S5Dewey

The problem with Brown is that he wants to bring his entire band with him. I don't see that as being a bad thing. At least we would know he's going to be entertaining even if he can't pitch.

That seems like a nice idea... until you think about what it means. It means that a two-year run is probably out of the question because the smart thing to do is to trade your key players while they're at their highest value. 2016 - 93/69 2017 - 93/69 (two respectable building seasons) 2018 - 108/54, A WSC, right on schedule and the players are at their peak. The question now is, do you want to shoot for back-to-back, or trade key players away to stay with the plan?

The more the FO says it the the more it sounds like, "We intend for the team payroll to start moving downward. If it goes below the LT limit, so much the better."

Again going to my portfolio comparison, let's say a person has buys $400,000 worth of stock and over two years that investment increased to $500,000. In the next six months the market has crashed a bit and his $400,000 is only worth $450,000.... has he lost money? There's no doubt that JH can sell the franchise for more than he initially paid for it but if he doesn't sell it at the highest value ever has he lost money?

It's the nature of TalkSox after a disappointing season.

Very true. Owning a franchise is much like owning shares in the stock market. You can look at your portfolio today and say say that it's worth $500,000 but it's only worth that much at the moment. The value will go up or down depending on what you buy or sell. Owning a MLB franchise is like that too. Although I don't know exactly how much the Boston Red Sox are worth this morning it's more than it would be worth if JH stopped spending money and became more complacent about winning. That approach would eventually reduce the NESN income as well as the income from ticket sales, and when the revenue dried up the worth of the franchise would dip. In short, JH needs for the Sox to remain competitive in order to maintain the value of his brand.

IMO resetting next year after Mookie can be a FA and JDM can exercise his opt-out makes a lot more sense than doing it in 2020. The thing we seem to be overlooking is that our position players are plenty good enough to win the WS and our pitching staff was injury plagued all year. Keeping that pitching staff is risky because they may remain injury prone as they age but trading them is equally as risky because they may very well bounce back from their injuries. In addition, if we sign two more pitchers one or both of them may get injured throughout the year. I like going forward with what we have.

Ok.. let me follow this... 1) Our #1 pitcher is suspect because of arm/elbow/shoulder problems that have limited his innings. 2) We should trade our #2 and/or our #3 pitchers to save money. 3) We can't afford to sign a #1 or #2 pitcher because of financial constraints 4) It's not a winning strategy to sign #4 & #5 slot starters. We should instead build from the top down, which we've already determined that we can't afford to do if we're going to stay near the LT limit. IMHO we should start the season with a pitching staff (!) and yet there is no good and viable way to build one. Looks like we're screwed! How about having an eight man rotation and having a different position player start every game? My point is that the hand-wringing that's going on here is beyond belief. We've identified everything that we believe won't work - and according to us it's everything. IMHO this team should bite the bullet and go with what worked in 2018 but didn't work in 2019 due mostly to injuries. Trade JBJ if it'll make you feel better but replace him with a decent CF'er, someone not named Benintendi. You may not like ll of this but it's a better option that what we're discussing now.

Wasn't it Tom Seaver who said, "Hitting is all about timing. Pitching is all about disrupting timing"? Maybe Sale is onto something! /s/

Pure coincidence.

Concur. Completely. Every time someone suggests moving Beni to CF I ask myself if that person can remember what having Beni in CF looked like. Ugh.

Short winded way of not making a response, I guess.

My opinion hasn't changed any, and it's that they're not going to decimate the outfield by giving up both Betts and JBJ. JDM's not exercising his opt-out clouded the issue for the FO though. If JDM had opted out they'd be holding onto Betts and possibly even non-tendered JBJ but with JDM as a part of the team they now have to decide whether to trade Betts or JBJ and finding a trading partner for either of them may take a little time.

In reading and hearing what I see and hear about Bloom vs. Dombrowski it appears that Bloom is the anti-DD. Bloom eschews big flashy signings of star players in favor of signing diamonds in the rough. Bloom tries to build a team made of "team players" while DD signs impact players. It seems that neither of those approaches is a good long term solution since Bloom has never won a WSC and DD leaves weakend farm systems behind when he leaves town. 1) Would the Sox have won the WS without star player Mookie Betts? IMO they wouldn't have.' 2) Why have the A's not won a WSC even with the alleged best player in baseball? A team needs both stars and a supporting cast and one can't overrate the importance of that quality starting cast. .Bloom has shown the ability to develop the starting cast. Now is he willing to shell out the big bucks - or prospects - to get the star(s) necessary to get the team over the top?

