moonslav59

11 of 15 AL teams are within 4 games of .500. 8 of 15 NL teams are.

I'm wondering when he'll be promoted to AAA. (Maybe when Anthony moves to MLB.) I'd like to see Romero & Early in AAA, too. Maybe YRod & Mullins to AA and Arias to A+.

Current Pitching prospects by ranking on soxprospects.com 5. Perales (IL) AA 7. Valera A+ 8. Sandlin AA 10. Early AA 11. Fitts (IL) MLB 12. Dobbins AAA/MLB 13. Tolle A+ 16. Paez A+ 19. Clarke A- 22. Reyes XST 23. Conrad XST 24. Guerrero AAA pen 25. Wehunt AA 28. Monegro AA 29. Mullins A+ 30. Delzine DSL 32. Tygart A- (IL) 36, Ingrassia A+ 39. Penrod AAA/MLB (IL) 40. Aita A- 41. Fajardo XST 42. Rivera A+ 43. Dean A+ 45. Mata AAA 46. Drohan AAA 50. Carlson A+ 51. Neely A- 27 of the top 51 are pitchers

Having 8 man pens help out a little, and I'm thinking we are getting further along in the season, where starts will start going one more inning. It doesn't help that we have been using out 8-9-10 depth starters, but they have pitched well- just not 6-7 IP. When Bello and Gio return, we wont be seeing 7 IP games from them, too, so we need Crochet, Buehler and Houck to start going longer into games. I wish we had added one more solid pen arm, but we did spend way more than I expected, and thankfully some on rotation depth and front line starters. The old man Chapman and Wilson signings, along with the Hendriks deal from last year, have become the standard fall back on decent pen additions.

Drohan continues to look sharp for WOO. 4 IP, 3H, 0ER, 1BB, 5K. Woo won 7-0. Mayer went 2-5 w an HR (up to .684) Grissom 2B'd again (2-4 and at .975) Koloz. hit a granny. POR lost 3-1. Gio got the start: 5IP 6H, 3ER, 0BB, 4K and Early pitched 3 innings of one hit ball. Jh Garcia went 2-2 w 2 BB and Romero walked twice. GRE won 8-7 as Paez went 4 IP w 4H, o ER, 0BB, 5 K (4 unearned runs) Brannon homered twice (.766.) SAL lost 5-2. Encarnacion 2-4.

We seem to have a few pitchers like Mullins. Many show promise but need to show it at higher levels. Good to see an increase in promise.

We are only 14% through the season, but some high need areas are already apparent- most were apparent back in March. 1. Catching: While Narvaez has looked good on D, and sometimes that's all a team needs, but with a blackhole in CF, we can't support two. 2. The pen: We knew it was deep with mediocrity, but way short on quality, especially at closer and set-up men. Chapman has looked good, but we still need more top quality. 3. Rotation: We have to hope 5 of the ones we have rise to the top and do enough to get us there. Maybe Anthony can add a spark. Maybe Buehler and or Houck get it together. Maybe Casas & others catch fire, soon. Maybe, maybe, maybe....

There is a chance he does well, but I agree. Hoping on Wong's return is no pleasant dream, either.

I think our team looks better on paper than we have played. Maybe returning players from injury will help, but I'm tired of counting on that year after year, and besides, Dobbins, Fitts and Newcomb have done better than Buehler and Houck, so expecting Bello & Gio to improve on them is difficult to swallow. Hendriks might come around, and moving bumped starters to the pen should happen soon, so maybe there is hope. The way we are playing, now, I do not get good vibes. I felt better, last year, at this time. I'm not losing my optimism, but this game was winnable, and we keep finding ways to hand them away.

Most 1Bman scoop way more than Casas does, and they save errors by their infielders.

Maybe Grandal will give us a boost, but I agree.

Man, I went away to do a little gardening, came back and fast forwarded through the meltdown. Geesh!

He actually started to look okay, but this is a weak team, so we can't know if he's begun to turn things around. The pen has been pretty good, until recently. On paper, they did not look good to me on day one. There is a lot of mediocre depth, but we needed top quality.

