moonslav59

1) I doubt he takes a significant discount to stay here. 2) We don't need a 4.75 to 5.50 SP'er, despite all the IP. 3) He's past prime, now. 4) Even at a discounted rate, his contract would likely put us over the tax limit by itself (assuming we keep everyone else).

I felt the same way about 2017. Seemed like too many players had down years all at the same time. Well, with 2017 and 2019 both seeming "fluky," maybe it was 2018 that was the outlier. Our offense did very well in 2018 and 2019, so it's mostly about the pitching. ERod, Workman, Taylor and Walden did better than expected. The other 19 used did worse.

I don't think 35 starts from outside your top 5 starters is all that out of the norm. Plus, we porbably could have started Eovaldi a few more games, and we may have even started Price and Sale more had we been in the playoff hunt. I just don't see injuries as a major excuse for us doing so much worse than last year. Starting Pitchers all did worse, except ERod. Pen blew too many saves. Offense bunched too many runs when not needed. Defense, despite Devers doing much better, did worse overall. Base-running looked more like 2017 not 2018. GM, managing and coaching made more mistakes.

Personally, I think we need to shake up our whole philosophy on pitching- from drafting, developing, coaching, evaluating, attending to their physical needs and more. That probably means bringing in an outsider with a known history of success with pitchers.

It is a mystery, because I'm sure they looked over his medical records very well before offering him the extension. Maybe I'm being optimistic, but Sale still started 25 games, this year- 13 with 0-2 runs allowed and 16 with 0-3 allowed.

The Sale extension was not the reason for the collapse or DD's firing.

They were fine with the plan, but the window was supposed to last through 2019 and possibly 2020 or even 2021. We were still the top spending team. We still had a pretty young team on the field, and the oldest players we had were role players like Moreland & Pearce. Yes, we lost 33 starts from Eovaldi, Price and Sale combined, but that's not really horrible, when you consider the other 2 in the rotation never missed a start. I think Henry was shocked by the suddenness of the "cliff," and the whole argument for trading away the future for a 5-7 year window collapsed when the window turned out to be 3 years- glorious as they were.

Not the pitching "staff"- maybe the coaching staff, yes.

I've said all along, even a 200 or 300 point advantage from one guy will not make up for a 1.00 rise in team ERA. As it turned out, the OPS advantage was near negligible, and the ERA spike was way over 1.50. CERA by Starter: Porcello 4.44 Leon 6.37 Vaz 13.50 Swi Sale 3.79 Leon 6.68 Vaz (An argument could be made that Leon should have caught every game by Sale & Porcello.) Price: 4.15 Vaz (4.27 career) 5.59 Leon (2.96 career) ERod 3.58 Vaz (3.99 career) 4.34 Leon (4.05 career) 10.39 Swi (4.44 career)

The blown saves sucked, and I get the argument that you can't say the pen did okay with so many blown saves, but I'm going to say it anyway. The pen did okay. They kept us in games that the starters put us in deep holes.They went extra innings often. They provided many "pen games," many of which ended up with 4, 5 or less runs allowed. Eearlier, this year, I went back and looked at every game- one by one- to determine who was mostly at fault for our losses and who was mostly the reason we won each game- the starter or the pen.It wasn't even close. The pen won us way more games and lost way fewer games than the starters. The record since that study does not appear to have favored the starters. Our pen has been pretty good the last 6-8 weeks. The SP'ing in by far the major reason for the negative turn-around.

I has a feeling Cora wanted Leon all along. I never understood the reasoning for Swihart other than to hope to build trade value had he got off to an .850 start.

Not "exactly" or he'd still be the Sox GM.

I wouldn't have gone as far as he did, but he got us a ring, so I fine with what he did. However, I won't sugar coat what we gave up to get that ring- not that you are. Judging by hindsight, the Pom-Espi trade did not help us win a ring- maybe one division title, but not a ring. The Travis-Dubon for Thornburg trade was bad. Justifiable, at the time, but bad in hindsight. The Buttrey for Kinsler deal was probably not needed to get us a ring, but we did need 2B defense. I wish we had Margot and Allen back, but no doubt Kimbrel was a big piece of our 3 division wins and the 2018 ring, despite his poor playoff performance. In hindsight, I wish we could have kept Allen and traded Espi, Travis and Dubon for something better and longer controlled than Pom & Thornburg, but overall, DD made justifiable trades that won us a ring. That's the bottom line up to 2018. Now, for 2019, and more importantly, the extended future, we have to deal with the consequences of those trades.

