moonslav59

It's not just Bogey's power being down, his RBI production fell sharply in '21 and '22. (152 RBI in '21-'22 combined.) That's not all that hard to come close to replacing, and his D was not all that great. I agree, we will be worse on O at SS and 2B, but the bar is not all that high to approach: .724 OPS at 2B (97 RBI) .815 OPS at SS (79 RBI) I disagree that our O at catcher is a sure decline. Our catching position had a .694 OPS in 2022, and that was helped a bit by McGuire's .834 OPS as a catcher.) The bottom of the rotation is not "garbage" and looks to be as good or better than 2022, especially in depth. To say the pen is "probably better" is a gross understatement. Yes, up the middle matters, but it's not the only thing. Our defense should be better at C, SS and maybe CF. Our O could be better at CF and equal at Catcher.

I think we will be a better team in 2023 than 2022. I think the schedule changes would give us more wins, even if we were equal to last year's team, so I'm thinking 82-85 wins is an odds on possibility. I think we will have a decent chance at winning 86-89 wins, which is likely enough to secure a WC slot. Winning 90 or more would take a lot going right, and to me, is not likely. I see a lot of possibilities for things going right, and the sheer number of them gives me hope, because we don't need all or even 90% of these things to go right to have a chance at winning 86-87 games or more in 2023. Last season, those were the win totals of the worst playoff teams in the AL and NL. Think about it, how many of these possibilities do we need to happen to win 87+ games? How many to win 90+? Sale starts 20+ games and looks decent. Paxton starts 18+ games and looks decent. Pivetts remains a top 5 fifth starter and gives us 180+ IP Whitlock thrives as a SP'er and gives us a good 28+ GS'd. Kluber gives us 24+ good GS'd. Bello has a decent sophomore year with 24+ GS'd. One or two out of Mata, Walter, Murphy, Crawford or Winckowski fill in the cracks from some of the above happenings not going right. Jansen, Martin, Houck, Schreiber and Barnes provide enough solid pen IP to greatly improve on our 2022 numbers. Rodriguez, Mills, Taylor, Braiser, Kelly, German and converted SP'er provide pen depth better than the 2022 pen did. Devers improves as he enters peak prime- offense and defense. Verdugo's improved conditioning over the winter brings him back to earlier career numbers. Yoshida and Turner's bats come close to replacing the 2022 offensive production lost by the departing Bogey & JD. Casas greatly improves the defense and offense from the 2022 1B production. McGuire and Wong keeps us about equal to what Vaz-Plaw gave us. Maybe better D outweighs worse O. More games and better PAs by Kike and improved D at SS can help lessen other losses. Duval and more play from Refsnyder improves on what we got from JBJ, Cordero, Pham and Duran in '22. Arroyo and whoever we add, this winter at middle IF can help keep the losses of Bogey and Story to more of a minimum. Farm depth of everyday players like EValdez, Alfaro, Tapia, Dalbec, Duran, Hamilton, Koss, Rafaela and maybe even Mayer, late in the season can improve upon what we got in 2022. I listed 18 things, here with some being several players lumped together. I'm thinking we might need 9-10 to go right with 4-5 coming close to be better in '23. Maybe 11-12 need to go right to make the playoffs and 12-14 to get close to 90 wins. We could also look at it from the perspective of how many of these 18 can go grossly wrong to still be able to overcome and make the playoffs.

The thing is, not all "passionate fans" are focused on just the here and now. My term "crybaby" was directed towards the many fans that want us to win right now and aren't that interested in improving comp pick positioning in the next draft. I could still choose a better word for them and am open to suggestions. It's not like I don't want us to win now. I was okay with the DD plan and was willing to sacrifice the longer term for an exceptional winning window that I had hoped and expected would last more than just 3 years, and I think there are times when that sort of plan is called for or more conducive to "going for it" - maybe not to the extent DD did, but maybe a happy medium somewhere in between. I'm probably in the minority for caring more about the future than 2023. I'm not thinking about a 5 year plan, starting now. To me, the 5 year plan started in 2019 or 2020, and I'm expecting a highly competitive team by 2024 or 2025, at the very latest. I had hoped, this winter could have gotten us there, but with the shocking prices the top FAs got, this winter, my hopes and expectations were tempered down a bit.

