moonslav59

I think Brez was working hard to get a big bat- KMarte, Paredes, Neto and maybe some we never heard about. I think he knows the offense is going to be under a microscope and any failing will be on him. Call that "heat" or pressure to improve, but I think he knows where our weak spots are. He will not be given a pass. he shouldn't get one. I will say this: I've never seen a Sox GM make more moves and changes in less than 3 years, and I'm talking trades/signings and systemic & philosophical changes. Now, one can argue the amount of trades/signings may not be a good thing, when so many were not top quality players or even somewhat quality- some were busts.

Teams usually will grossly overpay for pitching, so maybe we can swing a deadline deal- maybe through a third team- where we give a pitcher to a contender- they send prospects to team 2 and we get a big bat.

It's closer than you think. If Devers was a plus defender it would be better.

For what we gave up for Contreras, I think it was the right choice, but the context of not adding another big bat is what hurts the most. I like that we improved a lot on defense and with pitching, and overall we are plus over 2025, but I had hopes for bigger gains and more focused additions. I like saying quality over quantity. While many of Brez's trades were sideways, we basically added 5-6 pieces, instead of the the 3-4 higher quality guys I hoped for. Suarez, Gray and oviedo could have just been Suarez or Suarez and Oviedo. (1 or 2 not 3) Contreras, Durbin & I K-F could have been Neto and Contreras or Alonso & Durbin, or Bregman and Contreras. (2 not 3.)

I doubt they wanted all 4 of those prospects, but if so, the answer was a no brainer- NO! I would not trade 3 of those 4. I don't trade 2, if they were both Tolle & Early.

I really wanted Alonso and maybe more than Bregman, but once we lost out on both, I was happy with the pivot to Suarez. Had we added Neto, Paredes or KMarte, we'd be stronger than with Durbin- for a while, anyway. Let's see how improved pitching and defense works out. Can it outweigh the dynamic of losing 1000 PAs from Devers, Breggie and Ref and adding maybe 600 from Contreras and maybe 400 more from Anthony.

This is one way to look at it. If Gray and Contreras do not do well, one could come back to this in September and say, "I'd rather have Devers than Contreras and Gray."

I have us ranked about 5th or 6th in MLB. I'm not seeing that as "massive." I had hopes we could get to #3-4 with just 3 major moves. We made one major move (Suarez) and two semi-major moves (Contreras & Gray.) We need some things to go right, as all teams do. I think we have more fall-back options than most teams, if someone gets hurt, especially with the rotation. Our OF is four FT'ers deep. Suddenly, our infield has decent depth, but is lacking in star power (emphasis on power.) Our pen looks solid but not very deep. 1B is not very deep, unless Casas and Romy are healthy. Our catching position has more depth than before.

They may have "went after Alosno first," because he was about to sign, and we had to decide. I think Bregman was always our top choice, and that is why we would not bid highly for Alonso. I doubt we'd get both, but with no Contreras ($18M) I K-F ($6m) and no Suarez ($24M), maybe we could have afforded both. Maybe not. We may have had to have said no to Gray to get Alonso & Bregman. I'd rather have Suarez and Breggie or Suarez and Alonso than two everyday players and just Oviedo.

I'm glad we kept trying, and maybe the demands were too overwhelming. Maybe not.

I share the deep concerns about our constant unwillingness to make deadline moves. To me, it is a reflection of our GM's refusal to overpay (Money and or prospects) for top talent. We have seen it played out in all the near miss FA non signings, but also in trade talks like Neto and Paredes, KMarte and others. At the deadline, the overpay part of trade talks are amplified, hence the stand pat results, year after year. There is merit in not grossly overpaying for "the one guy," and when you think maybe one guy might not be enough, anyway, it does make some sense to just say no, but at some point you just gotta agree to overpay. On Schwarber, the thing was, it was NOT an overpay. We got him cheaply due to his injury. Aldo Ramirez was not a big chip. We got lucky, in some ways. The Pivetta trade was a dump of Workman, so that does not count.

We might still have more deadline trade chips than others on this list, especially if we have unusually good health with our SP'ers.

Kutter may outpitch Cole in 2026, so would that still keep the Yanks one step up or two steps back.

On defense... Rafaela>Abreu>>Anthony>>Duran Duran should DH the most of all OF'ers with Anthony second. Abreu should only DH as a mechanism to get him rest while keeping one of the few power bats we have in the line-up more often. Rafaela should never DH for obvious reasons. (I'd avoid playing him at 2B unless as an ingame emergency/flex issue.)

