moonslav59

I know! 3 HRs in just 32 ABs against us! An to think, that's about his average against everybody else too! One HR every 10 ABs is insane!

I totally agree, but I will say that maybe more experience will help Barnes and Hembree improve "under pressure".

Let's remember the sample size is still very small. Beni is bound to have some moments where he struggles, but it sure is nice to see him off to a great start. Right now, he's tied for 4th on the team with Leon with a 127 OPS+. (50+ PAs) 165 Ortiz 132 Betts 130 Young 127 Beni + Leon 125 HanRam 121 Bradley 116 Pedey 108 Bogey 100 Hernandez 93 Shaw 92 Rutledge 90 Swihart 87 Holt 80 Brentz 52 Vazquez 47 A Hill 22 Hanigan 9 guys at 100 or over is pretty impressive. 8 over 108 is probably even more impressive.

Let's lower the PAs to 210 to create a sample size of 330 players (an average of 11 per team). Here's how the Sox rank: 2 Ortiz 166 23 Young 136 26 Leon 135 27 Betts 134 40 Ram 130 46 JBJ 124 51 Pedey 123 (Even without Papi in the league, we have 5 in the top 45 and 6 in the top 50.) Even if you take away Leon and count Young as only good vs LHPs (half a player), we will still have 4.5 guys from the top 50 in MLB (out of 330). My guess is Beni will be a top 50 or 60 player out of 330 on offense next year, so one could easily argue we might have 5-6 top 50 offensive players next year.

I think Bogey represents the best chance to see a big improvement next year. He showed a long stretch of doing well this year. I hope it's not an endurance issue, but maybe if it is, he can address that in the off season by changing his workout routine. I, too, see Beni as a guy that may totally blast onto the scene with a ROY type season. If he does, that alone could make up for a lot of Papi's loss. I get the concern about worrying about all these "what ifs", like what if 2-3 of our top players have a down year next year. Well, if that happens, we probably wouldn't have much of a chance even if we had Papi back giving us a replicate of 2016. I think our second half pitching staff is what we will see all next year, and we pretty much did all this without Wright and Carson Smith. Plus, Uehara and Taz were out or ineffective for much of it, so their loss does not have a major impact on what the staff has done in the second half. I'm pretty certain we replace uehara, Taz and Ziegler with 2-3 very capable pen arms beyond Smith, Kelly, Scott and others who might step up from within the system. We could see major strides made by Barnes or Hembree next year. We could see Wright or Buch in the pen.

Oversight: Pedey .322 13 70

Before the season started I harped on the fact that every other AL teams had more and or larger serious issues than we had, and that they had less in-system depth to address their weaknesses than we did. Here's the W-L records of the top AL contenders: Last 10 8-2 Sox (9-2 in last 11 and 12-3 in their last 15) 6-4 CLE (9-5 in last 14) 6-4 TEX (8-9 in last 17) 6-4 HOU (7-7 in last 14) 5-5 TOR (6-10 in last 16 and 7-12 in last 19) 4-6 BAL (8-10 in last 18) 4-6 DET (5-8 in the last 13) Only CLE has been winning recently. Since AUG 1st BOS 31-18 TEX 28-19 CLE 28-21 HOu 26-22 DET 23-22 TOR 24-23 BAL 23-25 Only BOS, CLE & TEX have dobe very well since AUG 1.

The question comes up as to what to do with 3rd base as Hill is not answer and Shaw is back into his slump. I think the time has come to finally give Hernandez a few games in a row at 3B.

