moonslav59

Let's get back to the 2025 Red Sox outlook. To me, so much depends on 2 things that have nothing to do with player performance projections: 1. JH's willingness to up the winter spending budget. 2. Brez's willingness or authority to trade top players or prospects that focus more on 2025-2026 than 2027 and beyond. (It could be for a player with 4+ years of control, but trading multiple players with 5+ years of control for one at 4 is still more about the here and now.) One of my main concerns is how much confidence is this management team going to put into players that missed all or most of 2024, as being key players for 2025. Story Gio Whitlock Hendriks Fulmer and to a much lesser extent Murphy, I Campbell & others. Plus, maybe full seasons (or full days of availability) from Devers, Slaten, Criswell, Fitts, Grissom, Priester, Guerrero & Penrod Of course, we need to plan for injuries, but there is a lot of possible additional playing time coming from this list, and we already have a core of players that can be expected to be FT players or near that. Abreu+ Ref counts as 1 (or Yoshida + Ref at DH) Maybe together this is 2 slots filled. Casas (1B) Duran (LF-CF) Devers (3B) and maybe Wong (C) and Rafaela (CF) would fill 6 slots. Story/Mayer + DHam/Grissom should fill 7 more. Houck, Crawford, Bello & Gio can maybe be counted as 4 rotation slots filler with Fitts/Priester/Criswell/Dobbins combining to fill the 5th slot. The pen is too mixed up to know what is what, but we do seem to have 4-5 arms that are reliable for slots in the 8 man pen.

Good one!

How does this group of prospects stack up to past ones? (Of course, it's a bit of apples to oranges, as we have the benefit of hindsight for past ones.) 2024: Anthony, Mayer, Teel, Campbell, Bleis, Perales, Fitts, Cespedes, Arias, Sandlin, Meidroth 2006: Lester, Pedey, Jake, Papelbon, Buch, Doubront, Bard, B Moss, D Murphy, Lowrie, Mrerdith, Delcarmen 2013: Betts, Bogey, JBJ, Barnes, Vaz, Iggy, Workman, Margot 2016: Devers, Moncada, Beni, Espinoza, Kopech, Dalbec How about looking at a 4 year windows of prospects? We could add Houck, Whitlock, Duran, Crawford, Wink, bello, Wong, casas, Abreu, rafaela, Slaten and others to this group. Other time periods could add some awesome names, too.

Maybe. I also think you may be undervaluing how some GMs rate Mayer. (Not that you are wrong.) I think some GMs view Mayer as a major "get." I'm not sure how many teams have a better prospect or would offer one up, plus Casas and Fitts.

I know he was injured and S*** happens, but the end result is, we will pay Gio $38.5M for maybe 1 full year of pitching. Why act like the idea is unfathomable?

Very effective but not too secretive.

fWAR/PAs at 3B 3.8/566 Devers 1.7/410 Rojas 0.2/101 Urias 0.2/101 Moore 0.0/22 Sogard -0.3/35 Romy -0.3/32 Dalbec -0.4/35 Reyes at 2B 0.9/96 Moore (by far the best of this group) 0.4/68 Bliss (better than DHam in fWAR per PA at 2B) 0.3/443 Polanco (way more PAs than DHam) 0.2/118 DHam 0.0/42 Sogard -0.1/56 Romy -0.3/39 Westbrook -0.6/109 Grissom -1.0/202 E Valdez

You clicked "primary position" which is very misleading, as some teams have 1300+ PAs at 3B. Better to use "positional splits" and we see: 3B: BOS 14th and SEA 20th https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?lg=all&ind=1&qual=10&season1=2024&season=2024&team=0%2Cts&type=8&month=39 2B: SEA 20th and BOS 30th (where they have been for about 6 years)

16th is actually shockingly good, considering where were were in 2023, once Story went down injured, vs the same situation in 2024. While Rafaela was a negative on SS D, he was nowhere near as bad as Kike and others at SS in 2023. With Mayer joining the mix in 2025 and perhaps a healthy Story, maybe we can get to top 10 in fWAR at SS.

It's not CBT, of course, but do you really not see how we are actually paying Gio $38.5M for 1 year? Seriously?

If he was gambling himself, it is totally understandable he'd set up a way to do it that was not easily traceable. It need not have been some complicated scheme or deep conspiracy set-up. I really have no idea what went down, but it seems absurd to think his interpreter was taking all this money, without it being discovered. That seems as "nutty" as my suggested scheme to hide who was making the bets. Both scenarios have major questions and WTF's.

Is cell phones the only way to communicate? (there are also "burner phones." I'm not saying this happened, but it has to be as plausible as the other scenarion. As for how qa payoff could be done and hidden, I think there are many ways to do that. Or a promise that "we will take care of your family."

