moonslav59

Full throttle voting!

Load 'em up and trade them at the deadline. Go WOO! Go Sea Dogs!

The solution to too many talking heads is to add another one to make it an odd number, so they can stop having tie votes that have been paralyzing their decision-making process.

Word is, the Imanaga contract is set up very differently, with various escalators and possible opt-outs. Apparently, only about $80M guaranteed. We'll get the details, later. Contract pending physical.

It's the perfect contract.... for Gio. Concerns about his last 2 year numbers made the 4 year offers, if there were any, lower than he hoped for. $19M/1 if we pitches well. $37M/2, if he does poorly. (Wow! We get him at $18M year 2, if he does badly.) If he does poorly in 2025, too, we better make sure he doesn't pitch 140 innings, of he gets another $19M or a $1.5M buyout.

One more asst GM and no GM.

It looks like offering Gray $80M/3 might have been the best, "We shoulda, coulda..." (Not sure we'd have gotten him for that.)

So, Monty to NYY (unless they trade for Cease?), Snell to SFG?, Stroman to LAA and Clevinger or Paxton to BOS?

He certainly was near the top in risk factor.

I'm not sure this guy was the best SP'er for the money, but we could have afforded anybody, so far, except maybe Yamo.

Well said. Devers: Highest paid Sox player ever, and by $83M! Story: 4th highest AAV ever given to a Sox player (31 Price, 31 Devers & 29 by Sale) Yoshida: 9th highest amount paid for any Sox player- counting fees: (All over $100M) Devers Price AGon Crawford Sale Story JD Dice-K Yoshida

Looks like another rich guy gets off the hook. Julio Urias will not face felony charges: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/01/l-a-district-attorneys-office-will-not-file-felony-charges-against-julio-urias-case-referred-for-misdemeanor-consideration.html

If there were 15- trained Reds and Dales watching every game, every day and entering their eye test information, consistently and in an unbiased manner, it would be worth much more than just one of you saying Bogey is a better than average defensive SS.

LOL. Seriously, it was all Cora's call.

Most recent Sox signings for over $15M a year and 3+ years: By timeline (last listed first and by date deal started) Red= SP $31M x 10 Devers (EXT) '24 $18M x 5 Yoshida (+posting fee) '23 $23M x 6 Story '22 None in '21 $29M x 5 Sale (EXT) '20 $20M x 6 Bogey (EXT w opt out) '20 $17M x 4 Eovaldi '19 $22M x 5 JD M '18 None in '17 $31M x 7 Price '16 $20M x 4 Porcello (EXT) '16 $22M x 4 HRam '15 $19M x 5 Sandoval '15 $14M x 8 Pedroia '14 None in '13 $22M x 7 AGon (EXT) '12 $20M x 7 Crawford '11 $17M x 4 Beckett (EXT) '11 $17M x 5 Lackey '10 None in '09 Adjusted for inflation: $13M x 3 Lowell (EXT) '08 $14M x 5 JD Drew '07 $13M x 4 Papi (EXT) '07 $9M x 6 Dice K '07 (+ massive fee) I'll stop at '07 but mention Manny $20M x 8 in '01 and $13M x 7 Pedro in '98 (EXT)

I would say we'll make a trade, but I have no expectations of anything good happening.

How many scouts rely on watching TV to make evaluations of player's skills? Hell, they rely more on radar guns and stats like On base % than TV highlights.

Yes, indeed. They do use some other data, like how hard the ball was hit and how far from the fielder it was hit, but yes, eye tests by people watching ever play of every games (at the ball parks)and entering calibrated data into a formula beats one guy watching most of the Sox games on TV.

Has it really come down to Stroman or bust?

We are getting closer to the point where we say, "Then, there were none."

LOL. It's funny how things like that are all but forgotten, now.

The thing is, the obvious ball between the legs of a throw off the mark is not just noticed with the eye test, but also every single defensive metric and even fldg%. Nothing is gained with the eye test on those plays. It's the range plays, the difficult and semi-difficult plays that are hard to judge from a TV. If one OF'er consistently gets a great break and takes the exact right angle nearly every time, it's hard to see that on TV. We see him running hard and catching or missing the ball. When the opposite type OF'er goes after a ball that the previous OF'er catches easily or maybe spectacularly, we might not even notice it could have been caught. Maybe he has to dive to make a catch the other guy glides to an easily makes the out. We might even think the guy who took the wrong angle and made the diving catch is the better defender, because he made the highlight reel.

I do think watching nearly every game of one team does give the TV viewer a pretty good idea of who is good- bad, great or crappy, but just like stats and metrics, it is flawed, for many of the reasons you mention. My biggest beef with "eye test" proponents is that Horrible, bad, okay, good and great are all relative terms in MLB. I'll use the defense of Bogey as the example, Bogey is a damn good fielder compared to everyone who every played or tried to play baseball, but in MLB he can be viewed as anywhere from near average to bottom tier. While it might be true, in our own mind that Bogey is a "good fielder," what good does that label mean, if 20-28 SSs are better than him? Is that really "good?" Now, the next point: no single person watched nearly every play of every team, so how can we determine just how Bogey compares to other SSs? We simply cannot by using only the eye test. If we watch nearly every Sox game and just a few other games, we may not even see some SSs play, at all. Others, we may see 3-6 games, each. A few others more than a dozen games, tops. While metrics are highly flawed, they do inspect every play or every game in a way that attempts to be impartial and calibrated to be as consistent as possible, unlike home field scorers, who routinely assign errors and non errors in seemingly haphazard ways. In defense of watching games on TV, often a replay will show a play from another angle that does capture the jump a player gets and how much ground he covers to make the play. This works better for IF'ers than OF'ers, because angles taken, jumps off the crack of the bat and the fielder's speed is harder to judge than an IF'ers. The fact that DRS, OAA and UZR/150 often vary by wide degrees shows none are perfect, but to me, looking at all three, together has to be better than the eye test, when a blindfold is over our eyes for most of 28 out of 30 teams, each day.

Take both and deal Yoshida plus some cash, and maybe sign Soler or Duvall.

I don't think anyone should cry about Brez trading these 3: Dugo: He had 1 year left, had attitude problems, hit lefties badly. Urias: He had 1 year left, was not a plus defender and didn't look like he was going to get his O from 2-3 years ago back. Sale: He had 1 year left, couldn't stay healthy and when healthy was sort of up and down for 5 years, from 2019 to 2023. I like O'Neill, Grissom, Campbell and Fitts. I'm not high on Gio, but we got better signing him. I'm hoping something exciting happens: I'm expecting nothing. I will not be shocked to see Yoshida and or Jansen traded. I think maybe Story or Martin could be traded, as well, perhaps at the deadline. It's who we add that matters most.