moonslav59

Brez worked so hard to assemble a very deep rotation, even if many looked mediocre or had injury issues, then he trades one of the few who stayed healthy and or did not decline. I have to say, it's hard to plan on losing 4-5 SP'ers, even if one was Sandoval. Houck, Crawford, Dobbins, Winckowski (Gio missed a few starts & Newcomb was let go.)

I'm not high enough on Tibbs and Ehrhard to say "grossly," but as with all "buyer" trades at the deadline, it was an overpay. The Matz trade seems about the same, as I think we would have left Jordan unprotected from Rule 5 and lost him for nothing, anyway.

BOS & TOR: F DET: B HOU: B+ NYY: A- TEX: A SEA: A+

It does seem like it never happens. Bregman does seem to really like BOS. Is it tampering to talk to your own player? Tell him, "Go ahead and opt out: we will pay you $150M/4, this winter." wink-wink.

I'd have considered Rafaela and others for Ryan. If I was giving up Anthony, I might have included others to get Ryan and Jh Duran. (Maybe Chapman to PHI and someone from them to MIN as part of the trade.) I'm not a huge Mitch Keller fan, but I gotta think we could have gotten him (and maybe Bednar, too) for a package of prospects no other team could realistically match without emptying their farm. Duran & Chapman to PHI Painter, Abel, Mendez, Volloria, Tait, Campbell & Romero to MIN (MIN trades Bader to someone else for more prospects) Ryan & JH Duran to BOS

Agreed. Every move other AL contenders made look like overpays or gross overpays. It's what you need to do to keep pace with others who are improving. This further highlights the need to take winter additions more seriously, knowing that waiting until the deadline is more costly and counterproductive for future outlooks.

Well said. It wasn't that I did not like what you were saying about the streaking Rangers, it was my belief that you were being overly optimistic about their holes not being holes, going forward, but you were not affording Sox holes the same hopes. The Rangers just improved via trades. I think they filled enough holes to be better than us, on paper- same with SEA. The Yanks seemingly fixed their biggest hole- the pen. DET & HOU put themselves out of the Sox reach. Only TOR failed to make major deadline gains, but we are 5 behind them. That's 6 teams that look better than us. We still have a shot at beating one of the 6, but those odds fell, last night.

And winters, too (Buehler.) We also saw Bloom trying to trade for Graterol. We did unload Price on them, and he pitched just 114 innings with the Dodgers, so maybe that makes it not so bad.

No, it's not, and I'm fine with bringing up how Devers has not helped SFG for almost a 2 month sample size. I do not think Devers will keep playing like this. I think he will be a decent defender at 1B and hit .850ish for the next few years. He's agreed to play 1B for SF. That sucks from our view in BOS, but he's finally doing the right thing on taht front. I think we did well to rid ourselves of a player who was out to challenge our management team, and hopefully we will spend the savings, this winter and over the next 8 seasons. The "selfishness" talk is valid, I suppose, but I never got any hint of that until the Casas injury and the push for him to play 1B. I think the whole move to DH was blown out of proportion, but maybe I'm wrong. The talk of his getting fat, not being a top batter and being a bad teammate is not to my liking, but his last few months with the Sox put the bad teammate issue up for debate, to say the least. Before that, I think he was a great teammate. Being a Yankee killer makes anyone a good teammate.

My guess is it might have taken... Duran, Clarke and Early/Sandlin (maybe Romero, too) of Abreu, Campbell and Early/Sandlin Maybe, I'm wrong. Maybe they'd want Abreu, Campbell & Clarke. I'd probably try to sub eearly for Clarke, but would maybe say yes, anyway. You gotta overpay for controlled pitchers, but really, the time to make trades for guys like Ryan or Keller is December. I still wonder if we tried to 3 way a trade: Duran or Abreu (and maybe Chapman, if we also got Jh Duran) to PHI Painter (and others from PHI), Campbell, Clarke & others from our farm to MIN Ryan and maybe Jh Duran to BOS

I felt better after the 2024 deadline, for two main reasons: 1. We had a better outlook on Danny Jansen, Lucas Sims, Luis Garcia & James Paxton than we do on the M & M brothers, while giving up no major prospects. 2. We were closer to being in a seller mode than this season, and yet we still seemed to do better, at the time. Of course, only Jansen added any value, but the others had hopes as good as or better than M & M.

I'm glad for Romero, and I am one to think Jordan will never be a good MLB player. Romero was once ranked 7th by SPs.com. Injuries were part of the reason he fell sharply in the rankings. He's now #10, after the Tibbs trade. He's got 30 XBHs in 66 games at AA. (.756 OPS) He's an okay defender at 2B & 3B- two positions we need help or depth.

We may not even make the 6th seed anyway. You haven't seemed very optimistic, lately, either. If we do, we won't win a ring, just like other 6th seeds. Thanks for adding support to my point.

I'm fine with the trade. I just don't think we have to bash Devers to convince ourselves the trade was for the good of the team. I also don't like doing JH's dirty work for him, even if we are just presenting facts not opinions. The sample size of Devers since the trade is pretty small. The sample size of Hicks, Harrison and Tibbs is even smaller. The players we added with the Devers savings is at zero, right now. Let's talk again in a year or two.

