moonslav59

55% of big signings would blow away the league average. If you look at the totality of Theo's signings and trades since the Nomar trade or the Beckett/Lowell trade, you might be surprised at how the record was not good. He did very well with drafting and international signings, especially early on.

I'll take a stab at answering. One reason is the west coast swing. We always struggle in those western big parks. One reason is 14 road games vs 9 home games. (We scored 59 runs in those 9 home games. We scored 49 runs in 14 road games, including 9 in one game, so 40 runs in the other 13 road games.) Our away OPS is 100 points lower than our Home OPS. Another reason is multiple slumps: 2nd half OPS .642 Papi (83 PAs) .699 Holt (67) .647 Hill (51) .564 Brentz (24) .281 Hanigan (22) Even these guys have slipped: .736 Bogey (104) .743 JBJ (93) .762 HanRam (76) Only 4 guys have done well: 1.025 Betts .806 Pedey .805 Shaw .796 Leon (.769 Beni in just 13 PAs)

Yes, that has been my point all along. People blamed Theo and Ben for missing on big FA signings, when the blame maybe should have been placed not on the miss, but on the swing! If all GMs are who swing end up missing, maybe it's time to stop swinging. If the pressure to sign somebody is placed on the GM, then have some sympathy when they miss, since just about every swing misses the mark. Lowering the standard for a successful signing does what? Even if you lower the standard significantly, how many big signings on the list I provided on the previous page have even done okay/decent? Was the Albert Pujols signing even close to being good? He hasn't done horribly bad.

Here are the few moves I liked at the time: I loved the Uehara trade. I loved the first Uehara signing. I loved the second Uehara signing and felt the overpay was worth it. extension. I loved the original Napoli signing (with bonuses) and re-signing. I loved the ERod trade and had hoped the Lester and Lackey trades would have been geared towards returning top prospects and not ML players, although I had hopes that 5 years of Kelly control would have bested 1 more year of Lackey control on a team seemingly going nowhere the next year. I loved the Cespedes-Porcello trade and extension, because Porcello all of his years of team control fall within his prime years. I loved the Beltre signing and argued we should have re-signed him and traded Youk. I loved the Masterson (and others) for VMart trade (but wanted him at 1B not C). I loved the Cody Ross and Johny Gomes signings. I loved the AGon trade and almost called the exact package it took (I said Kelly, Rizzo and Bowden). I loved the AGon extension thinking he'd hit 50 HRs for us. I loved acquiring Coco Crisp. I thought he'd be great. I loved the Manny signing. I loved having Alex Gonzalez as our SS due to his glove. I liked the RDLR & Webster for Miley trade. I liked the Castillo signing. I liked the Mike Cameron signing. I was okay with the JD Drew signing. Some say the Vic and Dempster signings worked. I was against both. Il iked Vic, but thought he was declining and 3 years was too much. Not all of the deals I liked were "mid tier", and not all of them worked out all that well, but I think thye have worked out better than our big signings.

Well, Theo has at least got off to a good start with the Lester signing. There's still time on the Price signing, and had Young not gotten hurt, he looked to be a good "mid tier" signing by DD. I'm not saying don't sign anybody, but we've really been extremely b ad at it, haven't we? I was against the Price signing, but I felt it was pretty close to a necessary risk. Price did look like the best FA pitcher, in terms of projected performance and age than just about any other FA SP'er in quite a long time. I get why they did it. It's hard to lay blame, especially when you look at the track record of every big signing going back 10 years. A large percentage fail to come close to reaching expectations. It does make me feel like the winning strategy, like in WAR Games, is "not to play the game". We have done a little better with our shorter term $6-13M contracts and re-signings. I'm not sure, if that's the answer, but if you take back every trade and signing we've made since the 2007 Nomar or Beckett?Lowell trade, we'd not only have plenty of budget space going forward, we also have an exciting team stocked with young talent, but light on SP'ing (unless we kept our own talent- Lester). The big moves we've made on SP'ing have most often been to find a 4/5 slot pitcher (P Byrd, Colon, BedardSmoltz, Penny, A Cook, Peavy, Dempster, de la Rosa, Miley & Masterson) with the Dice-K, Lackey and Price signings as our only attempts at finding a 1/2 slot starter. Side note: while doing my research for this post, I found something that surprised me. From 2008 to 2016, which is 8.5 years, there are only 8 Sox SP'ersover 220 IP! 1375 Lester 1076 Buchholz 834 Beckett 701 Lackey 563 Wakefield 463 Dice-K 382 Doubront 315 Porcello (Kelly and Wright are 9-10 with barely over 200 IP with the Sox.)

