moonslav59

I don't disagree. I just don't see it as a "lowball," and not nearly to the level of Bogey and Letser, if it was.

$300/9 is pretty close to $350M/10, and why would this be his "final contract?" He'd be 35 after that 9 year deal. I just don't see $300M/10 as anywhere near being lowball, or at least not close to the Lester or Bogey offers. (reported in all cases)

After Pivetta's start to the 2023 season got him demoted to the pen, who would have thought he'd come back to lead our team in ERA (85+ IP)? 4.04 Pivetta (143 IP) only 16 GS 4.23 Crawford (123) 22 GS (He pitches, tonight, so his standing may change, some.) 4.24 Bello (157) 28 GS (3.74 ERA first 14 GS/5.49 last 14) 4.30 Sale (103) 20 GS (had a 3.16 ERA in his last 15 GS) 4.50 Paxton (96) 19 GS (was at 3.85 in first 15 GS) 5.31 Houck (100) 20 GS

With Devers and Casas rating to be our two best batters in 2024, I can't see making acquiring a 3Bman a high priority. Defense matters, yes, but not as much as fixing the rotation and finding a replacement for JT and Duvall from the right side of the batting box. While Chapman checks the RHB box, we have other positions that need more fixing than corner IF. Moving Yoshi to DH makes a hell of a lot of sense. It automatically improves the LF defense, and if it keeps Duran out of CF, if improves CF D, too. It might allow Yoshi to hit better in 2024, as he should be better rested and able to focus more on batting not defense. With Abreu and Rafaela knocking loudly on the door, this allows them an opportunity to win the CF position, or share it while backing up RF. If Rafaela proves he can play, nearly everyday, our OF D is fixed with no additions needed. It's a big if, though, and Abreu offers a back up plan, although his defense is still in need of improvement, especially in CF. Story should greatly improve our SS defense. Relying on Reyes to hit over .700, again, is probably wishful thinking, but his defense at 2B is okay. Urias may not be back, and his defense is not great, either. I'm hoping Wong and McGuire continue improving their defense and can combine to hit over .700, consistently. Maybe, this is too many "hopes" and not enough sure bets, but I think just adding one good RHB might be all the non pitching roster needs. Duvall returning is one option, but I don't really like him in CF; we have too many LF'ers already, and Dugo was our best defensive OF'er, last year, so adding Duvall to play RF is not really improving the D, either. It would balance the L-R make-up of the OF, though. Some have mentioned Teoscar, but he's not helping our D. I'm not aware of any power RH'd bats on the market at 2B. (Maybe via trade?) The main focus, this winter has to be on the rotation. It needs to be a major focus times 3. Maybe two really good starters would be enough, but I'd prefer one really good one and two solid ones.

I was suggesting $400M/12, but was mostly laughed at. If the offer was $300M/9, then it was about "market value." The other thing we need to know is was this even hinted to be "the final offer?" If our last offer was, indeed, $300M/10, then I would not compare that to the Lester/Bogey "lowball Johnny" offers. Even if they said, "take it or leave it," as a final offer, I think the offer was close enough to be viewed as "fair." I find it hard to believe they wouldn't say, "We can go a little higher, add some incentives or make it 9 years not 10," but maybe they did not go that way.

Nobody can tough GG. Nice try.

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.