We coulda sold Abreu or Duran for a gross overpay, then flipped the prospects or combined some with out own to grossly overpay for Ryan & Jh Duran or Keller & Bednar.

The atmosphere would have been Toxic, even with a half sell-off, like you suggested, but maybe had we also made one "buy" of a controlled pitcher like Ryan or Keller, the Nation would be no more angry than they are right now. They'd also get over it, if we went for it this winter.

IMO, no. Just post them again, after he gets back near or over .900.

If we were going to trade for a pitcher, we could have included Early, Sandlin or Paez with Tibbs and maybe even Romero or Bleis and gotten much better pitchers than May and Matz.

We are not good enough to do any more than maybe sneak into the 2 or 3 WC slot. Even if you believe in the "playoff crapshoot" philosophy, you have to admit, we'd have had a much better chance with Ryan or Keller plus a LH'd platoon 1Bman better than Toro.

We did NOT have to sell out the farm to make big enough gains to be a top 2-3 AL contender. We could have struck a nice balance and still had a very nice farm system. If we were not going to make significant improvements in just 2-3 areas (SP, 1B platoon & RP) then I'd have been 100% with Fred: sell, Sell SELL!!! We could have been sitting very pretty for 2026 and beyond. 1. Sit down with Bregman and say we want you back in 2026, then trade him. 2. Trade Chapman for a nice prospect or two. 3. Trade Giolito for a nice prospect or two. 4. Trade Wilson, Buehler & Refsnyder for the best you could have gotten, even if you think it's unfair. We could easily be a top 3-4 contender in MLB in 2026 by just spending to the tax line and making a couple key trades involving the swollen prospect pool plus Abreu, we'd have accumulated at the deadline and over the prior few years under Bloom & Brez. SP1 Crochet SP2 __FA__ (F Valdez/Ra Suarez/M King/Cease/Lugo) SP3 Ryan (for Abreu, Early & Sandlin) SP4 Bello SP5 Sandoval/Dobbins/Crawford/Houck/Harrison/Fitts Closer __FA__ (Chapman $22M/2 or Helsley/Ro Suarez, E Diaz) RP2 __FA__ (Finnegan/R Iglesias) RP3 Whitlock RP4 Slaten RP5 Houck/Dobbins/Crawford/Harrison/Fitts RP6 Dobbins/Crawford/Harrison/Fitts RP7 Weissert RP8 Crawford/Harrison/Fitts/Bernardino/Murphy C Narvaez & Wong 1B __FA__ (Alonso or E Suarez) or Campbell/Casas/Toro-Romy 2B Story (Campbell/Romy/DHam/Grissom) SS Mayer (Story/Romy) 3B Bregman (brought back at $35M x 4) (Mayer) LF Duran & Jh Garcia CF Rafaela (Duran) RF Anthony (Jh Garcia) DH Casas, Yoshida-Romy or __FA__ (Schwarber)

Or, they wanted more or better prospects than stingy Brez would agree to giving.

I woke up thinking I feel better than I did, last night. If what you says is true, I'm more pissed than ever. 3 years of Duran plus I'd even add a couple #7-20 prospects (or 3 #12-25's for Ryan is a no-brainer, to me. Ryan has 3 arbs left. He's a top 15 SP'er since 2024 (6.1 fWAR and 79 in ERA-) His 251 IP places 52nd, but he's just 35 IP from top 30. I hate to trade Duran or Abreu, but the step down to Anthony might not even be down. The step up from Fitts/Harrison/May to Ryan is off the charts upwards.

Our farm is looking very good, despite all the graduations. I expect our farm pitching to take off in the next 1-3 years. I think our everyday prospects will hold their own. C: Jo Garcia, Brannon, Salazar, Jo Rod 1B: Campbell (graduated) 2B: Cespedes, Cason, M White, Alcantara, Godbout (Grissom- graduated) SS: Arias, Ramos (Sogard) 3B: Romero, Reimer, Nunez LF: Y Rod, Yuten, Azocar, Cespedes? (Eaton) CF: Taylor, Bleis, Rivas (Castro) RF: Jh Garcia, Ju Gonzales DH: Hickey, Cespedes? It's not great, but with so many showing promise, I expect enough to jump up and shine. The rotations look very promising, with some needing to move to the pen: AAA: Harrison, Fitts, Tolle, Early, Uberstine, Sandlin, Perales, Wehunt, Drohan (That's 9, if none make the big squad!) AA: Clarke, Paez, Holobetz, Rivera, Rogers/Dean (maybe a AAA guys starts out at AA) Monegro will be on the IL A+: Valera, Witherspoon, Phillips, Evanson, Aita, Tygart, Judice (IL) A-: Fajardo, Neely, Travieso, J Bello, J Gartrell, Y Ruiz, M Patton, B Morgan, D Brown FCL looks very promising: Cason, Delzine, Reyes, Frias, Zink, Cordero

We had enough farm assets to offer more without hurting the future. We had enough OF depth to capitalize on teams overpaying for good ML talent and then flip for a better pitcher than Matz or May. We chose not to do it.

Toro is .591 in last 97 PAs. He was at .638 career in 1300 PAs, before 2025. He had one brief hot streak, when we needed it, but he is who he is- not very good.