S5Dewey

That's too much money to reward a punk with just because he can play baseball.

Baseball is the perfect game for friends to watch together. There's enough action to keep the interest and enough dead time to discuss anything and everything else. And drink beer.

My son followed the Sox religiously until he was out of college & got married. Now that he's got work & family responsibilities he waits until the next day and sometimes watches the game on Hulu.

Meh. I wasn't establishing blame as much as lamenting the fact that the FO signed off on the deal. DD was just the front man.

Really? One of the things that's usually understood in these long term contracts is that you're getting his best years first and you pay later for the right to those best years. If Price had already had three CY caliber years in baseball he could opt out and leave a hole in the Sox pitching staff that most likely wouldn't be filled with $30MM. Those CY guys don't grow on trees and they don't come cheap. Spending what's left of that $30MM on younger players after signing someone who isn't CY caliber isn't a bad idea, as long as the team doesn't plan to be competitive every year.

If Hosmer has that kind of money in front of him he should sign quickly before the Royals change their mind.

But that only works if Price opts to move on. If he doesn't move on we're stuck with his salary over the last two years of his contract when, as you said, there's a better chance of his becoming that financial sinkhole. Based on the first two years of the contract he'd be nutso to give up a guaranteed $30MM to move on after this year even if he pitches well. Maybe I'm too conservative but if I were in his position I wouldn't walk away from $60MM in the hope I might get $65MM... or not. It would be interesting to see if anyone would give him that kind of money based on a good year in 2018 considering what he did in 2016 & 2017, his playoff record, and that elbow.

I couldn't believe Dave got snookered into this contract at the time. It guaranteed that Price would be one of the highest paid pitchers in the league for the first three years, almost guaranteed that he'd leave after three years if he was pitching well, and guaranteed that we'd be paying him $30MM/year if he was pitching poorly. Would you want that guy negotiating YOUR divorce?? Who knows? Maybe JDM is holding out for a contract like this, thinking Dave will make the same mistake twice. Reminder to Dave: Just say NO to long term expensive contracts with an opt out clause only for the player.

...which is why giving Price that contract was a bad idea to begin with. I know it's now easy to say that we had to have him and he had us over a barrel, but in retrospect how much worse would this team have been without him? In 2016 he won 17 games with an ERA of ~4.00 in the regular season and ~13.5 in the post season. The best thing that can be said about Price is that he continually proves that "once you get to the playoffs anything can happen". Repeatedly, sometimes. In in 2017 we got For $30MM, I expect more.

At the end of the day there is no perfect way to judge players. Stats have their flaws as does the eye test. For example, you could watch Bogaerts and I both play SS and it wouldn't take you long to figure out which of us is better at it, even without the stats. If the eye test were as useless (my word, not anyone else's) as some make it out to be there'd be no need for scouting - which served baseball well for decades. Stats and the eye test augment one another nicely. In fact, if it weren't for the stats I'd have no doubt that the Sox kept the wrong shortstop. It's the combination of stats and the eye test make me unsure. One thing I'm relatively sure of is that the timing of this whole debate/discussion is the result of my changing my sig line so I'll tell you what I'll do. If you'll take down your insulting sig line I'll take down my equally insulting one.

I'm not going to go looking for any "stat r metric that says Iglesias is a better all around SS than Bogaerts" because I didn't say that he is. What I said was that I'm not sure we made kept the right shortstop, and I'm not. I'm hoping that Bogaerts was injured last year, it affected his offense, and he'll have an OPS of .800+ this year. If/When that happens I'll be surer that the Sox kept the right one. You're a stathead and I'm fine with that. I believe there's something to be said for both stats and 'the eye test' and you (apparently) don't agree. I'm fine with that too. Let it go.

Giving my head a good hard shake, wondering which of your points to respond to first..,,, You want to use fWAR because it makes your point better. However, all that's doing is pointing out one of the flaws i see in WAR in that we have two different bodies computing WAR and they can't get it the same. Is there another statistic that's named the same but two bodies get different results??? RBI's? BA? OPS? And people wonder why some of us have little faith in WAR What I said was that I wasn't sure (and I mean exactly that, "not sure") that we kept the right shortstop. Since Simmons was never a part of the Red Sox organization dragging him into it isn't even germane to our discussion. If Simmons were one of the choices between the three the answer would have been obvious - but he wasn't. I'd rather have Simmons than either of the two SS's we're talking about. So what? I'm not sure if you're using fWAR or bWAR to arrive at Iggy's 4.4 oWAR but actually that only strengthens my position that, again, I'm NOT SURE we kept the right SS.

