moonslav59

Too bad Baty doesn't bat RH'd, but that should not be the reason to say no. I do prefer Paredes over any other talked about additions, including E Suarez, who has been mentioned more by me than by anyone else. BTV does not accept Duran & Hicks for Paredes, unless HOU adds value (Sousa, King, Abreu, Janek?)

The Mets probably want someone to take Vientos and overpay for his power. He's not a bad batter, especially to a team like the Sox looking for power, but he Ks a lot and suck at 3B D. We have 2 first basemen. Baty is an interesting idea. He has 4 years of control. He plays 3B and 2B and has a $22M BTV. The closest Sox player is Crawford at 20 or Arias at 22, but if they need CF help, Rafaela 36 & Duran 42 would be gross overpays. I suppose we could try and expand the deal, and the Mets are a team that might take salary to get what they need and want, so BTV accepts: Duran 42 & Hicks -18 for Baty 22 Rafaela 36 & Hicks -18 (maybe add Sandlin or Mullins) for Baty

The Mets seems to have less of a plan that the fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants Sox. I heard they plan on playing Polanco at 1B and Bichette at 3B, after talking about improving their defense before this winter started.

Indeed. The last podcast on sp.com talked about team matching up for trades and mentioned how the Twins are like polar opposites to the Sox on how they evaluate pitchers, and how maybe very few of our pitchers interest them. This was in discussion about us trying to trade for Kearschall. Maybe Brez has not interest in King, Souse or the RH'er Abreu. Paredes makes $2M more than Duran and the same as Bello, so maybe we don't want Abreu's contract added, either, unless HOU takes Sandoval or Hicks (LOL).

Yes, he'd be a big asset at AAA- ready to step in as needed, and knowing many of the pitchers on the staff already, despite the massive Brz pitcher purge over the past 2+ years.

We need some offense, so maybe Ryan Jeffers for one year would be nice. I like Narvaez more than some seem to, and Jeffers could also DH, if we didn't have 3-4 guys vying for the DH slot (Masa, Duran, Romy & Campbell.) Last 3 years OPS: (250+ PAs) .859 Anthony .810 Duran .803 Casas (IL?) .791 Abreu .786 Romy .772 Jeffers (22 HRs per 650) .762 Masa .726 Narvaez .708 Story .685 Rafaela .682 Wong .664 Campbell .642 DHam

Or Uberstine/Drohan, but I still think we will trade for an infielder, perhaps two 40 man players, and if not, we'll DFA Eaton. We have 6-7 guys who can play OF, and Mayer can play 3B. We could also send Watson home early. I'm not sure why I'm so high on Moran, but he's not #1 or #2 on my list.

My guess is most companies have wider disparities than this, especially between the owner or CEO and the next highest paid person.

Still no word on the roster move to make room for Ranger. Wonder if a trade is near, so they can avoid a DFA.

That is the worry. Ideally, we'd have added a decent bat and great glove at 3B (Bregman) or a great bat and decent glove at 2B (KMarte,) but neither is going to happen. Possible options: Plus power bat/bad D 3B: E Suarez or Vientos Plus bat & decent D 3B/2B/1B: Paredes Decent D and decent bat 2B/3B: Donovan

Fair enough. I was hoping we could get to top 3-4 status. Fangraphs has us 7th, which seems about right. NYM & SEA just above us and PHI & BAL just below us. We are closer to #5 (-1.3 from the Mets) and -1.6 from ATL at #4 than #10 HOU (+2.0) and #9 BAL (+1.2), for what that is worth. If we add Paredes and a decent RP'er maybe we can moved up to #6 or #5, assuming neither of them adds plus players. I'm a huge Paredes fan.

That was what I meant by "breaking his arm." It's not happening. I know it's not. Suggestions are not predictions.

I notice fangraphs changed some values, as they often do. DHam went from 1.1 to 3. Paredes went from 13 to 8.5. They have Sandoval's value at $18M - $9M salary for about a $9M value. Is 1 year of sandoval equal to 2 years of Paredes? Not a single person in baseball would agree, so obviously they get somethings wrong.

My guess is projected fWAR type value structure, and certainly they seem to be off with some guys, just as fangraphs projections do, too. They also have to try to project Anthony's value in year 7, 8 and 9. It's easier to project 2026 value, alone. They could also be off on salary projections, as many players ar arb or pre-arb.

