moonslav59

The Hill signing made sense- likely available early in the season and may wear out late in the season, when Sale might be ready. The Wacha signing was a gamble, but with the same context as the Hill signing- perhaps replaced by Sale, late in the season. It was the Paxton signing that made no sense. Why have 2 pitchers, you know won't be ready (at the same times) until late in the season? Using that money to sign someone better than Diekman or a SP'er (with Diekman's money added) who was expected to be ready for opening day made more sense. As it turned out, we coulda/shoulda signed a bunch or other guys, since we ended up going over the tax line, anyway, but I think the offseason was geared towards staying under. To me, that means any suggested ideas of what we should have done should be coupled with what we should not have done as an offset to the budget. Certainly, taking back the JBJ trade would be at the top of everyone's list, and many not in hindsight, but all but the Diekman ($4M), Robles $2.25M and maybe Story ($20M) signings worked out pretty well. No JBJ, Diekman and Robles and having Renfroe in RF at $7.7M vs JBJ at $12M lux tax would give us about $14M to spend on the pen and 1B, assuming Renfroe in RF. Seems like enough to make a difference, but I did like the Wacha, Hill, Strahm and yes, the Story signings, and the additions of Schreiber and Refsnyder worked out well, too. All in all, I don't see Bloom winter 2021-2022 as being a net negative, but it could have been better, for sure.

Of course, nobody wants guys like this on our roster, but many players have things in their past that they regret or are despicable. My guess is, many are never known to the public. My first reaction to this question was "NO! Hell No!" I'm not so sure I'd be very upset, if the guy paid his price and gets another chance.

Barnes did make the AS game as a closer in 2021, so one can think there was hope that he, Houck or Whitlock could fill the role. To me, it came down to Bloom needing to choose which high need slots to fill and which to leave to what we had, at the time. IMO, a GM should try to fill the slots he feels have the worst internal options. Last winter we had: 1B: Dalbec coming off a red hot second half of the season and a career .800+ OPS after his first 550 MLB PAs. RF: JBJ (w little OF depth of Duran and unknown Refsnyder) Pen: Barnes, Houck, Whitlock, Taylor, Brasier, Valdez and others 2B: Arroyo and his injury history SP: Nate, Pivetta & Sale (known to be out for 3-4 months) Lost: ERod, Richards, Perez) Bloom rightfully chose to fill 2-3 SP'er slots (Wacha & Hill/Paxton)and 2-3 pen slots (Strahm, Diekman & Robles), but chose wrongly on 2 of the 3 pen arms. Schreiber, added in 2021 came through, though. He chose 2B (Story) over 1B and RF. I suppose he could have spread Story's money thinner over RF, 2B and the pen or 1B, but he gets bashed for low impact signings every time he makes one. It's give and take and either/or. It's not as simple as some seem to make it out to be.

I totally agree with this DFA, even over Ort and Brasier. This guy had ages to get his high BB/9 rate under control. It never got better. One interesting number in his favor: All time K/9 Leaders in MLB (80+ IP career) 1. Hader 15.3 2. Diaz 14.8 3. Chapman 14.7 4. De. Williams 14.5 5. Betances 14.5 6. Kimbrel 14.4 7. Karinak 14.3 8. N Anderson 14.1 9. DHern 14.0 His 7.7 BB/9 rate was his downfall.

A lot of people thought that was a problem from day one. I'd have liked one, too, but established closers are costly, and it looked like we were trying to stay under the tax line and did not want want to trade any meaningful prospects, so that added context makes it hard for me to just simply say "it's unacceptable." Do we not sign Wacha or Hill & Strahm combined, so we can sign a closer? Who do we trade for a closer? To me, it's rarely as simple as just saying "it was a mistake." It's usually and either or choice, like we should have added a closer, instead of Wacha. In hindsight, do we know that specific choice would have helped as much as it hurt the rotation? Also, I feel that had we just named Houck or Whitlock the closer, and kept him there, all year, we'd have done better in that slot, but again, maybe worse on slots where those two did pitch. I saw Bloom's winter challenge as having something like 8 slots to fill and only the resources to fill 5-6 adequately, so he had to pick 2-3 to "fudge." He picked the 3 you point out. Had he picked 3 others, like SP (Wacha & Hill) or 2B (Story), we'd probably be criticizing him for not adding a starter as being unacceptable. What kills me is that we ended up going over the tax line, so much of the reasoning (or excuses as some prefer to call them) was all for naught. I can understand not wanting to trade any promising prospects. I get that part. I don't get the budget botch, and I'm not sure that is on Bloom as much as upper brass for flipping priorities everytime the wind shifted.

