moonslav59

I thought there was a decent chance Narvaez could become our main catcher, and maybe it happens more quickly than anyone expected. Maybe.

Actually, 2B to OF to SS.

Wasn't Wong one of the "luckiest" batters in 2024?

I never understood those who said his skills do not traditionally age well.

Yup. The 12 years brings down the AAV a bit ($30M) which was ballpark to our 10 year offer AAV.

I agree, and I have not given up on his bat, just yet, but I think his higher than COL K rate is here to stay.

On top of this, he focused the farm building on everyday players, too.

Indeed, even with some sort of restriction on long term spending on pitchers, he still could have spent more on pitching than everyday players. (Story got even more than Yoshida, but together the Sox will spend over $340M.) The Devers extension was further spending on non pitchers. His largest pitching contracts were: $32M/2 Jansen '23 RP $19M/2 Barnes extension '22 RP $18M/2 Martin '23 RP $10M/1 Richards '21 $10M/1 Kluber '23 $10M/2 Paxton '22 $8M/2 Diekman '22 (traded for McGuire) RP $7M/1 Wacha '22 $6M/1 Perez '20 $5M/1 Perez '21 & Hill '22 Many of the higher paid pitchers were pen arms (top 3.) Bloom spent more on Yoshida than all his SP signings combined. Bloom spent more on Story than his top 10 pitcher signings combined. He spent more on Devers than all his pitching signings and extensions- maybe even arbs, too.

Ummm, he's very athletic and SS range involves the same skill sets as 2B range. Plus, I only said I felt he "seems" to be better suited for 2B than 3B, since range seems to be his biggest defensive asset. In his short time at 2B, his metrics showed his fault was turning the DP, so that might be an issue. IMO, he'd make a better 2Bman than 3Bman, but I'm not saying he should or will be moved, anytime soon- or traded. In the context of where Mayer can play, the talk has gotten speculative and imaginative. I'm just rolling with the talk. I'd give the odds of a Story trade at 1,000:1 by opening day 2026, but if he builds value, and Mayer shines that could lower.

To me "the bottom line" involves a lot of context, but he did fail to do better than 78-84 with a budget more than most teams.

It's nice to see Devers smiling.

The lost time due to injuries is a big part of that, and maybe he keeps getting hurt. Many of his PAs with the Sox have come while returning from long times off. I'm not sure we use those numbers as projections of what he will do, if he has a 500+ PA season. I hope we get to see it happen.

Story still has plus range, so 2B does seem better than 3B, IMO. What are your views on Campbell at 3B? We could also see Campbell in the OF with Mayer at SS and Story at 2B.

I still think the uncertainty over COVID lowered the price some.

My list might look like: 1. Campbell 2. Anthony 3. Mayer 4. Arias 5. Perales 6. Valera 7. Cespedes 8. Romero 9. Early 10. Jh Garcia 11. Fitts 12. Sandlin 13. Tolle 14. Soto 15. Delzine 16. Ju Gonzales 17. D Reyes 18. Paez 19. Narvaez 20. Clarke/Dobbins

There were some real movers in the new soxprospects,com rankings: Since we traded #4 Teel, #5 Montgomery and #8 Meidroth, moving up 2-3 slots for most should be viewed as attrition. Romero #16>6 Valera #23>7 Sandlin #14>8 Early #17>10 Bleis fell from #9 to #15 (but counting attrition, it was worse than that.) Paez 28 >16 S Soto NR > 17 Clarke NR >18 Ju Gonzalez 30 >19 Narvaez NR >20 D Reyes 27>21 S Delzine NR>29 Jo Garcia fell from #19>30th. Not sure why they kept Castro in the top 30 at #25. #18 Wikelman &, #25 E R-C were traded away. Some gutsy calls, but I like most of them. I'd have Castro out of the top 40. I would not have dropped Jo Garcia so much. 7 of the top 13 are pitchers, but just 1 in the top 6. 13 of the top 24 are pitchers, as well as 17 of the top 31.

Not that it matters, but Yoshida is even harder to trade. Story is owed $77.5M/3 ($23.3 Tax hit) Nobody will pay that. I keep looking at Seam Murphy, who is owed $60M/4 ($12.2M Tax) Of course, ATL would not do this deal, 1 for one, but what if we gave them Wong & Bleis and maybe some cash?

