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When it comes to 6 or 7 year deals, it absolute is optional. Or at least mitigable. The plan of “doing everything” to win now can and often does have long term negative effects. As fans we have the luxury of saying “who cares? Deal with the future when it gets here.” But a GM had better not have that same attitude. Let’s play the hypothetical but also realistic game where Cherington’s long term plan starts working. He deals prospects to fill gaps, and the Sox remain competitive for several more years. But the upfront price was 2014 and 2015 as they happened. The alternate reality is Dombrowski runs the team exactly as he has and has the same successes. But come, say, 2020 and 2021, the farm has run dry and the heavy contracts are too burdensome. He cannot afford to and fails to keep his young core and has no one to replace them. In these two seasons, the Sox are not competitive and out of the race before the ASB. Which scenario do you prefer?

It's an optional part of doing business. There are plenty of teams that minimize their involvement and still have stretches of success...

The Sox would need to go at best 20-47 the rest of the way to achieve MADSTORK's prediction of maxing out at 86 wins....

The most shocking aspect is that on July 12, the Sox have yet to lose 30 games. The last 2 teams won the division, losing their 30th game on June 17th (2017) and June 20th (2016)...

Hershiser in 1988 was about as dominant an anyone, especially given his opponent was the Bash Brothers..

Walks get factored into just about every offensive stat except batting average and slugging percentage. This includes OBP, OBA, wOBA, OPS, Runs Created and WAR...

And not using the present value thing, Scherzer's deal was for $210mill, which was the number that caused a lot of market noise. While Washington probably saved some value by deferring money (Fangraphs estimated it was closer to $131mill than $195mill), the future of that market was not as known, either. But I'm not going to argue economics with an accountant. Washington probably did well with their financing. The real issue was the $30mill AAV they placed on starting pitching, which was a previously unbroken barrier...

If I was GM of the Rockies, I might accept that deal, despite it's inclusion of Travis, who would not interest me. But Sharwyn and Chatham would. I might insist on a less MLB-ready, but higher upside A-baler in place of Travis. But it wouldn't be a deal-breaker. Of course, it is also fairly easily topped by another team looking for a 2B. Now would this same package get Dozier? Would it be worth asking? Or do you think LeMahieu, who has Coors-inflated numbers, but is a physical beast among 2Bmen, is the smarter option?

Scherzer still has 3 years left, for which he will be paid $126mill, including the deferred money. Lester has two years left, for which he will be $57mill. And arguably his 2017 season wasn't worth the $27mill salary. His 2017 was very similar to what the Sox are getting from Price now...

Right now, we have two pitchers one would consider "ace" caliber, at least at their time of acquisition. One was traded for ad is living up to the hype and beyond. The other was acquired via free agency and, while pitching well at the moment, is only in year 3 of a 7 year deal and most of us are hoping and praying he accidentally opts out. It's easy to say now "If Ben had gone after Scherzer...". But it's not like Scherzer's future health and performance were known at the time, either. It's also easy to say now that Scherzer ould have been so much cheaper. Do you remember the market reaction after that deal was signed? It was far out of line from what was expected. Really, look at all of the best pitchers the Sox have had in the last 20 years. Most of them were acquired via trade, which mitigated the length of their stay and probably the cost in many cases. This seems to always be the way to go. In fact, some times these pitchers are young enough to be extended and still mitigate the window of ineffectiveness at the end. My biggest issue with Ben was his failure to trade away a few prospects. He could have acquired a few shorter term arms to sit a top this rotation had he been willing to do so, especially given how overvalued prospects were in trades at the time, especially A-ball prospects..

Or maybe the idea with Cherington was to avoid those 7 year deals for starting pitchers. Those contracts always have a few years of over-priced, payroll-strangling ineffectiveness at the end, especially for pitchers 30 and over. Avoiding those years is a good thing. My personal thoughts are - never trade for a closer and never sign an ace. Closers typically require shorter contracts for lower mileage arms and are less likely to flame out. But if you look at what it takes to trade for one, it’s practically the same package as a frontline starter. (For instance, Chapman, Miller, Giles). And signing an ace type pitcher is a guarantee of bad years at the end; the only question becomes how many good years you get upfront, if any...

As great as that is, the specialization in today’s game ensures no one will ever come close to that, but that shouldn’t be held against today’s pitchers...

A couple ways to look at it. They had at most 3 games per year, and it is easier to be effective 1-3 times than 6 or 7, especially against postseason teams. On the other hand, if they were tired or injured that year, a couple bad performances become magnified in that small sample size...

To be fair about the postseason legacies for Gibson and Koufax, there was only one round of playoffs for the bulk of their careers...

It’s easy to say who was better in hindsight, but was it so obvious at the time which of the two would be the smarter sign?

Schilling was an extremely impressive post-season pitcher. But is he the standard all pitchers need to be held up to?

He was on a playoff team 2 years ago...

Scherzer wasn't an easy sign, especially when you see how far Washinton was clearly willing to go...

They did. But they weer all from different years, etc. These pitchers were probably in varying health and fatigue in each season. Even one season to the next, you might be looking at two completely different pitchers despite it being the same guy...

I'm sure if I looked into it, I could find as many samples to disprove this as you could to prove it. I also think anything a player did 9 years ago is not relevant today. Players just don't maintain the same physical skills at the same level over that time. To me, you can't tell me on one hand a player needs to "make adjustments" to survive in this league, and then hold him accountable for his pre-adjustment stats as if they can be used to predict what he will do tomorrow. For any stats, I find anything older than 3 years old is probably obsolete by now. And in the post-season, it just isn't fair to take data points from a widespread number of years, when the player was in varying stages of development and adjustment, and very likely in different physical and/or health conditions, and then lump them all together and say it paints an accurate picture...

Remember the good old days when Yankee fans bragged that if they didn’t win the World Series, the season was a failure? It’s getting really funny how far that bar has fallen. “If the Yankees get the Wild Card and just advance farther than Boston, the season is not a failure!!”

But the point is it always gets applied the other way - with post-season stats all lumped together as if they all occurred in the same week. It’s almost as dumb as when they give you a player’s stats vs one team. For some veteran players, that can literally be against dozens of pitchers who had nothing in common except wearing the same laundry...

It is forever in an occupation where the average career length is one season...

Just trade with the Dodgers for a utility infielder.like Brayvic Valera. There is something about the water in Los Angeles that makes every utility infielder to play there suddenly morph into an All Star caliber player. From Jamey Carroll to Justin Turner to Keke Hernandez to Max Muncy. And probably a couple more. We missed out on Charlie "Pinch Homer" Culberson. Are we going to keep passing on these guys and their obvious path to stardom?

He does have more time than that at 2B. Pearce to 2B. Holt/Nunez to 3B. Done By which I mean, all infield defense is Boston would be officially done...