Nick

Along those lines, especially with young pitchers such as Houck, Whitlock, Bello, Mata,etc. For our pitching gurus, why in the hell not stretch them all out during spring training? Is it because they won't be able to 'bounce' back after an inning stint as a reliever when the season starts? Is it that they can pitch one or six innings but only every 5th day because they've been 'stretched'? Just curious from a guy that knows NOTHING about pitching.

His changeup looked good vs Atlanta. He wants to be a starter. He's under team control for 5 years. Relievers are dime a dozen. You don't give up on a guy like Houck. I think he has higher ceiling than say Pivetta.

Perhaps it's the competition but our pitching looks decent for most part. NO MORE INJIRIES.

Sale, Houck, Pivetta, Kluber, ready to go path. Paxton's arm is okay. Bello should pitch in couple of weeks. Whitlock maybe month away. I am thinking " it could be worse".

Wander toward the back-right corner of the Red Sox clubhouse and you’ll see the lockers of the team’s three best upper-level pitching prospects right next to each other. From left to right are lefties Brandon Walter and Chris Murphy, then righty Bryan Mata. If that clubhouse layout is somewhat by design, Red Sox manager Alex Cora took it a step further in Sunday’s home Grapefruit League game against the Rays when he pitched them one inning each -- consecutively. Murphy has the most powerful stuff of the three, and his ongoing goal is to improve his control. Mata might have already been in the Majors if not for Tommy John surgery, which wiped away his 2021 season and limited him to 18 starts last year. Walter, whom the Red Sox took in the 26th round of the 2019 Draft due to the arm problems he had in college, had a brilliant ’21 season in Boston’s system, but was beset by a neck issue that limited him to 11 starts in ’22. The results? Murphy, Boston’s No. 15 prospect per MLB Pipeline, was first out of the gate, setting down all three batters he faced, including one strikeout. Up next was No. 7 prospect Mata, who worked around a walk and struck out one in his scoreless inning. Walter, ranked No. 8 in the system, capped the day by striking out two of the three batters he faced. Cora believes this trio can make it work...but, hey, we all know better than our manager.

Where is the pitch clock at the stadiums? Can the pitcher see it facing the batter?

I don't care. We have possibility of Bello, Whitlock and Houck all joining the starting rotation and Mata is waiting on wings. Someone here dismissed Mata as a reliever. Thing is they are all trying to get better. Mata was higher rated pitcher than Bello before Tommy John. Yeah, his control needs work but he wants to get there. He's lost weight, he is working on his change up. Isn't it too early to give up on Mata as a starter? Same goes for Kutter. He pitched well in stretches. I'll say it again, my 'eye' test say we have more young, starting pitching talent than we've had the last few years. Rank us 30th. Who cares? We're inserting Casas into the mix this year. Is there any doubt that Rafaela will crack the line up within two years? Story and Yoshida will buy us time to get some of our younger talent in A ball to mature. No more bitching about Devers? He's here for 11 years. 11 Freakin' Years.

So much for trashing our farm system ranking. I have learned that so called experts are not so expert.

I don't care what anyone here thinks. This is the best collection of young pitching talent (read 'young'='team control') we've had in awhile. Sure they may all suck but I'm optimistic. Bello, Whitlock, Houck, Schreiber, Matta, Kutter, Murphy and Walter. Add Noah Song to the list when he is returned.

If a fan is not excited about watching Casas, Bello, Whitlock, Houck and new additions, they need to go be a Yankee fan. So f***ing tired of all the negativity. We have won 4 World Series in last 20 years. Go suck on th at.

I guess the real question is would you rather have Betts at $29M or Story at $23M per year for 6 of Betts' contract years. Look to cut $6M elsewhere. No brainer to me. I see that we are still under the cap by $22M. Trading away Alex Verdugo would take care of having Betts' contract.

I'm not sure I ever enjoyed the busy season! I always had to sell half of my season ticket for basketball.

In a case of injury lasting longer than couple of weeks, I always prefer the defensive first option the best, especially for middle infielders. I still like Dalbec.

I am looking forward to 2023. Chris Sale has another 3 years with us. Hopefully, Casas and Bello will join Devers as a part of our 'core' group in search of next championship. Good luck to Betts and Xander and that is ALL I'm going to say about THAT. We're tied for 1st place (I'm sure many of you will argue that we're tied for last place)

Moon we talked about construction of the team based on distribution of team controlled years ....in a perfect world 4 rookies added to replace 4 players becoming free agent. My question is do you split the roster 50/50 with home grown talents versus free agents/traded players? Thus you only need 2 homegrown players and 2. FA/Trades? Obviously you won't sign too many FA for 6 years so you may need 3 or 4 depending on the length of contract.

