moonslav59

My updated rankings: 1. Anthony 2. Campbell 3. Mayer 4. Arias 5. Perales 6. Cespedes 7. Jh Garcia 8. Bleis 9. Romero 10. Fitts 11. Dobbins 12. Tolle 13. Jo Garcia 14. Early 15. Sandlin 16. Cason 17. Valera 18. Reyes 19. Monegro 20. Guerrero 21. D Soto 22. S Delzine 23. Wehunt 24. Paez 25. Penrod 26. Mullins 27. Narvaez 28. H Rivas 29. Taylor 30. Riemer 31. Neely 32. Clarke 33. G Jackson 34. Ingrassia 35. Castro 36. E Alfonso 37. H Ramos 38. Tygart 39. Ehrhard 40. Jordan

I've never mentioned Santander as an option, but he is reportedly willing to go short term, if he does not get near his asking price. The guy is a switch hitter with 44 HRs in '24. He K's, a lot and has a low OBP (.308,) but he'd be the fix we need for a RHB. He's not great on D, so he'd likely play LF, Duran/Rafaela CF and Abreu/Rafaela RF, or we call up Anthony and trade Abreu to fix another hole.

You think, if we sign Grichuk, we trade Abreu for a C, RP or prospect?

Marshall's has a special: Buy a yates and get a Grichuk for free.

I fully believe we extend him, but probably just for 1 year more, or opt out after 3rd year with us.

Yates & Grichuk is probably the best we can hope for.

RP'ers have been the exception: Hendriks 2, Jansen 2, Martin 2, Diekman 2, Barnes 2 extension Yates & Robertson might take 1. Finnegan might take 2. Estevez should get 3-4.

I'm not high on Robertson and notin is not high on Yates, but either would help. Estevez might be the best we can do, at this point. Finnegan has decent closer experience. Jansen, Martin, Sewald and Kahnle are likely upgrades over Wilson, Weissert, Kelly and Penrod, but by how much, and why would we cut Wilson to make room for one of these guys. (More likely we'd replace Guerrero with one, and are these guys big upgrades?) I had hopes for a lockdown closer addition, even if by trade, and maybe that still can happen, but I am not holding my breath on any meaningful pen addition.

An optimist might look at the numbers from recent years and think it isentirely possible a good amount of the recent seasons by fWAR could be repeated in 2025: 6.7 Duran '24 5.0 Devers '22 (was on pace for this in '24 before injury) 3.1 Abreu '24 3.0 Story BOS career per 160 gms 2.5 DHam projected to 150 games '24 2.2 Casas '23 projected to 650 PAs 1.5 Refsnyder projected to full '24 season 1.1 Wong '24 1.0 Rafaela '24 + 0.1, Yoshida full '24 season, Grissom ''22 plus about 50 more PAs. Pitching 5.6 Buehler '21 4.7 Crochet '24 3.9 Houck '24 2.4 Crawford '23 1.8 Sandoval 1/2 of '22 season 1.6 Bello '23 Pen 2.7 Hendriks '21 2.7 Whitlock '21 1.8 Chapman '23 1.5 Slaten '24 1.1 Criswell '24 1.0 Wildon "20 x 2 0.8 Wink '23 No way will all of these happen or even come close to happening, but how many have to come close to see a nice season from the Sox in 2025? I don't see Hendriks or Chapman coming close to the numbers I posted, here, but everyone else seems doable. (DHam might be a stretch, and Story coming close to 150 games, too.) Could we see: 6.5 Duran, 4.5 Devers, 3.0 Casas & Abreu, 2.5 Story and a Yoshida-Ref platoon, 1.5 Wong, DHam and maybe a couple prospects. 5.0 Crochet, 4.5 Buehler & Houck, 2.5 Bello and maybe 2.5 from Gio+Crawford 2.5 Whitlock, 2.0 Hendriks, 1.8 Chapman, 1.7 Slaten, 1.0 Criswell, 0.9 Wink, and maybe 0.5 from Wilson, Guerrero and one other guy

I dont see paranoia or conspiracy mania going on, nor even sour grapes.

Duran still remains kind of a "wild card." He "remade" himself, so often early in his career, that it was hard to know just who he was or was going to be. He changed his stance, approach, we even saw his defense go from crappy to near GG, almost overnight. He might have had a 4.3 fWAR in 2023, had he not got hurt. His 6.7 fWAR is 2024 blew everybody's projections away. Now, most of the major projection sites have him between 3.2 and 3.6, which is totally possible, but awfully pessimistic. Repeating a 6.7 seems entirely possible, and improving on it should not be ruled out for the peak-prime 28 year old. He quickly went from "we should trade this guy" to our best player in such a short time, it's understandable he be called a "wildcard."

