moonslav59

My guess is Betts will be better for the next 2-3 years- maybe 4, then the age differential kicks into Devers' favor. Body types may be a big factor, but sometimes big guys age pretty well, as in Papi. OPS+ (Granted, Betts blows Devers away on D) Betts 186 age 25 w BOS 134 at 26 BOS 147 at 27 LAD 126 at 28 LAD 136 at 29 LAD ? 30 ? 31 ? 32 ? 33 ? 34 ? 35 ? 36 ? 37 ? 38 ? 39 (2032) Devers 141 at age 25 ? at 26 (2023) ? 27 (extension begins) ? 28 ? 29 ? 30 ? 31 ? 32 ? 33 ? 34 ? 35 ? 36 (2033) Even though Devers is under control one year beyond Betts, he'll be just 36 in his last season. That's what Betts will be with 3 more years to go in his deal. I hope we are all around to discuss which deal was better.

I'd have kept Betts, but seeing what out budget was set at over the past 3 years makes me see it differently. I'm not sure keeping Betts would have allowed us to keep Devers. Of the 3, I'd keep Betts, then Devers, then Bogey. No way we keep all 3. If we kept Betts and Devers and the same budget, we'd be without Kluber, Martin and Jansen going into 2023.

There are posters who blame Bloom for not building up the roster- like it was his choice to slash $60M from the year 1 budget and have next to nothing from the farm in a 5 year stretch. Had we kept Betts, even at the Dodger amount (doubtful) and Price, we not only could not have added players around them, we'd have had to subtract players from what we had- maybe Bogey, Nate, or Sale or 2 of the 3. Now, it is different. We have some promising farm help here, already and expected 10+ more, this year and next. We have enough budget space to add Yoshida, Jansen, Martin, Turner and Duvall "around Devers." I get your point about Betts being here now, but we'd have basically wasted 3 years paying Betts to get to this year, and now he's over 30- still very good but the next 5 years don't look the same as the 5 years starting from 2020 on Betts. The "Time is now" three years ago was light years different from now.

The funny thing is, many of our contracts for 4 years or longer, actually stopped being an asset before 4 years or never really were an asset, except for maybe one season. * extension 217/7 Price: Yr1 good (136 ERA+ w DET then 112 in '16), Yr 2 75IP, Yr 3 176 IP 126 ERA+ 160/8 Manny: Clear winner until the very end of his contract 154/7* AGon: Yr 1 great season (155 OPS+), then nothing close & traded year 2. 142/7 Crawford: Complete bust from yr 1 (107 OPS+ w TBR & 89 w BOS) 145/5* Sale: Complete bust year 1, 2 & 3 140/6 Story: Injured for a big chunk of yr 1 and yr 2 110/5 JD: Year 1, 2 & 4 were big plusses. 5 was not bad. 110/8 Pedroia: Pretty clearly a bust, although the start was not bad 95/5 Sandoval: Bust from year 1 88/4 HRam: Yr 1 kinda bad, yr 2 good, yr 3-4 pretty bad 83/4 Porcello: Yr 1 Cy Young, yr 3 okay, the rest not so good 83/5 Lackey: Yr 1 Meh, Yr 2 sucked, Yr 3 missed, Yr 4 helped win ring, traded 73/7 Castillo: Bust from the start 70/5 JD Drew: Pretty good, especially yr 2 & 3. 1 & 4 were OK 68/4 Eovaldi: Yr 1 bad, Yr 2 good but COVID, Yr 3 his best, Yr 4 meh 68/4* Beckett: Yr 1 good, Yr 2 bad, yr 3 good, yr 4 bad/traded (beergate) 52/6 (+52 posting fee) Dice-K: Yr 1 okay, 2 very good, then caput 42/4* Youkilis: Yr 1 good, Yr 2 pretty good, Yr 3 not good & traded 40/4 Renteria: Yr 1:Not good then traded 40/4 VTek ('05): Solid contract all the way 36/4 Lugo: Yr 1 not as bad as many think but still... lost a step afterwards 31/4 Damon: Good signing front to back 30/5* Lester: Good extension 26/4 Foulke: Yr 1 was vital, then yuck!

