moonslav59

So, the Devers extension, that kicked in this year and broke all records of Sox signings by nearly 50%, is the last big splurge by JH?

With our pitching, we should be 5-8 over .500. If seeing there is more than one way to look at an issue is flip-flopping, then that's me. (I don't see it that way.)

Rafaela is now nearing the modern day Mendoza line. .599 OPS (Maybe a few years ago, .699 was it.)

Houck is at 93 pitches after 6 IP. Do we bring him out for the 7th? Tough call.

It does seem like an extension might have been agreed upon, before the trade was made: good point. I also think the Sox were thinking they would likely not be accepting the 2025 option, so they viewed the trade as giving up 1 year- not 2 of Sale. Of course, the $20M option for 2025 looks a lot nicer, now than it did in March. The re-working of Sale's contract on the extension is interesting. He was due to get $27.5M in 2024 with a $20M club option for 2025. That would have been $27.5M/1 or $47.5M/2 had the extension not occured. With the Sox paying $17M, the cost to ATL would have been $10.5M/1 or $30.5M/2. The extension lowered the 2024 amount to $16M (-$11.5M) but added $22M guaranteed for 2025, or $16M/1 or $38M/3. They basically gave him $10M more for 2025 with the 2024 offset. That is not some huge vote of confidence. The 2026 option is an $18M club option. Since the Sox are paying $17M, which I assume is added to the ATL deal, Sale will actually make $33M in '24 and $22M in '25 or $55M/2 vs the possible $47.5M/2 previous deal with the option taken, right? I'm not sure if the Sox $17M paid ATL is going to Sale (added to the $16M redo/extension) or ATL in 2024.

Me neither. With Gio & Whit out, all year, we need the 5 we have now to stay healthy all year. That is not very likely, and Keller isd probably a better option than burning out the pen with pen games or letting Chase Anderson go 3-4 innings, assuming he pitches well enough to last even that long. Our current 5 look pretty good, but regressing to the norm could happen. As SP'ers only: 1.94 Houck (10GS) .515 OPS Against 2.78 Criswell (7) .665 2.89 Crawford (11) .637 4.04 Bello (8) .714 4.20 Pivetta (6) .734 Note: Wink has 3 GS with 10.2 IP and a 1.69ERA/.620 OPSA

Bulky players always seem more prone to injury- like hammy pulls, knee and back issues. It does seem like easing off the body-building would improve on his chances at staying healthy. He might lose some power, but the trade-off seems worthwhile.

We have a history of picking up SP'ers. Recently, most have been 1 year signings or flyers on scrubs or recently injured pitchers, like Kluber, Paxton, Richards, Wacha and Hill. In a short time, Brez has added (none on a 1 year deal): Gio (IL) Criswell Anderson (used more in relief) Fitts (AAA) Sandlin (A+) Brad Keller (Kelly optioned to AAA)

Point well taken. To me it seemed like you were treating Grissom like you did McGuire, last year- very harshly over a very small sample size. Yes, others took to more harsh statements about Grissom than you have made. You did start the thread with a tidbit of hope that maybe the thread would turn him around, so it wasn't all harsh.

He was pretty good over his last 15 starts (3.16 ERA/3.41 FIP) He was even at 3.38/3.31 over his last 17 starts (a better FIP than 15 starts.) Some other selected sample sizes: Last 11 GS: 3.61/3.62 Last 9 GS: 3.92/3.96 is actually the worst sample size to choose out of the 4 I chose.

That is a strong point about Sale being healthy at the end of 2023. He was also pitching well, after his first 5 starts. Those 15 starts to end the season was his longest stretch of good pitching in about 5 years. The only season he even started 15 or more games since 2018 was 2019 (25 GS and a 4.40 ERA.) The last 15 starts of 2023 saw these numbers, and if this was what we thought he might give us for 28-33 starts in 2024, then the trade would be viewed more harshly at the time of the trade: 80 IP (5.1 IP/GS, 3.16 ERA and 3.41 FIP) That was not vintage Sale, but it was close enough to think he was back and a plus. I get that. To me, the promise of Grissom solving our 2B major problem for maybe 5 years, tilted the scales. It's not looking that way, right now, but it is way too early to think there is no or even little hope he will be an overall plus over the next few years. That ending to 2023 by Sale was a good sign that he might be back healthy and doing well for 2024, despite his 4.30 overall ERA for 2023. Many posters prefer to use full season numbers to measure future projections, so those that do, should not really have viewed 2023's numbers as all that promising- healthy or not, (To be fair, the 3.80 FIP for 2023 was a bit more promising, but nothing like the 2.21 of 2024.) No doubt, the trade looks horrible, now. If we had Sale and went with Romy/DHam at 2B, we'd probably be in a WC slot, right now. (I know many don't even look at WC standings until June, but we would likely be 3-4 wins better, right now.) There is still 2/3 of the season to go, and a lot can change in that time.

