moonslav59

If we finish in last place 5 more years, I'll still be grateful for 4 rings, but will have a slightly overall negative view on him. Nothing will take away that feeling of thankfulness to him and who he hired to get us to glory. I'm pissed at what he's done, but that does not mean I have to hate the guy. I'm pissed at what some of my family and friends have done, but I do not see only black and white.

He is different because he is the boss. He's not going to send himself packing, unless he's done with the effort, or thinks he can make more money elsewhere. He's not above accountability to the fans, but I guess it depends on how demanding a fan you are, or how much history factors into your length of leash. I admit, I got greedy after the first ring, after thinking for 3 decades, I'd be in heaven with just one ring in my lifetime. 6 years is a long time with just one playoff appearance. I will ask, who hired Lucchino? What about the 2018 Lucchino-less ring? Who allowed DD to go nutty on spending and trading prospects? I'm fine with crediting Lucchino, Epstein, DD and others more than JH, but I still think if we kept the same ownership as pre-JH, we might have 0-1 rings in my lifetime. I don't see the need to re-write history to vilify a guy who has let us down, recently (not that you are doing this.) JH was a major factor in changing the atmosphere of the organization towards winning.

I think we have a very solid 3 year window, and it may be longer, depending on how well our prospects do, and who we have or get to replace Houck and Whitlock, after 3 years. The good thing is, Yoshida's deal end in 3 years, too. I get the point about shortening the window, if we trade a top prospect or two, but I prefer we strengthen the 3-4 year window over lengthening it to 5-6 years. (It may still end up at 5-6 years, if we keep the right prospects and extend the right young players.) I've talked a lot about bottlenecks in the OF, middle infield and LHBs, but there is a way to play all the best, young players and prospects, if we trade other players- like Abreu or Rafaela and Grissom and or DHam. 2026-2027> C: Teel & Wong 1B/DH: Devers & Casas (EValdez 2B: Mayer, Grissom (Campbell/Cespeded '27>) SS: Story, Romy (Mayer, Romero or Arias '27>) 3B: Campbell, Meidroth LF: Duran (Ref & Jh Garcia '26>) CF: Rafaela or Anthony RF: Anthony or Abreu Of course, we don't get the return in trade that a top prospect gets us, by trading Abreu or Rafaela plus DHam.

It's not used like it used to be used.

I'd go.... 1. Ortiz (and not just because of the low cost.) 2. Manny (despite the last year) 3. Uehara (surprised not mentioned) 4. VTek (was technically a FA in 2005) 5. Damon (close call w VTEK at #3) 6. JD (maybe a tie for 3rd with other two) 7. Foulke (one great year) 8. Victorino (one great year) 9. Adrian Beltre (on 1 year deal) 10. Bill Mueller (big get) Honorable mention: Nate (missed time, but still did well) & Mike Lowell (2 good year out of 3 year re-signing in 2008), Napoli, Moreland, Nava (FA?), Cody Ross, Wakefield (re-sign), Renfroe, Carp

Agreed. If he were a FA, what sort of contract would he be looking at? $15M/3? $16M/4? If my numbers are close, we'd have to pay a sizeable chunk of is deal to trade him for basically nothing but salary relief. If that salary relief is applied to the winter spending budget, say from $30M to $35M AAV, that could make a difference.

Nobody likes being near .500, seemingly forever. That's on JH as much as anyone else, if not more so. I'm not happy. I probably don't have many Sox fans sharing my position. I'm glad he took over ownership and am thrilled with the results he helped bring about. I hope to hell, he isn't going to stay a miser the rest of his era, and if he does, my views on him will change, more than they already have, but I will always be eternally grateful. I honestly felt like I was going to die, never seeing the Sox reach glory. Of course, I want more, like everyone else. I'm just not so quick to turn on someone.

From 2023-2024, the Sox had two RP'ers in the top 20 fWAR: T16 Jansen at 2.5 T20 Martin at 2.4 As bad as our pen has been, we are about to lose our best two guys. Slaten offers some big hopes, as his 1.5 fWAR matched the high seasons from Martin (1.5 in 2023) and Jansen (1.4 in '24,) but we need more help than Hendriks and Fulmer promise. I'm sure Brez is aware and already looking for possible targets. I'll admit, I'm not expert on other team's best RP'ers and who might be available by trade, but maybe this can be the area we spend more money on. Jansen and Martin were not cheap, but we need a recommitment to this weak area on the team.

