moonslav59

Hammel has never shown the extended flashes of greatness Buch has. It's not always about most recent WAR numbers. Sometimes it's about what a players ceiling could be, and Buch can pitch like an ace for extended periods of time. He's done it 3-4 times over his career.

Also, when we play in NL parks, Beltran can play LF as we rest Beni, JBJ or Betts. Signing EE means either him or HanRam sits in NL parks. It's not a major issue, but could make a difference.

How about the broken clock being right twice a day?

You couldn't be more wrong. I hardly ever go back and blame the GM for bad signings and say "I told you so." I do go back and say I hated the signing at the time often enough-maybe too often, but not "in hindsight" which implies explaining how the player performance since the trade justifies how right I was. I don't do that at all, or iuf I do, it is very very rare. You know I disliked these moves day one. Someone who is the king of hindsight does not operate my way. I'm glad we have Kimbrel, Pom and Price. I have never put them down, even though many have argued they have been disappointing so far. My beef was upfront...not in hindsight. Look at all the moves I was against with Ben, yet I was one of the few that did not want him let go. I never said, "See I told you Pablo was going to be a bad signing and he sucks now" Never said it. One reason is, that I didn't think he'd suck. Another is because Ben had good reasons to do what he did, same as DD. I guess I'll never get across my belief that being critical of individual moves does not mean I'm bashing the GM as a whole or operating on some sort of hindsight campaign. It's just not true.

I can assure you every single GM, including DD, is projecting three years out.

No, I don't assume this, but before when these kids were 18 or 19, they were just speculative values themselves. I'm not against trading 17 or 18 year olds or our top prospects. I'm not big on hindsighting GMs to death. I didn't with Theo or Ben. I'm into being critical or agreeing with moves made at the time they are made. I will go back at times and say, I wish we still had this guy or that guy, but I never go back and say "nah nah nah nah, Kimbrel sucked- see I told you it was a bad trade". In fact, I priased Kimbrel as a top 3 closer and expect him to return to top 3 status next year.

Wow! "A waste of time". I'd have been fine trading Espi (with others) for a real ace in the "here and now", but to trade such talent for a promise of a #3 starter, and yes, that's all Pom was and is was a mistake. The future is now- 4-5-6 years ago. If we had taken this route 3-4-5 years ago, we'd have traded away Betts for Hammel, Bogey for who knows who, and maybe we wouldn't have finished in last place so much recently. Whopp-dee-freakin-doo!

Then what? Go out and outbid for Jansen or Chapman (or Melancon)? Theo would probably want Vaz or Swihart- most likely Vaz. I might try an initial offer of Swihart, Pomeranz and Barnes, but it woiuld probably take Vaz and ERod to get this young star. I wouldn't go that far for a DH, but the fact that he could catch is a plus.

And, that's exactly the mindset Theo criticized himself for getting away from in Boston. If Espi is the next Pedro, and I'm not saying he will be, I can wait 4-5-6 years. I get that when you are talking about a pitcher who turns 19 in March, it's near total speculation, but how often to 18 year old pitchers climb that high on the rankings lists? There's a reason for it. His potential is enormous, and caring too much about his "numbers" at age 18 is being short-sighted.

I don't want to trade away young players with high ceiling potential. That's the main reason the Pomeranz trade kills me. If we do trade away high ceiling potential, then if better be for something big.

Eventually Groome may join the top of the rotation. Maybe we won't miss Espi.

If they take Pablo with JBJ, then I'd maybe do it. Votto's contract is so high that even though he is doing great, he's tipped the balance to being a salary dump.

If we really want to get a DH who hits well vs RHPs (and LHPs, I might add), then maybe Beltran is the answer.

Yeah, I meant to say 2012. Thanks for the correction.

