moonslav59

We'll not only need Bello and Whitlock as studs, but a few others to rise and shine... Maybe one or two from Crawford, Winckowski and Seabold to settle into a 5th starter role or a capable long relief arm. Maybe one or two from Kelly, German, Ort, DHern and others to fill key pen roles, perhaps not top closer levels. Maybe one or two from Mata, Walter, Murphy, Santos or Drohan to fill a #3 or #4 slot in the rotation, with a #2 not out of the question. Maybe one or two farther away prospects to fill in a key role 2 or more years from now from Wikelman, Uberstine, Perales, Rodriguez-Cruz, Paez, Luis Guerrero, Ryan Fernandez and Taylor Broadway/Angel Bastardo/ Juan Encarnacion/Noah Dean/Hunter Dobbins/Jacob Webb...

WAR rewards durability, too, which is a good thing. The defensive metrics are wildly split on Bogey. B-R had him at a +0.5 dWAR before 2022, and his +1.3 moves him up to a career 1.8, but one could argue his numbers when on the shift moved him into plus territory, but certainly, B-R has him near average. Fangraphs had him with a negative UZR/150 before his _4.7 in 2022 moved him to +0.9 career- again, one wonders about the shift numbers, but UZR/150 has him near average- career. The DRS metric has never been kind to Bogey, until his +5 in 2023. He was minus, 5, 4, 9, 8, 11, 10, 3 and 5 in his previous seasons and is near the bottom of the pack at -50 career. All-in-all, I'd say he has been slightly below average to a clear below average, if you take away the shift plus values. As he ages and with the shift no longer allowed, my guess is his numbers will look pretty bad on fangraphs, going forward, assuming he stays at SS on his new team that has 17 SSs on their roster. Yes, his offense and durability bring him to a huge plus value, and WAR captures that very well. I'm highly biased on SS defense, but I still will miss Bogey, dearly.

That's how I saw it. If Sale was healthy for 4 of the 5 years, his market value was close to $145M/4 and we gave him $145M/5.

Georgia v TCU for all the marbles. Who-da-thunk it? I'm predicting Georgia squeeks it out. We have some games, today, but here's my final top 20, assuming Penn St and USC win. 1. Georgia 2. TCU 3. Michigan 4. Alabama 5. Ohio St 6. Tennessee 7. USC 8. Penn St 9. Florida St 10. Washington 11. Oregon 12. Notre Dame 13. Utah 14. Clemson 15. Oregon St./LSU

Maybe the pivot from Bogey to Devers works out better than the Betts to Sale pivot.

The one star they don't wait until the last minute to extend, ends up giving us nothing. (Okay, we did extend Bogey, so 2 guys, but one just got ujs one more year.) The Nate extension was second tier.

This is the point most often ignored, and where somehow the blam gets thrown on Bloom. (Plus, the 2019 team never replaced Kimbrel, Kelly and others lost from 2018, so that team was not what some want to remember it as being.) What were his choices? How else does he cut the budget? He can't trade Price for a bag of used balls, even by paying half his salary. We cut $60M from the 2019 budget, yet somehow people expected continued winning. Here were the big salaries carried over: $31M Price $29M Betts (last arb at $9M more than 2019) $27M Sale (extension kicked in) $22M JD $20M Bogey (extension kicked in) $17M Nate $14M Pedey Salaries lost: $35M lost by not re-signing $21M Porcello $6M Pearce $5M Nunez $3M Holt Subtract that $35M not brought back from the $60M cut from 2019 to 2020, and you come up with $25M to cut, but here is the key: you cut just $25M, you have zero to spend on any additions to the team around who you decide to keep. They chose to trade Betts ($29M) and half-Price ($16M) while trading some salary at the 2020 deadline- like Moreland, Workman, Hembree, Pillar, Osich... They cut about $45M in the Betts/half=Price sale which created enough budget space to sign: $6.5M Perez $4.2M Pillar $2.9M Peraza $1.5M Lucroy What were some other viable options? Trade Bogey or Sale and sign the same guys the did? Trade Nate & JBJ and sign nobody at all? Here's my favorite option some actually believe was an choice: Bloom should have convinced JH to spend more. I guess, in hindsight, trading Sale and JBJ would have been the best choice, while extending Betts to whatever he'd have taken, try to rework the Bogey opt-out extension and lock up Devers forevers after 2019, but without causing the budget to go up one inch. Hmmmm....

I'm sure the Sox have a point where they will never go over. I'm pretty sure that point is lower than I'd suggest they should go. They must know what Devers wants and how close or far away they are. It's when they get to this point something happens, actually, it seems like nothing happens, and that's the beginning of the end. Just make up your minds and pull the trigger. I hope that would mean locking him up large and long, but if not, just pull off the bandaid and trade him for the best you can get- which should be a pretty damn good return. Don't attach Sale. Make up your minds!

The best "time" was probably when his mom talked him out of taking the reported $200M deal. Maybe had they comeback with $220 I guess, somehow, it's still Bloom's fault.

