moonslav59

He very well might be. Going by the short sample from 2025, he looks way better.

Our 1B was such a mess in 2025, so it's hard to not see Contreras as a significant needle-mover. Do you view the 2026 Gray as being better than the 2025 Gio? Oviedo and the return of Crawford and Sandoval as better than Buehler/Dobbins/Fitts and the 2025 Houck? While I agree on wanting better pitching than Gray and Oviedo, our 2026 pitching projections look better than 2025. 1B looks way better. 3B (Bregman) and DH (Devers/Refsnyder & others) look way worse, for now.

It has nothing to do with how highly I rate Duran, and some here think I am underrating him by continually suggesting we trade him. Team want Duran and want him badly enough to give us something we need- something much better than Sandoval/Oviedo or DHam/Eaton/Sogard. Do you think Duran has equal value as oviedo or Sandoval? How about DHam plus Sogard? If yes, then you undervalue Duran. I've suggested trading him straight up for Lodolo. BTV says that's a "major overpay" by the Sox ($46M for $31M of value.) Does that look like I'm overvaluing Duran? BTV has Paredes worth $11M. I've suggested trading Duran for Paredes and a $7-10M RP'er. Once again, you are wrong about what I think. Maybe just stop pretending to know what I think.

Other than 2013, it failed from 2011 to 2014, too. This is nothing new. It's been a pattern, although the recent down cycle seemed longer than that 4 year period with Ben at the helm, due to the 2013 ring.

No, I merely pointed out that had we given Betts $29M, I doubt we'd have changed our budget plans going forward. More likely, had we kept Betts, we would not have extended Sale or Nate. I'm not assuming the budgets stay exactly the same, but I suggested that in my opinion the decision was made to cut the budget by a lot for the next few years, and I doubt it would have changed much had we kept him. I don't think we let Lester go because the plan was to slash the budget for years to come. I do think that was the case at the time of the Betts, sale, Nate & Boget choices made. I think JH & Co felt we could still win with the 2020 roster with very few big money additions needed. That year, injuries killed that hope. We did okay in 2021, but then the lack of replacing departing talent in kind caught up to us.

You continually confuse suggestions with predictions, no matter how many times we try to tell you there is a difference. I expect you will keep doing this over, and over, and over again.

Certainly two or more. You seriously doubt that?

Of course we don't know, but my guess is the idea was to cut the budget, and that's why we traded Betts & half-Price. I doubt keeping Betts would have changed the budget plans much. Just my opinion.

The Story and Masa signings came a few years later. How do we reach the 2020 and 2021 budgets with $29M from Betts added? First, we'd have likely traded Half Price anyway, but that was already deducted from those budgets, so we'd have had to dump others.... One from 2020....? $26M Sale $22M JD $20M Bogey Maybe 2 from....? $17M Nate $14M Pedey (nope) $11M JBJ $8M ERod

Of course that is an issue, but multiple teams need an OF'er like Duran to "get them" to where they want to be. We should be able to include a third team to help us get a piece that offers a bigger gain at a position of need than we lose by having the DH position shared by 4 guys over Duran as the near FT DH. The foundation is there for a trade that helps 2-3 teams. We may be reluctant to take less in return that what we value Duran at, and that might be what's holding it up, but a trade makes too much sense to not happen. Perhaps we already have a trade or two agreed upon, but we waiting on some FA shoes to drop, first. We may not want to trade away one of our best offensive players, until we have a good bat FA signed. We may be looking at signing a pitcher, instead, and if that happens, we trade an OF'er for a 3Bman.

How much they need Harrison in the pen might be the deciding factor.

I don't either, but paying Betts and keeping the same budgets would have meant trading away some salary in some years, not just no signings.

I no longer trust cots, so here are the spotrac tax budget numbers: Sox placed... 12th in 2023 ($226M) $1M from 11th, $5M from 10th & $32M from 5th. 12th in 2024 ($226M) $1M from 11th, $7M from 10th and $42M from 5th. 7th in 2025 ($249M) $12M from 6th and $3*M from 5th., 8th in 2029 as of now at ($235M) $16M from 7th and $21M from 6th (A Bregman signing away) What is getting farther out of reach? 5th place is about $45M away. We'd have to go $37M over the tax line to pass the NYY, and they are close to signing Bellinger or someone else to big money.

Yes. I didn't mean to sound like I was disagreeing with you.

He wanted to get paid what he felt he deserved to get. Had BOS given him that, or maybe even close to that, I think he would have been happy to stay in BOS. Now, if we had kept the same budgets from 2020 onwards, he'd have been miserable.

