moonslav59

That's how I see it- flaws and all. I've never used it as a "discussion ender," and I actually use OPS and UZR/150 more than WAR in my posts.

A look at our Luxury Tax Budget as of now... $M Player/ Yrs remaining- (+ options+ 31.0 Price 3 25.6 Sale 5 (+1) 22.0 JD 1 or 3 (no opt out) 20.0 Bogey 6 (+1) 17.0 Eovaldi 3 13.8 Pedroia 2 4.5 Vazquez (+1) ARB Estimates by MLBTR (Red= possible non tender) 27.7 Betts 11.0 JBJ 9.5 ERod 4.9 Beni 3.4 Workman 3.0 Barnes 2.8 Leon 1.6 Hembree 1.0 Osich 0.7 M Hernandez 199.5 Total +15 Player Benefits + 5 (8 players on ML roster at min salary) +2.5 40 man roster-minors $222M Estimated Budget (-$15M with no JBJ, Leon & Hembree= $207M)

If DD were still here and had a mandate to get under the tax line, he might not have re-worked the deal, unless it lessened the AVV.

If he needs it, he should have it on Nov 16th, so maybe he'd help in 2021. I get why they wait and pray, but we have this guy under contract for 5 years, so let's protect as many years as possible. (Not saying he needs it, but by Nov 15th, we should know.)

Please! Do! Not! Put! JD! In! The! OF! (Unless it's in NL parks, and even then, plan his days off for some of those days.) He is not a good defender. He is injury prone. His bat is his value. If he hated DH'ing so much, he'd have opted out.

Good points, but retaining his own players were mostly at drunken sailor dollars.

Maybe his post was operating on the assumption that Merloni is 100% correct.

The old water cooler arguments used to pit BA vs HRs, RBIs vs Fldg%, Slg% vs OBP, etc... This guy was better at this, but that guy was better at that. Consensus was rarely reached. WAR attempts to put them all together. It weighs each skill based on data. It assigns a value and totals it all up. It is flawed, for sure, but I trust it more than my own flawed and biased way of placing total overall value or ranking players by total value hardly ever see play in sort of reasonable order.

The injuries suck, but when a starter starts 32 games, he faces over 750 or 800 batters. That's way more than Betts or JD PAs in a season.

Isn't trading JD & letting JBJ go another option? How about keeping JD & Betts by trading Price and/or Eovaldi? We have many ways to get under the tax line. We can even just let JBJ & Hembree go and be under the line- keeping everybody else and signing nobody.

That's a separate issue. My point was to trade Betts and then sign him for 2021 and beyond AFTER WE RESET. All we have to do is match or top the highest bidder. If that number is not Trout-like, then we have a chance.

We don't know if Bloom sees value in big contracts. He was highly restricted in TB. We don't know how he places value on a player like Betts. One hint might be his choice of trading JD or not.

Well said! BTW, JBJ had a +1.4 fWAR.

Nobody has claimed WAR is perfect. We realize there are flaws. Some of these flaws diminish its value, but that is different than saying it is meaningless or near meaningless. To me, I just about never watch any MLB game not involving the Sox. There's no way I can tell who is better than someone else or better or worse than someone on the Sox. I use OPS, OBP, UZR/150, DRS, WAR and other numbers to try and place value or ranking by value on players. WAR is one tool I use. It's not the be-all-end-all, but I respect it while knowing its limitations and flaws. BA, OPS, Fldg%, RF/9 and all the other traditional value setter have flaws, too, and trying to determine which one is worth more than the others and by how much is something personal bias commands. WAR has tried to scientifically place value on everything players do based on tons of data. I look at it this way, when I know I don't know jack or close to jack about 29 out of every 30 players in MLB, and I'm trying to determine if JBJ or anyone else is better than someone else, I'm not using my personal observations as the number one tool. WAR is a good tool, but it is not all I use, either. My observations of other team's players involves watching 162 games of whoever the Sox are playing. That's 1/32 of all games. I never see some teams play for 2 years. I see some for 3 games. Using data and other people's opinions (like the fielding bible) is the only way I can know.

True, but he was not always bad. His two seasons over .830 prove that. Plus, it's not like .720 to .750 is bad. It's not good, but it's not bad either. Most players have slumps, but they spread them out into mini slumps. It's weird how JBJ's last 3 seasons all started with massive slumps. Maybe we should have sat him more in April and the first half of May. .765 since 2015 is not awful all the time.

He'll only get what one team agrees to pay him. If someone offers him $12 years at $30M+ then I doubt we'll match it. Players often don't get what they and their agents ask for up front.

Who knows? Just because he could never do that at TB doesn't mean he never will with the Sox. He's never had a $208M budget before, and after 2020, he may be allowed to go over the tax line.

You sound so sure. We could trade JD or Price or Eovaldi or 2 of those 3. I wouldn't mind us trading Betts, if we made a strong push for him in 2021.

You have a short memory, of "always" means something different to you. The guy was over .830 two years in a row. He was at .846 over the last 109 games this year. That's a much much longer stretch than his 38 game slump. He was at .793 the last 106 games of 2018. That's better than the 38 game slump again. His .756 OPS in his last 116 games of 2017 wasn't bad after a 17 games slump. The guy was decent with the bat way more than he was slumping. WAY MORE!

Offloading JBJ gets us to even. Any combination of Betts, JD, Price or Eovaldi could, in theory, give us enough to go large on someone, but I don't think that's what Bllom would do, if he had that much budget space.

MLBTR projects Porcello getting $11M/1. I was qthinking $12M/2 is the most I'd pay, but I had a feeling he'd get more.

Better to just sign a cheal CF'er and not expose Beni to ridicule.

I doubt that happens, but I don't expect any top 25 signings.

What kids? Duran is the only ML ready OF'er in the minors with any hopes, and his high BAbip makes him highly questionable.

Plus, the risk of injury or decline is mitigated by just a 1 year deal. Maybe 700's "not much" means something else to him than me.