Agreed, and I did not mean "crybaby" as always being a bad thing. I've been known to "cry" about a few things, too. I do think the fear of "crybaby fans" kept us from having even a mini-fire sale, last summer that kept us from resetting, but more importantly hurt our comp pick positions in the next draft. All we had to do was trade JD for a single A prospects, and we'd be better off. We could have also traded Bogey, if he agreed to waive the no-trade clause, Nate, Wacha, Hill & Strahm for prospects or ML players. Look what we got for Diekman, Vaz and Groome. It's not a huge deal. We'd have likely stayed under the tax line, again this year, so that part is not all that bad, but sometimes complaining fans can keep a team from improving their longer term outlook out of fear of backlash from fans wanting more now, now and RIGHT NOW!

It's 3.88 since 2017 with an FIP of 3.35. How is this for keeping it real? Since 2017, among 114 RP'ers with 200 + IP, Barnes is... T20th in fWAR at 4.8 21st in RP IP at 313 15th in xFIP at 3.34 (Martin i #7 at 3.01 & Jansen is 17th at 3.36) A lot depends on a Barnes recovery from whatever was bothering him last in '21 and for some of '22, but if he can just give us his norm from 2017-2022, we'll have a solid #2-#3 RP'er being asked to be our #4 behind Jansen, Martin and Schreiber.

Crybaby fans make a difference. Maybe my choice of words was not great, but it's true.

BTV accepted: Houck, Dugo, Anthony & Paulino for 3 years each from Grisham & Kim Would you do that?

I'd do this in a heartbeat.We'd have to add more pieces to get it done (Duran, Wink, Crawford or even Murphy would be ideal, but I doubt the Padres want any of these guys on their 40. Maybe Murphy.) Maybe they take Houck, Dugo and a non 40 man prospect like Romero, Yorke or Anthony. They each have 3 years of control, so maybe we are paying for more years than we need, but we could always trade Kim or Story, if and when Mayer wins the FT SS job. I guess Kim can even play 2B and OF, so maybe we keep 'em all.

Indeed. We are not going to start the season with 2 middle IF'ers on the 26. We won't have EValdez as the 3rd, either. Bank on it. It is fair to say, as of now, we really suck up the middle, but the rest of the team seems to have improved at all the corners and the pitching staff.

Salas looks pretty promising, but he's too far away to bet Casas on him helping out 3-4 years from now. To me, the Lopez trade showed that MIA valued him less than I thought they did. A straight up trade made more sense, and BTV agrees. By value, alone, a Houck and Duran for Lopez was better on BTV than Casas for Lopez and Salas and throw in Wendle.

