S5Dewey

I believe in statistics, therefore I will make disparaging and condescending comments toward anyone who believes there's room for anything other than advanced metrics in rating players.

No kidding!! I have seven (or eight) months every year when my focus is the Boston Red Sox. After that I'm left to deal with my addiction 'cold turkey'.

See the second sentence in the post directly above yours.

This is a logical trade I could get behind but ONLY of Stanton tears up the opt-out clause. In fact, unless Stanton want's to give that up I'm not interested in him. Thinking about going into 2021 without Stanton OR Benintendi could make me a believer in the cliff. :-(

As I have said many times, two words one never wants to hear in the same sentence are "cancer" and "pancreas". Ugh

That's well put. Our infield will be decent, but only if Devers steps it up. Otherwise it'll be indecent. If I give Pedey the benefit of doubt and say that he'll come back as strong as he was before Machado probably ruined what's left of his career we he will be the only infielder we have who's better than average on both sides of the ball. That's why I don't understand some people slobbering all over themselves to weaken the strongest part of our defense - the outfield - by trading JBJ. I understand that JBJ's offensive streakiness may make him the weakest of the outfielders, but his up-the-middle GG caliber defense shows up for every game and when your infield is as weak as ours will probably be I want some part of the defense to be outstanding. I am and probably always will be a believer in up-the-middle defense and right now the only two up-the-middle guys who are better than average are Vazquez and JBJ. If someone is going to be traded it should be the SS Bogaerts. What's that you say? Nobody is going to want Bogaerts? Well, that's an indication that we shouldn't want him either so the best way to upgrade the team is to try to trade Bogaerts et.al. for the power we need.

I don't understand why you keep picking on poor Ryan Dempster! Ok, you can say that the $13M he got for 2013 was an overpay but at the same time he averaged almost 6 innings per start and gave up only ~3 runs per start. I see that as being pretty great for a #5 pitcher. I'd rather have paid him $13M and won the WS than have paid half that to another pitcher and lost. And while we're talking about money, Dempster is also the guy who walked away from another $13M in 2014 by retiring before the 2014 season. That should count for a lot to someone who tracks salaries and luxury tax implications! Besides, there's this issue of him and Arod and the HBP. Ryan Dempster will always be a Red Sox hero in my book, if only for that!

I continually find it interesting how some posters can try to make a case that Clutch doesn't exist and in the same breath say that the sample size is too small to be definitive. They're trying to say that the sample size is too small to prove that clutch exists but large enough to prove that it doesn't.

I've always thought that if a player can play 3B then he can play 1B. The ball comes off the plate at the same angle, the distance is about the same, the biggest difference that I see is that the footwork is different. Since Butterfield made Hanley into a 1B-man I can see him doing the same with either Moustakous or Devers. What about signing Moose to play 1B, leaving Devers @ 3B, and then swapping them if things don't work out at 3B? We get their power and the best of the two defenses.

Two things concern me about Stanton. I don't want to be trading away JBJ or Bogaerts for a guy whom we're going to be paying millions of dollars for and who's going to walk in a couple of years. In order for me to be interested in Stanton that Opt Out clause has to go. Also, whether his injuries are related or not, this guy has missed significant time in three consecutive years. That's Ellsbury-esque and I can remember that many posters on BDC wanted to be the ones boiling the tar and bringing the feathers to run Ells out of Boston. How many times does a player have to have unrelated injuries before he becomes injury-prone? There's nothing we can do about the injuries and I'd (probably) swallow hard and make a trade involving one of the B's, but only without the opt out. Both together is too big a gamble. It reminds me of a young lady I knew once. She was very pretty and great in the sack, which make it easy to overlook the fact that she had a disposition like a pit viper. Sometimes it's easy to overlook shortcomings during the good times but sooner or later those bad times will come back to bite you on the ass.