I'm shocked to read this!

You can't get any worse than trading for JBJ in the first place. IMO, the trade is actually worse, if you did it thinking he'd be on the bench.

I don't disagree, but acquiring players in May is not a common occurrence. There was some context involving the 1B situation, I mentioned earlier, that might explain why we didn't aim to find a 1Bman earlier, but the act is, our 1B position sucked all year- in hindsight. The RF situation was not so complex or contextualized. Refsnyder became a viable RH'd bat in RF, eventually, but was not really used as a platoon RF'er. Curiously, he started 20 games vs RH'd SP'ers and only 15 vs lefties. The 35 GS'd total is also a wonder, when you look at his .881 OPS. The avoidance of using Dugo in RF vs lefties or righties seemed peculiar to me. Only after we acquired Pham to play LF, did it suddenly seem okay for Dugo to play in RF, and he basically ONLY played RF after that trade. I agree with Red that RF was a real head-scratcher, but we might disagree on what parts were head-gouging. While 1B was a disaster, and Red did call it that from nearly day one, I see reasons why it was not addressed until Hosmer and the eventual Casas call-up. The lack of added pen help was not something easily fixed in May, and I feel like injuries to our rotation forced pen decisions that were not good and somewhat unplanned for. Sure, we should have planned on Sale and Paxton being out, but we had 3-4 SP'ers out at the same time for some long stretches of 2022. Needing to start Houck and then Whitlock some, not only took them from the pen, but it also messed them up, IMO. Bloom had limited resources, since I do think resetting was still a priority and the no trading of top prospects mandate. Blaming is fine, but there is context involved.

His point was also that Bloom waited too long during the season to acquire a RF'er and 1Bman.

But you quoted Bloom as saying he needed another RH'd bat, like he didn't do that. He did- just not a RF'er, unless you count Refsnyder, who actually worked out well.

Yup, and for some reason, they never used Dugo in RF until Aug 2nd.

We don't know what players were available, but certainly Bloom & Co. should be open to criticism over this and other decisions- like trying Arroyo in RF, seemingly as a knee jerk reaction and not as something planned for. Some reasonable factors come into play and provide some context: 1. Casas was very near ML ready when a move might have been tried, but then he got hurt on May 17th. His return date was not known, so maybe they were hoping he'd be back before it was too late. 2. Dalbec's slow start in 2021 and amazing hot streak, later in the season might have been one reason they did not pull the plug on him in May or June. In 2021, he his .812 from May 13 to the end of June. He then hit .941 from the end of June to Sep 25th. 3. Cordero was hitting .746 on May 24th after hitting .837 from May 7th to the 24th. He got up to .749 on June 5th and .750 on July 1st. His defense was horrific, but maybe they felt his bat could carry him, until Casas was ready. On Arroyo and RF, I'm 100% with you on the WTF feeling. All along, I felt a solution was putting Dugo out there aand "hiding" someone else in LF- like Cordero or Arroyo or acquiring a Pham. earlier. I thought the Sox must have felt Dugo sucked too much in RF to even try it. Then, they get Pham and play Dugo in RF just about FT. TOTAL WTF, to me! Verdugo: Games in RF Opening Day to Aug 1: ZERO! Games started in LF after Aug 1: TWO! I doubt we make the playoffs had we acquired Pham 2 months earlier or just played Ref FT in RF, but that was a mistake.

Wouldn't it be better to add Rojas, instead of Wendle?