It's interesting to look back and see that our best 2 free agent signings of this century were in 2000 (Manny signed by Dan D.) and Jan 22, 2003 (Papi signed for peanuts by Theo.) If you look at all the FA signings over the last 20 years, it's not an good overall look. Manny & Papi were both signed more than 20 years ago!

Comparing the farm and budget Bloom was given to spend on a "supporting cast," even without Betts and half-Price's contracts on the books to what LA was able to build up since the trade is a joke. Like it's Bloom's fault our budget isn't close to LA's.

Only the negative stories get the attention.

Unless, somehow, someway, our GM could have and would have convinced JH to not slash the budget from 2019 to 2020, what other choices did we have? Trading Bogey & Sale? We only spent something like $15-20M in the winter of 2019-2020 after not replacing Porcello and a few other departing players and trading away the salaries or Betts and 1/2 Price. I think the total budget slash was close to $60M. To me, it's revisionist history to think we could have build a supporting team around Betts on the budgets provided Bloom in 2020, 2021 and 2022. It seems like trading Betts & Price was a given. We'd have wasted 3+ years of Betts and likely not been bad enough to get Mayer in the draft.

If anything, these last 3 years proved just how little support Betts would have had around him through his prime years. He turns 31 this October. Imagine the roster we had the last 3 years, and then subtract all the players we signed to keep the budget equal to what Betts and 1/2 Price would have cost. Couple that with a farm that provided Houck, Dalbec, Duran and names I don't want to mention, and the picture looks pretty clear, to me., Now, with some of the deadwood contracts off the books, a promising farm already contributing our projected starting 1B (Casas), 2 SPs (Bello & Whitlock) and a key RP (Houck), and the addition of several more meaningful FAs (Yoshida, Kluber, Turner, Jansen, Martin & Duvall) than in any of the last 3 seasons, and maybe all 3 combined, yes, I'd say conditions are much more favorable for adding support players around a homegrown star.

The 5 year plan is almost up. Let's see how it plays out.

Impatience is not a virtue.

I agree, and I was the guy saying we should give Betts a 14 year deal, but to me, the Betts choice was really JH's. I'm not saying Bloom tried to talk JH into signing Betts, but the idea looked like 5 year plan was needed, and Betts would be nearing post prime by then. Now, the 5 year plan is 1-2 years away from realization, so the Devers case fits better.

That he did, and to me, that was why he was replaced before "the plan" had a chance to reach fruition. Even the moderate signings in 2013, that led to a ring year, fell off a cliff, afterwards, then Pablito and HRam. The Pedey and AGon extensions had interesting results, too.

The article does mention it was Bloom that extended Barnes, but nothing, other than he was the union rep, that even hints at he being disgruntled- like Bogey and Vaz. GMs do make moves like this, all the time. It does not surprise me. This is basically Bloom's team, now. Only Sale, Devers and surprisingly Brasier remain from the 40 man roster he inherited. Others were in the system, when he took over, but only those 3 were on the 40 man roster after the 2019 season. Those in the system, added afterwards (current rank on 4 man roster seniority): 4. Dalbec 8. Houck 9. Mata 13. Duran 14. Crawford 16. Bello 24. Casas 27. Rafaela 28. Walter 29. Murphy 13 out of 40 is less than a third. Non 40 Man Roster Prospects on the farm from prior to Bloom: 10. Perales 11. Paulino 12. Wikelman 14. Lugo 16. Bonaci Bloom's stamp is clear and present.

