moonslav59

Line Up 1. Duran LF 2. Yoshida DH 3. Turner 1B 4. Devers 3B 5. Verdugo RF 6. Duvall CF 7. Arroyo 2B 8. DHam SS 9. Wong CF Why not Duran in CF and Duvall in LF? I'm not bashing Cora, but it seems strange. (Also, giving Casas a day off ve a RHP, hmmm....)

Last night, Binelas homered in his 3rd straight game. He still has a long way to go to make the bigs.

I think there were rumors we had interest in Matz a few years ago. He just turned 32, and I don't think trading for a 5.06 ERA guy ('22-'23) is going to help, unless we think we can turn him around to be more like the 4.36 guys from '18-'21.

Funny how many felt he'd never stick as a catcher, and with his speed, we felt he could probably be okay somewhere else. He's been a big bright spot, this year. After the 5 years of no farm help beyond Houck, this year has been very refreshing: Bello Wong Casas Crawford Wink Duran's revival Walter & Murphy have small sample sizes (21 IP combined), but have looked pretty good. (EValdez did not look too bad. DHam has a ways to go.)

Thanks for the correction.

Wong nearly homered to CF the other day, but yes, those 3 have been cold. Last 14 days- only 4 guys over.700. 1.065 Devers 1.000 Duran .808 Turner .772 Yoshida (.697 Casas- all others below .635!) Last 7 days, all but 5 are over .500! Duran, Devers, Yoshida, Turner and Ref. Time to bust out with the bats!!!

True, but it also offers a ray of hope that we can romp over bad teams in the second half.

Me, too. I once suggested offering him $400M/14.

The Rays have 13 pitchers with17+ IP, but 22 over 11 IP.

17 pitchers with 17+ IP 22 with 7+ IP

You can just feel all the love oozing from Sox Nation.

It looks like a rare win-win trade

100% Bloom could not have signed Betts. That makes it a one season of Betts trade. Then, the Price inclusion was the kicker. The trade was a very good one. Not extending Betts was a separate issue and one I feel was a mistake… just not Bloom’s.

4-1 over the next 5 is almost essential. 3-2 puts a lot of pressure on those 14-15 games after the break and before the deadline, which includes 2 road trips out west. 6 v CWS & OAK 6 v SFG & SEA (deadline is during SEA series)

He knows it's a big game. If he is ever going to become a great pitcher, he'll have to be able to "rise to the occasion."

To me, this is a huge game for our chances at making the playoffs (and not becoming sellers.)

We did not trade 4 or 10 years of Betts for Verdugo and Wong. We traded a 60 game season of Betts for 5 years for Dugo and Wong. Beni was never the same after the trade. I can see not calling it a win, but it wasn't a big loss- like many felt it was and still do. On the pitching, he did spend more on pitching for 2020, 2021 and it would have been for 2022, until the last minute Story signing. We signed Perez a year or two early. The Richards and Kluber $10M/1 deals flopped- like many in that price range do. The Wacha and Hill signings worked okay, but didn't get us over the hill due to massive production declines and injuries from Nate, Bogey and JD. The Kike decline and JBJ deal were 100% Bloom. 2020: 6 Perez 3 Peraza 2021 10 Richards 9 Ottavino (trade) 7 X 2 Kike 5 Perez 3 Renfroe & Marwin 3/2 Sawamura 2 Andriese 2022 23 x 6 Story 7 Wacha 5 Hill 4 x 2 Diekman 3 Strahm (JBJ - Renfroe) This year, we spent a lot on the pen but only $10M on the rotation.

