moonslav59

You can always find example of the "experts" being wrong, but many more times than not, if a player is ranked in the top 15 or 25, they turn out to be good to great players. Also, I don't recall Castillo ever being ranked as highly as Moncada or Benintendi, but his age and play with Cuba might make this an apples to oranges comparison.

A lot of his defensive issues are about him trying to catch Wright.

Good read. No mention of Swihart due to his injury, but eventually his name will once again join the who will be our catcher discussion mix. I could see keeping 3 catchers on the 25 man roster, if one was Swihart, since he can play LF 9a high need area right now), but I think it's going to be hard keeping Vazquez and Hanigan both on the 25 man roster. It will make PH'ing for our weaker hitting catchers easier, but with a DH that only plays DH, and Holt still in rehab, we lack the flexibility many other teams enjoy. I just don't see 3 catchers as a likely solution.

True, except I've yet to see a rattlesnake in 9 years living in Sugar Land (a suburb of Houston). My wife's a teacher, and I volunteer teaching, so we both have summers off. We go to Maine every summer for between 3-6 weeks, so I found a way to get the best of both worlds. The heat here is stifling, but only for 3 to maybe 4 months, so it's still beats 5 month winters..

Until we get a name, it's hard to say "too much", but I agree, the package is a hefty one, so it better be a top quality pitcher with several years of team control.

The fans are not the only ones drooling over their new shiny toys, these two guys are very highly rated by national experts. Yes, experts have been wrong before, but not as often as some seem to think they are. The last time we had guys ranked this high, their names were Bogey and Betts. I'm not saying it's a lock we get two more players at their levels, but it's not a long shot thinking at least one of these two guys comes close to B & B. That would be a spectacular gain for this club. between Bogey, Betts, Bradley and one of the "shiny toys" doing well, we'd have an awesome amount of production at a very low contractual cost for a few years anyway.

I could see Moncada starting as our DH next season as he learns how to play LF, 3B or 1B well enough to be of more value there than at DH. I also think how well Shaw does the remainder of the season will dictate where Moncada may play next year. If Shaw struggles, we may see Moncada pushed into 3B, assuming Sox management projects he can be decent there defensively in such a short time period to learn the position. If Shaw does well, we may still want to move Shaw to 1B next year and slide HanRam to DH. There's also the Pablo question. I'm not sure Sam Travis will enter the battle next year, but his name should be mentioned. With all these names in the mix at 3B, 1B and DH, it makes me think LF is probably the likely landing spot for Moncada. Young has just one more year of control, and he could be traded easily, if the position is squeezed by Moncada and/or Benintendi. I don't see Holt as a LF option-only as depth. I do think Swihart could compete for the LF position or platoon LF with Moncada/Benintendi (and/or Young), if he's not traded. It might be hard to trade Swihart, until we know how gzood Moncada or Benintendi are. Lot's of choices to be made soon.

Leon's sample size is way too small to make any definitive judgement on. It's great what he's doing, and I'm all for riding the hot bat as long as possible, but I'm not expecting it to go on much longer. There's little evidence he will ever remain a good hitter, even among MLB catchers, so it's all about his defense compared to Hanigan, Vazquez and Swihart's. It's tough call for me between Leon and Hanigan. Maybe we can extend Hanigan's rehab assignment, but honestly, even if Leon stays hot for another week or two, do we really want to bet on his bat continuing to be even slightly plus for a catcher? Maybe we can find a taker for Hanigan and his contract. He has an option year remaining. 2016:$3.7M and 2017:$3.75M club option ($0.8M buyout) I doubt many teams are looking to pay Hanigan that much to be their back-up. He probably cannot be relied upon to be anyone's FT catcher either, so we'd probably have to pay $500K to $1M to any team trading for him. I don't expect much in return either. It's tough choice, but I'd go with Leon- not because of his recent offense, but because he has 3 arb years left and Hanigan has just one year of control left. Keeping Leon though, means he has to stay on the 25 man roster or risk being snagged by another team. This means Swihart would have to be traded or take on a role as a LF'er (platoon?) and 3rd string catcher. I like the idea of a 3rd string catcher being available, because you can PH for our 1 & 2 catchers freely, but I still say Swihart's value at catcher for another team is worth more than his value to us, so he should be traded (not handed away for lesser value).

