moonslav59

DD traded over 20 prospects that were once top 20. Some were.... 1 Moncada 3 Espinoza 4 Margot 4 Webster 5 Kopech 5 Ranaudo 6 Guerra 8 Chatham 8 Scherff 11 Beeks 12 Basabe 13 L Allen 18 Dubon 19 Buttrey I can't remember all 20+. Not many amounted to anything, but maybe the ones Brez traded won't either. Brez also added Tolle, Bennett and some others we traded for good players.

It's going to be a dog-eat-dog winter.

$8-9M is just too much. I'm not sure I'd pay $4-5M, when we already have Anthony, Rafaela & Abreu. Depth: Yoshida, White & Jones (AAA: Eaton, Ward & Campbell) Name a better choice to replace: C- Rutschman, 1B- Contreras, 2B-Mead/Story, SS- Arias/Story, 3B- Durbin, LF-Anthony, CF- Rafaela, RF- Abreu, DH- Yoshida/Gasper/Romy/Jones/Sogard Maybe DH? Nobody else is close.

Nice catch.

Duran is barely replacement level. I have more faith in White-Jones and Yoshida than him. I'm fine with dumping Yoshida or Duran, but dumping both was tied to the idea we sign BLowe (2B/LF) or Suzuki.

Now, it's Crochet, Tolle, Suarez, Bennett & Bello (Depth: Houck, Crawford, Oviedo & Paez) That's still pretty good and all are young and have 4+ yrs of control. When have we ever had that? We have issues, for sure, but this is one area we look pretty good for 2027 and well beyond. Sure, I wish we still had Early, Harrison, Drohan, Dobbins, Priester, Eyanson and others, but we kept some real good ones- plus many of these pitchers traded were also acquired by Brez.

This doesn't look like a big step in the right direction? Anthony 8 yrs Crochet 5 yrs Tolle 5 yrs Rafaela 5 yrs Durbin 5 yrs Suarez 5 yrs Bennett 5 yrs Bello 4 yrs Miller 4 yrs Abreu 3 yrs Mead 3 yrs 9 good players at 4+ years 11 good at 3+ This is a major shift from even Theo & DD's eras. Some of these players listed have already been on this team for 2-4 years.

I agree that we simply cannot make plans based on 500+ PAs from Anthony. I do think Brez attempted to mitigate that fact during the season and both Mead and AR are back for 2027, too. (Mead for 3 more seasons.) Those two players are not chumps, and they both cost a pretty penny. Those two in season moves, not even counting the Miller trade were the largest since Schawrber. The thing is, they (plus Contreras & Durbin) needed to make up for the loss of not just Anthony but also Story, Devers and Bregman. The big drop off from Duran hurt, too. Maybe I'm too high on Mead and AR, but I see them as significant additions for the full 2027 season, but we need more.

They likely demanded it, as they too saw the great risk in adding a pitcher with that 5 year trend of not taking the ball. They probably asked for more.

Good points. I'm not convinced on Teel, but if he is the real deal, we wouldn't have needed the AR trade either. Eovaldi would have been good to keep around, but I think I'd still do the Crochet trade. Nate has started 22+ games every year with TX, along with 130+ IP. He has missed upwards of 39 starts in 4 years, so he's not been a horse, but I'll take his 4 year results over Buehler+ Giolito+ Kluber+ Paxton or Richards. Wacha was not an easy call due to his injury and lack of production before his year with the Sox. (69 GS in previous 4 seasons at a 4.67 ERA.) He's been a horse since he left (24+ GS every season at 3.44 ERA. (116 GS/4 yrs)

