moonslav59

I certainly agree we coulda-shoulda done better for a #2. I seriously doubt we add a #2, now. We have to make it up with 2 megabopper bats,

That would make our winter task harder

Damn long for a guy coming off an "off year."

$26M x 7! WOW! Wonder if they can afford Bichette, now.

If you only look at ERA, and that's not a bad choice, yes, he's not a 2 or maybe even a 3. If you look at FIP, xFIP, K%, BB% and some other numbers, he looks like a #1 or 2. I think 4/5 is harsh. 2/3 is about right. Maybe low side of 2, if kinda pusing it, but high side of 3 is not. IP count for value, too. Even in 2025, he was 20th in fWAR out of every SP'er in MLB, That rates as a #1.

He bases his whole belief system on "facts," and the only facts are errors made, and Duran's brief moment in the sun in CF, 2 years ago. I do think Rafaela would be great in RF, too, but why boot Abreu out. It doesn't make sense. Duran is not even a plus on D in LF, anymore.

He costs $21M not $41M. The rest is true. The guy is great with Ks and BBs. I'm not sure that's all we needed.

I'm not sure any GM likes DHam that much, but I'd jump for joy, if TBR said yes. Hell, I'd throw in Sandlin. (They might demand Casas.) I like Bichette, but is he really "THE GUY" we end up finally going large and long on? I like the age. I'd like him at 2B, but I really want Story going there (not happening.) He does not have the power I want, but if we get him and Alonso, GREAT! I don't think we can afford both. I hope that not trading any big pieces to get our #2 SP'er, we'll have enough to offer AZ for Ketel Marte. He has the power we need and fill the 10 year void we've had at 2B. His AAV is just $19.4M, so we would have enough for another big signing- maybe Alonso. I'm probably dreaming, again.

Yup. Crawford led the team in GS (33) and IP (184) in 2024. His ERA slipped to 4.36, but that was not far from Gray's 2025 ERA. Crawford '23-'24 56 GS, 313 IP and 4.23 ERA (102 ERA+) Gray '24-'25 60 GS, 347 IP and 4.07 ERA (101 ERA+) Dobbins is a question mark but looked good in his 11 GS in '25. 61 IP and 4.13 ERA (100 ERA+)

Pie in the sky, getting Bregman or Bichette plus Alonso will be near $60-70M AAV. I think that puts us over the second line, unless we shed salary. Masa (18) and Hicks (12) are the fan faves to dump, but at best we would only dump a small fraction or either one. More likely, we could trade an OF'er (Duran at 7.7 or KC at 7.5 or maybe Rafaela at 6.3.) That may be enough to sneak us under line 2. More likely, if we do sign a big bat, it will be trade for 1 and sign one, with the trade not adding a bunch of cost.

It feels like that is a given, but with these guys, we never know. We did just spend more money on a SP'er than many felt we would, but that could just mean less for batters.

TEX will have to give money, but how much?

The NCAA updated poll came out, last night. ORE jumped Ole Miss, but all else stayed the same. 1. Ohio St, 2. IN, 3. TEX A&M (no losses) 4. GA, 5. TEX Tech, 6. ORE, 7. Ole Miss (1 loss teams) 11. BYU (10-1) Above teams seem safe for top 12, even if they lose, except BYU. ________________________________ 8. OKL, 9. ND, 10. ALA, 12 MIA (2 loss teams) Teams on the outside with a shot: 13. UT (at KA maybe not enough to jump up) 14. Vandy (at #19 TN could get them to #12) 15. Mich (at Ohio St. could get them to #12.) (8-3 TEX & USC are too long shots to discuss. 9-2 VA, too) Upsets needed: 9 ND at Stanford 10 ALA at AUB 11 BYU v UCF 12 MIA at 22 PITT ________________________ Likely Conference Championships: TEX A&M v ALA (ALA out with loss?) Ohio St v IN (even if OSU loses to I & IN, they probably are in) Tex Tech v BYU (BYU would be out with a loss)

Spotrac has the Sox Payroll at $148M (9th ranked.) The have our average age at 29.3, which is lower than any top 15 spending team. cots figures in player benefits and arb estimates has us at $217M, which is $27M under the first line and $47M under line two. Assuming Brez can spend $30-45M up to opening day, how do we add two big bats on that? I've mentioned this a couple dozen times, so pardon the repetition, but trading Duran ($7.7M) and Campbell ($7.5M) for K Marte ($19.4M) only adds about $4M to the tax line. That would leave $25-40M to spend on a megasigning like Alonso or Schwarber, but more likely Bregman or Bichette. I suppose we could keep Duran and Campbell and trade Mayer as the centerpiece, and make them take Hicks to cut costs, and KMarte would add $7M. Then maybe we sign Alonso and Polanco, but that gets us close to line two, and we have Polanco at 3B and probably Duran at DH. Hmmm...

You think out offense is better without him? Our DH numbers plummeted after his loss. I get the mantra that 300 more PAs from Anthony can take up some of the slack, but What about the full 850 or so PAs lost by Devers and Bregman? And then Ref and Lowe? .905 Devers in 334 PAs .838 Ref in 209 PAs .821 Bregman in 495 PAs, (even bringing Breggie back of .780ish Bichette is not replacing in kind.) .790 Lowe in 119 PAs These 4 guys are the equivalent of 2 players at 550+ PAs. We need 2 bigs bats. I'm fine with one being a sideways signing like Bregman or Bichette to replace Bregman & Lowe (.800ish) But, we need a .900 hitter to replace Devers and Ref. In a sense, doing both just keeps us at status quo. Maybe some young guys step up, but we could see downturns from Story, Duran, Rafaela and Narvaez. We could also see the dreaded "Sophomore Slump."

