moonslav59

If he'd agree to a 2 year deal, which I don't think he will, then it makes signing him look bettter, but I'd still say no. We have arb raises to look at next winter, and the FA class next year is strong. We'll know more about Devers and Travis by then.

I think we could take back the Pom trade and hardly affect our odds at winning a ring this year, plus we'd be comfortably under the limit, so we could keep Buch. Espi could be ready to replace Porcello 4 years from now. (Owens, Johnson and eventually Groome may replace Buch.)

Exactly. Look what Kelly got us. Even the fallen prospect, Lars Anderson, got us Steven Wright.

How many of those prospects that we traded are going to be a big impact in MLB? A couple? Three? I'd guess 4-5 out of these guys: Moncada, Kopech, Margot, Espi, Basabe, Asuaje, Guerra, Pennington Three years is a long ass time in MLB to restock the farm. Even if we do "restock" the farm over the next 3 years to a decent level, hardly any will be ready until 5-8 years from now. How's that help us 4-5 years from now? Yes, we have Devers to replace Pablo or Moreland. We might get lucky with Travis replacing Moreland or HanRam. Maybe Groome can replace Buch or Pom, but who are we going to draft in the next 3 years from a 25-30 slot that will be ready to replace Porcello, Bogey, JBJ, Betts, Vaz & Swi, Pom and circumstance?

The Sox have devastated their system to the point where perennial whipping boy Trey Ball is on the cusp of being a top ten prospect. You're right! If you just move everyone up to fill the vacant slots on soxprospects.com, here's our new top 10: 1. Beni (will likely graduate this year) 2. Devers 3. Groome 4. Travis 5. Johnson (soon to be 27 years old) 6. Hernandez (going to turn 25) 7. Dalbec 8. Chatham 9. Ockimey (raw) 10. Chavis 11. Longhi 12. Raudes 13. T Ball

I did on another post somewhere- maybe on another thread. We don't lose a lot after 2018, and the ones we do lose are important players that will likely have to be replaced in kind. 2018: $13M Kimbrel ~$9M (last arb) Pomeranz ~$4M (last arb) Kelly ~$3M (last arb) Ross That might total $30M, but look what top closers are making now. Plus, now we have more arb raises: Bogey 3 of 3 --could cost a ton of money Thornburg 3 of 3-- another costly arb Holt 3 of 3 Rutledge 3 of 3 JBJ 3 of 4 --more cost Leon 3 of 4 Betts 2 of 3--more high cost Smith, Wright, Vazquez and Barnes 2 of 3 --some cost here too ERod & Swihart 2 of 4 My guess is, after arb raises, the $30M will just about be gone. That means Thornburg will have to be our closer, and we'll have to backfill the pen from within the system. Certainly, we will not be able to sign a big name FA without going way over the limit. I'm not saying we won't, but somewhere in here, we'll have to reset the luxury tax to avoid huge future costs. After 2019, we'll have a lot of money, but some big talent to extend or replace in kind. Porcello Bogey HanRam Thornburg Pablo ($5M buyout) Holt Rutledge These arb raises: JBJ 3 of 4 Leon 3 of 4 Betts 2 of 3 Smith, Wright, Vazquez and Barnes 2 of 3 ERod & Swihart 2 of 4

