moonslav59

I'm the same. I hardly ever argue about umpiring, but this is absurd. It's time for automated balls and strike calls.

I'm not sure I want him starting as of right now. I only mentioned him as an option that I have not heard discussed.

Recently, he has 5 BBs in 5.2 innings.

He has not had good control this year. His BB/9 rate is 4.9 and he's walked 4 batters in his last 5.1 innings.

Rico was a great one, but just 7 seasons with over 500 PAs makes it tough to think of him as a HOF'er.

While Barnes has some nice numbers this year, his WHIP has remained over 1.40- driven mostly by his scary BB/9 rate. One could argue that he's been lucky as a RP'er, so I don't think trying to stretch him out if a big danger. Barnes had 77 starts in the minors compared to just 13 RP'er outings. He had 22 starts in 2014 and his best WHIP rate in advanced professional ball (1.292). He had 7 starts in 2015 (AAA and MLB). I'm not saying now is the time, but maybe at some point...

Welcome notin! I always felt you were the best poster at BDC.

If our SP'ing continues to struggle, what about the idea of moving Barnes back to that role? I know he's doing great out of the pen, but still...

I'm all for keeping as much of our youth as possible, but the fact is we have bottlenecks at several positions and too many expensive vets that are near impossible to jettison. Eventually someone will go. To maximize return, it will (or should) be someone with a high stock value. I caught a lot of grief for suggesting we offer Swihart due to the fact that we had Vazquez, and Swihart's highest value is as a catcher, and catcher's are in very high demand in MLB. I see Moncada and Benintendi making the chance Devers ever wins a FT slot as being very hard to happen, even if we somehow are able to get rid of Sandoval and Shaw fizzles out by the time he's ML ready. That's also assuming Travis and Hernandez never do well enough to win a key role on the team. If Moncada wins an OF slot, then where does Benintendi play? More likely, Moncada will have to play in the IF. To me, our best package might start with Swihart and Devers, even though Devers' stock might have slipped this season a little bit. To me, those two headliners net us way more than a rental- even a great one. If we add other nice pieces like Owens, Johnson and/or Kopech, the return should be even better.

The more likely deal might come from a bad team looking to dump salary or to look towards a longer view into the future...Here are the worst teams right now: Fill in the names of anyone you want from these teams. MN: ATL: CIN: MIL: HOU: SDP: OAK:

I had hoped we made more deals like the ERod one than than the Cespedes one during the great purge that summer.

How about the team that had Butch Hobson batting 9th? The 1977 Sox had Rice with 39 HRs, Scott with 33, Hobson with 30, Yaz with 28, Fisk with 26, Lynn with 18, Carbo with 15 and Evans with 14. 4 guys had 96+ RBIs, 4 guys had OBPs above .370, and 6 guys with a SLG% over .489! The 2003 Sox scored way more runs than even those late 70's teams. All 9 starters has over 12 HRs and 65 RBIs. 7 guys had 19 or more HRs and 8 had 85+ RBIs. 6 guys had a SLG% above .510 and 3 over .575! Most of all, they were an OBP machine. All top 9 PA guys had an OBP above .333, 8 were over .345 and 3 were over .396.[/b]

Whatever we pay the other team counts against our luxury tax. If we keep him on our team, in the minors, not on the 40-man roster, nothing counts towards the luxury tax.

Several great pitchers today were obtained via trade, and many of them were not thought of as aces at the time of their trades. That's why I look at guys that are close to being called an ace to look for- like Salazar & Quintana, who now are pitching like aces. I'm not saying it's easy to get one of these guys, especially since they were on teams not looking to rebuild, but I don't think it's impossible. Jake Arrieta was traded, but he had an ERA over 5.00 after 3 1/2 seasons and over 350 innings. How do we find guys like him? I think Baltimore got Scott Feldman for him!