Guys who used to hit the market at 27 and 28, are hitting it now at 29 and 30. The players are still getting ridiculous money for the same amount of years, but since 2 prime years are already gone, the production and cost/benefit is no longer worth it. Very well put. I've been warning against these big and long signings for years, especially one that half the years are post prime. I loved the Porcello extension precisely because every year was within prime. Signing EE scares the bejesus out of me. I'm not an expert on the Yankee roster. I differ to your expertise, but I do see the Yanks as being very close to being competitive as early as next year. I'd suggest signing someone like Hellickson and B Anderson and hope they can be solid #3 type starters who give a lot of innings, which may allow the pen to be more effective. Don't go mega large and mega long. Stick to the plan, but don't wait to try to make some stop gap efforts to help you win now...not trading prospects for a quick fix, but just signing some mid-level guys to 1-3 years deals only- kinda like the Sox in 2013..

i can't disagree. We've always had at least one "big bat" in the middle of the line-up during championship years. It takes a great leap of faith to imagine a way for a team playing in a hitter's park to win without a stud up 3rd and/or 4th. Looking at the league leaders in wRC+ and seeing Papi second only to Trout speaks volumes of his ability and performance level. The Cubs have 2 guys in the top 10 (Bryant 6th and Rizzo 10th. The Tigers have #9 (JD Martinez) and #11 (Miggy). The Jays have Donaldson at #4 and EE at #17. The mariners have Crus (14) and Seager (19). The only other team with two in the top 21 is the Sox with Papi at #2 and Betts at #21. Taking Papi away gives us one in the top 21 and 2 in the top 28 (HanRam). With Cano at #24, only the Mariners have 3 guys in the top 28. One bright spot is the fact that we are the only team with 5 players in the top 37 with JBJ 34th and Pedey #37. The Cubs and Ms have 3. The Tigers, Rockies and jays have 2, and the Jays may be losing EE. Perhaps winning with balance is an option. We also have Bogey at #66. Let's lower the PAs to 210 to create a sample size of 330 players (an average of 11 per team). Here's how the Sox rank: 2 Ortiz 166 23 Young 136 26 Leon 135 27 Betts 134 40 Ram 130 46 JBJ 124 51 Pedey 123 (Even without Papi in the league, we have 5 in the top 45 and 6 in the top 50.) 103 Bogey 113 204 Shaw 93 229 Holt 89 If our youth improves as most do at their ages, maybe we can find 2 big bats in the top 10 or 20. Maybe we can win by placing 3 or 4 in the top 25 to 35. I feel good about our future. I feel good about our balanced offense. It's going to hurt big time losing Papi, but there's still a reason to be optimistic about the near future of this team. I haven't even mentioned Beni, Moncada, Swihart and other youngsters on the rise that could make a near immediate impact.

bingo!

First, our Pythagorean record says that we should have 92 wins, 5 more than what we have. IMO, that's the number you start with, not the 87 wins. It's no accident we are better now than at the start of the year, despite the loss of Wright (our best 1st half SP'er). We added Pomeranz. Buch came back to life. ERod found his groove, and the pen got healthy and better. Of course, there's no way to project all that will continue from day one next season, but there's reason to be optimistic. There may be major injuries or lots of minor ones. There may be too many unexpected declines by players still in prime or pre-prime. One could argue a lot went right this year, and expecting it to happen again next year is foolish. I see it this way, our best players are still in prime, just entering prime or pre-prime. One should actually expect improvement from the rest of the players as a whole, next year. We have Carson Smith returning. We'll have a full season from Beni. We should get better catcher production than the first half of 2016, but probably not near what we got the second half. We could maybe do more than just improve on this... PAs Player OPS 177 Vaz .580 124 Hill .554 110 Hanigan .463 64 Brentz .690 31 Holaday .459 12 Marrero .350 23 others going 3 for 36, We could improve on this as well... 126 IP Buch 5.20 (maybe by Buch himself) 90 IP ERod 4.98 (probably by ERod himself) 64 iP Barnes 4.10 62 IP Pomeranz 4.91 49 IP Taz 4.25 34 IP Kelly 5.88 21 IP O'Sullivan 6.75 17 IP Owens 7.79 13 IP Abad 6.39 8 IP Elias 12.91 Yes, there will be new names next year with numbers like these. There will probably be some of the same names with the same or worse numbers, but looking at the second half of this year gives me encouragement that the whole of next year's pitching will be better, perhaps even with just Carson Smith "added" and full seasons from Pom, Erod, Kelly and the "new" Buch. Maybe our defense can improve by having Shaw at 1B rather than HanRam. Beni should do better than the mix we had this year in LF (Holt 1/3 of the innings, Young another third and Brentz+ Swihart about a fifth. Perhaps Bogey can actually improve next year instead of being about the same or a little worse than last year. There's lots of reasons to be optimistic about or chances next year. This second half team is not the same as the first half team. . 13 IP N Ramirez 6.39 .