I do think the roster going into 2027 looks better than any roster since the 2018 remnant rosters that were beset with injuries and unreplaced star departures. He did mention the core of young pitchers as a solid aspect to build around, and to me, the years of control for them and several everyday core players bodes well for the future, but I'm with many others who are fed up with always looking forward. I'm guilty of feeding that narrative, myself. In Red Sox history, since the days when free agency became a thing, when have we seen this type of roster construction? (The complaint that it lacks starpower on offense is legit.) Player, age, control years Pitchers: Crochet 5 yrs Tolle 5 yrs Suarez 5 yrs Bennett 5 yrs Bello 4 yrs Miller 4 yrs Whitlock & Crawford, 2 yrs Chapman, Houck & Oviedo 1 yr Others: 5 yrs: Paez, Rivera, Samaniego, Gamboa, Olds, Burgos 4 yrs: Moran (out of options) 3 yrs: Slaten, Weissert, Kelly, S Martinez 1 yr: T Guerrero ______________________________________ Everyday Players Anthony 8 yrs Rafaela 5 yrs Durbin 5 yrs Abreu 3 yrs Mead 3 yrs Contreras, Duran 2 yrs Rutschman, Story & Yoshida 1 yr Others: 8 yrs: Campbell 5 yrs: Sogard, Seigler, Gasper, Cheng 4 yrs: Jones (no options,) Eaton 3 yrs: Monasterio 2 yrs: White (no options,) Romy, Wong, Casas I realize this may be more about quantity than quality, but the players in bold are pretty good, and some others have hopes. The sheer amount of good players with 3 or more years of control looks like the most since the 70's. Granted, this is not enough, but it is a solid foundation.

Okay, I'll bite: Sale ended 2018 healthy and with an 0.96 ERA in his last 11 starts. Yes, he missed some of August but finished strongly. Yes he struggled in the first playoff series that season, but he did help us win a ring. He missed the first 4 months of 2021, and came back looking very good to end the season (3.16 ERA) Again, he stumbled in the first playoff series but did okay v HOU in the ALCS. He ended the 2023 season doing pretty well, but not better than '18 and '21. (3.92 ERA in last 9 starts and 3.60 last 4 starts.) I saw no reason to have better hopes after 2023 than other seasons.

More proof.

I'd prefer contracting the league and expanding the roster to 28. We already have 3-4 cities that don't support their teams, even if they have winning teams (TBR) or very nice stadiums (PIT & MN.) KC. MIA and the A's have neither. I'm not sure Vegas, Salt Lake City or any other city will do better.

The thing is much of our electricity comes from fossil-burning fuel plants.

Nothing new has been said about the trade for a long time. Grissom was just as suspect as Sale. Sale had much greater upside, but the odds he'd come back were so long, I'm going to ever bash a GM for rolling the dice. ATL rolled snake eyes, I'm fine with putting this to rest. I'm also at the point where I'm done talking about Duran, too. Just trade him, non-tender him or whatever. Just end the thing. (Of course making that choice will be discussed for years, too... LOL)

That's one of the best and most thorough articles about the Sox I have ever read.

And when we extend our young players the GM is roasted.

I just saw it and responded. I still think the deal and the subsequent Gio signing made sense at the time. The hindsight grade is a D- to an F, even with the decent second season from Gio. Sale is like a Cy Young pitcher again, and Grissom was a major bust. We really needed a 2Bman, badly. We have since before the trade and up to the Mead deal- which spans 6 years. An effort was made to fix 2B, and like other attempts to fix it, we failed miserably.

One thing is GIO's 2.5 projection seemed more likely than Sale's. We can point to Gio's second half struggles the year before as a sign of pending doom, but Sale had a 5 year record of absolutely no confidante in even being able to start 10-15 games. Gio had a history of taking the ball 25-30 times a season. That's what we really needed. We can see what hoping on Crochet, Houck, Sandoval, Oviedo and Crawford can do to a team.

Agreed, and to roast the GM for giving up on a 5 year injury project is equally preposterous. Ultimately, GMs are judged in hindsight, and the deal sucked. I get that.