CERA's value is when comparing only catchers on the same team AND pitcher by pitcher with significant sample sizes. I'm not sure the sample sizes are large enough to compare, plus Vaz wasn't playing last year and Swihart wasn't really playing this year. Comparing how Vaz did with Porcello this year vs how Swihart did with Porcello last year might not be fair. It's hard to fully blame the catcher for Porcello's Jekyll and Hyde show. The sample sizes are all whacked out, but here they are: Porcello: 2016: Leon 2.52 (107 innings), Han 3.45 (16), Vaz 3.64 (94), Swi 6.00 (6) 2015: Han 4.15 (39), Swi 4.47 (107), Leon 7.86 (26) Career: Leon 3.57 (134), Vaz 3.64 (94), Han 3.95 (55), Swi 4.55 (113) Price: 2016: Leon 3.23 (109), Hola 4.15 (13), Vaz 4.62 (97), Swi 5.73 (11) Buchholz: Career: Hola 2.25 (8), Leon 3.01 (155), Vaz 4.44 (130), Han 5.93 (27), Swi 10.00 (9) ERod: Career: Han 3.78 (50), Swi 4.08 (71), Vaz 4.50 (22), Leon 4.60 (86) Wright: Career: Swi 1.35 (7), Vaz 2.72 (36), Han 2.90 (90), Leon 6.46 (24) Pom: 2016: Hola 3.32 (41), Leon 5.85 (20), Han 7.88 (8) Barnes: Career: Hola 0.00 (3), Vaz 2.02 (27), Swi 4.50 (30), Han 5.93 (27), Leon 6.14 (29) Ross: Career: Hola 0.00 (3), Leon 2.28 (47), Han 2.84 (32), Swi 4.94 (27), Vaz 12.86 (7) Hembree: Career: Swi 1.20 (15), Han 1.83 (20), Hola 3.00 (3), Vaz 3.08 (26), Leon 5.48 (21) Uehara: Career: Han 1.12 (24), Swi 2.60 (17), Leon 2.86 (28), Vaz 5.35 (35) Tazawa: Career: Vaz 3.06 (35), Leon 3.16 (26), Swi 3.86 (28), Han 4.10 (37) Kimbrel: 2016: Han 1.74 (10), Vaz 2.04 (18), Leon 3.20 (20) Kelly: Career: Vaz 3.06 (35), Han 4.83 (91), Swi 5.10 (60), Han 5.23 (10) Ziegler: 2016: Han 0,00 (3), Vaz 0.00 (2), Leon 2.01 (22), Hola 3.38 (3) It's hard to draw any conclusions from these wildly unbalanced sample sizes over 1-2 years.

That's what I've been saying all along. Like Iggy, who I hated trading away, the fact was with Iggy and is now with Swihart, are not in Sox management's plans at their highest value position. Like moving Iggy to 3B, moving Swihart to LF when our catcher hitting was under a .550 OPS was extremely telling. My other big point has been that with the state of catching in MLB today, many GMs, some on winning teams, are dying to add a promising catcher to their roster- risks and all and defensive issues and all. I think Swihart has a very high trade value, and that his value to another team rates to be higher than his value to us as a third string catcher and possible utility type player in 2017.

There were other RP'ers out there for NY to overpay that year.

Well said. My guess is that with equal offers, Miller would have chosen Boston over NYY.

A few points about Miller: 1) 2014 was his breakout year. In 2012 and 2013 he was just a good reliever. In 2014 he became an excellent one. But that was the only excellent season of his career to that point. I think 2013 was excellent. 1.19 WHIP and 11.4 K/9. The big surprise with Miller has been the drop in his BB/9. From 2006 to 2013, his BB/9 was between 4.5 and 8.7. It was over 5.0 in 5 of his first 8 years. Then, suddenly in 2014, it dropped to 2.5. This year, it was 1.1. One could argue that nobody could foresee that and offering more than $36M/4 would have been a huge gamble, but many of us wanted us to do that at the time, so it's not hindsight thinking. 2) Up until 2014 Miller was not a closer. He had 1 career save prior to 2015. True. 3) We were bidding against the Yankees. It's kind of humorous to think that because they paid him 4/36, an offer of 4/40 by us would have 'gotten it done', as if the Yankees would have just turned tail and walked away. I was surprised he went to a team looking to be in decline, instead of a team one year removed from a ring and with an excess of top young talent.

It would have been a wonderful thing to have signed Lester and Miller after trading them. I know it's getting old whining about spilt milk, but clearly we could have afforded both as we shortly afterwards paid more for Price and the "double whammy" Kimbrel. Hopefully, we have learned a valuable lesson, but I hope we don't go too overboard to compensate for the mistakes. In my opinion, we had been doing a pretty good job evaluating our own talent and skillfully determined their value. Most of the vets we lost to free agency either declined by more than what the signed for, or we got draft picks in compensation that worked out well for us. The loss of Lester, Lackey and Miller and the return we got for them broke that trend. I hated the Kimbrel trade, but I'm confident he will return to top 3 to 5 closer status in 2017. I disliked the understandable signing of Price, but I'm confident he will be better than he was this year. We filled the two positions we needed last winter with the best available players. The price was very high... too high, even more so when you look at what we could have gotten Lester and Miller for, but we have what we have, and we have to look forward and try not to repeat the mistakes of our past.

Agreed. Many forget that VTek was not a great defender until about age 31-32. At least Swihart has a good arm (39% CS rate in the minors). I've not given up on Swihart as a catcher, but I've just always been higher on Vaz.

I was for it. It was less than what we are paying Kimbrel for one less year overall, and we wouldn't have had to give up 4 prospects to get him either.

I was referring to the context of the idea Buch was probably going to be in the pen. I think we all know, he'll end up starting some games. By the look of recent seasons and out need for 28 to 60+ starts from our 6th or lower starters, he's likely to get the chance to start 25+ games next season, and $13M is the going rate. Nobody wants Miller starting again, except maybe the opposing teams.

I'm a big believer in Vazquez, too. I'm not sure he will beat out Leon by opening day, but I don't think the job is decided.

I don't think Vaz is going to repeat .585. I think it should be easy for anyone to improve on the .475 OPS of the combination of Hanigan and Holday (148 PAs). I think these two points could and should balance out the expected decline form Leon.