I'd like to see Detroit beat KC in the ALCS and SDP beat PHI in the NLCS. I'm always for the AL to win the WS, unless it's NYY or maybe HOU.

I could see that as part of the dynamic. I think he must also feel satisfied with just bringing one ring to an area that went over 80 seasons without one. The second, third and fourth were gravy, in some ways. He may feel like he's done enough and may never spend a ton, again. I guess we will find that out/

He won't be remembered like that by everybody, and IMO, not even half of Sox fans, after the recent anger wears off. Maybe younger fans, who didn't live through a decades long drought or don't appreciate how much it took to build the 2018 juggernaut might hold the animosity you have beyond his time as the Sox owner, but that's not how I will remember him. I won't forget this part of his time, here, but I won't forget 2003 to 2018 time period, either. I think most will view JH with some degree of mixed feelings. How he does from 2025 and beyond might make a difference, too. I remember fan being pissed at seeing some 2004 stars depart, then we shut up in 2007. Fans were irate after 2012, but then, ooops! The 2014 and 2015 seasons started bringing back unrest, before the 3 straight divisional championships happened under DD. 2018 was a perfect season, in many ways, and it seemed like the core was young enough to extend the window for at least 2-3 more years, but the dismantling began, almost immediately, when we let K & K walk after 2018. The last few years have sucked, bigtime. 2021 is barely a memory, anymore. I share the anger. It did not have to be like this. Letting Betts walk really sucked, but it went far beyond that, too. That being said, I think we are nearing another "window." Let's see how JH handles, this one.

Good stuff! I think Duran deserves it. Houck did very well, but wasn't all that unexpected. I think DHam's year was most unexpected, but he didn't play all that much, and most of the shock was more about just how bad we all thought he was to start with. Duran had some very nice numbers, last year before the IL stint/

I just watch the highlights, which is the best "eye test," according to the guys down at the gym.

I strongly disagree. JH spent more than other teams, many times. No other Sox owner comes close. I know Red, and maybe a few others, think JH was not significantly responsible for our 4 rings in 2 decades, but I do. I waited over 30 years to see the glory. I was thinking I never would. The guy may be a big __ fill in the blank___, but for over 15 years he gave what was needed to get it done. This does not put him above criticism, but it does add some context, I think is needed.

I have to agree, with Schilling as a close second. (early Beckett was awesome, too.)

Fixing the defense is a loaded term. It could involve hurting the offense by making changes to help the defense. It can mean moving current players around without changing the offense. It can mean adding external player and replacing who we have, with or without hurting the offense. I just don't see us adding a player from another team, to help the defense without hurting the offense. What position? Catcher seems like our weakest defensive position, but Wong was one of the best offensive catchers in MLB, this year, and we have who looks like an all-around player in Teel, just about ML ready. So, maybe a one year fix at catcher, who may or may not be a step down from Wong. (We also have to look at how badly McGuire did and Jansen not all that good on O.) The return of Story has to be viewed as the centerpiece to defensive improvement. We aren't adding another SS, like Adames. Maybe Mayer plays, some, and he is not supposed to be bad on defense, so our SS position should improve. Keeping DHam at 2B only helps, too, especially since Grissom is a question mark on D, at best, and sucks at worst. Mayer or campbell can't be any worse than E Valdez, our leader in 2B innings, this year. Moving Rafaela to FT OF or 4th OF'er status should help the OF defense, which was already very good. Less innings from O'Neill and Ref, and more from rafaela and Anthony looks like an improvement. That leaves corner IF, which was the worst in MLB, last year, combined and maybe close to one-by-one. We've beaten the idea of moving Devers to 1B or 1B/DH combo with Casas, but it's hard to imagine that happening, this winter. Keeping Devers and Casas healthy might be a bi-product of that choice, and I'm not so sure it would hurt the offense by DH'ing Casas and or Devers, and batting Campbell or Mayer over Yoshida. There has been the suggestion of playing Grissom at 3B (not 2B) and using Campbell at 2B, but I'm not sure than improves the offense as much as having Story, Campbell and Mayer play middle IF and 3B. (DHam could platoon at 2B, if a righty bat struggles vs RHPs.) I kinda like this defense: C: ___ (one year FA or trade___ & Wong (Teel in July?) 1B: Devers (Casas, when Devers "rests" at DH) 2B: Campbell or Mayer (Grissom-DHam platoon) SS: Story (Mayer) 3B: Mayer or Campbell (Grissom vs LHPs with Campbell at 2B?) LF: Duran CF: Anthony/ Rafaela (*Rafaela and Abreu platoon) RF: Abreu*/Anthony DH: Casas/Devers combo (Refsnyder-Abreu platoon) The offense is no worse than it looks, now.

