moonslav59

It sure looks like that line in the sand was never going to be crossed. With other players, maybe not. DD did get Bogey to sign an extension. It was the opt out that killed us. Had he been able to give more without the opt-out, we'd have had one less thing to bitch about.

I think so, too, but we'll never know.

Wrong.... again.

Did we, or did we not have 20 players needing immediate replacing and upgrading from the EOY 2019 roster? (I thought this was something we could all agree on.) I'm not even counting the loss of Betts, Price and Porcello, who we knew we'd never replace, in kind, on that budget.

A #2 is NOT average.

No, he was 20-33% from '21-'22 in most categories: 26th% in xFIP.

I think we were talking about production levels before 2023, but yes, counting those 3 seasons where he totalled 71 IP end up making his avg fWAR lower than his true skill level. 9.9/5 is 2.0 AVG 9.9/4 is 2.5 AVG to AVG+ 9.9/3 is 3.3 AVG+

Going by what MVP said, you'd have to subtract 2023. He said, "before 2023, he was average." That's 9.9 fWAR /6 years or 1.6 per season.

That also seemed like the time period, JH was more likely to say, "Yes."

Bloom had 20+ slots to fill in 2020 and a tiny winter budget, so of course he had to add more. He was forced into quantity over quality. Once we hit 2022 and 2023, that changed, or should have.

But what is the expectation when signing guys to $1-$5M deals? I'm thinking .333 is about average.

If you combine every year, before 2023, he was average. My point was from 2021-2022, even in xFIP, MVP's go to stat, he was top 40%. (He was top 26% in xFIP.)

Schwarber wanted a lot of money, so it's hard for me to say it was a blunder not to outbid DD for him. Again, we're always loaded with LF'ers and were back then, too.

It's not about my like of Duvall in RF: it's more about thinking O'Neill is an injury risk, too, as well as a declining defensive OF'er. Again, I'm not sure why we fixate on OF'ers who really have no business playing CF or RF, especially in Fenway. Yoshida Duran O'Neill Refsnyder Why add Soler or Duvall to the LF/DH mix? I'd rather we just go with... LF: Duran/O'Neill/Yoshida/Ref CF: Rafaela/Duran RF: Abreu/ O'Neill Use every penny left on upgrading the pitching staff.

Good point. We also know, Nate would have taken the deal Bloom first offered, so that was a huge mistake. The Eflin deal seems like one we could have bid up to the point where the Rays moved on, or where Eflin gave up on his like for living near TB. We could have had nate and Eflin for the total Story money. What makes it worse is, they'd still be on our roster, now!

No doubt. Keeping Betts and the same 2020 budget, would have meant dumping what salary? (Sale, in hindsight, of course.)

Agreed. I asked about RF.

All he really has is the Schwarber deal. (McGuire, Shaw, Iggy and Robles were okay.) (Abreu might change the narrative, a bit.)

I guess we can argue about what average is, but from 2021-2022, there were 150 SP'ers with 130+ IP. Here is where Monty placed: 27th in IP at 336 (top 20% tier) 36th in fWAR at 5.9 (2nd tier and 0.1 away from top tier) 39th in xFIP at 3.66 (0.13 away from top tier) 54th in ERA at 3.66 (2nd tier and 0.43 from 30th) 55th in ERA- at 90 He looked like a very solid #2 tier pitcher in those 2 years- maybe even a borderline 1/2 tier. If you combine his last 3 years, he tilts to top tier (top 30,) to me. Above average, at least.

He also said, during his hiatus, he saw all he needed to see from the box scores.

If he hadn't signed Story to $140M and spent over $100M on Yoshida, it would be more understandable, at least for the last 2 seasons. I do wonder if the top brass was against signing any pitchers to 2 or more years and more than $10M per year, until Gio.

You prefer O'Neill in RF over Duvall? (It's a close call, to me.) I just hate pushing Duran to CF, FT.

One strong argument for not extending Betts and for dumping half-Price was the idea that we could maybe spend that money on 3-5 players that could come close to what we lost. We spent only a fraction of that money, as well as not spending the Porcello money lost. (BTW, nobody is complaining about not extending him, either.)

They did not "have to," but they did. In one breath you blsme JH not Bloom, then say there was no "impossible" budget situation (implied for building the roster back up.]. After 2019, we lost Betts, Price and Porcello from the budget and the roster and spent pennies on the dollar. The winter spending budget before 2021 did not come close to replacing those lost players, plus the ones lost after 2020. It seemed impossible, to me, although the 2021 team somehow did pretty well. With the Story signing, the budget situation was "not impossible," agreed. The expenditures for 2020: $11M for JBJ (avoided last arb) Other arbs: ERod, Barnes... $6M Perez $4.2M Pillar $2.8M Peraza $1.5M Lucroy All the rest were under $1M Obviously, the budget was a major obstacle to building that team to respectability. We traded away Moreland, Pillar and others, and let JBJ walk after '20. Here was our budget for '21: $10M Richards $8M Ottavino (trade) $7M x 2 Kike $5M Perez $3M Renfroe $3M Marwin (All others were below $1M) 2022 looked like a repeat, until the March signing of Story.

I totally agree. The budget was the biggest constraint, and if we somehow found a way to keep all 5, or even just Betts, Bogey and Nate, but still had the same budgets, the rest of the 40 man roster would have looked like crap, or worse. While I realize we need some stars to win, we also would have needed a strong base and feeding pattern than this: The 20 that was in serious need or upgrading, going into 2020 (Some may have forgotten just how bad the bottom of our 40 was, when DD departed.): Brian Johnson (5th SP) Ryan Brasier H Hembree Marco Hernandez Sam Travis DHern Cashner H Velazquez Ryan Weber Colten Brewer Josh A Smith, Lakins, Chacin, Shawaryn, Poyner, T Kelley, C Owings, Gorkys Hernandez The AAA team was basically this: Kyle Hart Daniel McGrath Teddy Stankiewicz Tanner Houck Domingo Tapia Jenrry Mejia Austin Maddox Zach Putnam Erasmo Ramirez Kevin Lenik C: Oscar Hernandez, Jake Romanski 1B: Ockimey & Witte 2B: Deiner Lopez 3B: Dalbec SS: CJ Chatham/ T-W Lin LF: Sturgeon/Brentz CF: Matheny RF: Rusney DH: Chavis Other top prospects below AAA: 3. Casas 6. Groome 7. A Flores (RIP) 9. Feltman 10. Mata 11. Howlett 12. Decker 13. Duran 14. D Diaz 16. Jimenez 17. Northcut 18. Scherff 19. D reyes 20. Schellenger Call it a roster full or mediocrity, and I won't disagree, but our 21-40 and farm, right now, look much better than the 21-40 + farm did at the end of 2019. We have more to do to become a consistent winner, for sure, but I like our depth better than before.