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OMG!! A fan getting excited about a player on his team! Call Ripley’s! Devers can hit a baseball like very few people on this planet. Why wouldn’t any fans of his teams get excited? Even last year, he started out horribly but then went on a tear and we all loved him again. He was an exciting hitter. The problem was he was a terrible 3b who was very resistant to change to the point where he became a difficult and selfish teammate…

Since you called it a potpourri, who could say no?

BTV suggests a fair package for Shaw is Early straight up, or Bello plus Witherspoon. It also suggests Bello plus Durbin is a “minor overpay”, but it doesn’t matter since Durbin probably has very little appeal to the Cubs. I don’t mind giving up Bello. But I doubt he’s enough and this further clogs the Sox up with position players and does deplete pitching depth badly. Maybe if Chicago included the ironically named Luke Little? Or ignore BTV. Bello for Shaw straight up…

I don’t think Hoyer makes that trade at gunpoint…

I’ve seen Scholtens before. He’s been a <gasp> injury reclamation project the Rays latched on to after the White Sox released him.

Thats probably their biggest need, since they are experiencing a rash of SP injuries that just added Boyd to the IL yesterday. Horton is done for the year and Steele has had setbacks. While both Boyd and Steele might return at some point, someone else is likely to go down by then. They’re loaded with MLB-ready bats, but not so much for SP…

Hoerner has already signed an extension. Matt Shaw is prime trade bait since he’s relegated to a UIF for the next few seasons. Not the best use of a first round pick. The only reason the Cubs are holding is probably related to having no needs. Going 18-3 in their last 21 games has erased a few weaknesses. Neto is not getting traded. The Angels’ asking price might be something like Tolle plus Early. I’m out. McLain has dropped off significantly since his impressive rookie year. Hes probably attainable, but does he fix anything?

Gray is clearly in decline. For the past decade, his calling card was “you better swing because I’m not going to walk you.” This year his walks are way up…

I’m willing to bet it wasn’t Valdez’ first time plunking someone after giving up a B2B home runs…

So the one he got out of? The trade of Fielder for Kinsler was a great salary/baseball move for Detroit….

No argument. But that doesn’t change that the second they underperformed, he was out the door. Thats probably not a coincidence. Not sure what you’re arguing about. They had a great run under him, and the second it showed signs of stopping, he was let go. Same as in Boston…

A more realistic alternate timeline eould be if Price didn’t get injured in 2017 and then opted out a year later, would the Sox have been able to keep Mookie? But Zack Scott did kill that notion when he admitted the Sox basically misread how much Mookie would get…

And are you calling that a scene because it’s pure fiction? Per NBC Boston and Tom Verducci, Dombrowski was exploring trades for Betts, including one with the Dodgers allegedly involving Will Smith. That doesn’t sound like he declined. But I am open to any and all sources saying otherwise…

But what about the drop in performance? His last team, the 2015 Tigers, won 74 games, 4 fewer than Cherington’s ladt place Red Sox team….

And if the 2019 won 90-100 games and made the postseason, DD still gets fired?

No doubt. Im sure every owner wants a cheap winner. Because if the team doesn’t win, it’s easier to cope with a cheap loser than an expensive one. It’s also easier to try to fix a cheap loser than an expensive one. I would hope Henry noticed the 2021 team wasn’t drastically different from the 2018 team…

If you look at his history, Dombrowski was fired in Detroit after his very successful run culminated in a mediocre team with ridiculous financial commitments. I can see parallels in Boston. I know there were rumors about his difficult personality, etc. but let’s get real. He didn’t suddenly morph into a difficult person in 2019. Whether difficult or not, when his team is winning, owners accept him. But when the winning stops/slows down and the costs don’t, suddenly he’s not held in the same regard…

Fair, but what inspired that change in direction? He wanted to stop being successful for no reason? I could see that change being inspired by the facts (plus others) I mentioned concerning the 2019 team…

So now Bregman’s contract was a conspiracy to trade Devers? That does lead to two painfully obvious questions. 1. Why not just trade Devers? It’s not like any good PR from signing him could outshine the negative PR from dealing him. And clearly, even with his me-first attitude, Devers was very tradable. 2. Does the risk outweigh the reward? There was always the chance the player doesn’t opt out and then at attempt to drop a $300mill contract winds up costing an additional $80mill. The Sox probably learned a valuable lesson about opt outs after David Price didn’t exercise his. This is an over-convoluted conspiracy theory to explain things that didn’t work out, but it’s dealing with an organization that has historically moved on from expensive players and willingly taken the bad PR while simultaneously cashing the good checks. It turns out all you had to do to make Devers look bad was move him off third base, something that should have been done years ago given his (to be kind) questionable defense there. This could have been done without risking the $120million on Bregman. And it’s far more plausible that Dombrowski was fired because he needed the largest payroll in MLB to build a mediocre 84 win team that came nowhere near the postseason, and whose future was heavily reliant on 3 oft-injured pitchers that were still owed a total of $300million. Even if Dombrowski wanted to pay Mookie more, that kind of thing pribably happens to every CBO at some point and very few (re: none) get fired for it. It’s more likely that kind of thing would convince Dombrowski to resign than it would get him fired…

So the home runs had nothing to do with throwing at Story and the timing was coincidental?

Most fire sales don’t involve corr players with multiple years of control left. If Houston has one, I would expect them to keep Alvarez, Peña, Hunter Brown, and very likely Cam Smith. Priority moves will be Walker snd Hader….

Hamilton wasn’t that bad when he was here. He basically filled a role and got relied on too much due to the failures of others. Of course in both cases, that other “failure” had a bad stretch of 100 or so PA very early in their career. And yes, the Boston media has always been horrible about magnifying ex-Sox players. I’ll start the bidding with Bob Lobel, the most annoying sportscaster in media history, and his oft-repeated “Why can’t we get players like that?” for every highlight wuth a former Sox players. Gee, Bob, maybe because you whined about him endlessly when he was here…

Oh i dont think stats translate - even OPS+ - but I do believe struggling isn’t always just because of new geography. Stats do convey that struggle. Plus Theyre facts, while “he’d hit if he were here” is an alternate reality pipe dream. And I certainly don’t give ex-Sox or players the Sox avoided a pass for their new locations while holding new Red Sox players to a completely different standard. Some injuries are probably inevitable regardless of geography. We call them elbow injuries…

Somehow I struggle with “his goal was to get out of the game” was higher on his priority list than “f*** these guys and their back-to-back home runs.” Especially from a guy as mercurial and volatile as Valdez…

I think he meant when Gibson played.