Jack Flap

I'd be interested in seeing some evidence for these assertions. If all it takes is some media idiots and internet posters shooting their mouths/keyboards off in frustration, then that's a pretty low bar, and everyone from David Ortiz on down has been "vilified" at some point in recent years.

*backs slowly out of thread*

My understanding was that we lost the prospects we signed in the 2015-16 signing period and were then barred from signing anyone in 2016-17. Next year we should be free to spend without restriction again (assuming no international draft).

Oh good, now we can get on to Seager and Urias trade proposals. Seriously, though...A-Gon has 2 years and about $44 million left (hardly extreme by current standards) and would be a good trade candidate if the Dodgers need to cut back. No idea how he'd react to a return to Boston, but we could use a corner bat, and while he's never really been the same hitter since 2011, he's still pretty good. I'd prefer to just sign Beltran, but depending on what we'd have to give up it might be a better option than giving 4-5 years at $20+ million per season and losing a draft pick for Encarnacion.

I mostly agree with this, although I'd probably swap the rotation and the offense in our hierarchy of needs. Though it would always be nice to add a TOTR pitcher if the opportunity presents itself, I'd be perfectly comfortable going into next season with a Price/Porcello/Pomeranz/Wright/Buchholz group. (Much of the rotation angst I see here and elsewhere seems to spring from weighting Porcello's and Price's one-start October samples way too heavily. Both will be fine.) On the other hand, I feel like some people are underestimating how difficult it will be to absorb the loss of David Ortiz...subtracting a guy coming off a transcendent season and assuming you can make up the difference with the likes of Sandoval, Swihart, etc. feels like extreme rose-colored glasses to me. Those guys may help, and a full year of Benintendi certainly will, but I do think adding someone like Beltran or Holliday on a short-term deal would go a long way towards filling (or at least minimizing) the Papi void. I don't think anyone can disagree that the bullpen is most in need of work at this point.

I agree...although every year the aftermath of awards season seems to make me wish there were no awards.

Nah man, I don't know if we've flogged the Ball pick to death just yet. There might still be someone out there (perhaps in the Brazilian rain forest, or a monastery in the Himalayas) who hasn't yet heard that he isn't good and we should have taken Meadows instead. I think we need a few more pages about it, just to be sure.

I probably should have said "best position player"...however, because pitchers have their own award that is essentially equal in stature to the MVP, I don't consider that as great an injustice as, say, Mike Trout losing because an inferior player had better teammates than he did.

I don't know if you can top the Pedro trade, though.

While Webster and De La Rosa were busts in Boston, they did get us Miley (2.5 WAR in 2015), who got us Smith and Elias, who may yet make an impact for us at some point (in Smith's case, perhaps a very significant one given the focus on bullpen strength currently). The money was obviously the driving factor, but it's not like we got nothing out of the affair talent-wise.

Well, she's obviously not impressed by his performance on the field, so how is he going to......nevermind.

I mean, I guess I can't really fault anyone for voting Cabrera the year he won the Triple Crown (even if Trout was actually better)...but I agree. Hopefully this is a sign we can have an award for the best player (a distinction actually worth caring about) every year moving forward and not just the best player on a winning team.

Trout over Betts for AL MVP: http://fullcount.weei.com/sports/boston/baseball/red-sox/2016/11/17/mookie-betts-comes-up-just-short-for-american-league-mvp-loses-to-mike-trout/ The Red Sox fan in me is disappointed for Mookie, but the voters made the right choice. It's crazy to think that at age 25, Trout really should have four or five MVPs by this point, not just two.

Lol, I was trying to think of two different players doing it (as it looks like Porcello and Betts likely will), so I missed the obvious. Nice catch.

I'd say #4.

Could have been any of the top three, really. Great for Rick...and thank you, Ben Cherington. Have we ever had Sox players win the Cy Young and MVP (or even win one and finish runner-up for the other) in the same year?

And then we found Mookie Betts at #172 overall. You never know who will be available or how they will pan out. I don't think the 1st round pick should hold us back from signing a player we need, but it definitely could be a reason to favor someone like Beltran or Holliday over Encarnacion/Bautista.

As another JBJ devotee, I'm not sure I see it that way. Here's his home runs by month in 2016: Apr - 1 May - 8 June - 4 July - 4 Aug - 5 Sept - 4 If you figure that April and May basically balanced each other out, that's a pretty consistent season in terms of power...and you'd never guess that August was actually his worst month (.198 BA/.651 OPS). The "streaky JBJ" narrative has gotten a bit carried away, IMO. His OPS was over .800 in four of the six months and .731 or better in every month but August. He looks to me like a guy who had one bad month, as opposed to someone like Shaw who actually went through a drastic decline as the season went on.

Right, I didn't forget about Moncada. I just don't subscribe to this philosophy that you can only have one good prospect at each position at one time...I'd rather have as much talent as you can and figure out what to do with it later. I have high hopes for Moncada, but for all we know, he could be a gigantic bust; if both turn out well, on the other hand, you can always make a trade or position change down the line. Not saying it's a big deal that we didn't sign him, but for an organization that has been barred from signing any significant international prospects for the past two cycles, it seems an idea worth kicking the tires on.

Can he play 3B? Not sure why we wouldn't jump in on this given his reputed upside and the pretty modest cost. After Castillo and a couple other high-profile busts, the market may be swinging back to the point where there are some real bargains to be found coming out of Cuba once again.

Napoli inexplicably didn't get a QO after a 34-homer season. Wouldn't be my Plan A, but you could do a lot worse as Plan C or D.

I'm heartened by the early Beltran rumors. Give him a 1-year deal with an option, keep the 1st round pick, and call it a day.

I don't see any urgent need to choose between a prospect in Double-A and a prospect in Single-A, which is what Margot and Benintendi were at the time. I'm happy with the Beni/Bradley/Betts outfield we have set for the near future, but still having Margot around (or having been able to trade him for other needs, as Moon mentioned) would be attractive as well. Ultimately, there are reasons to like or dislike the Kimbrel trade, but the argument that Margot was "blocked," so who cares what we got for him, never held water for me...and I'm putting this out there not out of some desire to rehash the Kimbrel deal for the umpteenth time, but because I anticipate similar discussions being had about Devers in the near future (assuming we sort out the 3B/1B/DH situation at the major league level this winter). A player who's a year or more away from being major league ready is not "blocked" in any meaningful sense, simply because so much can change in that time.

Looks like this has turned into more of a Cherington thread than a Dombrowski thread? Anyway, I don't think we have a whole lot to evaluate with Dombrowski yet. I think it's fair to say that his three big acquisitions (Price, Kimbrel, Pomeranz) all fell mildly to moderately below expectations after being acquired. I was never a big fan of the two trades with the Padres, but I'm willing to give those moves time to work out. Was on board with signing Price because despite the risk inherent in giving a 30 year old pitcher that type of money, he has the pedigree and there were no better options. The early exit from the postseason was disappointing, but as we so often hear, the playoffs are a crapshoot; it's hard to argue with a worst-to-first season, and we remain well-set for the next few. On the whole, I remain cautiously optimistic about the Dombrowski era.