moonslav59

I get your point with both Evans and Youk, but I just think too many people recognized their great talent and they got credit for it. True, they were often overshadowed by more glitzy or short term WOW players, but they were praised a lot. Evans player fantastic defense for decades, and hit better and better as he aged. Youk had 6 straight seasons over .373 OBP and 7 straight over an .800 OPS. He fell fast and hard. That sucked.

And we didn't even include his last 4 playoff series, where he had a WHIP above 1.70 in 3 of them. 12.2 IP 9 BB 3 HBP 9 Hits (2 HRs) 8 ERs If you added this to his 3 regular season numbers, he barely top 5.

If you give Betts 10 years now by buying out his arb years, maybe he takes it. Even if you wait until age 29, I think you can pretty much count on 5-6 very good to excellent years, 2-3 good ones and maybe 2-3 decent ones. He seems to have the kind of swing and quick reflexes that age well.

I think he got a lot of cred when he played, so I left the Greek God of Walks off my list.

Roger Moret had tremendous talent. He went 13-2 and 14-3 in 2 of his 6 seasons with the Sox. He ended up going into a catatonic state sitting in front of his locker one day. https://www.lavidabaseball.com/remembering-rogelio-moret/ Nick Esasky exploded in one season with the Sox: 30 HRs and 108 RBIs in 1989. He became a FA and signed with the Braves, but he only played in nine games for the Braves, as his career was cut short by an ear infection which caused vertigo.

I had Bernie & Buckner in my top 10. Here's my rankings: 1. Bernie Carbo 2. Roger Moret 3. Bill Buckner 4. Oil Can Boyd 5, Daniel Nava 6.. Nick Esasky 7. Carlos Quintana 8. Orlando Cabrera 9. DMac 10. Kevin Millar Others: Tom Brunansky, Bill Hall, Koji Uehara (did get some acclaim), Nathan Eovaldi

I usually avoid the game treads for all the reasons you mentioned, but I did get caught up in the Kimbrel rage a bit. The guy has had a WHIP over 1.70 in 3 of his last 4 playoff series. Too scary for my liking, but I know it is a small sample size, and I would not expect him to continue like that going forward.

Thanks. I think we may be close to as good next year, even without Kimbrel. We will need to go almost totally injury-free, which is not likely, but maybe some of the injuries we have this year might be offset by these players playing more than 2018: Pedroia Sale Devers ERod Wright Moreland Vazquez Pearce & Brasier for a full year Even Bogey, Betts and others missed time or played hurt. Vaz and Leon almost have to get better. I see Devers getting better. Maybe JBJ has a full consistent year. Hardly anybody is so old, you can expect age regression.

His 2016 and 2018 seasons were unlike 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017. He had his highest WHIP in 2016. It's understandable that one could view that year as not "very good" when compared to his other years. (I think he was the highest paid closer in 2016- that changed quickly afterwards.) His highest BB/9 before 2016 was 3.8 in 2014. In 4 of his last 7 years it has been under 3.3. It was 5.1 in 2016 and 4.7 in 2018. In no way is that even close to "very good." Now, I get that's not all that closing is about but walking half a better per inning is an issue for any closer, no matter how well you do with the others. Like I have said, he was a top 5 closer for us. He helped us a lot. He was a "very good" closer every year, but he wasn't as great as he was prior to coming to Boston, except for 2017. He declined and likely will continue to do so. Replacing him will not be easy, and we may very well lose a few games by not finding someone as good, but we may lose more by not replacing Eovaldi and Kelly.

Good points, and there's a good chance replacing Kimbrel with Kimbrel will end up not being close to what we had for the last 3 years.

Exactly. The guy was very good, too. The Sox had a pretty long history of letting big stars do what they want but shut down lesser players on lesser wants and needs.

If we didn't have Price's contract on the books, it might be a lot easier to commit $300M to Betts, but it is what it is. It's a tough call, and I think we can try to get a little creative on ways to lessen the AVV for tax purposes, but to me, he's worth the big contract.

