moonslav59

Not to take anything away from the great season Duran has had, Mr. Devers has been unbelievable, all year long, but even more so, of late. He's up to .990! (5th best in MLB and by far his career high.)

If Devers could only get a hit with men in scoring position! Oooops...wait...

Talk about "drama!" I get the strong feeling, we better score, here, of a big L could be our fate.

"Always" is a harsh word. Kenley did carry us for a long time, and had a 21 game stretch from April 20th to July 3rd, where he pitched in 21 games, finished 18 of them and went 3-1 with 12 saves. He could not have had that much drama by only allowing 14 hits and 3 BBs in almost 22 IP (0 HRs) and a .439 OPS Against. He sucked to start the season, and ha ssucked since July 4th. He has not always sucked.

DHam did a wonderful job for us, over a pretty long period of time. His speed was a lethal weapon, too. I'm wondering, if he can still be "that guy." Before today's 0-4, he has struggled, a lot, for over a month. (22 games and 75 PAs) .186 0 3 (.240 OBP .243 SLG .483 OPS and just 5 SBs) I'm not sure Romy and Sogard can combine to do better. I'm not sure Grissom even gets another look, in 2024. We might be back to square one at 2B, after a short break of optimism.

O'Neill has been blundering on D, too, recently.

He has done very well for two months. .271 5 21 in 36 games started since May 31st. .362 OBP is one of the best on the team since then .481 SLG is decent. .843 is what we were getting from Casas. I'm glad we did not just "settle" on Cooper. Sometimes, dumpster diving works: sometimes, it does not.

Smith can hit doubles in his sleep.

Valera with yet another gem: 4IP 1H 0ER 1BB 1K Last 4 starts: 17 IP 1 H 0 ER 3 BB 18 K (Blanco let up 2 unearned runs to lose the win.) Anderson with 2 errors. Zanetello homered

We can argue all day about what Brez did at this deadline. It is likely we argue for weeks and months- maybe longer. Let's take a look at what our closest competitors did at the deadline: How did these teams improve their 2024 outlook? TEX may not be a competitor and they did next to nothing to improve their 2024 team. TBR sold more than bought, so I will skip them. CLE made a couple moves, which is kind of rare, for them: Lane Thomas Alex Cobb (They will likely win the division, so are not really going against us for a WC slot) To the real competitors: MIN Trevor Richards (no big add) Did less than BOS KCR Lucas Erceg Michael Lorenzen Paul DeJong I'd say this is pretty close to what BOS did. HOU Yusei Kikuchi Caleb Ferguson A lot depends on Kikuchi, but I'd say the Astros did slightly better than BOS. (Close call) SEA looks like the did a lot to improve. They certainly DID A LOT! Randy Arozarena Yimi Garcia Justin Turner JT Chargois I'd say they did better than BOS for 2024. NYY Jazz Chisholm Mark Leiter Jr Looks better than BOS BAL Zach Eflin Trevor Rogers Seranthony Dominguez (for Austin Hays) Austin Slater Eloy Jimenez Gregory Soto The O's look like they did the most to improve and way more than BOS, but of course all of this is just on paper.

He certainly still has some significant hope. Pitchers often take time to develop. I think he was a good attempt at balancing the farm. We traded a decent batting prospect for a decent pitcher, who has 6 years of control- like a prospect does. It was a good try, and now we wait and see if it works. Even if Yorke does great, and Priester just okay, it might still be worth it, since we are backed up at LF/DH and marginal defensive 2Bmen.

Yes, it wasn't "an argument." We were just trying to find out the right amount of days he has. It might not even matter.

I get it. My point is, none of our starting pitchers are working out. Pivetta pitches well, every other game, and that's it. Priester has 14 GS in his MLB career, spread out over 2 seasons. Other than Criswell, we have no ral options. Everyone is on the IL, sucking in AA or not on the 40. I just wondered how many day we had to use Priester. I was not predicting greatness. I even mentioned the hope of him maybe only being "lightly bad," which might be an improvement over others.

Only if you don't use stratigery.

Yes, and the same can be said for all our SP'ers and more than half our pen.

Agreed. I do think, even if he's slightly bad, he could be an upgrade on what we have, so I'd like to know just how much we CAN use him in '24. It may or may not end up mattering.

I didn't see it as arguing. It would be nice for fans to know how many days he can be on the 26, since we need SP'ers, and he's ML ready.

