moonslav59

Every year some free agent "dumpster dive" turns into a "bargain". I don't see Fister doing much better than he did this year, but I guess he could.

If they walk him on the Sox, it will lead to runs. If they pitch to him instead, he might hit 40HRs and have a .250 BA. I'm just not seeing how a guy who forces pitchers to walk him out of fear for the long ball can be all that bad.

If Nunez needs time to recover, he's not a good choice to take Pedey's spot on opening day. I'm not sure anyone knows what his knee will be like by April.

I'm not sure anyone's ever done a study on the subject, but my guess is Japanese players have close to the same success-fail rate as the norm. It might be easier to evaluate their players vs high school, Cuban or small college players. Several have many years under their belt before coming here.

I like Dyson, but it looks like Brentz will be getting a hard look at 4th OF'er.

In 2014 and 2015, when Duda was not hitting Hrs, he was getting on base. 2 straight years at .349 or above. That was very significant and helpful to the team. You may choose to put him in a box by calling him just a Hr hitter and nothing else due to his low BA, but he walks a lot. Besides, his BA is not much lower than other options out there this winter . His lower OBP (.322) this year is concerning, and certainly he could not do well for us, but looking at Hosmer, Morrison, Moreland and even Santana, there's not much difference on everything, except power, where Duda blows them all away. BTW, Duda's 2015 season could be viewed as his career year- better OBP & SLG, but putting 2 years like that together and following them up with a .818 with 30 HR season this year is pretty darn impressive. The .338 four year OBP is a big plus. If it wasn't for his September slump this year, he'd have had 3 full seasons over a .342 OBP. He's not a one trick pony. We need power. We don't have much money to spend. We need to avoid long term contracts. I'm not convinced Duda is the answer, but we should consider him, especially if we spend large on a non 1Bman like JD or GS.

Dave Cameron created two lists: FA Bargains: Santana L Cain T Hunter J Dyson D Fister FA Landmines (avoid): Hosmer Holland Lynn Nunez Cashner

Wasn't Nunez going to have off season knee surgery? I haven't heard anything.

We could have stayed under had we not kept Abad and Holt, not signed Moreland and not traded for Nunez, Reed and Davis.

We need power. Duda represents a big upgrade over Moreland in that area and is surprisingly better or close in many other areas. 4 years (2014-2017): 42 qualifying 1Bmen (Note: these are not small sample sizes) Power ISO & SLG% .242/.480 Duda (Better ISO than Rizzo, Goldschmidt, Votto & others) .199/.445 Santana (22nd in ISO) .196/.438 Morrison (24th in ISO) .187/.438 Moreland (29th in ISO) .160/.449 Hosmer (38th in ISO) (Duda places 9th in 1B SLG%, Hosmer 23rd, Santana 27th, Moreland & Morrison 31st) Getting on base and hitting (OBP/BA) .363/.246 Santana (8th in 1B OBP) .350/.289 Hosmer (12th) .338/.238 Duda (17th out of 42) .324/.242 Morrison .316/.252 Moreland (Only Hosmer has a significantly better BA than Duda.) Overall Hitting OPS/wRC+ .818/124 Duda (12th out of 42) .808/120 Santana .799/116 Hosmer .762/109 Morrison .755/98 Moreland (Duda is light years better than Moreland on offense & power) Base running (Not something I look for at 1B) UBR 1.9 Santana (5th) -2.8 Hosmer (13th) -4.3 Morrison (19th) -5.5 Duda (23rd out of 42- about in the middle) -7.4 Moreland (30th and worse than Duda) Defense: UZR/150 & DRS (43 players with 1000+ innings) 6.4/19 Moreland (2nd in UZR/150 & 5th in DRS) 3.5/2 Santana (7th/22nd) 0.1/8 Duda (23rd in UZR/150 but 12th in DRS) -1.3/-10 Morrison (27th/37th) -1.9/-9 Hosmer (30th/36th) I know that numbers and data don't show everything, and there's more to baseball than numbers, but these numbers don't lie. The fact that these numbers show Duda is better than just about every available FA 1Bman, but will cost way less and get way less years, makes him worthy of serious consideration.

Exactly. Dudaha s much better numbers vs RHPs, so he'd compliment HRam well. At $6M-$8M for one year, he's a good pick. Even at $15M/2, I'd sign him. Now, if we sign a 1Bman like Santana or Hosmer, then signing Duda really squeezes out HRam, so I'm not sure he'd be worth it. My plan of signing Duda makes the most sense, if we sign JD Martinez or trade for Stanton. We'll need to look for cost effective options at 1B/DH. Duda offers a lot of power, decent OBP and a lot less financial commitment.