This is a nice idea - until one thinks about the ramifications of it. What it does is give the #6 guy about 10 starts a year, all of them at the expense of five pitchers who are better than that #6. That would provide for a lot of fresh arms in October, which they won't need because they'll be playing golf. I'm as concerned as everyone is about the effect of multiple innings on Sale's arm but at the same time we need that guy out there starting games if we're going to qualify for the playoffs. I'd rather see him on a pitch count of.. say.. 90 and then turn the game over to the pen. Unfortunately even that is difficult to do because Sale isn't going to be happy about being pulled when he's cruisin', and an unhappy player may not be a productive player. It's a tough call and I don't have the solution, but I don't see limiting the starts of the 5 man rotation as being the answer.

I'll be surprised if Butterfield gets replaced. He's known as a guru of infield defense and is credited with teaching Hanley to play 1B as well as working with Bogaerts on his footwork and getting into position to make throws. The Sox may want Butterfield around to work with Devers whether he ends up at 3B or 1B.

Hahahahahahahaha. Good one!!

...which would lead to more HR's. That's a good point. I hadn't though of it from that angle.

I may have posted this before - I'm old and I forget what I've said to whom - but college baseball has gone to a flatter seamed ball that allows the balls with near HR power to carry about 20' further than the old ball. Maybe MLB has gone to that too? Whatever. The juiced ball is probably here to stay so the Sox have to adapt to the change. The thing that has bothered me the most about the juiced ball vs. the Sox lack of HR's is that our season may have had better resuts had the ball not been juiced. This team wasn't built to hit HR's, rather to get a lot of base hits, and the juiced ball worked against them.

IMHO it's Cora's job to lose. The rest is just Plan B in case Cora turns them down.

I'm not sure how much of that post is serious. I recognize that not all professional athletes are bastions of character but there is a line that has to be drawn someplace. I happen to think that Machado is nothing but a low-class punk who's a danger to everyone he plays against. I don't care how "clutch" he is or how good he is defensively. I want no part of him on "my" Boston Red Sox. I'd platoon Moon & a700 @ 3B and take my chances before I'd let Machado see the inside of the Red Sox clubhouse. Edit: I see Machado as being no better than ARod and IMO there's no place for either of those guys in professional baseball.

Just f***ing NO!! I was going to post this in the Pedey thread but it may fit just as well here. I've been trying to figure out why all the hate for Pedey on this board. I'm unhappy about "It's not me, it's them", but that's something that has to be handled within the clubhouse. If it has affected the clubhouse atmosphere that's one thing but AFAIK there's no evidence that's happened. There's as good a chance it was settled internally as not. So then we come to Pedey's lack of production and lost time. Some of that is due to his style of play, and deep down we knew that would happen, but some of it is also due to that cheap shot Machado put on Pedey's already questionable knee. Am I really the only one who recognizes the impact that had on this year's team as well as Pedey's future???? And some posters actually want to sign this guy???? I have NO interest under any circumstances of Machado ever cashing a check from the Boston Red Sox. In fact, I'm hoping he gets beaten and raped by a gang of homeless people and left for dead in an alley. Karma's a bitch.

The only thing that doesn't interest me about Stanton is that nasty little opt-out. If he could be talked out of that I'd trade Beni for Stanton and throw in whomever we have in the minors that isn't in our immediate plans. We take on the salary (dump) and the M's get a blue chip young player to rebuild around. Win/win. But unless he can be talked out of the opt-out I have no interest in giving up any quality players for him since he then becomes essentially a rental.

Like...Just say NO to Machado!!

IIRC Judge's slide began in a Red Sox series when Kimbrel exposed the fact that Judge can't get to the high fast ball.

I'm not going to speculate on who JF's replacement will be but I believe it will be someone who can manage all three of the Boston media, the clubhouse, and make the on-field decisions. I don't see it being Gardenhire because he's never had to handle a hostile media, plus IMO the Sox are going to be looking for someone younger.

I understand all of that, and agree. I had seen several posts prefaced with "If he were 100% healthy" and my post was more of a "DUH!!" statement. In reality I don't see Pedey ever being completely out of baseball regardless of the condition of his Machado-injured knee. I hope if he's not going to be able to play at a high level that he'd 'take one for the team' and instead take some kind of a coaching position while drawing his pay. But.. Time will tell.

But of course if he were 100% healthy we wouldn't even be talking about getting rid of him. There is THAT!!

Machado would be a better fit in a Yankees uniform.