moonslav59

Could the 2022 team "just be having an off year" like the 2019 team? Trading Renfroe to bring back homegrown JBJ shows no respect to homegrown players? Am I missing the point, there? You think keeping the 2019 team intact would have meant winning more? (Not to mention how could Bloom do that with the mandate to slash the budget by a huge percent?) The leaders in games played by position on the 2019 are listed here: C: Vaz 1B: Moreland- you want him back? 2B: Holt- you want him back? 3B: Devers SS: Bogey LF: Beni CF: JBJ- you want him back? RF: Betts DH: JD All the guys still here, except Devers declines from 2021 to 2022 or from 2019 to 2022. Bench (listed by most PAs) Chavis- you want him back? Leon- you want him back? Nunez- you want him back? Travis- you want him back? Marco Hernandez - you want him back? How about pitchers? Should we have stayed loyal to... (top innings pitchers from 2019) ERod Porcello Sale Price Workman Walden Barnes Hector Velazquez Most of these guys suck or are out of baseball. The ones we were loyal to are being bashed on a daily basis: Sale Barnes Brasier The 2019 team showed serious decline, because it had serious issues, including dead money/budget issues than Henry ordered cleaned up by the new GM.

I'm not doubting your statement, but all I read about was concerning 2022. I googled it and found nothing about 2023.

That seems about right. Perhaps he can move up to higher leverage situations as the season progresses. His .469 OPS Against is the best by any pitcher in the Sox farm system with over 40 IP. 57 Ks in 41.2 IP is nice. 18 BBs is a bit too high, but his 0.91 WHIP is very good.

I wasn't talking about what camp you are part of.

It's permanently injured or compromised?

I guess he's probably too small to play 1B, but from what I've heard about his defense, maybe DH is his only realistic ML landing spot. I wonder what team has an open DH slot, next season.

Has that been decided for 2023?

I get a kick out of you feigning impartiality and being above the fray with your passive aggressive BS. In all honesty, I often chuckle out loud, in solitude, reading your posts, but not over the fence. When you talk baseball, you make great points.

I get it, but what is enlightening is how some posters are all giddy over a yankee fan's support of their views and pay him the highest form of a compliment: imitation, as in using and repeating over and over his term "moonslop."

2022: Winckowski Seabold Bello Downs Ort 2021: Crawford Duran Wong 2020: Houck Dalbec 2019: PValdez DHern Somehow, this is Bloom's fault. One can see why rebuilding the farm became a top priority for the Sox GM that replaced DD. Since 2011, the only meaningful MLB contributors from the Sox farm system can be counted on one hand, and even some of these have just done well for 1-2 years: Devers Beni Montas Kopech Margot/Moncada Do some really believe a weak farm had nothing to do with the state of our current roster? Baffling!

What a team STORK, Old Red, JD & Swi make. A team one can feel so proud belonging to. These guys actually take comfort in the fact that these others on their "team" support them. Like some known and respectable people share their extreme views. It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad.

Best to just ignore the trolls and instigators.

So, calling posters who always bash Bloom "Bloom bashers" is name-calling, but saying what a poster writes is "moonslop" is somehow acceptable. One can see the faults in logic of some posters on display, daily.

You don't think context matters, as in... DD obviously had no mandate to improve the farm. (He was allowed to trade up to 20 prospects that were at one point rated in the top 20 Sox prospects rankings.) DD was given a much larger spending budget year one. (Bloom was allowed to spend $140M/6 in March of year 3.) To act like these factors don't have anything to do with the results is missing something very significant, and no, it's not making excuses. It's stating reality.

feigning impartiality.

Should I say "The Bloom made too many mistake gentlemen," instead of Bloom bashers? I think Bloom bashers is accurate. It's what they do, almost non stop and almost without any qualifications or side notes about some of the good moves and things done.

I think most posters and maybe fans think somewhere in the middle. I don't know a single poster who claims Bloom has done no wrong or even that he has done almost everything right. It's a strawman construction. It does seem like the Bloom bashers rarely mention any of the good moves, but it does happen from time to time, so my guess is none of them think he's 100% wrong, so we are talking about varying degrees in the middle. I also think many posters have various rubrics for evaluating the GM, so that adds to the wild disparities in evaluation opinions. Nobody is right or wrong, but recognizing the disparities in the evaluation criteria might go a long way towards at least having an understanding of those who disagree, and not jump to the conclusion that they are ignoring facts, like we are in last place, or that the 1B plan failed. Some fans could care less about the farm, some just a little, and some much more than others, but GMs know farms are important pieces in having a consistently winning team, and that it takes time to first build a strong farm, and then longer to start seeing the results- not just in adding low cost players to the roster and budget, but also to use in trades to fill more immediate needs on the big club. Some fans look at the current record and little else. There is nothing wrong with that, but IMO, one should look at the context of how the team got to this record, when trying to assign blame. How many of the underperforming players were acquired by the current GM. Was it reasonable to expect him to rid the team of certain players that did not meet expectations? Were the plans made at certain position that failed reasonable at the start of the season, and could changes have been reasonably expected to be made mid-season? How much was the spending budget a factor? For example, I keep hearing, "Bloom has had 3 years to rebuild...," but do we really count 2020, when he was forced to make massive cuts to the budget? Should Bloom really have been expected to create a winning team by 2021, based on his winter spending budget or about $40M and the fact that he had a bout 8-10 significant slots to fill on the 26 and a pretty weak rest of the 40 man roster to try and improve? Should one consider the fact that the 2021 team did better than expected, and that now is being used against him, because we failed to improve on 2021's record? I'm not using injuries as an excuse, but can one expect adjustments on expectations placed on a GM with a very tight spending budget until late March 2022? I know some will view this as just making excuses or being an overt Bloom apologist, but I do think these are all fair questions and aspects to consider when giving Bloom a falling grade or advocating giving him his walking papers. Bloom deserves a lot of criticism for many moves and non moves, but context is needed, including the likely high priority he was given to rebuild the farm, first and foremost.

