moonslav59

Yes, many have been good, but would you take any of these contracts now for no player in return?

Al Avila, Detroit GM, says “changes are coming”. Lots of big contracts to choose from... Verlander: 17:$28M, 18:$28M, 19:$28M, 20:$22M vesting option Miggy: 17:$28M, 18-21:$30M annually, 22-23:$32M annually, 24:$30M club option ($8M buyout), 25:$30M club option Justin Upton: 17-21:$22.125M annually J Zimmerman: 17:$18M, 18:$24M, 19:$25M, 20:$25M VMart: 17:$18M, 18:$18M A Sanchez: 17:$16M, 18:$16M club option ($5M buyout) WOW! Imagine if we had a GM that signed most of these guys to these deals!

They're looking to cut costs. Someone has to go- why not the one with the most risk?

I think his injury should lessen the return cost, but if they want a ton, then we just say no.

Better yet, let's talk about the next trade... The Royals are apparently looking to cut salary. They have a lot of players coming off the books after 2017, including Hosmer (1B) and Moustakas (3B), so I'm starting with giving them Shaw (1B/3B). How about we trade Shaw, Holt, and three from: Chavis, Barnes, Ockimey, Owens and Johnson. for Kendrys Morales --$11M mutual option ($1.5M buyout), Wade Davis--$10M club option ($2.5M buyout) and Joakim Soria--2017:$8M, 2018:$9M, 2019:$10M mutual option ($1M buyout)- sort of a salary dump. Probably way short of what is needed (add Devers or Basabe?), but at least I'm trying to change the conversation.

Yes, all the ones he got to.

I can see us not keeping all these guys, and certainly JBJ could end up as the odd man out.

And, I respect your opinion here too. I think Iggy is better than an "above average fielder", but I could be wrong.

Moon mentions that "Bogaerts took a step back this year, while Iglesias has hit .275 in Detroit." Wow. Iglesias hit 45 points lower this year (.255) than he did last year (.300), but that's not a "step back?!?!" Come on. At least argue apples to apples. Even .255 is higher than most expected Iggy to hit. How about them apples? I said from the start, I'd take Iggy as my FT SS hitting .225, I'd be thrilled with .255 and 60-80 stolen hits from the opps every year.

I think Sox management views JBJ very highly (i do too and always have), after all, he was the guy most GMs wanted when calling about trades. That was before he had a nice full season in 2016 ending with a very respectable OPS.

One of the things that rankles me is half of a story.... As I've said, I can willingly live with Mistake #1 - not having Iggy in their plans, but they NEVER should have traded him and gotten such poor value for him. I actually have the opposite view. I have more of a beef with their valuation of Iggy that with what they got back for him. The cost of a pitcher like Peavy at a trade deadline is usually enormous. Although he clearly was not a "Mercedes" anymore, he had 1.3 years of team control and we were looking to compete in 2014 as well. One could argue they valued Iggy highly, since they got something like Peavy back for him, but we also gave up Montas. If peavy had pitched better for us, then the trade might not look as bad, but I think he actually underperformed expectations. That's a hindsight aspect to viewing the trade though, just as talking about Iggy's injuries and better than expected hitting is. To me, the bigger mistake was not wanting Iggy to be our FT SS into the future. He was arb eligible until 2016 or 2017, so (3-4 more years not counting the remainder of 2013. I think his lost season has made him arb eligible to 2018. I can see why the liked Bogey as their SS of the future, but then the whole Stephen Drew fiasco kind of showed they, themselves, felt Bogey wasn't "the man" yet. Keeping Iggy at least until the end of 2014 would have saved us the Drew issue. I'm okay with the decision they made. Whether it was attitude issues, projected low offense or both, Sox management did not view Iggy as their FT SS. The fact that they played Iggy at 3B for 37 games in 2013 (which shocked the s*** out of me) told the whole story. To move a great defender at SS to 3B so Drew or Bogey could play SS was absurd, IMO. It showed how they viewed Iggy as a utility IF'er and not the extreme plus defender at SS that was his calling card and highest portion of his value. Detroit moved Perralta, when he came back- not Iggy, and Perralta was a better fielder than Drew/Bogey, so to me it was obvious there was a valuation difference between the Sox and Detroit.

