S5Dewey

Really? How many of those do YOU have? First of all there IS no trophy for "runner up". And second, if there were it'd be a safe bet that he'd never win another one.

Hahaha. You guys are really grasping at straws now. That was typical managerspeak if I ever heard it! What he said was that if Iggy's not healthy he won't play and if he is we'll make our decisions from there. What did you expect the manager to say, "When Iggy comes back he's going to SS and Aybar is going back to the bench where he belongs."? Actions speaking louder than words, Aybar started at SS on the 28th and again on the 29th against the Angels, and on the 30th Iggy was reinstalled as the regular SS, often times batting 2nd in the order. And there he's stayed. God, the things you people come up with.

Runner up ROY SS (no less!) batting >.300. What's your definition of Mercedes price?

Really? Since my name was brought up and it became personal I'll defend myself. Apparently you need to be reading more of my posts. The ONLY time I mention Iggy and that trade is when someone else brings it up but if someone else brings it up I will respond. Depend on it. Doubt it? Check it out. Then get back to me and tell me how many times since I came to this forum that I've initiated any conversations about that trade. I understand that there are some people who will carry water for the FO regardless of what they do. I'm just not one of them.

One of the things that rankles me is half of a story. Peavy's numbers look good until you realize who he pitched against. In 10 starts he had four wins for the Sox, only one of them against a team with a winning record (the Dodgers). Other than that his wins were against the White Sox (78-84), the Colorado Rockies (75-87) and the hapless Diamondbacks (63-93). The league is full of pitchers who could have beaten those guys. Whether we "needed him" is a whole 'nother story with Dubront (11-6, 4.32) and Workman (6-3, 4.97) available, but I'll defer to the Sox in thinking that we "needed" another pitcher. What they did was pay a Mercedes price for someone who used to be a Cadillac pitcher when they could have been as successful with a Chevrolet, and cheaper. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. As I've said, I can willingly live with Mistake #1 - not having Iggy in their plans, but they NEVER should have traded him and gotten such poor value for him.

Yeah. And if that's what someone can find "wrong" with him that's fine. I saw Kris Bryant hit a ball to deep CF where the CF misplayed what would have been a routine fly ball for JBJ into a double that scored two runs. I'll take JBJ's ability to run down balls in exchange for a couple of errant throws every day, and three times on Sunday! I find it amazing that some of us now expect JBJ to make a perfect throw every time on throws that most OF's wouldn't even attempt. And when it doesn't work out it's defined as a "weakness".

No they're not. Not in the bigger picture. Iggy had one serious injury which kept him out of the 2014 season, which gives people that impression. Iggy and Hanley have something in common: They both had serious injuries and tried to play through them. In Hanley's case he stunk up the field and in Iggy's case he spent the time on the DL. Other than that he lost what was supposed to be two weeks when he got a broken finger by getting hit with a pitch at the end of 2015. Then "with the Tigers later falling out of the AL Central race, the team elected to not activate him from the DL for the remainder of the season". (Wiki)

So in WAR Brock Holt = Iggy. This is one of those situations where a player's ability doesn't correspond well with WAR, which is why I have little faith in WAR. Let's look at their stats. Iggy .275/.678 BA/OPS Holt .273/.705 They're essentially the same with Holt having slightly more power. I can agree with that. However, in order for the two of them to be equal one would have to think that Iggy is only slightly better than Holt defensively. Really? I will give you this, though. Brock Holt for Jake Peavey would have been a fairer trade.

Maybe it's things like this that make me not have a lot of faith in WAR. Are you trying to tell me that Brock Holt should be the starting SS for a pretty darn good MLB team? If so, we need to trade him for a starting pitcher, and do it NOW!

I'n not denying that he was expendable in the eyes of the FO. From a logical standpoint, that's why he got traded. A team would never trade anyone whom they don't consider to be expendable one way or another. Again, Mistake #1. Getting good value in the trade would have been trading Middlebrooks for Peavey. The position of "It's not a panic move when a team chooses to strengthen its chances at the deadline by filling a need" would justify any trade made at the deadline, and I'm not buying into that!

Well, that certainly touches on my two points. Mistake #1 was finding Iggy expendable. I don't see much doubt that the team would have been better off in 2016 with Iggy and XBo on the left side. Mistake #2 was not getting good value for Iggy when they traded him. It's pretty hard to justify not getting fair value for something without calling it a panic move. Especially with that deadline looming. The FO blew it, and we got stuck with bloated Sandoval and his bloated contract.

I have no idea. In his last year with Boston he hit .330 with a .785 OPS.

