moonslav59

Well, we haven't traded but one top 20 prospect (Aldo Ramirez) since the Beeks trade in the summer of 2018. Before that, we had traded over 20 prospects and players who at, at one point or another, had been a top 20 prospect. That's quite a shift and not something anyone should have expected to see ML results in just 3 years. It's kind of a plus, we did see Whitlock and now are seeing Casas and Bello. The farm may or may not produce as hoped, but not out of lack of effort and a focused priority.

He's been very consistent for a long time.

If he isn't, it means he got worse, as he's 7th now, and Casas and Mata should graduate in 2023- maybe Rafaela, too.

Factor in what those team's lost in their rotations and pen: NYY: Taillon (3.91 in 177 IP) & Montgomery (3.69 in 115 IP) plus a few key pen pieces TOR: Stripling (3.01 ERA in 134 IP) TBR: Kluber (4.34 ERA but the team leader in GS at 31 and 2nd in IP at 164) BAL: Lyles (4.42 ERA but also blew everyone else away in GS 31 and IP at 179.) Our rotation gains Whitlock and maybe Sale and Paxton plus a full year from Bello. I think we will add another SP'er by opening day, too. (So may the other AL East teams.)

Nothing is a sure thing. You are right. Hell, Andrus might out hit Bogey. All we can do is go by expectations and projections, and as of right now, assuming Story stays at 2B, I think we should be batter at 7 of 9 batting order slots, about even at catcher and much worse at SS. I see our pen being vastly better, despite losing Strahm and Whitlock moving to the rotation. It's better at the top, middle and bottom, as well as the AAA depth looks better, on paper. The rotation is hard to project and compare, since we had so many moving parts, last year and very few SP'ers with a lot of IP or GS'd. It looks worse, to me, on paper, but even without adding anyone else, just better health might make it much better. Again, overall, just saying better than the last place team might not be very exciting, but I'm seeing quite a bit to be optimistic about, and I'm not even counting a Sale and or Paxton rebound, or a Barnes and Taylor rebound, or any improvement from Dugo, Arroyo, Dalbec, Pivetta or others that are not really beyond prime and could easily have a better year in 2023. Just flip 2021 with 2022 for these players not past prime, and that alone could do wonders: 2021>2022 OPS+ 141>134 Devers 108> 75 Kike 107> 102 Dugo (117 in 2019-2020 combined) 107> 80 Dalbec Story 117 OPS+ (2018-2021) > 102 in 2022.

I'm fine with blaming them for not foreseeing an uptick in the market for high end players. I'm not sure any GM foresaw this much, but I agree. My point is that it's not incompetence if they never felt Bogey was worth any market prices as the timeline raised that "market value," including one last big spurt. We can judge later if paying Bogey $180M/7 or $225M/8 would have been a good or not or "better than" the Story signing. Even if they knew Bogey would eventually get $225M/8, they may still have felt he was and still is not worth even that, let alone $280M. We cannot say for sure that position is incompetence. Not trading him, if we knew this to be, earlier, is where I think the biggest mistake was made, but that just my opinion. They did feel Yoshida, Jansen, Martin and Turner were worth more than what other GMs felt they were, so let's see how incompetent they were/are.

It was for the tax line. It was when you figure the winter spending budget was $60-70M. If we keep thinking in terms of what JH could have spent, yes, you are right, but it's not the way it was or apparently still is.

Do you agree that we look better, if even slightly at 6-7 slots and even at 1-2 slots in the 9 everyday player positions, assuming Story at 2B? That's got to make up for losing Bogey's O and D. The pen looks way better on paper. That leaves the rotation and a couple months to try and upgrade it to near what we had in 2022 and 2021, too.

