moonslav59

Suarez was a major signing. Calling him a lillipop is hyperbole, I hope. I guess JH could have not allowed $21M for Gray and $21M for Contreras, and instead signed Bregman, and you'd say he was spending agian?

If they can, they do. If they don't, they still get paid, unless they pull a Dempster.

They snuck Valera into the top 100. Nice! They have Tolle ahead of Arias, which looks correct. (I'd have Early ahead, too.)

Cam Smith is not part of their infield logjam: 1B: Walker/Paredes 2B: Altuve/Paredes (or Altuve to LF) SS: Pena/Correa 3B: Correa/Paredes Their DH is set with Yordan, but he could play LF and DH Altuve.

...and you have to look at who takes their place in the line-up and field. Anthony will play LF or RF, depending on which one we trade, but the line-up slot will likely be this: Duran does not DH, if we trade Abreu or Duran is traded and whoever we DH is who replaces Duran/Abreu's bat. Both Duran and Abreu look to give us a .775 to .825 OPS. Duran brings speed into the offense, which should not be overlooked and undervalued. Th offense would be to sub Duran/Abreu with Yoshida L/Romy R/Campbell R/Casas L. If you figure some sort of platoon between these 4 guys over the full season, what might you guess their OPS would total? Maybe .750 to .800? Maybe .775 to .825 without the speed?

I think he was battling an injury for much of 2025, but he's been pretty good at the plate, every year: .786 '25 .781 '24 .862 '23 (.930 AAA) .834 '22 AA .857 '21 A+ Many players have ups and downs. I'm not sure Wilyer is more extreme with that.

I'd be fine with Janek- a promising catcher prospect, but we need a LH'd RP'er, so that would be okay.

HOU felt extremely uneasy with Altuve in LF, last year, but they might reluctantly try it again, this year. I'd hesitate trading Abreu for Paredes, straight up, but if they add King, I'd probably do it. Maybe Sousa, Abreu or Janek would be enough. I get the point about trading offense away, and the theory might be one OF'er will replace Yoshida/Romy/ Campbell is not a big step up on offense, so losing one but adding an infielder that can hit is a net gao=in on offense.

Word is HOU does not want Duran but rather Abreu, and the Sox are asking for more added to the deal. HOU should give more, as it is 4 years of Abreu for 2 of Paredes.

I'm fine with thinking Antony and other younger players can take up some of the slack left by departing players, but we should not really count on it. Lost PAs (OPS) 495 Bregman .821 334 Devers .905 209 Refsnyder .838 That's over 1,000 PAs. 119 Lowe .790 (Which is maybe what Contreras gives us but with 450 more PAs) Let's say Contreras takes Lowe's 120 and another 350 from the other 3, that leaves about 650 for one more player. Of course, I'd like two big bats added, but one could cover what was lost, along with Willson. It's gotta be a big bat, and K Marte is not walking in the door. Paredes comes closest to meeting the need, but he is part speculation. Suarez might be plan B and any other plans don't look like big bats, to me.

Gray's age is the big wildcard. Bello lost some velocity, last year, so maybe that's a wildcard, too. I think both will do fine.

Yes, if players agree to deferrals, fine- just don't lower the AAV for it. Teams could start changing 7 yr deals into 10 year deal to help lower the AAV, but the league has policed that, too.

I'd go... 1. Tolle 2. Early Big gap 3. Arias 4. Witherspoon 5. Valera

100%. Maybe Contreras replaced half of Devers. But, we still have Breggie and Ref's bats to repalce.

I see it that way, too, and Romy had decent splits in 2025, Not great but better than Duran and Abreu vs off-handed pitchers. The issue is he will face more off handed pitchers being a RHB than Duran & Abreu. Can he hit .710 again vs righties? If not, we may see -- eeeek!!!- DHam again!

He played very well for a half season, got a year older and showed signs of injury issues. This was after showing decline from his peak 2 seasons at ages 24 and 25 (152 and 162 OPS+) He rebounded a bit in 2022 to 134 but that was still a far cry from those monster years. Then he dropped to 122 in 2023 and 116 in 2024. His defense remained excellent, but a 116 OPS+ is not even close to $170M value. He ended up at 128, last year, and that is why he got $170M, but why is a half season in 2025 carry more weight than 2023 and 2024 combined, and now he's almost 32 years old? To me, he wasn't worth what we offered him, so I'm not upset he turned us down. That's the bottom line, to me. If (emphasis on if) Brez made some mistakes in the talks, I'm glad he did, and I hope he learns from it, so when we really should get our top target, he doesn't muff it up.

