moonslav59

As up and down as Kelly has been, that's a real possibility, assuming a strong desire to keep both Abad and Hembree exists. Ross has an option, too, but he's been one of our most consistent RP'ers since we got him, so I doubt that happens, unless he's got a nagging injury. At another position, Bryce Brentz is out of options, and barring injury, I predict he'll be traded or DFA'd. That would make room for us to sign a SP'er or two to a minor league contract as insurance.

It's not "bound to happen" in any given year. Last year was the first season I know of where Buch had a half good season and a half bad season. He's either good for a half season and then out injured, or bad for a half and out injured the other half or good or bad for a full season. There was too much of a probability of him sucking and/or being hurt to justify paying him that much to be our 6/7th starter.

Very true. That's one reason I think creating spending space by trading Buch should turn out to be a big value to us later next season.

There's a chance he won't be worth that in MLB.

Kopech does have a lot of upside. So did Moncada. I'm just so happy to have Sale. Imagaine: 3 out of 5 games, we'll have an ace on the mound! I also think the odds are good that one out of ERod, Pom or Wright have a break out season in 2017. If we;re lucky, two might.

A shot of a special juice to the butt cheek.

No argument here, and to me, the best way to build up a staff is from the top. DD did that. I can't express my thankfulness enough for him getting Sale. The Thornburg deal looks like a big score as well. We gave up a lot to get these two, but their contractual cost and length of team control makes it more than worth the sacrifice. I consider Sale and Kluber equal, and I like Price/Porcello more than Carrasco/Salazar, but it's close. Maybe we can gain ground with Erod/Pom/Wright over Bauer/Tomlin and Merritt, but tht looks close too. Our pen is going to have to outperform expectations to not lose too much ground to the Guardians' pen. A strong year by Thornburg and the return of a strong Smith could go along way towards closing that gap significantly. Kelly, Barnes, Ross and others have room to step up as well. I still like our line-up better than Cleveland's despite our loss of Papi and their game of EE. We outscored them by 101 runs last year. They have Brantley returning. He placed 13th in MLB in OPS from 2014-2015 at .876! Add EE, and they look to have easily made up the ground needed to catch the Papi-less Sox, but we should see an increase in 3B and LF production as well as an overall defensive improvement. Should be a tight race to the top of the AL.

His ship has sailed.. far, far away.

Why not trade Swihart then? Take the known over the unknown. JBJ still has room to get better as well. Just a little more consistency and he'll be near HOF consideration.

Pretty much what we've all been saying here for days. I'd add that it gives us a lot of wiggle room for midseason acquisitions- not a little.

The Guardians look pretty impressive. They have 12 pitchers with a projected WAR of 4 or over. (The Sox have 10.) They look especially built for the playoffs. (Projected WAR) SP1 4.9 Kluber SP2 4.5 Carrasco SP3 3.3 Salazar RP2 1.2 C Allen RP2 2.7 Miller RP3 0.5 Otero RP4 0.5 Cooney RP5 0.4 B Shaw RP6 0.4 McAllister RP7 0.7 Clevinger

