moonslav59

I like to praise or critique trades/signings at the time of the transaction. It's always easy to look back and support your decision based on what transpires afterwards. Clay B.....even if Clay was healthy and pitching well for the Phillies, I still would think the decision to trade him was the right one. 100%!

To me, it was more than just resetting the tax. It meant we can wait until mid season and spend the savings on a better pitcher or two better pitchers or a positional player that covers a currently unforeseen need. Flexibility.

MLBTR... Buchholz has been diagnosed with a partial tear of the flexor pronator mass in his pitching arm, per a club announcement. He is headed to visit Dr. James Andrews for a second opinion. As things stand, it’s not clear what treatment will be undertaken for the injury. That’ll be sorted out after the trip to Dr. Andrews’s office — which is never where a pitcher hopes to find himself. Clearly, though, Buchholz is headed for a layoff of some duration. Surgery isn’t always required in cases of strains (slight tears) or partial tears, but in such cases a fairly lengthy rest-and-rehab protocol is typically followed.

Agreed, but it is what it is. As much as both of us would like to go back and undo a trade or two (maybe three for you), we can't. I hate to have to rely on multiple hopes and prayers for our long term outlook to improve, but I fear that's all we can do now. We really are going to need Travis and Devers to be ready by the time we lose Moreland (2018), HanRam & Pablo (2020). Maybe a Dalbec or Hernandez can take a role, if Travis or Devers fail, but filling these 4 slots from within the system would go a long way towards freeing up salary space to keep our rising young stars, pay their arb raises, extend one or two of them AND maybe be able to keep Chris Sale. That's a lot to hope for from Travis, Devers, Hernandez & Dalbec, but it's not an absurd hope. What worries me is that we could have all those hopes come through, and we'll still have to let Bogey or Porcello go and maybe even one from Betts, JBJ or Sale go as well. Maybe not. Maybe we can stay below the $20M excess of luxury limit point where severe penalties kick-in, but it will not be easy. Hoping Groome can first replace Pom and then replace Porcello's slot is too much for me to realistically think is possible. If he can do it, it's likely Devers or Travis will not, and finding great corner IF'ers via free agency is usually very costly.

The lack of a true "long man" was apparent last night. Once Price comes back, and Pom or Wright go to the pen, that problem will be solved. Taylor did a great job giving us over 3 innings of good pitching. I hope he keeps producing like this.

It's +$20M to avoid penalties such as taking away draft picks or lessening amounts for draft signing pools. Resetting the luxury tax will be a big deal, because it will lessen future tax percentages when we likely will have to go over possibly starting as soon as 2018. The actual luxury tax still significantly increases each consecutive year a team goes over the limit.

In foresight too. DD knew we could always at least trade scraps for a salary dump pitcher mid season and do as good as Buch projected to do. If we can wait until July 31st, we only pay 1/3 of a pitcher's yearly salary, so Buch's $13.5M is really like a third of two pitchers making $20M each!!! Or 3 pitchers making $13.5M each. It's hard to imagine us doing worse than even a healthy Buch would have done.

I'm glad we were able to trade him without having to pay a penny. Remember, his buy out was $500K, so his "real cost" was about $13M.

Your points are very well taken. I too wish we had more than just 3 good prospects to pin our hopes on. We might be lucky, if two of them give us plus production down the road. One thing going for us is that we don't need great production to replace Pablo at 3B with Devers or Moreland at 1B with Travis. Replacing HanRam and Pomeranz will be tougher. I'm not sure we can even hope Groome will be ready AND as good as Pom year one (2019). We may need a healthy other 5 starters or someone to come out of nowhere to take his place (Elias, Owens, Johnson, Barnes?). I think the salary space we lose by our departing players will be almost totally eaten up by arb raises and extensions.

Good to see some of our bats beginning to "awaken", but too bad Wright had a meltdown. Taylor's performance was promising.

Exactly. Like it or not, GMs are graded in hindsight, like they were supposed to know a player was going to get hurt or suddenly and sharply decline. There are cases where warning signs were abundant, and a GM took a gamble anyway, maybe because it was his best or only option available at the time. On Buch, I was one of his biggest defenders over the years, but I agreed that it was time to cut our losses and move on from all of the uncertainty that came with his health status. I will say that if he was only making $2-3M, I'd have wanted to keep him. The money saved should help us immensely this summer.

