moonslav59

I thought you respected fWAR more than I do. Urias is not even close to 30. ERA- is more kind to Nola, but yes, Gray has been much better. (I should add him to my top 5.) ERA- 2022 to 2023 58 Kershaw 1 60 Verldnader 3 64 Ohtani 5th 12 Gray 74 17 Snell 75 18 Wacha 75 21 Urias 76 38 Montgomery 83 42 ERod 86 48 Nola 88 49 Stroman 88 50 Eflin 88 51 Braxton 89

Here are the current SP's rankings for our pitchers and their ERAs in 2023: SP'ers 7. Perales 4.21 8. Wikelman 2.88 11. Drohan 6.48 13. Walter 3.07 21. Mata 5.61 25. E R-C 2.53 29. Monegro 2.43 32. Dobbins, 33 Hoppe, 34. Bastardo, 35. Rogers, 40. Paez, 43. Gambrell, 48. I Coffey, 51. Liu

I'm liking Gambrell more and more, but yes, others like Drohan, Walter, Murphy and E R-C are not lighting the world on fire, or are hurt.

I did this to prove how none of us will agree on who belongs in te top 5-6, yet we bash GMs for choosing wrongly. Insulting Gray? Yes, I did, but you insult Nola. Top fWAR since 2018: 4. Nola 24.7 13. Gray 17.1 15. Snell 16.5 24. Giolito 14.7 28. ERod 13.4 29. Stroman 13.2 28. Urias 12.4 44. Ohtani 11.8 49. Montgomery 10.9 54. Flaherty 10.2 2020-2023 4. Nola 15.8 16. Gray 11.1 17. Kershaw 11.0 21. Urias 10.8 22. Ohtani 10.7 (pitching only) 24. Montgomery 10.4 29. Giolito 9.5 33. Snell 9.0 42. Stroman 8.0 45. ERod 7.6 2022-2023 4. Nola 9.4 10. Ohtani 7.9 15. Gray 6.9 23. Snell 6.3 25. Montgomery 6.2 26. Kershaw 6.2 44. Stroman 4.6 46. Urias 4.5 (Like I said, I placed him in my top 5 dues to his age.)

Wikelman with a nice start with POR 6IP, 1H, 0ER, 0BB, 5K (2.45 ERA)

I agree on the lack of improving the development of pitchers. I'm not sure if the arrivals of Houck, Whitlock, Crawford, Wink and Bello is some signal things are improving, but it might be. I think there has been one very consistent plan from the start, under Bloom- the build up of teh farm and young player foundation on the 26. His highest ranked player traded was Aldo Ramirez (Schwarber) Nearly every significant trade, even the ones for vets, included prospects coming with the vet. Wong and Downs with Dugo Seabold with Pivetta Wink, Gambrell and others with Franchy German with Ottavino DHam & Binelas with JBJ Not to mention all the straight vets for prospects deals, including: Abreu & EValdez for Vaz It's the one consistent and almost always followed plan or priority in Bloom's 4 years plus the last year of DD'd reign.

Who is your top 5 or 6. We are already seeing some wild disagreements on the top ones.

Not that you are doing anything differently than anyone else, but it sounds like confirmation bias. If anyone says something like we believe in, we tend to believe it (and then quote it.)

My list (not in any order) Ohtani (not someone we will sign Nola Yamamoto Snell Urias (due to his age) Second Tier: Sonny Gray 33 Kershaw 35 Montgomery 30 Giolito 29 Flaherty 27 .

Who would be on the "short list" of maybe 5-6 top SP'ers where we hope to add 2, but might be lucky to add one, this coming winter? My guess is, most lists will have just 1-2 common names- maybe 3. It's not so easy to project who the best will be, then it's sort of like roulette on choosing the right one or two. Then, the player needs to want to play for you, and you have to offer a competitive offer, if not the most.

It's hard for a scientist to figure this stuff out, let alone a lowly-minded profession like MLB GMs.

Just curious how you choose what to believe. You sometimes use quotes by Sox employees to support your positions. I'm not trying to bust your balls, here. Just wondering how you choose.

