moonslav59

A Price opt-out would be a game-changer. I'm not super high on Bogey, but he still won't be easily replaced. (Chatham?) Losing JBJ would hurt very badly.

Last year of team control: 2017: Nunez A Reed Moreland Young Abad Boyer Fister (A Craig comes off the books.) My guess is we sign or trade for a big bat 1Bman and try to fill all our other needs from within the system: FA for Moreland Devers for Pablo Hernandez (Lin/Marrero) for Nunez Holt (Brentz/Barfield) for Young CSmith for A Reed Thornburg for Abad Several choices for Boyer & Fister We may sign another lower level FA or two or wait for the deadline to make adjustments, if needed. 2018: Kimbrel Pomeranz Kelly R Ross HRam (2019 if his options vests) It gets more difficult here. This could be the second year going over the luxury tax, and arb costs could be sky-rocketing. My guess is, assuming no big injuries or surprises, we'll try to keep Pom and Kimbrel (or other pitchers at their current level). We may need to replace Kelly and Ross from within. If we can replace HRam with Chavis or some other in-house player, we'll be fine heading into 2019. We may need to sign another big bat, if Travis, Chavis or no other prospect steps up. 2019: C Sale Bogaerts Porcello Thornburg B Holt Rutledge (Pablo comes off the books) It's hard to project this far away, but clearly our work is cut out for us this winter here. Pablo's money coming off the books can help some. We'll have to keep Sale of find another ace. That won't be cheap. We may say good bye to Bogey, which would probably help allow us to keep Betts & Bradley the following year. 2020: Betts JBJ Wright C Smith Vazquez Leon (Castillo comes off the books- not luxury tax books) The so-called "cliff year" may actually be 2021 2021: ERod Pedroia Barnes Hembree Swihart Elias 2022: Price TBD: Beni Devers Hernandez Travis Lin Marrero Workman Scott Taylor Johnson Maddox Martin Velazquez N Ramirez H Owens

It's been fun watching the Sox lately, and hopefully our rotation will get healthy and back in the groove come playoff time.

Cashman has been nothing short of brilliant of late. Much of his success has been in acquiring top prospects with no value except speculative. Hmmmm.....

If the Sox can't afford to pay market rate for a younger-than-normal FA stud, then who can? Our problem is we have too many becoming FAs within a 2 year span. We should be able to keep 2 or 3 out of our big 4 (Betts, Sale, JBJ & Bogey) but probably not all 4.

Well said. The word "cliff" might be hyperbole, but we don't have to go back too far to see a recent "cliff". We finished last in 3 of 4 years. How was our farm from 2007-2010 or 2008-2011? Why was our farm so weak? Could it have been years of getting draft picks in the mid to late 20's? The turn around of our farm under Theo's last years and Ben's years were fueled by comp picks, international signings and drafting "unsignable" players lower in the draft. The comp picks and free spending on international FAs are gone. Our draft picks should be mid 20's for the next 2-3 years. To me, it's bit more than "uncertainty" but maybe a bit less than a "cliff".

Gray pitched pretty well. It was more "splashy", but it was also a great trade (IMO).

We will need a 1B/DH next year and another one after HRam bolts.

They must be Buttah!

Unless we'll need Nunez at 2B or SS, I think Nunez at DH negates the need for Travis, although one could argue for a Moreland-Travis platoon at 1B. I agree with you. Boost the D by calling up Marrero or Lin. If we do need Nunez at 2B or SS, then maybe using Brentz or Barfield, or even Chavis at DH might be a better call than improving our bench IF defense.

He certainly looks ML ready with the bat, and since he's being moved to 1B, he may be used as a DH in September. In the past, the Sox have promoted players to the bigs on just 10 games at their new position. I'm not sure they'd try that with Chavis at 1B. DH seems safer.

Go for the big sweep. Put some distance between us and the Yanks (and others).

Moreland at 1B: he's heating up. Nunez at DH. No or little rest for Bogey, and Pedey better get well quickly. Calling up Lin or Marrero makes sense, if HRam goes on the DL, but maybe giving Brentz a look would work out better. Another option might be calling up Travis or Barfield.