Okay, but you called him a #4, right? Potential to be one is a different statement. It depends on how you decide to group SP'ers as #1-2-3-4-5 and certainly using ERA has merit. One way to look at rankings is to compare Suarez, Gray and Bello to every team's projected 2-3-4 SP'ers. You may find Gray looks better than half the #2's and almost all #3s. One day I will do this, and I'm guessing Suarez looks better than 15-20 team's #1 and maybe better than all but 1-2 team's #2. He's a top #2, if not a bottom #1. I'm thinking Gray will look as good as or close to half the #2's and almost all #3's. even if you use ERA. (Of course using only ERA neglects IP and other meaningful stats.) IMO, Bello could easily be MLB's best or top 2-3 4th starter. When we got Gray, I had hoped for a "better #2," but I felt he was pretty close to being one, as long as his age did not finally catch up to him. His fWAR was top 20, last year, and that was largely fueled by IP and FIP, as fangraphs favors FIP. His 1.4 bWAR is not all that great and probably is not top 60, but it is probably in the #2 to #3 range. Anyway we look at it, getting Suarez and pushing Gray and Bello back a notch greatly improved our rotation. It also left just the 5 slot open, instead of 4-5. Our depth was improved by Ranger, as well. Now, we need a big bat and a 2B/3Bman. I know we agree on that! 🤩

I can't see how Gray can be viewed as a #4, even if he pitches like one, every now and then. I won't bring up the last 2-3 year numbers, because Gray is old and others are not in age decline. Let's just look at 2025 numbers... The first one is IP. It takes creating the SP sample size of 150 pitchers (30 teams x 5 SP'ers) an IP minimum of 70 IP, That alone should tell you who the number 4 and 5 SP'ers are. They are the ones with less than 120 IP, unless they are good but missed starts for various reasons. #91 on the list had 126 IP. The #120th had 98. (150 had 72 IP) Gray was 19th in IP, despite his age. That's top 30, and if you rank started 1-2-3-4-5 based on top 30-60-90-120, then Gray loses no points for innings and durability for 2025. Lets go to ERA: Gray placed 90th at 4.28 (that looks like the best #3 SP'er in MLB.) Not a #4. His ERA- placed him 89th, so about the same: low #2 to top #3, not a #4. He placed 11th in SIERA. Far from a #4. Some like FIP a lot. Gray ranked an amazing 23rd, here at 3.39. That #1 territory, but I agree it does not make him a #1 or even a clear #2. Certainly, it's not close to #4. How about Ks and BB? He ranked 12th in K%-BB%. That's middle #1 territory and far from #4. The old WHIP: 55th at 1.23 which places hin a low #2. Can anyone show me one important stat where Gray was below average, other than ERA, which I assume most would say is mid tier #3 SP'er? Even ERA places him as a #3. Calling him a #4 is greatly exaggerating the skills of the rest of MLB SP'ers. To me, Gray is likely the best #3 in MLB. Maybe he's second or third best, if the Dodgers, Yankees or some other team have perfect SP'er health. Suarez looks like a number 1 in most categories and would rank and a top 2-3 #2 by almost every stat. Crochet is a top 3-5 SP'er in MLB, IMO. Bello might be a top 4-5 #4 in MLB, and while our #5 might not rank top 15, our 6-7-8-9 SP'ers rank more highly than almost every MLB team, so we should be okay with out #5. fangraphs projects our two top RP'ers as having the highest project fWAR of any other top 2. Whitlock blows away many teams' #1 RPer. Our offense needs serious help. Our defense took a big hit at 3B, but looks better at 1B and maybe 2B. Depending on who we add at 3B/2B, maybe the hit won't be so great. Our OF D is second to none.

And HOU might have a totally different view than we or other GMs do. They could also want him and his lower AAV and longer control years over Duran.

Indeed, but keeping pace with these insane jumps by 3-4 teams is not something I think should be fairly demanded by a fan base. Also, the numbers provided in the previous post included jumps bt the Phillies from 2021 vs the Dodgers from 2019. The 2019 to 2026 Sox jump looks paltry and is very far from "keeping pace," but the 2021 ro 2026 jump looks better, although still way short of those other teams listed: 2021: $185M> 2026: $268M (+$83M) PHI $209>$363 (+$154M) in the same timeframe. The Mets jumped $213M from 2021! Crazy money!

Yup, Brez could have totally botched things, but still ended up at the right point... or not.

Very well said. It should never be viewed in such simple terms as "Bregman was our number one target; we missed out on getting him; he must have botched it." Even if we did "misjudged the room," or were willing to pay more but did not get think we had to, the fact is we did not grossly overpay for Bregman, and we got a very good SP'er instead. Maybe he was an overpay or gross overpay, too, and time will show we chose wrongly. So be it. My opinion is, I'd rather have Suarez at $130M than Bregman at $170M, and for all we know, that may not have sealed the deal, if the no trade clause was a dealbreaker, anyway.

It was pretty lame.

They canceled school for today on Friday- over just the idea of a Saturday night ice strom. We got nothing but rain. It's sunny today, streets are dry and its about 32 degrees. LMAO!

The misjudged a lot about Masa. They may not have thought he was a plus defender, but they felt he was good enough to play LF, and he is not really "good enough." We've had worse defensive LF'ers, but most were hitting 30 bombs or getting on base over 35% of the time (or both.) The Masa signing was Bloom's worst decision, especially in light of how restricted his budget was. Masa and Story were a large percent of his total spending over 4 years. (The Betts trade was on JH & Co. IMO, so I don't hold that against Bloom, The return for Betts is up for criticism, but the only other reported offers were the one from the Padres w/o Price and the original offer by the LAD, which we tweaked Graterol out of the deal.) That $18M sure makes a big difference, especially from 2025 to now and next season. Thank God Story finally gave us something good. Let's hope that continues. I suppose Masa might still help us over the next two years, and if we trade an OF'er he will likely get a long look at DH. IMO, it's almost impossible for Masa to redeem himself and break e ven with his cost vs production, even when you factor in the norm for FA signings and their cost v production.