moonslav59

So, trade away future hopes for futile hopes. Good plan!

I can’t find anything either, Evan at $208.

One thing on JD. Had we traded him for a bag of balls, we'd have gotten under the tax line, which would make us much more likely to spend big, this winter or the following ones. Maybe, some think this year saw us have a better chance at winning than they see us having in 2023 and 2024, and that opinion has merit, but I don't look at it that way. I see a team with very little chanc e to make it as far as we did last year, so I'm wanted to maximize our chances in 2023 and beyond. I realize I am in a small minority, and Bloom/Henry had other factors involved with their choice than I did with my suggestions and ideas. I get it. I had mentioned we might walk the line and be buyers and sellers. I suppose that's kind of what we did, but it still kind of surprised me.

I understand why they did not trade players we can't trade this winter, because their control expires, but it doesn't mean I have to like the idea. We aren't winning it all this year. To me, that's what matters. I don't own the team. I don't have to make fans happy. I don't have to sell season tickets. I fully understand why we didn't trade JD, Nate, Hill and maybe the others on the IL for the best we could get, even if it was scraps, but I'd rather we tried to improve our future than follow a pipe dream. We were able to trade Diekman, so I wonder what the offers were. Could we have traded JBJ? Either way, we pretty much have the same team with some tweaks and guys coming off the IL. I'm going to follow the pipedream and hope for a miracle. Lord knows, I've been wrong enough about this team, already, so maybe the biggest mistake will be the team winning and maybe even making and advancing in the playoffs. We're not far from the last WC slot, and some teams ahead of us sold off key parts to their teams. I'm not sure, if we'll see Wacha, Kike, Strahm, Sale and Paxton, this year, and maybe Barnes or someone else will join the club and give us a boost. It seems many posters feel like we are just 1-3 key players away from a strong run, so maybe those three will be 3 from Hill, Nate, Wacha, Sale, Paxton, Hosmer, Pham, Casas, Crawford, Wink or a surprise player. I'm going to watch every game and root like hell we win. The last 4 games have been a good sign. Maybe the trades will shake up the remaining players. GO SOX!!!

Misery loves company. I know I used to seek to right wrongs (or perceived wrong), but over time, I realized it just feeds more and more from them. I'm not telling anyone what to do, and it may ring hollow, since I fed the trolls for years, but I'm thinking, if we all ignore them, maybe they'll go away, or at least lessen their drivel. Don't give trolls the attention they seek. Who knows what motives posters have for chumming up with trolls. Maybe it helps them think of more names to call those they disagree with. LOL!

So, the genius GM, who built such a shity team, was only a Drury away from a chance at a ring? LMAO!

So, is this the 2023 foundation Bloom has to work with? SP: Sale, Pivetta, Paxton, Winckowski, Crwford/Bello/Seabold/Mata RP: Houck, Whitlock, Schreiber, Taylor, Davis, German/Barnes/Brasier/Sawamura/Danish C: McGuire, Wong, RHern 1B/DH: Casas, Hosmer, Dalbec 2B: Arroyo, Downs SS: Story 3B: Devers LF: Pham, Cordero (Verdugo/Duran) CF: Duran RF: Verdugo, Refsnyder I'd have to list our top priority open slots as: SS/2B (whichever Story does not play) CF SP C 1B/RF/DH RP SP

I'm not so sure. Yes, he'll be 33, next season, but he's basically free. You think they DFA him before Cordero? (Cordero can play OF.) Dalbec still has options and is not showing he is better than Hosmer and deserves to be on the 26. I'm not saying he'll never be DFA'd, but I think Bloom got him for more than just 2022.

*shoulder (edit feature not working)

Listening to the sports talk show hosts here in Houston, they seem to be expecting Vaz will be able to "help should Maldo's load."

