moonslav59

Biggest Projected Changes in WAR from 2020 (adjusted) to 2021l No Sox on the leader boards for declines. Devers 7th in projected gain+2.4 in WAR SP'er Gains Sale 3rd at +2.6 ERod 5th at +2.5

Sawamura is a real chance. I still think we sign Pillar or Marisnick.

FAs remaining at positions of need: 2B (move EHern to CF) Logan Forsythe Marwin Gonzalez Jason Kipnis Joe Panik Neil Walker Daniel Descalso CF JBJ Pillar Jake Marisnick Jon Jay Jarrod Dyson Brett Gardner Brian Goodwin Billy Hamilton Danny Santana SP Odorizzi Paxton Walker Teheran Porcello Arrieta A Sanchez Rich Hill B Anderson, T Anderson, H Bailey, T Cahill, Z Godley, G Gonzalez, C Hamels, M Leake, T Milone, T Ross, J Samardzjija, M Shoemaker RP Rosenthal Melancon Workman Sawamura McHugh Kela Greene Clippard Giles Peacock (Several others) ??? 1B ??? Mitch Moreland and many others

Jed Lowrie signs minor league deal with A's. In lesser news, Didi G signs with Phillies for $28M/2 with deferrals.

In Brazil, you are fined, if you do not vote.

One could expect the same or better numbers from players in their primes or getting closer to prime. Bogey is 28. Devers was pre-prime in 2019. Vaz was having his best year in 2020- better than 2019. Verdugo should get better, but will not come close to Betts. A Renfroe-Beni platoon should be better than Beni's 2019 season. The 2019 season also saw this... 32 GS Porcello 5.52 (I'm thinking Richards/Pivett/Perez can beat that) 22 GS Price (4.28) 8 GS Velazquez (5.43) 7 GS Johnson (6.02) 6 GS Casner (6.20) 5 GS Chacin (7.36) 11 GS by Weber, Lakins, Jo Smith, Taylor, Poyner & DHern) Sale started 25 games (4.40) ERod started 34 (3.81) Eovaldi started 12 (5.99) It's not hard to imagine this rotation can do better, depite how good these guys looked on paper before the 2019 season began. Or not.

A large amount of people didn't vote for a president, either.

IP since 2018: 486 Cole 333 ERod (0 last year) 313 Perez 305 Sale (0 last year) 273 Pivetta 246 Kluber (37 last 2 years) 229 German (0 last year) 228 Taillon (0 last year) 227 Eovaldi 213 Severino (0 last year) 136 Richards 75 Montgomery (244 Houck minors & majors) (234 M King minors & majors) (220 D Garcia minors & majors) Not that this is any indicator of how many IP anyone throws in 2021, but we do know Sla eand Severino will start the year on an extended IL. Lots of zero IP, last year.

I see Chavis at a make or break point. We should find out, sooner rather than later, if he's the next Middy or what. With low expectations, this year, why not give him a long enough look to find out- not that he couldn't be cut and comeback with another team, but keeping him around in AAA for the next year or two would just prolong the indecisions. Yes, it's nice to have some AAA depth with ML experience, so even if he does not get a long look, he will not be on the top of our DFA list. I'm not super high on Arroyo, but he, too, might be primed to show he belongs. He's 25, and that's about the age many players start showing they are starter material. The guy only has 300 PAs in the bigs, so what do we really know, at this point. Let's find out. If he could hit like his .775 minor league number, which includes an OBP of .340 and an XBH every 10 ABs. I'm higher on Munoz than many here, but as of now, he's just depth and not even on the 40 man roster, so his chance will only come after Chavis and/or Arroyo have failed or gotten hurt. As everyone knows by now, I want EHern in CF almost FT. Maybe Renfroe can start vs some RHPs he's shown success against, and Beni can vs some LHPs, and each OF'er will need some days off for rest, but EHern is my CF'er.

Don't forget Taillon.

Dyson's offense has really tanked sine 2016. .674 in "17 .539 in '18 .633 in '19 .411 in '20 (just 66 PAs) And, he's 36. I'm sticking with Marisnick, but Pillar would be okay- though more costly and worse on D than EHern.