...as reflected by our 90 point drop in team OPS (.833 to .743). Even so, we still have 9 of our top 11 PA players with a season OPS of over .790. If Young comes back and Leon stays healthy, those two could pass Holt and Vaz in PAs making it 9 of our top 9 with OPS over .790.

We are now tied with the Tigers for the second WC slot 2.5 games behind BAL & TOR for the 1 slot and the division lead. SEA is 2.5 behind the Sox & Tigers. HOU is 4.0 behind and the Yanks are hanging tough at 4.5 behind. CWS & KCR are still slightly alive 7.5 behind. 4 teams are toast. The NL has 6 teams that are "toast". That leaves 20 teams still somewhat "in it". Talk about parity. However, probably only 14-15 teams still have a good shot.

WAR POS.. BOS BAL TOR SP'er 4.9 4.0 4.3 RP'er 1.2 1.5 1.3 .....C 0.6 0.7 0.7 ....1B 0.7 1.1 0.3 ...2B 1.2 0.8 0.9 ...3B 0.7 1.9 1.9 ...SS 1.2 0.7 1.0 ...LF 0.6 0.4 0.7 ...CF 1.2 0.9 0.9 ...RF 1.5 0.3 0.9 ...DH 1.0 0.6 1.0 BAT 8.5 7.4 8.3 PIT 6.1 5.6 5.6

Let's compare the Sox OPS+ with Toronto: TOR 161 Donaldson 135 Encarnacion 131 Saunders 111 Bautista 104 Tulowitzki 94 Smoak 84 Martin 81 Pillar Others: 118 Travis (240) 93 Carrera (222) 78 Barney (250) 36 Goines (173) 27 Thole (114)

Imagine how ballistic Sox fans would be going right now, if you told them their top 6 SP'ers had these numbers: IP - ERA 144 - 3.50 116 - 4.02 84 -- 6.72 73 -- 5.67 72 -- 5.47 64 -- 6.22 Their 7-9 starters have combined for 54 IP/24 ER (4.00 ERA) Even on offense, they have these issues: 1) a .317 OBP from the 1 slot 2) only 2slots with an OPS over .796 3) .675 team OPS since the allstar game 4) massive spli disparity (.801 vs RHP/.695 vs LHP) 5) compare their OPS+ depth vs ours: BAL....................BOS 140 Machado.. 161 Ortiz 121 Alvarez..... 131 Betts 120 Trumbo..... 130 JBJ 107 Schoop..... 119 Bogey 104 Davis........ 108 Pedey 101 Jones....... 105 Shaw 93 Hardy......... 89 Holt 84 Rickard...... 77 Wieters Others: BAL: 130 H-S Kim in 212 PAs, 82 Reimond in 180, 68 Flaherty in 159 & 28 Joseph in 111 BOS: 54 Vazquez in 176 PAs, 118 Young in 142, 155 Leon in 121, 16 Hanigan in 102 & 91 Swihart in 74.

Some others from before salaries got astronomical: Carl Pavano, Wayne Garland, Vince Cloeman, Dave Collins, Albert Belle, Gary Mathews Jr., BJ Upton, Milton Bradley, Jason Bay, Mo Vaughn, Russ Ortiz, Carlos Silva, Mike Hampton, Denny Neagle, Juan Pierre, Andruw Jones and Chan Ho Park.