Just because we had 3-5 players that would be number ones on most teams, doesn't mean we have to give all of them up. If we only had Swihart and a bunch of Guerra types, would giving our top 4 or 5 guys get an ace? Sometimes I wonder if some GMs think that way: I want 2-3 of your top 4 prospects or bust, and it matters little if your 2-3 are 5 times greater than other teams.

soxprospects.com has an interesting page on projected rosters years from now: http://soxprospects.com/future.htm Here's the 2018 version: C Vazquez/ Swihart 1B Ramirez/ S Travis 2B Pedroia 3B T Shaw/ Sandoval SS Bogaerts/ Hernandez LF Benintendi/Holt CF Bradley RF Betts DH Moncada (I know, it's 14 guys, so I'm not sure they can count to 25.) Pitchers: Price, Porcello, ERod, Kelly, Owens Kimbrel, Smith, Kopech, Barnes, Johnson, Workman, Light, Jerez (no Wright)

I think the Cubs once traded 5 guys for Matt Garza, and most of them became ML players. Garza wasn't really an ace, but it does happen. One of those players was Chris Archer, and I think some others were Sam Fuld and Brandon Guyer. I can't think of the other two, but one was a catcher. I'm sure somewhere at sometime there was a 6 for one deal or 6 or 7 for two.

So, Todd Frazier, Swihart, Devers and Margot aren't 4 "top players/prospects"? Throwing in Holt, Owens and Guerra doesn't help? It;s not like these guys are slouches. I've also mentioned the idea of taking on a second (unwanted) player, making it a 6 for 2 trade or involving another team to make it less than 6 for 1. The theory goes like this: trade 3 very good prospects for 1 very good player (like Frazier), then maybe trade another 3 for 1 and then flip those two plus another prospect or two for one awesome player. Maybe I am too "pie in the sky" by hoping we could have gotten a player like Salazar, Carrasco or Quintana through this method, but it's not like I was asking for a Mets starter or Sale. I also suggested offering Kelly over Owens/Johnson, so that might change the dynamic to Frazier, Kelly, Swihart. and Margot . There's 4 for 1, but I still think any team wouldn't have turned down Devers and Guerra or Holt just because 6 for 1 deals are rare.

Some interesting career numbers by JBJ: 657 PAs vs RHPs .696 OPS 296 PAs vs LHPs .736 OPS 448 PAs Home .808 505 PAs away .619 241 PAs RISP .872 OPS 419 PAs Men on .840 OPS 100 PAs First pitch .806 1-0 1.461 2-0 1.000 3-0 (20 PAs- 20 BBs!) 2-1 .769 3-1 1.417

Luckily, we don't many super long term deals like CC anymore. Price has 3 or 7 years left. Pedey 6 Castillo 5 Porcello 4 Sandoval 4 (with 5th year option) HanRam 3 (4th vesting option) Kimbrel 2 (3rd option) Young 2 Ortiz 1 Uehara 1 Tazawa 1 Buch 1 option As you can see, when we will need to start paying these kids, we'll be losing some big money, especially Porcello, Sandy and HanRam. We'll also have some cheap young talent on the 25 man roster to balance out the mega deals: Moncada, Espinoza, Benintendi, Devers and others.

My point was about how Bogey was view when he was still a prospect. That has changed, in terms of his projected position. He's a SS now and probably will be until he gets much older. Back then, most saw him as a 3Bman.

I totally agree and said so before last season began. I recently projected Betts to again finish in the top 3 in Sox OPS this year. That was when he was over 150 points behind Shaw and 7th on the team in OPS. The fact that Bogey has stuck at SS, and his defense has improved significantly has changed my view of his value. Betts has shown a lot of growth on defense as well, especially when you consider he just started playing OF last year, but the SS position is king. It's a close call between Betts and Bogey, but I see Betts' offense as becoming much greater than Bogey's- enough to pass Bogey in overall value as Red Sox players. How Benintendi rates compared to B & B is yet to be determined, but I can't fault anyone for seeing greatness in him. I think our killer B's are going to blow away Bagwell and Biggio, because we'll have 4! Betts Bradley Bogey Benintendi Yes, quite a tribute to our farm system!

I disagree. If his projected ML position was going to be 3B, then some value would be taken away. We have no idea how most GMs viewed Bogey's eventual position, but it seemed like most scouting reports at least mentioned an eventual move to 3B.

You say I'm "all over the place", but didn't you first say no team is going to give us an ace for that package? Now, you say my package is "way too much". Which one is it?

I recall reading several posters saying something similar to this, "We know for sure that JBJ will never be able to hit ML pitching." I never understand the use of such definitive statements after sample sizes of just 100-500 PAs or even more. I kind of feel the same way about Shaw, but in reverse. I'm not saying I am certain he will come back down to earth, but to me, he has yet to prove he is an .800+ hitter. Minor league numbers are not 100% accurate projection tools, but it is rare than a player deviates wildly from his AA and AAA combined numbers.