26 Man in RED, not 40 man roster players in parenthesis: SP1 ___Add___ SP2 Houck SP3 Giolito SP4 Crawford SP5 Bello SP6/LR Criswell SP7 Priester SP8 __Add__ SP9 Fitts SP10 Dobbins SP11 Mata (DFA/Trade?) or ___Add__ SP12-13 Perales (60 Day IL) & Wikelman (Gambrel, Penrod, Drohan, Sandlin, Early, Mullins, I Coffey) RP1 ___Add__ RP2 Hendriks RP3 Slaten RP4 Whitlock RP5 ___Add__ RP6 Kelly RP7 Fulmer RP8 Winckowski RP9 Bernardino RP10 Booser RP11 Weissert RP12 I Campbell RP13 B Horn (Guerrero, Mills, Webb, Denlinger, Troye, Hoppe, Liu) C Wong, ___Add___ (Teel) 1B Casas, Dalbec (DFA?) (Gasper/Jordan) 2B DHam, Grissom, Westbrook (DFA?) (McDonough) SS Story, Romy (Mayer w Story to 2B) 3B Devers (Meidroth) LF Duran, E Valdez (Campbell, Rosier) CF Rafaela (Anthony) RF Abreu, Refsnyder (Jh Garcia) DH Yoshida (Hickey)

Exactly, we won't add them, until they are ready for a call-up. Even if we know one will be on the opening day 26, we will wait until the end to do it.

It seems he has more than 45 days. And it looks like just 2023 was exactly 45 days, so I think they just don't update those numbers until the season is over.

With so many roster moves made, the chance of a major roster crunch, this winter looks slim. If we end up adding non Rule 5 players like Mayer, Anthony and Teel, it won't be over the winter. Here is a quick look at the 2025 roster outlook: 40 Man controlled through 2025: Devers Dalbec (non tender/trade?) Houck Mata (non tender/trade?) Wong Whitlock Duran Crawford Winckowski Bello Story Refsnyder Kelly Casas E Valdez (trade? Rafaela Murphy D Ham Abreu Yoshida Bernardino Wikelman (trade?) Perales (might go to 60 Day on opening day) I Campbell Weissert Slaten Criswell Grissom Giolito Romy G Heineman (non tender/trade?) Hendriks Booser Horn (non tender/trade?) Westbrook Y Ramirez (non tender/trade?) Priester That's 37 players with at least 5 players that could easily be DFA'd or traded. One could make the list 6-8 without losing anyone that special. I think Valdez gets traded, and maybe Abreu, due to the LHB unbalanced nature of our roster, us losing O'Neill and all of the top 3 prospects being LHBs. They will not be handed away, by any means, but maybe we can package them for an upgrade in pitching of for a RHB (SS, 2B, RF, 1B.) The Rule 5 list was thinned out, a little, although guys like Paulino and kavadas were not likely to be protected, anyway. Here is the full list with key players in bold, and those I think we protect in RED. Angel Bastardo (Borderline?) Alex Binelas Brainer Bonaci Bryce Bonnin Taylor Broadway Zach Bryant Allan Castro (Borderline) Brendan Cellucci Juan Chacon Nathanael Cruz Theo Denlinger Kelvin Diaz Hunter Dobbins Juan Daniel Encarnacion Albert Feliz Max Ferguson Richard Fitts Michael Fulmer Grant Gambrell Jhostynxon Garcia Bryan Gonzalez Luis Guerrero Francis Hernandez Nathan Hickey Gabriel Jackson Blaze Jordan (Borderline?) Robert Kwiatkowski CJ Liu Eduardo Lopez Elih Marrero Tyler McDonough Tyler Miller Wyatt Mills Yordanny Monegro (Borderline) Juan Montero Wyatt Olds Ronald Rosario Corey Rosier Reidis Sena Chase Shugart Phillip Sikes Karson Simas Adam Smith Nick Sogard Noah Song Luis Talavera Christopher Troye Tyler Uberstine Miguel Ugueto Brian Van Belle Diego Viloria Jacob Webb Jeremy Wu-Yelland I see 4-5 pretty sure bets to be protected and 3-4 "borderline" prospects. With 3 open roster slots and 5-7 players we could DFA or trade away, easily, I don't see a crunch, until we start signing FAs or adding non-Rule 5 guys like Mayer, Anthony, Teel, Campbell or Meidroth.

Agreed. Kavadas looks like a career AAAA player: great for some town's AAA team. Lugo is likely to be the same, but could be a late bloomer and make it somewhere as a LF/DH type (emergency 2B.) Yorke has the best chance to stick in the bigs, and may get a look, this year. Portes is far away but has raised some eyebrows.

MLBTR said this: He has around 133 days of major league service. It’s possible he crosses the 172-day threshold to reach a full service year in 2024, but he’d still be under control for five seasons beyond this one. If the Sox send him down to Triple-A Worcester at any point, that could push his free agent timeline back and give Boston six full years of control. This indicates he can be on the big club for about 38-39 days to keep the 6th year of control.

Our pen was top 5 to 10 in many key categories, all year long, until the AS break. Then, just about every one fell apart. Their replacements did even worse. When you couple this with the pretty steady decline by the rotation, since early May, one can argue we are lucky to be 56-50. I've not given up, but this staff needs to right themselves, and quickly. The next 25 days, we play all the team near us in the WC standing.

Agreed. We really did not give up too much, and we had some duplicated values in LF, anyway. To me, Portes might be the biggest give-away, but like you said, he was so far away, a lot can happen between now and when he's possibly ML ready. The deals were not bad, but we needed more.