The Guardians pitching looks better than ours, at least in some ways. One could look at the small sample size playoff series as see that The Guardians swept us without Salazar and Carrasco, their 2nd and 3rd best starters. I think this is an over simplification, but them adding Salazar, Carrasco, EE & a full season from Brantley, and us adding Sale, Thornburg, Moreland & a full season from Beni doesn't make it seem like we gained on them in this context, however, Salazar & Carrasco both started over 25 games this year, so the regular season gains are not as pronounced. EE is an upgrade over Napoli on paper, but let's remember Naps had 34 HRs and 101 RBIs this year. He was also a clubhouse leader. Here's the projected WAR, for what it's worth: 4.9 Kluber > 4.8 C Sale 4.5 Carrasco = D Price 3.3 Salazar 1.6 Bauer 1.4 Tomlin (Again, in a 3 game series, CLE has a WAR edge in SP'ing) 1.2 C Allen 2.7 Miller >> 1.1 Kelly 0.7 Clevinger 0.5 Otero > 0.4 Thronburg 0.5 Cooney > 0.4 R Ross 0.4 B Shaw > 0.3 Smith 0.4 McAllister >0.2 Barnes 0.3 Merritt > 0.1 R Elias 0.2 C Anderson > 0.0 Hembree/Abad/Scott Pitching Total: CLE 22.7 > BOS 21.8 SS 4.7 Lindor > 3.8 Bogey 3B 3.4 Ramirez > 1.0 Pablo 2B 2.7 Kipnis 1B 2.6 Santana > 0.7 Moreland DH 2.4 EE > 2.0 Ramirez LF 2.1 Brantley > 1.6 Brantaley CF 1.4 Naquin C 1.3 Y Gomes > 1.1 Leon C 1.0 R Perez = 0.8 Vaz + 0.2 Swihart RF 0.9 B Guyer OF 0.9 Chisenhall > 0.6 Young 0.3 Almonte 0.1 E Gonzalez > 0.0 Rutledge + Hernandez Total: BOS 24.3 > CLE 23.7 Overall: 52.7 LAD 51.6 CUBS 46.5 CLE 46.1 BOS 45.3 WSH 44.4 HOU 42.1 SFG 40.2 NYY 40.0 NYM 39.1 STL 39.0 LAA 37.8 SEA 37.7 PIT 37.1 TOR 34.8 TEX 34.6 DET 34.6 TBR 33.2 MIA 32.1 BAL 31.4 KCR

Wouldn't be the first time. Remember VTek's debacle?

They look like they might have passed us as AL faves after this.

I guess EE's deal is just $55M/3 with a $25M buyout- making it essentially:' $60M/3 or $80M/4 (team choice) As much as I'd have loved to have had EE, and I expected he's get 4-5 years at $20-22M a year, I can't see how we could ever have gotten below the luxury tax to reset over the next 3 years. Without Moreland, we could have come close this year, but we'd have to find about $3-5M more somewhere. (Remember, replacing $2M with $500K only saves $1.5M) Arb estimates: $4.7M Pom $2.6M Kelly $2M Abad $1.8M Ross $1.7M Holt $1.3M Leon One could probably cobble together a couple trades that could bring us useful $500K players in return for some of the names above and get us below the luxury limit, but how much weaker would we be in those areas. Also, would EE's $20M contract in 2018 and 2019 prevent us from extending one or two of our young stars nearing free agency?

If the Royals are out of it by July, they could look to dump the salaries of these guys on their last years: 3B Moustakas $8.7M OF Lorenzo Cain $11M SP Jason Vargas $8M 1B Eric Hosmer $last arb SP Danny Duffy $last arb The cost might be way too high for a rental, but at least we can afford their contracts. The Yanks might look to dump CC Sabathia ($25M). He'd cost about $8.5M at the deadline. CWS? Todd Frazier (last arb), M Cabrera ($15M), J Shields (only $10M owed by CWS) The Rangers are not likely to be out of it at the deadline, but if they are, they might look to trade Darvish ($11M, A Cashner $10M or Beltre ($18M x 2)

You're right, and usually there's an overpay even for a salary dump type deal. Even deals like the Peavy trade, which was for 1.3 years of control- not 0.3 is still being debated today. I hate to use the Shields deal as an example, because he sucked after his trade to the CWS, but the Padres paid $27M of the $42M owed to him and only got F Tatis and Erik Johnson in return. It's not a good example, because he wasn't a 0.3 year dump, but still, he only cost the CWS about $8M on the luxury tax budget. The gamble on him was similar to the gamble on Buch. Maybe a better comp would be the trade of Scott Feldman by the Astros for Lupe Chavez. Feldman was on his last year at $8M and was doing well for Houston (2.90 ERA in 62 IP at trade time). He ended up sucking for the Jays afterwards though, but I see him as a similar gamble to Buch for any given 1/3 of a season.

