moonslav59

Agreed, but I don't think it helped his bargaining position by saying he wanted to stay at SS, and I don't think he'd be happy to be forced off SS after just one season. Of course, $280M makes that a lot easier to swallow.

...or any specific offer BorA$$ asked for, or did I miss that? If BorA$$ never lowered from $250M/10, did Bloom make a mistake by not accepting that?

It was a hypothetical point. Yoshida "may end up at DH" in 2 years, after Turner goes, of 1 year (or less) if Devers goes. Forget I even mentioned Casas.

If that suggest improvement comes true and the pen greatly improves on 2022, the staff, as a whole. could move up sharply from 22nd in fWAR at 9.8 to maybe 14th overall at near 15.0 with some upside potential for better with extremely good health or the addition of Kluber and/or Fulmer or a trade addition. Now, how do you foresee the fWAR differentials at the 9 batting slots? We were 18th at an 18 fWAR: C 11th (2.7) Vaz & Plawecki vs McGuire & Wong 1B 25th -0.6 Dalbec, Cordero & others vs Casas & Turner 2B 20th at 1.7 Story, Arroyo & others vs a healthy Story & Arroyo SS 4th at 5.9 Bogey vs one from Andrus, MRojas, Mateo or Iggy 3B 9th 4.6 Devers & Dalbec vs the 2023 Devers & Turner LF 23rd 0.9 Dugo, Pham & others vs Yoshida CF 24th 1.3 Kike, Duran vs a healthier Kike RF 15th 2.2 JBJ, Dugo & Ref vs Dugo and Refsnyder DH 18th 0.4 JD vs Turner, Yoshida, Dalbec

Agreed, and I'm not trading for him, because I want him, but he would likely not be worse than Dugo on D or O, and if we can get Luzardo, Lopez or another SP without losing a top 5-6 prospect, I'm thinking double yes! A package that brings us Luzardo, M Rojas and Garcia fills all 3 of our highest need areas in one trade. It keeps us under the tax line by enough to still add Kluber and Fulmer, although I doubt we'd do that, too. It shouldn't cots us Mayer, Casas, Bello, Bleis or even Rafaela. I'm not sure they want Dugo or Duran, but giving them Yorke, Romero or Walter would be worth it, to me.

Better than the crapshooter Phillies. I never said upsets don't happen, but by and large, a top 3-4 team wins way more than the bottom 3-4 teams that make the playoffs. It's not even close. Win% or whatever.

True, but Casas plus others, maybe, and a solid #2 would not be bad, either. I don't see us trading Casas. I just mentioned the idea as a way to find a position for Turner. There is also a chance Casas falls flat on his face and Turner could end up platooning at 1B and playing some DH, too.

Because it was an outlier season, much like Nate's 2021 season was. I'm not doubting it being an outlier. Sometimes, I think you and others site BAbip as a way to show much of what happened involved luck, when a good chunk of BAbip massive changes can be attributed to a big change in the defense behind a pitcher, or the fact that the pitcher, somehow greatly lowered the LD% or hard hit%, and "luck" played a much smaller role that implied or thought. Outliers happen, and maybe it's not all due to extreme good luck. Players often find a groove that just happens to last longer than any other time in their careers. In Porcello's case, take away 2-3 of his worst starts in 2024, and he'd have similar numbers to 2016. is it really that much of a fluke to just have 3 less bad starts in any given season? He had a 3.48 ERA and 3.28 FIP in his first 16 starts to 2018, which is not too far away from 3.15/3.40 in his 2016 season.

Welcome my son Welcome to the machine What did you dream? It's alright we told you what to dream

This should be rule #1 for the 2023 staff. Make the choices and stick to them, at all costs. We have 6 SP'ers as depth. (Mata, Walter, Murphy, Crawford, Winckowski and Seabold.) Try them before moving Houck from the pen. We have 6+ RP'ers as depth. (All the SP'er listed above plus Taylor, Kelly, German and others.) I'd prefer Houck stay in the pen, and define a role for him there, too- like long man or 8th inning set up, who may go 2 IP when needed, only.

Presto Magnifico! Seriously though, does anything I listed look clearly wrong? Of course, there are some massive speculations, but who speculated Wacha and Hill would give what they did, last year? How hard should it be to improve on the rotation of 2022? That's one promising thing about having a horrific season: it's easier to improve upon. It's easy to focus on how we replace these 236 IP and 43 GSd 3.32 Wacha (127 IP) 3.87 Nate (109 IP) But what about these 270 IP and 57 GS'd... 4.27 Hill (124 & 26 GS) 5.75 Wink (67 & 14 GS) 5.43 Crawford (61 & 12 GS) 11.29 Seabold (18 & 5 GS) Wink, Crawford and Seabold combined for 31 GS'd and a 6.35 ERA. There is a real chance those 3 get zero starts in 2023. This is not magic: it's reality.