We've done well with trades, but I fear the trade capital is getting to low to expect any major impact player that way. We'd have to open up a new hole to create a major upgrade somewhere else. It would be like whack-a-mole. I do think we need to keep the extended future in mind, if not, we end up with more Storys and Yoshidas. Those two are a significant reason we couldn't improve more last winter and again, this winter. Sure, it's easy to just say, "Henry needs to spend more," but how has that argument been going since 2019? I brought up BLowe because I think he checks a few boxes- some major ones, but he does come with some serious risks, namely his age (32,) a likely lengthy deal and the budget hit. There are other nice bats out there as FAs, but not many. We haven't been winning many bidding wars for bats. I think the last one was JD- back in the DD era. We do have a few big trading chips, and I get the win now argument. We've just gone 7 years with just 3 playoff teams and one (2021) that advanced beyond round one. The problem is that guys like Primera & Valera and all the recent draftees don't have a very high value vs what I consider their upside potential value. The gap is just too wide for me to think it's worth dealing one away. The two big value prospects happen to be major factors in our near and extended future outlook. Story sucks at SS defense and Godbout is not MLB ready or a sure bet. Arias is not a sure bet either, and the spectacle of Mayer and Campbell has put doubts in all our minds on how much faith we can put in Arias. Monasterio & Cheng or inferior defenders like Sogard at SS are not championship level SS options. Depth- fine: wire to wire SSs- no way. We really need Arias or use him to trade for a bonafide, proven SS. Contreras is 35 and has another season of control plus an option year. The timing works out perfectly for Justin Gonzales to move into the 1B slot. JG is our only other blue or near-blue chip prospect trade value. 1Bmen seem easier to find than SSs, so maybe we could risk trading him, but he alone will not give us a major upgrade. (We do have Casas, Gasper, Sogard, Romy and maybe Brannon as 1B depth, which is better than our SS depth, but again, none seem like wire-to-wire players or "good enough" platoon combos.) One idea might be to trade Gonzales + Mead for a stud middle infielder, or JG + Contreras for an even better 1Bman, or JG + Anthony for a stud LF'er or SS. I'm not sure how this theory plays out in real time, though. We aren't getting anything by trading Duran, Story and or Yoshida, except a little salary relief. Duran's $8-9M arb estimate is significant, and if we can't trade him, we can just non tender him and save a good amount of our winter sending budget space. Yoshida + Story might net a $7-10M savings, unless we attach some mid-level prospects with them. Maybe we can save $15M. We have some decent depth to hardly notice any or all of the three being gone. White & Jones for Duran, Arias & Co for Story, and about 5-6 players and platoons for Yoshida at DH. I'm not sure how much we can get for $10-15M, but if we add it to the amount JH plans on giving Brez, it should help. We have $21M for Gray, $6M for IKF and $9M for Sandoval coming off the books, too. Only Gray needs replacing, unless we roll the dice on Crochet taking his slot and nearly everyone remaining healthy. The everyday player core without Story, Duran and Yoshida looks like this: C: Rutschman & Wong (better than our 2026 catchers) 1B: Contreras & Sogard/Romy/Gasper/Casas (maybe the depth makes up for an expected decline from our 35 y/o 1Bman.) 2B: Mead & Seagler/Romy (huge upgrade) SS: Arias & Monasterio/Cheng (Big question, but our SS position sucked in 2026) 3B: Durbin & Sogard/Monasterio (same- maybe a small uptick?) LF: Anthony & Jones (Maybe no Duran is addition by subtraction?) CF: Rafaela & White (same) RF: Abreu & Campbell (AAA) same DH: Platoon: Gasper/Sogard and Romy/Jones (Brannon/ Jo Garcia?) It's obvious these 9 lack true star status. Some come close, especially if you compare to positional peers- like Contreras, Rutschman, Mead & Anthony on offense and Rafaela, Durbin & Abreu on overall value. You think, wow that's 7 very good players, and maybe that amount makes up for the lack of a stud bat, but I'm not so sure that and a top 3 pitching staff is enough. The obvious positions to upgrade look like DH, which could be LF and 2B by moving Anthony or Mead to DH and SS, if we trade Arias + ____ for a proven SS with a big bat. Some serious choices need to be made. Running back essentially the same team and hoping Mead, Crochet and a full season from Anthony and Rutschman can tip the scales seems to reliant on 95% health. I'm done with hope for health as a strategy. I've long been done with hoping JH will spend bigly. We need to make a couple bold moves.

More proof.

I see Duran that way. His arb makes non tendering a choice. Sign and trade or just trade for a single A player, too. All teams have bubble players we could trade or just DFA. I've made the point we'll have no 40 man roster crunch precisely because I agree we have several players nobody would miss id traded of cut loose. That's not to say our 38-40th men suck or are worse than most other teams. I actually think they are better, but we have so many 38-40th players we can and should trade as many of them as we can as long as some GM will give something. Reminds me of NOV 18, 2025, when we traded 4 bubble pitchers: Luis Guerrero, Chris Murphy, Bernardino and Alex Hoppe. We DFA'd Wink and N Lowe on the same day. A few days later we DFAd Criswell and traded Grissom.

It's hard to know what the issue is which makes it hard to fix. It's not like we can trade for September hitters only. How do you coach late season batting? Is it a conditioning issue?