moonslav59

My plan for 2019. Place Price and Sale on the 60 day IL. It may help them be stronger next year. Stretch Eovaldi & DHern out to become starters by September. We'll need them as starters in 2020. See what Marco (2B), Chavis (1B), Travis (1B/OF/DH), Johnson & Velazquez (SP) and Lakins, Taylor, Walden, Poyner and others can show us over the next 8 weeks. It may help us plan for 2020 a little better.

Kimbrel to the IL.

The Cashner trade proved we didn't have to trade a top prospect to get a decent pitcher. DD chose to send a message to the team. It didn't work. The Eovaldi & Pearce re-signings killed us due to their injuries. DD's earlier big signings appear to be fading or mildly declining (Price, Sale, JD & Moreland). I'm glad we won a ring, so I'm fine with what DD did, but I will not sugar coat the mess the "win now" strategy has put us in now and going forward.

You are right, but had Eovaldi and Pearce stayed healthy, this season did prove we had a need for a SP'er and back-up 1Bman. Moreland got hurt again. (Nobody expected Chavis to shine, and he was needed at 2B anyways) We ended up trading for Cashner as our only move. Clearly, we need a SP'er had we not signed Eovaldi. We only had a limited amount of money to spend. It certainly looks like going over the max penalty line was not allowed. In hindsight, we'd have know Chavis could play 1B and 2B well enough to not be a negative. Signed Charlie Morton at $15M x 2. Signed Adam Ottavino at $9M x 3. We'd have stayed under the max line and been in the race, but it's easy to say this in hindsight.

You could play Chavis at 1B vs LHP'ers and play Marco at 2B vs lefties. Marco has hit lefties better than righties in small ML sample sizes to date. We could also use Dalbec with Ockimey at 1B and use Chavis almost FT at 2B.

2020 Tax Salary Budget: $Millions 31.0 Price 25.6 Sale 22.0 JD (assuming option) 20.0 Bogey 17.0 Eovaldi 13.8 Pedey 4.5 Vaz Total:$134M (7 players) Arbs: (est) 27 Betts (3rd of 3 arbs) 10 JBJ (4 of 4) 9 ERod (3 of 4) 4 Beni (1 of 3) 3 Workman (3 of 3) 3 Barnes (2 of 3) 2 Hembree (2 of 3) 1 Wright (3 of 3) 1 Hernandez (1 of 3) Total $60M (9 players) Non arbs (24 players on 40 man roster) Total: $11M 40 man roster with no FA signings: $205M +$15M player benefits= $220M The limit is $208M, next year, so to reset, we'll need to trade about $12M in salary and sign no free agents. For argument's sake, let's say we trade JBJ & Hembree and "save" about $12M. This is what we'd have left for 2020: 25 man roster SP: Sale, Price, ERod, Eovaldi, DHern, RP: Workman, Barnes, Taylor, Walden, Johnson, Velazquez, Brasier, Wright C: Vazquez, Centeno 1B: Dalbec 2B: Chavis, Hernandez SS: Bogaerts, Lin or Chatham 3B: Devers LF: Travis (or JD) CF: Benintendi RF: Betts DH: JD Martinez (or Chavis/Dalbec) The rest of the 40 man roster: Pedroia IL Lin or Chatham (1 on 25 man) Reyes Lakins Poyner Weber Shawaryn J Smith Curletta Kelley Ockimey Feltman Houck Duran A Rei T Ward

Holt is a FA after this year, so trading him is not really an option. I doubt we can reset, unless we trade a contract or two. That will have to be Price, Sale, Eovaldi or JD.

The funny thing was how the front office thought their little speeches might work on these modern day players. The best motivating factor would have been to trade a star player or acquire a bonafide RP'er- not silly speeches.

Weber is a scrub's scrub. He's looked decent a couple times this year. He shouldn't even be on any competitive team's 25 man roster. He better not be on next year's roster, unless we've decided to blow it all up and start over.

There was a time when Porcello was doing about as well as Lester, but this season put the kabash on that.

He could have tried. The problem was that we felt we still had a chance at the WC slot.

I do, too. Yes, we took a gamble by signing him after an injury plagued season, but we signed him to less than he would have gotten as a FA last winter. Right now, the signing looks sketchy, but I'm still confident he will earn his money, too.

The Astros have balanced the win now philosophy with the keep a strong future philosophy pretty well, but I think these recent trades tilted the balance to the point where they will suffer, like we are now, by shortening their window. They should be the faves for this season and next, but they will be seeing budget issues as their young stars reach their last arb years and free agency. The Astros still have some top prospects and recent grads, so they are not heading for a cliff.

He very well may become that bad. Perhaps, we should just shut him down for the remainder of 2019 and hope that makes him stronger for 2020 and beyond. There's obviously something going on with the extreme babying he's gotten all year.

Being a top spender should allow us to compete again at some point in the near future, but I think we will need to be bad before we get good again-- maybe not "cliff" bad, but we may need to get a good draft pick slot or two and more international spending pool money to build the farm back up. Couple that with a rest of the tax and no tax draft penalties, and I think we can be back to being top contenders in 1-2 seasons. Maybe we'll have to sell off a couple high-priced and aging stars by paying a big chunk of their future salary, but it worked with the AGon, CC & Beckett deal, and it worked with the Lester, Lackey & Peavy sell-off. As much as this season sucked, maybe it made our future path more clear.

Can we all now agree, this season is toast? Man o man, what a disappointment!

Price won us a ring. We knew we'd see a downslide at some point. It reminds me of the Victorino signing. We all knew it was 2 seasons too long, but once we won the 2013 ring, nobody really cared. I doubt Price or Sale become a Sandoval or Crawford, but I suppose they could. Years of team control left: 2 Pedey 1-3 JD 3 Price Eovaldi 5 Sale 6 Bogey

As much as we have already. Sale, Price, Eovaldi and ERod are all under team control for several more years- hopefully into the next competitive phase we go through after the reset.

Neither is Weber. Johnson has had more success than Weber as a starter at every level.

We're not sure he's done throwing 95-96. Good point, though.

Yes. I don't think the make-over has to be as extreme as others. A while back, I posted a list of the top SP'ers by WAR since 2003. Almost every pitcher had a down year or two, most around 30-32, but all except Felix bounced back pretty quickly to have a few good seasons afterwards. The 3 years it took CC was an exception to the trend. I think Sale may be back to a high level by next year, but I realize that may be wishful thinking.

They "learned" spending large wins rings before the declines set in.

I looked at each of CC's 3 transitioning seasons, and the best 11 game sample sizes I found were: 2013: 3.48 (game 2-12) 2014: 5.28 (only started 8 games) 2015: 3.84 (game 19-29) It looks like Sale's transition year 1 is already ahead of any of CC's 3 years.

Do you discount his 11 game stretch this year as luck or what?

Weber should be gone after this year. I have more faith in Johnson and Velazquez, which isn't saying much.