moonslav59

Sure, just like the Price trade where we had to throw in some bum named Betts. LOL

You stat nerds can hash this out.

Good that you can watch "lowlights" in the box scores. Have yet to hear why it bothers you that fans get "giddy" when their team is winning, even if it turns out to be false hopes.

But, you stopped watching when we were winning. Your eye test was skewed.

The Yoshi contract is what it is. We have to deal with it and make the best of the situation. May be having him DH 120-145 games would help him hit better than 2023. We know it would improve the D, by itself. These should be the "easier" choices for the next GM.

Okay, we need 6 non numbered SP'ers before we dip into the pen.

Yes. It is with many teams. And many teams use their long RP'ers as spot starters or slotted as their #6. If we sign 2 really good pitchers, and we get lucky with both starting 31 games, each, we'd still need 90 starts from ____. Let's say with some more good luck... 28 Bello 28 Pivetta We'd need, best case scenario, 34 starts from ... Sale Houck Crawford Whitlock Walter/Murphy Are we to expect more good luck and get 24 from Sale and just 10 from Houck or Crawford and be able to keep Whitlock and the other one from Houck/Crawford in the pen all year? IMO, we'd end up using 12 pitchers again, including all our long men plus Walter, Murphy and maybe Drohan or Wikelman. Even 3 solid SP'ers does not guarantee keeping 2 or 3 of those guys in the oen, all year, but why not try to plan on just that? The 3rd guy could be a durable #4 type. SP1 FA SP2 FA/Trade SP3 Bello SP4 FA/Trade SP5 Pivetta (who has been proven to start many games and give a lot of IP) SP6 Sale I'd rather have to get to my 7th SP'er not my #6 to start dipping into my long relief group in the pen. I'd love to see, what I think might be revolutionary (at least for the Sox) to have a solid 4 man long relief pen and 4 man short relief pen combined. Short: Jansen, Martin, Wink, Schreiber (AAA: Bernardino, Kelly, Robertson, Guerrero) Long: Houck, Whitlock, Crawford, Pivetta (if Sale is healthy) or Murphy (AAA: Gambrell/Walter/Mata/Drohan/Wikelman) To me, this is a top 5 or 6 pen in MLB. Why not plan for that?

I'm wondering why you chose to say 87. I could care less if you say you are terrible. It bring me no joy. You rarely answer the question asked, so I will say I think you are terrible at that.

I seriously doubt JT comes back at that option price, but he did seem to like it in Boston, despite all the seeping toxicity. It doesn't make sense, to me. Yoshi should be the DH for several reasons: 1. He reallysucks on D, and I mean badly. 2. He seemed to burn out over the long MLB schedule. 3. The only position we seem to have a surplus is OF, especially LHB'ers in the OF. I really like JT, and I'm worried about our offense, next year, without him. I just don't think we'll want to spend the money it may take to bring him back on him and not pitching and a RH'd bat who can play CF (or RF, if Dugo's days are numbered.)

Susuki makes the catch, and this is not even mentioned.

But why mention 87 wins?

It's obvious many think like you do.

You mean you read about them. One "problem" Devers had in key situations was they walked him way more than JT (more than double the amount) PAs in High Leverage: 120 Devers (21 BBs) 112 Turner (9BBs) JT did outhit him (.333 to .266), but when you factor in the walks, which would bring their PAs about even: nonwalk PAs: 103 Turner 99 Devers The RBIs were about the same per nonwalk PA: 31 Turner 30 Devers High Leverage OBP: .408 Devers .384 JT SLG .532 Devers .510 JT OPS .940 Devers .894 JT JT did do better with RISP and Late & Close, but MVP? I'd give it to Martin. You can't do much better than he did.

Oh, it made perfect sense. That's why I'm all for adding 3 solid SP'ers, so we don't have to keep jerking these guys around, or at least lessen the odds of having to do so. I know full well, we won't. We will continue dreaming Sale will start 25 games and go 160+ IP. We will keep thinking Houck can go past 18 batters. We will be sufficiently impressed with Crawford's 4.78 ERA as a SP'er in 2023 to anoint him the 4th starter in '24. We will keep Whitlock in the pen, but won't hesitate to start him, when someone gets hurt. We won't make plans to cover for anything that could and will go wrong. Unless, the new guy breaks the paradigm.

I think the D should improve, significantly, even with no major additions: SS: Story over the rag tag circus clowns of '23. LF: Yoshi should DH 120+ games. Anyone else on the roster is an improvement. CF: Rafaela is way better than anyone else we had in CF in '23, raw as he is. 2B: I think a full season of Reyes and maybe Urias beats the group we had in '23. RF, 3B, and 1B will likely stay the same. C should improve as the two we have gain more experience. Remember, the two catchers we had, this year, hardly caught anyone on the staff in 2022, and if they did, it wasn't for long. We should be bringing back many of the same pitchers of 2023, hopefully not the worst ones, but more from... Bello Crawford Pivetta Wink Houck Whitlock Martin Jansen Schreiber Bernardino They may only see 3-4 new pitchers in '24.

Indeed, but at the time, I thought the only good thing we did have was depth. I kept saying we "choose quantity over quality," and it turned out the quantity was not nearly enough, either. (Certainly the quality was not good, either.) Now, the plan is to pencil Sale into a top 5 slot and expect him to give us how many starts? I'm not writng Sale off, but we better plan on zero from him. Maybe he gives us 20-25, but then someone else will likely get hurt or pull a Kluber or Richards on us.

What was the meaning, then?

The Houston talk radio shows are roasting Dusty Baker alive. They point to favoritism, like playing Bregman 154 games while "resting" much better performers, too often. Misuse of the pen, as in pitching pressly more than Abreu, when it counts. Sound familiar? When the team wins the same manager doing the same things is a genius.

Huh? Are you projecting, again? Mocking?

Apparently, we were supposed to expect that and sign 2 more allstar closers, just in case....

I thought we had decent SP'er depth, last March. Mediocre but okay on quantity. It turned out Wink was never used in the rotation (thankfully,) and Mata got hurt again (surprise, surprise.) Sale Paxton Kluber Bello Whitlock Houck Pivetta Winckowski Crawford That was 9 with ML experience, then we had... Walter (9th ranked on SPs) Mata (5th ranked on SPs) Murphy (17th ranked in March) (Drohan 13th and Wikelman 14th were viewed as too far away for 2023.) It's not the greatest 11-12, but it was not all that horrible looking on opening day. To me, it looked better than the 2022 rotation on opening day- before we knew Wacha and Hill would do pretty well.

I know it's unlikely. Hell, I think it's unlikely we add two solid SP'ers. Crawford has a 4.78 ERA as a SP'er, thisa year. It's at 5.44 his last 9 starts. Throw out his first 2 starts and it's at 4.47 in his 20 starts since being added to the rotation for good, back in early June. That's not bad, especially for a first long stretch of starting, but it's no ringing endorsement. I'd prefer he stay in the pen. If we end up with Bello, Houck and Pivetta as our 3-5 SP'ers, we may need several good long relievers in the pen.

More common sense.

Like you said, two years ago...

I think the second reason was to hedge against the pending Bogey bolt.