moonslav59

He offered more hope than Kluber and Richards did. He actually was a decent pitcher just a half season before we signed him. That did offer a smidgeon on hope, IMO. I guess some could claim Kluber & Richards offer some slight hopes, too, but to me Gio offered more (and cost more, too.) Obviously, that hope never came true. We all know it did not work.

Nice article. On Guerrero, while 5 BBs in 35 PAs against is awful, he's only allowed 3 hits. He blows all our pitchers away in OPS Against: .396 Guerrero .465 Slaten (IL) .483 Chapman .581 Bernardino .580 Crochet (SP) .596 Wilson .604 Weissert .622 Wink (60 Day IL, but in doghouse before) .641 Whitlock .649 Burdi (IL) .692 Hendriks (IL) .702 Kelly I think we need to roll the dice with the healthy guys on this list. Closer: Chapman Top set up: Wilson & Whitlock High Leverage 7th & 8th inning: Bernardino and yes, Guerrero No better options: Weissert & Kelly, until Slaten returns. My guess is Hendriks and Burdi will get another look, if and when... Also, maybe a SP'er gets converted to the pen, if we ever get a healthier rotation than we've seen, so far. I'd like to give Criswell a shot at starting, again. He seems to do better there, but moving Dobbins to the pen would be a mistake. Criz could replace Gio, but do we really think a pouting Gio would/could be a boost to the pen?

You don't think saying "Clean house on all of them" is intense disdain? WOW is right!

Your selective memory is your only true constant. Just like you've always been for moving Devers off 3B. LMAO

Monday morning QBs are never wrong. I realize many disliked the Sale and Gio deals, when made, but seriously, everyone was fed up with getting nothing from Sale for over 4 years, and he'd appeared "healthy" many times before- only to go down again, with some new injury. I disliked the Gio signing, at the time. Although he offered more hope than guys like Kluber & Richards, he cost almost twice as much, as does Buehler, now. The swings and misses on FA SP'ers has been a major downfall of this team. The only decent one was Wacha, and he missed time, when we needed him the most. Yes, that is on the GM, fully. Brez ha swung and missed on Gio & Buehler and maybe Sandoval, too. He did strike gold on Crochet and made a decent attempt with Fitts, but it's not been wnough.

The deal backfired, spectacularly, no doubt. I'm sorry if I don't share in the intense disdain for a GM giving up on a guy who gave us absolutely nothing for 4+ years. Had Sale gotten hurt again, we'd never have heard a peep, and nobody here expected a CYA season from Sale. The fact that Grissom sucked and sucks didn't help, and the "money saved" was used to pay Gio's deal. All I can say is just about every GM has a deal or two that look awful. Brez has made many deals that looked and still look good and real good. Some others have not worked out, some due to injury and some due to unmet expectations. The bottom line is we are not playing any better. Our record is worse than last year's s***** year. We all see that and feel it. Are you for firing Brez, after 2 years? Cora, too? (I'm all for showing Kennedy the door. I'm wondering about Bailey and our batting coaches.)

Wow, I forgot he did that. Thanks for reminding me. Remind me of the poster who said the worst part of the Sale deal was the money included.

In hindsight the Priester trade looks not so good, as of now, but he has been doing worse, of late, and we got two good prospects, one a pitcher plus the 33rd pick in the draft for a guy that was one of about okay, decent or having some promise 10-11 SP'ers we had on our depth chart before his trade. In general, I agree: trading any promising pitcher is not a good idea. When the top name we got back is an OF'er, it looks even more suspect. I will say, I will not be surprised in 2-3 years, if we look back and call this trade "genius." I'm as pissed as everyone about the 4 years and 6 out of 7, too. Even 2021 was no feather in top management's cap. The signings before that season mostly sucked. We only won on the remnants of the 2018 team and a confluence of better health, peaking vets and career or near career years by several players. (I won't mention Cora's role. Ooops, I just did!) Personally, this past winter was the first one in many years, where I felt we did a good job filling almost all of the major flaws in our roster. The one I think we fell short of was the closer role, and I was wrong on that. I would feel I'd be contradictory, if I now bashed management for doing what I felt was right. I'm not saying what they did was right, and sometimes good moves just don't work out. I thought Buehler was an overpay, but he was a better gamble than guys like Kluber, Richards and Martin Perez were. The Bregman deal broke the stretch of mizerness. His injury was unfortunate, but not a "wrong move." The remnants of the 2024 signings: Gio and Hendriks bit us in the ass, and that's on Brez & Co., but we did start the season with the best ML ready SP'er depth I've seen the Sox have, perhaps in the 50+ years of my Sox fandom. Crochet, Houck, Buehler, Bello, Crawford, Giolito (Sandoval in August?) Fitts, Dobbins, Criswell, Whitlock, Winckowski, Newcomb Granted, not all these guys were household names, but these are 13 pitchers after the Priester trade. Okay, throw out Newcomb, Whitlock (pen) and Wink (Pen & doghouse,) and we still have 10 guys for 5 slots. I can't blame Brez for Houck sucking. (I'm not sure Bailey is to blame, either, and I guess Brez hired Bailey, so...) Brez is to blame for Gio & Buehler, yes, although both did hold some level of promise. Crawford's injury is not on Brez, but I do think he planned well on having the depth needed to cover 1-2 rotation injuries, at any given time. Ultimately, the GM gets the blame for a team failing, and Brez is no different. For right or wrong, the team he built is failing. He's made a lot of changes in just 2 years, so in many ways this is "his team," already. Bloom's curse is still present, but Brez was handed a top farm system to use as he wished, and he was also recently handed a budget Bloom never saw, and even DD was denied in 2019. I am far from the "clean house" claims some are making. We tried that 2 years ago (except for keeping Cora.) Maybe, last nights win will be the spark we need, but I think I've thought or said that a dozen times, already this year. We have some very serious flaws with no easy in system fixes on the horizon, except for MAYBE Bregman's return and a possible boost from Sandoval (or even Crawford or Houck,) but I'm dead tired of these type of hopes we've seen dashed year-after-year. The waiting is certainly the hardest part.

