moonslav59

What happened on that very first day of ST'ing, before any games even started?

I happen to think the idea of giving the SP'er a little extra rest in spring made sense. They are aging, injury prone and came off a long playoff season with extra innings pitched. My hope was, we might suffer a little in April but more than make up for it later in the year, when we needed them most. I think most baseball people think resting players a little more helps them later in the season. The fact that it did nt, in this case, proves nothing. One sample size proves nothing. Sure, it can be used as evidence to support the opinion that it was a bad idea, but nothing can be proven. There are countless reasons why we sucked out of the gate. We've sucked in April before and gone on to have good to great seasons. Who know why that didn't happen this year. My guess is there are over a dozen reasons all lined up against us, this year.

No, I didn't see the fire and desire, but I'm not about to blame it on Bogey getting 4 less ABs in spring, or that a lot of players getting 4-10 less ABs of 4-10 less IP as the big attitude changer. Maybe, and I stress the word maybe, it played a very small, and I stress the word very, role in the lack of fire & desire. That's my opinion, and you guys can go to town with yours, but it's all total speculation by all of us.

...and Workman and Barnes.

This plan will likely put us over the $40M line, assuming we get a decent SP'er, RP'r and pay JBJ $10-11M. Maybe we can stay just under to avoid the penalties in the draft slots.

I'm not sure anyone else will offer him 10-12 years, and I know the risk of these long term deals, but going longer than anyone else may help us keep him and lower the AVV.

Did the extra rest Moreland got cause the injury?

I'd go $300M/10- maybe a little more, if we can lower the AVV- like $320M/12.

Yes, the attitudes changed because Bogey got 4 less ABs, and the whole team saw that it was a kick-back season. This stuff cracks me up. The reaching for any excuse is laughable.

Because we will be adding multiple year FA contracts to get good ones, drafting low and having restricted IFA pools for 2 more years. each draft affects more than just one year into the future, especially when you draft HS players often. We won't get a good closer on a 1-2 year deal.

My worry is that by putting it off 2 years, we may hurt the farm for 3-5 years. If each year we wait we add 2-3 years to the rebuild, is it worth it? (Not saying the math is correct, just a hypothetical.)

It's all that extra weight on his body type.

You said it in a lot less words than I ever did.

I can see this. I do think he had hope we wouldn't be the worst farm after 3 years.

He saw the writing late, then, because he wouldn't have extended Sale had he known we'd reset after 2019.

I can certainly see this position as having a lot of merit, but to keep Betts, we're talking putting off the reset until 2022. That's not unreasonable, but my guess is our farm will still be #30 by then, and we'll have a lot of other players leaving for the reset-- ERod, Workman, Barnes, JD...

I just turned 60, and I'm getting myself in the best shape I've been in about 15 years. I like the idea of being strong 3-8 years from now.I happen to think that the more we try to "win now" by spending and spending, the harder it will be to rebuild the farm, and to me, the farm is the best way to insure long term success, either by keeping some or trading some, when needed most. If Henry wants to spend 20-200% more than all other teams from here to eternity, that would certainly help us win more, and I'm not against that, but tehre are many ways to insure near constant success, and it's my opinion that having a decent farm is the best way. Just saying Henry can spend more and we will "sow the fields again" is easy. Doing it is hard. 3 years ago, I heard many posters saying we'd "build the farm back up" just like the old days. Well, 3 years have gone by and our farm has gotten even worse than before NOT better, let alone "rebuilt" to a decent standard. We have 2 or 3 guys, mostly 2-3 years away that may turn out very nice. The rest look like role players, at best. We will likely draft around 15th next spring and have a limited IFA pool, again. Great prospects don't fall down the draft board anymore due to signability issues. We haven't proven we can draft well with lower picks swince maybe the Betts draft. That was a long time ago, and until we prove we've improved our talent evaluation personnel, I'm thinking our farm will stay near #30 for a few more years.

The problem is, with the new rules in place for a few years, "sowing the filed" is way more difficult when your team is winning 3 years in a row and spending way over the tax line. Penalties, draft slots and limited IFA money all add up to us having the 30th ranked farm woth little hope in changing that by much, if we keep winning and spending.

