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I think you mean a fourth first baseman. We also had Travis Shaw…

And it takes 2 years to catch them cheating…

I have to think it’s possible. It’s also possible Breslow prefers not to go “full throttle” in 2024 with Montgomery because then he won’t be able to afford Burnes/Fried/Wheeler/Woodward/whoever in 2025. Sometimes you gotta pick your spots. The most likely possibility remains the Sox are too cheap for any of them. But “most likely” doesn’t mean “only”…

The Cubs are in a building phase?

The big problem Montgomery is facing is neither he nor Snell is going to get the payday they want until the other signs somewhere, making him the last option on the table when teams just get desperate. But neither one is going to sign solely to help out the other. And this situation is further hampered by both having the same agent…

Last post about him, you called him a crybaby…

But how it rolled out (Cherington quitting, Dombrowski’s statements about wanting to keep Ben on) shows Dombrowski was brought in to replace Lucchino, not Cherington. If you count Cherington in the “every 4 years” thing, you’re mixing roles and misrepresenting…

Why? So I can see what players that I didn’t care about signed elsewhere?

And yes, Cherington’s resignation did feel like it was accompanied by a hissy fit…

Granted it seems like the structure was different. But Cherington also want the CBO. His title was General Manager/EVP. Both Dombrowski (Hazen) and Bloom (O’Hallorhan) had GMs underneath them…

They replaced two CBO’s after 4 years. I’m not even sure how important folks like Kennedy and O’Halloran are in that place. I think that’s why I almost never complain about them…

Do you have a relevant point? It’s not about whether or not you liked JBJ. Or Renfroe. And guess what - none of Bloom nor Cora nor Brian O’Hallorhan’s wife’s boyfriend cares about your thoughts on Bradley or Arroyo. They don’t care about mine either. Only one of us seems ok with that. The point is Cora had the option of playing either Bradley or Arroyo in RF. Cora chose Arroyo. Bloom did not. You might wish Cora had better options, but that didn’t change the fact that CORA CHOSE to play Arroyo out of position…

But like most fans, I solely blame/credit the name they give me. I never blamed Lucchino for anything and heaped it all on Cherington. I am not going to dump on or credit Kennedy for anything that happened with abloom in charge. Breslow is a similar focal point with me, although clearly operating within a budget that is not his fault…

Arroyo in RF was more Cora than Bloom. Bloom didn’t fill out lineup cards. Ever. You may not have liked letting Bradley hit vs LHP, but it was always an option and he could definitely play the defense. If Cora thought they needed a RHH RF, he could have ignored Arroyo and let Bradley post a sub-.500 OPS vs LHP. By playing Arroyo, all he did was leave himself open to criticism for benching his best defensive outfielder while playing a teammate out of position. He likely only does that if he believes Arroyo can vindicate him. That Arroyo made it out to RF as often as he did shows just how on board Cora was with that move. This doesn’t surprise me; Cora has always been a big Arroyo supporter. And I don’t think that was necessarily a flaw…

I think he was given a talk much closer to bring Tampa North. And he laid out his plan to fit his Tampa North budget. It fits most of your criticisms,. After all, how many free agent pitchers does Tampa spend more than $10mill on? Is Eflin the only one? I’m glad he spent some cash on players to help this team, although sometimes it felt like spending for PR purposes. Why else would they sign Story? At least that’s what it felt like at the time. My only thought were that it quashed any suspicion that they really were Tampa North. Maybe that was the whole goal there. Bloom might have been scapegoated, but his indecisiveness definitely merited being fired…

I blame him for doing nothing at the deadlines, and I count Hosmer as nothing. Really I could see counting Austin Davis and Hansel Robles as nothing, too. My exact words were “twiddled his thumbs”, which is a metaphor for inaction, not for “failing to sell.” I wouldn’t have liked it if he dealt JD and Sale in 2022 and Turner in 2023, but I would at least acknowledge he had a direction. Unlike some people, I’m not criticizing Bloom for not running the team the way I wanted it run; my criticisms are when he failed to run it at all…

He definitely let 1b go that one year. But you’re falling into the “This move didn’t work out do the whole plan is shot” mentality. Every GM makes moves that don’t work out. The idea is to limit those to impacting one season…

Maybe because what I saw was a team in terrible shape and you didn’t. I saw the 2019 team as a squad that dropped 24 games from the previous year, had over $300mill committed to three frequently injured pitchers, and had not locked up any of their young star player core. And did all this st a time when Tampa and NY were making huge strides and the 93-wins the Sox won two AL East pendants with were no net going to be good enough. And all this while everyone was ranking the Sox farm in the 25-30 range. Bloom did fix the farm. And he did make the postseason in 2021. And, if he didn’t just twiddle his thumbs, could have made it in 2022 and 2023 as well. Now if those last two had happened, are you still so critical of his plan?

You’re getting too mixed up with citing each individual move as part of the plan. Kike at SS was clearly not; it was a reaction to an injury. Bloom didn’t fix it properly but it clearly wasn’t planned. Also, can we stop labeling Yoshida a bust after one season? Did you think Hideki Matsui was a bust after one season? And especially since Yoshida was actually a very good hitter for the bulk of the year but had a late season collapse. So did Justin Turner. Was he also a mistake? In fact the notion that “he acquired player X and that guy was bad” is NOT an indictment of the entire plan. Especially not on these piddling one season moves. That’s more just fans being overly critical. I am not so certain not spending on pitching was Bloom’s idea. Not like they’ve gone crazy spending on it since his departure. His plan seemed simple to me - keep the parent club competitive without making too many major commitments, and build up the farm system the surest and fastest way possible (i.e. no high risk pitching prospects with early pucks). That he repeatedly folded in July and neither committed to selling nor actually trying to improve a borderline club was completely his fault and shows how he couldn’t commit to his own plan.

If Bloom knew how to handle July, was his plan so bad?

Not quite. The difference is that with masturbation, at least one person likes it…

I think the plan is to be like the Orioles, but to do so with skipping those bad years. Get right to the winning team with the stacked farm system…

Double if you count Criswell!

11 games? Can’t count him. I mean, you can’t discount the Sox for not having an ace in January when as recent as last year the champs did not get theirs until August. Nate was the guy for the first few months, but he wasn’t really all that much better than Bello last year…

Who was the Rangers ace last year?