I think the farm became the major focus, and for good reason. The highest prospect we traded was Aldo Ramirez, until Brez came to town, and that goes back to 2018 (maybe Beeks for Nate at the deadline was slightly higher ranked. Mid 2018 to winter 2024-2025 is over 6 years. Not only did we hardly trade any top prospects, we traded vets for prospects and accumulated comp picks by letting some stars go (Campbell for Bogey & Anthony for ERod.) Even when we traded for vets, we often got a prospect or two added on. DHam & Binelas with JBJ for Renfroe. Seabold with Pivetta for a couple of RP'ers. Wink and 2 other prospects with Franchy for Beni. Wong & Downs with Verdugo for Betts. Fitts and others with Weissert for Verdugo Straight up vets for prospects included Abreu & EValdez for Vaz and Sandlin for Schreiber, to name just a couple of many. I do think the upper brass felt we had a good enough roster to barely compete, along the way, but the #1 priority was building up the farm and younger depth on the 40 man roster.

I don't think players lose a ton of value over a 22 game sample size, where they hit the ball hard for outs, too often.

I never said "only." I went out of my way to say how Rafaela would still play a lot and get a further chance to prove he should play more. BTW, today is Rafaela's 200th game. Anthony has zero. Duran has 375 and deserves a FT role (at worst a platoon.) Abreu has earned a platoon role and has played 182 games. I still think Refsnyder has earned a platoon role, but I'm okay with going with the Rafaela defense vs LHPs. This is not about some tiny sample size by Rafaela or Abreu's bad split sample size. I think Anthony has earned a shot. I do not think Rafaela has done enough to keep Anthony from getting his chance. The DHam-Romy platoon at 2B, last year was about as good as Rafaela has been, and we handed the job to Campbell. There is no guarantee Anthony will do as well, but I'd like see him get a long look. We can still find a way for Rafaela to play 35-45% of the innings.

I think this is about JH being a miser.

I would not have been against that idea, but now that he is DH'ing, only, we might as well wait it out. Is the number still 171 days or less (out of a 187 day season?) If so, he's already got the extra year, right?

Good to see Casas going oppo, when they pitch to him like that.

This could be a 16-12 game.

Abreu is buttah!

The low expectations were real. Most Sox fans are not dumb. We looked at the rosters and knew we were not a winning team. I don't think that stopped any of us from expecting management from getting off their asses and address the holes in the roster- from top to bottom. The glacial pace of improving the roster, starting with the farm and 40 man roster depth did not satisfy the masses. We lacked top quality for too long, while simultaneously watching some of our top talent walk out the door, many times for comp picks, only. It was hard to see the long game, and JH's record breaking spending hiatus wore our patience thin. The Betts walk was a staggering choice that set us ack for long time, but we also watched so many other stars sign with other teams. Many were already in decline, but losing stars and heroes is never easy. The few bigger signings we made did not amount tom much, at all. The Devers extension was viewed as desperate way for JH to save face (or his life.) Now, when we look back, things still bad, but somethings look much more understandable. Beni never became the promising player many felt he'd become. JD was over the hill. Price, ERod, Porcello and other SP'ers lost did not do well after leaving Boston. True, replacing them with Martin Perez, Garrett Richards and Kluber were horrific attempts at staying relevant, granted, but re-signing them would have been pretty bad. The loss of Bogaerts was the final straw for many, but was it really such a big loss? Sure, we'd be a better team with him, over the past 2+ years, but with the fixed budget, maybe we do worse. He's got a .742 OPS w SDP. He has yet to homer, this year. His defense is no better. As it turned out we got Campbell for Bogey and Anthony for ERod. What looked like horrible chocies, at the time, may now become pure genius. I'm very optimistic about the future of this team, but I also think this roster on paper, looks top 3-4 in the AL, and with minimal injuries and expected age related growth, we could be top 1-2. When you look where we were before Brez took over, that is a remarkable improvement. While Bloom's highest prospect traded was Aldo Ramirez for Schwarber, Brez has taken risks and dealt away from our strong and deep farm. He took a big gamble trading away catcher depth, our weakest area, right now, but we got our man: Garrett Freakin' Crochet!

I'm a big Cora supporter, but I do have issues with him giving hot players a day off. We just had a day off on Thursday, and Story has a .984 April OPS. Now, watch DHam come to life.

Sometimes the "right move" doesn't work out. I will always believe that. Some of the hits off Weissert were not scorched. Hey, we got the win. Later in the season, we may look back and be happy we eased Crochet into a full season of starting pitching.

Anthony is no Rafaela on D, but he's pretty good. He's no Refsnyder, Yoshida or Manny. Rafaela could still play CF vs LHPs. That's over 25% or games. He can play back-up infield and late inning defense/PR duties, too. I really like Rafaela, but Anthony deserves a chance to prove he's the best OF'er we have- right now. If he ends up 2nd or 3rd best, which is a strong possibility, especially year one, so be it. Right now, he is DH'ing through an injury, so I'd wait for the day he gains that extra year of control, but I'd wait no longer.