By replacing Shugart with Sabol on the 40, we now have 17 everyday players on the roster. One is Jh Garcia, who is highly unlikely to playML ball in 2025. That leaves 3 everyday players in the minors that are on the 40: Narvaez or Sabol Romy or Grissom and Sogard. This also includes a couple near "DH only guys- Yoshida & Ref in the group of 13. This has to change by opening day. Of course, having ML ready prospects like Campbell, Anthony and Mayer in the system that do not need to be on the 40, until we need them on the 26 helps, a lot. We don't need to have a lot more everyday players, because they are basically "on 24 hour call." Here are the pitchers on the 40: Crochet, Houck, Buehler, Bello, Giolito, Crawford Hendriks, Chapman, Slaten, Whitlock, Winckowski, Wilson, Guerrero, Sandoval & Murphy to 60 Day IL, day one. AAA: Criswell, Fitts, Priester, Dobbins, Weissert, Bernardino, Kelly, Penrod Non 40 man roster pitchers who may easily see action in 2025: Fulmer, Adams, I Campbell, Mata, Moran, H Harris, N Davis, Mills, Stock, Adames, Gambrell, Drohan and maybe Y Cruz, Hoppe, Troye, Sandlin or Early starting the year in AA.

soxprospects.com podcast had Justin Willard, the Sox Director of Pitching, on for a talk. http://news.soxprospects.com/2025/01/podcast-ep-348-director-of-pitching.html There are about 30 pichers at Fort Myers, right now. The "development period" has grown in MLB, so there is less down time for many pitchers, and they have more time to spend with them on health, nutrition, pitching mechanics, "pitch design" and skills more so than actually having them pitch very often during the winter. Willard boiled it down to two things: nasty stuff vhe zone.s throwing in the zone. Some do one more than the other, and the idea is to improve on the area where a pitcher struggles. There are various ways to try and maximize velocity, and there is a lot of focus on this area. He said this last season saw more focus on this area than ever before. "Take off the governor" was common with several pitchers, and they also gave pitchers a day off every 6 weeks to compensate for the added stress on arms. (Wehunt, Early and Gabriel Jackson were some that did very well, in this area.) The main idea, last season was to change the culture to more of an objective-oriented system with individualized plans set up for every player. Talk on the Sox IFA signings spoke on we hardly ever spend very much on one guy. They seemed to really like this year's class, when compared to last year's top picks. They like Soto, "a high end talent," a lot, although he may not stick at SS. He's 6-3 185. Very deep signing group with a lot of skills and upside. Lots of switch-hitters and smart baseball kids. They raved about 17 y/o Sabdiel Delzine, who they think is 6-4 220. We don't give $500K to many pitchers, so they think the Sox are very high on this guy. Rankings will be update winetrs.d, next week, so look for more new IFAs than past.

I do think adding Estevez or one of the others would make it a significant upgrade for the pen over 2024, but we ended the season as the worst pen in MLB (2nd half,) so "significant might mean just getting to the middle tier. Add: _____, Chapman, Hendriks, Wilson, Whitlock and more pen IP by several pitchers already in the system. Lost: Jansen & Martin, but also Anderson, Keller and many more bad IP from others. The rotation was not bad, last year and saw the most improvement of any other area on the team. We added Crochet, Buehler, Giolito and maybe a half season from Sandoval. Our depth looks better than last winter. We have a better looking Criswell & Fitts, but also Priester & Dobbins. Our offense took a hit by losing O'Neill, but some returning players and some age progressions could more than make up for the loss. We also have Campbell, Anthony and Mayer banging, loudly on the MLB door, yet none are even on the 40, yet. Our defense, once again, will rely on the return of Story for there to be an upgrade. The OF D might improve with more games from Rafaela and none from O'Neill, but if Yoshida plays a lot more, that would be nullified. Corner IF still sucks and has to be the MLB worst, when combined. Our C sucks, despite the promise Narvaez brings on D. I will say, I think our 2B defense has to be better than 2024. Losing E Valdez (468 innings was the leader at 2B in playing time, by far) and Westbrook (102,) Reyes (39) and Gasper/Wong's 49 innings comes to almost half the total innings. DHam (267) and Romy (130) looked real good at 2B D, but Grissom (245) did not. How much we improve at 2B D might depend on how much Grissom plays or if he improves or not. Campbell cannot be any worse than the team average at 2B in 2024. I see a sure plus at 2B D, especially if DHam and Campbell or Romy gte over 1000 innings, there. So, hopefully better MI D and OF D, while staying the same at corner IF and C. I'm not sure this moves the needle much, but better D at SS. 2B, CF and RF can't hurt. Add a decent RP'er, and we should be faves to just barely make the playoffs, but we'd need a ton to go right to advance far,