Pardon the long lists. Here is what I found on the most recent BIG free agent signings since 2011 and the largest contracts in MLB history (FA or otherwise). Look at the names and see how many of these big signings have been an unqualified success... Recent Top Free Agent Signings: 2011: $142M/7 Carl Crawford $126M/7 Jayson Werth $120M/5 Cliff Lee $80M/5 Adrian Beltre $56M/4 Adam Dunn 2012: $247M/10 Albert Pujols $219M/9 Prince Fielder $122M/5 CC Sabathia $106M/6 Jose Reyes 2013: $147M/6 Zack Greinke (with opt-out) $125M/5 Josh Hamilton 2014: $240M/10 Robinson Cano $155M/7 Masahiro Tanaka $153M/7 Jacoby Ellsbury $130M/7 Shin-Soo Choo $90M/5 Hunter Pence $85M/5 Brian McCann 2015: $210M/7 Max Scherzer $155M/6 Jon Lester $95M/5 Pablo Sandoval $88M/4 Hanley Ramirez 2016: $217M/7 David Price (with opt-out) $207M/6 Zack Greinke $161M/7 Chris Davis $133M/6 Justin Upton (with opt-out) $130M/6 Johnny Cueto (with opt-out) $110M/5 Jordan Zimmerman $90M/5 Jeff Samardzija Largest Contracts (FA or other) 1. Giancarlo Stanton, $325,000,000 (2015-27) 2. Alex Rodriguez, $275,000,000 (2008-17) 3. Alex Rodriguez, $252,000,000 (2001-10) 4. Miguel Cabrera, $248,000,000 (2016-23) 5. Albert Pujols, $240,000,000 (2012-21) … Robinson Cano, $240,000,000 (2014-23) 7. Joey Votto, $225,000,000 (2014-23) 8. David Price, $217,000,000 (2016-22) 9. Clayton Kershaw, $215,000,000 (2014-20) 10. Prince Fielder, $214,000,000 (2012-20) 11. Max Scherzer, $210,000,000 (2015-21) 12. Zack Greinke, $206,500,000 (2016-21) 13. Derek Jeter, $189,000,000 (2001-10) 14. Joe Mauer, $184,000,000 (2011-18) . . . Jason Heyward, $184,000,000 (2016-23) 16. Mark Teixeira, $180,000,000 (2009-16) . . . Justin Verlander, $180,000,000 (2013-19) 18. Felix Hernandez, $175,000,000 (2013-19) . . . Stephen Strasburg, $175,000,000 (2017-23) 20. Buster Posey, $167,000,000 (2013-21) 21. CC Sabathia, $161,000,000 (2009-15) . . . Chris Davis, $161,000,000 (2016-22) 23. Manny Ramirez, $160,000,000 (2001-08) . . . Matt Kemp, $160,000,000 (2012-19) 25. Troy Tulowitzki, $157,750,000 (2011-20) 26. Masahiro Tanaka, $155,000,000 (2014-20) . . . Jon Lester, $155,000,000 (2015-20) 28. Adrian Gonzalez, $154,000,000 (2012-18) 29. Jacoby Ellsbury, $153,000,000 (2014-20) 30. Miguel Cabrera, $152,300,000 (2008-15) 31. Zack Greinke, $147,000,000 (2013-18) 32. Mike Trout, $144,500,000 (2015-20) 33. Cole Hamels, $144,000,000 (2013-18) 34. Carl Crawford, $142,000,000 (2011-17) 35. Todd Helton, $141,500,000 (2003-11) 36. David Wright, $138,000,000 (2013-20) 37. Johan Santana, $137,500,000 (2008-13) 38. Alfonso Soriano, $136,000,000 (2007-14) 39. Freddie Freeman, $135,000,000 (2014-21) 40. Justin Upton, $132,750,000 (2016-21) 41. Shin-Soo Choo, $130,000,000 (2014-20) . . . Johnny Cueto, $130,000,000 (2016-21) 43. Matt Cain, $127,500,000 (2012-17) 44. Barry Zito, $126,000,000 (2007-13) . . . Vernon Wells, $126,000,000 (2008-14) . . . Jayson Werth, $126,000,000 (2011-17) 47. Ryan Howard, $125,000,000 (2012-16) . . . Josh Hamilton, $125,000,000 (2013-17) 49. CC Sabathia, $122,000,000 (2012-16) 50. Mike Hampton, $121,000,000 (2001-08) 51. Jason Giambi, $120,000,000 (2002-08) . . . Matt Holliday, $120,000,000 (2010-16) . . . Cliff Lee, $120,000,000 (2011-15) . . . Elvis Andrus, $120,000,000 (2015-22) 55. Carlos Beltran, $119,000,000 (2005-11) 56. Ken Griffey Jr., $116,500,000 (2000-08) 57. Jordan Zimmermann, $110,000,000 (2016-20) . . . Dustin Pedroia, $110,000,000 (2014-21) 59. Jose Reyes, $106,000,000 (2012-17) 60. Kevin Brown, $105,000,000 (1999-2005) . . . Ryan Braun, $105,000,000 (2016-20) 62. Albert Pujols, $100,000,000 (2004-10) . . . Carlos Lee, $100,000,000 (2007-12) . . . Ryan Zimmerman, $100,000,000 (2014-19) . . . Evan Longoria, $100,000,000 (2017-22) . . . Kyle Seager, $100,000,000 (2015-21) 67. Adam Wainwright, $97,500,000 (2014-18) 68. Pablo Sandoval, $95,000,000 (2015-19) 69. Carlos Zambrano, $91,500,000 (2008-12) 70. Mike Piazza, $91,000,000 (1999-2005) 71. Chipper Jones, $90,000,000 (2001-06) . . . Barry Bonds, $90,000,000 (2002-06) . . . Scott Rolen, $90,000,000 (2003-10) . . . Torii Hunter, $90,000,000 (2008-12) . . . Ichiro Suzuki, $90,000,000 (2008-12) . . . Hunter Pence, $90,000,000 (2014-18) . . . Jeff Samardzija, $90,000,000 (2016-20) Tell me how many you see...