Let's remember that several of the games best catchers took a while to become established. I could be totally wrong, but I don't think Vaz was part of the 2023 and beyond plans. (Watch us re-sign him, now, LOL) McGuire gives us one more guy to throw in the 2023 mix, along with Wong and RHern. Maybe the best one ends up our back-up, but McGuire does have 2 more years of control. Rememb er, this is the team that kept Sandy Leon around for 3 years as he hit .571. He played half the games in those 3 years- 239 games, at that!

Maybe the next 7 weeks will tell.

It's kind of hard to rebuild a team that started with 20 holes in the 40 man roster and a bottom 5 farm team without trying to add prospects- quantity and quality. It's also kind of hard to try and make all those added prospects ML ready on day one. The farm Theo and Ben built took a long time. It was deep and strong for most of their years. It was certainly lacking in pitchers over the last decade, but the quality and quantity of the everyday players was astoundingly great, despite many highly touted ones flaming out. DD did a great job trading the flame-outs while their stock was high, but he also created a hole that will take years to fill back up. I'd like to think we are almost there, but this is year 4 after the fantastic, all-in 2018 season. I've often mentioned a 5 year plan, like when Ben took over, but I'm not sure 5 is some magical number. Bloom has acquired many prospects among his trades. Some were sure to flame out and appear to be doing just that, but with quantity, you increase the odds that a few will contribute down the line, and maybe we'll start seeing that real soon with Winckowski and maybe Seabold or others. It's good to see some DD prospects, who were not traded away, I might add, showing signs of help- like Crawford, Bello and graduated prospects like Houck. When the whole talk of the "C" word ran rampant, I mentioned how much harder it is to rebuild a farm, these days, with the new rules on slot money, IFA bonus pools and restrictions placed on higher spending teams and winning teams. I thought it might be extremely difficult to rebuild the farm quickly, and i'm not sure I was wrong. Within the context of the new structure of MLB minor league talent acquisition, I think Bloom has done a good job building up the quality and quantity of the farm. Sure, it looks like he missed some chances to "sell high," but that is not an easy thing to do. I'm not against trading prospects. All anyone has to do is go to BTV and see suggested trades by moonslav to see I'm not about hoarding prospects. I think we should trade Casas and maybe Duran and or Yorke. I'm super high on Mayer, Rafaela, Bleis and Bello. I'm also thinking these guys might make it big: Mata, Walter, Hickey, Kavadas and Murphy. We also have some wild cards like Song, Gonzalez, Paulino, Lugo, Jordan, Binelas, Wong and Ward. Many of our prospects in the rookie league are looking very good, too.

Everything I said about Vaz, I said before and some for years. We traded 2 months of a soon-to-be 32 year old catcher, during a season, where you and others seem to believe almost everyone on the team not acquired by DD sucks. IMO, we should have traded more expiring contracts, but the funny thing to me is that it seems Bloom did not, in order to keep fans like you happy. Boy, did he miss the mark!

It seems funny to me, that some of the guys bashing almost everything about Cora, Bloom and the roster construction, were the same ones that seems to think we were just a couple trades away from a ring. Did they expect Bloom would make some great trades after he has sucked in every trade up to now, according to them? Did they think Bloom had constructed a roster just 2-3 key pieces away from maybe winning a ring? It seems like Jekyll and Hide, to me. The vibe I got from this team convinced me we were toast. The slim hope has never been extinguished, and I can understand the position that we "owe this team." especially guys like Bogey, JD and Nate some significant additions to get us closer to a chance at glory, but to me the odds were too low to justify sacrificing future odds for the here and now. I guess today's society is high on instant gratification, and the thought of sacrifice is not viewed as a virtue, anymore, but baseball is a business, and keeping the fans' perception's high is part of what brings the cash in. I think Bloom tried to walk the tightrope by not hurting the future by anything more than losing Groome, but he added 2 more years of control at catcher, an option on a RH'd hitting OF'er and a few prospects that seem to be on the rise, this season. Kinda "meh," to me, but I'm clearly in the minority of most Sox fans.