No. They WERE Hell-bent on trading him because with the commitment they'd made to Bogaerts at SS they had no place for him at the time. Or at least they thought they didn't. So they jumped at the first semi-reasonable offer that came along. It's amazing to me how posters find ways to run Iggy down. DD thought enough of him to give up one of his best prospects for him, then also thought enough of him to leave him at SS when Peralta came back from his suspension, moving Peralta to the OF. Iggy ain't dog meat. He's still the starting SS for a pretty good ML team.

I think we'd all prefer an ace over a 3Bman. The difference there is in the cost, either in money or players/prospects, and that pesky Luxury tax thing. For some reason which I can't explain I have more faith in Shaw improving than I do in Sandy Leon improving in spite of the fact that a case can be made that both of them have reverted to what they are.

As we say, once you make the playoffs anything can happen. Sometimes it happens for you and sometimes it happens to you. "Some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you". Unfortunately this year we got eaten by the bear.

There certainly is THAT!!

Uh-uh. Nobody outside of LA cares if LA wins. The Cubs OTOH currently have a nationwide following due to their ineptness in the past and their immediate success. I mean, how can you NOT like the Cubs better than the Dodgers???

This is where you and I have a difference of opinion. I look at all trades not only in terms of what the trade does for us this year but also what it does for (or to!) us in future years. You can believe if you want that the Iggy/Peavey trade was what put us over the top and I'll disagree. That's fine. There's room for that in my life. But I don't see how anyone can disagree that the trade hurt us in future years, which was my contention all along. As I've already said, IMO their first mistake was trading Iggy. The second and bigger mistakes was that, if they were Hell-bent on doing it, they didn't get enough for him. I can remember pre 2004 when folks on the old BDC board saying that they'd settle for nine last place finishes if we could win the WS just ONCE. Well, that's been debunked now! Playing for one year championships is what teams with smaller payrolls like Kansas City do. We're Sox fans and we now want to be in contention every year, and I don't think that's unreasonable giving the payroll we've become accustomed to. In order to to that we have to either keep our home-grown outstanding talent or, if we trade it, get at least fair value in return. And in this case they didn't do either.

There's an old adage that when things go South you can't fire the players so you fire the manager. In this case they fired the manager AND the players (by trades), and that's how we got to where we were before this season. Make no mistake, the Red Sox are still in a rebuilding mode, they're just nearer the top than most teams would be after two consecutive last-place finishes.

I can't decide if you're agreeing with me, or disagreeing.

My guess is that some of that might be due to the improvement in the bullpen and not letting inherited runners score.

I understand that someone has to have the distinction of being the worst player on the team but our 3B is the worst in all of baseball!. And I'm speaking of the eight position players when I say that. When I project what we have going into next year I see six positions filled (3 OF, SS, 2B, 1B). That leaves catching and 3B to make an improvement. We've got Leon and two 'kids' in the pipeline and IMO two of those three are going to fill the catching spots. That means if we're going to make improvements in fielders (and I mean offensively and defensively) it's going to be at 3B. I like what I'm hearing about Moncada but I think we're being awfully optimistic if we think that someone with '0' ML AB's is going to suddenly make a huge improvement in our team at that position. We need to pump the brakes just a bit on him, let him develop, and see if he's as good as advertised. If he is that's all well and good, but even if he is we don't know when he's going to be that good. I think we may have gotten spoiled with Benintenti's coming from AA to the majors without a glitch. Players who do that are unusual. I don't object to finding out if Moncada is another of those players but if we're going to try that I believe our Plan B should be something other than continuing with the worst 3B position in baseball.

Shaw is an odd case. He seems to be the personification of 'clutch' but can't produce in a regular game situation.

My quick take-away from this: JBJ is 4th on offense, but 11th defensively??? And all this time I thought defense was his strength. The rest of them I can buy into pretty easily.

Does it bother anyone but me that we're putting an awful lot of faith in Moncada and his ability to be our 3B? This guy hasn't has a ML AB yet and we've anointed him as our savior at 3B with our Plan B being Sandoval, Holt, or Shaw. I have NO faith in Sandoval - anything we get from him will be a pleasant surprise to me. Shaw could be "The Man" but in order for that to happen he's going to have to be the Travis Shaw we saw in spurts earlier in the year. And Holt... I see Holt as being serviceable enough but without enough power to fill a corner spot. That makes Holt as my favorite at Plan B, but barely. IMO we need to get more power at 3B to be a contender. I can see the Sox making Shaw part of a pitching trade, keeping Holt as super-utility guy, and picking up a real 3B. Then giving The Fat Man a month or so to prove himself again assuming he shows up at ST at less than 300 lbs. /s/ If TFM shows that he can play 3B we then trade away our real 3B and if he doesn't show that he can play we have to accept that he's a sunk cost and get what we can get for him. It's a lousy option but a better one than having him occupy a spot on the 25 man roster, blocking someone who can actually play the game. That leaves Moncada in competition with our 'real 3B' for that spot, which may be a very good thing.