moonslav59

Agreed, and only his age progression chart looks better than Bregman on offense. It's a sideway move on offense and a step down on D, especially if he demands SS. (Even if he plays 2B, it means Story does not move there, so no big gain, anyway.)

I'm kinda surprised that so many think our offense will be good enough by just bringing Breggie back and adding a moderately-priced 1Bman.

The team hit .715 after AUG 15th 80+ PAs .909 Anthony .802 Story .790 Lowe .731 Duran .709 Romy .688 Narvaez .680 Yoshida .625 Bregman .628 Rafaela (DHam & Ref did will at about 50 PAs, and Eaton did okay. Their OPS bumped up the team OPS and none are in the 2025 plans in any significant way. Lowe's .790 might be gone, too.)

Trading Masa would likely mean we pay $12-14M of his $18M x 2, unless we add a prospect- maybe a borderline Rule 5 guy like Mullins or Sandlin...maybe a guy like Kelly, Wink, Criswell or Murphy would lower the cash needed and improve the tax line budget. Dumping part of Hicks' deal could help that, too.

If we have a fixed winter budget, we won't get 4 highly talented players. I'd rather we narrow it to 2-3, and if we trade for 1, adding 2 at about $45M might be enough to get what we need. The 4th slot will have to be a dice roll on in-house options like 2B/3B (Mayer) DH (Yoshida/Romy/Duran/Campbell/Garcia) or 1B (Casas/Romy/Campbell or convert Duran/Yoshida)

The money appears to be about $45M to line one and $65M to line two. My suggestion is we trade for a SP2 and use the money to go large on 2 players- 3 tops. We have some depth that can cover the borderline needy slots, and maybe we can also bring back matz and Ref, assuming we trade an OF'er or two. $45M -$65M/ 2 is a lot of AAV. $65M/3 is no chump change either. If one is Hoskins, as you suggest, his cost will probably not be more than $12-15M AAV, so that would leave $30-33 M for 1 player (Bregman/Alonso/Schwarber) or $30-35M for 2 players (maybe Suarez, Matz & Ref) If we go to the second line, it could be $50-53M/2 or 3. That could be Suarez, Polanco & Hoskins or maybe Bregman, Hoskins and M Kelly.

The ones who opted out want to get teams to be interested, immediately. I'm thinking Story stays. Does he officially have to opt out before his agent can legally talk to other teams about offers?

Maybe a hard floor is unrealistic, but if you told the revenue sharing recipients that they only get the amount of money from sharing that they increase their player budget by, maybe it would spur spending. The deal could even give 125% of a budget increase in revenue sharing, but they get nothing, if they don't increase their budget.

Yes, I remember you presenting Hoskins' profile, before, but I have to think we need a bigger upgrade than just him. I don't see a Bregman return and 300 more PAs from Anthony as breaking even with the 830 PAs of the 2025 Bregman & Devers, .905 Devers (15 HRs and 58 RBI in 334) .821 Bregman (18 HRs and 62 RBI in 495) 33 Hrs and 120 RBI in 830 PAs. Then, we need Story, Duran, Abreu, Narvaez, Romy and Rafaela to keep the '25 pace. While Hoskins should easily beat the .691 combined 1B OPS of 2025, he may not top Lowe's .790. Yoshida might improve on .696. So might Mayer at .674. I'm not sure any others jump out as good bets to do better. We may also lose Ref's .838 OPS, but there are plenty of addition by subtraction players we will lose or play less: .659 Toro in 284 PAs (10th ranked in PAs) .664 Campbell in 264 (11th but could play more) .590 DHam in 194 (14th) .500 Wong in 188 (15th) .790 Lowe in 119 (17th but not an addition by subtraction) .580 Casas in 112 (18th and has a shot at a big improvement) .661 Sogard in 104 (19th) .731 Eaton in 90 (20th and above the league OPS.) I realize you are trying to be realistic, and this type of plan may very well mirror what Brez ends up doing, but IMO, it falls way short.

Criswell could make 11.

It's a realistic ask, and we may not even go that far, but even if Breggie returns and somehow he and more PAs from Roman makes up for the 830 PAs of 2025's Devers+ Breggie, is Hoskins improving on the .691 OPS going to bump us up a level? Hoskins: .748 in '25, .732 last 2 years and .760 in his last 3 seasons (missing 2023.) Are you counting on better from Story, Duran, Abreu, Narvaez & Rafaela? We all know how much you count on Mayer to go 150+ games. Suarez might be a big boost on O over Bregman, but we might lose something on D and clubhouse leadership. This is the time to go bold, or at least bolder than just adding Hoskins. Hell, Lowe gave us .790 and our O fell apart.

Yup, add two big bats and a solid #2 SP. Someone's been saying that all along. Anything less may not even be status quo. We can hope on the kids, and maybe it works. Maybe one big bat and a SP would be enough, but we can spend up to the line and get 2 + 1.