DH should not be one of the two, and we already had a LF'er (Dugo) and 3Bman (Devers) and 1Bman (Casas & Dalbec). Our biggest needs were SS, RF and SP. We only added Kluber at those 3 highest need areas. That's my biggest beef about this winter's moves.

He can, but I doubt that is the goal. We will need to keep him under, so he can pitch 10-15 innings in the playoffs.

We need middle IF'ers- plural. We will add at least 1. There are several one year SSs on the trading block, including the obvious M Rojas, who should not cost us much. We also have 3-4 players we can easily DFA or trade without hurting our 40 man depth. (Brasier, Ort or DHern will be gone, soon- maybe all 3.)

I think signing Raffy also explains why we never went high enough to sign Bogey. It was likely always an either or, whether we agree or not. It might also explain why no Andrus, but we could have signed Andrus, instead of Turner.

Maybe since every SP'er we have is not expected to go 160+ IP, except maybe the worst one- Pivetta, we start with a 6 man rotation. I have always been against the idea, but if they ever are all healthy at the same time (LOL) , maybe it make some sense. We don't really want Bello and Whitlock going 180+. Expecting 180+ from Sale and Paxton is not only a pipedream, but may end up hurting them and the team more than helping either. Kluber may get near 180, but 160 is probably a better idea- tops.

I was happy we signed HRam to play 3B, then the Pablo signing shook me- and not in a good way. It kinda reminds me about this winter and signing 2 guys best suited to DH- Yoshida and Turner, when we needed a SS, SP and RF'er more.

Nobody disagrees with this. So, where did we go wrong with Betts? He almost took the $200M, but his Mom kinda talked him out of it. We offered him $300M, which is more than you think anybody should be paid. We got just about the best deal we could for him. No othe rreported offers seem significantly better and the BTV value of the trade showed the Sox winning bigly. It seems, no matter what we did with Betts, you'd say it was a mistake. I totally agree on Lester, because we saw what lester did before and after that fiasco. I totally agree that the $30M/1 yr addition to that current deal was woefully low and not a good start, at all. After that, it's hard to know what happened, and it seems like very little did happen, and I'll agree thatw as a mistake, too, but if we never know Bogey would have accepted even your suggested $168M/6 offer from last winter, it's hard for me to say a mistake was clearly made. And then, we need to wait and see if Bogey earns even $168M/6 to know for sure about 4even that supposition being a "mistake." There are just too many moving parts on the Bogey situation to know anything for sure. We can guess he'd have taken $200M/7 a year ago, but are we sure that would be a good deal, now? It makes sense to think we could have signed Devers for less, a year ago, but a year ago, we were working on different norms and trends. I wish we locked up all our stars, years ago, but how and when? Had we locked up Jake, JBJ, ERod and others, long ago would we be patting Sox management of the back for having such great insightfulness?

Yes. Instead they went with hitting, in Max's year, by signing Pablito & HRam.

I don't think anyone "liked" paying Price $217M/7, but many felt it was a necessary sacrifice needed to be made. I think many feel the same about the Devers signing. We wish we could have extended him earlier at a much lower cost, but it takes two sides agreeing to do that.

His fall back is always strawman building.

Not going to happen. He's locked into criticizing anything and everything. Sure, it's easy to just say we should have locked up all our young stars early, at a much lower cost than they would be, now, but we have tried that. The player needs to accept a low offer to make it work. Betts turned down our offer, and later a much larger offer. We traded him, instead of losing him for nothing, and Red call that a big mistake. We've tried to sign Devers for a while, and ended up paying him more than anyone wishes we had to do, but now that's a mistake, too. We failed to extend Bogey without the opt out, 3 years ago, and low-balled him, recently. We apparently offered him a contract very similar to the top offer Red suggested ($168M/6) and he turned it down and signed elsewhere- again, another big mistake by the Sox. You can never do good with Ole Red. Damned if you do: damned if you don't.

Yes, but I was using Anthony as an example of how, where and who "extra" bonus money can be used on.