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Trade them for the Diamondbacks…

Honestly, Flaherty has been very mediocre the last few years and Fried gets injured a lot. So is your question which team is better - one with Juan Soto? Or one with Roman Anthony and Jack Flaherty, but also with Max Fried on the IL? Both teams have pitching weaknesses. Which one has more money to fix them? (Probably Anthony/Flaherty team.) Of course they’re still not equal unless Anthony lives up the the hype. Soto is going to deliver…

Jackson Jobe, the man drafted ahead of Mayer?

The Sox traded prospects for Sale and it worked out brilliantly. The Sox spent money to extend Sale and it was catastrophic all around.

Unless you dealt him for a player with a ceiling of Cy Young candidate…

It’s been a bad year, but I still have some faith the Sox FO knew what they were doing. And even Atlanta valued him enough to demand Boston pay the bulk of Sale’s freight if Grissom was included…

Supportable, but 43 for 88 (.489) is some pretty insane happenstance…

Of course it does. You can’t play Story at 1b. The guy has a .288 OBP since coming to Boston; he doesn’t even know where first base is!!

A battle of Future Hall of Famers (and Criswell)…

Especially since the .724 OPS includes his PA with the bases loaded. In all other situations, his OPS is .711. With Tabler, the PA with the bases loaded was only 109 over his career. Granted, he was 43 for 88 in those situations. But is this just another collection of small samples spread out over a larger period? Tabler did have a reputation for hitting with the bases loaded; it’s even mentioned on his Wikipedia page. (And they call him “clutch” in that same paragraph.) Is this just a widely known happenstance or true clutch?

If the past includes name-calling, slurs, fights, unsubstantiated pedophilia accusations, doxing, etc. then swearing is not much of a problem. Let me be the first to put the “pro” in “profanity”…

Tabler’s career OPS was .724. With the bases loaded, it was 1.198. If that isn’t clutch, what is?

Exactly. Sometimes a guy is just not 100% in one October, and has a couple bad games and gets labeled a choker. Is Scherzer a choker because his postseason games in his late 30s aren’t as good as the ones in his mid 20s? That seems unfair…

Clutch is defined as the ability to come through in a critical situation where the outcome of the game is at stake. The perception (correct or incorrect) is a player performs beyond his normal skill set in these situations, but that might be more of a fan definition. Especially since many fans treat all postseason AB and IP as critical, when some just blatantly are not. If you think of a clutch player as just being himself in important at bats, that’s plausible. But then the issue is quite often that player is just a good player in any circumstance. I mean, aren’t bad hitters also “clutch” if they have a .600 OPS in both critical and non-critical situations? After all, they don’t succumb to pressure as much as they simply suck. But when clutch is thought of as excelling in critical situations, it gets difficult to prove. Most of our allegedly clutch hitters excel all the time, and really they turn into players thrust on a national stage more often to create memorable or epic moments. Would Derek Jeter be less clutch if he was on the Pirates? If you think so, clutch becomes a byproduct of environment as well. To me, in far too many years of watching MLB, I’ve only seen one player with the ability to excel in critical situations, and that would be former Indian/Royal utility infielder Pat Tabler. Tabler was a .700ish OPS guy throughout his career who somehow posted an OPS over 1.000 with the bases loaded, and he had a reputation regarding this ability to boot. He was often called upon to pinch hit in these situations because of this skill, giving him a disproportionate amount of plate appearances with the sacks full. No idea what it was about Tabler that made him excel in this one situation, but far bettter hitters have performed far worse where he shined. I stand by my belief that the only clutch player ever was Pat Tabler…

But at some point, many of those better pitchers have already thrown 160-220 IP, which certainly can affect performance. It’s probably a significant factor in why many of the game’s best pitchers (Maddux, Kershaw, Pedro, Price, Scherzer) were less effective in the postseason, especially since postseason numbers are often a collection of small samples spread out over multiple years and the occasional bad outing can skew the data…

I’d be ok with dealing Mayer but what about Anthony? Abreu isn’t exactly Rudy Pemberton out in RF. And I think a team with Abreu and a pitcher you can get for Anthony might be better ea team with Anthony and a pitcher that can be had for Abreu

The problem is - perception isn’t always reality. Was ARod really that bad in the postseason? Or did he have a few bad moments that got amplified by his high profile unlikeability? He did have a postseason OPS of .822, which, while it is certainly lower than his career OPS of .930, still isn’t exactly the stuff chokers are made of. The extremely likable Mookie Betts has a .710 OPS in the postseason (against a career OPS of .900), yet no one thinks of him as a postseason choke artist like they do A-Rod…

There are no stupid questions. Just questions that get asked to stupid people like me…

There’s no such place!!!

I don’t the is a single potential fate for Casas that would lead to Meidroth as the Sox starting 3b next year. Yet that was the one change you put into my fake lineup…

My normal speech involves dropping more F-bombs than a Pianosa air squadron. I’m ok with the swearing. But I can curb my language if the forum prefers it…

I will wager key organs within my body that, barring injury, Chase Meidroth is not the Sox starting 3b next year…

Cubs released Hector Neris. Neris has been problematic for the Cubs, especially in high leverage situations. But he’s still better than most of the Sox pen has been lately…

Or made by another person still around. Could be Cora…

That’s essentially what the Newton Beacon said as well…