moonslav59

He may get a $25M/2 year deal somewhere, but not with BOS, who has Anthony banging on the door of a team that already has an OF of Duran-Rafaela-Abreu with Campbell able to play OF, too. (Ref may not retire.)

I seriously doubt he gets a QO. He won't even get a $15M/1 or $27M/2 offer from anyone.

We sure need some pen arms for 2025.

He's been a beast, despite the lower than expected rbi total. He's had some big hits and come up short quite a bit, too. We will need to find a way to bet lefties, next year w/o him.

You are assuming both Whit & Fulmer are healthy. I could also see Whit used in short relief, but more often.

That he is. It was a risky trade, but even if Yorke truns out to be good, he may never have gotten a chance with the Sox and a middle infield of Story, Mayer, Campbell, DHam, Grissom, and later Arias and others. I hope we see more trades like this one.

Great post. I will say that Houck had horrific numbers after 4-5 IP or 75 pitches, too. I hope we finally decide to keep Whit in the pen, all year.

Crawford need to solve the HR issue, if he is going to be a successful SP'er, going forward. I'd prefer him in the pen for 2025, as the co-long man with Whitlock, but I fully realize that ain't happenin'.

Top 3 of the biggest favorites, today, all lost their games, outright!

We have done very well in this one area: 1 year stints by an OF'er: 2024: O'Neill .254 31 61 (.888) 2023: Duvall .247 21 58 (.834) in just 353 PAs (Off year in 2022.) 2021: Renfroe .259 31 96 (.816) 2020: Pillar (traded after 126 PAs) .274 4 13 (.795)

I know Tyler O'Neill is not under team control for 2025, but we do need to think about how we replace the best RHB on the team- a team that really struggles vs LHPs. As of now, he is tied with Devers for the Sox lead in OPS at .891. He leads the team in HRs (31 to 28 over Devers.) Much has been said about his unusual RBI total of 61, but can we get by without adding another RH'd bat from outside the system? On top of this, Refsnyer, a top 30 OPS vs LHPs batter in MLB over the last 2-3 years is saying he may retire. Maybe Campbell of the return of Story can make up for O'Neill's loss. Maybe the LHB, Anthony, can do well enough v LHPs to help us forget about O'Neill's loss. Let's see,,,

Priester went just 3.1 IP, today with Woo. 63 pitches. 2H, 2ER, 3BB, 2K. It's the bottom of the 9th and Woo has 3 hits. Anthony is 0-2 w 2BB. Grissom 1-3. No Teel or Campbell. POR lost 4-0, but Blden pitched well: 6IP, 2H, 0ER, 2BB, 6K. The bats got 3 hits: Hickey, Jordan & Jh Garica. Hickey & Garcia also drew a BB.

Tell me you or anyone disagrees: (Maybe not in this order) 1. Pitching 2. Pitching 3. Pitching 4. Catcher and corner IF defense 5. RHB

You are doing a great job. Relax. Although Sox fans can be brutal, we generally aren't towards people not in charge of the Sox.

Bello might be considered a number 3, too. I agree, we need an ace most of all, but we could also use another Bello or Pivetta or a "3 type SP'er."

We know where we need help.

I've always felt a line-up is better with a mix of batting styles that includes some "aggressive -type" batters. We have Devers and Rafaela. Other batters may K, too much, but I would not call them free swingers. Maybe they can help Rafaela improve his discipline, but sometimes trying to tweak a batter's whole syle can backfire.

No doubt, Bloom failed on his drafting of pitching, but the idea of drafting the best available player has a wide following among GMs. It's sad to say that maybe his best pitching choices was not trading Houck or Crawford and trading for Pivetta and Wink, along with the Rule 5 pick of Whitlock. I will say, draft picks often take 3-6 years to make an impact, so the jury may still be out. His drafts rounds: 2020 (only 4 picks total): 4 Wu-Yelland, 5 Drohan 2021: 4 E R-C looks promising, 8 Dobbins & Guerrero, too. 2022: 3 Rogers, 5 Dean, 6 Hoppe, 10 I Coffey and 12 Mullins all look like long shots. 2023: 4 Duffy, 5 Early, 9 Wehunt and 14 Ingrassia look faw away. IFAs: Paez & Nunez "21, Portes '22 (traded away by Brez) & Cohen, C Lee & A Bates in '23 and in 2024, D Reyes looks promising. Overall, these were Bloom's major and decent+ additions to the Sox pitching system (farm + MLB) Pivetta, Wink & Robles (trade) Whitlock (Rule 5) Kelly, Bernardino, Schreiber (MiLB FA/Waivers) FA: Jansen, martin, Wacha, Hill, Strahm, Paxton was okay for $10M This list is not impressive, at all.