We've already discussed potential for our bullpen. I'm little concerned with our lefties but we have now several flame throwers in the pen. No need to be concerned about having a top lefty. Thornburg is better vs LHBs than just about any lefty in MLB. Leon, Moreland, Pedy, Xander, Pablo, Beni, Bradley Jr, Betts and Hanley is good enough offensively to score many runs, even though we maybe short on power. This is how you build a championship team. We lose Young and Moreland for 2018 season. We're light on OF replacements within our system, but my guess is replace these two with Travis and one from Swihart, Hernandez or Devers. We lose Kimbrel, Pom, Joe Kelly, Robbie Ross for 2019 season. We'll probably have to sign a couple FAs and hope our younger pitchers step up. Maybe Groome can be a significant piece. We have a three year window to chase the world series and reload the farm system. Sale, Porcello, Xander, Hanley and Pablo comes off the books after 2019. Hanley and Pablo will yield $40M in savings. By replacing Hanley & Pablo (Moreland & Young) with Travis, Devers, Swihart & Hernandez, we might have enough money to pay all the big arb raises AND keep Sale and maybe one from Bogey and Porcello. Maybe sign someone else, if they want too much. I think it's a solid 4 year window...maybe 5. We all know what type of talent it takes to win it all. There's always some luck involved. How often does a Betts seemingly come out of nowhere? I'm just thankful we have a competitive team at least for next three years. We may need another Betts by year 4 or 5.

Moon has a very good point about building the starting rotation from the top and not the bottom. Acquisition of Sale has accomplished that task. There's no doubt that in Sale, Porcello and Price, we have three formidable starting pitchers at least on paper. Sox will have the luxury of selecting the 'best' fourth starter from Pomeranz, E Rod and Wright come playoff time. That's exactly it. While we "only" added one starter, Sale made Porcello & Price our 2-3 starters. ERod is now our 4th starter. Pom and Wright are our 5-6 not our 4-5. Trading for a 3/4 like Pom is better than trying to upgrade your 4/5 starter. Here's the luck we've had going that route: Masterson Peavy Dempster Mortenson Aaron Cook Franklin Morales Erik Bedard Brad Penny John Smoltz Paul Byrd Bartolo Colon Julian Tavarez Matt Clement (not really a 4/5 type) Jason Johnson Wade Miller Bruce Chen

LOL! I read the book, too. It was better than the movie as is usually the case. It's hard to argue against the importance of having a great closer, especially since our three rings all came with stellar closer closer performances throughout each season and playoff cycle. I love having a lights out closer, and I really do think Kimbrel was one of the best one could ever expect to get. I'm hopeful he gives us another 2 years of great closer production. My beef with the trade was about paying FA money and giving up top prospects. I was OK with one or the other but not both.

That was a big part of "Moneyball" as the A's continually created closers from their system, and then they traded them over and over again. They realized they could use the over-valuing of closers to their benefit. Foulke was a big part of our ring as was Papelbon and Uehara, but paying big money and giving up prospects was overkill.

maybe not 100% "win now" as we still have Groome, Devers, Travis and Swihart, but I agree we went a little to far. Maybe you think a lot too far, but I don't think we are far apart.

I'm not the least bit concerned that we don't have ML-ready players in Pawtucket at this moment because... where would we play them?? It's nice to know they are there, in case of injury, and knowing that Moreland and Young are FAs after this year. (I'm pretty sure Travis has an inside track to Moreland's slot.) (Maybe Hernandez or Devers will oust Pablo, Rutledge and-or Holt out of town.)

I agree that Anderson, Ockimey and Lakins might now be hot topics for us at the moment but it does demonstrate that we have players in the minors who are 3-4 years away to fill spots starting in the early 2100's.... You mean early 2020's, right?

True. I'll try to avoid that sort of talk going forward.

I guess, if a prospect is close to being called up to the big club, then talking about them in that context is ok for this forum, right?

It wasn't that "iffy" to some of us. What a great start for "the fat catcher" and the one that can't hit.

Agreed, and while a half season of pitching great for the Padres can be viewed as a fluke, it can also be a strong sign of what he can do again... this time for us.

Thornburg is better vs LHBs than almost any LOOGY... 531 (LHBS) vs .732 career (RHBs)

Again, they did a lot of it with stacked comp picks, massive international signings and no restrictions on how much we could pay draft picks. You may think those are minor obstacles: I do not.

"Posters" to me includes the site I was on before. My apologies for offending this site. I'm sure none of the same thing happened here.