Can you specifically say where the odds are I am wrong on these rundowns by position? (BTW, I counted the pen as one position, when we actually should improve on 6 of 8 pen slots as well as AAA depth) Compared to 2022, I see us as being odds on favorites to improve on these positions (assuming we add a SS and SP): 1B: Casas > Dalbec/Cordero/Hosmer 2B: Story> Story/Arroyo/Sanchez-Downs 3B: Devers> Devers LF: Yoshida> Dugo/Pham CF: Kike> Kike/Duran RF: Dugo/Ref> JBJ/Dugo/Ref/Cordero DH: Turner> 2022 JD Maybe equal: C: McGuire/Wong= Vaz/Plawecki (counting D and staff handling) Much Worse: ______ Pitching: 2023 Pen >>> 2022 Pen The rotation is the great undecided and almost impossible to predict with so many returning from injuries, and trying to figure out just how good Wacha, Nate and Hill were, last year. Pivetta = Pivetta Sale =/> Sale Paxton =/> Paxton Whitlock=/> Wacha Bello =/> Bello & Hill ______ ??> Nate Crawford/Wink/Mata/Walter> Crawford/Wink/Seabold

The way I see it, we need to match or improve from the 2021 team. We can get better than 2022 and still finish last, but I have actually made this point several times, already. Compared to 2022, I see us as being odds on favorites to improve on these positions (assuming we add a SS and SP): 1B: Casas > Dalbec/Cordero/Hosmer 2B: Story> Story/Arroyo/Sanchez-Downs 3B: Devers> Devers LF: Yoshida> Dugo/Pham CF: Kike> Kike/Duran RF: Dugo/Ref> JBJ/Dugo/Ref/Cordero DH: Turner> 2022 JD Maybe equal: C: McGuire/Wong= Vaz/Plawecki (counting D and staff handling) Much Worse: ______ Pitching: 2023 Pen >>> 2022 Pen The rotation is the great undecided and almost impossible to predict with so many returning from injuries, and trying to figure out just how good Wacha, Nate and Hill were, last year. Pivetta = Pivetta Sale =/> Sale Paxton =/> Paxton Whitlock=/> Wacha Bello =/> Bello & Hill ______ ??> Nate Crawford/Wink/Mata/Walter> Crawford/Wink/Seabold

Let's see how both contracts work out, even assuming Story at $140M/6 and Bogey at $160M/6, which we don't know he'd ever have taken. It's not a radical idea, but it's not a slam dunk choice, either.

It does, but you know he really might have been. They just never foresaw a $280M offer- not many of us did, and now in hindsight, we all scream coulda-shoulda.

I would think $8M matters to all but maybe 5-6 owners in MLB. I'm sure it's pitiful to think a GM might decide to spend $2-4M less because of the $8M check to JBJ, this winter. I agree JH could and should spend more, but I think that about every filthy rich company owner squeezing what he can out of his workers at the least amount of expense possible.

I know many poo-poo BTV and disagree on many of the values they assign to certain players, but it is shocking to see how the top Sox and Yankee players compare to other AL East teams. According to BTV, and remember this includes prospects, TBR and TOR blow everyone else away, and even BAL has better than NYY and BO do. I won't name names just values of the top 5 and the next 10: (Remember, this is not how good the players are: it's how good they are or project to be for the money they make or project to make) Top 5 TBR: 136, 128, 53, 47, 45 TOR: 154, 94, 56, 54, 52 BAL: 146, 87, 52, 39, 36 BOS: 55, 41, 37, 34, 33 NYY: 50, 31, 28, 27, 19 6-15: TBR: 32, 30, 30, 25, 22, 19, 18, 18, 18, 16 TOR: 35, 28, 26, 25, 17, 12, 11, 11,10, 10 BAL: 25, 25, 24, 21, 20, 16, 15, 13, 13, 12 BOS: 19, 19, 15, 14, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7, 6 NYY: 17, 14, 13, 12, 11, 11, 11, 10, 9 TBR's 16-25 even best our 6-15! 15, 15, 14, 13, 11, 9, 8, 8, 7, 6 This is not too encouraging.