I know all about the "attitude" issues with Iggy. I'm not "all about stats", because most stats show Iggy is not an overall plus at SS, so I think you're wrong on that aspect. I know Bogey said he didn't want to play 3B. I also know he's not getting better on defense at SS since the Iggy trade was made. Not by stats and metrics, which do support my position, but from my observations based on watching just about every single pitch in every single Sox game in every single season since the 1980's. Bogey's not a plus defender at SS. I admit I have an obsession with great SS fielding that has never been based on stats. It's based on me playing the game for many years and seeing tremendous SS defense, particularly with superior range, have enormous value on a team's psyche and run differential. I'm fine with people arguing about Iggy's injuries and attitude. There's some good points made, and to me, this isn't a clear right vs wrong debate. There's too many nuances involved for anything to be clear about what side is right here. I get your side. I have even said many times that given the fact that Sox management likely never viewed Iggy as the FT SS, then the trade made perfect sense. In their eyes, they traded a uttility IF'er for 1.3 years of a solid SP'er. Makes total sense to me. What I'm arguing is that I did view Iggy as our FT SS of the future (at a low cost, I might add). At the time of the trade and before, many scouts were saying or hinting at the fact that Bogey might not be cut out to play SS as he matured. The fact that he has not improved seems to back up that aspect of my position that he should have been groomed to play 3B or both 3B and SS earlier in his career. I mean fo God's saake, they threw him into a new position right smack in the middle of a pennant race and post season after playing just 10 games at 3B in AAA. I don't blame the guy for saying, "I'd rather play SS." Plus, most SSs love the feeling of playing the most important defensive position on the diamond (next to maybe catcher). Not many enjoy giving it up, but countless SSs have. MLB is littered with former SSs doing very well at different positions. I thought I saw a little improvement last year on defense with Bogey. I easily admitted that maybe I was wrong all along about his defensive abilities at SS. On another site, I even said that if he keeps improving, I'll admit I was wrong on the Iggy/Montas-Peavy trade. That hasn't happened. Bogey took a step backwards while Iggy has his .275 with the Tigers. I'm not sure why this trade seems to be debated more than the AGon-Rizzo trade, more than the Dodger salary dump trade, and more than the great Sox Purge of 2014, because I don't think anything that major changed. I don't think we won in 2013 because of Peavy, but I also don't think we'd be all that much better without making the trade. Better, yes, but not by a lot. Now, if we can argue we don't sign Pablo, if we have Iggy, then things look different, but there are "what ifs" on both sides, so I'm willing to just leave it at me feeling the trade was bad, but understandable. The trade was not so bad as to make a huge impact on our team since the WS win in 2013. I know S5Dewey may think differently, and I respect him for that, but I'm kinds feeling like this dead horse has been beaten enough.

Maybe just don't start him vs RHPs.

Holt's WAR is not based on playing SS, although his UZR/150 in just 212 innings there is freakishly good. He has a -3 DRS in 212 innings, which is freakishly horrible.

His loss of playing time is a huge factor in his WAR. I'm not downplaying the importance of being able to play.The fact that he hasn't played more than 137 games in the two years after his missed season shows there may be issues beyond one "freak" injury. I totally get that. However, when you look at his numbers when he plays, he's clearly better than average and probably places top 10 of 30 overall. In my opinion, he's still a better option (when healthy) than what we have at 3B now, assuming the move of Bogey to 3B. I do think the comparison to Leon as a shooting star was kind of a "spin", since Iggy's .274 Detroit BA has been much higher than most expected... certainly not .330, but clearly not as low as projected.