I did not say move Yoshida to DH in 2023. I specifically said, "If he ends up at DH," which implies in the future. Devers may be gone in 2024, or even soon or at the deadline. I do not think they trade Casas, but if they did, Turner could play 1B while Yoshida DHs. If we want to trade for an ace- NEWSFLASH- we'd need to actually give up a good young player or prospect to get one.

I think they really felt we could compete for a playoff slot in 2021 and 2022. Most here, agreed in March '21 and '22- maybe more so in '22.

Yes, and the best team in MLB won in 2022. 2021 was a feather in the crapshooters caps. BTW, do you really want to be known as a crapshooter club member? Now, we call them liars for being so preposterously wrong, that they must have known all along we'd suck and intentionally told mistruths.

Imagine this scenario: Mayer is ready for the bigs in 2024, but Bogey becomes upset they want him to move to 3B (no Devers) or LF. He demands a trade and or pouts and complains to the media and asks for a trade. Not likely? Possible? Probable? I got the feeling Bogey might have been okay with a position change in 3-5 years, but not after 1.

Without the SS being on the 1B side of the diamond vs LHBs, it's actually more important to have a wide-ranged 2Bman than before.

There is solid evidence that the number one priority is, and has been since the deadline in 2018, the farm. 1. Most trades we made that added a vet also included a prospect or 2 or 4 as in the Beni for Cordero trade. 2. We have not traded any top prospects in 3.5 years, unless you count Aldo Ramirez for Schwarber as such. 3. Signing almost every FA to one year deals hints at "bridging" to someone you hope will be ready in the current system, as in a graduating prospect. They may very well have wanted Bogey and thought they could get him all along the way, until the Padres offer blew them, and many baseball pundits away. Call it a lie. Call it a mistake. Call it "the GM being over his head" or "misreading the room," but there can be many explanations and speculations, but the fact is, Bogey is gone. No doubt, we'd be better with Bogey, but honestly, would we be projected to finish much higher in 2023 than 2022 had we spent the $50M on... 25.5 Bogey 17.0 Nate 10.0 Vaz (No JD, Wacha, Hill, Straham or Jansen, Martin, Yoshida or Turner, either)

The low BB was not really luck. He also had his lowest K/9 rate in that 4 year stretch. He had one of his lowest GB%'s and LD%'s, too.

It did make a difference to Ben, luck or not, that both Porcello and HRam had much better years in 2016 than 2015. Another "fluke" was leon leading the Sox in catcher PAs in 2016 and putting up an .845 OPS. Meaningless, maybe, but that is the nature of hypotheticals and scenarios.

Because you seemed upset we did not bring Nate back. Both had clear outlier seasons with the Sox, and Porcello's was more in line with the rest of his career than Nate's was, although Nate's 2021 was not a CY season.

Since we added 2 DHs, I have not included Soler in any BTV suggested trades. I have packaged Dugo in with AGarcia and a SPer package, many times, and lately I have been adding M Rojas to the deals. I'm not thrilled with AGarcia in RF, especially in Fenway, but I'm not thrilled with Dugo there, either, and I'm hoping taking on Garcia's salary, which we can do and still reset, would mean we can get a SP'er without trading a top 5 or 6 prospect. BTW, doing this plus a Kluber and or Andrus signing (or Rojas included in the trade) would actually make me think this winter was an overall winner, despite the bad taste left by Bogey's departure.

Or, Devers or Casas.

So, basically... Pivetta '23 = Pivetta '22 Bello '23> Bello + Hill '22 Sale '23> Nate + Crawford '22 Whitlock '23> Whitlock + Wink "22 Paxton + 6 others ??> Wacha + Seabold & others in '22

As one could say about Nate's 2021 season. At least Porcello was more consistent and healthy the rest of his career.

Jansen has been Mr. Consistency for over a decade. Bloom did a pretty good job building the pen, which was probably the one area most bashed over the last season or more. I'm still scratching my head over the fact that we have not filled our biggest 3 needs: SP, SS and RF and spent nearly 3/5ths of our winter money spent, thus far on DH/LF and DH/3B/1B players. In terms of the 8 position player plus DH needs rankings, I had 3B last or 9th, LF was 6th (behind 3B, 2B and CF) and 1B was the 5th highest need area. Don't get me wrong, I like Yoshida and Turner to bolster our offense, but we still have at least 2 gaping holes to fill, $38M to spend, but hardly anyone left to spend it on. Yup, a real head-scratcher, and this one is likely on Bloom not JH. There is time left, so the judgment is not final, but options are running thin, unless we make a trade and part with a precious prospect or two.