I did say that and nothing has changed. My point was mostly about years 1-3, and those (not you) who keep saying he's had 4 years to build a winner. It's been 5 years between Devers and Bello with no farm help, except Houck. It's been 4 years from the Sale extension to the Story signing in March 2022. We should have been better after the Story signing and into this year. I am not saying Bloom has done a good job spending, even when he had more spending to do (starting March 2022.) I see it this way: Bloom overachieved in 2021 by getting us much farther than we should have gone. The 2022 season might have gone better, if Story was not hurt. Bloom knew he was hurt when he signed him, so it's no excuse. The spending was still somewhat limited, and as I have said before, I think his 2022 signings were better than 2021's (Wacha, Hill, Strahm), but it was the decline of production by carry-over vets that killed the '22 season more than Story and the JBJ trade. Again, no excuses. 2022 could have gone better had we not traded for JBJ and spent Story's money on better pitching than Richards. The 2023 season is not over. To me, this still is Bloom's legacy season- or make or break to me- maybe not to JH. He lost a lot of talent, but much of it was in decline or injured in 2022, so I thought his increased budget would allow him to put his stamp on the team and show what he can do. I expected us to spend $7-9M more, but maybe he will at the deadline. I liked the Yoshida, Duvall, Jansen and Martin signings. I thought the Kluber deal looked better than the Richards and Perez deals. I had hoped we'd have brought back Wacha, and I felt his deal was a reasonable one, and the Eflin near missed killed us. The Kike extension hurt. The injuries focused on just 2 areas- P and SS have been devastating, and the Sale injury should not be counted against Bloom, but the luck of Paxton cancels that out. The Kluber signing may end up being the key mistake. The others look fine, to me- one by one, but when taken overall, too much was spent on hitting and not SPing and defense. That's a mistake Bloom owns. I do not think Bloom has done a good job building this ML roster for 2023, so far. That could change, if people get healthy and the bats hit nearer to their April numbers than afterwards. There seems to be too many ifs to overcome, this year, but IMO, we don't need all the ifs to work out to make the playoffs, and then, it's a crapshoot, right? If we suck, this year, I'm not moving the goalposts. Bloom owns it. He added injury prone players. He had a decent budget to work with. He had farm infusion for one (Bello, Casas & Duran, to name 3.) That excuse is gone, now. The reset hurt, but he still had a lot to spend. He chose to spend over 90% on everything else but the rotation. The interesting thing is that our rotation has actually done pretty well, since the first 3 weeks of the season, despite missing one-third of our best starters GS'd due to injuries. The rotation depth has kept us alive. The D and now the O has been killing us. Bloom fixed the pen, finally. If the rotation can get a couple arms back, we just might see Bloom's "legacy" improve.

OPS Against (40+ IP) .571 Dobbins .600 Rogers .601 Nail .609 Perales .619 Wikelman A+ .669 Bastardo A+ .672 Drohan AA/AAA .700 J Paez .703 I Coffey A+/AA .703 Van Belle AA Notables .824 Walter AAA .881 Murphy AAA 30-39 IP .523 Bolden A .575 Denlinger AA/AAA .590 Troye A+/AA .594 de la Rosa A

Farm OPS Leaders (150+ ABs) 1.061 Dalbec AAA (19 HRs) .931 Hickey A+/AA (12 HRs) .922 Fitzy AAA (10 HRs) .915 Bonaci A+ .914 Jordan A+ (11 HRs) .878 Meidroth A+/AA (46 BB/46 K) .826 Kavadas AA (13 HRs/ .396 OBP) .825 DHamilton AAA (11 Hrs/ 27 SB) .823 Yorke AA (26 XBHs) .823 S Scott AA/AAA (.368 OBP) .816 WAbreu AAA (.366 OBP) .814 Rosier AA/AAA (.363 OBP) .803 Anthony A/A+ (49 BB/ 51 K) .797 Mayer A+/AA (13 HRs/ 30 XBHs) (Gone: .888 Goodrum/.886 Affaro) Notables: .786 RHern .757 Binelas .753 Rafaela AA/AAA .716 Paulino A+ .685 CCoffey A .639 Ravelo A .636 Ferguson A+/AAA (23 SB) .603 McDonough AA/AAA Under 150 ABs/ Over 45 ABs 1.030 Joh. Garcia 1.015 Arias .968 Musett .963 Cespedes .924 Asigen .910 EValdez .895 Alexis Hernandez .886 Nunez

