moonslav59

To me, it's the whole Abad is out of options thing. I still wish we'd have just cut him loose or traded him. Maybe when Thornburg comes back...

True, but when I watched the play, it looked like it might be caught. He probably could have been 2-3 steps off 2nd base and still tagged up, if he caught it.

It was a tough hit to know it was not going to be caught. I'm not sure he deserves much or any blame.

It was nice to see ERod settle down. 66 pitches in his last 4.1 IP was not bad. The last run allowed was unearned. Big hits by Marco & Bogey, too. Finally, some big walks taken helped as well. Nice win!

True enough, especially good young Sox pitchers who seemingly never pan out.

I get your point, but every great pitcher was a promising teenager at some point. Not many pitchers have been ranked so highly at his age. Yes, that still makes his value highly speculative, but there's a reason he is ranked so highly. Experts think he has such a high ceiling that the risk-reward is not a hindrance enough to drop him in their rankings. He may turn out to be a dud. The risk of that is certainly high enough to see why getting 2.5 seasons and 3 playoff cycles from a possible #2-3 type starter was worth it. The idea is logical. I guess I still have a gambling instinct in my soul. Espi's ceiling is just too tantalizing for me to want to part with for anything short of a guy like Sale or Quintana (not that I think we could have gotten either in a straight up deal).

You just can't say no to an opportunity like this.

Price....There was simply not much available as far as top of the line pitching was concerned. Again, it was something DD had to do. Did we overpay? Perhaps but not knowing what the going price was DD was not going to take any chances and get beaten out by another offer. It's unfortunate $31M per year sticks out like a sore thumb but it is what it is. No chance we win the division without him last year. Can we have it done cheaper? Perhaps but it's all Monday am quarterbacking to me. There was other top starters avaiable, like Cueto, but although I felt like we grossly overpaid to get him, he was the best we could hope for at that time of great starter need. Kimbrel....this one hurts but it was our inability to have a healthy closer at the time that forced DD to make this move. Not only did it take Kimbrel, but we also had to trade for Ziegler and convert Kelly in a relief role to accomplish what we did. With emergence of some arms in the pen, it's pretty certain we will not resign him after 2018. As Moon said, was it worth paying FA price AND prospects for his 3 years of service? I'd say yes only if we win the world series. BUT again, this was a move DD thought he had to make in order for us to become a contender for 2016. He was right, even though we may have overpaid. I totally understand why the move was made, but that's not enough for me to agree with it. I don't "blame" DD for making the move, because I try to avoid the blame game as much as possible, but I guess some could argue over the semantics of my position. While there were no other top closers available at that time, getting a top closer was not an essential priority, in my opinion. We could have obtained two or three good closers for the same money but with less prospects given up. Those prospects could have been saved or used as part of a bigger package to land us someone better than Pomeranz- see below. Again, I viewed Kimbrel as a top 3 closer and expected top 5 closer from him for all 3 years. The fact that he has slipped from top 5 status makes the trade look worse in hindsight besides the fact that good RP'ers market value has sky-rocketed since the trade. I'm hopeful he can regain his earlier form. Pomeranz....again, inconsistencies from Kelly, E Rod and Clay B forced this trade. I still think it was the correct move. The possibility exists for Espinoza to become a stud pitcher and Pomeranz to be mediocre pitcher for 2 1/2 years of service. Did we overpay? Probably. But DD was not going to sit idle and watch the team implode. As it turned out, Pom did not help the Sox but again that's after the fact. While true, some of us disliked the deal when it was made, so it is not "hindsight" in my case anyways. I do think we needed a starter, but maybe a 2 month rental would have been enough.Maybe we could have tried to go larger and trade for Sale or Quintana last summer, but who knows if the CWS were open to the idea back then. I think we may have gotten Sale & Quintana for probably less than Moncada, Espi, Kopech, Margot, Allen, Guerra, Asuaje, Basabe and V Diaz. Now, that's hindsight and speculative hindsight at that!