Last spring, there is no way any Yankee fan would say the Sox had a better foundation or players you can count on to be average or above average at their positions. Now, I'm not so sure they'd feel the same way, now. Wong/McGuire v Trivino/Higgy Casas v Rizzo/Bauers Urias/Reyes v Torres Story v Volpe Devers vs LeMahieu/Peraza Duran/Refsnyder v Pereira/I F-k Rafaela/Abreu v McKinney Dugo v Judge Yoshida v Stanton The pitching shows the Yanks in a better light, but there are a lot of questions for both teams. Bello, Sale, Pivetta, Houck, Crawford vs Cole, Rodon, Cortes, Schmidt, German, Brito Jansen, Martin, Winckowski, Schreiber, Whitlock, Bernardino/Joely vs Homes, Kahnle, King, Peralta, Abreu and otehrs

Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? LOL

In bWAR Wacha 2022 blows Sale 2023 away.

I was all for signing Senga and did not think $75M/5 was too much. I admit, I did not know much about Eflin and wasn't upset we missed out on him, at the time. We did offer Nate a QO, and apparently more than what he ended up signing for. I remember wondering what we saw in Seth Lugo, and other name mentioned before we signed Kluber. It looks like any of the other 4 would have been much better than what we ended up getting. Bad luck? Bad GM? In reality, we should have signed 2-3 from those 5, and of one was Kluber, we'd have still been better off.

Story and Yoshida do not cost what Nola will cost, for one, but I do think the risk on signing the very best SP'ers is higher. One could point to Judge and argue it's not much different, although he was not a FA signing.

I totally agree, but is the success rate on $75M all that much better than $100M+ signings? True, you don't lose as much when they fail, but our plan proposed, here is to basically to get lucky with some FA signings. Every year, we can go back and select a few signings that worked out very well, and say, "We just need to do that." Well, yes, but even the Senga and Eflin signings had risk. Not everyone here would have been happy with those signings, when they happened. It's the hindsight calls that are 100%. Other SP'er signings near Senga money $75M/5: $72M/4 T Walker $68M/4 J Taillon $63M/3 Bassitt 2022 $77M/5 ERod (opt out) $71M/3 Stroman $56M/4 Jon Gray 2021 None $23M/3 Odorizi and TWalker Who fits the Senga profile, this coming winter?

It's not unreasonable to project that, but at his age, I don't think it's a solid bet he reaches .770-.780. Sure, he can, but is it a solid enough bet to count on? I do think the Yanks bet he can and do not upgrade at 1B, and I doubt they try and upgrade at catching, either. They will bank on bounce backs from Trivino and Higgy. They will slot LeMahieu somewhere as a FT'er, too. That could easily be two choices that end up below average. They will probably go with Stanton at DH, again, so that's 3 out of 9. They will add a CF'er and maybe LF'er, and try to get a SP'er and 2-3 solid pen arms. Is that going to be enough?

Yes, nobody is a 0.0 WAR but 18 pitchers were worse than Kluber's -0.4 fWAR, including... -0.7 Kopech -0.5 Syndergaard -0.4 Bumgarner, Severino, Manoah, Fleming & Rodon

I'd say Rich Hill "worked out" for $5M, too, but yes, the question exposes a weakness in the idea that buying SP'ers is the best plan. 1. We'd need to spend more than $5M/1 and $10M/1 (our 4 year range on SP'er signings) to get a better SP'er. 2. You'd need to not only beat our poor odds on big FA SP'er signings, but also the whole league's odds. The track record has been somewhere between bad and horrible for years. It's an outlier to have one work our well for the team, and the ones that do work are more like the Eflin signings than the Scherzer signing the year before Price's signing. Check out the records of the top pitchers signed since Price. It cannot look like a good plan.

