moonslav59

Nice breakdown. It should be mentioned that several Brez additions were made possible by trading Bloom prospects and players- many with very high trade value.

I have confidence in Crochet, Chapman and Whitlock. Although Gio and Bello have had very nice seasons and might have better numbers that who they might face, I worry most about them. However, my number one concern is the offense. You can't lose Devers, and .820 career OPS 1Bman and then a guy like Anthony and not be worried. We've already seen our preseason back-up catcher win the FT job. We've seen platoon guys like Romy and Ref starting vs RHPs, more and more. We've seen Yoshida go from the forgotten and banished DH to our late September hot bat. We've seen the highly missing in action Trevor Story lead the team in HRs and RBI. We've seen our CF, hovering near .700 all season find a way to lead our team to the playoffs with huge hits and spectacular defense. We've seen the likes of Nate Lowe, Eaton, Sogard or DHam being forced to start- sometimes 2 or 3 of them at a time. With Abreu back, that should not happen as much, but still... Our offense is the biggest concern.

There will be an all AL East bracket to the AL side of the playoffs: #5 BOS at #4 NYY for 3 games in NY. The winner plays TOR in a 5 game series w TOR getting home field advantage. The winner faces the other half of the bracket that includes #2 SEA facing the winner of DET v CLE. It seems a bit rough on the AL East, when the #1, #2 and #4 best records are all from the ALE, and only one can advance to the ALCS. SEA has the 3rd best record and gets for face the weakest 2 teams by records in the playoffs winner. The ALE also has the #10 and #12 teams in the AL and the other two divisions have the 3 worst teams in the AL and 9 or the worst 11 teams in the AL.

How about CLE making the playoffs with a walk off HBP? HOU was eliminated by that pitch and the CLE win. CLE-DET play their games for the DIV win or WC, tomorrow. From MLB.com... The Blue Jays can clinch the AL East with a win over the Rays OR a Yankees loss to the Orioles. The Guardians can clinch the AL Central with a win over the Rangers OR a Tigers loss to the Red Sox. The Reds can clinch an NL Wild Card spot with a win over the Brewers OR a Mets loss to the Marlins. The Yankees can clinch the AL East with a win AND a Blue Jays loss. The Tigers can clinch the AL Central with a win AND a Guardians loss. The Mets can clinch an NL Wild Card spot with a win AND a Reds loss.

True, but DHam sucks at SS, too. Romero might be better at 3B than DHam.

My prediction: Rafaela or Narvaez homer, this inning.

Once again, this rag-tag pen came through.

When Murphy walks a guy, the pitches aren't even close. He should be past the shaking off the rust phase, but his BB/9 is about two higher than his rookie year (3.2.)

I still think we coulda-shoulda, but not knowing the asking prices makes it hard to make have a clear position, for me. The Matz trade worked: the May trade did not. The Lowe pick-up worked. The call-ups (Early, Eaton, Sogard and others) and returning injured players (Slaten, Yoshida and others) have helped, too.

Only 3 Sox batter have enough PAs to qualify for awards. That is part of it. Bregman has 18 and would project to 25+ with 650 PAs. Abreu would project to 30+. Ref too. Narvaez over 20. Romy & Anthony would be about 17. We do hit a ton of XBHs, and an XBH% of over 9% is pretty good: 10%: Romy, Ref, Duran, Mayer, Abreu & Narvaez 9%: Bregman, Rafaela, Anthony 8%: Story League average is 7.7% The league average ISO is .162. Sox are at... .227 Abreu .219 Ref .189 Bregman .185 Duran .180 Narvaez .178 Romy .173 Mayer .171 Anthony & Story .165 Rafaela

No. but he did let them up, right after I praised him. His 2025 regular season ERA is 2.33.

Why did I jinx him?

And Rafaela to RF, too.

My glasses may be a shade of pink, but I'm sold on Early.

Sadly, I see casas as our 1Bman for 2026, too. Lowe will cost too much to keep, and I'm not sure they trust Romy/Campbell enough to take over 1B. It makes a lot of sense to have Casas be our DH until his control years run out. I have total confidence he can be an .800+ hitter and maybe even .850+. Being the DH would also lessen the chance of further injuries, and yes, I know his last injury was from just swinging the bat. The problem with that choice is what to do with Yoshida. Parking an $18M DH in AAA makes little sense. Trading Yoshida seems impossible, but maybe if he becomes a WS MVP, someone will want him. Yoshida, Mullins and cash for Murphy would be great. Duran for Marte would solve a lot of issues and free up the OF logjam. I'm not sure I trade Jh Garcia, if we also trade Duran. I guess is Ref returns for one more year, okay. I'm ready to let Abreu try FT play. I'm okay with Romy going FT, but I hesitate to anoint him my FT 2Bman, 1Bman or 150 game 1B/2B combined. I'd love to hand 150 games to Mayer, but we need a plan B, so how do we do that?