You asked for more precise data, then called me a whining bitch for doing so. I went beyond 2017. You ignored that. I mentioned how just about every hitter fuels much of his numbers with several short hot streaks. You either choose to not believe that or ignore it. No counter evidence like I provided for "the steady" Mookie. A .338 OBP over the last 4 years is nothing to criticize. He is more than just an HR hitter. He gets on base enough to outweigh the seemingly poor defense (the numbers do not support him being a poor fielder) and his slow base running (which again, are not wildly different than other 1B/DH types.) I'd like to do better than Duda, but if we spend large on JD Martinez or Stanton, then he offers a cheap short term fix at 1B/DH. He adds instant power to a team that sorely needs it. His ISO numbers are top 10 in MLB. JD alone cannot fix out power outage weakness. Other choices like Santana (almost the same BA as Duda over 4 years) and Morrison (worse BA & flash-in-the-pan worries) will cost more and get more years. OK, Duda bunched up his HRs in 2015, but you choose to highlight his low BA (.244) and ignore his .352 OBP. Talk about "convincing yourself" . He's not a one trick pony. A .352 OBP would have led the Sox this year! But, of course, don't let the numbers get in your prejudiced ways. BTW, in 2015, the year you showed how Duda bunched all his HRs and basically called him a one-trick pony, he had an OBP over .366 in 4 of 6 months. His worst OBP month (July) was also his best HR month, so he was doing other things like getting on base like a maniac during times hew as not hitting HRs. June was the only month he had low HRs (1) and a low OBP (.312). Duda also had a .349 OBP in 2014 to offset his .253 BA. His HRs were very well distributed. So, it seems you convinced yourself he bunches up his HRs based on 2015 alone. (HRs by month: 4, 3, 5, 7, 7, 4), Yes, 14 HRs in a 2 month stretch, which is almost half of his HRs, but look at JD Martinez this year:8, 5, 8, 8, 16, which shows 24 of his 45 HRs in a two month period. How about Mookie's 2016 31 HR season? 4, 8, 4, 5, 9, 1? That's 2 months with 17 of his 31 HRs. It's pretty common for hitters to bunch up HRs and hits. Duda bunched up his HRs in one of his last 3 full seasons. If that's all it takes to convince yourself he's too streaky, then there's not much more to say. I won't stoop to your level by calling you names, but a bunch come to my mind. It seems like the more anyone uses data to prove you are wrong, the more you lash out.

MLBTR projected us to sign 3 free agents: JD Martinez $25M x 6 Logan Morrison $12M x 3 Bryan Shaw $7M x 3 These three deals would put us dangerously close to the major penalty luxury tax limit. I think we'd have to shed a little salary to stay under, and we'd have nothing left to spend mid season, if needed.

JD hasn't really been hurt all that much, and I don't think any were the type that are lingering. He was not a FT player until just a few years ago, so the games played numbers look deceiving. If we sign him to DH and just play a little OF, I feel pretty confident he'll stay healthy.

Maybe we sign Butler again to play in AAA.

He's apparently a better defender and is more of an iron man. The 4 year numbers are pretty close: Santana 2681 PAs (2nd among 1Bmen) L Duda 1813 PAs (23rd) Santana .246 103 336 L Duda .238 94 252 Santana .363/.445/.808 L Duda .338/.480/.818 Santana .199 ISO/ 120 wRC+/ 16.4% K rate L Duda .242 ISO/ 124 wRC+/ 24.5% K rate Santana .351 wOBA/ +3.5 UZR/150/ -2 DRS L Duda .350 wOBA/ +0.1 UZR/150/ +8 DRS When healthy, Duda's number compare very closely to Santana's.

