moonslav59

Max, nobody said you were wrong about lower spending teams making the playoffs. Several posters have also pointed out that a team does not have to spend a lot to do well. You are not the "only one." Many posters saw the writing on the wall for the Sox after 2018. There was a fierce debate over the "C" word. Some of us still grateful for what DD did those 3 years, despite the price we paid, afterwards. It's not always as black and white as you make it out to be. DD did what he was told to do. He was good at it. He even did better at building the farm than many thought he did, at the time. He traded a bunch of top prospects that amounted to squat and kept the few good ones, including Devers. He spent what he was allowed to spend and rarely missed on bid signings and trades. Dislike him all you want. Drive that bandwagon into the sunset.

Red was not against the trade, itself. It was the paying too much money part. Had we not paid a penny, he'd have liked the deal and still found some other way to twist it into him being right. There was logic in keeping every pitcher with promise we could. There was logic in cutting our losses and trying to fix a second base problem we had for 5-6 years. We swung and missed, wildly, and then swung and missed on Gio to make matters worse.

Winning makes it hard keep a farm strong. The Astros farm did a job no Sox farm has done since the days of Clemens, Hurst, Ojeda and others: produce quality SP'er, and more than 5, at the same time at some points, in recent years. F Valdez Keuchel McCullers Jr H Brown Javier L Garcia, Urquidy, McHugh, Arrighetti & Blanco Plus, they helped breathe some life into Cole, Morton, Verlander and others. They also had a farm that was able to refill the losses of Springer & Correa. I hope our farm can set us up for an 8 year window.

Dare I say, the Phillies are headed for a cliff.

Wong was the worst defensive catchers in MLB, last year, according to many metrics. Certainly, that is an area of need. Teel is supposed to be good on defense, so I'm thinking a 1 year deal for a " bridge" makes more sense. Wong could make a nice back-up catcher, PH'er and emergency 2B/1B sub. He's also a RHB, while Teel bats lefty and has yet to prove he a plus on offense. I know there is a lot of "ifs," but we can make great strides on infield defense with just a somewhat minimal addition of a 1 year catcher: C: D'arnaud or Jansen & Wong 1B: Casas & Devers, when not DH'ing 2B: Campbell, Mayer, DHam-Grissom SS: Story & Mayer (Romy) 3B: Mayer/Campbell or Grissom (Meidroth) This defense is light year's better than 2024"s C: Wong and McGuire/Jansen 1B: Smith & Casas (Dalbec, Romy, Cooper & Wong 60-95 innings, each) 2B: E Valdez had the most innings (YUK!) DHam & Grissom (245+) and Romy, Westbrook & Sogard 100+. (Gasper, Reyes and Rafaela 30+) SS: Rafaela 647, DHam 433 (Double YUK!) Story 228, Romy 80, Sogard 51 3B: Devers 1138 was more innings at one position than anyone else, except Abreu in RF, and he sucked. (55+ from Romy, Reyes, Dalbec & Sogard) LF: 611 Duran, 498 O'Neill & 297 Ref (room to improve, here) CF: 810 Duran, 631 Rafaela (Can't get much better.) RF: 1421 Abreu (a plus) 301 O'Neill & 198 Ref (could get better with Anthony instead.) So, improve D at C, SS, 3B, 2B, LF, RF and maybe a little at 1B, 2B and CF. The same or better at every position with just one addition and a couple position shifts: Devers to 1B/DH/ Casas to 1/2 DH and Rafaela out of the infield.

To play deveil's advocate... As much as I see a very strong need for pitching, we did finish 11th or 12th in pitching fWAR and ERA-. We have some young pitchers and banked on Hendriks and Fulmer as 2024 signings meant for 2025. With Gio and Whitlock returning, and a full season of Slaten, one could say we are okay, despite losing Pivetta, Jansen and Martin. Pitchers like I Campbell and others were thought to be better. One could easily get high on Fitts and maybe Priester, Dobbins, Guerrero, Penrod and others. I'm not buying this, but some numbers show our pitching is okay.

No problem. I'm not sure green is an option. I know we both think pitching is terribly important.