I thought part of "agreeing to disagree" meant not continuing to repeat things over and over, perhaps in hopes of convincing someone to change their views. Plus, I hope GMs don't primarily use fan polls and their top interests or wishes to make decisions.

How about those in the middle? Also, I thought a certain poster had great disdain for name-calling.

If you had to choose one position to not make any additions to, which one would it be? A. Catcher: McGuire, Wong, RHern (Cottam/Hickey) B. 1B: Hosmer-Dalbec, Casas (Kavadas/Northcut/Jordan/Binelas) How about 2B vs DH? (Assuming Story goes to SS.) A. Arroyo, EValdez, Downs (Koss/Yorke/Paulino/Bonaci) B. Hosmer-Dalbec, EValdez/Refsnyder (Kavadas/Northcut)

2022 current numbers for prospects Bloom traded for: soxprospects.com's ranking OPS/OPS Against on the farm 9. Winckowski .562 12. Seabold .648 16. EValdez .981 17. Wong .777 26. WAbreu .818 28. Binelas .747 30. German .469 Pitcher 39. RHern .756 Draftees/IFA: 1. Mayer .683 4. Yorke .652 5. Bleis .895 10. Romero .783 14. Anthony 1.031 20. Coffey .381 22. Hickey .832 24. Perales .451 (Pitcher) 25. Kavadas 1.056 31. McDonogh .702

Trade them, and then hear all the wrath from these same posters. The evidence clearly shows how much all the Bloom bashers loved the Betts, beni and Vaz trades, right?

I also hated the Diekman signing from day one and argued for pages and pages why I felt it seemed strange he gave him a rare 2 year contract, as small as it was. I also think some Bloom bashers confuse us trying to give justifications for certain moves as trying to claim the moves weren't failures. I happen to think Bloom's pre-season plan to use Dalbec and Shaw at 1B with ML ready top prospect, Casas, waiting in the wings was a pretty solid plan. Then, add the context that the budget was too tight to add players willie-nillie here and there just for depth, and I think most, if not all GMs would not have touched 1B. Casas got hurt in late May, so the argument that Bloom waited 100 games too long to make an addition at 1B is, at worst, and exaggeration. Trading for anyone in late May to mid July is a very difficult thing to do, but I do think it is fair to raise the point as criticism. For all we know, maybe Bloom did try. All this being said, the 1B plan turned into a total failure, and Bloom is partially responsible for not expecting Dalbec to fail and Casas to get hurt. Even though neither were "Bloom guys," he could have made changes by trading Dalbec. I scratched my head at the Story signing, and it seemed to me to be a late off season reactive move to quiet and placate squirmish fans. I questioned the plan to use the superior defensive SS at 2B, which was also a criticism of Bloom and Cora, and was roundly bashed for doing so. I also wondered about the pressure acquiring Story would put on Bogey- forcing him to say "I am the SS," and getting some grief for not doing what was best for the team. The same posters bashing Bloom for trading Vaz and hurting team morale lambasted me for suggesting that the Story signing might have hurt team morale, and certainly brought to the forefront that the Story signing and low-ball offer to Bogey all but sealed Bogey's fate as not being in the Sox long-term plans. I criticized the Houck piggy-back idea. I criticized not using Houck as a closer. When these Bloom bashers talk about blind Bloom loyalists, I often think they are talking about me and others, but I do not think I am even close to thinking even 75% of Bloom's moves were good. The main reason I appear to be such a strong Bloom defender is more out of a need to counter bashing that goes too far, neglects key elements of the move or are just plain wrong. Certainly many of Bloom's moves have failed. All Gms have plenty of failures, and when you are forced to add players at low to moderate salaries, the chances of failures increase. I will say, I expected more of Bloom's bargain basement moves to work, but quite a few have, and the jury is still out on a good chunk of his moves that involved promising prospects.

As it turned out, Bloom should not have deconstructed Martin Perez and Renfroe. The Schwarber case is more complicated. Iggys, not so much. Deconstructing Richards, Ottavino, Marwin, Santana, Andriese and others is not something I hear Bloom bashers mentioning. The non-deconstructing of Shaw & Robbles could be viewed as a mistake. So, we should have kept Renfroe and Perez, even though not a single poster advocated bringing Perez back. Schwarber being iffy. In their places, Bloom added failures JBJ and Diekman, so-so's in Story, Hill and Strahm, and net plus additions in Wacha, Schreiber, Refsnyder. I may be in the minority, but I don't see the net changes made to the 2021 roster as being negative. I also don't view the deadline moves as being a net negative to 2022. I see the near total decline by returning vets as the main reason for the team's decline. Blame bloom for not foreseeing this makes more sense, to me, than blaming him for the overall changes made from 2021 to 2022. I won't speak of injuries, because that's just "making excuses." Bloom has gotten a lot of grief for trading Vaz and his $2.5M remaining on his contract. I shutter to think about all the grief he'd have gotten by trading Nate and JD, or gotten Bogey to agree to waive his n-trade clause.

At least Arroyo can hit. I think the totality of the defensive skill sets of Duran in the OF, Cordero at 1B and Arroyo in RF was just too much for any Sox fan to stomach. Of course, winning helped us fans get over Dalbec, Renfroe, Schwarber's defensive bumblings, last year.