What makes you think we will beat the long odds and actually sign a couple strong SP'er that end up being even decent signings? It is a choice ripe with failures after failures. Nobody wants to trade a guy like casas who could end up being the next Freeman or Olsen. Nobody. But, to think signing FA aces is a good idea, then I could easily say, "STOP!" I won't, of course, because we might need to do both to get a rotation worthy of playoff success. I'd love to see us sign a top FA SP'er plus Yamamoto from Japan, and maybe make a lesser trade for anotehr serviceable SP'er without needing to trade Casas, Mayer, Anthony or Teel, but the chances of us striking gold on all 2-3 choices is close to zero. The chance os trading for a solid pitcer that works out well is higher, despite the known loss of what you had to give up to get one. It's eassier to sign a FA 1Bman (like JT) to replace Casas than it is to outbid someone for Nola and then see that signing work out well for us.

I'm not saying it's beyond a chance Bloom just chose not to spend some money he was allowed to spend. His reasoning might have been that no deal seemed worth it in the long run, so he didn't bother to make one or two more winter or summer deals or winter signings. I do think Bloom was unfairly criticized for the early tenure situations, including the Betts/Price trade, and the discontent built up to a point where this year's collapse has caused more harsh criticism than PERHAPS he deserves. Even with the $6-10M left on the table, and saying that's on JH still does not excuse what happened this year. Bloom chose to focus more money on the pen and starting line-up than the rotation. Perhaps he never had enough to fix them all enough for us to be big playoff contenders, but we all saw the rotation being neglected beyond reason. He should not be let off the hook for that, Had we not signed Duvall and gotten 2 pictures, instead, even if they failed, I'd have felt better about the attempt. I'm not happy with that major choice made. I felt like last winter was Bloom's "make or break" and "legacy" winter, and I have not changed my position on that. While I don't think JH & Co. see last winter like I did, they must not be happy with all he spent on these results. Sure, our spending has dropped from top 3-5 to 12th t0 15th, but we are still spending, and we lost some deadwood money, like Price, and the only deadwood money left is Sale and maybe some guys Bloom has recently signed, like maye Story and Yoshida. I think Bloom will get another year, but if we suck, again, I can't see any justification keeping him around, unless they have viewed this as a 7-8 year rebuild process, which I doubt has even been discussed.

Of course, it isn't, but be honest: isn't it much easier to build a WS team or contender when you have a steady flow of low cost contributing players filling in many slots on your 26 and 40 man roster? Asking a GM to go into a winter with 18-20 slots to fill and a limited budget, like Bloom was handed to start his tenure is an impossible task when you also get zero help from the farm. Year two he had 12-14 slots to fill, a little bigger winter budget and one guy- Houck added from the farm (OK, your fave, Dalbec, too.) Year three he had it down to 7-9 slots to fill a bigger budget and some late arrivals from the farm, like Bello & Casas. Year four he saw a lot of salary lost, a pretty significant budget to work with and the beginning of Bello and Casas muturity, plus a surprise from Duran and Crawford, and it still was far from enough. We may never reach the point where our farm provides enough so that JH and whatever our GM is, only has to fill 3-6 slots every winter with outside additions via trades or FA signings. You are right. There is no guarantee, but what other plan is better? Should we count on only buying players via free agency, like the NYM and SDP? Should we empty the farm by trade, this winter? What is your idea of the best hope? To me, startin with a strong farm is the best way to get started.

He will be another year older in 2024 and started declining pretty quickly after 2019. It may not be a "stretch" to think he can be average in 2024, but I think the odds are against it. The 15th ranked 1Bman in MLB, now is at about .770-.780. Here are Rizzo's OPS numbers since 2020: .755 .783 .817 .706 He'll turn 35, next season. Why would .770-.780 be expected? No, it's not a stretch to think it could happen, but my list was supposed to be about how many slots can be viewed as solid for 2024? Solid average is not even asking for much. I see 4, maybe 5 if the starting 9. 3 maybe 4 SP'ers an unknown amount of RP'ers, when 2-3 years ago, you guys had 4-5 in the pen viewed as AVG or AVG+. Let's say you have 2. That's about 11 slots out of 26. You guys may be planning to spend big, this coming winter, but you are more than 3-4 slots away from being top contenders, again.