Top Red Sox Playoff OPS by Season (2003-2021) 35+ ABs 1.279 Papi '04 1.260 Kike '21 1.230 Youk '07 1.206 Papi '13 1.204 Papi '07 1.160 Manny '07 1.158 T Walker '03 1.135 JD M '21 1.105 JBay '08 1.084 Pearce '18 1.061 Nixon '03 1.057 VTek '03 1.028 Devers '21 1.018 Lowell '07

Top wRC+ Leaders from 2021-2022 (1000+ PAs) 1. Judge 179 13. Betts 138 16. Devers 137 25. Bogey 132 38. J Turner 125 40. JD M 123 51. Renfroe 118 57. Beni 113 85. Dugo 105 2017-2022 (2500+ PAs) 1. Trout 179 2. Judge 166 3. Soto 153 9. Betts 140 11. JD M 139 15. J Turner 136 26. Bogey 127 31. Devers 123 58. Beni 109 60. Story 109 89. JBJ 79 (91 qualified)

Awesome GA-OSU game and TCU-Mich was a pretty good one, too.

Hope you can find a way to have a .... Happy New Year!

At least you finally showed your true feelings on the Sox "deserving" this. It doesn't surprise me you feel this way.

Your true colors shining through.

Happy New Year!

Steamers Early OPS Projections: .855 Devers + .801 Casas + .768 Dugo+ .736 Story = but way more PAs .735 Arroyo .727 Dalbec + .708 Kike + and way more PAs They don't have Yoshiad or Turner projections, yet FWAR 3.1 Sale > 1.8 Hill '22 1.9 Whit > 1.5 Whil '22 1.5 Bello > 1.3 Bello '22 1.4 Pivetta = 1.5 Piv '22 1.3 Paxton ?? Kluber ??? 1.0 Nate '22 0.8 Houck = 0.7 '22 0.7 Martin> 0.5 Brasier '22 0.5 Schreiber 0.3 Jansen= Strahm 0.3 '22 0.3 Crawford, Brasier & Taylor = 0.3 Craw/0.3 Davis/0.1 Valdez 0.2 Joely ??? 0.1 Barnes, Mata, Kelly, Walter, Seabold ??? .660 McGuire (321 PAs) & .738 Wong (209 PAs) = Vaz/Plaw fWAR '22>'23 projected 6.1 Bogey/0.2 Arroyo>>> 1.2 Arroyo 4.9 Devers >4.4 Devers 2.4 Story/-0.3 Downs 1.7 Vaz/1.3 McGuire/0.1 Wong/-0.4 Plaw 1.3 Ref 1.0/-0.2 Pham/-0.3 JBJ/-0.4 Duran ??? Yoshida 1.2 Verdugo 1.0 JD ??? Turner 0.5 Kike 0.2 Casas/-0.1 Dalbec/-0.1 Hosmer/-0.2 Cordero

ZIPs projects 82-80- just 3 GB the Yanks in 2023. I'm not thinking 3 games behind the Yanks, but how delusional are they?

Its not hard to improve on horrible. Answer each of these Qs: Is Casas/Turner better than Dalbec/Cordero? A healthy Story > the 2022 Story? Same with Kike? Devers better in 2023 is likely? Yoshida > Dugo/Pham/Duran in LF? Dugo/Ref > JBJ/Ref/Duran in RF? Turner = the 2022 JD? Catchers = 2022 catchers? Pen way better than 2022, even without Whitlock? 43 more starts from Whit & Bello = 43 starts from Nate & Wacha? 26 starts from Kluber = 26 from Hill? Now, I know all of this will not come true all at once, but one by one, I think the odds are, I'm right on almost all of these. We got way worse at SS, and maybe worse at C and SP2 and SP3. The rest looks even or better and our ML ready depth in the minors is light years better, on paper. Prepare to be wrong, again. Tell me, specifically, which slots I got wrong, and why.

He was talking about defense.

To me, better than last year, but better than last place leaves a lot of gray area. People focus on losing Bogey and JD and then Nate, Wacha and Hill. Bogey & JD's production, in terms of runs was down. Nate, Wacha and Hill started enough games for 2, so we essentially lost 2 not 3 SP'ers. I like Bello, Whit and Kluber replacing those 60+ starts. We also are losing some really bad pitching and hitting, which total meaningful PA and IP totals. I like Yoshida and Turner. I'm counting on better from Story, Kike and Devers. I might end up being disappointed with Casas, but he has a low bar to beat from 2022 at 1B. I like our catching tandem better than Vaz & Plawecki. Our pen lost so many games for us, last year. They should actually win some for us in '23. SS and a couple slots in the rotation are the big question marks, but the other slots all look like plusses or equals, to me. I'm sure you'll tell me where I'm wrong. Bring it on! With your record of predicting Sox outcomes, the more bad ones, the better.

He's already improved enough on D to not be a minus. Devers Forevers!

I see Berti's D metrics in RF don't look good. I like that he can play 2B, too, making Arroyo tradable. MRojas and Berti for Duran, Murphy, Dalbec and ____?

I'm fine with his offensive projection. I'm not happy with subpar D in RF.

I think the days of acquiring a Pedro or Schilling for a couple decent prospects are over. The Sale trade ended up not being so much of a return as thought at the time, due to Moncada and Kopech not doing as well as many expected. The HRam for Beckett plus salary dump Lowell worked for us. Our big FA signings have been a mixed bag with Price and Lackey as the 2 biggest ones. I know signing deGrom or Rodon might have worked like some of the recent ones you just listed, but there are quite a few failures we could lits, too. I didn't see this FA class of SP'ers as being "the one" to splurge on. I thought trading for one made more sense. I'm not happy with Kluber being the only SP'er added, but I like him more than Heaney, Lugo and a few others near the same price. It's going to come down to Whit & Bello with maybe Mata or Sale stepping up. The rest just need to stay healthy and not suck.