I wanted us to extend Lester and even suggested we extend Lackey with a signing bonus that would pay him good money during his "minimum wage season". However, once it became clear Lester was heading to free agency I was fully on board with trading him. I did not like the idea of trading him for Cespedes and a comp pick, but that's a separate issue. I thought we could have gotten better for Lackey too, but I could see how Lackey's 1.3 remaining years was worth more to a contender than to a non-contender (the Sox). All-in-all, once we messed up the Lester extension, I liked the idea of blowing it all up. I loved the Miller for ERod trade (and I said it at the time). I did not like the idea of trading Lester and Lackey for ML players. I had hoped we went for prospects like ERod instead. I thought Kelly had promise, but the Cespedes deal made little sense to me, especially with the no draft pick clause. I had hoped we loaded up with prospects that summer, and then spent the next winter signing free agents and trading some prospects for young controllable players.

I'd still be living in Maine, if it wasn't for the 5 month winters.

So, how good of a pitcher can we get for Benintendi, Swihart, Devers and Kopech/Dubon/Lakins?

I'd like nothing better than for Brentz to prove me wrong. We sure could use a boost right now.

So, let's burn the straw man and move on. I'm just hoping we don't trade Moncada. The sky's the limit with this guy.

Show me where I misstated your position, then argued against a point you never made. Name "the bunch" of straw men I constructed. You're straw-manning on me straw-manning! LOL! BTW, nice avoidance of my reply to your question.

I'm not sure the move to LF was what screwed JBJ up. I'm not even sure the argument some make that we rushed him too quickly is totally accurate. He looked ready at the minor league level- bat and glove. Some players just take longer to adjust to MLB than others, and we'll never know, if we waited a yeara on JBJ, he wouldn't have still gone through a tough adjustment period. It may also have just been an extended slump or a loss of something nobody could figure out. I wasn't accusing you of "straw man" building, Hugh. I did think you seemed to act like I wasn't understanding your point or that I didn't know what the standard procedure was. Maybe I don't value the "mental side" as much as you do, but I'm not dismissing it wholesale. I don't think I ever called for Moncada to be immediately switched to LF or 3B. I may be wrong about him being closer to ML ready offensively, so if that is true, then I agree that we can wait the normal wait time to consider starting the process of moving him to another position. If he is ML ready with the bat right now, then I wouldn't wait too much longer (maybe 15-20 more games) before beginning to give him some reps at 3B or LF (not both). I'm not saying start playing him in LF next week or even 2-3 weeks from now, but probably sooner tahn we did with Swihart and others. I'm just not sure how long our luck can run having to quickly get players ready for a new position at the ML level.

Maybe/probably, but we can say the same about Moncada, Benintendi, Espinoza and maybe even Devers.

I'd rather have Vaz at C than Swihart, and keeping both with such a high need at pitching for us and such a high need for catching elsewhere, makes me think Swihart is the odd man out. Devers as well.

Like a hypothetical scenario.