Every player in MLB has "brutal" stretches like that. There were only 2. You made it sound like Duda was having slumps every 2-3 weeks that lasted 2-3 weeks every time. I look at his numbers and see that he seems (probably) more consistent than most players with an OPS between .800-.850 in 3 of the last 4 seasons. I also didn't see that many very short bursts of hitting that skewed his numbers-- any more than what is probably normal. I'm not about to go do an week by week OPS analysis. Watching an cumulative OPS go up and down while weighing the sample sizes from early season to late season shows all you need to know. The guy kept a remarkably steady OPS almost the whole year. He slumped at the end and had a few short slumps in the middle, but from ... game 26-39 his OPS was always between .926 and 1.007 game 40-54 from .878 to .930 game 55-69 from .876 to .926 game 70-84 from .879 to .920 game 85-99 from .869-.901 game 100-114 from .850 to .874 game 115- 127 from .818 to .861 He never went below .850 from game 25 to 107. After dipping to .846 after one game, he stayed above .850 for 9 more games. He went from .851 to .818 over the last 10 games of the season. To me, this look like a very steady 2017. 2015 was pretty similar. Game 26-39 .776-.855 (basically a 1 for 18 streak in early May w small sample size) Game 40-54 .836-.974 (.836 up to .947 then down to .898) Game 55-69 .844-.881 (hardly any ups and downs) Game 70-84 .761-.831 (with a 3 for 34 slump) Game 85-99 .754-.799 (hardly any ups and downs) Game 100-114 .797-.837 (heated up to .837 then went 7 for 35 and .813) Game 115-129 .797-.828 (between .797 and .814 until game 115-unreal steady!) Game 130-135 .836-.853 Come on, look at most Sox players this year: they had unreal long slumps with very few hot streaks. 2014 Game 26-39 .719-.808 (early May had 5 for 27 slump) 40-54 .680 to .779 (very steady improvement from game 43 to 54) 55-69 .762 to .794 (no big ups or downs) 70-84 .799 to.841 (stayed steady then had big 3 for 3 game w two 2Bs & BBs) 85-99 .829 to .856 (very steady 15 games) 100-114 .833 to .873 (pretty steady) 115-129 .827 to .856 (very steady) 130-144 .817 to .827 (remarkably steady) 145-153 .817 to .832 (remarkably steady end to the season) From game 70 to 153 he stayed between .817 and .873. He had one 7 games stretch between .856 and .873. The other 76 games, he was between .817 and .855. I'd say the numbers show he has been very steady over his last 3 non-injury seasons. Look at "steady Mookie:" Game 27: .742 Game 32: .924 Game 46: .809 Game 55: .791 Game 64: .866 Game 74: .815 Game 80: .876 Game 89: .827 Game 102: .806 Game 133: .769 Game 153: .803 2016 Game 26 .717 Game 39 .742 (dipped to .696) Game 54 .880 Game 69 .855 Game 84 .866 (dipped to .828) Game 99 .873 Game 114 .914 Game 129 .923 Game 144 .892 Game 158 .897 If I did Bogey's or JBJ's game logs, you'd love Duda.

That's high end for Healy, if not wishful thinking. He wasn't cheap either.

I'm not a huge HRam fan, but he's no Pablo.

I'm hoping we get JD or Stanton, but a big part of me feels you are right. We should avoid these big & long deals. I'm like 51% for big splash right now, but that numbers seems to change from day to day.

I'm not so sure. In the scope of how much he left on the table by coming out now, the difference between what the highest bidder can offer and the next few offers is minuscule.

San Fran might surprise.

They probably would not mention the fact that they are considering a move to 1B for Devers. They may have already decided to wait and see, at least until next winter, thereby making a Mostakas or Frazier signing a nonstarter. That's the route I would project they take, but who knows one way or another. Personally, I'd like to see Devers get a chance to improve to a plus defender at 3B, but it might take at least a year or two. I really like our chances at winning a ring in the next year or two, so part of me is thinking we might be better served with Devers at DH or 1B and a better fielding 3Bman with some power manning 3B for a while. Either way, I'm fine with the choice they make, unless we decide to sign Hosmer to more than 3 years. 1st choice: Trade for Stanton (DH/4th OF)/HRam at 1B/Devers at 3B 2nd choice: Sign JD Martinez (DH/4th OF)/HRam 1B/Devers 3B 3rd choice: Sign Santana (1B)/HRam DH/Devers 3B 4th choice: Sign Moustakas (3B)/HRam & Devers 1B/DH I'd be okay with signing Morrison, but then I'd like to see a secondary deal better than what we have planned, if we do one of the above deals.

I still think left coast teams (combined) have at least an equal shot as the Yanks.

That's assuming no drop offs from Yankee players having career years and no improvements from many Sox players having worse seasons than 2015 & 2016. That being said, I do not think standing pat is a good choice. I'm not sure we need big splashes, but we really could use a significant upgrade at the clean-up slot in our order. I just don't see that coming from anybody already in our system, but I guess it's possible: Devers/HRam/Betts/Beni?