moonslav59
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Everything posted by moonslav59
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A Realistic View of the 2025 Red Sox: Part I
moonslav59 replied to moonslav59's topic in Boston Red Sox Talk
I'm hoping you are joking. -
Will Brez get the financial support DD was given? Does he have the freedom to trade several top prospects? Yes, the situation is much different than today, but how different is knd of unknown, right now.
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I agree. DD was taking control from him. Nobody in charge likes that. This does not mean JH and others wanted Ben to quit, so I don't see it as being the same as firing somebody, but if they were pretty certain he'd quit, I can see thinking there is little difference.
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The 2019 team did not do well, and yes, we can blame some of how bad 2020 was on the missing Sale and ERod, plus JD's .680 season, but these guys were FAs after 2019: Porcello, Moreland, Pearce, Nunez, Holt, Thornburg These guys might not be great, but with $11M to spend and you had to trade Betts and Price, all you can do is build up the lower part of the 40. This was the season end roster to 2019: https://www.soxprospects.com/2019SE.htm
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Don't you think a mandate to cut tens of millions from the budget kinda forced his hand on that? I doubt he thought he'd be viewed as "smart" by replacing Porcello, Betts & Price with Dugo, Martin Perez, Jose Peraza and Jonathan Lucroy. (I think those last 3 guys cost like $11M.) No way did he think he was building a 2020 winner and would be called "the smart one." Even with the $11M winter spending by Bloom, the budget was still reduced by about $60M, according to cots adjusted CB Tax numbers.
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There is an in between possibility: they knew he might quit, but hoped he'd stay and work under DD.
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The thing is, there was a report that DD was all set to trade Betts, midseason 2019, but the Sox started winning, and they decided to give 2019 a shot. I'm certain no GM would want to trade Betts, so I'm assuming Bloom was forced to do it, or told He'd have to cut $45-50M from the budget, elsewhere. I think not being able to bring Kimbrel & Kelly back in 2019, and not given a penny to even try to replace them, might have been the beginning of the friction. I do think DD knew the Betts trade was on the winter horizon, and could likely have been the final straw in the relationship between JH and DD. I honestly cannot imagine DD running the Sox under the 2020 and 2021 budgets handed to Bloom. I'm not saying he'd have quit, but there would have been some major acrimony that would likely have led to a (not much) later firing or retirement.
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A Realistic View of the 2025 Red Sox: Part I
moonslav59 replied to moonslav59's topic in Boston Red Sox Talk
Yoshida underwent labral repair surgery on his right shoulder. Duran (CF) and Abreu (RF) are Gold Glove finalists. -
What? By intentionally spending less than he could have, to look smart?
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You make some good points, and you do no longer say he "decimated the farm." That is a good direction you took. No doubt, all GMs make mistakes. Getting the team to where DD got it in 2018 took a lot of skill and investment. It also took sacrifice, which I was fine with. Others were not. Nobody is right or wrong, because the whole ball of wax is gray in color, anyway.
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Yes, and that was quicker than I ever imagined we could get back to the playoffs, but I think it proved to be a blip on the radar screen of a longer down time. Although we started spending more, for a brief time, we lost so many players, even after Kimbrel & Kelly, then Betts, Price & Porcello. I think we could have ended the "cliff" after 1-2 years, had JH returned to the "cycle" or spending. It seems like 2022 (the over the limit year) was a mirage, and just about everything went wrong. I do think the cliff was worse than I expected in 2020, but not having Sale and ERod hurt, badly. I think the 2021 season made JH feel like he did not have to spend a ton to win, so we missed a chance to pull out of it quickly. JH and of course, Bloom's poor choices extended the bad times.
