moonslav59

Devers seems decent to good with the glove. His arm accuracy is the major issue. I don't think all players are cut out to DH, so I'm not sure moving Devers or Casas is a great idea, but our corner IF sucks on D. To me, Devers at 1B would be better on D. We'd have to pay for a 3Bman like Chapman, or go with Urias at 3B. This causes Yoshi to stay in LF, almost everyday. I'd prefer to have Yoshi DH and give Devers a 1Bman's mitt over the winter to work on being the back-up at 1B in '24, and see how he looks there.

Tin foil.

I was hopeful we'd see a glimpse of the Urias of a couple years ago. I'm not sure we want to pay his arb total in 2024. I do think we don't add a middle IF'er, this winter, except guys like Chang. We have other needs: SP SP SP LH RP RHB (I guess we could try and add a big RH'd bat who can play 2B and maybe CF. Any ideas?)

Further proof that more rest was needed.

Often, when teams lose, it looks like they are not trying or not trying hard enough. It's hard to know. Body language is not 100% accurate, but I did get a sense we lost the enthusiasm we seemed to have back in July.

Winter 1, there was not enough money to spend to fill even 1/10 of our needs. Winter 2, 1/5th. To me, it's been two winters, and IMO, Bloom did pretty well with the budget in 2022 on pitching. The Story signing really hurt. Winter 4 saw just $10M go to the rotation and no trades that helped it, either.

I'm still a big Cora fan. He did a great job in '21 and helped in '18. I think he did near the best anyone could do in the other years, under trying circumstances.

I'd prefer to say we had no iron men in 2023.

Reyes is better on D at 2B than the combined carousel of 2023. I'm not sure about his offense for '23. EValdez may help the O but hurt the D at 2B.

This is the 20th season from 2004-2023. Man, how time flies! 4 Rings! Here is a look at the best single seasons by our starting pitchers by fWAR: 7.6 Sale 2017 6.5 Schill '04 6.2 Sale '18 5.7 Nate '21 5.7 Beckett '07 5.4 Lester '09 5.1 Porcello '16 4.9 Pedro '04 4.9 Lester '10 4.6 Schill '06 4.4 Price '16 4.3 Beckett '08 4.3 Lester '08 3.9 Beckett '09 3.9 ERod '21 3.8 Lester '14 3.8 Beckett '11 3.7 ERod '19 3.6 Sale '19 3.3 Leckey '10, Buch '15, Arroyo '04, Lester '13 3.0 Buch '10, Wells '05, Pom '17 Best tandems: 11.4 Schilling, Pedro '04 10.6 Sale, Pom '17 9.6 Nate, ERod '21 9.6 Lester, Beckett '09 9.5 Porcello, Price '16 8.6 Sale, Porcello '18 8.6 Beckett, Dice-K '07 8.6 Beckett, Lester '08 8.2 Lester, Lackey '10 Best three: 14.7 Schilling, Pedro, Arroyo '04 (16.9 w #4 DLowe) 12.4 Porcello, Price, Wright '16 11.9 Nate, ERod, Pivetta '21 (14.1 w #4 Houck) 11.3 Beckett, Lester, Dice-K '08 10.9 Beckett, Dice-K, Schilling '07 Best Single Season fWAR by Everyday Players 10.5 Betts '18 9.5 Ellbury '11 8.2 Betts '16 7.9 Pedey '11 6.7 Devers '19 6.4 Beltre '10 6.4 Betts '19 6.4 Pedey '08 6.3 Ortiz '07 6.2 Youk '08 6.2 AGon '11 6.0 Bogey '22 5.9 Bogey '19 5.9 Youk '09 5.8 JD '18 5.6 JBJ '16 5.4 Betts '17 5.3 Ortiz '06, Ortiz '05 4.9 Beni '18, JD Drew '09, Pedey '13 4.8 Devers '22, Betts '15 4.7 Vic '13, Pedey '09 4.6 JBay '06, Ellsbury '13, Bogey '15 4.5 Lowell '07

If Pivetta goes 1.1 inning more, he'll be at a 4.00 ERA. 1.2 or 2 IP more and he's under 4.00.

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.