moonslav59

A fellow worker of mine was called Anita Humphrey--I need a hump (for) free. Another was, I kid you not, "Harry Butts"--not even "Harold" on the birth certificate! That's worse than A Boy Named Sue.

Yes, and fast forward through commercials. I do that even when I'm at home. I usually try to time it so I'm at real time for the 8th or 9th inning.

He's been a top 10 hitter vs LHPs over the last 2-3 years. This year, he's hitting righties better. Go figure!

I'll watch the games when I get back from Mexico, but it's nice to see so many crooked numbers on the scoreboard!

Beni & probably ERod are both too far away to really project anything- budget wise. You make a good point. I agree on Porcello probably not being re-signed, but he will need to be replaced with someone very good and possibly very very costly. I suppose, if we keep Pom, we can hope for Wright, Johnson and later on Groome to fill his slot for low money, but chances are, we will need to spend big to replace Porcello. We may have to spend pretty big on Pom, if he keeps pitching well this year and next. Losing Pablo & HRam's contracts will help us keep 2 or 3 of Sale, Betts, JBJ and Bogey. If we can somehow keep all 4, I'm not sure we can keep Kimbrel & Pom and stay away from the $20M over the luxury tax where severe non-monetary penalties kick in. Let's go year by year assuming we sign no more non current Sox players long term: After 2017: $6.5M Young $5.5M Moreland $2.0M Abad Let's assume this money pays for arb raises and a one year player like Moreland- perhaps a good utility player that can play 1B/3B/LF. Money all used up with no long term additions or extensions. After 2018: $12M Kimbrel ~$7M Pomeranz (last arb estimate) ~$4.5M Kelly (last arb) ~$2.5M Ross (last arb) Assume Price does not opt out, add raises for option years to Sale (+$6M from where he is now on luxury tax dollar count) and others plus arb raises. It's hard to assume anything even this far out, but let's say we keep Pom, Kimbrel & Kelly. This alone might put us near the $20M over the luxury tax limit depending on how well these two have done in the next 1.5 seasons. Let's say all the arb raises and option year raises are eaten up by the loss of the one year guy we signed the year before, and the little we might have saved by trading a few other non essential players (maybe even Porcello). HRam's vesting option is also a wild card, but let's say we figure out some way to sign Kimbrel & Pom and keep Porcello for his last year. Let's assume we are maybe $15-19M over the luxury tax and avoid any severe penalties in 2019. (This could be a stretch.) After 2019: $22M HRam $21M Porcello $19M Pablo (we buy out his option) ~$18M Bogey (last arb year) $12.5M Sale + Thornburg, Holt & Rutledge This is probably too far away to project, but with the $43M "saved by losing Pablo and HRam, we can pay the arb raises to everyone worthy of keeping and maybe keep Sale & Bogey by also letting Porcello, Thornburg, Holt & Rutledge go. Maybe we have a little to sign a decent SP'er to $10-14M a year...maybe. It will be super tight to keep Bogey, & Sale and stay below $20M over the limit. Bogey might get a $7-10M raise over his last arb year salary. Sale might get a $20M raise per year. After 2020: How do we keep JBJ & Betts, if we are already within just a few million from the maximum luxury tax penalty? It's too far away to project, but it won't be easy. I won't even try, but we might be looking at having to give Betts $12-15M over his last arb salary and JBj $8-10M over his last salary. That's about $20-25M to come up with without having any salary losses to compensate. There's no way we let Betts & JBJ go, so we may have to not sign someone big from the previous years.

Marco and Holt are better, but some of their WAR is from other positions. -0.1 Marco -0.2 Holt -0.3 Marrero -0.5 Pablo -0.5 Rutledge fangraphs has this for 3B only: 0.0 T-W Lin (3 PA/11 innings)) -0.1 Marco (60 PA/72 innings -0.1 Selsky (9 PA/3.2 innings) -0.3 Marrero (104 PA/230 innings) -0.5 Rutledge (118 PA/139 innings) -0.5 Pablo (108 PA/213 innings)

He should just bunt almost every time.

I agree 1000%. How many times is a guy like this available? We're talking about... Chris Freakin' Sale !

Pablo could allow 1 hit per game and count the OPS per game and still come out better, assuming he continues having a .325 OPS advantage. Maybe he does allow one hit (or makes an error) per game over Marrero's defense.

I have a question: does a HBP count towards your OBP? If not, why not?

His next slump, we'll see it again. To me, I'd rather keep these players (in order) assuming their contract demands or a matching offer isn't $40M x 8 years plus. The "Sign Em Six" 1. Sale 2. Betts 3A. Bradley 3B. Beni 5. Bogey 6. ERod

JBJ is almost as high in OPS as Moreland, and since he started off so slowly, I'd say he's our "scariest" right now. Our OF has an .803 OPS. I expected better, but that's not bad. Perhaps, the best part about our OF is that we have only used 10 PAs from people not named Betts, Beni, Bradley, or Young, and Young only has 111 PAs as an OF'er. Highest OPS over the last 28 days (35+ PAs): .973 JBJ .869 Moreland .865 Beni (Why move him way down to make way for JBJ?) .806 Leon .772 Bogey .763 Betts (Not bad for a "slumping player") .699 HRam .649 Pedey (Getting a free pass?) .584 Pablo .468 Rut .465 Vaz (uh-oh) .258 Marrero (and people are okay with this but bash Pablo at .580+?)

I've been volunteering at a nearby public middle school teaching ESL. I've seen some crazy spellings... DeWain Dewane Tohmas Sarha Jimmee I can't remember all of them. Two had their last names spelled wrong on their birth certificates, but we had to use the official spelling on the transcripts. My wife's name is Maria Lorena. On her birth certificate, get this, they abbreviated her first name! It says, "Ma. Lorena _________". She's had to get official documents signed by a notary to say that Ma. = Maria. It's a crazy world.