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It would have taken masterful moves to keep the team competitive with the slashes imposed on the GM. I never expected a 6 year cliff. I think I even suggested it could/should be 2-3 years, which makes 2021 just about on track. I also never expected the cuts and tight budgets by JH to last about 6 years. I expected him to "cycle" back to spending to or just over the tax line every 2-4 years. We did spend (poorly) and did go over one year- the one we should not have. Bloom was hired to find cheap players that overperformed: he didn't find enough, and he was nearly Oh-For on his biggest contracts handed out. (Jansen and Martin did fine, but he only had them in his era for 1 year.) Story, Yoshida, Barnes, Richards, Kluber and Kike II were his first $10M+ deals. If you count M Perez I + II as $10M+, that's oh for 7 until 2023. Maybe we could have made the playoffs had he just gobe 2 for 7 or 3-7- maybe not, but it was never going to be a glory team, once Betts was botted.
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I spelled it out, and you know exactly what my position was and always has been. It was "inevitable," when you believe JH will not spend and spend year in and year out. He never did before, and I did not expect he'd start in 2019. We can cry all day long, "But JH CAN SPEND MORE!" That does not make it inevitable he will. JH has cut spending every 2-3 years, over his whole era. I felt it was inevitable, he would again, and that we'd pay the price. You and others claimed, among other ideas, that we could build the farm quickly, that JH would just keep raising the budget from an already 1 ranked budget, or that we still had a strong enough core to keep the window going for 3-4 more years. The farm had nothing from Devers to Houck. The rules were changed to make winning and spending teams have a harder time stocking the farm. Stiff penalties were added to big spenders, and thinking JH was going to pay those taxes was la-la land.
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As much as I rant about adding a solid SP'er, I agree that Tanner Scott should be target #1.
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Yes, he did, but over the 4 years, he did not spend what DD did. He spent less in 2013 than Theo did in 2010 to 2011. (That's not counting inflation.) Ben did increase spending after 2013, and quite significantly, so your point is solid. The team was at about $165M, the two years before Ben, and he dipped to $154M in '13 before ending at $184M. From start to finish, he went from $168M (Theo in 2011) to $184M- up $1`6M DD went to $197M yr 1 & 2, then 1, $234K in 2018 (1 rank) and $236M in '19. His total add was $$52M in 4 yrs. Bloom from $236M to $181M or -$55M. Brez down $10M in 1 year.
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The sham, here, is you inventing we thought.
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Of course JH could have become what the Dodgers and Mets are, today. Nobody ever said there HAD TO BE A CLIFF, or that it was inevitable. We knew JH was not going to go from the #1 spending team (2019) to much greater heights to keep all the stars or replace them in kind.
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Ben, Bloom and Brez would have spent $50M more year, if JH allowed them to do it.
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Good article. We certainly need a LH's RP'er, and I'll go farther and say the need for a RHB is overblown. I'd like one, yes, but it's not as high a priority as a LH's RP, a solid SP and another solid RP'er or three. Just get a serviceable RHB catcher, and count of Story, Campbell and Ref to do the rest. Also, Anthony is no platoon player. He hits lefties, very well.
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If the pen is not significantly improved, the sham continues.
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Agree. 8 teams is pushing it, for me.
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I didn't realize their bWARs were so high, and maybe expectations biased my statement.
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Gotta say that list is not something to moan and groan about, right? It turned out rather amazingly, how few did real well. I know the argument that he barely knew the ones decided to keep, except maybe Devers & Beni, but facts are facts. He kept the best and traded almost all the higher/highest stock ones. Also, the returns of Sale, Kimbrel, Nate and Pearce far outweighed the misses like Thornburg, C Smith and maybe PomPom. He knew how to run a high budget team. That 2018 team was a juggernaut. 2016, 2017 and 2019 were all really good, on paper.
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Exactly. The best ones were Dubon and Beeks- not the ones we thought, like Moncada, Kopech, Espinoza and others.
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I'm not saying DD was bad- just the opposite. I won't say I wish he stayed, because he'd have had a rough time with JH's budget's, too. Probably couldn't have done any worse.
