moonslav59

Attendance went down about 100,000 this year, and the ring year, 2018, was down from 2017. (We also missed 2 home games for going to London.) Our attendance in 2012, 2014 and 2015 was nearly identical to 2013. Sox fans will support the team. Most tickets are bought way before the season starts or is half over. I'm not sure fans need to think we have a chance at a ring every year, but they want to see some sort of excitement (offense?) or a decent product, as long as there is a hope we are getting better. Seeing some fresh, young faces may not be all that bad. I'm also not so sure a JBJ-less Sox team will finish 20 out next year. Now, if we trade JD, and some pitchers have surgery, then yes-maybe. I may be different from most fans, but I'd rather see a shorter period of rebuilding, even if it means having an awful 2020 season. I don't want us to suck, but if we make some good trades for some top young talent, my optimism will overpower my dislike for seeing us lose a lot of games in 2020. If it takes 2 years to get back to a top 4-6 team, I'm okay with that, too. I do agree with you on the mediocrity thing. trying to stay mediocre, while rebuilding, might just extend the time it takes to get back to the top.

Well said. I will say, I do not think we should trade guys like Barnes and Beni, who just came off somewhat down years. If Barnes looks good to start 2020, maybe look to get something nice for him in July. Beni is under team control through 2022, so he's different, but I might still look to trade him next summer, if the offer fits our needs. Sell high candidates might be Walden & Taylor (still pre-arb), but I'm fine with keeping both for 2021 and beyond. Stretching out Pedey's deal might be a good idea, but if we want to start spending big after 2020, it might be best to just bite the bullet and get out from under his cost all at once- or renegotiate it after 2020.

Bill Mueller. What a fun guy to watch. (BTW, for those who just love hating on the "selfish" Manny, how about when Manny sat out the final game to make sure his teammate, Mueller, would win the batting title?)

I, for one, am fine with our approach. I may think DD went a bit too far, but he wanted to make sure we had a rock solid ring roster, and he got us there. I'm fine with a couple down years used as collateral. Just get us back to the top again in 3-4 years and keep bring a couple rings a decade and I'll accept anything in between.

For 2 years of control, I'm pretty certain we'd get top 20 or top 10- maybe a top 25 and a top 50.

I agree. If more players learned to use the shifts to their advantage, teams would stop using it against them. I'm not sure that's going to happen anytime soon. Bell is right, though, and as more and more players swing for the fences every AB, their out locations become more predictable.

I'm not sure what to read into anything.

When I saw Price's only 7 IP game was in the middle of April, I thought about how the Sox must not have viewed him as needing to be babied at the start of 2019. Something happened during the season that changed the plan..

None actually happened with our only true closer: Workman, so one could argue we had zero 7 IP from DP, 1 from set-up and 1 from our true closer. None even ended with Barnes.

Done.

The following players are the highest paid contracts in MLB history. How many have rings during those contracts? All over $150M total. Red= Ring Trout, Harper, Stanton, Machado, ARod ('08-'17), Arenado, ARod ('01-'10), Miggy, Pujols, Cano, Votto, Price, Kershaw, Fielder, Scherzer, Greinke, Jeter ('01-'10), Mauer, Heywood, Teixeira, Verlander***, Felix H, Strasburg, Posey, Altuve ('18-'24), CC Sabathia ('09-'15), Chris Davis, Manny, Kemp, Tulo, Tanaka, Lester, AGon, Ellsbury, Miggy ('08-'15). *** Not with team that signed him

They haven't won it all in a long time either, but your point is a good one. If the Dodgers win this year, does that mean it proves some big market moves are needed?

Let me ask you and the board this, assuming we reset. Let's say we keep everyone but JBJ and have no money to spend on anyone else. Do you the think the majority of fans or board members would think we have a "good chance" at making the playoffs with that team? If yes, I'm not sure the chances are all that high. If the answer is yes, wouldn't we be prolonging the "rebuild" and return to greatness by not moving sooner to deal some of our 1-2 year control players to improve the future at the expense of maybe lowering our odds of making the playoffs from 40-50% to maybe 20-25%? Would fans be okay, if they really liked the prospects or young players we got back in trades, knowing it might take 2-5 years for those players to make big impacts? I'm not saying those are the only choices or possibilities, but I do think fans are pretty forgiving when hope is higher.

In theory, it would be great, if we could master such "small market moves," and then make very few "big market moves" only when needed and only in strict moderation and for highly selective players (like Betts).

So, if we traded every single prospect, but it led to a ring, you wouldn't call that one part of the team, the farm, decimated?

In hindsight, we can definitively say we could have won in 2018 without Pom, Thornburg and Reed, but that's not really fair. We could probably add the Kinsler-Buttrey trade and say, we'd still have won. Sale & Kimbrel didn't really do all that much in the playoffs, but without one of them the whole season might have gone differently. I'm thinking, to win in this league, you have to build a roster that looks like "overboard," so you can handle injuries, unexpected down years or under perfromances and just the plain luck involved with the "crap shoot playoffs." I do think DD went to far, but it worked, so I'm fine with what he did. I also realize we now have to pay the consequences for what he did, and I'm not going to sugar coat it. It sucks, but it's worth it. The 2018 ring was wonderful. Sure, I wish the window stayed open another year or two, but it is what it is. It's not the first time I really liked a Sox team and felt they were going to win it all (or had a great chance) but ended up disappointed. It won't be the last. I liked our chances in 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019. I'm okay with not really like our chances much for 2020- not that I won't.

LOL, not much has changed since 9/29/19, in terms of ERod.

Just because he may not have been all that good at one job doesn't mean he can't be good at another job- one he's done before and was promoted from, I might add. Plus, I thought the whole anti-loyalty thing was becoming a stain on the Sox image. Now, we show a tiny bit of loyalty and BAM!

I don't think it is that way at all. And what does ignore mean? Like, if he pays really close attention, it will help him in some way?

...and everybody who did something at the ML level was once a nobody.

For the Sox, I know of seven 7-1-1's: 4/14 Price, Brasier, Barnes (W4-0) Only time Price went 7 or more IP 4/28 Sale, Walden, Hembree (L5-2) 5/10 ERod, Thornburg, Weber (W4-1) 5/17 Porcello, Brasier, Hembree (L 3-1) 6/14 ERod, lakins & Smith (W13-2) 6/17 Porcello, Brewer, Brasier (W2-0) 7/12 ERod, Taylor, Velazquez (W8-1)

I just don't see that trade as helping either team. Plus, there is no such thing as "an ace at most a year away."

Yes, but "today" is all about yesterday when today was tomorrow, which was last year not today. Hope that made your head spin like mine did writing it! What cracks me up is how often we hear how trading prospects in a good thing, because their value is potential and speculative or that none of the guys we have traded have amounted to jack, so far (Moncada excluded), yet some of the same guys, okay, maybe not the same guys, now want to tell us to have faith in our farm rebuilding and how all these fine young prospects are going to lead us away from the mirage of a cliff. It literally cracks me up.

I doubt that's the reason they did not fire Cora, and besides, who knows what the next GM might want?

True, but we did have a stretch with 3 last place finishes if 4 years.