moonslav59

You do wonder why the more the story changes, the more it makes him look more and more like the loyal player and the team like the culprit.

I agreed with you. We don't know, if one GM sees something of value, though. It's not like a PTBNL has to be good.

That 2013 team was widely believed to have "over performed," although I'm not fully sold on that point, and there were some other major additions to the 2018 season, beyond Cora. JD was a huge add. Mookie nearly doubled his fWAR from 2017 to 2018 (5.4>10.5) Beni went from 1.5 to 4.9. Bogey 3.1 to 4.4 Price nearly doubled his GS'd from 2017. (1.5 fWAR>2.4) Porcello did much better than '17 (2.0>2.4) Then, we added Nate & Pearce. Now, maybe Cora had something to so with all these improvements by the same guys on the 2017 team, but I'm not giving him a big chunk of that credit. Just JD, Nate & Pearce alone, made the two teams vastly different.

You seem to shy away from context, and I agree that we did spend a lot the last 2 winters, but so many others spent more and passed us in the rankings, and our "starting point" was perhaps lower than many wanted to think it was and was below where these teams that passed us were 2 years ago.

I tend to agree. If no team wanted or needed him enough, this season, due to some injury or decline, I don't see them wanting him more, this winter. Now, maybe some GMs called Bloom with offers of PTBNLs or even better, and he set the value, too highly, but I kinda doubt it.

Great points. That investment made in the farm may or will take time to start seeing tangible results at the big league level. To me, I have already seen enough to think improvements have been made and results have already started to be seen, including more pitching help from our own farm than we have seen in a long time. While several of the contributing players were not "Bloom kids," he did not trade them, some of "his guys" might have been involved in some of the "development" aspect of their rise or success at the big league level. He added several prospects and younger players outside of the draft and IFA, including Abreu, Whitlock, Wink, Wong, Schreiber and others not yet at the MLB level. He hardly traded any prospects, of note, over 4 years. Recent prospect pitching graduates (not all Bloom kids:) Bello Crawford Whitlock Houck Winckowski Bernardino, Kelly, Murphy & Robertson One can easily argue there doesn't seem to be many top pitching prospects on the farm, right now, and I would agree, but the above list is still encouraging, when compared to the list of homegrown pitchers we've seen between Lester and Houck. My list of the best pitchers on the farm (with SP's projected starting level in '24:) Wikelman AA Perales A+ Gambrell AAA Monegro A+ Drohan, Walter AAA, Hagenman AAA, Mata Dobbins AA, E R-C A+, Bastardo AA, Rogers A+, ICoffey AA, Penrod AA, Song AA, Paez A+ RP: Kelly, Guerrero, Liu, Hoppe, Troye, Denlinger, Fernandez, Broadway, Webb, Bell We may lack on blue chippers, but there are a lot of pitchers with promise and hopes. The everyday player list is deeper and of higher quality.

Bloom did spend a lot of money, last winter. He also had a lot of talent to replace, even though some of that talent had been in some sort of decline for a year or more. He did offer Nate a pretty big contract, which was later withdrawn. He did offer Eflin a pretty big sum of money and more years than he ended up giving Kluber. I do think the budget restrictions did hamper his overall spending, but I think where he spent it seemed to be up to him, and he apparently did want to boost the rotation, earlier in the signing period. Once he missed out on plan A and plan B, it seems plan C did not involved nearly as much spending on the rotation. More was shifted to hitting and the pen. Maybe he viewed Kluber as a near equal as Nate or Eflin, and maybe that looks like a bigger mistake now than it did then, in hindsight, but the fact is he seemed willing to spend a lot on the rotation, then did not. There didn't seem to be any effort to bring Wacha back, and I don't recall many othe rumors on major SP'er signings. I seem to recall Seth Lugo's name and maybe one or two others, but nobody that made me think, "Wow!" Another factor, I'd like to know about is whether there was a directive on not trading higher level prospects for shorter term gains, or was that mostly a Bloom choice.

I also wonder why the Sox have not come forward with specific answers on some of these points. It makes me think the answers are not what fans want to know, of they just don't want to fan the fire and keep this conversation going on and on. They could easily say, on ____ day, we offered $___ for ___ years and were told _____." Maybe they don't want to start a precedent or put Mookie on the spot, which is understandable, but some recent Mookie statements have put them on the spot.

Indeed. I'm looking forward to that thread.

The weird things is, the eye test does not match the numbers on this... Overall 2023 Sox Batting .259 BA .751 OPS RISP: .265 BA .772 OPS These numbers were much better, until about a month ago, too.

It does seem like a slump is contagious. (Same with hot streaks.)

Some others may pass Verdugo and Pivetta before all careers are over: Current bWARs w BOS: 2.6 Wong 1.7 Wink (2.0 in '23) 0.7 Abreu (in just about 1 month)

I think we need 3 solid pitchers in the 1.5 to 2.5 slot range of effectiveness, but seriously, look at how bad this year went. If we had just added 2 SP'ers who gave us a 4.10 ERA and 180 IP, we'd probably still be in the playoff hunt, or just very recently eliminated. I'd love to get and ace and two guys like Pivetta, but a little better.

I get how the start to a season can seem to "set the tone," but it sucks to head out west in July, too.

I did not mean to imply we only need one pitcher. My point has been we need 3. I do think drafting SSs and then trading them for less riskier pitchers than pre-draft ones is a good idea.

I would not trade a bunch of top prospects for a 28 year old 1 year guy, or 27 y/o two year guy, but if we can get 3+ year from a younger pitcher who has already shown he can pitch in professional ball, then it has to be considered, seriously. This effectively takes the place of drafting and developing pitchers in your own system.

The statement didn't say don't sign all 3 of those everyday players, but clearly we focused more on that than SP'ing. As it turned out, we did need hitting, too.

Hard to choose the right GM, when you don't know the direction you want to go.

Me neither. We are at a moment very similar to when we did not get Scherzer, then realized our mistake and went for Price. It was a time it needed to be done. That time is now. (Actually, it was years ago, too.) Roll the dice. Roll them 2-3 times.

I think this statement is something a large percentage of posters would all agree on.

I'm sure they come to a consensus on the overall philosophy on drafting and positional risks vs rewards factors is part of the conversation.

I'm happy we draft SSs not pitchers. I just wish we'd trade some for pitchers we know more about, later on.

It's horrific. The word I was hearing before the deadline was that the team believed in themselves and were hoping we didn't trade away anyone important. We didn't, and the team fell apart. The team was 56-47 on July 28th. Yes, other teams made trades to improve. I had hoped they would do more, but that confidence seemed to evaporate, starting around the deadline- losing 7 of 8 right before and after the deadline. It looked like they might be coming out of it by winning 5 of 6 from AUG0 to AUG 15 and then 5 of 7 at NYY and HOU in the middle of August, but that was the last glimmer of hope (68-60 on AUG 24 after that 17-1 romp.) I find it hard to believe that on August 25th, the players subconsciously gave up, because management gave them no support 3 weeks earlier. We had a good offense. We should not have needed help, there, but POOF- presto- it was gone. If they quit because of Bloom, then they would have probably quit at some point, over something else, later on anyway.

They will probably choose #3, again. Play it halfway. Try to make it look like they want to win, now, but do nothing that sacrifices any of the future. IMO, they will come close to the lux tax line and maybe not go over, again. I doubt they spend close to the second line, like I hope they do.

Indeed. I was just pointing out how back then, many ranted about having so many "blackholes." Last year, it was the pen. It usually takes more than fixing the worst area of your team to win it all, and teams with a major weakness can still win it all.