He did have a nearly identical career OPS away as Bogey, so if away OPS is the true measure of what a hitter can do, I'm thinking Story's total OPS decline was expected on the "home" front, but should not have been on the away front. .752 Away pre 2022 .625 Away 2022 I'm hopeful he can bring that back up to near .750, when healthy, and if he can hit over .800 at Fenway, he'll have a total OPS very similar to Bogey's career OPS.(BTW, he's hitting .800 at Fenway, this year.) All speculation, of course, but it's not just about his Coors numbers. That was only half the equation. He still plays half his games on the road- same as everyone.

The top 6 salary guys DD inherited had about an 18 bWAR in DD's first year, and that's not counting Uehara. While Pablo was "deadwood," it's not really comparable to Bloom's "deadwood." Bloom's top 6 contracts gave him 5.1 bWAR, led by 2 from JBJ. Pro-rate that to a 162 game season and it's maybe a 13 bWAR, but it's hard to imagine JBJ ending up with a 5+ BWAR in 2020. On top of that, DD was not forced to trade his best players to help shed Price's contract the DD made, BTW. How would 2016 have gone had DD not been able to sign Price, and was forced to trade Porcello to get rid of half of Pablo's contract?

Bloom probably viewed the return of pitchers from the IL as the pen calvary. It certainly was a strange deadline for the Sox. I'm not sure any fans are totally happy about what went down. Maybe that's impossible, anyway.

You think Bloom wants him, next year, at $6M?

I don't get why they did either. The paying of the full contract was insane. Maybe they think Tatis will play DH for a while, when he returns. Maybe they like Groome.

You are playing strawman. I never said you wanted to trade them. You missed the point, completely, again.

Look at the facts that show most pitchers do much better with any catcher not names Vazquez. The fact that Vaz has hit under .660 in half his seasons- under .585 in 1/4. The fact that Vaz turns 32 very soon and is a FA, after this season. The fact that McGuire is 27 and has 2 more low cost, arb years, in seasons where money will likely be tight with many slots to fill. The fact that every trade is not valued on what each player has done on offense, this year only. It's about cost, years of control and defense, too. Your fatc are accurate, but selected to support your opinion. That's fine, but they are not all the facts.

I thought Hosmer was really good on defense. I think we trade Casas and maybe Dalbec. Just a hunch.

We heard a lot of crying about Pablo, HRam and Porcello (until his Cy Young season), not to mention Pedey & Rusney. DD's first season: Inherited: (bWAR in 2016) 23 HRam 2.6 21 Porcello 4.8 (Cy Young) 19 Pablito -0.2 16 Papi 5.2 13 Pedey 5.4 13 Buch 0.1) 11 Rusney (not on tax line) 9 Uehara (0.7) Core (bWAR 2016): Betts 9.5 JBJ 5.8 Bogey 3.8 Leon 2.9 Wright 1.9 Shaw 1.7 Holt 1.6 Beni 0.8 Ross 0.8 Erod 0.4 Hembree 0.4 Barnes 0.3 Tazawa 0.3 Spent winter '15-'16 $210M/7 Price $13M/2 Young (Traded for $13M Kimbrel) Bloom: Inherited: (2020 bWAR in short season) 32 Price- traded ?? Betts- traded 25 Sale 0.0 (INJ) 22 JD -0.7 20 Bogey 1.6 17 Nate 1.2 13 Pedey 0.0 11 JBJ 2.0 8 ERod 0.0 (COVID) 5 Vaz 0.9 4 Beni -0.1 3 Barnes 0.3 Core: (2.1 Dugo in Betts trade) 1.3 Houck 0.7 Devers 0.6 Dalbec 0.6 Plawecki Spent: 6 M Perez 1.1 4 Pillar 0.7 3 Peraza 0.0 3 Moreland 1.2 min Weber 1.2 Min Munoz 0.6 Min Mazza 0.5 Min Arroyo 0.2 Min Puello 0.2 added Pivetta 0.6

My point was to highlight... .756 Away Bogey .752 Away Story (Pre-2022)