Anthony. The fact that we did not trade Duran and had Yoshida, Romy and other at DH highlighted there were contingencies in place for a Roman collapse or injury. The problem was Duran was a crappy contingency plan that very few wanted traded last winter. Now, they blame Brez for not improving the offense enough. Keeping Duran might be the biggest winter mistake on offense. At least second to signing Suarez and trading for Durbin over signing Bregman. Story was untradeable. So was Yoshida. I guess counting on Mayer was a big mistake, but Brez did go out and replace DHam with Seigler, IKF and Monasterio, while already having Romy and Sogard in reserve. The other slot might be Narvaez/Wong. Looking at the second half numbers for Narvaez could have been enough to convince another GM to make a move there. Okay: 2B and Catcher. Look what Brez did over the summer: Mead and AR.

Not at all. I was for selling all but one other season, I think. He couldn't even pull that off. The one time he did something, he got Abreu, but that summer he also was a buyer. Okay, I don't count 2020, when he sold off a lot and got us Pivetta.

Maybe they got lucky not doing that.

What scares me is that the insanely inept Yankee front office wanted AR as much as we did.

I know your position. You've stated it dozens of times. It just seems funny you bring up that point after being critical of me bringing up the playing in the toughest division point. It's kinda the same thing in reverse.

It's hard to know when to trade a player right before they decline. Suggesting a trade before the player reaches prime is not usually wise, but the Duran case was unique. Nobody I remember ever tweaked his approach more than Duran. Even when he was doing well, he tweaked and tweaked. I know I was not the only one who wanted him traded, and I've been wrong on many opinions and suggestions, but anyone can check out the BTV site and see I hold the record for suggested Duran trades. It might be the record for anyone suggesting trading any player. I suggested trading him even after 2024. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. I don't deserve it. Many of us wanted it done due to his unpredictability, volatility and high number of bonehead plays on defense and baserunning. Last winter, many were saying we cant trade our top 3 offensive player when we need offense, but Duran was our worst player on offense, when you factor all the PAs into the evaluation. Now, we are thinking of non tendering him vs paying the $10-11M arb or trading him. Does anyone even want him in a platoon role for 2027? He hit .200 v RHPs (.633 OPS) I know there is a chance he can revert to his 2025 self, Nobody expects 2024, again, but I'm not getting why we should expect it.

Oh, that changes everything.