Well, Renfroe vs RHPs (.717 and .733 in 2019) is better than Beni vs LHPs (.691 but .796 in 2019), but the righty split means many more games. The real comp is Renfroe and Beni vs Arroyo (or maybe Chavis). On offense, both blow Arroyo away as a platoon, but vs their worst splits- not so much so, but on the defensive side, we'd improve at 4 positions by playing EHern in CF full time or vs LHPs. Arroyo: .597 v LHPs (Beni .691) .678 v RHPs (Renfroe .717) We could also play Chavis v LHPs and Arroyo v RHPs and use EHern FT in CF. Although Chavis hits RHOs better than LHPs, that could just be a fluke due to small ML sample sizes, but Chavis blows Arroyo away in OPS v LHPs: Chavis .699 v L .740 v R (This assuming Chavis recovers from his 2020 splits of .650 v R and .611 v L.) This one reason I wanted us to sign a 2Bman over a CF'er or RF'er.

I thought of that after I wrote my post mentioning his era. Some great ones surely came up during his time as GM. (Some were acquired before he became GM, but still...)

The O's, Rangers, Mariners and Tigers are all horrific. fangraphs projects 65-74 wins for all 4 teams. The Royals and Guardians are projected under .500. It's interesting how they project 6 of the 15 AL teams to be under .500 and 10 of the 15 NL teams to be under .500. I doubt that works out that way, but I think we can all agree the Sox are significantly better than those 6 AL teams and 10 NL teams, of which we won't play most of them. That leaves the Rays (82 projected wins), A's (83), Angels (85), CWS (86) all pretty close to the Sox (88), Astros, Jays & Twins (89). The Yanks are by themselves in the AL at 96 projected wins. I can't see how anyone can say the teams projected between 82-89 wins, all look better than us, on paper, or at least significantly better where they take 2 our of 3 against us every series. Sure, if nobody comes back from injury, and all our players who had down years in 2019 or 2020 continue doing poorly, we may come close to 90 wins, but other teams will experience the same things, too. If you truly believe the 2019 team was as bad as they showed, despite being just slightly different from the record setting 2018 team, then I can see why you see little hope for 2021, but many of those players still on the team from 2018 are still in their primes or not that far past prime to expect something good from most of them. Some were not quite at prime in 2018 or 2019 and could be expected to do better in 2021. Our 2021 health is nearly impossible to project, so much depends on how you feel players like Sale, Eovaldi, Richards and ERod will do, and how many innings they give us.

Odorizzi and JBJ would get us over .500. We won't sign either, but it's there.

Fun like Manny, yes. Fun like Carl Everitt, maybe not so much, although he put up some nice numbers.

I'm still sticking with my call of Marisnick- now more than ever. He'll be cheaper than most on notin's list. Who is the best 2Bman let on the market? Lowrie?

Our defense sucks, so even with a 10th ranked rotation and a top 5 or 6 offense, we may still struggle to reach 87 wins. That's one reason I want EHern in CF.

It's like they were trying to make poor Tim feel useless.

It's mind-boggling, but much of MLB's decisions fall in that category.

The 2019 team underperformed by a lot. Clearly, they were a better team on paper than 78 wins. They were pretty close to the same team as 2018, and it's harder to "elaborate" on the massive drop in wins between 2018 and 2019 than 2019 and 2021. You also have to look at the strength of other AL teams. The Astros are way worse than the 2017-2020 versions. The Rays look worse on paper, but I never count them out. The CWS have improved. The Twins and Angels should be good. The Guardians and A's may compete, but the rest of the AL is in bad shape- worse shape than the Sox. I'm not going to say projecting 78-82 wins is wrong. I can certainly see that happening, but I think our 2021 team should be much better than the 2020 team which projected to 65 wins. We did end 2020 going 12-9, which included wins vs NYY, ATL and TBR, and 2020 saw 60- 80% of our rotation on the IL at any given moment.

That's probably true, especially since his innings will be limited, but we only signed 1 SP'er, this winter- a guy who has barely pitched since 2015. We have 7 SP'ers with one not returning until July. Sale Eovaldi ERod Richards Pivetta Perez Houck Possibles: Whitlock Seabold Mata Weber Mazza Gossett Hart

YES! His contract was purchased for $1.00.

That was a nice era, too.

We were talking about players brought up in the early to mid 1970's- very good to great ones. Lee came up in 1969, but his first significant season was 1971, so maybe he can count. Lyle should not count. He pitched 43 innings in 1967 and 66 in '68. Reggie Smith, too. He had a few games in '66 but was FT by 1967. Roger Moret fits the time frame but maybe not the very good player aspect of the category. He pitched a little in 1970 and over 70 innings in '71. He had a 116 ERA+ from 1970-1975, sso that may be considered "good enough." The list is clearly weighted by non pitchers, that's for sure.