The Sox can go over the limit by just under $20M and not incur extreme non monetary penalties. Even with the tax up pretty high by 2020 and 2021, if Henry gives the okay to spend big, we could possibly fill a big hole or two with successful FA signings AND successfully fill another hole or two with some maturing prospects that work out better than lower picks normally do. It's not impossible. We could be pretty good in 2020 and 2021, but IMO, it will be very difficult to remain highly competitive those years and probably 2022 as well. Those years are far away. It's hard to know anything for sure even about 2018 and 2019 let alone several years afterwards, but DD will have his work cut out for him come 2020.

HRam not only need 1050 PAs in 201702018 combined, he also needs to pass the team physical. With his constant shoulder issues, they might already know they have the goods on him to send him packing. If they don't then you are right. We'll need to figure out how to limit HRam's PAs next year.

Mitch Freakin' Moreland

I really didn't mean it as "calling you out." I honestly didn't know what you were trying to say.

Although I disagreed with Ben's signing of Pablo, there was a rationale behind improving the offense before 2015 and going for pitching with the big FA class of SP'ers before 2016.

Jay Bruce passed through revocable waivers. I guess we didn't want him all along.

What makes you think Bogey doesn't "care about us", and what does that actually mean? (BTW, I have said over and over that Bogey would be the one "killer B" I'd let go, if I had to choose one.)

I think the hope was that our power house rotation would carry the loss on offense. Right now, we're 9th in runs scored, but we're just 1 run behind 8th place CLE. We may get to 7th (12 runs behind TEX), but it might be hard finishing above 7th. We're 25 runs behind 6th place AZ, 28 behind LAD and 41 behind 4th place NYY.

We scored about a hundred more runs than any other AL team last year. I projected we'd be top 3 or 4 this year without Papi but with a full season from Beni and likely an overall growth from other young players. Finishing 3rd or 4th in MLB last year would have meant we'd have scored 100 or so runs less. We scored 878 runs last year. Minus 100 and we're at about 778. We're on pace for 772 this year. We're not that far off, but it seems like our offense is worse than I expected. If we keep up this hot streak we may end up well within 100 runs from last year. Maybe the league average has risen, so that's why we look worse than expected.

Our catchers have been extremely streaky at the plate this year and in recent years. Many (including myself) felt there was no way Leon could repeat 2016, but there was also little chance Vaz couldn't outhit the 2016 Vaz, Hanigan and Holaday. 2017 catcher OPS: .700 2016 catcher OPS: .665

You claimed I hold the position we have no chance of competing after 2020. That is a constructed position I do not hold and have never stated. Pure "strawman". I do think the odds are strong that DD's recent deals will significantly and adversely affect our extended future (2020 or 2021 and beyond). I have never stated I think we will finish in last place starting in 2020 or 2021, so I have never espoused the "worse case scenario" is most probable. I do think DD has sacrificed a significant part of the future for the present. I'm actually surprised so many here seem to feel our future will be unaffected or at least not significantly seeing us as having a much more difficult task keeping us highly competitive once "the window" closes. I have said it may not end up being a "cliff", but IMO, I think the odds are we will not be highly competitive in 2021 in large part because of the recent deals made by DD. The sheer magnitude of trading away so many good to great prospects just about has to have an adverse affect on the extended future. While it is possible every prospect we traded will suck, I doubt it. We've had a pretty good success rate with our prospects. The other factor is the changing rules with signing FAs and higher penalties for going over the luxury limit, which could possibly include penalties like dropping our draft pick 10 slots or being shut out from signing international FAs for a year. The fact is, it is tougher to build up a farm by having more money. One might look at the changing environment and think it would have been a good time to keep our strong farm to improve our extended future chances at staying highly competitive through the next 6 or 7 years. I was not one to think like that. I wanted to trade some of our prospects in deals like the Sale one or a hypothetical Quintana deal (with 4 years of control). I do think DD went too far and traded too many prospects. You don't. I love the debate. I just don't concoct opinions you don't hold along the way to make my points.