moonslav59

It's hard to take this seriously.

You assume he'd hit like he has with SFG in a place where he was very unhappy, while being openly abused (LOL) by his employers. Of all the batters in MLB hitting .763 or better, why chose the most unwanted guy in the sport? BTW, Connor Wong has a higher OPS, which is not saying I think he's a better hitter, but come on! Devers?!?!? (Willson & Ceddanne are above .763, too and Abreu is almost equal.)

...and then he gets bashed for trading away the likes of Harrison & Drohan- two pitchers nobody had in out top 9-10 SP'er depth charts. I do agree we came up at least one move short- the big bat we needed sorely. By trade or signing, we needed one more big move. In hindsight, add Duran or Bello to what we gave up for Oviedo and maybe we could have gotten BLowe or Donovan (and hoped that Donovan stayed healthy.) The signing part would have been trickier.

Ooops. Good catch.

His bat is not what you remember it to be. The circus environment would be horrific.

Salem has really been struggling to compete, of late. It was nice to see them break out.

They have done well, but I have no regrets switching from MIL to BOS back in the early 70's.

Hickey hit two homers and Uberstine pitched 3 strong relief innings, tonight. Gasper and Ward homered, too. Ziehl pitched very well in POR's loss. 5IP 6H 1ER, 1BB, 8K Witherspoon got roughed up a bit. Mayers, too.

The teams that killed us: 1-5 TOR, TBR, MIN, HOU 2-4 ATL Plus records vs... 3-0 KCR 5-4 NYY 2-1 CLE, MIL, SEA, STL & TEX

Maybe this would have got us into the playoffs: Sign: Suarez, Caratini & Murakami (No IKF) Trade for Gray & Contreras, but also Jh Garcia, Travieso and Duran for BLowe.not Oviedo. C: Caratini, Narvaez & Wong 1B Contreras (Murakami) 2B Lowe 3B Durbin SS Story/Mayer (Seigler-Monasterio) LF Anthony (Yoshida) CF Rafaela RF Abreu DH Murakami

Most of us wanted 2-3 big bats or 3 upgrades at the least. We got one in Contreras. We also added Coulombe to the pen, but yes, just about all of us felt Brez neglected the pen. The idea that SP'er depth can be used to fill pen needs never seems to work out. To me, the hindsight solutions would have been... Schwarber- fat chance he comes to BOS, unless we blow PHI away, which would likely mean no Suarez, so how much does Schwarber minus Suarez add? BLowe- he was talked about some Murakami- almost everyone disliked the idea. Arraez- was roundly laughed at as an idea for a Sox winter addition. Somehow, Brez would have to have obtained Murakami and B Lowe and still have enough to afford Willson, Sonny & Ranger.

I'd think Bello over Sandoval makes more sense, too.

They are examples of money not always bringing wins (NYM) or making the future look bleak (PHI,) but many teams spend a lot and win. Some teams win without spending much, and that seems to be what type of team JH wants us to become, but even with moderate spending, we can't seem to win on a consistent basis. Speaking of consistent winning, we've only won two series in a row, once- way back in early April when we won 2 of 3 from MIL and then 2 or 3 from STL.

The first thing I'd want to do with this line-up is trade Devers.

I fully agree that Brez dropped the ball on adding another big bat or two. (I wanted two more.) I've mentioned the "moves not made" as the major negative to his off season, and why despite 3 very nice ("singular," I called them) major additions, I give him only a B-.

I wasn't the one calling it impeccable, but I will say no other GM added a better 3 players than the top 3 by Brez. I'm still waiting for you to say which of his major moves were not good. Moderate to minor moves are not supposed to net studs, but it does happen from time to time. (BTW, IKF + Seigler have a better OPS than Bichette & Bregman, and I'd rather have Durbin than either of those two, even at half their costs.)

He promoted 20 year old Bogey to play 3B after just 10 games at 3B in the minors. Now, he had over 630 PAs above A ball under his belt, but still...