One more entry of note: Linked to all sorts of players from Chris Sale to Jonathan Lucroy, there was a lot of speculation at the trading deadline of whether the Red Sox would try and pull off a blockbuster trade, and, if so, which elite young players they would include in such a deal. MLB.com's Ian Brown spoke with Red Sox President Dave Dombrowski about the deadline and if they were reluctant to part with Moncada or Benintendi. His answer was definitive: "I would say extremely," said Dombrowski. "They're really good. And they're not the only ones. [Rafael] Devers you could say is pretty close, too. He's a little younger. These guys are special players, and they're not far from the big leagues, either."

This from soxprospects.com "...the last time a Red Sox positional player was called up a season after being drafted was Fred Lynn in 1974...." "Chris Mitchell at FanGraphs runs him through his "KATOH model" and it predicts big things for the 22-year-old. It has a very nice list of comparable players, and also says that he has a greater than 50% chance of having 16+ WAR over his first six seasons and a 30% chance of 20+. Not too shabby." "Every publication and industry expert seemed to want to weigh in on the subject. MLB.com's Jim Callis says he should surpass the weak production the Red Sox have gotten from left fielders right away with more to come as he develops." "Baseball Prospectus' Christopher Crawford was more direct in his praise of Benintendi and his immediate impact potential saying, "There are four plus tools here, and Benintendi is such a smart player with quality instincts that it’s really tough to see him not being an impact player immediately. Baseball is really hard, but Benintendi makes it looks easy." "Baseball America's JJ Cooper calls him "one of the best hitting prospects in the game..." On Moncada & others.... "Baseball America released their High Class A Best Tools list this week, and Red Sox were all over the Carolina League portion. Top prospect Yoan Moncada alone landed in four spots on the list (most exciting player, best hitter, best baserunner, and best defensive second baseman). Righty Michael Kopech also was given the best fastball, Nick Longhi (pictured, left) was tabbed as the best defensive first baseman, and Rafael Devers as best defensive third baseman...."

True, butd I haven't given up on this year, despite my recent grumblings and venting.

We were lucky he retired, because it saved us $13M the next year. We were unlucky when we misspent the savings on two bozos. Granted, Masterson couldn't even carry Dempster's jock.

Why I don't disagree, Pablo is signed for less than half of what Price got, and he "under performed as well. While he was never a great 3Bman, he was a very clucth playoff performer and a decent regular season hitter and fielder until he came here. I'm not defending Pablo. I hated the signing, I'm just saying just about everyone we sign has under performed.

