Jack Flap

It's tough to think of someone better to take Groome under his wing.

If I recall correctly, he was asked who would be hitting third and said something like "As of now, Hanley Ramirez." This was also before the Martinez signing had been finalized or publicly acknowledged by the team. I would guess that nothing is written in stone at this point.

I think that's absolutely debatable. Pomeranz had a fine year, and I still like Rodriguez's potential if he can ever make it through a full season without getting hurt, but neither is a lock to be better than Porcello by any means.

Same here. I wish we'd done more for the bullpen, too. If Hanley proves healthy and able to play first base the way he did in 2016, we may find ourselves wishing Moreland's $6.5 million this year had been spent on a reliever or two instead.

They have probably moved on to bidding for Arrieta and Moustakas.

Well, I'll just say I apologize if I mischaracterized what you were trying to say, and leave it at that.

Players who don't pay attention to or place any value on advanced numbers (and I'd hazard a guess that there are a lot more who do than there were 10 or 20 years ago) might want to consider starting, because the teams who pay them certainly do. We're just coming out of an offseason defined by a massive disconnect between what players think they are worth and what teams are actually willing to pay, and if I was a player, I'd want to know why that was and what I could do to keep it from happening to me next time...

I didn't watch him hit all 45 bombs last year, but based on the numbers, I think I have a fair bit of confidence that he has great power. I know people are generally more suspicious of defensive numbers for whatever reason, but at a certain point they, coupled with the consensus around the game that seems to have him as a fairly mediocre defender (although there were other factors at play, the fact that the only team willing to offer him a long-term deal plans to use him primarily as a DH seems noteworthy), are worth something, right? Not to denigrate the value of anyone's eyeballs, but the idea that you can't know anything about a player's defensive skill, and have to be purely agnostic on the subject, until you, personally, have watched them extensively seems...a bit preposterous to me. Perhaps more to the point, all of us have had the opportunity to watch our current group of outfielders at work, and I for one feel no urgency to break up what should be one of the better defensive outfields in the majors on account of JDM. I expect we'll see him start from time to time to rest one of the starting three, but if it's any more than that, it means that one of the Beni/JBJ/Betts trinity has gotten hurt or their playing time has been cut for some reason, so for that reason alone, I certainly hope we don't see too much of him in the field. As someone else said, he was signed to hit, and I'm excited as hell to see him hit...not terribly concerned about the rest.

"Per Boras, the Red Sox will receive financial relief in the final two years of the deal if Martinez spends at least 60 days on the disabled list in any one year or 120 days cumulative because of the foot injury. On the other side, the Red Sox gave Martinez a third opt-out. He can now become a free agent after the second, third, and fourth years of the deal." http://www.weei.com/blogs/john-tomase/what-held-jd-martinez-contract-scott-boras-explains

Sounds good to me.

I'd have preferred to see one of our numerous middle infielders go (maybe Holt, who seems redundant with Nunez, Hernandez, Marrero, Lin, and so on), but it'd be nice to see Brentz finally get a shot somewhere. Best of luck to him.

Great contract. This is really the best possible outcome, IMO. Props to Dombrowski, who seemingly played his cards exactly right to the end.

https://media.giphy.com/media/rl0FOxdz7CcxO/giphy.gif

It would be the ultimate concluding twist to this saga if, after months of everyone assuming JD was going for every last dollar he could possibly get, he took a lesser deal to return to Arizona. It would rather seem like he went to the trouble of hiring Scott Boras for nothing - and indeed, I'm not convinced this isn't some last-ditch effort to wring even more money out of the Red Sox - but if that's truly what he wants, I would not blame him for doing what he thinks will make him happiest...I would only ask that he get on with it sometime soon so everyone can move on with their lives. Snagging Morrison or Duda on a 1-2 year deal (and keeping our powder dry for next winter) is looking better all the time.

Logan Morrison is on the Red Sox’ radar as a potential backup option should they not sign Martinez, per Heyman. The 30-year-old would be a considerably more affordable source of power to slot into the DH spot in the lineup (presumably with some occasional time at first base to give Mitch Moreland a break, or in the event of a Moreland injury). It’s been fairly quiet on Morrison for much of the offseason despite the fact that he’s run up a 130 wRC+ over his past 900 big league plate appearances. MLBTR’s Connor Byrne recently took a lengthier look at Morrison’s merits. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/02/mlb-rumors-jd-martinez-diamondbacks-yu-darvish-brewers.html

This would seem like a risky maneuver for Martinez, given that he's already 30 years old, just had the best season he's probably ever going to have, and would be facing a much deeper free agent class next winter... I'd be happy to offer him an opt-out if that would help sweeten the pot, but all this talk of a short-term deal feels like posturing until we see evidence to the contrary.