I like to praise or critique trades/signings at the time of the transaction. It's always easy to look back and support your decision based on what transpires afterwards. Clay B.....even if Clay was healthy and pitching well for the Phillies, I still would think the decision to trade him was the right one. 100%!

To me, it was more than just resetting the tax. It meant we can wait until mid season and spend the savings on a better pitcher or two better pitchers or a positional player that covers a currently unforeseen need. Flexibility.

MLBTR... Buchholz has been diagnosed with a partial tear of the flexor pronator mass in his pitching arm, per a club announcement. He is headed to visit Dr. James Andrews for a second opinion. As things stand, it’s not clear what treatment will be undertaken for the injury. That’ll be sorted out after the trip to Dr. Andrews’s office — which is never where a pitcher hopes to find himself. Clearly, though, Buchholz is headed for a layoff of some duration. Surgery isn’t always required in cases of strains (slight tears) or partial tears, but in such cases a fairly lengthy rest-and-rehab protocol is typically followed.

Agreed, but it is what it is. As much as both of us would like to go back and undo a trade or two (maybe three for you), we can't. I hate to have to rely on multiple hopes and prayers for our long term outlook to improve, but I fear that's all we can do now. We really are going to need Travis and Devers to be ready by the time we lose Moreland (2018), HanRam & Pablo (2020). Maybe a Dalbec or Hernandez can take a role, if Travis or Devers fail, but filling these 4 slots from within the system would go a long way towards freeing up salary space to keep our rising young stars, pay their arb raises, extend one or two of them AND maybe be able to keep Chris Sale. That's a lot to hope for from Travis, Devers, Hernandez & Dalbec, but it's not an absurd hope. What worries me is that we could have all those hopes come through, and we'll still have to let Bogey or Porcello go and maybe even one from Betts, JBJ or Sale go as well. Maybe not. Maybe we can stay below the $20M excess of luxury limit point where severe penalties kick-in, but it will not be easy. Hoping Groome can first replace Pom and then replace Porcello's slot is too much for me to realistically think is possible. If he can do it, it's likely Devers or Travis will not, and finding great corner IF'ers via free agency is usually very costly.

The lack of a true "long man" was apparent last night. Once Price comes back, and Pom or Wright go to the pen, that problem will be solved. Taylor did a great job giving us over 3 innings of good pitching. I hope he keeps producing like this.

It's +$20M to avoid penalties such as taking away draft picks or lessening amounts for draft signing pools. Resetting the luxury tax will be a big deal, because it will lessen future tax percentages when we likely will have to go over possibly starting as soon as 2018. The actual luxury tax still significantly increases each consecutive year a team goes over the limit.

In foresight too. DD knew we could always at least trade scraps for a salary dump pitcher mid season and do as good as Buch projected to do. If we can wait until July 31st, we only pay 1/3 of a pitcher's yearly salary, so Buch's $13.5M is really like a third of two pitchers making $20M each!!! Or 3 pitchers making $13.5M each. It's hard to imagine us doing worse than even a healthy Buch would have done.

I'm glad we were able to trade him without having to pay a penny. Remember, his buy out was $500K, so his "real cost" was about $13M.

Your points are very well taken. I too wish we had more than just 3 good prospects to pin our hopes on. We might be lucky, if two of them give us plus production down the road. One thing going for us is that we don't need great production to replace Pablo at 3B with Devers or Moreland at 1B with Travis. Replacing HanRam and Pomeranz will be tougher. I'm not sure we can even hope Groome will be ready AND as good as Pom year one (2019). We may need a healthy other 5 starters or someone to come out of nowhere to take his place (Elias, Owens, Johnson, Barnes?). I think the salary space we lose by our departing players will be almost totally eaten up by arb raises and extensions.

Good to see some of our bats beginning to "awaken", but too bad Wright had a meltdown. Taylor's performance was promising.