I disliked the JBJ trade before JBJ even played a game after the trade. I am fine with people disliking trades, including the Sale-Grissom trade. Have I ever said otherwise? Hell, I disliked the trade, at first, but then the more I thought about it, my opinion shifted to slightly liking it. Part of the liking it was based on the assumption, we'd use the $10M saved to add another piece, but I'm not sure we can say that, now. I'm fine with anyone hating this trade. I just think it is too soon to give it a final grade, which it seems some are doing. If I am wrong on that, I stand corrected. BTW, if DHam keeps looking like this, it might make the JBJ trade move from an F to a D or better, as the JBJ trade final grade is not quite complete. I can see how I seem contradictory on these types of issues, and I appreciate you pointing that out. I do give strong opinions on things and don't seem all that tolerant on others doing similar things as I do. I will try to keep that in check, if I can catch myself. I guess where I see a difference is that I did not base my opinion on the JBJ trade on his April and May sample size (and Renfroe's.) I think the fact that Sale has got off to a surprisingly great start, and Grissom has gotten off to a shockingly horrific start has created a situation where relatively small sample sizes are driving the discussion to brash statements that sound to definitive, to me. While it is certainly possible we don't get 4-5 years from Grissom, if he flames out, his sample size could end up being 4-5 years of sound play at a position we have been extremely bad at for 3 or more years. I'm holding off judgment on the trade. I will say, my opinion went from dislike to like, but now it is looking more questionable than I felt in March. Another factor is that if we end up sucking, this year and next, having Sale likely would not have helped us get to the playoffs, and if Grissom does just okay for years 2-5 or 3-5, it might still help us more than Sale would have. Only time will tell.

It's games like this, we really miss Casas, who kills lefties. v LHPs in '24 .608 Devers .602 Duran .477 Abreu This would be the time for Cora to schedule a day off for Abreu and maybe one of the other two. Here is an interesting quirk to Sox splits: 2023-2024 L-R splits by our catchers: v RHPs .748 Wong (a RHB) .647 McGuire (a LHB) v LHPs .940 McGuire (a LHB) .649 Wong (a RHB) McGuire has a .193 reverse split Wong has a .099 reverse split

Players doing better than I expected, so far: .929 Refsnyder (and I've been pretty high on him) .910 Devers (improving his D, of late.) .855 Wong (on D and O) .843 O'Neill (needs to right the ship) .829 Abreu (better on O and D) .799 Duran (showing '23 was no fluke) .733 DHam (Felt he was DFA fodder in March) .708 McGuire (better on O & D) Tweeners Casas & Yoshida (injured) Rafaela & Romy (Good D/ bad O) Under performers 1B .596 Smith, .566 Cooper and .377 Dalbec 2B .453 Valdez, .451 Reyes and .314 Grissom SS Story and his IL stint Pitcher Pluses Houck Crawford Criswell Bernardino Weissert Slaten Pitching tweeners Jansen Martin Pivetta, Kelly, Wink, Anderson & Booser Underperformers Bello (not bad, but I expected better) Joely, Campbell, Jacques Gio & Whitlock and their IL stints. Really, we have 4-5 major areas that need improvement and consistency: 2B 1B SS (on O) 4SP/5SP Bello/Pivetta

We are 2 games from the 1/3 season mark. My guess is we go 1 and 1.

You're calling the trade grade over, already. Noted.

He's in a huge slump, recently- much to your delight. I did not pick the "after 50 PA" number.

We are lucky the Rays and Jays keep losing more than us. We do seem destined to finish near the .500 mark, despite some some surprises we've seen, so far. I'm enjoying watching this team, more than 2022's and 2023's teams. Maybe having lower expectations is part of it, but we have quite a few players AI like watching play. I think Brez and Bailey have set us back on the right track, but we had so far to go, maybe .500 is the best we can expect. There will be no in-season return of Gio, Story or Whitlock, like the hopes we had in season's past of returning player promises. Maybe Casas can give us a mid/late season boost, or someone like Hendriks makes some noise, but to do something special, this year, we will likely need to see big turn-arounds from several players... like... Grissom Winckowski Rafaela (on O) O'Neill (bust his slump) McGuire (on O) Bello (I probably forgot 1 or 2.)

While true, there were other ways to cut $10M, and even more. To me, this is way to early to be having a strong opinion of the results of the trade.

And besides, after his first 54 PAs: 115 PAs .744 OPS 5 HRs in 27 games. (on pace for 30 HRs in 162 games) The .744 OPS would be 6th best out of all Sox players with more than 90 PAs on the team. If that's a slump, geesh!

The future did not look bright in 2020, and some saw this coming before that season. It did look bright in 2021, as it looked like we were getting better, and the farm[ was steadily improving, if slowly.

Agree 100%. It's all... Me, me, me,,, Now, now, right now!

It looks like a good trade, so far. He might tank or get hurt, but I doubt Robertson or Santos are going to light the world on fire. Who knows, maybe we trade O'Neill at the deadline and the gift keeps giving. (Maybe not.) I'm not a huge fan of O'Neill, but he's done as expected or better, and there are so many others more worthy of criticism. Also, we have yet to reach the 1/3 mark for the season, so the report card is still far from complete.

This is Yankeesque!

Find his worst stat and post it. We did not acquire him for BA. His career BA is .247. How about these stats? .510 SLG (2nd to Devers is what we signed him for.) .349 OBP (4th on team and .001 from 3rd, Abreu) 0.8 bWAR (T 5th on team) 11 HRs (1st on team) 17 RBIs (6th, despite missing time) We gave up Nick Robertson and Victor Santos for one year of a guy who was a question mark for 2024. He's given us what we hoped for. Good D (in LF), poer from the right side and is 4th in PAs on the team. Oh, and by the way, 8 players have a worse BA than .241 (34+ PAs) and 9 have a better one. If he gains .003, today, he passes Casas to the top tier in BA on the team.