You do know Bogey had just 15 HRs in 631 PAs, last year. He and JD combined for 135 RBI. That's almost as much as just JD had in 2018 (130.) I'm not going to accuse anyone of having mistaken opinions, we may very well suck, this year, but I think when some are thinking about us losing Bogey, JD, Nate and others, they are remembering them in their glory days. JD .330 43 130 in '18 .304 36 105 in '19 not the... .213 7 27 in 54 games '20 .274 16 62 in '22 Bogey .288 23 103 '18 .309 33 117 '19 not the... .295 23 27 '21 .307 15 73 '22 Nate: The heroics of 2018 11-9 3.75 in 2021 (32 GS) not the... 68 IP 5.99 ERA of 2019 6-3 3.87 in just 20 GS and 109 IP of '22 I'm not saying I'm happy losing these three, but replacing the more recent versions of them is not as hard as it may seem to be to some, here. Saying we will not do as well as last year is extreme pessimism, IMO, or a misunderstanding of how low the bar is set for improvement: How hard will it be to improve on these positional numbers? .694 Catcher (Replacing Vaz & Plawecki with McGuire & Wong) .683 1B (The worst 1B season I have ever seen on a Sox team: Casas has arrived.) .694 LF (One of the worst LF productions by a Sox team in '22: Welcome Yoshida!) .671 CF (Hard to know what happens here with no Kike in CF) .661 RF (We may step down on D, but a massive O gain is probable.) .763 DH (Turner should improve on JD's '22 numbers.) That's 5 of the 9 everyday slots where improvement is not only possible, but probable. Ine 3, it's highly probable we see major gains. (One could argue C is unknown.) .724 2B (Looks like a loss) .815 SS (Loss) .856 3B (Could improve as Devers reaches prime) Rotation: many see the 2023 rotation as being almost all one big question mark, but so was the 2022 one, this time, last year, and again, we look to be losing many bad innings, too. 2022 SP Innings 180 Pivetta 4.56 (expect about the same: a plus 5th starter) 127 Wacha 3.32 (will be hard to replace his 23 GS, but it's not 33 GS'd) 124 R Hill 4.27 (a decent 26 GS'd needed to be replaced) 109 Nate 3.87 (only 20 starts needing replacement) This is 69 GS'd needing replacement. That's basically 2 FT SP'er NOT the 3 it appears to be. We added Kluber 25-33 GS +27 Whitlock 9 GS >> 25-33 +22 Bello 11 GS >> 25-33 +20 There is the 69 GS'd replaced. Now, the easy part to improve on: 67 Winckowski 5.75 in 14 GS 61 Crawford 5.43 in 12 GS'd 18 Seabold 11.29 in 5 GSd 6.1 Davis 0.00 in 3 GS'd That's 34 GS'd needed to be replaced and almost impossible not to greatly improve upon by this year's additions: Sale Paxton Mata Walter Houck (Maybe some better starts from Wink & Crawford, if needed) The pen improvement looks like a no-brainer, but pens are always fickle. I don't expect Schreiber to be the 2022 Schreiber, but guys like Barnes and Houck could balance out the returnees. No more... 51 Sawamura 3.73 48 Davis 6.19 40 Danish 5.13 38 Diekman 4.23 25 Robles 5.84 16 Bazardo 2.76 * Valdez 4.41 10 Familia 6.10 7 DHern 21.60 and others... More and hopefully better from some of these returnees 65 Schreiber 2.22 62 Brasier 5.78 43 Houck 2.70 40 Barnes 4.31 14 Kelly 3.95 4 German 18.00 The big boost is the additions: Jansen- one of the most consistent closer over the last 10+ seasons. Under 1.05 WHIP last 2 seasons. Led league in Svs in 2022 w 41 Martin- 0.527 WHIP, last season (1.15 career and 1.03 since 2019) 2.87 FIP since '19 Rodriguez- not a great addition but has a solid 3.14 FIP since 2020. I see a plus in the pen, a good chance for a plus in the rotation, a plus at 4-5 of the 9 everyday positions (1B, 3B, LF, RF & C or DH) and a break even at 1-2 others (C or DH). The only sure down slots look to be SS, 2B and CF, but we may be able to lessen the down degrees with another addition or two up the middle. We should be better in 2023, unless we equal the injuries we had in 2022.

They were talking about adding more than 2 middle IFers as being a possibility, although some could be on minor league deals. If I'm a SS or 2Bman looking to get a chance to play, the Sox would be high on my list. I am 100% certain we add a ML middle IF'er before ST'ing. EValdez will not be our opening day infield utility guy.

He does have options- and trade value. Casas is a not a sure bet at 1B, and Dalbec also provides depth at DH and 3B. notin's idea of trying him in the OF may work.

Lopez had just 2 years of team control.

Not for just Lopez. Hey, now that MIA gave 3 for 1, maybe they can take a 2 or 3 for 1 or 2 trade with us: Dalbec & Ort for Wendle Murphy, Duran & Dalbec for Berti & Wendle

You suggested thinking the glass was just half full was stretching it. We will be better, next year.

Seems like he's very consistent with his inconsistencies.

99.9% sure we reset in '23. Wendle makes peanuts. There are a lot of trade options out there for SS or 2B. We can even afford Andrus or Harrison, but the extra years are probably a barrier for the Sox.

I think he deserves another chance at the plate- maybe not with the Sox, since we have Casas and Turner, now. His D is horrific. Maybe, trying him in LF might be the best idea, but we already have 18 players where LF is their best position.

Weird, because after the Rojas trade, MLBTR stated Chisholm was moving to SS. What are your thoughts on acquiring Mondesi from KC as a one year bridge SS? He should not cost much: maybe Dalbec straight up (throw in Ort... LOL)?

If he can keep hitting .,754 with 33 HRs and 95 RBI per 650, he could stick as an Of'er, assuming he can catch fly balls. Big ifs, though.

How about Houck, Duran and Yorke for Ober and Kepler? Or, Houck, Dugo & Murphy for the same two?

Looks like the Twins got a lot, or BTV is really messed up on the value of Arraez.

Maybe now MIA will trade us Wendle.

Pablo Lopez to Twins for Luis Arraez (with Jose Salas & Byron Chourio)!