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If you had said “drafted”, my answer would have been different. Possibly non-existant…

Yes. If you have players performing at a serviceable lever but making league minimum (or thereabouts), it makes it easier to retain elite and extremely expensive players. Have you ever heard of the Los Angeles Dodgers?

Unless you count Devers and Bogaerts…

Doesn’t matter if they’d play a big role. They just had to make minimum wage. But as you asked, who would you prefer in RF? JBJ or te still cheaper Manny Margot? How about 2b? Jeter Downs, Yolmer Sanchez, or 2022 All Star Sergio Espinal? How about choosing between Kopech or Brayan Bello? Heck, what about Kopech vs Rich Hill? These deals all helped win a ring, but they also helped create the situation the team had today…

It would have been even cooler if the one time he’d been retired, the pitcher was Josh Outman (no relation). Alas, Josh has been out of MLB since 2014…

The problem is a lot of these issues were inevitable, as the Sox spent heavily on free agents and drained the upper farm. Some of us have been saying so for a while. The decree to get under the tax threshold just complicated matters further. This wasn’t caused by incompetency in running the team the past off-season. This has been smoldering for years…

He’s also a Chris Farley run-alike, which makes for great television when he gets on base. Like I said, we’re Vogelbach fans in my house…

Chicago is perfectly safe in over 90% of the neighborhoods. It’s a very large city in area and only has a few spots where you really need to worry. And even in those neighborhoods, you’re safe we’ll over 90% of the time…

Why does it matter what position the power bat plays? He did replace Renfroe (19 HR 43 RBI) with Trevor Story (15 HR 58 RBI)…

I’m not surprised.

I think it would help negotiations, and the one year against their $108mill in commitments is a drop in the bucket. Despite my thoughts on it, I’d still be shocked as Hell to see Vazquez get a QO, and I get why he won’t get one…

Nothing from Old Red yet?

Ok, but which of the known options graded better than a D? And if you can unearth any hidden ones, please add to the list. But as Old Red’s complaint is Bloom should have done better, what is he referring to? Is there some unknown offer I’m missing? Or did he just see bad grades from pundits who failed to address the entirety of the deal and surrounding financial implications and simply looked solely at talent without taking money and years of control into account?

And why shouldn’t he? My daughter has recently gotten into MLB as a diehard Cubs’ fan, and her perusals around the league have lead to a fascination with the unathletic and remarkably ugly Vogelbach, a man she cannot believe plays sports for a living. So, yes, Vogelbach is worth any price IMO…

Well those were absolutely the only offers that anyone published. I’m sure several other teams checked in, but taking on one year of an OF making $25mill plus a portion of Price’s deal also eliminated over 2/3 of MLB before names even changed hands. And everyone who panned the trade in the media failed to mention even another single interested party. So it’s possible/likely other offers existed, the extent of how serious they were cannot be ascertained. That leaves two known serious offers. If you know of a third, I’d love to add it to my list of options. I welcome all corrections…

While true, especially for relievers (Diekman!!), I don’t expect farm-altering pieces for any of them. Although if one of them gets a non-descript heretofore unknown who turns into the next Josh Winckowski, it will be a job well done…

Vazquez is a free agent anyway. Keeping him or trading him doesn’t change that status…

Replacing Mookie was never going to happen. If you think he did poorly because all the pundits gave the trade a D, what better option did he pass on? (Disclosure - I preferred the original Verdugo/Graterol deal at the time. And despite Graterol’s health struggles, I still do.) But it’s not like 29 teams were throwing their best names at Boston and Bloom just chose poorly. His options were limited. He could: 1) have held Betts and Price (whom the Sox would still be paying $31mill to) for one more season. He really couldn’t re-sign Betts because Mookie wanted a ton of money and Henry wanted to reset the limit, which becomes impossible while paying full price Mookie and Price 2) traded him to LA as we saw 3) traded him and Price to San Diego for Wil Myers, one of Cal Quantrill or Joey Lucchesi, and one of Manny Margot or Josh Naylor. That’s it. Those are the options. So if 2 is a D, which of 1 or 3 was better? I suspect you’ll ignore the question and continue to complain while pretending there were dozens of better offers that were refused for no reason whatsoever…

The most free-spending GM in team history couldn’t lock him up. Nothing that Mookie (or more accurately, Mookie’s agent) said at the time indicated this was going to be possible except in an extremely cost-prohibitive way. And even then, had the Sox extended Mookie, Bogaerts would have left after 2019. So it comes down to Betts vs Bogaerts and Verdugo. That’s not a slam dunk either way IMO…

But they’d be even more worse off if they held Mookie for one more 60 game season and then saw him walk to free agency. And Winckowski is making a good argument that 6 season of him is better than 2 season of Benintendi would have been…

Gee you spotted the only flaw with that post…

Eovaldi has been a home run machine this year, not a good trait for a pitcher. He’s had a long career riddled with injuries, and is already 32. He’s very unlikely to be healthier in his 30s than he was in his 20s. The Sox already have Sale and Paxton under control for next season; how many oft-injured pitchers do they need? You can’t rant about the GM not filling in all the injuries on one thread and then advocate for more players whose Topps baseball card lists their position as “IL” on another…

Dude half the league needs SO, and so far only one has been moved, and that happened this weekend. Could the Sox have acquired Luis Castillo? Sure. But it would have cost at least one of Casas or Mayer…

The starting pitching has been addressed multiple times, but internal options go first for two reasons. 1. Easier to undo if something doesn’t work out 2. Can do it anytime, unlike trades that require waiting for another team to sell

Hell mine are often unpopular among the stat crowd. And many are not so hesitant to point it out, especially my mistakes and flawed logic (which I am more than fine with)…