I assume you mean OPS+... OPS+ 2025 / 2023-2025 150/135 Schwarber (turns 33 soon) 145/141 KMarte (just turned 32) 144/130 Alonso (just turned 31) 130/121 Bregman (will be 32 soon) 129/114 Bichette (will be 28 soon) 123/121 Paredes (will be 27 soon) As you can see, the top 3 are significantly better than the bottom 3, Paredes is better than B & B over a 3 year span and is younger than all 6 on this list. KMarte is better than all 6 over 3 years, but would cost a lot in trade to get. 123/127 Contreras looks better than some seem to think. He turns 34, soon. If we could get 120+ from Contreras and Paredes, I think we'll be okay, but I know we all wanted better than just "Okay."

Paredes has dealt with injuries, and that is a concern. While Alonso and Schwarber are both older, they have stayed healthy- Alonso has been the ironman for a couple years. I'd have loved to have signed Alonso, and Bregman would have been nice, instead. I know Fred wanted both, and so did I. We can argue all day long about JH being cheap, our ranking in spending vs Revenue or whatever, but the fact is JH has limits, like just about every team. We've seen a significant uptick in spending from 2023 or 2024 to 2026. Of course it could have been more, but it wasn't and likely won't be much more than we've seen the last 2 winters. Spotrac has us 6th in 2026 payroll AAV, and we are $16M behind NYY for 5th. They may sign Bellinger or someone else and go up by another $20-30M. I seriously doubt we ever get to top 5, unless something radical happens. $226M (12th) 2023 and 2024 $249M (7th) 2025 $276M (6th) 2026 I know this is not enough for many posters, but it is an uptick. We can also argue that we spent the money poorly, and that would be on Brez not JH. Some want to blame Cora for not helping us win as much as we could or might have. Some point to injuries and our trend on adding injury prone players more than the norm. I'm fine with people saying we should have spent more or spent it more wisely. I agree with much of what is said by those posters. What I often argue about is when people say, "JH won't spend, anymore." We are spending $50M more than 2023 and 2024. That's a 22% increase. This is not a defense or apology for JH. I wish he'd let Brez spend more or knock off the BS "no trade" crap and "no 6+ year" implied limits. If we really and truly wanted Breggie, we shoulda-coulda had him- Alonso, too or instead. I'm not saying this could not be true. Looking at just the AAV, we could have afforded Berggie or Alonso + Ranger, had we not added Contreras & Gray. Is that a better team? Is that a ring contender? If yes, then this is on Brez.

Do you think we are better than last year? If we add Paredes without losing Bello or Duran (or similar) are we better? If yes, how much better?

Fangraphs also projects this: fWAR/IP 1.8/156 Bello 1.2/114 Oviedo 0.9/80 Sandoval 0.6/86 Crawford 0.6/49 Early 0.5/51 Tolle 0.2/49 Harrison Sure, some of these guys project to equal or better fWARs if you even up the IP and project the same value, but it doesn't always work out that way BTV has these values per season for our pitchers: $40M Crochet, $32M Gray, ??? Ranger $20M Bello $18M Sandoval (pretty close, but really?) $13M Early, $9M Tolle, $8M Oviedo, $5M Harrison I don't think we should need to give up Duran or Bello for Paredes. BTV has Crawford worth way more than IP. If we could get Paredes, King plus once from Abreu, Sousa or Janek for Bello, I'd do it. I might do it for IP & King alone. Only because I really like IP and BK.

He should bring back the most in return out of the others in consideration, but for good reason: he's the better bet at having a plus 2026 season.