7-10 less ABs by 3 guys (who are among the team leaders in OPS) is supposed to be a significant reason we sucked in April, and it carrier over all year. The IP variance is almost as meager.

I don't think the choices were to trade every notable prospect, except Devers & Beni or trade none. I'm not sure there's a single poster here that said trade none, yet we keep hearing (not from you) that anyone critical of all the trades wanted to "hoard" all the prospects. I don't even think it was Ben's long term plan to hoard them forever- but to strike a balance. Maybe saying he "destroyed the farm" is a little harsh, but we were ranked #1 by one service and between 3 and 6 by several others- now we are 30th by just about every service. What would you call that? We all knew we'd pay to some extent for trading so many prospects. I'm super glad he kept Devers & Beni, but to some varying degree in opinions, we all know we sacrificed some to a lot of the future to open a 3-5 year window of championship caliber teams.

To me, if I had to guess, I'd say it was more Cora's idea than DD's. DD was canned for other reasons, IMO, including leaving almost nothing in the farm and the way he was dealing with ownership and others in the organization not restgate.

Also, I don't draw a different conclusion on all this. I draw no conclusions. It very well might have made a difference. It very well might not have. The conclusions are total conjecture. Not that I've never used conjecture, but I just find this whole subject pointless. We had reasons to give these guys a tiny bit more rest in ST'ing. We started off slow and had several other slow points in the season despite the extra rest that should have helped us later. It didn't work out that way. Blame it on restgate, if you wish, but I think there were many factors involved in the huge drop off, and restgate seems like a 50-50 call to me.

It's obvious I was saying the conclusions are conjecture, and for you to pretend otherwise is very telling. FYI ABs 2018>2019 52 >42 Betts 50 >52 Devers 47 >43 Bogey 47 >40 JD 46 >47 Beni 46 >43 JBJ 45 >32 Moreland 39 >39 Holt 38 >38 Vaz 4 of these 9 players had the same or more ABs in 2019 STing. The ones that did not had these less: 10 Betts 7 JD 7 Moreland 4 Bogey 3 JBJ If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were joking to think these minor variances had such a major impact.

Of course losing sucks. This season sucked in many ways, but I still enjoyed watching all the games (well, most). I plan on living a few more decades. I'm in for the long haul. I happen to think we might not be too bad next year without signing a single FA. If we reset, we'll be better positioned for the next 2-3 years, at least. If we get two years in a row with draft picks between 10-20, instead of 27-30 or 40+ with the penalties, we can better position ourselves in years 3-8 from now. One down year should help us be better for many more years afterwards. I know you believe the answer is always just have Henry spend more and more, and that would be great in many ways. If that happens, then yes, we can stay godo to very good for a longer window, but I happen to believe Henry does not want to be thought of as the modern George Steinbrenner or to continuously outspend most teams by 100-200% and other top spending teams by $20-50M every year. More power to him and us, if he does, but I'd feel like a hypocrite for all the crap I heaped on Yankee fans for decades only to watch us become the target of that same crap. I'm not saying go frugal. Staying $1M under the luxury tax may still make us the 3rd or 4th highest paid team in 2020 is not poverty. Resetting the tax and then asking Henry to go over the line in 2021 and beyond makes much more sense when the taxes are way less due to the reset. My position is based on the belief that I don't think Henry will stay over the limit forever, and to me, it makes more sense to reset in 2020, so we can spend and keep Betts in 2021 and others afterwards.

I agree, and although there is some truth to body type & aging theories, there are plenty of players his size that had some great late careers. These numbers seem to indicate he's trending better not worse: LD%: 16.8% in 2017 21.2% in 2018 24.0% in 2019 Soft Hit% 18.2% in '17 12.2% in '18 11.6% in '19 I'm not sure why his UZR/150 dropped: 20.9 in '16 19.0 in '15 21.0 in '18 12.8 in '19 and if this continues, it may be very hard to reach a 9 or 10 WAR again, but I've know some players who improve on defense as they age. It wouldn't surprise me to see him back neat 20 over the next few years. He's averaged an 8.4 bWAR (7.6 FWAR) over the last 4 years.