moonslav59

At the start of the season, I mentioned how we had such a large amount of players with some serious upside- some already proven: some speculative. One thing I mentioned was the possibility that Devers had yet to have his best season of his career. Afterall, he's the same age as Duran, who we viewed as still learning and growing. I'm not claiming I "called it:" I just suggested it was one of many possible plusses that could boost our offense into a better than 2023 offense, despite the losses of Turner, Dugo and Duvall. We've seen a lot of those what ifs come positive, including our catchers reaching above average status as a group, especially now with Wong and Jansen. As bad as our middle IF D has been, they have hit better than expected while stealing a lot of bases, along the way. We've seen our OF go from near league worst two years ago to one of the best on O and D. We can even afford to lose O'Neill, who is hitting over .900 and not miss a beat. We even saw D Smith and Romy do a decent job covering 1B during the Casas injury. All-in-all, this has been a very exciting offense to watch, including us being a top 5 SB team. It's been a lot of fun for me to watch. The pitching was fun for a while. The D has been scary bad, at times, with a few glimpses of improvement, here and there, but all-i-all not much fun to watch. Devers seems to have settled down. Rafaela and Duran have been amazing in the OF, while Abreu and O'Neill have had mixed defenses. Wong needs to improve in some areas, but we seem to have the opponents running game under control. These days, that is a very good thing. To me, this team is set up very well, going forward, as long as we address our key weaknesses: pitching and defense. The defense may be "fixed" by having a healthy Story and some farm infusions by Mayer, Anthony and Teel. Keeping rafaela in CF would be a big boost. The pitching needs outside help, and in a big way. That will take spending from JH and better choices by Brez and trades and signings in this area.

We don't need another double header with our lack of pitching depth. We already have a 5 games in 4 days series with TOR coming up, soon. We need a win, today and get this team into a winning mode.

Nobody disputes the fact that the trade has been a complete blowout steal for the Braves, so far, with little hope it can ever be completely balanced out by a Grissom revival. The dispute or debate has been about the idea that there was no logic involved in the trade and that somehow we should have trusted in Sale to come through after 5 straight disappointing seasons in a row. I credit Brez for trying to move towards durability, despite it backfiring spectacularly. I credit Brez for trying to fix the 2B situation that had been a disaster for about 5 years. I credit Brez for the O'Neill, Slaten, Romy, DSmith and Criswell additions. I credit Brez for building up our farm and depth with more focus on pitching (Sandlin, Priester, Weissert, Fitts, Judice and more pitchers drafted than recently) I credit Brez for at least attempting to fix problems within the season (like Dom Smith and the deadline attempts at fixing the pen.) Yes, I also credit Brez for the Bailey addition. He also did NOT trade Duran and others. He swung and missed badly on the Sale trade and Gio signing. Nobody thinks otherwise.

For sure. Mixed messaging and back-tracking. Lots of rumors of the Sox being "in on ___ and ___." That's nothing new. Of the deal we made, the headliners stunk up the place, but some of the mid and lower tier additions have done well. (Same with Bloom, right?) The Gio signing The Sale & cash-Grissom trade The Dugo for Weissert, Fitts and Judice trade The Ammons for Slaten trade The Robertson & Santos for O'Neill trade The Urias for Isaiah Campbell trade The Schreiber for Sandlin trade The Criswell, Anderson, Alexander, Luetge and Uwasawa minor signings Westbrook signed Mickey Gasper minor league Rule 5 The Hendriks and Fulmer signings Cash for Heineman Romy Gonzalez off waivers Extended Bello & Rafaela In season additions: Luis Garcia for Lugo, Kavadas, Zeferjahn & Vargas Lucas Sims for Ovis Portes Quinn Priester for Nick Yorke Danny Jansen for Paulino, C Coffey & Batista James Paxton for Bolivar Dominic Smith signed "Rented" Zack Short for 8 days Bailey Horn for cash Garrett Cooper for cash The list is longer than I imagined it would be, and many are under-the-radar type deals, but Brez has been very active.

2024 163 Devers 145 O'Neill (good job, Brez!) 133 Ref (TY Bloom) 131 Duran (Glad we never traded him) 129 Abreu (Vaz who?) 122 Yoshida (Overpay?) 116 Wong (Let's forget Jeter Downs.) Back to Devers: career high OPS+ 163 2024, blows all other seasons away! 141 2022 134 2021 132 2019, generally considered his best career year 126 2023

He may not get another look in 2024, but he's done okay in August: 5.1 IP 3 hits 4 BB + 1 HBP (1.5 batters on base per IP is not good) 5 K

A three game sweep within a 4 game series. Sure, why not? I'll take it!