You are killing me with the data here. My hats off to you. You are a research guru. Of course you aren't changing my mind but I bet you already knew that. DD's decision to not listen to trade partners when they brought up Devers name tells me something. I feel the same way. I think that Devers' big step up on defense this year sealed the Moncada deal. I love Devers. I wish we could have talked the CWS into taking Swihart, Hernandez & Owens instead of Kopech, but that's likely dreaming. As much as I like Moncada, finding a place for him to fit would not have been that easy. My biggest concern with Moncada has always been his defense and lack of a defined role in MLB other than hitting lights out. Much not all but much of this top of the line talent that has been recently traded was blocked by legit ml talent. Having a backlog of talent isn't a bad thing of course but I think there are others ways to look at it in terms of value. My approach is somewhat simple - I get that and I'm ok with it. If I worried as much about tomorrow as some people seem to, honestly, I don't think that I would enjoy today nearly as much. It's kind of like having a ton of unused $ sitting around and not being used. You get to pat yourself on the back and say you are rich but in reality until it is being used it isn't doing you much good. Being prepared and saving for the future is a good thing but without a little risk taking along the way - yawn. I'll say again - although I have 0 data to support - as long as our current ownership remains in place, I absolutely believe this team will compete at a high level - 5, 10, or 15 years down the trail. As you know, I have never been against trading top talent. I have suggested dozens of trades with Moncada, Swihart, Basabe and others in my packages. I wanted us to try hard, and I'm sure DD did, to keep Espi, Devers & Kopech. I realize most of our positions are locked up for 2-4 years, so trading away the near ML ready talent made sense. My concern is with the 4-7 year range, and that's where the three guys I listed as keepers would have come into their own. We traded two of the three. If we had to trade Kopech to get Sale, I get it. As I have said, I love the Sale deal. I do wish we had the Espi deal back, especially in light of the Sale deal and talk of using Pom in the pen now. I think we will be competitive from 4 to 7 years out, but not "highly competitive, unless Henry changes his M.O. or we find the Rizzos and Betts in the lower picks a few times in the next draft or two. As I have shown before with out draft successes, they almost always involved years with multiple comp picks or top 15 draft choices. I'm not saying we can't draft better with lower picks than we have done in the past, but we will have to improve in this area, or we will have some trouble after year 4. Here's another simplified way to look at it: Our draft choices since 2005: (Only significant players listed) Top 15: 12 Groome 16 7 Beni 15 7 T Ball 13 16-35: 26 Chavis. 33 Kopech 14 24 Marrero, 31 Johnson 12 28 R Fuentes 09 30 C Kelly 08 27 J Place 06 36+: 51 Chatham (118 Dalbec) 16 67 S Travis 14 37 P Light 12 172 Betts 11 77 Wilson 09 85 S Fife 08 6th Rd A Rizzo 07 2nd Rd Masterson 06 Comp Picks: 16-35: 19 Barnes, Swihart 11 20 Vitek 10 28 D Bard 06 23 Ellsbury, 26 Hansen 05 36+ 36 Owens, 40 JBJ 11 36 Brentz, 39 Ranaudo, 57 Workman 10 42 Buchholz, 45 Lowrie, 47 Bowden 05 Look at our own picks from 16-35. There's not a single player that amounted to squat in the last 12 freakin drafts!!!! Kopech shows promise, but that's it! That is mind-boggling and scary as hell. When you look at all the later picks combined over 12 years, I see Betts and Rizzo as the only 2 solid stars. That's 1 every 6 years! That's not too hopefull either. The vast majority of our in-system studs have come from comp picks and international signings. Both of those areas have become much more difficult for us to do well in due to rule changes. If we continue our pattern of acquiring young talent without top 15 picks or comp picks or $60M international players like Moncada, we're going to be suffering in 4 years and maybe much longer. Take away our top 15 picks (Beni & Groome), our comp picks (JBJ, Swihart, Barnes, Ellsbury & Buchholz) and big ticket international signings (Moncada & maybe Devers & Espi) and where would we be (and have been)? We wouldn't even have had the prospects to trade away. Look, I'm not doom and gloom. I'm super psyched about this team and its future. I think we can and will remain competitive beyond 4 years, but it's going to take some major changes in the way we have been drafting players and signing international players. We can't continue going 12 years with just a Michael Kopech to show for all of our 16-35 draft picks.

It's pretty close. I agree on Pom in the pen due to experience there, but I also think Wright and ERod have slightly better starter profiles. I'd put ERod in the 4 slot right now, but ST'ing can change things. Interesting comp on Wright & Pom. 1st Half 2016: ERA - 61 Wright (3rd best in MLB) 62 Pomerabz (5th in MLB) WHIP 1.06 Pomeranz (13th) 1.21 Wright (36th) WAR 2.5 Pomeranz (14th in MLB) 2.1 Wright (24th in MLB) W-L 10-5 Wright 8-7 Pomeranz Something else interesting: out of the top 25 leaders in Wins for the first half or 2016, 5 current Sox pitchers placed. 1) Sale 14-3 7) Porcello 11-2 10) Wright 10-5 15) Price 9-6 25) Pomeranz 8-7 52 wins.

Or, April-May, but we run the risk of Buch going down as we wait for someone else to go down first.

LOL Prius soul would have been closer

Well said.