I would say that depends on how much faith you put in WAR, and how much you like defense. In 2017 Bogaerts had an offense bWAR of 3.4 and defense bWAR of -.04 In 2017 Iggy had an offense bWAR of 1.0 and a defense bWAR of +1.1 It looks like Bogaerts had the edge in WAR because of his offense (no surprise there!) but he's not even as good as a replacement player defensively while Iggy is an asset on both sides of the ball. It's much like the situation with JBJ only the opposite. JBJ's defense solidly outweighs his offense but I still like having him out there. But that's just me. That's why, as I said, I'm not sure.....

Hey, I'm not the one who brought Iggy's name into this!! But given what's transpired since I'm still not sure the Sox kept the right shortstop.

The condescension on this forum from some posters now is mind-boggling. "I know more than you do so if you don't agree with me you're STUPID." I know the tenor of the country now is to be as crass, insulting and assertive as possible but does it have to carry over into this forum?

Here's an idea. Move Jeter's team to Vegas and call the them Las Vegas Posse. Then have them go on a six game losing streak and see what they're called THEN!!

That's easy. It's because those two are entirely two different types of players. One gets the bulk of his WAR from offense and the other from defense. Those of us who want JBJ to remain on the team have defense higher than those who want HIM traded. Vice versa for Bogaerts.

This entire discussion reminds me of a study done by the University of Maine several years ago regarding whether burning wood was a viable source of heat for a home in the winter in Maine. I never heard the results of the study but I certainly hope they decided it was since we'd been doing it for hundreds of years. But it did raise the question of what we'd tell our grandparents if UM decided it wasn't! Sometimes our lyin' eyes are pretty accurate.

Yep. We did last year and we've already made plans to do it again. He's a nice guy and knowledgeable about the Sox. I'm looking forward to it. I've met maybe a half dozen people who post. I met a guy from the midwest there when we were on the old BDC thread. cp176 reminds me of him. A high school & Legion baseball coach with a love for the Sox. He came down every year to visit with his father-in-law and his FIL had the tickets but since then his FIL has passed away so he's not coming down. Too bad. Another great guy.

I've got the bill for my ST tickets and plan on paying it.

I'll give you that my eyes are untrained and biased but that doesn't mean that there aren't some flaws in RF/150 that I pointed out. BTW, I'd love to know what all that "training" consists of. LOL

I agree with this, which is why I see JBJ's offensive ceiling being so high that his outstanding defense makes it crazy to even think about dealing him. If JBJ gets traded and has a breakout year there are going to be a lot of posters here who are going to be ready to have DD's head on a platter, forgetting how those same posters wanted to trade him.

I just don't have much faith in things like RF/150 (or whatever it's called) as it pertains to JBJ. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but here's how RF/150 seems to work. There are "trained observers" who are timing how long it takes JBJ and everyone else to get from where he starts to where the ball comes down. They then plug that time into some hocus-pocus formula and come up with a "Range Factor". That's fine if a player gets to where the ball comes down exactly as the ball gets there. However, JBJ is usually standing there waiting for the ball to come down. Consequently he's had more range than his RF shows. The hocus-pocus formula might be fine if JBJ were only waiting for the ball occasionally - that would make those few times inconsequential - but he makes a habit of being there waiting for the ball. This is like my hearing that RF/150 doesn't really apply to LFs in Fenway park because of the wall, and the more "exceptions" I see and hear about the less faith I have in RF/150, and since RF is a part of WAR.... well, you see where I'm going.

But it's not just that. If we shift Beni over to CF we've weakened our CF defense and if we install JDM in LF we've weakened the defense there also. This whole thing makes no sense to me. The strongest part of the Sox is their OF defense so they shouldn't be weakening it to add a little offense.

I see that scenario as the Sox scoring more runs but also giving up more runs. JBJ has a 162 game career avg. of 72 RBI's while JDM's is 100. The question becomes whether that 28 RBI difference is worth the loss in defense. In order for that trade to happen we'd have to weaken the defense at two positions. I see it as being a wash at best.