I could see Story or Mayer at 3B. I'm thinking he might have a huge 2025 season and get the same or better offer that DET gave him, and he'll pounce.

It looks that way. And to think a week ago, he was just a "suspect."

I think we had pretty good depth, last year, and in some way, they kept us in it longer than the previous 2 seasons. Even after the Gio injury, there was still talk about Houck or Crawford being in the rotation. Criswell, ended up putting up better numbers than most of our initial, all healthy starting 5, and we barely heard of him. He got his shot after Whitlock was lost for the season. While deciding who was "pen depth" to start the season might be impossible to determine, Slaten was not supposed to pitch that many high leverage innings. These were our top high leverage pitchers by PA, among nonstarters. How many were supposed to be ranked this highly in PAs against, and some did pretty well: 123 Jansen, 79 Bernardino, 75 Kelly & Martin, 69 Weissert, 63 Slaten On the offensive side, we lost Story for almost the whole year, and ended up using Rafaela at SS more than anyone else. He actually did better than past subs, need I mention Kike? There was a psoter wondering why we ended up needing to see Abreu "kicking the ball around RF." That "depth" turned into a gold mine. Refsnyder was money. It took DHam a second call-up to find a groove, but he and Romy stabilized 2B, and they were maybe the 4th and 5th stringers after EValdez, Grissom & Reyes on the 2B winter depth chart. That being said, our depth is better this year, especially with the pitching. I'm curious to see how many IP we see from any pitcher not in our system on March 20th, 2024. Last year, we saw this.... (IP) 52 Chase Anderson 25 Brad Keller 18 Bailey Horn, 15 Luis Garcia, 14 Lucas Sims 11 Paxton, 5 Priester and 1-4 IP by some others Having the 3 top prospects improved our depth, a lot, some even beyond the 40. Adding so many pitchers over last season and this winter, as well as some returning pitchers from injury in '24 gives us some great depth, and we've already seen Newcomb jump the depth charts to land a rotation slot.

Yes, I realized my folly. 3 appearances in 7 games might look close to every other day, but 1, 4 and 7 is every 3 days.

The pendulum swung so far from Ben to DD to Bloom. It's not just money spent, although Ben spent a lot, but major trades and the whole over 30 pitcher theme change. I thought Bloom got a bad rap for many things that were not really his fault, and consideration should be given to what should have been expected when signing $10M/1 contracts and not much more. However, he did fail to deliver on somethings I think he was signed to do; namely continue finding gems in the rough, like Rays continuously did for the years he was there. He found a few , like Whitlock, Pivetta, Wacha, Renfroe, Duvall, Abreu and others, but he missed the boat on too many. As I pointed out, what are the expectations on $10M/1 pitchers, or less? It's not much, but he swung and missed, badly on almost all his biggest contracts: $140M/6 Story and about $100M/5 on Yoshida, counting the fees. Then, $10M/1 on Kluber & Richards. The Barnes extension. He did well with Jansen, Martin and Wacha. That's not a good rate. What he did very well was draft and some IFA signings, but he had higher draft picks than Ben & DD had on a consistent basis. To me, that was his number one task, and it looks like he did pretty well, but that is still TBD. Also, not trading guys like Houck, Bello, Crawford, Duran and others might be an overlooked plus. In general, he gets a speculative A to B+ on farm building, but a solid D on "staying competitive along the way. 2021 was special, but 3 last places has to bring this to a D+, at most. Does that mean he gets a C. overall? That depends on one's perspective and ideas of what the goals should have been, but maybe not what the actually were, behind closed doors.

True, even "every other game" would be an overstatement. Good point. He has pitched 3 games out of the first 7, but that is misleading, because it will likely be 3 in the first 9 or 10 days. Let's say, for argument's sake, he goes 2 every 3 games, that would be about 110 IP. It would also be 54 games in 186 days or about a appearance very 3.4 days, which about what he has done, so far. To me, 90-100 IP like this would be HUGE! Even 70-80.

Can Whitlock keep pitching 2 IP, every other day? That could come to over 160 IP.

Having Mayer makes me less nervous. We also have Rafaela, who can play SS, and we could call up Anthony.