Nick

No complaints about 3 straight Division titles topped off by World Championship. Betts now plays for the Dodgers. We've won 4 titles in less than 20 years. Move forward.....give Bloom some slack. He's just getting started. I just wanted to point out we won't be going all in this year per Sox Management.

This just came in my e-mail...... The president and CEO of the Boston Red Sox admits the Sox are not “all-in” trying to win the World Series this year. “I think it would be inaccurate to say we are going for it with an all-in approach that perhaps we did prior to the 2018 title,” Sam Kennedy acknowledged in a wide-ranging interview Tuesday. “We cherish that title, and all of them, but the way we built that team came at a price, which included importantly a depleted farm system and some depleted draft picks along the way. So we are building back up, and as we do this hopefully the right way, we’ll have a chance to be competitive in the American League East in 2021, but also for the longer term.” There you have it. After 20 years of pedal-to-the-metal, the Sox are downshifting in urgency and expectations. We're looking for incremental improvements and find out where the pieces fit. We're climbing uphill after going down the cliff. Kimmi will enjoy reading about the 'price' we paid for the 2018 title. Also uncertain if it's wise to spend as though we're big market ball club when you have no idea what the COVID situation will be this year in terms of having the ability to generate top tier revenue as in the past.

Is Dalbec athletic enough to play left field? Will we have position crunch when Casas arrive hopefully late 2022?

Enough with JBJ......that would be the dumbest $$ spent this off season....go look elsewhere

I cringe every time I hear that a professional baseball player maybe 'fragile'. I thought about the six man rotation thinking it may benefit someone like Houck. What if he gets off to great start? Can he do it in August and September? Does he have enough stamina? Is there a 'wall'? Is it 200 or 150 IP?

I may have asked previously and keep in mind I know nothing about pitching and recovery between starts.... With six man rotation, can each one of them throw one competitive inning between starts? Surely each starter throws between starts and not just to stretch out.

Lining up the contracts is another component of assembling a championship team. With Sale not coming back right away and not knowing what his return looks like, I can't imagine Sox being a playoff contender. Thus another year is 'spent' on everyone's contract. My questions.... 1) What to do with E Rod? Do we extend him (as we did with Sale) in April of 2021? Discounting 2020, has he not followed a trajectory of a say #2 starter since we've aquired him? Or do we wait and see what he does early in 2021? If he's pitching well, what incentive does he have to sign a long term contract? Do we simply trade him in July if we're completely out of race? 2) What about Devers? He's in his first year of arbitration. He's under team control for another 3 years. Do we let him go (get a major league pitcher under team control in return) and hope his presence is replaced by say Dalbec? I would keep him and maybe work on an extension to buy our couple of years of team control. 3) This is last year of Dustin's money and we have two more years ($32M) of Price's contract. With a possibility of luxury tax going up when the current labor contract expires, we seem to have ton of cap space. Will Bloom take the Price route (hoping for 4 out of 7 years of production and pay huge) on a major player or stick to his Tampa Bay upbringing? Always looking for 'value'. 4) Do we build a team around Xander, Sale, Verdugo, Dalbec, Houck, Matta, etc and get the best return for Vaz, Devers, E Rod? This would give us time to line up the contracts assuming 2021 becomes a throw away year. 5) Do we start Houck in the minors to gain another year of team control? 6) Can we count on influx new talent from the minors for 2022 season? Who are they? What say you Moon?

I'm not the biggest Theo fan, mainly due to so many here worship him. But to bring the World Championship to the Sox and the Cubs, well that speaks volumes about his leadership. You can't take that away from him. He has a great baseball mind even with his faults. He was not perfect but who is? No doubt a Hall of Famer.

What's our lineup and starters if season started tomorrow? Who pitches the first series?