Exactly. Just because Kimbrel has arguably been the best MLB closer for the last 5-6 years combined, doesn't mean he will continue to be even a top 5 closer in just the first year of his expected 4-5 year deal, let alone years 2 to 5. Kimbrel did some great things for us, and it will hurt losing him, but he had already shown signs of decline over recent years, particularly 2016 and 2018. His main area of concern is control. He's still been striking out batters as much as ever, but look at these BB/9 numbers... 3.4 with ATL (5 yrs) 3.3 with SD (1 yr) 5.1 in 2016 1.8 in 2017 4.5 in 2018 Thankfully, his hits per 9 went down, but his HR/9 has inched up steadily for 2 straight seasons. I'd love to have Kimbrel back, but paying him top closer money for 4-5 years, when he's not the top closer anymore and will likely only get worse does not seem like a good choice. Kimbrel 2011-2015: #1 in RP'er WAR at 12.5 T#4 in ERA- at 46 #3 in WHIP at 0.91 (behind Uehara & W Davis) 2016-2018 T#4 in WAR 6.0 (with Betances) #11 in ERA- at 55 T#6 in WHIP at 0.91 Don't get me wrong, those numbers with the Sox are fantastic! However, he was barely a top 5 closer as compared to being the best before.

That is what happened. Plus, I literally busted my gut over the guy. (I have a laparoscopic hernia operation scheduled Dec 18th.)

Yes, some changed quite a bit. All in all, the totals are not that far apart.

Maybe something like $250M for the first 10 and $1M a year for the next 50 years. Henry won't be the owner by then, so it's not his money.

Johnson's okay and Wright is fine, if healthy (like hardly ever), but so many teams have better depth, especially in AAA.

I remember Manny being the ultimate "team player" and sitting out the last game to allow Mueller to win it.

Here are some names to ponder... Roger Moret Bernie Carbo Bill "Soup" Campbell Dick Drago Bob Watson Tom Burgmeier Oil Can Boyd Mike Easler Bill Buckner Ellis Burks Nick Esasky Carlos Quintana Danny Darwin Tim Naehring Troy O'Leary Reggie Jefferson Brian Daubech Rich "El Guapo" Garces Dante Bichete Kevin Millar Orlando Cabrera Scott Williamson Bill Hall DMac Cody Ross Scott Atchison Mike Carp Daniel Nava Koji Uehara Steve Pearce Nathan Eovaldi My top 10 in RED

Sox management could be such pricks back in those days.

Yes, counting the posting fee ($51M) for Dice-K and the 100% tax on Moncada ($31M) it was a whopper! We did save some market value on Sale's contract, but that pales against the total cost of those 3.

Hard to tell. We saved untold millions with the Dodger dump trade, and we won a 2013 ring with some of the money spent, but the rest was largely wasted. Maybe we can offer him a $300M over 60 years, so the AVV would just be $5M. (LOL)

Daniel Nava?

I'd guess we have one of the worst.

He's really missed in the area Theo and Ben did very well in- the international free agent market. Doubront Dice-K Okajima Tazawa Iggy Montas Bogey J Aro Lin Margot Espinoza Moncada Devers D Hernandez (5th ranked now) Guerra, Dubon, the Basabes and others used in trades to get key pieces. Now, DD inherited a season of being banned from signings, but he's still had two years and only has Hector Velazquez to show for it. True, The Flores death was horrible, and there are some promising, and mostly very young, prospects with the jury still out, but according to soxprospects.com, these are our top int'l prospects: 7) B Mata 19 8) A Flores 18 14) Danny Diaz 17 20) G Jimenez 18 Like I said, some promise, but it's a long way away, and a big gap between Devers and the next one. This is an example of how much harder the system has gotten, and why I don't think it will be as easy as some seem to think it will be to quickly rebuild the farm while we keep winning and spending large every year. It has been our savior for nearly a decade.