ERod pitched 170 innings in 2015, and since he has a high pitch/PA number, my guess is he has pitched to as many batters as someone with 180+ IP has. I don't think he needs to be babied. He turns 24 in early April. He's pitched in professional baseball for 7 seasons and has over 800 IP. I could be wrong, and if Sox management thinks he should be on an innings limit this year, then the idea of starting him in AAA and limiting his innings there would make some sense, but I think there would be ample opportunity to take him out of games early over the year to give him any rest he may need in order to still be fresh by playoff time. As a side note, Pomeranz has been in professional baseball 6 years, has just over 750 IP under his belt and never pitched over 101 innings until 2016 (170.2), and he was injured in the process of reaching 170. Steven Wright has been in professional baseball for 10 years with almost 1300 IP, yet he had never pitched over 148 IP until 2016's 156.2 IP, again a year that included him getting injured along the way to 157 IP. Maybe I'm over simplifying things, but ERod is younger and already has pitched a season with 170 IP- something Wright has never done in 10 seasons and Pom just barely accomplished this year. I think Erod is strong enough to not be on an inning count. I may waatch his pitches per game a little closer than our big three, but no more so than for Pom, who has been a RP'er for much of his career.

I wish we would just trade Abad for a Robby Scott, Josh Penningston or Victor Diaz type. We'd save $2M and keep Hembree for 3 years longer. This doesn't seem to be worth the argument. I jest, of course, we'll find an easy way to keep Hembree, Abad and anyone else we think is worth keeping without having to demote anyone worthy of being on the 25 man roster. Injuries, creative DL scenarios or a two for one type deal are all options before needing to trade Abad for a similar relief pitcher with options.

To me, the Buch dump goes beyond the tax reset. The spending space it created could allow us to acquire a much better player at the deadline. A more reliable SP'er. A 3Bman, if Pablo sucks. A top notch RP'er. We can afford to take on someone elses salary dump, so the return in prospect(s) would be minimal, ans since we'd only be paying 1/3 of the contract, we can even get two guys making $15M annually and be adding only $10M to our budget (.33 x $30M).

I don't disagree that situations like this can and do happen, but with this case, it really boils down to ERod vs Abad or ERod vs Hembree, and this is assuming no injuries and no willingness to create a phantom DL scenario for a RP'er. Again, assuming everyone is healthy and looking decent in ST'ing, is it really worth starting ERod at AAA, so we can keep the $2M Abad? I just don't see it being considered, unless ERod looks shaky in ST'ing, and he's not going to start. Putting ERod in the pen makes little sense, even if he is better than ABad, but I thought this whole argument was assuming everyone was healthy and looking at least decent in ST'ing.

SP1 Sale SP2 Porcello SP3 Price SP4 ERod SP5 Pom SP6/Long Relief Wright Closer Kimbrel RP2 Thornburg RP3 (Smith) Kelly RP4 Ross RP5 Barnes RP6 Hembree or Abad (both out of options) AAA SP7 Elias SP8 Johnson SP9 Owens (SP10 Kelly?) RP8 Scott RP9 Workman RP10 Ysla RP11 Martin RP12 N Ramirez RP13 Olmos (Owens/Johnson/Elias)

I think that's what will happen, although I have a slight preference for Wright as the 5th starter. He'll get his chance to prove he's a better starter, if indeed he is.

That was probably part of it, but I did get the Sporting News and Baseball Digest to satisfy my data obsession.

Maybe we have all been too quick to downplay he return we got for Buch... The Red Sox freed up some salary by dealing Clay Buchholz to the Phillies, but Boston also likes the prospect (Josh Tobias) they got in return, WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford writes. Tobias, a 10th-round pick for the Phillies in 2015, was one of 10 names targeted by the Sox as they looked through Philadelphia’s system. Red Sox director of pro scouting Gus Quattlebaum describes Tobias as “having potential as a versatile, switch-hitting guy with make-up and a feel to hit. Whenever you can find someone who can hit, that guy is going to standout.“