Well, it goes back to your previous post on the Sox still making a profit. The recent Sox extensions do leave us on the hook for a pretty big chunk of change- much to unproven players/prospects plus Crochet, Bello & Rafaela. Once Story and Yoshida are gone, maybe we'll view Bello and KC as the next two drags on the budget, but Bello's in $9.2 and KC is $7.5. Combined, they have a lower AAV than Story or Masa, alone. These are the major Sox long term commitments: $28.3M to 2031 Crochet $26M to 2030 Suarez $16.3M to 2033 Anthony $9.2M to 2029 Bello $7.5M to 2032 Campbell $6.3M to 2031 Rafaela Shorter ones: $17.2 x 1 Contreras (plus option) $23M x 1 Story $18M x 1 Masa No major arbs coming up. Maybe Duran gets $8.5 to 10.5M, if he's not traded. This is a major difference from the Mets future budget (and I'll add the Phillies, too.) The Mets have $51M Soto to 2039, $42M Bichette to , $34M Lindor to, $24M Semien to , $22M Robert to 2027 plus option, $22M to 27 Manaea and $20M to 27 for Polanco. 3 other players make $43M combined through 27. The Phillies budget and the ages of the guys they have signed is frightening.

Well, I think a guy of DD's stature getting fired is "out with a bang." I'm fine with saying Bloom's departure was a whimper, as many wanted him gone for years. Ben's departure was not a major deal, since adding DD and the loss of Lucchino were both bigger stories. Theo's loss was siesmic. Before that, we get into the pre-JH era.

Suarez and Gray did not have recent injury issues. Bennett was a depth add for 2026 as Perales was not ready. Yes, Sandoval and Oviedo were additions, who had recent injury histories, but these days almost every pitcher does. It was depth added that did nt work out. Crawford and Sandoval were supposed to be healthy by the end of 2025. It's kind of a bummer they still have zero IP in 2026. Houck was a known injury, so did not count as immediate depth or even last season depth. We started the winter with Crochet, Suarez, Gray, Bello and Oviedo/Sandoval/Crawford as the top 7 rotation pieces. We had a couple young and promising SP'ers in Tolle & Early with Bennett seemingly ML ready, but largely an unknown commodity- much like Harrison and Drohan were. That's 9-10 SP'ers with the possibility that Houck might return by late July/early August or later. I would not count Uberstine, Sikkema or Anderson as more than one pitcher as viable MLB depth. That makes it more like 10 or maybe 11 in total. This was not even close to our weakest position on the team. Some of us were hoping the excess might be used to fill the big need we had in the pen. Many felt we should have signed a bat over Suarez, in part because they felt the rotation and rotation depth was a strength we could deal from. No doubt, Brez traded away a lot of pitching- mostly unproven ML ready pitcher and pitching prospects. We don't hear about Fitts, Dobbins, Clarke, Fajardo, Travieso and others I can't remember, now, because none are pitching like Harrison 2026 or Priester 2025. However, none are pitching like these newly acquired pitchers, either: Suarez, Gray, Bennett Brez also added Tolle in the '24 draft along with Futrell, Cason & others, then Eyanson in the '25 draft as well as Witherspoon, Phillips, Brown and others. Delzine and other promising IFA signings have been added to pitching depth of the extended future. There have been some promising pen additions from getting Bastardo, Song & Paez back to adding Samaniego and the struggling Watson. He even got Drohan back before trading him. Coulombe has exceeded expectations. Guerrero has looked good as pen depth. (He did trade for Harrison and Priester, too, before trading them away, and neither pitched well enough to get a shot with the Sox MLB club. Wasn't that adding depth, at the time? To many, Brez has focused too much on pitching and pitcher acquisitions to the determent of missing out on our needs on offense. Within the context of a limited budget and the desire to keep the farm strong, I think the rotation was built up stronger than any other high need area under Brez. Picking that area to say he shoulda done more seems to be missing the bigger picture. Many, including myself, think he missed the big picture, this past winter, and while his singular major moves all look good on paper, he created an unbalanced roster with too much concentration of the rotation and defense and not enough on the hitting.

Maybe they want to give the impression they want to keep Adames, so it doesn't drive his value down. They should trade him, and deadline trades bring more back than winter trades.

