moonslav59

Do you really think it is realistic to believe our farm will rebuild itself? That DD can build the farm up enough to start getting very significant infusions within a year or two? He's been drafting and signing international players for 3 cycles already. The rules have changed since Theo & Ben's days. I'm not entirely blaming him for the state of our farm, but I think my opinion goes beyond "perception" and more towards probabilities and "reality." Thinking the best Sox team ever was going to collapse based on a bad game or two here and there is not the same.

If we just want defense at 3B, assuming in a back-up role, we have Lin. If Nunez can get his knee fixed, he's an upgrade on defense (maybe for late innings).' Devers is our starting 3Bman. I felt that even before the Pearce signing. I agree with Dewey. The wanting defense at 3B was a roundabout way of letting Devers know where he needs to improve. I saw some improvement last year, but he still needs to work on his footwork and arm accuracy. He's got nice reflexes and moves pretty quickly, at times. 3B is not a big concern to me, as I see Devers offense taking a big step up next year, which will more than make up for any slow growth on defense.

Not the same. One is based on reality and probabilities. The other is based on paranoia and emotional instability.

I agree. They may try something mid season (like we did with Kinsler this year), but I doubt we do anything this winter, except leave some wiggle room in the budget fior summer deals.

Another month to the shortest day of the year.

Had a nice feast with family and friends. The football was a bit boring. How many days to truck day?

H a p p y T h a n k s g i v i n g !

Yes, and he showed flashes of greatness in the minors. It looked like he had his BB/9 going in the right direction by 2014 in AA & AAA, but then frazzled. 26 starts 2.94 ERA 9.6 K/9 3.3 BB/9 1.16 WHIP He never came close to those numbers again. BTW, Johnson and Gabbard had some decent numbers, at time.... Johnson 2014 25 starts in A+ and AA 2.63 ERA 0.97 WHIP 8.3 K/9 2.4 BB/9 2015 18 starts in AAA 2.53 ERA 1.10 WHIP 8.4 K/9 3.0 BB/9 Gabbard's only good season in the minors was his 13 starts in AA in 2006 2.57 ERA 1.03 WHIP Career: AAA 4.51 and 1.52 AA 5.11 and 1.50

I get that, and actually made that point in this post, but at the time of the signing, Pedey had not missed much time or played poorly while injured much at all. The length of the contract was a gamble, and it looks like we lost. To me, it's still nothing like the CC and Pablo signings.

All players play through injuries, and Pedey did very well, when playing hurt. Hurray! You were right about Pedey getting hurt at the time of the signing. Good for you.

At the time, I thought it was a good deal for the team. It's hard to arm-chair this one, for me. His contract will hurt the luxury tax the next few years, but at least it's not $22M or more.

Hope is one thing. Expecting is a big leap.

The world is full of pitchers who had brief moments of glory early in their career only to flame out or end with a serious injury. Maybe I'm being a pessimist, but usually I'm accused of being too optimistic. Waiting it out for a larger sample size before getting all gah gah about some pitcher doing well for 2, 7 or 13 games out of the gate is just not my cup of tea, especially when they were never that dominating in the minors. I admit, I fell for Owens. I fell for Espinoza and was pissed we traded him. My high hopes clouded my better judgement, but at least those guys showed serious flashes of brilliance in the minors. Johnson and Gabbard did not do poorly on the farm, but they never did anything to make me think they could be very special. I know we're just talking about Johnson as nothing more than maybe a decent or excellent 5th starter, but I'm choosing to suggest we don't pencil him in as our best bet for the 5 slot. I'm not even so sure about signing Eovaldi or the like and relying on Johnson to be our #6 guy, but certainly we could do worse or much worse like many teams' #6 guy. I like Johnson. It seems like he's gotten over his emotional issues and might be able to improve some more, but I don't think he will continue having a key role with this team, if he can't improve upon his WHIP being over 1.43 all the time.

When we extended Pedey in the middle of 2013, he had virtually no injury history. Now, one could argue he plays the game hard and maybe a bit recklessly, and injuries were bound to happen, but at the time of the signing, Pedey hardly missed any time due to injury, except in 2010 (75 games played) and a tiny amount in 2012. 139 games 2007 ROY 157 games 2008 MVP 154 games 2009 (.819 OPS) 75 in 2010 159 in 2011 (.861) 141 in 2012 (.797) 160 in 2013 (led league in PAs with 724) He's only played in over 135 games once since 2013 (ages 30-34).

I don't disagree, and I know it is not impossible to find talent without glitzy prospects. DD has done a fine job getting us key players like Nunez, Eovaldi and Pearce mid season for scraps, but there is no doubt the key to our recent success is the in house infusion of young stars we drafted and signed internationally. Betts, Bogey, JBJ, Beni, Devers, Barnes and ERod (through a salary dump trade) have been essential to our championship roster construction. To me, it is nearly impossible to construct teams like this without some major youth infusion every couple or three years. We added Beni and Devers not too long ago, and they have been a big help. Who are our next Beni or Devers? I suppose we can hope for 20 more Brasiers, Eovaldis, Pearces and Nunezs, but I'm not sure how realistic that is. Our best hope is that maybe Henry okays spending $250M in 2019 and $270 in 2020 and on and on...

My point was that the trend seems to be to reverse the traditional home park advantage teams used to build upon. The Yanks used to load up on left-handed hitters and pitchers, and we used to load up on big right handed hitters and avoid LHPs like the plague. Teams adjusted to that and started flipping the splits. We now have 4 lefty starters, counting Johnson. The Yanks & Astros are built to hit lefties better than righties. I'm not against signing a lefty, if he's better than the righty option, but all things being equal, a righty fits into our rotation better and matches up with our biggest contenders. Seeing how well a pretty much journeyman big righty, Eovaldi, did for us in the playoffs vs righty-stacked line-ups opened my eyes a little bit. I know the split differentials are not vast, but mixing up your starters, be it lefties with righties, knucklers with fastballs or whatever, IMO, is always a good idea, if possible.

There does seem to be a snake-bitten aspect to our recent picks and international signings. Worst of all was the death of Daniel Flores, the promising young catcher.

It's not a big deal, but expecting us to rebuild the farm with such low picks and low international draft pools is not going to be easy, and eventually we will need some infusion of top youth talent and the low cost they bring to the budget. If we haven't been able to rebuild while having the 12th, 24th and 26th picks in the last 3 drafts, why expect better from #40?

I just watched a documentary on Moon and saw footage of him passing out. They were injecting him with speed in the foot and holding him up as he played on. They couldn't get the needle in, because he kept banging the bass drum. Those were the day, eh?

the last pick of round 1 is 30th. We will pick 40th due to the penalty for going over by $40M. That's 10 below the last pick of the round.

The Yanks' splits moved .065 from 2017. The Astros moved .080. Am I missing something?

10 picks later than last pick.

Wow! Who is next? CC?

It's what The Who used to blow out every concert.

Juan Pena Phil Dumatrait Anastacio Martinez Abe Alvarez Casey Kelly Michael Bowden Craig Hansen Bryce Cox Nick Hagadone Stormy Pimental Anthony Ranaudo Allen Webster Rubby de la Rosa Henry Owens Trey Ball I'm sure I missed some...