Continued losing has helped our draft positioning, but we have always seemed to master the comp pick rules, as well as capitalized on the actual comp picks we get- often better choices than picks we made before them. It's actually 4 in the top 87 picks, and with 30 teams, that's one more than we should. There is also added signing bonus money that goes with the extra pick(s.). We got the 33rd pick for Priester (YRod & Holebretz) and #75 for losing Pivetta to free agency. We lost our #54 pick for signing Breman. Revisiting our spectacular Comp Pick history: 2005: Ellsbury & Lowrie for losing OCab, plus Buccholz for losing the declining Pedro. 2006: Daniel Bard for Damon 2009: Workman for J Bay 2011: Barnes for VMart & JBJ for A Beltre 2014: Kopech for Ellsbury (see 2005) Kopech also helped us get Sale. 2022: Anthony for losing ERod (He was our 3rd player selected) 2023: Kristian Campbell for losing Bogey, plus Riemer for losing Nate. We selected 4 players before KC I hope we do well with this extra pick.

Okay, but he also traded for Crochet & Fitts, as well as some far away pitching prospects.

That was nice. '96-'99: 30.2 Griffey Jr 26.1 ARod 22.8 Edgar The Big Sox trio (pick any 3) did not overlap perfectly: 27.6 Nomar '97-'00 21.1 ORTIZ '04-'07 20.8 Pedroia '08-'11 20.4 Youkilis '07-'10 19.9 Manny '01-'04 14.7 Ellsbury '10-'13 13.8 Nixon '00-'03 13.7 VTek '02-'05 (27.3 Betts '16-'19/ 17.6 Bogaerts '16-'19/ 12.6 JBJ '16-'19/ 11.8 JD '18'21)

He's real close to being MLB ready... LOL!

Trevah Novella is seeing some rising action in the plot curve. Maybe it's just taken some time to shake all those cobwebs off.

I like soxprospects.com, and I don't get to watch as many games as you do. I appreciate your insights. I'm really pumped up over our farm, and maybe because I'm channeling my disappointment with the Sox towards the one plus we have. I think we are deeper than many feel we are. They see 6 or 7 in the top 100 and thinks that's it. I know we lack bonafide pitching prospects, but many good ones never amount to squat, anyway, so I like the fact that we have 20-25 pitchers with some sort of promise or hope. I'm figuring 2-3 might work out real well and another 3-4 pretty good to okay. I'm supre high on the Garcia brothers and Cespedes, and now with Bleis mashing and Arias doing his thing, we have a nice second class coming in after soon graduating or past trading away Anthony, Mayer, Campbell, Teel and Montgomery. How many teams have a second everyday 5 like ours does? Arias, Jh Garcia, Bleis, Cespedes and Romero or Soto. Couple that with deep yet not spectacular pitching, and I think are well set up.

He'll be exactly MLB ready in 22.57 days. LOL!

Can you believe a manager would move a guy with 50 RBis out of the 2 slot?

Trevor Novella thickening the plot.

Yes, #10 for Roman. Noda is looking good, too, but Romy and Toro are noy playing themselves out of their ML slots. Jh Garcia goes 0-5 and is still over 1.000. Jordan with 2 more hits. Fitts struggling. You gotta wonder, if he may not get another ML look, this year. Yuten 3 for 4 w Salem,

Romy for Mayor!

This was probably the rotation depth chart before the Priester trade: 1. Crochet 2. Houck- sucked and now on IL 3. Buehler- pretty much sucked 4. Bello- done OK (missed 3 starts) 5/6. Crawford- out all year 5/6. Giolito- sucked/ missed 5 starts 7A. Sandoval- expected to be out until August (doesn't really count) 7B. Fitts- has 5 starts (not so good) 8. Priester- traded away 9. Criswell- used in pen, instead (is that on Cora or Brez?) 10. Dobbins- has 7 starts 11/12. Newcomb- has 5 GS (might have been below #11) 11/12. Whitlock or Wink

There is still a lot to be proven with Bloom's prospects. I remember Ben's prospects looked a lot better than they proved to be, in a general sense. That being said, year by year... 2020's w abbreviated draft: Rule 5: Whitlock Yorke>Priester> Y Rod & Holobetz Jordan starting to come to life Drohan making a second move up. 2021: Mayer Elmer Rodriguez> Narvaez Dobbins, Guerrero, Z Ehrhard, Hickey, Ubertsine Winckowski (Beni Trade) DHam (Renfroe trade) Paez & Liendo IFA 2022: Anthony Romero Bleis IFA Jo Garcia, Encarnacion, Yuten IFA Meidroth> part of Crochet deal Abreu (Vaz trade) Coffey> Danny Jansen Rogers, Dean, Brannon, Mullins, Hoppe 2023: Campbell Teel> Major piece of Crochet deal Arias IFA Cespedes, Valera, Nunez, K Salazar IFA Early Taylor A Anderson, Wehunt, Carlson, Ingrassia, Riemer, Zanetello

You keep glossing over the word "maybe." As a SP'er in '25- both with 7 GS: Priester: 2.83 & .695 OPS Against Dobbins: 4.21 & .765 OPSA I think "Maybe" is legit.

Facing the lefty: L Duran L Devers R Refsnyder R Narvaez R Romy 1B S Toro 3B R Story R Rafaela R Campbell 2B

It does seem weird that they include the "O" of of, but not the "T" for the.