I'm no expert on the timing of prospect promotions, but I'd like to see Arias in AAA.

The problem was we got Suarez instead of Bregman, who was never going to be that "other big bat." I was glad Brez botched those negotiations, but that is not putting a feather in his cap. The offer we made to Alonso was not a serious one. I think we were fine with Anthony/Duran/Yoshida at DH and once we got Contreras, we stopped looking at 1B/DH types. Like it or not, Schwarber & Alonso instead of Contreras was the only option, and I'm not sure Schwarber would leave PHI, anyway. In hindsight, Brez should have dealt for BLowe or Donovan AND Durbin.

Adding a Catcher and LF/DH looks like a good start, but they'd have to be great on offense to make us jump high enough to be a top contender. I realize we may have to "settle" on someone like Story at 2B, Mayer at SS or Narvaez/Wong at Catcher since we will not be adding 3-4 bats, this winter, but to me We need to add a middle infielder who can also hit. Story-Mayer & Co is not a winning keystone combo. Some have faith in Arias, but counting on him to hit the MLB ground running in 2027 is like hoping on Campbell in 2025 and Mayer in 2026. I'm not up for that, again. Pitchers like Houck, Crawford and Oviedo will not have the trade value needed to be dealt for what we need. Perhaps one could be part of a larger trade, but we do need rotation depth, too. I doubt Brez wants to trade Eyanson, but we will need to give something to get real value back. Trading Arias takes away from our middle infield future but who else can we trade to get a stud bat? It has to be Eyanson and or Arias. (Mayer's trade value is not as high as his upside value to us, and he won't bring a stud bat either, unless maybe a one year contract DH type.) Brez has shown he's willing to make wholesale changes to the roster. He flipped 20+ players last winter and 10+ the winter before. He's traded some highly ranked prospects and players like Sale. He's not shy on pulling the trigger like Bloom was. That could be a good thing, if he does as well as the Contreras and Gray deals, again this winter, but he's also made a few deals that may have looked okay at the time, but have looked bad out of the gate (Harrison & Priester.) The Sale trade has haunted him beyond the opening gate. The best shot at winning in 2027 would be to sell this summer and try to get players and ML ready prospects that can fill an open slot or two listed in previous posts. Gray should bring something good enough to fill a slot. Trading Chapman might, too, but then we have the closer slot to refill. IKF, Coulombe and other one and done players are not bringing us top value for 2027, but see what we can get, anyway. I would not trade Contreras, unless we get a great offer. Are we fed up with Abreu's failure to become a stud? Do we trade him and hope he doesn't become a stud for his next team? Who else has the trade value to bring back top value?

I'd be fine trading for non rentals, but the deadline is not the time for that. After these last two losses, I'm on the fence about adding BLowe and Jeffers or the like. To make bold trades, this coming winter, you have to think about trading away a couple or more top prospects. I'm not against the idea, but we simply have to strike gold, or we could be looking at another 8 more years of futility. We need a big bat and likely two. Assuming we trade Duran and dump Yoshida, we can really look at any position. Since Contreras looks fine at 1B, we will likely look at the other 8 slots. We aren't adding 9 everyday players, so we need to decide who stays. I'd start with: C ______ 1B Contreras 2B ______ (Durbin/Story) 3B Durbin SS ______ LF ______ (Anthony) CF Rafaela RF Abreu DH _____ (Anthony) Bench: Narvaez or Wong, 1 or 2 from Mayer, Seigler, Monasterio, Eaton SP: Crochet, Suarez, Tolle, Early, Bennett depth or pen: Houck/Crawford/Oviedo/Eyanson RP: Chapman, Whitlock, ______, _______, Slaten, ______, Bello, Moran, Weissert/Kelly/Guerero/Watson/Samaniego/Uberstine/Holobetz/Wehunt Do you trade Arias when our middle infield is wide open? Do you trade Eyanson and trust our current rotation and depth? Does Witherspoon, Gonzales, Godbout, Azocar, Valera, Soto, Primera, Delzine and others get us what we need?