I agree. There are just a tiny few players, you just have to draw a line and keep. I also don't think Betts was being totally unreasonable with his demands, but he did seem to say he wanted to test the market, so I can understand an owner thinking how absurd might this get? Look at what Ohtani and Yamamoto got. Look what Bogey got. I'm not defending JH. He needed to just simply make it happen (like he did with Devers, after semi-learning a lesson.) The whole COVID thing and what he ended up signing for make it look like it was easier to keep Betts than maybe it looked in 2019 to early 2020. Again, no excuse: JH blundered, badly. He may never live it down.

To be honest, I didn't even notice that was what we were arguing about. Maybe I misunderstood. I'm not 100% sure Bloom was handed a set budget and told, you work it out as you think best, but either way, I'm not sure it matters, to me. What matter to me s that JH made serious cuts to the budget. We may never know, if it was in the form of one-by-one "NO's" to each big contract presented, or just a general set budget with more say by the GM on who gets signed. I thought I was very clear, and I think my first response on this said, "Of course JH could afford anybody." That statement certainly makes it clear we "could have" matched the Dodgers, so Max was wrong, in that sense, yes. There is a chance JH told Bloom, "Don't offer any more than we already did to Betts." To me, that changes nothing. We still could have but chose not to. The only difference is bringing Bloom's choices into the blame game, or not. I thought this talk was about JH and penny-pinching.

Assuming JH okayed other gutting over the Betts trade, yes.

What's the argument? We all know why we didn't sign Betts. JH could have. Bloom could not. I've admitted this over and over. JH would not pay, therefore we could not match LAD. Is this a false statement?

Indeed, and I am all for flipping 1 or 2 to get us over the hump, especially if JH won't up the budget enough to get us there.

We could not match LA, because JH set the budget too low. I'm still not getting how what I am saying is muddying anything. We all know he didn't sign because Jh would not pay him. Why does it matter so much how we word it? I guess we can take issue with the word choice "could," because we all know JH "could have" paid the money, but from Bloom's perspective we "could not," unless he gutted the rest of the team. As it turned out, we lost Betts and gutted the rest of the team, so I doubt that was even a choice, in hindsight.

Many, many, many fond memories. He was truly a great pitcher, who had to reinvent himself after the injury. That WS loss to Cincy was tough to take, as a kid, but he gave us something to be proud of, and his base-running, something to laugh about.

I think it took longer to build up the farm that many felt it would, and we still have a hole in the pitching side of the farm. Bello, Crawford, Houck and others are better than we've seen in a while, but still not enough. With a few decent to good pitchers now on the 26, and a solid 13 everyday players with depth, I think we can say we have reached a "sustainable" level, but only if we add a few key pieces, namely pitchers, and here is where JH and Brez need to step in.

Yes, agreed, and until recently, I always felt like JH's spending was cyclical and matched up with certain "windows" of opportunity to win a ring. I kept thinking, "this could be the winter," but that got tiring. At this point, I'm not sure JH ever spends like he did, before. I'm not counting on it. I'm not expecting it. However, I've not given up hope, either. "I'll believe it when I see it," is my current mantra. I'm very optimistic about our future, and maybe we can with without major financial outlays- maybe not. Many of us realized, even before 2018, that the spending was enormous, and so many of our younger players were all approaching free agency, around the same 1-3 year period. We wondered how we could sustain a great team, without massive budget increases, and what appeared to be a very low ranked farm system. We called a word, some hate to hear, so I won't say "cliff." (LOL) I doubt anyone saw it ever getting this bad and letting so many of our stars walk. Some had faith we could rebuild the farm, quickly and get right back into the swing of it, without missing a beat, but that also presupposed JH would spend "enough" to bridge to this new farm system. As it turned out, the farm took many years to get where it is now, and we still lack many farm pitchers that are great or even real good. With little farm infusion between Devers and Houck/Duran/Bello, I think JH saw the window was going to be closed for a longer period than we've seen under him. Hopefully, he see the window as being open, now and changes his way, but I'm not believing in that, until I see some actions. (emphasis on the plural "s.")