It took our offense to be better by 100 runs to secure 4 game lead in AL East as of this morning. Why would anyone think we can win next year scoring less? Everyone on the planet says we can't replace Ortiz. So we do nothing? Do you honestly believe that's what DD will do? I seriously doubt it. Again, nobody is saying we shouldn't or won't do anything. Nobody. Some of us are saying we might not need to go big at acquiring a DH to make up for Papi's loss. There are other weak links that can be fixed or upgraded. We could also add a bat that is not a huge addition along with upgrading the pen, rotation and/or defense. Offense in baseball is very different. There's a 'team' component to it. Think of difference between say Hanigan versus what Sandy did. That impacts every hitter in Boston lineup. Baseball is unique in that it's a team sport but you can have best player at each position and there's no chemistry issue strictly on baseball matters. All nine batters get to hit. There's no sharing of one ball as in basketball where team chemistry/composition is very critical. To suggest you can go from Ortiz who has clearly had the BEST pre-retirement year in baseball history to say we'll just hope bunch of others can fill in as DH on their day off is astounding. Again, who is saying do nothing? The ones that are saying do nothing to the offense are saying do something to the pitching and/or defense. While adding EE instead of Beltran or Turner or some other "lesser player" would certainly add to our offensive projected output, the money spent may prevent us from upgrading the pen, rotation and defense as much as we could by just signing the lesser player. If we added Fernandez, Quintana or Sale without giving up a ML offensive piece, one could argue that would make a huge dent in the "replacing of Papi". Then there is this... (again)... Here's another way to look at it: instead of trying to replace Papi's 600 PAs or 1.000+ OPS offense, we could replace these PAs with more PAs from Beni (.865), Swihart (.720), Young (.894), Moncada, Leon (.891) and Holt (.717): PAs Player OPS 177 Vaz .580 124 Hill .554 110 Hanigan .463 64 Brentz .690 31 Holaday .459 12 Marrero .350 23 others going 3 for 36. That's about 550 PAs of putrid production We could gain over 200 points here alone.. I'm not saying this will make up for losing Papi, but it's a big step in the right direction. Add a couple strong set-up men in the pen, maybe upgrade a SP'er, pick up a Beltran or Turner, and we may come close to making up for Papi's loss without gambling on EE.

Well, if I'm a CWS fan, I'd be saying, "you don't trade an ace with 4 years of team control at a very reasonable cost".

Do we want hard throwers or guys who are effective? Sometimes one doesn't lead to the other. Sometimes it's nice to throw a mix at teams.

Me too. It would probably take JBJ, ERod and Swihart. I might give 2 of the three then sign Beltran to 2 years and hope Moncada can play LF by the time his contract expires.

We have a great OF but not much depth. Trading an OF'er means needing to replace an OF'er with another move (Beltran? until Basabe may be ready? Move Moncada to LF?)

I guess I don't think of planning to get way more PAs from Beni and maybe some more from Moncada, Young, Leon and Swihart is "standing pat", but I see how not adding to the current roster can be viewed that way.

I don't like the idea either, but what if Swihart is hitting .850+ at AAA, and our DH is not doing well. If Swihart can't play 1B, then HanRam will and Swihart (or Moncada) could be the DH for a while. I know this hurts their growth as a fielder and all around player, but if either is the best hitter we have, and we don't have a position for them to play, then DH may be a stop gap choice.

We'll have Buch to come in by the 5th or 6th inning.

Well, I did mention he might get $22M x 5 and someone said they thought he'd get more.

JBJ is one of my favorite players. I'd trade him straight up for Quintana.

ERod is still a little up and down, but he's looking to have kmore ups recently. I like him as our number 3 in the playoffs, but I have no issue with Pom.

He only made $30M in his last 3 years combined.

Did someone say he was going to make $30M a year?