Dodging Dodger Denominations: 700/10 Ohtani '24 365/12 Betts '21 325/12 Yamamoto '24 182/5 Snell '25 162/6 Freeman '22 140/10 Will Smith '24 137/5 Glasnow '24 74/5 Edman '25 72/4 Scott '25 66/3 Teoscar '25, 22/2 Treinen '25, 17/1 Conforto '25 + Sasaki 24/2 Muncy '24 60/4 Taylor '22 I probably missed someone.

It's absurd, today.

Their rotation does look very impressive, but like our rotation and many others, these guys all have some serious questions. Snell: no doubt, he'd be a #1 or #2 every on every MLB team. He's missed about an average of about 6-7 starts over the last 4 years and just turned 32. His 142 ERA+ over the last 3 years is amazing. Ohtani: it has to be all about health with this guy. He's coming off a major injury and has only started more than 23 games, once. (23, 28, 23, 0 in the last 4.) He had a 151 ERA+ in his last 3 seasons, pitching. Glasnow is the poster boy for injury-prone pitchers. Since becoming a SP'er in 2018, he never started more than 14 games, until he managed 23 in his last two. He has a 124 ERA+ in his last 4 seasons (59 GS= about 15 per season.) Yamamoto is just 26 and showed he can pitch in the bigs (129 ERA+ in 18 GS.) Again, he missed time with an injury, so there are now doubts on that front, but he might be the surest bet of the top 4 Dodgers SP'ers, in terms of health and skills, combined. Sasaki is a wild card, but one every team would have loved to have had. Hard to find a comp to him. Gonsolin turns 31 in May and had a great 2022 season, although it was just 24 GS- a career high. He was good before that, too, but had an 87 ERA+ in 2024 (20 GS.) Another injury risk guy. D May is just 27, but he has never started more than 10 games in a ML season. A 132 ERA+ over the last 3 years is damn good, but it was just about 7 GS per year. By contrast, here are some cherry-picked sample size of our top 6 SP'ers: Crochet 128 ERA+ (career, including 33 GS and 73 gms as RP) Houck 125 ERA+ (137 in 2024) Buehler 125 ERA+ career (146 from 2018-2021) Sandoval 108 career (132 '21-'22) Bello 99 career (101 last 2 years and 107 in 2023) Giolito 98 career (106 from '19-'23 and 129 from '19-'21) Crawford 95 (104 last 2 years and 113 in '23)

Is anyone else having enormous issues with typing messages on this site? My cursor keeps flipping to various places within the text I have already typed. It is happening almost every sentence, for me.

The pen looked like the one area the one area the Dodgers looked comparatively weak.

This is not sour grapes, but the Dodgers are making a mockery of the system.

Adding Estevez, Yates or maybe Finnegan might move the needle, a little bit, and Bregman is probably the biggest impact player left for the Sox, but to me, he is not the one FA I'd have chosen to go go large & long on. I doubt we get Bregman, anyway. I guess another meaningful trade could get me optimistic, but we fell short of what I had hoped we might do. Nothing has changed.

All these Dodger additions keep piling up. It will make it more fun to watch, if they don't win the WS, but they are sure doing their best to ensure than cannot happen.

Tanner Scott to Dodgers for $72M/4. To me, he was the best fit for the Sox, out of who was left. Oh, well. No big surprise on who got him.

There is probably a slim chance all 3 top pjury at MIrospects win a FT job over the season, even if there is an in MI and OF, but this could be the look, if it happens without any injuries: C: Wong/Narvaez 1B: Devers/Casas DH: Casas/Devers 2B: Story/Campbell SS: Mayer/Story 3B: Campbell/Devers LF: Duran CF: Anthony/Rafaela RF: Abreu/Campbell/Anthony 1. Duran 2. Campbell 3, Casas 4. Devers 5. Story 6. Anthony 7. Abreu/Rafaela 8. Mayer 9. Wong/Narvaez

He had 58 saves vs BOS. Anyone know how many blown saves he had vs the Red Sox? Including playoffs?