A straw man is an argument based on a fallacy by giving the impression of refuting an argument made by someone, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that person. You claim I want to "jerk Moncada around", when my position is far from that. I don't see what's so hard for you to understand about calling your argument "straw man". You may disagree with my definition of "jerking around", but clearly you should be able to understand why I am calling it a straw man argument. And, I hate getting in argument over semantics, knit-picking peoples positions, and reading into things inaccurately. Can we move on to baseball? Many people felt Middy was a high risk to fail in 2013. We ended up having to play Bogey at 3B after just 10 games in the minors. To me, that was "jerking" a player around, and at the worst possible time and level. Many people saw that once Vazquez was over his injury, we'd need to find another place to play Swihart, assuming his bat became as many projected it might become. This talk was even occurring before Vazquez's injury. Swihart ended up being "jerked" to LF after just 12 games in AAA. You can claim these two cases were injury related and this sort of thing happens in baseball, but there is an argument to be made to be proactive, especially in cases like Swihart's where it is pretty obvious there is an issue of being blocked at his natural position anyways. The Bogey-Iggy issue was different. It seemed clear all along,m Sox management wanted Bogey to be their long term SS not Iggy, so I get the reasoning to not start converting Bogey to 3B, but having him learn how to play 3B "just in case" would not have been a radical idea or "jerking" as much as he actually ended up being jerked. Yeah, the philosophy is to not change a guys position shortly after advancing to a new level. I get it. I understand the benefits, but how cool is it to have a player change positions at the MLB level so quickly? It's happened often with the Sox. Too often for me to not be concerned. The Betts situation did not occur under any stress or pressure due to injury or immediacy needs at the ML level due to a playoff run. Mookie's rapid rise surprised just about everyone. It seemed like he was jumping up a level every few weeks. He played mostly 2B with some SS from 2011 to the fall league of 2013. He was promoted to AA to start 2014 then promoted to AAA after just 54 games, and onto MLB action after just 45 games at AAA. That's 3 levels of advancement in just a few months, and along the way, they converted him from a middle infield position to CF. In your opinion, was this following "standard procedure"? In your opinion, was this "jerking" a fragile prospect around? Yes, I believe they gave him 30-40 games at AA as a 2B before moving him to CF, which is pretty close to the timetable I am suggesting we try with Moncada. (Actually, I am not calling for moving Moncada to LF or 3B right away. I was just saying he could start taking reps in practice sooner rather than later.) Betts played more OF than 2B at AAA (33 CF, 4 RF, 6 2B), so they did transition him adequately before the bigs, but there was no pressure to promote him to MLB in mid 2014. What if there had been a big need? Would it have been prudent to get Betts time in the OF sooner than they chose to do so? I'm not sure what the answer would have been. All worked out well with Betts as he adjusted better than anyone anticipated. Bogey looked good at 3B in 2014, but not so good in 2015. Swihart's sample size was too small to gauge. Some say we messed up JBJ by forcing him to play LF. I was for keeping him in CF and moving Ellsbury to LF, but I'm not sure his situation relates to this argument.

You're greatly over exaggerating what I'm calling for. That's the "jerking straw man".

I'm hoping Brentz does well, but I've never been a Brentz believer.

Regarding the Teheran rumors...all of the reasons I didn't want to see a prospects-for-Hamels blockbuster a year or two ago don't apply here: he's young, on a great contract, and presumably has his best days ahead of him. In theory, that's the type of pitcher you break the bank for, but you'd have to be damn sure he's a TOTR type in this division/league. I've read opinions that his stuff wouldn't play up in the AL East, and FIP and other ERA estimators don't make him look nearly as good as his sub-3 ERA would indicate. The Braves will want a big haul, and who can blame them, but I'd hate to give up one of our top 4 prospects plus 2-3 other pieces and have Teheran be only a #4 type pitcher for us. His age and contract are very appealing. He's 25 1/2. His luxury tax number is: $5.4M to 2019 and then $12M in his 2020 option year. Even if he ends up being a 3/4 slot pitcher as he enters his "prime years", we won't get burned on the money. The risk is with what prospects we give up to get him. It would take at least one of our top 4 prospects, and I share user's concerns, but I'm just not sure anyone else is available that is as good as Teheran. That doesn't mean I'm willing to grossly overpay for Teheran. His 102 xFIP- since 2013 is scary. Yeah, it's not as bad as Shelby Miller's 110, but it's still on the wrong side of 100. Teheran must be a magician, because his ERA- has been 87. That ranks him 21st out of 69 pitchers with 500+ IP since 2013. (Miller's is 94.) Teheran's WHIP ranks 15th at 1.15. His BAbip this year is .206, but his LD% is way down and his GB% is way up, so it might not all be luck. It's hard to judge a guy that is just 25. How much stock do you take in his 730+ IP at the ML level. The sample size is certainly big enough to be definitive, but at age 25, one could expect further growth. Overall, I think I'm with userbame on this. His mechanics scare me too. He's not as good as some of his numbers show he is. I would not overpay. I'd offer Swihart, Devers, Kopech and Lakins or Dubon. That won't be enough, so....

For the small sample size lovers: Moncada's AA OPS is now up to .842.

Maybe they're waiting until he changes his name to Boncada, so he can joining the "New Killer Bees": Betts, Bogey & Bradley (& Benintendi?) LOL

Hanigan is pretty good on defense as well, if he could just learn to catch a knuckler.