How about Mayer, Abreu, Fitts and DHam?

Money talks as much as mafia type threats.

Massive? In what way? Couldn't Ohtani have simply paid the guy to take the fall for him? Nobody else need be involved.

Would they do Mayer & Casas (maybe add DHam & Wink?)

I get that, and agree, but I do think bringing in Bloom was an attempt to have a GM that found "gems in the rough" at low cost. He was involved in those types of moves with the Rays, despite not being the one who did the evaluations to determine which ones to get. As it turned out, Bloom did not do such a great job finding the right guys, and it seems obvious, it was because he did not have the proper people in place to identify the "right guys" to sign or trade for. Peraza, Martin Perez, Godley, Weber, Covey, Kickham, Stock, Brice and that whole 2020 mess of a roster. He did "find" Schreiber, Aroyo, Kike I, Renfroe (seemed like a typical Rays add-on,) Refsnyder, Wacha, Strahm but then there were more like Cordero, Andriese, Sawamura, Richards, Diekman and Kluber types. I'm cautiously optimistic we are doing the right thing and heading in the right direction. I know I have said this too many times, already, but I do think we are already seeing improvements at the ML level from our farm development (Houck, Crawford, Bello, Duran, Casas, Rafaela and more) and talent evaluators (Abreu, Whitlock, Fitts, Slaten, Wink, DHam, Wong, Kelly, Weissert, Bernardino, Criswell and others acquired from other teams.)

I don't think this presented scenario makes more sense than it being Ohtani that was doing the gambling.

All teams would like one- few have the pieces to offer to get one, or they do not want to part with top prospects.

They did go back to Nate, so I think they did want him, then. That was long ago. I hope we can do better than Nate, but he is still pretty good. I think we need to think about getting someone as good as Houck or better. I'm thinking we may end up settling on someone below Houck's projections, and I won't be surprised if we end up with a Criswell/Chase Anderson type addition, instead. I'm not a big fan of Crochet, and I wonder if 2024 was just a fluke, but I do think adding him is better than anyone we've added since trading for Nate in 2018. I could see trying to trade Mayer or maybe Casas + Abreu with maybe some lower level add-ons. The thing about the CWS is that their 40 man is so weak and shallow, that they might be one team that would take a 4 for 1 or 5 for 2 type trade that would open up roster slots for our Rule 5 guys plus not rule 5's like Anthony, Mayer, Campbell, Meidroth and maybe eventually Teel. DHam and Abreu would be FT players on the CWS. If we included Crawford in a trade for Crochet, he might be their #1. They may also prefer to take prospects, if they view their next "window" as being 2027 and beyond. I'm also not a big fan of RHB Luis Roberts, but his $8.3M lux tax numbers looks pretty good. ('25 $15M, '26 is a $20M club option w $2M buyout, and '27 is the same option as '26.) I'm guessing the CWS would like to shed Roberts salary, but they do not view him as a salary dump. I doubt anyone thinks his contract is "underwater." Would this deal be acceptable by both teams? Mayer, Abreu, DHam and Winckowski for Crochet (2 arbs remaining) & Roberts (Owed $17M/1 guaranteed) Maybe Roberts comes to life in Fenway.

We do need an ace, and I agree we should trade for one rather than spend. I'd keep Duran over Casas, easily, but Casas alone, does not get us a solid SP'er, let alone an ace. (Duran would get us a better pitcher than Casas, by far.) I'd see what we can get for Casas, Abreu, DHam and Dobbins/Wink.

Good article. The Rays have a long list of non-headline signings that go on to have a career year(s.) I hope this is not a sign that they are looking to do what they hired Bloom to do- build a winner without spending much at all. While these signings are important and useful, we cannot rely on only minor deals to get us back to glory.

So, Texas want to cut salary ($24M gets them under the tax line, so this trade works for them on that front): Yoshida ($54M/3 and $18M lux tax hit) Dobbins & Winckowski for deGrom ($115M/3 and $37M lux tax hit) Chaffin ($6.5M/1) +$1.5M cash Note: I'm not really for this trade, as I have very little faith in deGrom and am tired of rolling the dice on injury-prone pitchers.

I agree. I don't see Jon Gray as an upgrade over what we have. Andrew Chaffin (LHP) at $6.5M/1 might be nice, but he's 34 and has not been very good for 2 years (4.10 ERA/3.77 FIP/1.45 WHIP) Nate has a $20M player option... maybe. I'm with Randy. I don't see a fit. We need pitching. Those everyday players aren't of interest, to me.

Amazing how on so many of these triples, you see where Duran is, when they cut to him running. This guy is FAST!