It's both strange and hurtful that all our players on the 60 Day IL are pitchers or Short Stops. P: Sale, Schreiber, Kelly, Mills SS: Story, Change, Reyes Shorter ILs: P: Whitlock, Houck, Joely, Kluber, Bleier (Paxton on Pat leave) C: McGuire All-in-all, 13 of our 14 players on the IL or PAT list are pitchers or SSs. Only McGuire plays another position. (14 of 15, if you count Sherriff/ 15 of 16 counting Mata.) We've used 27 pitchers before the All Star Break, one being Reyes, so really 26. I thought we had good depth, this year- more "quantity than quality," but not bad on the quality side. Kluber and Pivetta pitched themselves into demotions, but still remain on the 40. (Pivetta is actually contributing from the pen.) Pitchers I viewed as good ML ready depth from the farm have not really given us much: Mata, Walter, Murphy, Kelly and Mills. We've had to dig deep into our system as well as grab some pitchers from the waiver wire or by trade. Some have done okay. One can argue about who our 13 pitchers would be, if all were healthy, and it can be argued that Bello might have started on the farm, but here is my 13: Opening Day All Healthy SP: Sale, Paxton, Bello, Kluber, Pivetta RP: Jansen, Martin, Houck, Whitlock, Schreiber, Bleier, Brasier, Joely That leaves the replacements as... Crawford (drafted '17) Winckowski (Beni trade) Others... Waivers: Bernardino J Garza Trade: Taylor Scott (for cash) Zack Littell (for cash) later was waived From system: Walter (drafted '19) Murphy (drafted '19) Kelly (FA in '20) on 60 day IL Ort (minor league Rule 5 in '20) Sherriff (FA) on IL, now Jacques (minor league Rule 5) Dermody (signed as FA) later waived

He's made some blunders, for sure. I was highly critical of the JBJ trade (re: "Head scratcher"), the Richards and Diekman signings and more. He did have other options, for sure, like spending more on pitching than hitting. I get that, but again, getting no help from the farm, seeing virtually every carry-over vet decline, even the ones in their prime, while having to manage a tough budget system for 5 years, again I ask what should be expected? It looks like some expected him to hit on 85-95% of his signings and trades, because even that might not have been enough. The Story signing made sense, to me, since I felt all along that Bogey was not coming back. He could have had a sell-off last deadline, but may have been told not to do it. Sure, he could have not signed Richards and Kluber, but what else do GMs normally get for $10M/1? Should he have not signed Renfroe, so he could spend $3M more on a SP'er and gotten a much better one? I look at the price range he had and think he did about as expected to maybe little worse with the Kluber, Richards, Perez I, Perez II, Wacha and Hill signings. The first Kike signing was decent- this one, not. The Barnes extensión sucked. The Betts and Beni trades look good, in context. The JBJ trade sucked. The Pivetta, Schwarber, Diekman and Vaz trades look good to me. One bad trade out of about a dozen. The Whitlock, Scheiber, Refsnyder, Arroyo and other finds have helped, but he has surely swung and missed on many more low level deals- as expected. Again, he had about 18 roster slots to fill in 2020 while slashing the budget. He had about 12-14 to fill before 2021 and precious little budget space. He had more money in 2022, but still about 10 slots to fill- not enough to get top quality players, unless you put all the eggs in 1-2 baskets. No help from the farm on filling any slots, except Houck, Dalbec and the recent call-ups in 2023. No doubt, we could go back and name names of FAs who overperformed expectations and say, "He should have outbid the Rays for Eflin and re-signed Perez for 2022," but I don't think it's realistic to expect any GM to get 75% of his moves right, especially when needing to bargain hunt for 3 of his 4 years in control. How many GM build winners with no farm help but Houck and a slashed budget year 1, followed by slow increases the next 3? There maybe be 1 or 2, but it's certainly not something to be expected.

Chang and Reyes with 2 hits, tonight as they rehab with Woo. Reyes homered. EValdez 3-3 w HR and BB Yorke went 2-4 w POR Binelas homered again

So, JH doesn't know how to "delegate?" I guess when JH was resetting several times, before, including the 2013 ring season, he must have had other higher priorities. It's so obvious, right?

I posted in green to show sarcasm. My point was JH & Co. can have many high priorities and give all of them the full attention and resources they need to be as successful as possible, whether other priorities are existent or not. I know what "top" priority means, and what "high priority" means. I doubt that some other priority being higher means the Sox would suffer in any way. They don't have to rob Peter to pay Paul. If you believe that, don't talk to me about minutiae. BTW, I have more other interests than you can dream of. No need to project what you don't know.