Who is MH, and is he insane?

Let's break down only the SP'er numbers from 2025 vs what 2026 looks like.... IP and ERA Returning... (Stunningly very little) 205 Crochet 2.59 162 Bello 3.34 19 Early 2.33 10 Tolle 7.84_________ Lost... The Good: (152 IP) 145 Giolito 3.41 7 Criswell 1.29 The Meh (69 IP) 53 Dobbins 4.25 9 Harrison 4.00 7 de Leon 4.05 The Bad (63 IP) 41 Fitts 4.83 (1.32 WHIP) 22 Newcomb 4.43 (1.96 WHIP) The UGLY!!! (179 IP) 110 Buehler 5.40 44 Houck 8.04 25 May 5.68 As you can see, we lost more "UGLY!" than "GOOD," and we lost about the same "Meh" as "bad." You are focusing on Gio. We didn't lose Bello. We improved by moving him down on notch. Losing Dobbins is maybe the only other meaningful loss, but he wasn't great. The loss of the 2015 Houck and his 44 IP is not being mentioned much, but he really sucked. Newcomb's ERA looked decent but there was a reason we demoted then traded him, and his WHIP highlights why. Now, we added... Good 157 Ranger 3.20 40 Oviedo 3.57 (1.21 WHIP) Meh to Good 181 S Gray Plus Crawford (313 IP from '23-'24 w 4.23 ERA/1.12 WHIP) Sandoval (224 IP '23-'24 w 4.45 ERA/1.51 WHIP & ?236 IP '21-'22 w 3.17 ERA/1.29 WHIP) To me, the potential for a massive improvement looks highly probable. We lost Gio & Dobbins, but also over 240 IP of bad to ugly. We gained Luis Tiant III and Sunny Gray plus a couple proven starters -returning from injuries- as depth.

We didn't trade Bello. He's our #4 not our #3, so one can count that as another plus, if you choose to view it that way.

Good analogy, but we also got Ellsbury for a comp pick for OCab. The difference in this analogy is that we got nothing out of Harrison, while we did get real value out of Jake and Jed, before getting Holt & Hanrahan. (Plus, we got Kopech as a comp pick for Jake, and he was a major part of the Sale trade.)

Could be true, but he's pitched so little in 2-3 years. I do think Crawford fits that role better, and who knows what role is best for Oviedo. Earlier this winter, I had Sandoval as the #5. Now, I see it as a three-way tie, but my guess is Brez & Cora have an idea of who they send to the pen first. The second choice might take ST'ing to sort out.

If they were demanding Mayer, then we'd still have an infield opening. If they wanted Arias plus Tolle or Early, I'm not sure I'd like that deal more than the Durbin steal deal. Arias + Witherspoon? I'd probably say yes, despite Witherspoon's upside. With Neto, I'd be more willing to part with Arias.

Exactly. Why should they? I'd like to know what the package was. Without knowing, it's hard to say the Durbin deal was better or worse.

Did your account get hacked? Because someone posted this just a few posts back... ...we don’t know the Angels asking price, so it doesn’t matter now....

Buehler sucked- so did DMay and some of the other pitchers that Gray & Suarez are replacing. Oviedo is a question mark- much like Dobbins, Fitts & Co were, last year. BTW, we also "added" Crawford & Sandoval. I think you are underselling the significance of the rotation upgrades. I may be underselling the losses on offense, but I have spoken about losing over 1150 PAs from our top 6 batters in 2025 and replacing that with maybe 550-600 PAs from Contreras (who projects to do about the same as Bregman in 2026.) I hate needing to rely on 300 more PAs from Anthony and 300 more from Mayer to try and replace the 350 from Devers, and 250 from Lowe & Ref, but they may take a bite out of that loss.

If one wants to look at this like Devers for Durbin, then count the money, too: Devers for Durbin IK-F and Suarez plus another FA after Suarez and I K-F are gone.

I think what they wanted does matter. If they wanted way too much, I won't care if Neto does better than Durbin. Maybe down the road, if the guys LAA wanted end up sucking, we can go back and think "what if..." Neto looked like a much better target, and the demand must have been way higher than Harrison and scraps. Hell, even Harrison is a doubtful piece in any trade. I wish we had Neto, but they probably thought the disparity in trade offers ve returns significantly favored the Durbin deal. I'm pretty certain Neto will do much better than Durbin, and I'm not sure the extra 2 years from Durbin make up the difference. I really like the comp pick, as we lost our #2 and it's bonus money with it.