Exactly. Like it or not, GMs are graded in hindsight, like they were supposed to know a player was going to get hurt or suddenly and sharply decline. There are cases where warning signs were abundant, and a GM took a gamble anyway, maybe because it was his best or only option available at the time. On Buch, I was one of his biggest defenders over the years, but I agreed that it was time to cut our losses and move on from all of the uncertainty that came with his health status. I will say that if he was only making $2-3M, I'd have wanted to keep him. The money saved should help us immensely this summer.

We've already discussed potential for our bullpen. I'm little concerned with our lefties but we have now several flame throwers in the pen. No need to be concerned about having a top lefty. Thornburg is better vs LHBs than just about any lefty in MLB. Leon, Moreland, Pedy, Xander, Pablo, Beni, Bradley Jr, Betts and Hanley is good enough offensively to score many runs, even though we maybe short on power. This is how you build a championship team. We lose Young and Moreland for 2018 season. We're light on OF replacements within our system, but my guess is replace these two with Travis and one from Swihart, Hernandez or Devers. We lose Kimbrel, Pom, Joe Kelly, Robbie Ross for 2019 season. We'll probably have to sign a couple FAs and hope our younger pitchers step up. Maybe Groome can be a significant piece. We have a three year window to chase the world series and reload the farm system. Sale, Porcello, Xander, Hanley and Pablo comes off the books after 2019. Hanley and Pablo will yield $40M in savings. By replacing Hanley & Pablo (Moreland & Young) with Travis, Devers, Swihart & Hernandez, we might have enough money to pay all the big arb raises AND keep Sale and maybe one from Bogey and Porcello. Maybe sign someone else, if they want too much. I think it's a solid 4 year window...maybe 5. We all know what type of talent it takes to win it all. There's always some luck involved. How often does a Betts seemingly come out of nowhere? I'm just thankful we have a competitive team at least for next three years. We may need another Betts by year 4 or 5.

Moon has a very good point about building the starting rotation from the top and not the bottom. Acquisition of Sale has accomplished that task. There's no doubt that in Sale, Porcello and Price, we have three formidable starting pitchers at least on paper. Sox will have the luxury of selecting the 'best' fourth starter from Pomeranz, E Rod and Wright come playoff time. That's exactly it. While we "only" added one starter, Sale made Porcello & Price our 2-3 starters. ERod is now our 4th starter. Pom and Wright are our 5-6 not our 4-5. Trading for a 3/4 like Pom is better than trying to upgrade your 4/5 starter. Here's the luck we've had going that route: Masterson Peavy Dempster Mortenson Aaron Cook Franklin Morales Erik Bedard Brad Penny John Smoltz Paul Byrd Bartolo Colon Julian Tavarez Matt Clement (not really a 4/5 type) Jason Johnson Wade Miller Bruce Chen

LOL! I read the book, too. It was better than the movie as is usually the case. It's hard to argue against the importance of having a great closer, especially since our three rings all came with stellar closer closer performances throughout each season and playoff cycle. I love having a lights out closer, and I really do think Kimbrel was one of the best one could ever expect to get. I'm hopeful he gives us another 2 years of great closer production. My beef with the trade was about paying FA money and giving up top prospects. I was OK with one or the other but not both.

That was a big part of "Moneyball" as the A's continually created closers from their system, and then they traded them over and over again. They realized they could use the over-valuing of closers to their benefit. Foulke was a big part of our ring as was Papelbon and Uehara, but paying big money and giving up prospects was overkill.

maybe not 100% "win now" as we still have Groome, Devers, Travis and Swihart, but I agree we went a little to far. Maybe you think a lot too far, but I don't think we are far apart.

I'm not the least bit concerned that we don't have ML-ready players in Pawtucket at this moment because... where would we play them?? It's nice to know they are there, in case of injury, and knowing that Moreland and Young are FAs after this year. (I'm pretty sure Travis has an inside track to Moreland's slot.) (Maybe Hernandez or Devers will oust Pablo, Rutledge and-or Holt out of town.)