In the season of upsets, trying to predict one is near pointless. It's interesting to see Indiana still undefeated at 6-0 and having a bye week. They are 18th ranked, but could move up with a few more upsets. Here is this week's schedule: #2 Ohio St @ #3 Oregon #1 Texas @ #18 OKL #4 Penn St @ USC #9 Ole Miss @ #13 LSU So Carolina @ 7 ALA, #10 Clemson @ WF, Stanford @ #11 ND, #11 IA St @ WVA Next week's big games is GA @ TX and ALA @ Tenn

The first 2 seem like no-brainer high needs. The second two seem more complex and might be hard to do through adding players from outside the system. Infield defense can be greatly improved by just having a healthy Story. Perhaps, the best aspect of the 2025 roster is that Mayer may be an internal option at SS, if he does get hurt, and we won't have to rely on big K Rafaela to get 600 PAs, with half booting balls around at SS. The next solution has been discussed and is more complex: moving Devers to 1B and or DH. That will very likely not happen in 2025, but is there, if we want to do it. A good back-up catcher could help, a lot. On cutting down on K's. One easy way to do that would be to make Rafaela the 4th OF'er or defensive replacement and play Anthony FT. By not bringing back O'Neill, we'd lose our top K% guy at 34%. Casas and Story were both around 31%, so no relief there. Abreu was at 28% and should be traded. If rafaela at 26% is benched, we'd be losing 3 of our top 5 K guys from the line-up. Our lowest K guy was Yoshida, and nobody else came close to his 12,4%. He is also the talk of trade. Duran (22%) Wong (23%) and Devers (24.5%) were the next best. All look to be starters. This might be the best and easiest way to improve #4: 2024 Prospect K rates: 12.7% Meidroth (19% BB) 19.7% Mayer (9%) 19.9% Campbell (14%) 23.0% Teel (14%) 23.5% Anthony (15%)

You assume JH is going to keep cutting. I'm not sure. I don't think anyone can be sure. I'm not expecting more spending. I'm not expecting less. If I had to guess, I'd say we stay about the same or add $5-15M to the 2024 budget, and maybe stay near the same ranking (10-12th.) I seriously doubt we ever get to bottom 15, let alone bottom 10 or 5. If we do, I'll join in on the JH has to go chants.

Huh? All I talk about is adding pitchers and usually way more than anyone else. I've said, other than adding a one year back-up catcher, every penny and trade resource should be spent on pitching. If our need for pitching is overblown, I'm the overblown bandwagon driver. My point about harnony's statement was that he thinks we are overblowing the need, but that he may not think the need is not there, at all. He just thinks we are going too extreme. He's not alone. I mentioned adding 2 solid SP'ers and pushing Crawford to the pen, and a few posters strongly disagreed. (I said the same thing, last winter. I wanted Whitlock and Crawford in the pen.) I want our 5-8 pen guys pushed back to AAA. That's 4 new RP"ers, and would like one to be the closer and another to be a co-8th inning guys with whoever is the best from Whitlock, Slaten or Hendriks. (the "losing" 2 would be the 7th inning guys, Crawford the long man with maybe Criswell, too. If I was the GM, I might not be happy adding just 4 solid pitchers. Our need is not overblown.

It is concerning, especially because it has happened to some extent for 2-3 straight seasons, but the Devers injury was certainly one big reason for the stark drop off. I'm not one to read a whole lot into a 6-7 week sample size, but that doesn't mean those numbers should be totally discarded. Losing O'Neill looks worrisome, too, especially with the need for a big RHB, even when we had him, but consider this: we were 11th in runs scored in 2023, and many were complaining about how much worse we were going to be after losing our #2, 3 and 8 PA leaders who placed #4 (Duvall), #5 (Turner) and #7 (Dugo) in OPS+. (121, 119 and 103) Those 3 placed 2nd, 5th and 6th in RBI, while Turner and Dugo were 2-3 in runs scored. Nobody had much faith in O'Neill replacing Duvall and Dugo and a bunch of unproven young players being asked to play more. We finished 9th in OPS and .748 and 16th in wRC+ at 99! The league OPS was .734. In 2024, we saw the league OPS drop 37 points to .711, yet the Sox OPS only dropped 7 points to .741. We were ranked 7th not 9th. We moved from 16th to T10th in wRC+ at 104. Yes, we lose O'Neill, but that seems less worrisome than Turner, Duvall and Dugo. We should also see a healthier Devers and Story, but someone will get hurt, so counting on that seems too wishful. What can be expected is the natural age curve improvement levels for almost our whole line-up plus some big opportunities for major impacts from Anthony, Campbell or Mayer. I know I can get overly optimistic, but these guys are highly regarded by unbiased baseball people. While nothing is guaranteed, I think it is reasonable to expect an improvement, even if don't add any outside bats to the mix, except maybe a co-catcher for Wong. Grissom is 23. Casas and Rafaela are 24. Abreu is 25. DHam is 27 Devers, Duran, Wong & Romy are just entering prime at 28. Yoshida is still in prime at 31 and Story might be close at 32. Ref is 33 but is aging well. Not a single everyday player is post prime. Other than who we add as back-up catcher, the others on the 26 will likely be 21-23 year olds Anthony, Campbell, Mayer, Teel or Meidroth. I'm looking for reasons to expect decline or stagnation and all I see is losing O'Neill or more injuries than we had, this year. I don't know why that should be expected. Tell me why we should not get better. I'm listening- really, I am.

"Overblown" does not mean we have no needs.