Outstanding post, Max. 100% spot on. Certainly, paying so much of our spending budget on players not giving us much value, if anything is a major reason for our lack of success. That is on the GM/CBO's. Not spending enough is the other major reason and that is on JH & Co. It has really been a tag team event since and including DD's final year with the Sox. Here is a look at some of the failed big contracts by year, starting with 2019 (in $millions): 31 Price began his steep decline, 21 Porcello had a god-awful season, 17 Nate (5.99 ERA in just 12 GS), 15 Pedey (nada) and 15 Sale (4.40 in 25 GS) In some ways, the 2019 saw the biggest waste of big money contracts over a long period of time... more than any year of Bloom, Brez and maybe even Ben & Theo. 2020 was a total disaster and was Sale's first extension year (25.6M and 0 GS). Even JD 22M hit .680. 17 Nate did okay but missed 25% of his starts. 14 Pedey gave nada, 8 ERod sat out the year. The 6.5 spent on Martin Perez pales when compared to those listed ahead of him, but was still a bad choice by Bloom. 2021 was the feather in Bloom's cap, but in reality, we still saw a lot of wasted salary, including the $10M Bloom paid Richards and 5.5 on Perez. We also saw... 25.6 on 9 starts by Sale and 8.3 on ERod's 4.74 ERA. The others pulled their weight, so this was one of the better years for least amount of sunken cost, and it's no fluke, we did well. 2022 saw another 25.6 wasted on Sale's 2 GS. 17 Nate did okay but missed 12 GS, 23.3 on Story missed, badly (Bloom,) 22 JD was down at .790. The $12M spent on JBJ and 7 on Kike hurt, as well. The 9 Barnes extension fell apart mid season. (Bloom did okay with the Wacha, Hill, Strahm and Renfroe deals) 2023 saw yet another letdown by 25.6 Sale w only 20 GS and a not-so-great 4.30 ERA. 23.3 on Story was another year missed. Bloom's 18 on Yoshida, 10 on Kluber and 10 on Kike were near or total busts. (Bloom did okay with themis to lower deals like 16 Jansen, 11 Turner, 7.5 Martin & 7 Duvall. 2024 saw a frighteningly low amount of additions, especially large ones. Brez's 19.5 on Gio was a complete wiff. Paying 17 for Sale to win the Cy Young w ATL was worse than a total bust. 23.3 on Story (Bloom) was yet another wasted year. 18 on Yoshi looked a little better, but he missed time and still has not earned his contract for 2024, alone. 16 on Jansen was okay, 7.5 on Martin was not. (Only the 6 paid for O'Neill and 1 for Criswell worked out well.) 5 Hendriks gave us zero for 2024. I'm not going to total all this up, but it has been a huge percentage of our budget.

It really has been a big kick in the gut of Sox Nation. When you look at as a one-two gut punch with the Betts trade, it sickens me. We'd be 2-3 games up in the WC race and breathing down BAL's neck for 2nd in the division. Visiting this thread should have a health warning attached to it.

#1 Georgia just barely beat Kentucky 13-12!

He did not help, but this all started when we let Kimbrel & Kelly go with no replacements, and the budget, especially on big ticket pitchers was slashed and slashed. IMO, there is no doubt JH caused the pitching issues we face now. Also, here are some interesting numbers that cast doubt on the claims that are pitching is getting worse: Team fWAR Pitching by year: since 2017: 23.2 '17 18.5 '18 16.5 '19 (a massive 3 yr decline of 6.7) 20.4 '21 (under Bloom was better than '18 & '19) 10.1 '22 (an unforgivable and horrible cliff dive by JH & BLOOM) 13.7 '23 13.9 '24 (projected) So, a 6.7 decline in DD's last 3 yrs and a 2.8 decline in Bloom's 4 yrs (16.5 to 13.7 in 2023.) Now, we got so horrible in 2020 (0.1) and then very good in 2021, that the drop from 2021 to 2024 is almost as bad as DD's 3 year drop. (20.4 to 13.9 under Brez, or a 6.5 drop.) One can see it as cherry-picking to point out our improvement since the terrible 2022 season (10.1 to 13.9 and a 3.8 fWAR gain.) I also want to point to defense NOT pitching. SIERA is a metric used to like FIP, or in other words, taking the defense out of the ERA. 3.77 2017 3.72 2018 (Best in 10 yrs) 4.24 2019 (Restgate & no K & K) 4.58 Covid year (Year 1 under Bloom: No Sale or ERod) Now watch... 4.00 '21 (Bloom's second year and better than 2019- Bloom.) 3.98 '22 (So, maybe not so bad pitching, afterall- Bloom.) 4.10 '23 (got worse, but still better than '19-Bloom) 3.94 '24 (best year since 2018- BREZ) I gotta think the 3.94 shows improvement, but when you see the drop off over the last 4 months, that becomes questionable. 2024's ERA- of 96 is the best since 2018. (2019 was 97 and 2023 was 100.) Another stat that shows improvement, Please don't take this to mean I am content with our pitching "improvement." I'm not at all. I'm only highlighting how the defense is a major cause of our decline in run prevention, while our pitching needed to be improved by way more than it was. I'm hopeful that a healthy Story can make a big improvement in 2025, as he would also push Rafaela to more playing time in CF (or even 2B.) I think our 2B defense will improve with Campbell and DHam taking over the most innings on D from E Valdez- one of the worst defensive 2Bman I have ever seen. C, 3B and 1B need improvement, bigtime, but I doubt we add anyone or shift these guys around to new positions in 2025. 1

It's hard to know, if the SEA GM covets any of our bats we can afford to part with. If they insist on Anthony or Campbell, we may have to cave in. They may not even like Casas or Abreu. They may not want Yoshi at $3M a year. It's just hard to know. If JH wasn't such a miser, we could take on salary dumps like Haniger and or Garver, not because we want or need them, but just to lessen the return value demanded by SEA. Both are also RHBs and offer some hope of a bounce back season in '25. (Garver could serves as a 3rd string catcher, too.) Who knows, maybe they really want someone like DHam or Rafaela, but I doubt it. We have a lot to offer, and they have 5 really good SP'ers. Seems like a fit, to me.

Hard to disagree. I will say this... Signing Story and letting Bogey walk was an effort to improve the defense. Signing Jansen and Martin was a good strategy, 2 years back. Signing Gio was the largest contract given to a SP'er since the Sale & Nate contracts prior to 2019. (That's not saying much, but it was a better attempt than the $5-10M/1 deals offered to new blood pitchers every winter since 2017. I'm in no way defending JH & Co. Gio was way too little, especially in light of trading away Sale and the loss of 19 starts Paxton had in 2023. We added Slaten, Weissert and I Campbell along with Criswell, and thought that was enough. The absurdity is overwhelming.