Iggy has a .274 BA with the Tigers in over 3 times the PAs as he had with Boston (where he had a .280 BA). Let's be truthful here, 90% of Sox fans would have been screaming for Iggy to be our long term SS had I guaranteed he'd hit .275. I get that his OPS is just .678, but only 16 MLB SSs have more PAs and a better OPS as a SS than Iggy, so one could argue, he's been about average on offense for a SS (maybe slightly below) and top 5-6 on defense. That's a plus all around no matter how you spin it, except for one thing: durability and health.

4th out of the 17th that "qualify", so that is not the same as saying 4th out of 30 teams starters. If you lower the innings to 500 in order to get a sample size of 30, then JBJ finishes 10th out of 30 individually. DRS is a stat greatly influenced by innings played, if we had a DRS/150, JBJ would sink in the rankings. For example, he has 11 runs saaved in 1375 innings, while these guys would surely pass him in DRS/150: Broxton 9/511 Marisnik 9/570 Cain 8/615' This would place JBJ 8th. These rankings don't seem to jive with the eye test. Maybe the way JBJ makes hard plays look easy influences some of the scoring, but UZR/150 is not supposed to work that way. The 2014-2016 numbers place JBJ at 7th in UZR/150 (+11.3). IN DRS, he ranks 8th, but he'd move up one, if he had the same innings and down 2 as welll, so he's be ninth. Those numbers still seem a little low. He was 3rd in UZR/150 from 2014 to 2015, so obviously something changed this year. (He would have ranked 5th in DRS/150.) I didn't see it with my eyes.

Let's look at our 2017 player splits from this year and their career and the average of the two: OPS vs RHPs AVG--Career/2016 .889-- .861/.917 Betts .823-- .745/.902 Bradley .820-- .844/.796 Ramirez .812-- .797/.827 Pedroia .791-- .835/.744 ('15) Sandoval .756-- .751/.762 T Shaw .751-- .717/.785 Bogaerts .737-- .707/.766 Young .733-- .704/.762 Holt .727 (career) Swihart .704-- .653/.764 Leon .584 (career) Vazquez OPS vs LHPs Career/2016 1.005-- .913/1.097 Ramirez .912-- .846/.999 Young .906-- .750/1.062 Leon .860-- .847/.873 Bogaerts .842-- .761/.599 T Shaw .823-- .832/.814 Betts .818-- .847/.812 Pedroia .673-- .681/.665 Bradley .673 (career) Swihart .667 (career) Vazquez .569-- .673/.465 ('15) Sandoval .529-- .709/.350 Holt Some big differentials here!

Who? Shaw/Hill/Holt?

Iggy was hitting pretty well the year they traded him, and he has a .275 career BA. Belanger's career BA was .228. Iggy doesn't have to be the defender Belanger was, if he hits 47 points higher the rest of the way. Iggy's career line .275/.325/.353/.678 Sox 3B in 2016 .242/.306/.380/.686 Most feel OBP is more important than SLG, it looks like the career Iggy would have been about a wash on offense when compared to Shaw & Co., but our team defense on the left side would be much better.

Yeah, I got it, and it does make the Iggy side of the debate look stronger.

It's Vazquez not Velazquez. I think Pablo and Swihart will battle for DH vs RHPs. I think Shaw and Holt will battle for 3B with Hernandez as an outside threat. Moncada may challenge by May or June.

...and if we still had Rizzo (instead of AGon), then we'd still have Crawford! I felt that keeping Youk at 1B might prolong his career. (He was already on the cusp of a nosedive.) I felt VMart's value as a 1Bman would not be worth his salary. (He certainly earned his money.) As it turned out getting Barnes and Owens for VMart did not mitigate the loss. I liked the idea keeping Beltre. (But, getting JBJ and Swihart and using the "saved" money to extend AGon made sense.) There were a lot of big decisions made that had long-lasting ramifications in more ways than we can imagine.

No doubt.... or Espinoza ...or Margot...

I'm not even sure that many people in LA care.