His transformation into a plus defender is about as stark as the one to a plus hitter. He's been real fun to watch, as has Devers, Abreu, Rafaela, Ref, O'Neill, Wong and to some extent our scrubs filling in at middle infield (DHam & Romy) and 1B (Smith.) The thing is, none of these performances look like flukes or one and dones. The pitching and defense has not always been so "fun" to watch. We' ve had numerous pitchers do well for some pretty long stretches- just enough to keep us in this race, but right now, the pen needs a few guys to step up and get the job done on a consistent basis. For a long while, Slaten and Bernardino carried the load. Kelly and Booser did for shorter stretches. Jansen has had a couple mini-meltdowns, but has been solid. Martin has not looked close to the 2023 Martin, so maybe he can be "that guy." I'm not sure we can count on getting anything from Slaten's return or hendrik's arrival, but who knows. We'll probably give Weissert or even I Campbell or Joely another look, but they seem like long shots, right now.

Agreed. Maybe ICampbell or Joely get another looksee, too. Keller looked good.

Valera is just 18, and all they are saying is he starts the season at Salem, which is pretty nice for his age. I'm liking how our minor league pitching is improving in quantity and quality with every week that passes, and the draft helped.

Not only do we just add one SP'er, we are actually replacing 1 or 2 with just one, each year. 2020: Lost Price & Porcello- added Perez (lost Sale to injury and ERod to Covid) 2021: Lost Sale to injury- added Richards 2022: Lost ERod & Richards- added Wacha and Hill 2023: Lost Wacha and Hill- added Kluber 2024: Lost Kluber & Sale- added Gio. We've been going backwards and not even staying even in numbers, let alone quality. Even if you don't count losing Sale to injury, we still lost 7 and added 6.

Garcia and Sims have a long way to go to lose the "bomb" label, but yes...

2023-2024 (850+ PAs) 1.103 Judge 1.026 Ohtani .981 Soto .968 Alvarez .961 Betts .944 Acuna .938 Freeman .936 Seager .928 Ozuna .912 Tucker .905 Harper .904 Witt .898 Devers (before today) 22. Duran .843 50. Yoshida .787 (likely moved up to #47, today) 400+ PAs 14. Devers .898 24. Casas .852 25. Abreu .849 29. Duran .843 45. O'Neill .819 (STL/BOS) 76. Yoshida .787 95. Refsnyder .772 104. Turner .766 (3 teams) 127. T Pham .754 (4 teams) 134. Jansen .751 (TOR/BOS) 176. Wong .729 211. Verdugo .707 (BOS/NYY) 230. Rafaela .698

True, and he was at .821 on Sept 4th. It took a real bad end of the season to get to .783. .525 in last 71 PAs. I think keeping him at DH FT was a great idea. Innings in LF: 713 in 2023 1 in 2024.

You get the game ball, Thunder!

I thought the same exact thing, but felt it was necessary. Huge game from Bello, who now has a very nice 7 game stretch. Yoshida has really looked like he belongs in MLB. Maybe, it was just about adjusting to the new culture and having his family with him, now. We need a win, tomorrow.

Yoshida up to .805, now. MLB OPS Leaders since June 24th (not counting today) 1.294 Judge 1.268 Witt 1.230 Vlad 1.143 Rooker 1.139 Soto 1.133 Marte 1.080 Alvarez 1.079 Devers 14. Yoshida .931 27. Duran .884 66. Rafaela .768

Devers: .970 OPS career best (.916 in '19) .378 OBP career best (.361 in '19) .592 SLG career best (.555 in '19) .297 BA second best (.311 in '19) 27 HRs (T 4th best, but on pace for 2nd or 3rd best) 77 RBI (5th best, but should end up with 4th best) Not bad after his "slow start."

soxprospects.com projects these rotations for 2025: AAA: Fitts, Gambrell, Dobbins, Drohan, Penrod AA: Sandlin, Wikelman, Early, Mullins, ICoffey, Monegro A+: E R-C, Paez, Wehunt, Tolle, Neely, Futrell A-: Valera, Ehrlicher, Judice, Clarke, Tygart, Aita Draftees Montgomery (RF), Ehrhard (LF), Turner (DH) and White (2nd C) starting season in GRE. Cason starting in SAL at 3B

Let's put up a crooked number, here!

So, Sims must be good.

Rich Hill will start for Woo on Tuesday. Slaten threw another pen session, yesterday and will throw again on the 19th. If all goes well, he will rehab for a bit. I'm thinking, maybe end of August? Hendriks will pitch, tomorrow with Woo. He's expected to make 6-8 rehab appearances before joining the Sox. (Maybe Sept 1st?) No updates on Booser. AUG 12th update on Story: "The chances of Story coming back this season have gone from slim to realistic."

With GRE, even longer... GRE: 4 runs in 4 games

O'Neill, too. This team has had so many players step it up, at the plate.

Nate just gave up the lead to MIN. They scored 3 in the 8th to go up 4-2.