I agree, we were better for most o3-19, but I disagree with the other point. I think we are on the upcycle, again. Since the end or 2023: Devers was the largest and longest deal in Sox history and by far. 4 extensions given to young and promising players/rookies. $21M AAV to Buehler was the second highest ever given to a FA pitcher in Sox history. This on the heels of two 2 year deals given to SP'ers (Gio & Sandoval) when we hadn't signed a FS pitcher to more than one year since Nate's semi-extension deal in 2019. $40M AAV given to Bregman blew the Devers' AAV away. The Crochet blockbuster trade and the second largest pitcher extension given in Sox history. (Sale was #1.) Granted, 8 moves/deals does not tell the whole story, but this is a serious uptick in spending and commitment to winning. This offseason is still TBD, so it can easily be undone by inactivity over this winter and season, but we'll see. I certainly wish we'd made a bold signing or two by now. One big signing will barely get us to plus status over 2025, but improvement is not something we've seen since last winter.

Yes. I doubt it was to save a few hundred thousand bucks. So far, I like how our farm has helped this team get better and the pitching outlook looks about as good as I've ever seen our system look. (Please excuse my optimism.)

We shoulda kept Newcomb and watched him do great in the pen.

I guess using the word "bet" was going over the line.

If he signs for $125M/5, then there's a 6th year option for $25M and a $20M buyout. (Essentially making it a $25M x 6 deal of a $29M x 5 year deal.)

While our offense is better with Duran and maybe Anthony DH'ing- and it won't be Abreu & Rafaela- I keep coming back to the idea that Duran is worth way more to another team as an OF'er than to us as a DH. (Hell, Masa might end up with a higher OPS in 2026, but of course way less SBs.) It's not technically a bad idea benching, demoting or trading Masa and paying 75-85% of his deal, so Duran DHs, it makes more sense, to me, to trade him to a team desperate for an OF'er and whether it takes a third team or whatever, we get back a 3Bman, 2Bman or a #2SP'er. The improvement we make at one of those slots should far exceed the differential between Duran at DH and Masa/Casas/Romy/Campbell at DH for 2026. Sign one guy and trade for another. That gets us to top 3-4 status, in my mind.

I think he gets $28M+ x 5. If we go to 4 years, it will be $30M+.

That cut in scouting was puzzling to me. I'm glad they put intense focus on pitching, and how these guys turn out will be a reflection of how much we improved the player development aspect of building a top foundation of young players. It's a little too early to judge that aspect, and I'm not sure how much spending has to do with it, as much as just getting the right people in the right places at the right times.

We never expected Newcomb to make the opening day roster in 2025, but I expect non of these guys will.

They dumped his salary and promised to spend to replace him. It wasn't all about salary, for sure, but it sure changed the narrative on spending. The Lester and mookie issues were horrible for Sox fans, and that was a marked change, but we had also lost Manny, Damon, Pedro, Beltre, and many others along the way. Look at all the stars the Astros have lost in just 8 years or so. Hell, even the Braves lost Freeman and some other big stars. The Yanks couldn't keep Soto. We aren't "cheap." Not even close. The whole start of the long lull in big spending actually started in 2019- the year we had our largest budget ever. We didn't bring back of replace Kimbrel or Kelly from the ring team. We've always spent more than most team. We've cycled up and down, often. We've let many really good players go, often at the right time- often not. We've added high-priced players and peaked with that in 2018. AWe went through the longest lower (not low) cycle under JH in new spending from about 2019 to the end of 2024. There were a couple blips of upspending, but withing the context of the major cuts from 2019-2020, it was barely noticeable. We spent big on Devers- bigger than anyone before. We started extending our young talent, so we won't see them boly in peak prime. We made the bold trade for Crochet and then extended him to the end of his prime years. We even started signing pitchers to 2 year deals! (LOL) These are all facts. They are not apologies or constructed defenses. The other facts that matter are that several teams have significantly jumped their spending- some leaving us in the dust. To me, the beef some posters have is that JH has not kept pace, despite our "higher revenue streams." That point has merit, but I don't get why facts are twisted to try and make JH into some kind of miser. Try looking at the Reds. Not many people are bitching at the Astros, because they spent the same or less than us, but they won more since 2018. IMO, some are masking their being spoiled with being "tough" and calling out those who point out facts as being some sort of namby pamby enablers of Mr. Miser Henry. Of course we all wish we'd do what is needed to get us over the top. At times, it seemed like we didn't need all that much to do it, and it sucked when we sat on our hands. What made it worse was the lies and pretenses conveyed by management, such as the "full throttle" statement. Obviously some sort of scam was going on, at some level. I called it a sham and got hell from a guy who has been bashing management for as long as I can remember. I may be in a minority, but I've seen a significant change in philosophy and planning, and much of it looks good to great, to me. I'm not going to ignore all that because we missed out on overpaying for Alonso or Schwarber. I'm also not ignoring the fact that we avoid large and long deals for players over 29 or 30. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing, especially when you look at out team's record on those deals.