Wow, I just mentioned JBJ needs to be moved up, since he now has our highest OPS this year. Who was the guy who wanted us to trade him ASAP? I can't remember.

We can probably win with just one from Price, Porcello or ERod pitching like a solid #2 the rest of the season. If 2 pitch that well, we'll win the east by 5 or more.

We might be able to keep Betts, Beni and JBJ or Bogey, but not all 4 B's. Even to keep 3, we would probably not be able to replace Porcello with a $20M pitcher. We sure as hell have to keep Sale (as it looks right now). Pom will be a FA too, so Sale, ERod, Wright, _______, _________ scares the bejesus out of me.

I've said all along I trust Sox management to know when is when.

I do think Henry wants to reset the tax this year, so he CAN go significantly over the limit over the next 2-3 years without paying a mega tax and losing draft picks/slot money.

I think the point was that if we could acquires a great fielding SS with a significantly better bat than we currently have at 3B for cheaper than it would take to get a 3Bman, we should consider it. The new SS does not have to be equal, better than or even close to Bogey to make the deal a plus move. Again, I am NOT for moving Bogey to 3B mid season. Find a decent 3Bman that won't cost us a top 3 prospect or just take the plunge on Devers. One of the other needs to be done, perhaps before the deadline.

Notice how he didn't say, "I'll never smoke weed again."

I made the same point back then. Youk was a plus plus 1Bman defensively and had already declined on defense at 3B to the point he was a negative.

I've seen U2 4 times, but I missed the original Joshua Tree tour. It was my wife's first U2 show. We both loved it. There's an amazing super large high definition screen behind the band, but I won't give anything else away. Enjoy!

Well said. Of course Henry has enough money to buy every top FA on the market every year. If the budget was "limitless", we'd probably be doing close to that, and we haven't. I think Henry wants to make money with the Red Sox, but is probably willing to break even and treat it as a cost-free hobby. He might not even mind losing a little money here and there, but I doubt he's willing to be George Stienbrenner plus.

Great show. I saw then in Houston a few weeks ago.

At the start of the season many felt losing Papi and not replacing him with a big hitter was a huge mistake. They did not think that acquisition of Sale, Thornburg and Moreland would be enough. We only have a .750 team OPS as we near the halfway point. Those of us who felt we would still be a top 3 or 5 run-scoring team appear to have overestimated our projections on offense. There is another area that was of great concern to some at the start of the season: un unbalanced offense with 2-3 "black holes" in the line-up. On this point, I will say that as of now, we only have just one black hole, and it's a big one: 3B. We are actually one of just a very few contending teams that only has two position with an OPS below .708. One is a surprising 2B! After JBJ's slow start, some felt CF would be a black hole. Now, CF is our highest OPS position on the team! Many felt that since Leon's 2016 season was a fluke, our 2017 catcher OPS would be worse. I argued that losing Hanigan and Holaday's putrid offense would balance out the projected decline in Leon's offense. I also projected a better year for Vaz. While catchers have our third worst OPS, the OPS is significantly better than 2016. Here are our positional OPS: .558 3B (Totally unacceptable) .666 2B (This is a big surprise. Pedey is at .720 though.) .708 C (When compared to other teams, this is good.) .732 LF .753 DH (One expects better from this position.) .807 RF (I expected near .900 here.) .827 1B (Mostly coming from Moreland.) .838 SS (Bogey has pulled his weight and then some on expectations.) .879 CF (I'll say it again--MOVE JBJ UP IN THE LINE-UP! He's now got our best OPS.) How about balance by batting slot? We only have 1 slot below .725 and that is the 9 slot at .553- a black hole if ever there was one. What's shocking to me is that our second worst slot has been the 5 slot. Again, moving JBJ might solve this. (Top PA players listed) .553 9th slot (Marrero 94, Marco 48, Vaz 45, Leon 42) .725 5th (Moreland 118, HRam 83, Beni 44, Young 33) .730 7th (JBJ 110, Rutledge 54, Pablo 48, Young 30, Leon 30, Vaz 24) .742 6th (JBJ 69, Moreland 64, Bogey 40, Young 40, HRam 31, Pedey 20) .760 8th (Leon 74, Vaz 67, Pablo 46, JBJ 35, Rut 31, Young 22) .779 1st (Betts 218, Pedey 78, Bogey 39) .791 4th (HRam 141, Moreland 101, Beni 80) .810 2nd (Pedey 158, Beni 156) .830 3rd (Bogey 212, Betts 111) Some other offense observations. We have a .750 OPS as a team, and... .727 the last 28 days .709 the last 14 days .745 vs RHP (but .754 when a righty starts) .775 vs LHP (but surprisingly .734 when a lefty starts) Not surprising: .764 at home and .738 away, although the gap is lower than recent years. By age group: .803 25 and under (This is encouraging) .676 26-30 (This from the prime years of a career?) .763 31+ .794 RISP (Something many have been crying about in recent years, buy is now better than our overall OPS!) It's .798 with RISP and 2 outs. .717 Late & Close (disappointing) .752 High Leverage .429 vs NYY .592 vs HOU .650 vs TOR .651 vs SEA .673 vs STL 1.102 vs MN .896 vs TEX .877 vs MIL .870 vs PHI .869 vs CWS .838 Cubs (The rest are between .693 and .803) .780 Day .736 Night If you subscribe to the philosophy (as I do) that one of the best ways to improve a team is by upgrading the weakest link, then one big fix is needed: FIX the 3B Problem!