We're bringing 330 PAs of Devers back? We can't just look at team OPS when our home park is Fenway. We were T 12th in wRC+ at a whopping 103. (Devers probably added the 3.) The Athletics finished ahead of us. OPS+ 118 NYY 113 SEA 108 TOR 106 BOS 9th in road OPS is not something I'm beating the drum to bring back as is (without Devers.)

Well, we had Anthony for 300 and Devers for 330, so it's not like we're adding a big bat to replace Duran or Abreu.

It's just my opinion, and it seems like MVP and notin seem to be setting sites low, so I'm hoping on tier twos.

They'll offer the QO. Since I think we'll have a restrictive budget, I'm hoping he says no, we get a comp pick and then spend the money on hitting.

He's not getting that.

According to BTV, Duran alone could bring back an ace. I'm not sure I agree, but I do agree that we need a huge bat upgrade, and that's with keeping Bregman, Duran and Abreu! Trading a corner OF'er means we need two big bats and Breggie. Is JH up to that challenge? I doubt it. We'll be lucky to get one from Bregman, Alonso or Schwarber, let alone two. Expecting one of those three plus Suarez, Polanco or Bichetts is almost surely a pipedream, but IMO, it is what we need: 2 major bats and a solid #2 SP. That;s rock bottom minimum, or I'll be expecting a borderline playoff team in 2026.

I have to agree. Even if Bregman stays healthy all year, he may not provide much more total production than he did in 2025. Story led the team in many categories, and he's they guy most of us counted on for nothing in 2025. Now, we are supposed to expect a repeat? Duran declined from his awesome 2024 season, and may bounce back with an uptick, but can or should we count on it? Plus, many think he'll be traded for pitching. Abreu could stay healthy and move from a platoon to FT, but like others listed here, can we expect the same or more in 2025. Some here think Rafaela lucked out being close to the league norm OPS, so counting on him to be above .700 might be a stretch. Narvaez has an amazing rookie season, while Wong had a horrific season. Expecting the same from them in 2025 might be reasonable, but expecting more is probably pushing it. That leaves precious few slots to hope for major improvements to make up for the loss of Devers, which the tarde itself did not come close to doing on offense. Assuming Bregman returns... 2025 numbers 1B: .691 (16 HRs) DH: .823 (26 HRs with Devers boosting the numbers) 2B: .670 (12 HRs) We gotta think Yoshida/Romy will not hit .823 with 26 Hrs as the DHs, but with 4 OF'ers and no moves made, I do think it's fair to count on equaling these numbers with Duran/Anthony at DH. The thing is, most of us don't see us benching an $18M Yoshida to keep the status quo with Devers & Co's 2025 numbers. Trading Duran may fix the hole left by Gio, but now we still have these 3 positions to hope for significant boosts. If Yoshida/Romy ate the 2026 DHs, and if that's the plan, we need massive boosts from 2B and 1B. It does not take much to improve on .691 and .670, but we have to also make up from expected downticks at DH and some of the other I listed above. Alonso would provide a huge boost. Schwarber at DH would, too. Perhaps they are wishful thinking as would be adding Bichette on top of paying Bregman to return, but it seems to me we need one of these three to hope for any form of improved offense. And this assumes Mayer/Romy can slightly improve the 2B production. Another option might be to add two tier two players from Suarez, Polanco or maybe someone via trade, like Harper or K Marte. I'm not sure Suarez & Torres/ B Lowe/ W Castro would be enough, but with a solid #2 SP'er added, maybe it could be. We'd certainly need to see some boost from Anthony, Mayer, Campbell or Garcia, unless we see some major uptick from the 2025 veteran regulars.

That could be the issue that contributes to holding us back, but I'm not convinced of it, now am I convinced it outweighs the good things he has done and brings to the table.

Pedro was a pinto bean.

If liking it means at best an early exit from the playoffs, maybe.

That's what I am most afraid of. Bregman returning may not even keep us status quo on offense, which we sort of a weak area in 2025. We need a big boost and a Bregman return does not do that. Hoping on 650 PAs from Bregman & Anthony only adds about 500 PAs from their 2025 totals, and is a bit of a gamble that they will repeat 2025 numbers over 1300 PAs. Can we count on Story and Duran to repeat 2025? They were our next two big bats. Then there is the Devers loss. He did get 334 PAs in 2025- the most of any Sox player at DH and 8th ranked in PAs despite an early June dump. The offense situation need is dire. Breggie, Hoskins and a returning Ref is not enough, and if we trade Duran for pitching, it may not even be equal.

The OF depth would also be fine by trading one. We'd still have Garcia and Campbell as well as Refsnyder likely willing to return if offered a decent contract. (The Sox also view Yoshida as an OF option, despite our objections.)

Duran was worth way more last winter. Did you mean to say "Can't lose Bregman, Duran and Story...."