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I think for CF, the Sox will do one of the following: 1) Bring back Bradley 2) Find another cheap defense-oriented CF on the free agent market, with Pillar and Michael Taylor looking like candidates 3) Take back a questionable contract as part of a deal to upgrade the pitching. The first names that comes to mind are Kevin Kiermaier and Ender Inciarte. Other (in my opinion) less likely candidates include Lorenzo Cain, AJ Pollock, Dexter Folwler, Wil Myers, and Randy Grichuk. Two of them (Fowler and Myers) do present question marks about their ability to actually still play CF, which hopefully will be a factor. And it should be one that eliminates Gregory Polanco, who would be a perfect fit due to his bad contract (with one year left at $14.6 mill, which is like $45 mill in Pittsburgh Dollars), strong desire of his team to move him, and abundance of likely available veteran starting pitching. Polanco is mildly interesting because he was among the league leaders in exit velocity this year, coming in 13th in MLB with a 92.9 mph average exit velocity (which was just a tick behind Devers and his 93mph average exit velocity). But his overall numbers sucked. Like, really bad. Like .539 OPS bad. It doesn't take long to see why - his strikeout numbers are through the roof. So apparently he either hits the tar out of the ball or simply doesn't hit it at all. If he could play great CF, that might be one thing. But he can't, and getting Polanco to play a corner position and moving either Verdugo or Benintedi to CF probably isn't worth it, unless you have much stronger feelings about Joe Musgrove, Jameson Taillon or Trevor Williams than I do. (And i do like Musgrove and Taillon. Williams not so much)...

Upton cannot still play CF. That’s his retired brother who played there. The younger Upton is also a converted SS, but corner OF only. Leody Taveras? Of the Rangers?

So you think the Sox with a rotation headlined by Nate Eovaldi, Martin Perez and Chris Mazza, were one Mookie away from World Series contention?

I have a feeling the pitching-weak Angels, frequent league leaders in TJ surgeries, would be reluctant to include any young arms, especially if they are getting back another pitching question mark. This team still has IL Veterans Andrew Heaney, Dylan Bundy, and Griffin Canning and only recently shed themselves of oft-injured Garret Richard and Nick Tropeano. Not to mention, they had the untimely passing of Tyler Skaggs, who was not exactly the most durable pitcher during his career either. I have no idea what it is the Angels do to absolutely batter their pitchers into painful submission, but I would be very surprised if they saw Nathan Eovaldi as any part of the solution. So the Sox would probably need to replace both Eovaldi and Martinez. Upton was tremendous at one point in his career, but right now he is often banged up and ineffective. I would prefer Martinez just stay and bounce back...

I suspect his favorite candidate is still actively doing his current job. That is, if you consider anything a bench coach does to be active...

I'd just assume have Eovaldi and Martinez...

And it cannot obviously incorporate any intangible values a player has. I believe it basically assigns a value based up project fWAR (in dollars) minus project salary...

Passed away 12 years ago, from falling down a flight of stairs...

So do you think the Sox would have been better off with Betts and a draft pick this year only, followed by a big question mark in RF instead of Verdugo for the next five?

I know nothing about him except he played catcher, never made the Majors, managed in the minors, and is currently Tampa's bench coach, a position for which he was hired by Bloom...

But Vaughn Eshelman is no longer with us...

Today? Everybody. Especially who ever is getting Zombie John Marzano...

The Sox were doomed for a bad season when they lost Sale and Rodriguez for the year. Would finishing 4th in the AL East with Mookie and then watching him go for a draft pick be any better?

And that is why I am sticking with my original prediction it will be Matt Quatraro. And it makes sense that he is among the top choices but there has been no progress. Unlike a lot of the candidates mentioned, Quatraro is still working...

Cash just had a year as a scout and a year as a bullpen coach when Bloom hired him and he worked out. We might not be getting a "name" manager...

Ummm... no.

Absolutely true. Obviously bad trades will still happen. But BTV has given a clearer picture of what players can be worth in trades...

Graterol. That wipeout slider is one of the nastiest pitches in MLB...

We have no chance of re-signing him since Henry had mandated resetting the tax and there was no practical way to get under it without moving Betts. Unless you wanted to move Bogaerts instead, but that would have been unwise given that he clearly wanted to be in Boston. The only chance the Sox had to bring Mookie back was to trade him away, reset, and then hope he reached free agency...

No. Watching any player celebrate over beating the Yankees is sweet, regardless of the uniform...

Now what BTV cannot do is tell you whether or not a GM wants to deal or acquire any specific player. Just because a deal is equal doesn't mean either GM wants to give up or acquire those specific pieces. But I think it does at least quash some of the absolutely lopsided trade proposals that every baseball internet site has been littered with since the dawn of the Cyber Age...

They did. They actually do analysis of every trade in MLB. In the Mookie trade, the Sox received more value at the time, as Alex Verdugo alone was roughly equal to Mookie due to years of control remaining (along with, you know, Verdugo being pretty good). But what that site also made obvious was that, despite columns from the MLB.con and Boston Sprotswriter crew, the Sox were absolutely not going to get Dustin May or Gavin Lux. never mind both. Which I believe one of them suggested would be fair. From what I saw at the deadline this year, every trade I saw the analysis for was actually very close using their simulator...

Actually they have done a pretty good job fine tuning it in the 1 year plus it's been around, and a lot of actual trades that real life GMs have obviously deemed fair have been valued as being roughly equal using their system...

If Cora is waiting for anything, it's probably to see who gives him the most lucrative offer...

Jimy's bullpen management skills were simplistically brilliant. Basically, you got either Hipolito Pichardo and Rich Garces (and rarely just one of them) or you got Rheal Cormier and Tim Wakefield. The idea of having the middle relievers work in pairs to guarantee adequate rest was so simple, but it worked so well. And yet we really have not seen it since...