notin

Or "And I'm the guy who got DFA'd?!?!?"

So did Masterson...

It doesn't hurt that we traded away a couple like Frankie Montas and Justin Masterson, and converted some of the better ones left into relievers, like Barnes and Papelbon. To say it's the scouting or development is probably not correct, since this goes back nearly two decades. And if you discount Lester and Buchholz, you have to go back to Aaron Sele in 1991 to find a SP who worked out for the Sox. That spans nearly 30 years and over half a dozen GMs and probably hundreds of scouts and minor league coaches. At this point, it is getting far too coincidental for my liking. Maybe part of the reason is the Sox have had a habit of filling the rotation with veteran arms as they could afford them, and simply dealt their better pitching prospects away or converted them to bullpen arms...

At age 19, Lars Anderson posted a .828 OPS in 533 plate appearances in A ball and a .975 OPS is 47 PA in High A-ball At age 19, Triston Casas posted an .820 OPS in 493 PA in A ball and a 1.429 OPS in 14 PA in high A ball. Very similar, especially since Casas High A resume is built on so few plate appearances (and two of his 3 hits went for extra bases, including 1 HR)... Anderson debuted in MLB 3 years later, but was a complete flop. This doesn't mean Casas will be a dud like Anderson, but it might give some semblance of his timeline...

Devers looks to have one corner INF spot locked up for a few years. Beyond that, the other corner is wide open for the time being.

It might be a tad early to worry about logjams created by A ball players. There is no such thing as a player in A-ball being blocked...

Welcome to the 2020 Red Sox..

It's also not exactly an easy hole to address. Using higher draft picks on pitchers can have mixed results. Trey Ball being a prime example. Ball was a flop, but he was hardly a reach as a bad draft pick. Every mock draft I saw had him in the 7 to 15 range in the first round. So the Sox likely took him at their only chance. Ball just did not work out. Groome looked like an excellent pick at the time, and was a definite feather in DD's cap. Until the injuries set in and basically kept him from pitching at all. Had Groome stayed healthy, he would probably be making his debut this season or next...

I don't fault DD for that one. He acquired a cheap controllable reliever for an expendable, easy-to-replace player and a good minor leaguer. It was actually an odd move from a guy known for ignoring bullpens. That it did not work out due to injury is not Dombrowski's fault. The Carson Smith trade was a good move at the time for largely the same reasons. Unless there were medical concerns DD ignored (which he is wont to do)...

Chavis is a role player. Dalbec is trying to be a starter. I like that they are trying Chavis in the outfield, although I know it's more out of him being a warm body not named Peraza...

That's an option?!

Baltimore, Detroit, and Seattle are all within 2 games of the Yankees for the last playoff spot. This week, the Yankees and Orioles play a surprisingly crucial 4 game series. (Both teams have 3 games left against the Red Sox.)...

One thing we need to stop doing is letting the Guardians poach all the good local pitchers. Do some local scouting, Bloom!!

But he is still maintaining his FIP, which uses strikeouts as a factor...

Dalbec is what they call a Three True Outcome guy. He'll hit home runs. He'll walk. But he ill strike out a lot. He's basically a newer version of Mark Reynolds, which is actually not a bad thing for a guy on a rookie contract...

I actually assumed the word "beat' was in present tense and it was more of a prediction. It might as well be...

Hey you were on that other website for a while. If you were there in 2007, you might remember we had one poster who went by the moniker bigfoot14b or something close to that. Anyway, he was ripping Theo (whom he derisively called "Guitar Boy") right up through the 2007 World Series...

Didn't Brock get his 3,000th hit the same day as Yaz?

Soxprospects.com also guess he will be in AA next year, but I wouldn't be too surprised if he started the year in high A ball and worked his way up. He barely touched that level last year and who knows if they will have somethings he needs to work on progressively. Of course, if he does hit in AA ball, AAA is really not much of a developmental step any more, so that puts him on the doorstep...

My guess would be similar to Pillar. His agent should be looking to Kiermaier. THe end result will probably be somewhere in between, with possible pandemic/financial loss influences...

Well, we do know under certain conditions $365 million could retain him. Whether or not being out of Boston was one of those conditions is another matter. But if we go extremely hypothetical (based on my old commentary about transactions in the 2015-2016 offseason), and we revisit the Price/Kimbrel acquisitons. Dombrowski traded for Kimbrel and signed Price. History has shown it is cheaper to sign a closer (as they rarely demand 7 year deals) and trade for a starter. Had the Sox signed a closer that offseason and traded for a starter, would they have been off? Price was a good pitcher, but was only worth 10.6 fWAR for the Red sox from 2016-2019. Similar pitchers (whose availablity I cannot guarantee) include Chris Archer, Lance Lynn, Gio Gonzalez, and Tanner Roark. If the Sox had dealt for one of them and signed an available closer that off-season and received similar production, resetting the tax limit without Price ($31mill AAV) and without my oft-questioned extension of Eovaldi ($17mill AAV) might have made it possible to reset the tax limit after 2019. Now, if that had happened, and yeah, there can be no certainty here, but do you think it might have been possible to retain Betts? Henry's generosity does seem to be rather mercurial, and it appears that he really changes his habits based on spending the Luxury Tax payments that have no ROI. I know. A more hypothetical post is hard to see here. But it seems like too many moves were made without ever considering that Betts would be the unaffordable one. And I have not even delved into the Sale extension, which is looking more and more like Sale jumped at it knowing his own health situation. Why else would the poster boy for Underpaid Contract Extensions leap at a second one?

But do you think having Price on the books affected the ability to retain Betts? It might be more than just overlapping years.

I don't like the ideaof trading Devers. Per BTV, one might expect a package like the following teams among the lowest in team fWAR at 3B in 2020. From Atlanta - OF Drew Waters, RHP Ian Anderson, RHP Kyle Wright. It is a good return assuming they all pan out. Not sure Atlanta is that keen on including Anderson. From Milwaukee - RHP Corbin Burnes, RHP Freddy Peralta, SS/2B Luis Urias. milwaukee would undoubtedly love Devers, but would they include 2 MLB pitchers? From Washington - SS/3B Carter Kieboom, RHP Jackson Rutledge, RHRP Tanner Rainey. I think they do it, but should Boston? From Arizona - C Daulton Varsho, OF Alek Thomas, OF Krisitian Robinson. The only pitcher who fits the trade is the (very likely) Untouchable Zac Gallen. Of these 4, the Atlanta package is the one I give the most thought to...

Kevin Kiermaier is owed $36.5 mill over the next 3 years. Expect that to be Boras' jumping off point in negotiations...

Oh I think we can safely say Mazza, Springs, Hall, Covey, Kickham, and Leyer are failed dives. Especially if you consider the rest of their careers...