It's not rocket science. The Sox have more needs with pitching, and SEA has more needs with batting. That seems like the foundation for talks, but that does not mean a deal can be made. The odds are still long we make a deal with SEA, but the odds are probably better than most other teams. We are kicking around the Yoshida idea, and that is a real long shot, IMO. More likely they take Casas or someone else- not Yoshida. One never knows the players a given GM covets. SEA could really like a guy like DHam or see the upside in Romy of Grissom, and shock us. Maybe they want Abreu or Mayer more than we do. It's easy to say, "We have so and so already, but with SEA, they could trade anyone, at any moment and open a slot for Abreu or whoever.

We have 3 top prospects, all good hitters knocking on the door, and even if you don't have the faith in our current batters that I do, there is no doubt we have more capable hitters than pitchers. A batter for pitcher trade seems mandatory, to me. You can say it is a surplus of mediocre or slightly better than mediocre group, but it is a surplus. The deficit in pitching is stark. We could add a quality SP'er and 2-3 solid RP'ers and still come up short on pitching. I do agree that our batting is not a slam dunk plus for 2025, but if we have anything, we have too much quantity of batters, especially if 2 prospects earn a slot. At worst, we can probably trade Abreu and DHam for decent RP'ers and break even on offense with Anthony, Campbell and more from Story or Grissom or maybe Mayer/Meidroth/Romy.

Indeed. We'd likely have to still kick in some money for year 3 of Yoshida or add a SP'er like Criswell or Priester.

I was thinking Ray for Yoshida straight up. Doval did not have a good year. His WHIP was over 1.5. His ERA was near 5. He walked nearly 6 batters per 9 IP, but the 12 K/9 was good. Ray: $50M/2 Yoshida: $54M/3 I'd give Yoshida, Wikelman and Murphy for the two.

You'd think, once he realizes pitchers aren't throwing him strikes, he could just decide, before the pitch: I'm taking this, no matter what. Just by chance, he could get more walks of better pitches, when he decides, "I'm swinging, no matter what," like he seems to do, now.

I actually thought of Ray as an option, then forgot to bring it up. Yes, this is the type of deal, I think makes more sense than just handing Yoshida plus $12-13M a year away for nothing.

IMO, we have these "plus" batters: Duran, Casas & Devers Abreu, Ref , Yoshida and Wong (esp compared to other catchers) Anthony & Campbell (rookie years) Borderline: Story, Mayer and maybe a Grissom-DHam platoon, possibly Meidroth or EValdez on a platoon, only That's 9 with maybe 11 or 12. Most teams have 5 or 6, at best. A few have 7-8.

I'm not talking about removing Duran. Some have mentioned it, but way less than other suggestions. We have a surplus of plus batters.

As might a Bryce Miller or Luis Castillo one be, this winter.

Somehow, I missed this survey. Like Bell, I'm surprised at the Duran trade number. I don't see a contradiction in the idea on what we should do vs what we think we'll do. I'd vote no on us going over $241M. Hell, I'd vote no on going over $211M. My "ideal plan" would be to spend on pitching and make some small trades for more pitching or maybe a LHB-RHB swap. I would not offer a QO to anyone and think trading Yoshida would be good, but we won't find a deal worth it. (that's not a choice offered.) Who "should" DH? 90 games Casas and 72 games Devers (They play 1B when not DH'ing.) Wong should get the bulk of catching duties with someone like D Jansen on a 1 year deal, until Teel is ready. I'd say the FT CF job is Rafaela's to lose. I'd try Whitlock as the closer, first. Big 4 traded? I'd go with Mayer. I think 1 top prospect breaks camp with the big team: Anthony. (Abreu gets traded to make room in the OF.) The others will be delayed to gain an extra year. I'd give Brez a 5. We won't sign Burnes. My passion for the Sox has not wained. Do not sign Bregman. Trade Casas only for pitching and to move Devers to 1B. Play Campbell, Mayer or Grissom-Meidroth at 3B. (not a choice) My feelings on Bloom were meh ("bad") and have improved a little after watching some of his players/prospects do better.

SEA is well known for making a lot of trades, many surprising ones. I would not be surprised, if they surprise even you.

I'd set the odds at less than 1% we sign any of the 4 guys combined: Soto, Burnes, Fried or Adames. I'm not sure the group of Bregman, Alonso, Snell and Cole (if he can opt out) is much more than 1%. To me, our best bets for major FA signings are second/third tier: Flaherty, N Martinez, Nate, Manaea, Tanner Scott, J Hoffman, Estevez, Kikuchi, Danny Jansen, K Jansen, C Holmes, Sewald Maybe: O'Neill, Wacha, Bieber, Heaney, Severino, Lorenzen, Montas, Chapman, Robertson, Martin, Minter, Kittredge, Treinen