They would salvage the off season to some degree, but I expected so much more, this winter. Granted, with the prices the big FA signed for, the wish list could never have met my expectations, without us going over the tax line, which I felt was never going to happen. I was hoping we added 4-5 kept players for $80M and not 6-7 at $40M, which is what we've spent, so far in AAV. Adding these 2 more players at maybe $25M AAV combined makes it 8 players at $65M (Yoshida, Turner, Andrus, Kluber, Jansen, Martin, Joely & Mills.)

Ownership is choosing greed and building for the future. That's why they hired Bloom. I don't see it as incompetence, just because they are choosing the long game over the short one. I think we had a legitimate chance at making the playoffs after the Story signing in March. I think most here did. Now, because we sucked, we were all wrong, too, but calling it incompetence, when most of us felt we were "competitive" seems a bit over the top. If you are talking about the Bogey situation, I can understand how the word incompetence can be used. I, too, think they could have handled it differently and grossly misjudged the market explosion, but again, I don't think they ever wanted to pay Bogey the market price at any point on the timeline. Even now, they would not give Bogey $225M/8, IMO. They should have traded him after signing Story, at the latest. He'd have waived his no trade clause, if they told him Story was going to play SS.

Yup. Nobody was talking Kluber and Andrus even 2 weeks ago. Now, we are acting like they are saviors. This team has not traded a top prospect, other than #8 Aldo Ramirez since #5 Jalen Beeks was traded for Nate in the summer of 2018. I'm not sure they think the timing is right to break this streak. (I do, as long as we get someone with 4+ years of team control.)

I'm not even sure Kluber or Nate clears them of malpractice. I'd like to see us trade for a solid #2 and sign Flumer, so we can DFA Brasier, once and for all, and bump Crawford, Wink & Co to AAA.

Bah Humbug!

Would signing Klub er and Fulmer make anyone very happy with our staff? (It would almost certainly mean Brasier would be DFA'd, so there is that!)

Yes, of course, but we don't need all of these guys to do very well. I will say, we can't afford to go through 5-6 of these guys before hitting on one who does well. We might be out of it by then, but we have a lot of choices, and it might come down to the order we choose from them. Bello pretty mush has to do well. Maybe one from Crawford, Winckowski and Seabold. Maybe one from Kelly and German. It might be asking too much to hope for immediate success from 1 or 2 from these guys, but it's not impossible: Mata Walter Murphy Santos Longshots: Ort, DHern, Shugart Of course, we also need at least one of our oft-injured vet pitchers to come back: Sale or Paxton. We need Pivetta to be steady. We need Whitlock to give us 150 solid. We need the pen to do as good as they look on paper and maybe one from Taylor, Brasier, Mills and Barnes to find the groove they showed in at least one season in the last 4-5 years. Houck could be a big key, too. Our staff is not hopeless, but adding Kluber and Fulmer or one solid SP'er via trade would help, a lot.

The FA market is dried up of high impact hopefuls. The best we could maybe do is Kluber, Andrus and Fulmer, which wouldn't look bad, but IMO would still leave us short of what I hoped for. It would take us going 3 for 3 on those FA signings, and so far, we are like 3 for 50 PLUS trading for a solid SP'er for me to think, "well done." (Then, who are we trading to get that solid pitcher?)

