moonslav59

If we do add someone like Paredes, Horner, Shaw, Baty or ___, thebench will look pretty nice with IKF, Wong, Casas/Masa & one from DHam/Sogard/Eaton

I think it's safe to say, we can start refocusing on some non pitchers, but be more balanced, going forward. We did trade Sale for Grissom, 3 pitchers for Contreras & Tyler O'Neill for two pitchers, so we have used some pitchers to boost the everyday roster. (Most pitcher trades have been for other pitchers, and we've seen several everyday players traded for pitching, like the Crochet trade.)

I agree with Ole Red more than many think. IMO, he's dead wrong on thinking a player can tell his boss how to do his job and stick around.

I rarely take managements/ownerships side in these sorts of matters, but Devers knew the team wanted him at 1B. I don't care if a fan thinks he'd be better at DH. The team wanted him at 1B and he balked. He then agreed to play 1B with his ext team. How anyone can assign less than 1% blame on Devers is astounding, to me, but hey, some opinions are wildly different than our own.

As I grow older, I really try to stay away from the obsessive blame game our culture seems to have embraced. It's hard not to, for sure, but when I do it, I rarely think it's all on one person. Many people could have done things differently in this whole Devers fiasco, and he'd probably still be here. That being said, if he was, we'd probably not have Bregman, Ranger and Contreras here, right now, too. (2 our of the 3 for sure, IMO.)

Well said, and a fine opinion you have.

You could end up being right, but there is still time to make a deal. You were wrong on Ranger, and moved on much more quickly from that one compared to this one. You also kept forgetting the Contreras add as being significant, though not enough, I agree. I got a glimmer of hope when those twp roster slots opened up. Gasper and K-F were not my expected additions, but we can trade someone for a decent infielder. and then K-F looks much nicer.

One of these two might be more likely than finding a return to HOU for Paredes. I'd be happy with any of these three, but we cannot give up Duran or Abreu, and neither team is looking for a star for prospects deal. I keep coming back to who can be the third team?

Paredes hit .691 v LHPs, last year, but I think that was an outlier. It was only 71 PAs. He's .805 career and is entering prime, now. Shaw hit .808 vs LHPs in '24. Hoerner is career .788 v L. The Cubs may be a better match, but Hoerner has just one year remaining and Shaw is sort of an unknown on offense.

I used to think I'd trade Abreu for Paredes, King and Janek, but I'm not sure that's enough. It's a push on O, although it helps balance the L-R thing. King would help the pen, but more than Crawford or Harrison can? IDK.

I'm not sure we'll add much more money to the budget. If we add a 2B/3Bman who makes more money than we send away, I think we'll use our SP'er depth to fill out the pen.

The team has moved away from several long term philosophies under Brez. 1. Making pitching the top priority from the top to the bottom of the system. 2. Extending young promising players before they reach free agency, and even before arbs. 3. Signing a pitcher to a long term contract. (The last 2 longer deals were Story and Masa.) 4. Making the one and done contracts higher than $10M. (Breggie, Buehler, Chapman...) Some that may need to go/change: 1. No Trade Clauses 2. Trade Deadline big deal reluctance 3. Doing whatever it takes to get that "one guy" you really want 4. A GM who is poor at communication

It can't be Abreu for Paredes, even if they give us King, Sousa or Janek. It's a sideways move on O, despite balancing the L-R issue. HOU won't trade Paredes for prospects, unless it's like Tolle or Early, but I'm not sure they want pitching or like ours.

Who could be the third team that gives HOU the OF'er they need, takes our prospects or pitchers and we get Paredes? We aren't giving them Abreu, and they don't want Duran, apparently, or they won't add players like King, I suppose. We probably can't throw money into the deal as Paredes is due just over $9M, so the idea of maybe Reynolds plus cash to HOU could not be with our money. Any ideas?

No way we will be close to that.

That looks like the biggest what if of this winter. We'd also still have Fitts and Clarke to trade for someone else.

This whole decade long hole at 2B is absurd. Add the poor defense at almost every infield position for that same decade and it's the biggest headscratcher of all- next to make the fixation with one and done SP'ers looking for rebounds and rehabs.

One great aspect of building up the pitching from top to bottom is that teams often get desperate for pitching and will overpay for one by more than they would for a bat. That means Brez has to be willing to trade pitching. Looking at his record with the Sox, that has NOT been an issue, and we can start with the Sale trade, mention Priester and end with this winter, where he's traded about a dozen MLB pitchers + top 12 pitching prospects- often for other pitchers, but still. If he wakes up and smells the coffee, even if it's just Vanilla latte, maybe he trades from our pitching depth and adds a real 2B/3Bman, soon. At this point, we can't afford to trade offense like Duran or Abreu. Ideally, we find a way to dump Masa and trade from pitching depth for Paredes, Shaw or even 1 year of Hoerner. Baty would not be horrible. With IK on board, maybe adding Vientos would give our offense a boost, but he's got DH or 1B written all over him. (No Masa might give him some time there, though.)

It is hard to see it as being the same or better as 2025. We lost 1150 PAs from 4 of our top 6 batters: .905 Devers 334 PAs .859 Anthony 303- returning .838 Refsnyder 209 .826 Romy 341- returning, perhaps as a straight platoon bat .821 Bregman .790 N Lowe 119 That's hard to ignore, despite adding a .790 Contreras. One of the top 6 returning might be platooning. #7 Abreu and #8 Duran might be worthy of platooning, too.

True nuff, but you thought getting rid of Hicks was a dream, too. Trading for Robbie Ray one-on-one might work. (We could add Mullins or maybe someone as high as Eyanson with Drohan thrown in. Of course, we can always add DHam... LOL)

Agreed. Our pitching got better. 3B defense got worse, but maybe 1B and 2B can improve. On offense, we could get worse than .670 at 2B, but forcing DHam off the 26 could make that less likely. I K has never hit over .699, but he's not DHam bad. How much 2B Romy plays could be the deciding factor in a plus or minu on offense at 2B. I'm thinking Wong is not 2025 bad, nor 2024 good on O, but he'll help with the Catcher OPS, even if Narvaez drops a little. Maybe call catcher a push with upside potential. We should top the .691 1B OPS- maybe by over 100. .736 at SS might be hard to match. .777 at 3B is not as great as we might have expected, since Breggie missed a lot of time. Maybe we lose 25-50 points there. .823 at DH will be hard to match, but if the LH'd bats (Masa & Casas) can hit .775-.800 and the RHBs (Romy & Campbell) can, too, maybe dropping 25-50 points here and at 3B can be made up for at 1B. Let's call the catcher and keystone positions a push. How about the OF? .792 overall in 2025, but we used Anthony at DH, and he missed half a year. Rafaela may regress, but I think we can beat .792, so maybe there is a sliver of hope. .859 Anthony- more PAs can be the boost we need. .786 Abreu- entering peak prime, so maybe .800+ .774 Duran- bring back some of that 2024 magic? .708 Rafaela- can he continue his growth? Maybe the offense can stay about the same. Maybe not.

That's how badly I want to rid this team of Masa. (Okay, not that badly. I would not do this trade.)

We have to forceably take the DHam option away from Cora. I K is a way better option than him. It's a lot to pay in infield utility guy, but with the China Dolls we have in our infield, it could pay off. Trade for I P and call it a winter.

So this signing puts us over the $250M mark and maybe $10M below the next tax line. Paredes just signed for under $10M, so I'm gonna keep hoping against hope...

I was thinking the same thing. I K might be as good as this guy... LOL.