moonslav59

Almost got to 100 mph!

Holt/Hernandez, because Holt can play the OF and 1B.

Although Thornburg is a righty, he is one of MLB's best RP'ers vs LHBs. His reverse splits are among baseballs most extreme. His reverse splits are nearly 200 points in OPS against!

I haven't heard one poster say our farm will be garbage, or we'll have nobody to call up. Our future 4-5+ years out looks worse than it did before all these trades-- much worse. Can we recover? Maybe- maybe not. One thing is for certain, the rules have changed making it harder to buy your way into acquiring the best young talent via international free agency and draft picks who slide down the draft due to "signability issues".

Certainly trading away so many nationally, highly ranked prospects is going to affect the future 4+ years from now. By how much is up for debate. It won't be easy to stay highly competitive into the extended future

Present tense does not include yesterday, or last week, or two weeks ago. You chose to make you cut off on what counts just these last two starts to say they "stink". That's subjective. They don't stink. Thay have stunk for the last two weeks. I see a difference, but maybe it's just semantics.

I haven't "given up", but they are both off my radar right now- Owens more so than Johnson.

Sorry. You never mentioned HanRam, so I assumed you meant Papi. You are right. Without HRam, our middle of the line-up is much weaker. We still have Betts, but nobody else with 30+ HR power, except maybe JBJ (who is out until maybe Friday).

Maybe even 50-60.

If Hernandez ends up replacing Pablo, how much power will we lose? 8-10 HRs over a full season? While I agree replacing Papi is going to force the team to redefine itself, I wouldn't say we are "without the big bat in the middle of the line-up." We have these players returning: Betts .318 31 113 HRam .286 30 111 J.B.Jr .267 26 87 Bogey .294 21 89 Not to mention these 2016 hitters pro-rated to 650 PAs: Young .276 25 70 S Leon .310 15 80 I'm not trying to minimize the loss of MLB's top OPS guy last year, but we still have some top quality hitters on this year's team. Here's how our top 4 hitters placed among all MLB batters with 600+ PAs last year: #15 Betts .897 #24 HRam .866 #31 J B Jr .835 #39 Pedey .825 #47 Bogey .802 I'm not sure any other teams have 3 in the top 30 and 5 players in the top 50. The middle of our order should not be a concern.

It seems like every one of Pablo's few hits have counted.

Yeah, he might go 8.

They don't "stink". They've just pitched like stink in small sample sizes.

Pablo was never a big HR guy either. I wish Marco was a better defender at 3B, but he might be our best 2nd option.

At least he's had a couple of big hits.

This is... Chris Freakin' Sale ...we're talking about.

Plus, Bogey only has about 30 PAs. I do like the idea of Bogey in the 2 hole for the long run, but I want Beni leading off--assuming he proves he belongs.

I know he's there, but he's off my radar right now.

It's... Chris Freakin' Sale !

He won't. Next game 7 IP 2 ER

Remember, this was my "Optimist Chapter" ! My "Pessimist Chapter" might exceed the character limit on a post.

True enough, and if we're able to just keep Sale, Betts and assuming Price is still producing in 4-5 years, we may be able to be at about .500 even with a bunch of scrubs filling out 10-15 slots on the 25 man roster.

Small sample sizes are "valid" but not necessarily meaningful. I did the math: take away Sale and our two worst starts, and we have this: Totals: 35 ER/55.2 IP (5.66 ERA) - Sale 2 ER/14.2 IP -Porcello's bad start: 8ER/4.1 IP -Wright's bad start: 8ER/1.1 IP New Total: 17 ER/25.1 IP (6.04 ERA) Just take away the 2 bad starts and keep Sale's 2 starts included, and we have: 19 ER/50 IP (3.42 ERA) 3.42 would rank 10th, although if you took away everyone's worst two starts, it wouldn't look that great. One good thing: the Guardians have the worst starter ERA in all of MLB at 6.58, and they look to be the AL's strongest Sox contender on paper.

For a while I had Owens ranked higher on my list than soxprospects.com. I really liked him early on. I've just about given up on him now, but it's nice to see him doing better.

Losing HanRam & Pablo's contracts the same year Sale, Bogey & Porcello are up for extensions makes keeping 2 of the 3 reasonably possible. There's a chance to keep all three, if we have already filled the shoes of Kimbrel, Pomeranz, Young, Moreland and Ross from within the system. That might be a lot to ask for, but only Kimbrel has a major role right now. I could see "the cliff" being 4 years away, when we will already almost certainly be significantly over the luxury tax but not at the $20M over penalty stage. After 2020, we have these players coming off the books but needing replacement or extension: Betts JBJ Wright Smith Vaz Leon None of these guys are "fluff" like Pablo will have been the year before. Take Betts or JBJ plus Vaz and Leon out of the previous year's projected line-up and what do we have? 2019: 1) Beni LF 2) Bogey SS 3) Betts RF 4) Devers 3B 5) JBJ CF 6) Pedey 2B 7) Travis 1B 8) Dalbec DH 9) Swihart/Vaz/Leon C Bench: Hernandez, Chatham/Longhi/Ockimey/Marrero/Matheny 2020: 1) Beni CF 2) Travis 1B 3) Bogey SS 4) JBJ RF 5) Devers 3B 6) Pedey 2B 7) Dalbec LF 8) Swihart C 9) Hernandez DH or, take out JBJ and insert Betts. Yikes! We'll need a lot to go right for 2020's team to compete for a ring.