Here's the problem with signing or not signing the high priced FA's. The FO has dual goals. Goal #1 is to make money and goal #2 is to win. As a short term solution signing the FA's solves goal #1. If the fans think the Sox are going to be winners they'll come to the park and spend the money. However, it may not be a good long term solution because if these FA's don't play up to their contracts the FO is stuck with those contracts - and as Moon has pointed out, most FA's don't. OTOH, if they don't sign the FA's much of the fan base will think the Sox aren't trying to win and they'll stop showing up at the park, especially if the team gets off to a slow start. Which costs the organization a lot of money. Right now the FO is trying to lure fans in after two straight last place finishes by not raising ticket prices and making promises that the team will be better. Fans seem to love coming to see Betts, Bogey and JBJ. They aren't buying tickets to see HanRam and Pablo. Soon, they'll avoid Price starts. We can win and draw fans with some of the guys like Moncada, Beni, Devers, Kopech, Margot, Espi and others becoming the next Betts and Bogey.

Moon has stated if we can't win this year with Ortiz having a stellar offensive year, what makes us think we can win with Encarnacion? We could still win this year though...with Papi.

Encarnacion is not going to meekly sign for 3 years. He's going to want 6 or 7 and probably get 7 from some desperate GM. I hope it's not DD.

Weren't Masterson, Dempster and Victorino exactly the kind of FA signings you're in favor of? No. Masterson was one of MLB's worst pitchers, and $9M was a gross overpay even though it was "mid tier. We were lucky Dempster retired. I'm always against signing #5 SP'ers. Vic was over the hill, showing signs of decline and signed for 3 years. That's not as short term as I want. Beckett was never signed by us as a FA. True, but he was going to be.

You're right; nobody has said Encarnacion was the sole answer to our troubles. That was hyperbole. Maybe I could have been more brief, but whenever I try to be overly simple, i get misunderstood or misinterpreted. I think that was one of my better posts.

You could be right, but I tend to think if something was seriously wrong, we'd see it in his K rate or BB rate. His K/i9 is the same as 2015 (9.2. His 2.1 BB/9 is his highest since 2012, but his 2.1 mark is lower than his career 2.3 mark. His K/W ratio (4.4) is the lowest since 2011 (3.5), so maybe something is there. To me, he seems to be trying to hard for K's instead of letting hitters hit him weakly for outs. I'm not expert on struggling pitcher diagnosis, so who knows. )

Totally right, but when are we going to ever stop banging our heads on the wall and repeating history? The answer to our troubles is signing Encarnacion, I'm hearing from many here. Our problem is signing big FAs. The solution to that problem is probably not going to be signing another big FA! Price Pablo HanRam Masterson Dempster Victorino JD Drew Crawford Beckett Lackey How many of these signings have been unqualified successes? How can the solution to this losing pattern be to continue it in hopes we finally get one right? Keep the kids. Try to strategically sign mid level FAs to short term deals to fill the gaps. Forget panning for fool's gold!

You mean "another one" besides Price, and I totally agree. We had too much mediocrity with hopes filling out the 2-5 slots. We came out well with just 2 of them: Porcello and Wright. ERod is showing hope. Had we acquired another solid SP'er, and I don't mean a 5 slot guy like the Dempster and Masterson signings tried to address, but a real dependable 2/3 slot guy, we'd be a lot better off right now. We wouldn't have had give up Espi to roll the dice on Pomeranz. We wouldn't have had a 7.00+ ERS from our 5 slot for much of 2016. We wouldn't even know who O'Sullivan is! Not surprisingly, I actually think we got lucky that 2 of the 8 guys (Porcello, ERod, Buch, Kelly, Wright, Owens, Johnson, Elias) we had fighting for the 2-5 slots have done as well as they have! We'd be in last place had Wright sucked, or Porcello pitched like last year. Those aren't two big what ifs. Now, where are we? There's little hope of finding a FA SP'er next winter. We've exhausted our top prospect depth by trading away 3 top 90 prospects in Margot, Espinoza and Guerra for a high-priced closer (Kimbrel) and a possible flash-in-the-pan SP'er (Pomeranz). We can't aford to trade Beni or Moncada, and I doubt we can get what we need by offering Swihart, Devers, Kopech and Basabe. We have to make up for Papi's retirement on top of taking care of our staff this winter. I'm trying to be optimistic, but it's getting harder with every Price start.