Some thoughts on the state of our farm: There were a number of factors that have led to where we are now, but let's not forget the fact that the farm still gave us Devers, Beni, Taylor, Walden & Chavis fairly recently. We have a few promising prospects, now, but other than Dalebec and D Hernandez, not many good ones are close to ML ready. Here are a few of the "factors" as I see them: 1) Obviously, the number one factor was trading away so many of our highly ranked prospects by DD. Here is a list of those traded and their highest ranking ever on soxprospects.com: 1 Moncada 1 Swihart 3 Margot 3 Espinoza 5 Kopech 5 Beeks 5 Marrero 6 Guerra 7 Basabe #1 9 Dubon 12 T Shaw (not a prospect when traded) 12 Rijo 13 Allen 17 Buttrey 18 Basabe #2 18 Callahan 20 Asuage 20 Gerson 2) International Free Agent Signings have been horrible, and this used to be one of our greatest strengths (Devers, Bogey, DHern, Moncada, Margot, Iggy, Montas...). The best we've got to show since DD became the GM is Velazquez and Antoni Flores. The system has changed since Theo and Ben's days- making it harder for winning and big spending teams to have large bonus pools, but we've done very poorly, here. (See #6.) 3) Drafting low due to winning so much for 3 straight seasons: 2017 drafted 24th (Houck) 2018 drafted 26th (Casas) 2019 drafted 43rd (Cannon)* see #3 4) Draft penalty for going over the max line dropped us to #43 in 2019 draft. 5) Drafting poorly with the picks we had. The 2016 draft was the only one we picked higher than #24, and we did okay, assuming Groome amounts to something, and we also got Chatham (51), Dalbec (118) and Shawaryn (148), but it does not appear to be a strong draft. 2017: Houck (24), Brannen (63) and nobody else on the radar was not good. 2018 was decent: Casas (26) is a top 90 prospect. We also got Feltman (100), Ward (160)and Duran (220). Not bad, but not really eye opening either. 2019 is too soon to know, but there are some promising players. 6) Daniel Flores passed away. He was given twice the next highest signing bonus ($3.1M) as the next guy since 2015. Sad. 7) Banned from international free agent signings for 2016-2017 period. Thanks, Ben. Put all these together, and we have a pretty bad farm system, right now. That doesn't mean we have nothing, but many of the best we have are 2-4 years away- like Casas, Mata, Jimenez, Lugo & A Flores. Here's my current list of the top dozen Sox prospects: 1) Casas 2) Mata 3) Ward 4) Jimenez 5) Groome 6) Dalbec 7) Houck 8) Chatham 9) N Song 10) M Lugo 11) Duran 12) A Flores

He ruined the farm doing what he thought he had to do to insure a ring. We can debate whether he needed to go as far as he did and still get the ring, but IMO, there is no doubt the farm was ruined- justifiably or not. We had a top 5-8 farm. Now we have a bottom 5-8 farm. I'm fine with bottom 5, since we got the ring, but it's time to rebuild the farm not pretend it's fine, and DD is not the guy to do that. I just hope the next guy makes the rebuild as quickly as possible, and we can get back to top contention status, soon.

It ain't happening. Henry wouldn't spend a penny more at the deadline, and now you're talking tens upon tens of millions to be spent this winter.

How about Bannister getting no blame for a the whole staff melting down, except for 3 guys (ERod, Workman & Taylor). 3 Good 23 Bad to Horrible

Sale missed less starts than Price and Eovaldi. Price and Eovaldi were injured, too. Eovaldi barely made any starts. Porcello is the only starter that can't blame a lot of it on his health. Our SP'ers this year: Sale 25 starts- 13 with 4 or more runs allowed & 8 with 5+ Price 22 starts- 7 with 4 or more & 3 with 6+ Eovaldi 8 starts- 4 with 4+ and 4 with 5+ Should have been 98 starts not 55. Should have been less than 24 bad starts in 98 starts, but we had 24 in 55. Then, there's Porcello. He gave us 32 starts, but 15 had 4+ runs allowed & 12 saw 5+. Add him to the other 3, and we have 39 bad starts out of 87 starts. That's 45%. ERod held his own and then some, but those missing 33 starts by the first 3 listed didn't do us any good, either.

It could be overblown but still an issue that needs to be addressed.

They need to re look at their whole philosophy, scouting, developing, talent recognition, medical staff and coaching of our pitchers from the first day they join the organization until the last day.

Sad.

I'm extremely happy with our team's history since Henry took over. I wouldn't trade places with anyone (even before our first ring). That doesn't mean I don't wish we had the farm systems of just about any other team in MLB. We have a nice core of players going forward- some have some huge health concerns, but we can still be pretty good going forward. Building the farm was never going to be easy under these new rules, especially for teams winning so much and spending enough to get draft and pool money penalties. It will be almost impossible to stay highly competitive without drastically improving our farm, unless Henry allows the budget to go over the max line year after year. (I doubt that happens.)

Fixed it! Thanks.

This will likely be our SP'er depth chart next year- assuming health. 1. Sale. 2. ERod 3. Price 4. Eovaldi 5. DHern 6. Cheap FA signing 7. Chacin 8. Wright (if tendered-arb) 9. Johnson 10. Velazquez or Shawaryn/Houck

I wouldn't call 4.65 "horrendous." I'd say 2 horrendous, 1 pretty bad, 1 very good and 1 great.