I'm pretty sure that you said he should be fired for the lack of moves at the deadline with no qualifiers attached. Maybe I'm wrong.

We also have a day off on Monday, so maybe some who get today off will play tomorrow. My guess is Wong starts tomorrow, so Narvaez gets 2 off in a row.

and Justin Wilson along with other pitchers.

Casas or Yoshida at DH? Which OF'er gets traded? Here is my list of who they will trade by probability: 40% Duran 35% Abreu 15% Rafaela 5% Jh Garcia 5% nobody If Ref returns, the odds go up for Rafaela and Jh Garcia being traded by 2.5% each. with nobody going to 0%.

I agree and have several times. I was not such a big cheerleader on getting a big bat like Suarez,but I did want an upgrade at 1B. He ended up getting Lowe, later on, and he's done okay by me. Matz has done better than the Luis Garcia's, Lucas Sims and others from past deadlines, but Dustin May was a "flop." We may have lucked out with decent showings by Early, Harrison and the one good start by Tolle.I'm not sure why you mention this so often. I don't think anyone thinks Brez did enough at the deadline, and since we don't know what deals we could have made, specifically, I find it hard to call for his firing based on unknown failed deals. Just my take. BTW, my deadline take was we should have gone all out for Ryan, and I realize he would not have helped like I thought he would, so who am I to say Brez should be fired. Matz and Lowe have done more than Ryan would have, so as much as I think he underperformed, he did better than I would have. SEA gave up a lot for Suarez. They gave up a lot for Naylor, too. We gave up nothing for Lowe.

Exactly. They just took it to another level. The trashcan was just how they delivered the stolen sign. Almost every team stole signs and communicated them to the batter in some way. The Sox were even caught doing it and punished for it. How many of us have never cheated at anything in their lives? Cora paid a price- maybe a bigger price else. I'm over it.

That hit was pretty high up on the wall, but maybe Ceddanne gets back there more quickly and can time his jump better. Not sure if he could jump higher.

Agreed, but if he has a bad game, tonight, does that mean Harrison gets the 4th starter slot, when and if it arises? I'm kinda thinking these next starts might have as much to do with 2026 as the playoffs.

Great points. Here's a great what if.... Does Rafaela catch that Rafaela triple that won the game?

A big part of the success of this team came from our "secondary players." I guess when your team lacks a top starpower batter, you kind of have to rely on a team effort, but I feel like it went beyond even that. All year, I pointed out how our 5-9 batters outperformed all other teams in OPS by slots, but what makes that more remarkable is that we did it with so many back-ups. Remember, Narvaez was Wong's back-up, and he won the FT job. Campbell started the season as our 2Bman, and we morphed into DHam, Mayer, Romy and a few others. Mayer also covered for Bregman, when he went down. Eaton played some there, after Mayer went down. Casas went down in early May and we cycled through Toro & Romy before adding Lowe. Romy and Ref hit vs RHPs more than planned. Now, Yoshida has formly won back his DH position after missing about 4 months. A lot of moving parts over the season. 4 different catchers is not out of the norm, but our back-up has 2/3 of the innings. 6 different 1Bmen with 5 over 94 innings. 2B was once again a merry-g-round with 6 guys over 56 innings and 4 over 165, including our GG CF'er playing 2B too often. 7 players at 3B, with 4 over 60 innings. Amazingly, the SS position was the most one-sided with Story gtiing 1365 of the 1430 innings at SS. (DHam had 60 and nobody else more than 3.) The OF saw a lot of shuffling and Rafaela used at 2B, a lot, but we did see 3 guys with 800+ innings in the OF (1337 Duran, 1149 Rafaela & 829 Abreu, who was hurt.) Anthony had 442 and DH'd some. Ref has 256 and was hurt for a while. Eaton had 134, KC 69 and Masa 32. The PASSWORD had 25 and Sogard 17. Hats off to a pretty decent defense that improved greatly as the year went on. Despite 21 errors at SS, it was nice to see Story make so many great plays there. The Sox are T for 9th in team DRS but are just 2 away from 7th. They are also 9th in team OAA, so I think it's pretty safe to say, we willed ourselves into a top 10 defense, after being horrible for several years beforehand. Traditionalists will point to the .980 last place Flg % and neglect the value of making plays nobody else makes (or very few do,) but so be it. .985 is 20th and .987 is 10th, so just .002 separates a top 10 from bottom 10 team. Good job by Brez fixing the defense, which I'm sure helped our pitchers look better.