moonslav59

Not this. LOL!

...and also one with balls enough to move Devers off 3B.

Yes, until 2019, when DD was not allowed to replace Kimbrel & Kelly- only Pearce. He was also nearly force to tarde Betts. I still think the Sox-DD separation was mutually desirable, at that point.

I'm not even sure MIL says yes to this offer.

Okay. I will say that if you add Devers Runs and RBI and minus his Hrs, it was 97 runs accounted for. That was 25% of our runs. 15% is too high, I admit, but I suggested that as a possible high end amount. Even a loss of 11 or 12% might be too high.

Yup. Out of 74 qualifying players in MLB, Duran is 51st at .724. Rafaela is 60th at .681, Campbell is 66th at .664 and Story is 71st at .638. I think the cutoff is 230 PAs. For what it's worth, if you lower it to 210 PAs, we jump from 5 to 8 players. Here are those rankings: 1. Judge 1.192 3. Bregman .938 (6. Devers .905) 20. Narvaez .814 24. Grisham .798 25. Goldschmidt .797 27. Abreu .792 36. Rice .769 42. Bellinger .763 55. Wells .731 60. Volpe .726 62. Duran .724 66. Dominguez .708 72. Rafaela .681 80. Campbell .664 85. Story .638 We'd have to go down to 90 PAs to get Refsnyder and other Sox players on the top part of the list of 189 players, or about 6 player per team: 7. Refsnyder .900 21. Toro .835 25. Romy .819 28. Narvaez .814 4 in the top 30, looks pretty nice. (nyy HAS 1.) 38. Abreu .792 (NYY has 6 in the top 30 to our 5.)

There is no sugar coating this, and the loss may end up being more like 15% of the offense. I'm also so damn tired of counting on returning IL players, that never seem to give what we hoped for.

I think we can sign Cease, Helsley and Hoskins (RHB) or Naylor (LHB) at 1B and not be too far over the tax line, assuming Gio does not trigger the 3rd year option, and we say good bye to Buehler, Chapman, Wilson & Refsnyder. I'm not projecting any trade, but one almost has to happen. For argument's sake, let's say we trade Casas for a prospect, keep Bregman and sign Cease, Helsley & Hoskins. This could be our 26: 1. L Duran DH/LF 2. R Bregman 3B 3. L Abreu RF/R Anthony RF 4. R Hoskins 1B 5. L Mayer SS or 2B 6. R Narvaez C 7. L Anthony LF/ R Romy DH 8. Story 2B or SS (Campbell?) 9. R Rafaela CF Bench: Wong, Campbell, Romy or Abreu, Jh Garcia/DHam? SP: Crochet, Cease, Sandoval, Bello, Dobbins (Crawford, Houck, Harrison, Fitts) RP: Helsley, Whitlock, Hicks, Slaten, Houck, Crawford, Harrison, Weissert (Bernardino, Fitts, Kelly, Guerrero, Burdi, Murphy, Perales)

Harrison may end up replacing Buehler after one more bad start. Otherwise, he goes to the pen. Hicks should be a plus for our pen, and he can pitch multiple innings each appearance. The Devers trade may have fixed the pen, and with an eventual return from Houck, Crawford, Slaten and a first time appearance by Sandoval, our pen could easily become a solid plus in 2025 as well as beyond, although we will need a closer for 2026. I'm worried most about the rotation, despite the decent depth Brez amassed over the winter. I'm not totally confident that Bello and Dobbins can continue pitching like decent #2's or 3's. I'd rather view them as our #4-5, going forward. I have no faith that Houck can regain #2 status, and Crawford seems like a total unknown value piece for 2025. I have more faith in Sandoval or a resurgence by Buehler than Houck and or Crawford. Fitts could rebound. I'm not sure why Criswell has never started, after he did well as one, last year. I'd love to see us trade for a second ace, but not a 2 month rental, unless we can extend the guy. I'm not sure ATL is looking to buy, and why would they want Story's contract? Ozuna for Story and cash? Ozuna is just a rental, and maybe Story could end up being a better bat than we think he can be, going forward. Ozuna does bat RH'd, so maybe he could be an answer, but ATL would likely want a prospect or two- not Story. They may demand Arias and Sandlin or Romero, Mullins and Clarke. Is that worth 2 months of 40 HR man Ozuna?

Again, tell me why you assume our pitching, which has been up and down, all year, will suddenly continue as it has done over the last 6-7 games, but you also have total faith in Toro at 1B- a guy who has sucked over the last 6-7 games (something like 2 for 17.) We need guys like Toro to do even better than they were doing before the trade. IMO, that is asking too much from him, Romy and a few others. I do think Story can do better than his current OPS. I think Abreu and Bregman can make an impact, when they return, but Bregman is not close to returning. We can count on the kids, sure, but we will be seeing Mayer, Anthony and Narvaez- 3 rookies- batting 3-4-5 almost every game and Campbell 7th or 8th almost every game. Maybe Duran becomes the 2024 Duran, again. That's not far-fetched. I'm not expecting more from Refsnyder. he's already done great. Who else will make up for the loss of a guy who accounted for 25% of our runs- pre trade? That's a big ask of an iffy pitching staff and a bunch of rookie batters.

