Nick

Houck has 36 days accumulated. He needs 172 days or 136 days in 2021. Looks like there are 186 days available in 2021. We need to hold him off until May 22nd. Doable.

Can you see 2023 lineup of C Wong 1B Casas 2B Downs SS Xander 3B Devers/Dalbec LF Rosario CF Duran RF Verdugo DH Dalbec/Devers JD, Price, Eovaldi and their $55M comes off the books after 2022. That's on top of $13M for Dustin after 2021.

Maybe we can hold off calling him up later in the year and give the Sox six full years starting 2022. So we go with Eovaldi, Richards, E Rod, Pivetta and Perez? I'm not opposed to another starter. Will Porcello sign a one year deal?

It would be nice if couple of youngsters can step in for 2023 Mata, Houck, Seabold, Casas, Downs, Duran just to name a few.

I think our projected starter War is in line with most of the AL teams.....after adding Richards.

Sale Eovaldi E Rod Richards Pivetta Perez Houck Mata Seabold Groome Song D Hernandez or is he a closer material? Is this our organizational starting pitching depth? Saw somewhere our projected War for SP is now comparable to most other teams.....not sure what they project for Sale.

No doubt he can still throw 100 pitches a game....just the question of if that's for first 3 innings or 4 innings....

Until few years ago, we had a senior league 55+, you could smoke and had designated runner for every batter if you want.

Yep, another $10M guy for 2-3 years.

As long as it's not a long term deal I'd agree even thought I don't think it's in Bloom's DNA to add another $10M starter at this point. You have to give the team chance to stay in the ball game for 5 innings.

Sox has assembled some high ceiling guys in rotation. At the very least they all need to remain healthy to have any shot at reaching their potential. We all know what can happen when things go south health wise. 2019 Starting Rotation Sale Price E Rod Eovaldi Porcello On paper THAT looked great coming off the world championship season.

Hall of Fame consideration worthy.....well done.

Payroll looks inflated due to $30M in TWO non performing contracts. It jumps to $55M if you throw in Chris Sale. I'm always optimistic but for Sale, I'll believe it when I see it approach. Who really know? He could suffer one set back that will push him back 4 weeks. At that point you have to ask if it's worth it to jeopardize 2022 season and beyond. I rather always throw little more money for shorter years. There's no point in going over by 'little'. Might as well be $19,999.999 over the limit.

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.