I'd wish we'd done more, too. It looks like we've been more reactive than proactive, and didn't bring home the prize(s) we needed the most. The FO basically said we need a #2SP for the rotation, and we spent almost all of our winter spent assets on 3 SP'ers: Suarez, Gray & Oviedo. The FO said we needed a big bat, since we lost Devers: we have added just Contreras, who is a nice upgrade at 1B, but we gave up trade pieces and are paying a $21M AAV for him. I like the trade, but we still need a big bat and a 3B/2Bman (or one in the same guy) but options are dwindling. I like E Suarez, but he was not at the top of my list. I had him slightly ahead of Bregman & Bichette for filling the "big bat" need, but Breggie & Bichette are better defenders at filling the 3B/2B need. Paredes might be a better "big bat" than E Suarez, especially if he can pull the ball like he has with HOU, but at Fenway. You know pitchers will pitch him differently there, and we can only speculate on his success or lack of it. He's a better defender than E Suarez, so I'd prefer him over Suarez, but he needs a trade not just money. We've backed ourselves in a corner in a number of ways. It's a bit confusing, comical or worse, depending on how you choose to look at it, but building the top rotation and near top rotation depth in MLB is not a bad thing. There are more ways to win than by bashing homers. We've seen enough of Red Sox history to know it's hard to win rings by bashing alone. Our first ring came when we added Schilling to Pedro. Our second ring came when we added Beckett to Schilling. Our third ring when we added Lackey to Lester, and out 4th came when we added Sale to Price. Now, our offense looks worse than those ring teams, but our rotation looks deeper. That might not be enough. IMO, we look about even in win projections to what we won, last year. Adding Paredes makes us better, but like you, I had hopes we'd get way better, not just 2-3 wins better. It's not like we haven't spent money this and last winter. Someone just pointed out that the AAV given Ranger was about the same as we offered Bregman. I think we'd be a better team with Bregman over Ranger, but it's not a slam dunk speculation. If we add Paredes, I'd much prefer Ranger + Paredes to Bregman + some cheap RP'er addition, which is what I think might have happened. Adding Ranger, Gray, Paredes, Contreras and Oviedo is pretty damn significant. Losing Devers, Bregman, Giolito and Refsnyder is too, but we also lost a few players who look like additions by subtractions, most notably Buehler, D May & Toro. I think we would be significantly better with Paredes and maybe B King or Sousa from HOU. It's not all I hoped for. I thought we needed just 3 major pieces and not 5 pretty good ones. If we add Paredes, I'm going to be more optimistic than pessimistic, but I know there is no chance of you ever being optimistic.

That's one way to look at it, and I do agree that Alonso & Schwarber should have better numbers in 2026 than Paredes, but it's not a sure bet. (Of course nothing in baseball is.) By 2027, which is the last year of control on Paredes, he might beat out one of the two you listed in OPS. By year 3, 4 and 5, Paredes will be gone, and the two you listed might be heading for underwater status.

BTV assigns a value to players by subtracting the salary/projected salary from the total value a player has. Players with more years of control can have significantly more value due to years not skill levels when compared to someone else. Here are the skill value per year: Crochet (40) Gray (32) Duran (27) Anthony (25) Campbell (23) Story (22) Bello (20) Sandoval (18) seems about $10M too high, and i like him! Mayer (16) Abreu (15) seems too low. Rafaela, Contreras, Slaten (14) Whitlock, Early (13) Chapman, Crawford (10) Tolle (9) Oviedo, Narvaez, Romy (8) Casas (7) Harrison (5) Yoshida (3) Weissert, DHam, Wong, Hicks (2) Sogard (1) Houck (0) Value/years: 239/6 Crochet (40) 225/9 Anthony (25) 107/9 Campbell (23) 95/7 Rafaela (14) 82/5 Mayer (16) 80/3 Duran (27) 80/4 Bello (20) 79/6 Early (13) 60/4 Abreu (15) 56/6 Tolle (9) 42/5 Narvaez (8) 39/3 Whitlock (13) 32/1 Gray (32) 29/3 Crawford (10) 28/2 Contreras (14) 27/4 Slaten (14) 23/3 Romy (8) 22/1 Story (22) 20/3 Casas (7) 19/2 Chapman 10) 18/1 Sandoval (18) 5/2 Oviedo (8) 10/2 Harrison (5) 8/4 Weissert, DHam (2) 7/5 Sogard (1) 6/2 Yoshida (3) 5/3 Wong (2) 4/2 Hicks (2) 0/2 Houck (0)

According to soxprospects.com, here are the options remaining for our pitchers: Rule 5: Watson 0 Chapman, Moran, Hicks 1 Sandoval, Oviedo, Weissert, Kelly 2 Bello, Crawford, Harrison 3 Crochet, Whitlock, Slaten, Tolle, Early, Sandlin, Drohan, Uberstine, Bennett, Samaniego

Agreed. I should have called them "depth."

I doubt the Astros are looking to add salary during a season that does not look like a winner is in the works, but if they would.... Sox sign E Suarez to $24M x 3 with deferrals that make the AAV $18M. Sox trade Bello ($9M AAV) Hicks ($10M AAV) + $4M for Paredes ($9M) & Sousa ($1M) The Sox save $7M, which allows the E Suarez signing and staying under line 3. 1. L Anthony LF 2. R Paredes 2B 3. L Duran DH 4. R Contreras 1B 5. R Suarez 3B 6. L Abreu RF 7. R Story SS 8. R Narvaez C 9. R Rafaela CF Bench: Wong, Mayer, Campbell, DHam/Masa