No, but Devers did account for over 25% of our runs. I'm not just tossing out a random number. Add his Runs and RBIs and subtract his HRs, and he accounted for just over 25% of our runs. An average player should account for 11% of the runs (1/9th.) I'm not sure we can replace Devers with an average bat, as out 7, 8 and 9 best bats have not been at the league average, so why should our 10th guy provide 11% or our runs? I could see justifying a drop or about 15% in offense. Maybe 12-13%, if we get lucky- maybe less if we make a trade for a bat.

I think guys like Goldschmidt and Grisham have been exceeding expectations, and their pitching staff has done better than many expected, since Cole missed the whole season. I mean, we knew Fried was real good, but 9-2 1.89 good? Rodon has always been good, but expecting 15 GS and 90 IP was a big if. Schmidt and Yarbrough are doing well- maybe that was a little unexpected, but not really. I'm surprised they have done this well with a closer at a 5.47 ERA and 1.33 WHIP. The whole AL looked mediocre to me, in March. That was the major reason I had high hopes for the Sox. I'm not sure my opinion has changed much.

Ben did spend a lot, but he also dumped salary DD never really did. The AGon, Crawford Beckett salary dump trade to the Dodgers was perhaps the biggest dump in MLB history, if indexed for inflation. Ben's spending immediately afterwards was somewhat muted and diffused over several mid level contracts, like Vic, Napoli S Drew and Dempster. I think DD had more leeway, but some felt Ben chose not to spend wildly on big deals and was too resistant to trading top prospects.

Good rentals often cost way more than their worth. Deadline deals are often rooted in desperation and hopes that 1-2 players can get a team over the hump and onwards to glory. It almost worked for us in 2021. The Schwarber trade, along wit savvy additions like Iggy, Shaw and Robles got us within a few outs of a WS appearance. The Schwarber trade cost us the highest ranked prospect Bloom ever traded, but it was only Aldo Ramirez, who was something like our 10th ranked prospect in a pretty depleted farm system, at the time. To get the Kikuchi''s of the world, like HOU did, last year, it's going to cost way more than Aldo Ramirez. I'm fine with trading Mikey Romero or even Cespedes or Bleis, since I view them as blocked, anyway. (Yes, nobody is really blocked, when they are 2-3 years away, but anyway....) Guys like these three, plus maybe a Mullins or Sandlin, might get us a couple useful players, but I'm not so sure even those type deals are worth it. We can do better with winter trades, and we have proven that over even these bad years. Recent winter deals: Top prospects for Crochet. Elmer Rodriguez for Narvaez Verdugo for Fitts, Weissert and others. Scraps for O'Neill Recent Deadline deals: Paxton, Luis Garcia, Lucas Sims (2024) Urias, Llovera, Nick Robertson (2023) To be fair, the deadline deals of 2022 were better, but just the one where we were selling (Vaz for Abreu & EValdez)

"Reasonable" at the time, not "good." Hey, the posters who hated the deal, at the time, got it right. Those of us who felt the deal was reasonable or "good," at the time, got it wrong. I was one who thought it was worth a shot. I had given up hope on Sale, and it turned out I was as wrong as wrong can possibly be. That does not change the fact that Sale's return to glory was far from a sure bet. Grissom's complete implosion was far from a sure bet. The Gio injury and failure was far from a known thing. The confluences of 3 spectacular failures helped you guys look like geniuses. Hats off to you, and I don't mean that facetiously. You got it dead right. I got it wrong. That doesn't mean I have to agree that the deal did not make some sense, at the time. That's all I'm saying. I'm not trying to rewrite history and justify the trade by saying it was a good one. It wasn't. It just made some reasonable sense, at the time.

Of course there were questions and several posters who hated or questioned the idea of trading pitching. Those questions were "foundational," so I disagree with notin on that point, but Sale's record of injury and even of production, when he did pitch from 2019-2023 made the decision, at least reasonable, at the time. We ended up signing a guy with a much better track record of taking the ball every 5th day. I was not a fan of the Gio signing, but I was confident, he'd pitch more than Sale. Not only was I wrong there, but Sale pitched like the old Sale, and Grissom stunk up the place. BTW, 2B had been our weakest position since Pedey left. That part of the deal had merit, too. It just backfired just not as as badly as the Sale-Gio swap out. Hey, how about Story + cash and Duran or Abreu for Sale, now?

