moonslav59

He was just warming up. That is not his normal delivery.

I can't believe we are just 12 days from the first ST'ing game for the Sox. (Feb 24 vs BAL)

Good choices. I'd add Slaten to the RP group. My Longer shots: Mata, E R-C & maybe Troye. My Longer shots to start? Gambrell, Walter, I Coffey. (I think Murphy graduated.)

That trade doomed all of you, more than you know. (It is what made me a Sox fan. I was a big Tommy Harper fan while living in Milwaukee, and when we moved at the same time of the trade, I switched teams.)

The sad thing is, we might be lucky to get just two to three decent pen arms out of our entire farm system of pitchers. Maybe we get lucky and get a 4th starter and 3 decent RP'ers. That's probably the farm ceiling.

I did not ignore everything else. You complain my posts are too long, then if I don't go in great detail about every aspect of CC's game, "I'm ignoring it?" I know he was a plus defender, when we got him. I know he was a plus runner, when we got him. We paid him enough to be an all around great player, and he never was vs LHPs. He was "glorified" because of his D and BR'ing. I would not have given him top dollar to be great in 65% of the games, and a poor hitter in 35% of the games. His plus D and BR did make up for some of that poor hitting, but not at that money, IMO.

Smith was a better defender than Rice, so Rice to DH. Cooper was traded because the manager said, "He'll never hit in MLB." or something like that, as I recall. They also traded 1Bman Cecil Cooper for 1Bman George Scott, who did play 1B.

Defensive Runs Saved is related to batting splits?

Not when the one vs LHPs is above .700. Career: Papi .981/.817 Crawford: .798/..682 (To be fair, I think CC's was like .695 when we signed him.) You should have used Yaz: .891/.693, but that was a different era, and the Sox did not have anyone that could give the all around game Yaz gave, to take his place v LHPs.

There were a few purges in the 70's that left the team far from "sustainable" in the 80's. The 90's had a few rough patches, too. 78-84 in '83 (6th place) 86-76 in '84 (4th place) 81-81 in '85 (5th place) After going to the WS in '86, we went 78-84 in '87 (5th place.) In the 90's: 73-89 (7th) in '92 80-82 (5th) '93 54-61 (4th out of 5) '94 78-84 in 97 (4th) From '87 to '97, an 11 year stretch, we only won over 55% of our games once (in the shortened '95 season at .557. From '80 to '87, we did it once ('86.)

I think it was the CC signing that Theo was talking about, when he said they got away from their own philosophy. I did not like the signing. CC was a glorified platoon bat, as I called him, then.

...and might be in the majors, by now.

I think he viewed CC as excessive and going away from "the plan." I'm not sure he pulls off the Dodger dump trade, and who knows where we'd have been without it.

He's copying what I said about Cespedes as maybe being the best since Devers.

They need to cut Kennedy out of the decision loop. If they replace him with Theo, in that regard, it should help, but we still have too many hands on the handle stirring the pot.

Theo, later admitted that he and the organization had gotten away from their philosophy and were relying too much on FAs and trading prospects, his last 1-2 years. I'm not sure, if he realized that after leaving, of if he knew it, at the time. Also, what would he have done about it? He did leave a very nice core, so had he stayed, I can't imagine him doing any worse than Ben. I doubt he'd have pulled out all the stops, like DD. It appears I am not the only one doing some "what ifs..."

Too bad his D is unimpressive.

51 Casas 48 Bello 45 Mayer 42 Anthony 34 Duran 24 Crawford 22 Bleis 20 Teel 17 Rafaela 17 Grissom 13 Yorke 9 Wink 8 E Valdez & Abreu 7 Cespedes 6 Wikelman 4 Walter, Romero, Zanetello & Perales 3 Bernardino, Meirdroth, Alcantara 2 Paulino, Jordan, Bastardo, Monegro, Fitts, Brannon, Anderson, Jo Garcia, Jimenez, I Campbell, Murphy, DHam, Bonaci, Hickey, Dobbins, Castro 1 Guerrero, Wong, Rogers, Lugo, Kavadas, E R-C, F Valdez, Slaten, Kelly, K Campbell, Weissert, Mata, Broadway, Chacon, G Gambrell, Song, Liu, Politi, Marcano, McDonough, Binelas, Ferguson, Rosier, Lira, F Encarnacion, Dearden, J Encarnacion, C Coffey, R Fernandez

Yes, once you get past the top 4-5 prospects, there is a lot of room for moving prospects up or down. I agree with the 4 you mentioned. I would not have Hamilton as high as 19th. The more I think about it, the more I like Abreu 5th.

To me, "ripping the band aid off" means having a fire sale and maybe tanking a year or two. The drafting and developing of pitchers has been a long-standing issue that has yet to be fixed, unless if has begun under Brez, and we have years to wait.

I agree with everything, except I'd point out, there was no talk of sustainability, as far as I remember, during the heavy trading period under DD (year 1-3.)

All good points, and I have not given up on him. I just like quite a few propsects better.

It's good to know someone else thinks we have decent (not great) depth beyond the top 4-5. Good to see Abreu up so high. He could be a real eye-opener. I've very high on Cespedes breaking out, this year. It's weird how so many are still so high on Jordan. I'm not. Our top pitchers are still way down the list, and maybe Fitts, a Brez addition passes Wikelman & Perales, this year. 12. Wikelman 13. Perales 14. Fitts 20. Rogers 23. Monegro 24. Walter 27. Bastardo 30, Slaten 33. Mata 34. I Coffey

I think the Fulmer signing has a better chance at making a difference, granted not until 2025, than the Luetge signing.

I also believe that most Sox fans only care about the here and now, but next year and the year after will soon be the "here and now," again. Building a sustainable system is the best way to keep fans happy for as much and as long as possible. I also agree with Bell that Sox fans are capable of going through a couple bad seasons, here and there, especially if they feel like the future looks brighter. This team has tried to walk the line between rebuilding for tomorrow while trying to make it look like we can compete, each year (in the here and now.) The 2021 season convinced some fans, but more destructively, it convinced management, it could be done. In many ways, a complete teardown is a more effective way to rebuild, but the trade off can mean 2-3 (or more) seasons of really bad here and nows. Trying to avoid this just extended the rebuilding and suffering by the fans. While I do feel like the future looks brighter, these guys have left such a nasty taste in my mouth with all the lies and shams, that it no longer puts a dent in my frustration and feeling of hopelessness. It's not like our roster sucks. It doesn't. In some ways, that's what makes sitting on our hands winter after winter, more painful. I understand the theory of waiting for the best time to pounce on spending large and long on a SP'er, or two. I can see why thinking 2025 or 2026 looks like a better year than now, but had we held a major fire sale in the summer of 2022, I firmly believe that time to "pounce" would have or could have been now. I still think two major SP'er additions makes us a strong WC competitor, and we could have designed those two additions to be projected as still worthy in 2025 and 2026, as well, but now it looks like we will be sitting in limbo for 1-2 or maybe even 3 more years. I'd rather have had 2-3 seasons of 60-65 wins than 6-7 of 75-80 wins.