We didn't go all in, this winter, so I tend to agree: Bloom my not NEED to win to keep his job another year or two, but I do think they want to see marked improvements and a brighter future after this year is over. If we have a ton of injuries, and our vets underperform, again, that might not all be blamed on Bloom. Yes, he's the one who decided to signing so many injury prone players (not named Sale,)[ but when you are not allowed to go large and long on the best of the best, it's a given you are stuck with less than the best or high risk players. I'm not so sure a Yoshida flop would be pinned all on Bloom. It seems the scouts have wanted this guy for a very long time. I do think there is a chance Bloom is gone, if we look bad in 2023, and maybe he will deserve to be axed, but it's not a sure bet.

Sums it up very nicely. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, our farm was giving us just Houck over a 5 year period between Devers in 2017 and Bello/Casas in 2022. We were, sadly, not ready to "provide the support" needed around Betts. The "context" wasn't there. With Devers, the situation seems better suited for providing support around him. We'll see how it works out.

Fangraphs has the Sox 2023 Payroll at $192M, which ties us for 11th with SFG. They have our lux tax payroll at $218M (11th most, but just $1M under TEX, $2M under LAA and $3M under CHC. Our $135M commitments for 2024 place us 5th, but we fall to 10th in 2025 commitments at $76M.

We had 15 different pitchers start at least 1 game, and not just because of injury. 11 guys started 3 or more games and 9 started 5 or more. 4 of the top 5 SP'ers had 22 or more GS'd, but yuckaddodle! 34 ERod 3.81 ERA 32 Porcello 5.52 (dropped off a cliff) 25 Sale 4.40 (the year he turned from Chris Freakin' Sale to Freakin' Chris Sale.) 22 Price 2.28 12 Nate 5.99 The pen had a half a run better ERA than the starters, but with no Kimbrell, Kelly and others, only Workman, Barnes and Walden kinda shined: IPin relief only RP ERA 73 Workman 1.88 78 Walden 3.81 64 Barnes 3.78

It wasn't just bad luck that doomed the 2019 season. The team had serious flaws. We had worse luck in 2020 and 2022 than 2019, in terms of injuries. A lot of blame was thrown at "restgate," but seriously, some players just underachieved... like the 2012 rotation that all imploded in the same season.

Can we ignore the 2022 team record and just say it was the same team as 2021?

Yes, I know what you were saying, and I pointed out how the 2019 was NOT the same as 2018, because Kimbrel, Kelly, Nunez and others were gone. I also did not say they were "just a .500 team." I said the barely reached .500, and they did. by just 4 games. Yes, the squad had talent on paper, but a few were in decline, a few became injury issues, and a few underperformed expectations in 2019. It was not the same team.

All true. He had about 20 slots to fill on a dollar ninety-nine, so we got what we paid for. The Perez and Springs additions could be viewed as good- just 2 years too early, but yes, they all pretty much sucked. After being forced to trade Betts and Price and not replace Porcello and other money coming off the books, he spent about $15M on 5 non min wage players... $6M Perez $4.2M Pillar (traded at deadline) $2.9M Peraza (complete bust) $2.5M Moreland (traded at deadline) $1.5M lucroy (complete bust) $850K osich (traded at deadline) Non-arb additions at min wage or close to it: Covey McHugh Brice Brewer MHall Arauz (Rule 5) KHart CMazza JSprings

Not really. No Kimbrell, Kelly or Nunez and then the 2020 team lost, beyond cut or traded contracts (Betts, price, Porcello, Pearce...) saw ERod and Sale miss the whole 2020 season. If people want to blame Bloom for 2020, fine. I don't. Sure, his low budget moves almost all failed, and I had hoped he would have done better, since that was his M.O., it's hard for me to count much of anything in 2020 against Bloom.

When you are forced to cut $60M from a team that barely reached .500 the previous year, I'm not sure about how much expectations should be factored into results. People wonder why he signs so many players with injury histories- well, they cost much less.

No love. Slightly better than crap can still be pretty smelly. We were also talking pen work: Weber: 7.11 SP (1.056 OPSA) 2.25 RP (.583) His pen sample size was about twice the size of Stock's.