Just looked, again: Bogey is down to .617. He's 18th in fWAR among SSs at +0.9. His apparent improvement on Defense has kept him above water. DRS: -5 SDP/ -50 BOS OAA: -1 SDP/-28 BOS His value page on fangraphs: $48M last year w BOS $37M first year w SDP $16M last year $6M this year, so far (projects to maybe $13-14M)

I did, too late, though. I get your points about the Bello & Rafaela extensions. They were hasty and overpays for their service time positions. I don't disagree, but right now, Bello is earning $6M and Rafaela is earning $2.2M. I can't say the extensions "don't look good."

Pretty much sums it all up, from the major deal aspect. One could add Story. Yoshi, Crochet and Bregman to the list, but this list was about just the major failures, except the Bogey one looks fine, now. One could also add the AGon deal and then dump. The Lackey deal and then dump, too.

The Crochet extension does not look good? While I agree with your positions on Bello & Rafaela's deals being too much and too long for players in their years of service range, both are doing well, now. Maybe it's still an overpay, to you, no matter how well they do, for that reason, but I wouldn't say the Bello and Rafaela extensions "don't look good."

With Bloom, our FA success rate was way below 50%, although that can be expected when your highest offers are $10M/1. When you look at the largest FA deals in MLB history, I think the success rate is under 50%, but there is debate about how to define success. Did the 2018 ring make the Price deal a success, is just one example. Breslow's biggest deals: Bregman: looks good despite the injury. Right away, he blows Bloom out of the water, but then again, I doubt Bloom was ever given the green light of a $40M AAV, even for one year deals. Crochet trade: looks like a winner. Crochet extension: see above. Sale trade: made some sense, at the time, but turned into a complete disaster. I see 3 for 4 on the real big deals. Now, the next tier: $39M/2 Gio with a chance to vest for a 3rd year: Bad, so far with a slight glimmer of hope we get some value out of him, like we never got from Kluber, Richards & Co. $21M + buyout for Buehler: Looks plain ugly, right now. $18M/2 Sandoval: TBD $11M/1 Chapman: win, so far We might be lucky to be at 50% on this tier. Maybe a 3rd tier? Hendriks: Yuch-A-Doodle-Doo! O'Neill trade: win Wilson is only a $2M deal, so maybe tier 4: a win, so far. Call it 50-50 on tier 3?

While I agree, this does look a lot like the smoke and mirrors philosophy we've seen in the past few years. Sign Story> wow we're spending again> let Bogey walk. Sign Yoshida> Yipee, we're spending again> let several key player walk, and now, sign Bregman> Triple WOW!> then trade an even higher paid guy. It's going to come down to what we spend this winter and how, and that is, once again, all about wait until next year. I'll say it again, "How Soon Is Now?" (The Smiths) I'll add, "The Waiting is the hardest part." (Tom Petty)

I'm not sure kid gloves would have worked, and while battling through the media is a horrible way to try and fix a mess, the fact is Devers felt he was a good defensive 3Bman and was offended and resistant to moving to DH. He criticized the GM and pouted. He dogged a few plays. Now, he's making more comments that exposes his what his true intentions were, since apparently, he's now fine playing "anywhere they want" him to play. He was acting like a baby, after we paid him $313M, which enough money to keep all his great-great grandchildren living the high life. No doubt, they are thrilled to get out from the $313M contract, but I do not think they felt that way in December. Maybe, after the Bregman signing, they had feelings that $31M a year for a DH was too much, but I doubt they were thinking of a way to dump his salary. Devers, himself, brought about the desire to look at dumping him and his salary. That's not letting Brez & Co off the hook. They certainly should have and could have handled it differently. It is believed that Cora never officially asked him to play 1B, so to me, that is evidence that he was walking on egg shells and WAS TREATING DEVERS WITH KID GLOVES! He was either afraid of offending Devers, or afraid he pout, dog it or demand a trade. How did that end up working out for Cora? Well, he got the pout and dog anyway, and it was Brez that ended up demanding a trade, and he got it. I do think they could have gotten Devers to agree to share time between DH and 1B, had they did it more smoothly and not through the media. Maybe, Devers would have been upset, for a while, but he doesn't seem like the type of guy that would let it get to him for too long of a time. People talk about the "disrespect" we showed towards Devers, but I saw disrespect sent the other way, too. I also think Devers disrespected Bregman's ability to play 3B way better than he can. Nobody talks about that, and notice how Bregman said all the right things, like "I'll play wherever they want me to play," like any team player should say, and not as he final nut kick, Devers is saying that in SF. I'm sorry to say it, but I agree with Bell: "Good riddance."

We lost 25% of our offense with the Devers trade. That's more important than having an approachable GM.

My first thought, too. I'm not so sure DD, Ben & Theo were all that personable, either.