Maybe this is in line with 'playoffs' being 'overvalued'. I think you're proponent of getting into the playoffs. Nothing 'assures' you of world championship. You can't just 'go for it' and destroy the farm and the salary structure for one year. Now I'm okay with what DD did but had we not won the world series I would feel differently. We tend to overvalue the 'performance' in the playoffs. I believe that's where the Sandoval signing originate. We ignore the pedestrian regular season and lock in on the superior performance during the world series. You can't become a different player based on one 7 game series. You showed us what exactly you are over the 162 game season. That should not negate average talent displayed during the regular season. You can't give a player $100M based on that blip of success.

Nearest casino (fortunately) is 90 minutes away. Over the years I moved from slots to blackjacks and lastly to Texas holdem. I hate to admit but I was one of those that purchased books and videos on "How to win at........". I figured I was pretty smart........ I considered it as entertainment. I always put a limit of $300. On one trip, I had just sat down. Threw away my first hand. I was dealt pocket aces on next hand. Person to my right put a raise to $25 so I just called. Another person called and the next guy raised it to $75. One guy called the raise and came back to me. I went all in. This was all preflop. $75 raiser had pocket kings. Anyway, a king came up on the flop and I ended up losing my $300. I was at the table for 5 miuntes. I have gone as long as over 24 hours straight. Being an accountant, I'm probably too conservative to win big at card games. You got to have balls and place no value in losing money. Apparently mine aren't big enough.

Bloom did a great job flipping players with low upside for younger talent in 2020. Dalbec to me is different. He's someone with 40+ HR potential. It's just way too early to give up on him. Not sure if I've seen a trade scenario that wows involving Dalbec.

I like it that we don't piss away $5- $10M as we've done in the past. Our farm system is getting stronger and we still have money to pursue talent. I'm willing to wait and build a consistent contender....let the rebuild begin.

"Rodriguez agreed to an $8.3 million salary for 2020, his second year of arbitration, and is likely to receive a raise for 2021 despite not pitching last year. After being shut down for months, the lefty has been cleared to resume baseball activities and hopes to be 100% for the beginning of spring training." Really? A pay raise without playing in 2021? Maybe Bloom will make all this moot by extending him.

Not for me and I'm not fan of his agent.....

I do enjoy watching young players improve so no matter in 2021 I don't think it'll be a complete waste. I do think the team owes it to the fans and position players alike a respectable starting pitchers in all 162 games. Bring out the young guns. Was it the year after the E Rod trade that he had a very good season? The team sucked but I made sure to watch his every start....

No doubt Dave would have given up couple of young players to acquire a manager, whether needed to or not. He just loves to give away players.

The four main players the Red Sox traded at the August 31 deadline -- Moreland, pitchers Heath Hembree and Brandon Workman and outfielder Kevin Pillar -- are all free agents. Boston acquired Potts, Rosario and pitchers Nick Pivetta, Connor Seabold and Jacob Wallace in three separate deals. Good job by Bloom.

You don't just kick off a guy that's meant so much to the organization. It's about doing it the right way. Pedey knows what's coming. We're simply giving him a courtesy call and asking his permission to get him off the active roster (we don't need his permission obviously). Nothing more. You do it out of respect. Nothing, nothing changes in terms of financial liability to Pedey and there's no impact on luxury tax implications. We own it. I don't like the way he was taken out of action. It wasn't clean. The guy who did it is an *******. I remember him trying to step on 1B's foot also intentionally. Dirty player. He took away 4 years of playing career.

Building a championship team requires patience. A group of talent must arrive at about the same time. That's the trick. Timing wise it's not working out for E Rod. Missing 2020 did not help his cause. No way I let him become a free agent on my dime. Bloom won't either.

After nine years, has the boy genius done enough in Chicago? I do realize he spent first three years reshuffling the deck and getting rid of inflated salaries. They look to be on the verge of rebuild. Do we expect more from Bloom? I certainly do.

I don't get the love affair with Moncada. Sox thought they had better candidate in Devers. Pedey was still in play at 2B. You're not going to get Sale's contract for NOTHING. I wished we didn't have to give up Kopech. He's the only one I regret giving up but he's also hurt.

Yeah, there's big market money and then there's Yankees money. Even without a ring, Hal wakes up every morning and realizes how lucky he is....