If they just came out and said it, maybe it would give fans more faith than the crap they keep spewing. I'm not really sure they were blatantly lying about "trying to stay competitive" all these last 2 years. They did pretty good one year, and the confluence of injuries and downturns by too many vets might have been more of the reason we failed to make the playoffs than a flawed plan or incompetence. The fact that the best prospect we have traded in 4 years, yes including DD's final year, has been Aldo Ramirez is the biggest clue to what the plan has benn since 2019. Winning now has been a lower priority, even if not verbalized by management. It's obvious. The farm has grown by leaps and bounds, and thanks to some pleasant surprises by DD's prospects, we should start seeing some serious results, this year with a mix of DD and Bloom guys coming up in following years. Seriously, you need to establish a steady flow of prospects before you set your window. I'm not saying a Bogey or Devers extension interferes with this idea, as the window was not supposed to be 2027-2030- past prime for Bogey and a little for Devers, too. It's not total stupidity or incompetence to think it's better to wait on spending for big ticket items, until you have the pipeline stablished and have a better idea of what slots need attention from outside the system. It's easy to say, "Getting pitching is never a bad idea," but in now way do I see any of this year's FA SP signings as one I think would overlap whatever years the planned "window" is. The other big clue is the massive amount of one year deals, with 2 year deals far exceeding longers one, as well. Rebuild- yup! Telling your GM to trade Betts & Price and not replace Porcello, too, as well as letting Kimbrel, Kelly and others go before you even took over as GM and saying "Here's $40M- go and replace 12 players and create a winning team" is preposterous. I do think we had hopes at making the playoffs in 2021 and 2022, if almost everything went right. I'm not sure the whole "stay competitive" thing was a lie. They actually thought we could, and so did I, each of the last 2 Marches. To be a lie, there needs to be intent to deceive. This winter looks like it could be a "lie," but there is still time to acquire a pitcher via trade or maybe hope Kluber and or Nate can give us one year, and find a middle IF'er and maybe another piece to give us faint hopes of a WC berth, and hey, most ehre think the playoffs are a crapshoot...

What GM can juggle building up a farm, extreme budget cutting and the decline of returning vets- not to mention getting nothing from your highest paid player in 3 years? We should have won more than we did in 2022, no doubt. A perfect storm- the opposite of whatw e saw in 2021- occurred. The lost hope of Jeter Downs, getting nothing for Bogey, the JBJ trade, the 3 years of getting nothing from Sale, our highest paid player by AAV and not finding enough gems in the rough brought us to where we are, today. Certainly JH's refusal to go large and long on anyone, including our own stars has been a major factor in the state of the 26 man roster. I'm really not sure, under the circumstances JH set, how we could really expect much better. Better, yes, but how much better? You can't spend $40M on 12 players and expect great things, year one, especially with virtually no help from the farm- not just in year one but the two prior and two afterwards. You can't spend $40M on 8 players in year two, and expect great things. You can't spend $60M on 7 players year three and expect a ring. We knew the farm would not be a help for 4-5 years. We knew the only real way to win "along the way" was to spend and spend while also finding great bargains, which is what we expected and hoped Bloom would do. He's found quite a few, but not enough. I'm not sure incompetence is the word I'd choose, given what he was handed. I'm holding out hope, JH is just waiting to time a spending "pounce," but as Tom Petty would say, "The waiting is the hardest part."

Why is it different now than after the Fisk, Lynn, Burleson, Hobson, Tiant, Lee and many others purge over 40 years ago? I'm not trying to sugar coat where we are, right now, in terms of going for a ring in 2023 or maybe even 2024, but the team had some serious issues 3-4 years ago. Many of us knew it and saw what was coming. With the new rules in place making it harder to get great draft picks late in the first round and even the second round, because you could give out mega bonuses. Penalties for spending more affect your draft. The plan had to be to build up the farm, and that is very hard to do, while winning. That's not to say we lost on purpose, except for maybe 2020, but not really sucking makes it harder to b uild the fam quickly and deeply. Did anyone really expect Bloom to not only get us to a top 5 farm but to already be seeing Bloom farm infusions in 3 short years, including one season where doing well hurt our draft positioning? In some ways, it's a miracle that DD's farm turned out better than just about anyone expected and we may see Casas, Bello and maybe a couple others add some serious value we have not seen in 5 years. I realize none of this helps the fan paying big bucks to go watch the team in 2 of the last 3 years and 2023 looks to make that 3 of 4, but we've gone through longer droughts than this, and the fanbase kept cheering for our Sox. Maybe, we got spoiled by all the rings. Maybe patience is no longer something anyone cares ab out, anymore. I think there will be a lot of exciting things to watch in 2023- win or lose. That's minimizing the frustration I am feeling about this winter that I expected to be the turning point, but I'm not going to choose "doom & gloom." I like the direction our long term future is heading. I wish and think JH should spend more, but I'm not going to get angry about it.