It did surprise me some, but I've been talkin CWS trades for months. I love pitching and D, so I'm really excited.

Me too. The years on the deal are second. Being RH'd is tied with age as the 3rd concern.

It should be interesting to see how the market plays out. I almost hope they trade Buch soon, just to find out if I was right or wrong about his value.

ERod has to show he can do it for 170+ innings. There was talk of him tipping his pitches, so if that was part of his 2016 issues, he should be able to fix that easy enough. He's got enormous upside, but so have a lot of pitchers who never amounted to squat. I have a lot of faith that this will be his year. I have him as my number 4 with Wright, Pom and Buch below him (in that order). Spring training may change that order.

Well, if Sale, Price and Porcello can go 7 every time, we can absorb two 5 inning guys.

The theory would be that we get a prospect plus something significant with the money saved.

With more serious restrictions though.

It was .260 in the second half. Porcello's was .239.

Not having to part with ERod, JBJ or Devers was huge. If you told me we could get Sale for Moncada, Kopech and Swihart, I might have said okay as well.

Yes, this is the worst FA SP'er class I can remember. Some big name pitchers might be traded, but as we move towards the end of free agency, or as teams lose pitchers to injury, all we need is one GM to get desperate enough to overpay. We keep overpaying for pitchers, I'm not sure why we can't expect some GM to overpay for one of ours.

Imagine keeping everyone at these costs 2020-2021 or replacing them with top level FA players: Price $31M (assuming he does not opt out) Betts $30M+ (2021>) Porcello $30M+ (2020) Sale $30M+ Bradley $24M+ (2021) Ramirez $20M+ (2020) Kimbrel $20M+ (2019>) Maybe Devers can replace Pablo and Travis for HanRam, but if only Devers steps up, keeping or replacing just the 7 players above could cost over $190M. One can imagine trying to do without replacing HanRam in kind through free agency, so that would bring the number down to $170M. The supporting cast is perhaps an equal issue. Pedey will be older. Pom, Buch and much of the pen will be different or more costly.

I'm not sure, if you can or should count JBJ's slow career start as a slump or "bad streak". It could have just meant he was called up too early, or he took a long time to make rookie adjustments. If you discount his poor MLB start, there's little evidence he's an overly streaky or "inconsistent" hitter when compared to other Sox hitters. 2016 APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP JBJ .807>1.175>.805>.839>.651>.731 Betts .757>.927>.792>1.068>1.086>.762 Bogey .785>1.017>.815>.830>.599>.750 Papi 1.071>1.180>1.039>.903>.912>.1.017 Ram .696>.842>.720>.940>.962>.1.045 Ped .846>.870>.724>.862>.916>.742 Bogey had the worst month of an of our core players. He also had 3 months below .800 to JBJ's two. Betts had 3 months below .800 and three above .925. One could argue that he is more inconsistent. HanRam had a month under .700 and even Pedey had 2 months below .745- same as JBJ. JBJ had one bad month and one so-so month this year. I'm not ready to call him streaky, yet.

I think most see prime as 27-31 or 26-32. EE will turn 34 next month. In theory, he should have already been declining. One could say he's past due and could decline quickly, but one could also say he's showing he can age well. Papi broke all the rules on "past prime", so it's impossible to project, but a 4 year deal would men he plays while 34, 35, 36 and 37. All the years fall outside of traditional "prime" years, but I guess "significantly" is up for discussion. It certainly is a concern or should be.

Just read over an old Ben Buchanan article just before the Sale trade on how much acquiring Sale would increase our already good odds at winning the WS: Assuming they only give up Eduardo Rodriguez off the major league roster (a huge assumption) to go with the likes of Moncada and Kopech and presumably some other prospects, I don’t think their odds are actually all that much better. Looks like he thought we'd have to give up much more than we did. ___________________________________ Here's what he said after the trade: Here’s your Dave Dombrowski blockbuster... giving up no major league talent in the process. Obviously Yoan Moncada is a huge loss. Obviously Michael Kopech has excellent upside. Those other two prospects could be huge. There’s also a lot to wonder about just how much better Chris Sale actually makes this team. He’s an exceptional pitcher, and will be Boston’s for the next three years (at a fairly reasonable price), but they were already a good team with a good rotation. That being said, if the Red Sox were going to go all-in on 2017, they have at least done a good job of that...