moonslav59

It took my childhood hero, Tommy Harper, 154 games to hit 31 HRs, 70 XBHs and steal 38 bases back in 1970 (for the Brewers.) Later, he led the AL in SBs with 54 for the Sox in 1973. (He never hit more than 18 HRs or 45 XBHs in any other season. At the time, Harper was just the second AL and 5th MLB player to do it. Now, there are 69 players. Canseco had 42 HRs and 40 SBs in 1988, ARod 42 & 46 in '98 and Barry Bonds had 42 HRs and 40 SBs in 1996 Alfonso Soriano had 46-41 in 2006 and Acuna blew everyone away with 41-73 in 2023.

Our 2B position has been 29th or 30th in many categories from 2019-2023, combined: defense, offense, anything and everything. We don't have to be number 1, or even #15, but 30th hurts the team. The DHam-Romy platoon ha sstabilized the position, this year, and the SBs has boosted their value, but nobody expected them to play like this. In fact, DHam was last year's Grissom.

The Beckett trade was HRam plus a nice pitching prospect in Anibal Sanchez, and MIA forced the Sox to take on Lowell and his contract. The Sale trade involved 4 prospects, including Moncada & Kopech, another highly regarded pitching prospect. Pedro took 2 top pitching prospects to get: Tony Armas Jr. & Carl Pavano. Schilling took 3 moderate pitching prospects (Yes, harmony, sometimes 3 or 4 for 1 trades happen;) Fossum, Jorge de la Rosa and Brandon Lyons. We have done far better with these types of trades than FA signings like Price and Lackey. Even lesser deals like Nate & Peavy worked out well.

I would not call Fried an injury prone pitcher: 2019: 30 GS (3 in relief) 2020: 11 out of 12 possible GS 2021: 28 GS 2022: 30 GS 2023: 14 GS 2024: 21 GS out of what? 22 chances? Since 2019, there are only 21 pitchers with more than 134 GS, and one is GIO, who I will assume he passes in 2 more starts. He is 2 starts from #18 in MLB. He is 24th in IP at 772, just 1.2 IP from GIO and 23rd place.

I always wondered about moving them to the AL. Seems like MIL would have made more sense, since they were once in the AL.

Power isn't everything, but he has not looked like he can even get 20 2Bs a year. I've not given up on him, but I am much more a doubter than I was shorty after the trade. At least he has several years to prove he belongs in the bigs. If Mayer gets promoted, we may not need hi, anyway.

What if every one of those 45 outs were when the score was close, and most of the hits were when up or down by 5 or more runs. Is it still "clutch?"

While 88 seems like a lot, it's not really a big sample size. I seriously doubt he'd have gone 86 for 176 had he gotten double the chances.

I don't either, and I live in Sugar Land, now. I'm a Packer fan, but I like the Texans, a lot, now. They are fun to watch.

He's looking more like Jeter Downs than even Pablo Reyes.

I'd say heppenstance.

Almost every pitcher we sign ends up sucking. I'm not sure spending more on one would work. We'd have probably signed Monty, last winter, and then where are we?

The Astros have done a remarkable job, considering they have not had Tucker for much of the year, and have missed 5-6 of their top 7-8 SP'ers for all or most of 2024: Verlander McCullers Vazquez Garcia Urquidy France Who else could find a rotation, this good, with all those guys out?

Many prospect trades for a ML player are 3 or 4 for one. I tried not to add players like E Valdez who seemed to have inflated values on BTV. I will say that most of my trade suggestions had more "No's" from the Sox side than the other team's side, so that does sort of show I was not being a "homer."

I don't think a random generator would ever spit out a sample like that.

I agree. I think other GMs do, too. That's why I think he might be one of the most sought after prospects in MLB, and some team would be willing to give up a TOTR SP'er with 3 or more years of team control for a package headlined by Anthony. I do think he will end up better than Abreu and Rafaela, so it seems like we should trade Abreu, but he will not bring back anywhere near what Anthongbrings back, unless we include Mayer, Teel or Campbell (and maybe more.)

You crack me up.

Someone once posted my personal address and was soon booted off the site. We've had a lot of gray area incidences that are hard to judge as "going too far," and I've said a few things I regret saying, too.

Every great player has short sample sizes of poor numbers. There is no way of knowing if really good or really bad numbers are just some random slump or due to some phycological defect or positive anomality.

The thing is, if you randomly generated numbers for players in such scattered and small samples sizes as career playoff PAs or IP, you'd get a few outliers that do better than the norm. How can we know with any certainty that the numbers by Papi and Schill weren't just the luck of being hot, during those selected performances? I get the point about facing tougher pitchers (Papi) and batters (Schill), so equal to regular season stats really means they did better. I bring up the Josh beckett example, a lot. The guy was on his way to becoming one of MLBs best playoff pitcher in history, then suddenly, he wasn't anymore, while still in his prime years. The sample sizes are generally too small and scattered. The deviations from the norm look precisely the same as a randomly generated sample size of players and numbers over such a sample size. I will say, I'm not sure about the idea of a player just being lucky vs some sort of skill helped by some sort of "inner calmness" or whatever we want to call it. That very well may play a role in improved or worse numbers by some players. I just think it is nearly impossible to prove, and I think the idea or "clutch" is hyped and over-stated. Look what people were saying about Devers into mid May, this year. The guy has had some mammoth hits for the Sox, over the years. He goes 5-6 weeks hitting badly with men on base, and all of a sudden he is a choke. Nobody is talking that talk, anymore, except maybe in a few game threads..

I meant "3B."

That's exactly how I see it. I'd love to be able to keep all our youthful depth. Depth is an important aspect of continued winning, but we have such a glaring weakness on this team, that we simply have to trade from strength to improve our weak area: pitching. I think the defense will improve without any outside additions, as long as we can stay healthy at middle infield. It may never be great, but I actually think the team defense could be near plus, if Story, Mayer and Rafaela stay healthy, all year. C: Wong, ___, Teel (minus) 1B: Casas, Romy (minus) 2B: Story, DHam-Romy (PLUS) SS: Mayer, Story-DHam (plus) 3B: Devers (minus) LF: Duran, Ref (PLUS) CF: Rafaela, Duran (PLUS) RF: Abreu, Rafaela (plus) DH: Yoshida, Ref/Devers/Casas We should be plus or PLUS at the most important positions, except Catcher, and minus at corner IF, also.

Duran is now 15th in OPS and just .003 from #14 Jose Ramirez. The sky seems to be the limit for this guy. 68 XBHs 31 SBs (only 4 CS) Very good defense.

I'm sure glad Casas finally said he was ready for the bigs, again. Duran has been buttah!

Agreed, and if you did a random generated sample, you'd find the same amount of select few that "had it" over their entire career. Even Papi had very similar career numbers with clutch or playoff numbers. Reggie Jackson, too.