...or not.

I have a hard time believing this, but if so, JD's demands and his attitude towards Boston's 5/125 offer look even more delusional. It might be time to tell Boras that the offer will decrease tomorrow and every day thereafter until position players report to spring training, after which it's off the table entirely, and see if that gets anything moving. I'd say we've been more than patient here.

I don't blame JD for fighting to get every dollar that he feels he is worth, but as the weeks pass by without the offer being increased or new teams entering the bidding, at some point reality has to set in. He and Boras can complain about the Red Sox "inflexibility" all they want, but it seems clear at this point that they not only misread the market but have failed to adjust their expectations long after that should have been clear. Personally, I'm kind of over the whole thing and just ready for some baseball.

I agree, but it does look like a better signing than Moreland at 2/13.

So, this seems...very silly. http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/22300069/agent-says-fight-brewing-slow-mlb-free-agent-market I get that the owners aren't exactly the most sympathetic group, but it's hard for me to put all of this on them. From what's been reported publicly, Martinez has been sitting on at least one 5-year offer, and Hosmer at least two 7-year offers; there was a report a few weeks back about Darvish turning down 7 years from the Yankees as well; we know Santana saw a reasonable offer back in December, and took it; soon-to-be 32-year-old Lorenzo Cain managed to find himself a 5-year deal recently; and so on. Not all of these reports may be 100% accurate, but from the sum total of what we've learned this offseason, it seems these guys are getting offers - probably very solid ones - just not the ones they want, and that makes the playing the victim and crying about collusion seem absurd to me. The landscape of the game is changing as teams figure out that handing out massive contracts to 30+ year-old free agents whose best days are behind them is a losing proposition, and agents like Boras are way late to the party, still acting like their clients are entitled to the same dumb deals that they might have gotten in years past. A lot of this seems like a pretty foreseeable result of the new CBA that seems designed to suppress spending (particularly by a team like the Red Sox that always lives close to the threshold) with increasingly draconian luxury tax measures, and IMO, if the players are so unhappy and discontented, they should first turn their ire on their own union for agreeing to it without getting much in return...

If Buchholz and Middlebrooks don't tickle your fancy, I bet Ryan Lavarnway and Allen Webster are available somewhere.

You have to think Martinez is digging in his heels even deeper on his demand for six years now, and it's kind of hard to blame him.

I see Hosmer as a good, not great, player who is going to be paid more for longer years than he probably should. I said the same once about Crawford and Sandoval (though obviously both of those contracts turned out far worse than anyone anticipated)...I don't see Hosmer being that kind of disaster, but I think there are much better ways to allocate our resources. The 5/125 offer for Martinez seems eminently reasonable and gives me some hope that this should get done. If a sixth year is the sticking point, I don't know that I'd let that get in the way of a deal when we're going for it in 2018-19...maybe give him a choice between 5/125 and something like 6/138, or make the sixth year some sort of an option. After that you set a deadline, and if that's not good enough, move on. Maybe it's the lingering memory of the previous time we signed a Boras client who held out into the season, but I really don't have much desire to continue negotiating with Martinez once spring training is underway - and unless the team believes its own press about being content with the roster they have (which would be painted by fans and media as a failure of an offseason), they'll need to leave themselves time to make a move before Plans B, C, etc. drop off the board. JDM is obviously the best individual player available for our needs, but I've wondered all winter if we wouldn't be better off with someone like Duda plus a starting pitcher (is it too late to get in on the Darvish sweepstakes?) than with Martinez alone. I still hope we add another good reliever or two, and some more infield depth wouldn't hurt, either (we remain connected to Nunez based on recent reports). It's a bit of a bummer that an offseason that started out with numerous possibilities seems to have been reduced to "Get JDM or bust," so I hope Dave still has a few things up his sleeve. Having this many major free agents still unsigned in late January is kind of surreal. One has to think the ice is going to break and there will be a burst of activity sometime in the next couple of weeks...we'll see.

I don't think that opinion is unpopular at all, just unrealistic in the context of this discussion. I'd feel like I hit the lottery if someone offered me even $5 million, but that really has nothing to do with what JD Martinez will sign for.