Nothing will ever equal 2004 and it's not just the WS Championship. Nothing will ever match beating the MFY after being down 3-0, something that had never been done before, and then winning the World Series Championship. The WS was just "gravy on the cake" as my friend with a gift for malapropisms says. If the Sox hadn't won another game between the 2004 WS and the end of the 2010 season that decade would still be my favorite.

This age of sabermetrics and WAR had made membership in the HOF a joke. Members are there because they were voted on by people with biases rather than using what we now realize is a more equitable way of determining worth - the computer. The solution to this is relatively simple. First determine a minimum WAR necessary to be eligible for the Hall. Then determine the WAR of every player who played the game. Next sort every player from Step 2 by WAR. Those who fit the minimum criteria for membership can stay. Throw the rest of the bums out. In the future there's no need to have balloting by those biased people. Simply use that minimum WAR value to be worthy of membership. This will provide a fair and equitable way for players to be enshrined in the Hall and should end all of this debate about who should be in and who shouldn't. It will also be about as much fun as doing your taxes.

IMO that may not be as difficult as you think. Being pissed off is a reflection of expectations. Those fans who think that JH has an obligation to spend every penny he has in search of a WSC will be upset but by the time the season starts the trades will have been made and the expectations will be lowered. Who knows? It's possible that by opening day the rational fans will realize that JH is trying to keep his budget under control and that the team needs to lower the payroll for a year or two. Then they'll be back. BTW, do we know that ticket prices have gone up for 2020? I haven't heard from them about my ST tix yet but it's not unusual to not have them in November.

I'm hoping he isn't claimed and can go to Pawtucket. He's had some bad breaks (no pun intended) and has had some 'anxiety issues' much like another now sought-after pitcher. He'll never be an ace but he has a future in baseball with some team with patience and realistic expectations. I wouldn't mind at all if it were the Red Sox.

Money may not be the total solution to winning the WSC but it doesn't hurt. Without doing the research - and I'm sure someone will if I'm wrong here - I'd ask how many teams with a payroll in the lower 2/3 of MLB have won the WS in the past 10 years? Yes, a well-constructed team playing in the right division can get a WC spot or even win their division but when the rubber hits the road - when teams start playing for the League Championship - we learn that many/most of those high-paid players are paid that much for a reason. In a sport where a player is successful 1/3 of the time he's considered very successful it's inevitable that some of them will fail in the playoffs, but if a team has enough of the highly paid players it's a good bet that some of them will be successful enough to be help the team win.

Then what you were saying when you said, "And while we might have seen an unlikely worst case scenario, I still wouldn't say the whole situation was unforseeable" what you were saying is that it probably wouldn't have happened, but it could. That's pretty much what you can say about any situation.

Where's the line between "unlikely" and "unforeseeable"?

I don't entirely disagree with the premise of your post but this ^^ is more than a little bit disingenuous. That whole thing wasn't exactly an arm's length transaction. Sale had effectively talked his way out of town. The only question was how much (or little) they were willing to take to get rid of him.

And putting him in the OF is an even bigger gamble.

I don't blame either JH or DD. This whole thing came about because of the pitching staff being ineffective in 2019. This would have been a lot more palatable if things had gone as planned and we'd been contenders in 2019 when we'd have had another good year before this sh*tstorm started. That was the plan and IMO most of us were ready for it to happen then. What it did in reality is move the angst up a year to a time when we weren't ready for it. Hence, we're pointing fingers.

That's true, but saying that he was there because he's better than Gorkys is hardly a stirring recommendation. I have never understood why he didn't get a look at 1B during ST. Two things have been well established. The first is that he's NOT a good outfielder. He's "hidden" there only to keep his bat in the lineup. The second is that he wants to be involved in the defense. I'm not sure why he's intent on being on the field for defense - it could be to improve his value (which is NOT working out well!) or it could be that he's simply not as good defensively as he thinks he is. But.. whatever. If he's not good enough to be going to be used in the OF he's sure as Hell not going to be at C, 3B, SS, or 2B so where does that leave?? I'm not saying that 1B should be his position to lose. I'm just saying that it's almost criminal to not see how he fares there. If he can't handle 1B then he can go back to being hidden in the outfield.