I made slight adjustment to Moon's opening roster and went with 25 man roster. I just wanted to do a little mental exercise on constructing a team. To be absolutely cheap, I need following break out of contracts. 4 players in Arb 3 year (say $10M/yr) 4 players in Arb 2 year (say $5M/yr) 4 players in Arb 1 year (say $3M/yr) 4 players in 3rd year 4 players in 2nd year 4 players in 1st year 1 player named Devers....life-time contract At the conclusion of each year I would simply trade or let go of Arb 3 players and replenish them with 4 rookies. We will have 4 players with 6 years of team control and I think it's a pretty good 'class'.....Casas, Whitlock, Bello and Wong. We only have 2 players with 5 years of team control, Yoshida and Houck We then have 2 players with 4 years of team control, Schreiber and Story (24-27) We have 9 players with 2 years of team control and 5 with just one. The point being Bloom has tons of work to do over the next couple of years to extend/replace 14 players. The key being quality of replacement has to be better. I'm not sure you can consistently win with as much turnover as we've had recently. At some point, Bloom should have a team put together that has some stability and obviously the one that can get into the playoffs. I'm not sure we're there yet.

Moon, I need a favor. Can you tell me our opening day roster? Just your opinion. Don't worry. I won't pull a Red on you.

We will have to see how many starting pichers will start 25 games minimum. Many here assume that won't happen.

Obviously baseball is a business. With that, on an average, how many rookies should Sox count on to make and establish themselves on the big league team? One pitcher and one position player a year? Should that be the standard to which Bloom should be held accountable? If the player control is six years, then does it make sense to 'budget' 1.5 position players advancing from our farm system to the bigs annually? Now with Devers on the hook for 11 years and Yoshida and Story for 5 years, are we on track for adequate replenishment? Is that standard enough, knowing you can 1) trade for a player and 2) sign a free agent? Different rule for $230M budget Sox vs say Ray's (maybe they need 2 to 3 per year, both in position and pitching)? 2023 Casas, 1B Bello, SP Give Bloom an A 2024 Rafaella, CF Mata? 2025 Mayer, SS ????? So it goes.... PS...Perhaps we say 4 players annually to give an A....

You lock up players before they get to arbitration. Otherwise you end up paying what you paid Devers. How many of those can you afford? I didn't hear many of you asking for Betts' extension say his 3rd year. Bunch of f***ing Monday morning quarterbacks on this board.

Justin Turner's contract is interesting. First, Dodgers declined 2023 club option of $16M, buying it out for $2M. Turner got what he needed from the Sox, signing for $8.3M for 2023 but with the buy out option of $6.7M (seems high). Thus he will get $15M for 2023 at minimum. With incentives for plate appearances, he can get to $16M, matching his 2022 salary with the Dodgers. He also has a player option of $13.4M for 2024. Let's hope he has a good year and decides hitting in Fenway is good for his career.

What if Whitlock, Bello, Houck and Mata become future starters? They are locked up for at least 5 years (Houck). I'm good with it. Enough time to develop more pitchers. We do have a war chest of $230+M budget. We're not the Rays.

Why is Ryan Brasier still on Red Sox “I know (Brasier) has been kind of a lightning rod for this. People talk about projections that can kind of roll their eyes,” Bloom said. “The fact of the matter is there’s a lot of things you can look at that that pitchers do that are really good indicators of what they’re gonna do next, and in many cases might be better indicators than the ERA. That doesn’t guarantee anything going forward. Obviously, we deal in probabilities, right? Nothing in life is guaranteed to us. “But those indicators are real and there are things that not not just we, but also the industry as a whole, increasingly believe in because more often than not, they do prove out. And with Ryan, it’s not rocket science, he throws a ton of strikes. He has really good stuff, made some adjustments later in the season, just in terms of how and when he used what he had to sequence it better and help him get outs. The product of a lot of good work, first of all, obviously by Ryan, but also by various members of our staff... that really worked together to help him understand, ‘Okay, why are our results under-achieving what our stuff says we should do? “It’s not because we don’t throw strikes, right? He throws a ton of strikes. So how else can we sequence our stuff to help us get outs better? Again, does that guarantee anything going forward? No. It’s something that has to be earned. But there’s a lot of reason there and optimism that’s shared by both front office and field staff that that we will get better results going forward.” I hope I'm wrong about him.

It's interesting that many here thought extending Devers (to the tune of 10 years, mind you) was the biggest goal this winter. Mission accomplished. We also wanted a 'real' bullpen. Mission accomplished, at least on paper. Starting rotation needed a makeover with departure of Eovaldi, Hill and Wacha. Again mission accomplished. (I'm going to consider Whitlock, Sale and Kluber as new additions to the starting rotation, hell I haven't seen Sale in 3 years) We needed upgrade in the outfield. Mission accomplished. Two of the three starters are new. We needed a replacement for DH. Mission accomplished. New DH can play in the field from time to time if we need additional right handed bats in the lineup. JD was useless as a fielder. Now, no one player will replace Xander's offensive numbers. Kike won't match it but he certainly is capable of playing defense as well as Xander. Thus incremental improvement in offensive category at other positions will be enough to compensate for the departure of Xander's bat. Tell me again how awful this winter was?

At some point, even JH will run out of patience if the team continues to underperform. But I'm not sure what directives JH can give without blowing up the budget and/or greenlighting emptying out the farm. I am not trying to be difficult but what would have done differently?