While I agree, fully, are you not worried about a 100 ERA- in a large sample size like 2024-2025? ERA- factors in a few things that ERA does not. I know you value things like FIP and K-BB types of numbers, and I respect that. You also know a lot more about barrell rates and other numbers that go right over my head. I think Gray is a better pitcher than his 100 ERA- indicates, but I also think he's not as good as some of the other numbers show him to be. IMO, he has been a decent #2 SP'er the past 2 seasons, and we needed a #2. I had hoped we did better, but if we fill the two big bat needs well enough, I'm fine with this move. I do worry about how well he does at age 36. I do not worry so much about the while "under the spotlight wilting" talk. I hope he gives us 180+ IP and an ERA- better than 100. I'd like better than 90.

I thought it was more about all the Sox-LAD trades. The Brez sample size is tiny.

It's hard to know if he "hit a wall." of if it was something else, including just a prolonged slump. His drop off was and still is worrisome, but not to the point where signing Realmuto jumps priority over other higher needs. Also, are we so sure it was some sort of ran out of gas situation? He actually did better over his last 26 games and 92 PAs (almost 1/4 of his total) than he did in his first 3/4. .751 after August 21st .718 before August 21st. Yes, he was over .800 for much of the first 3 months of the year, so first half>second half, yes there was a sharp drop, but if it was due to fatigue, why did he do better over the last 5-6 weeks of the season? .750 is damn good for a catcher and about 30 points higher than the whole MLB OPS.

The A's will not take Yoshida, unless we pay all but $3M a year of his deal. STL won't either. Other teams might take all but $5-6M a year. I think BTV gives him a -$25M value with $36M owed, so that's about $5.5M x 2 production value.

I think we may be done with the rotation. We basically swapped out Buehler's $21M/1 deal for Gray at the same cost. I'm confident Gray can beat Gio's 2025 numbers, but it's not a sure bet. Gray is top 5-10 in some key stats, but 30th to 40th in others. If you go back 3 years, which includes his very nice 2023 season, Gray looks like a solid #2, but with 36 year old pitchers, I feel like the last one or one+two seasons matter more. In the stats where more IP matter, Gray jumps many other pitchers who pitched better but maybe gave less value, due to less or much less IP. Most of Gray's numbers went down from '24 to '25, so in a way I'm doing him a favor by choosing the '24-'25 sample size for this break down. 30 Teams x 5 SP'ers = 150 SP'ers. It's pretty sad that you have to lower the IP sample size to about 145 IP over 2 seasons to get to 150 SP'ers to compare and contrast, but here it goes... 5th xFIP 2.95 (14th in FIP at 3.26) 7th SIERA at 3.17 8th K-BB% 23% 14th fWAR 7.4 14th K% 28.4% 18th BB% 5.4% 22- IP 347 73- ERA 4.07 (46th xERA 3.78) T75 to 80th in ERA- at 100 If you group #1s as 1-30th best, Gray is a #1 in all but the last 2 categories. (These are not the most important 10 categories and some kinda duplicate each other.) His ERA and ERA- place him in the #3 group. One could split the difference and call him a #2 based on his 2024-2025 numbers only and not look at age trends or performance trends over the last 3 years. IMO, he's okay as a #2. I had hoped for better, and I think we'd have more money to spend on top batters had we traded for Ryan or Lodolo types, or even Gore, Ragans and Bubic types. We did not use up a lot of trade capital, so if we trade for a big bat like K Marte, then one can see the reasoning in getting Gray not Ryan types.

I don't pretend to know more than sps.com, but I'd go with.... 8>7 Fajardo 7>8 Gonzales 11>20 Sandlin 14>11 Godbout (everyone after Godbout up one, except Holobetz & Travieso ahead of Uberstine and Drohan) 22 Bleis and 23 Cespeded to 32 and 33 and Castro 25 to below 35, so... 22 Azocar 23 Jo Garcia (from 29) 24 Delzine 25 Ramos 26 Rivas 27 Monegro (31) 28 Aita (36) 29. Taylor 30. Cason 31. Heyman

Yes, I saw that. Gray has a lot of hope- certainly more than Buehler, Kluber and Richards combined. I'm okay with the deal, but not if it means skimping on bats.

The only way I'm okay with Gray as our #2, is if we do not skimp on the two big bats we need. I keep hearing "a" big bat. We lost Bregman AND Devers and need to improve on even that! Bringing Bregman back or replacing him with Bichette is a sideways move but would count as one. That still leaves replacing Devers, and to me I see three possibilities: Alonso, Schwarber and K Marte (by trade.) The good thing about the Gray trade is that we still have the trade capital to make a winning offer for KMarte. He has a $19.4M AAV, so that fits in better than Alonso or Schwarber will, and if we add Bichette or bring back Bregman we likely can't afford the other two. So, maybe we sign Bregman or Bichette and trade for K Marte. (I might be okay with Polanco, but he'd have to play 3B.) 1. L Anthony 2. S K Marte 3. R Bergman/Bichette 4. L Duran (DH?) 5. R Story 7. L Casas/R Romy 1B 8. R Narvaez 9. R Rafaela (Assuming Mayer plus others for K Marte.)

Found this by google... The agreement was reached on April 15, 2011, and was formally announced shortly after. The timing was partly to avoid a higher luxury tax for the current season, as the new average annual value would not apply for 2011.

I'm okay with the deal within a context, so that's a big BUT. Had we traded for Ryan or Lodolo, we'd have need to give up way more, but their salaries are much lower, thereby leaving money for 2 big bats. Unless we get 2 big bats, the signing might look like a big BUTT!