Nick

You have no overall salary structure plan.....give me your 25 man roster and see if you can fit it under $220M....then I can take you seriously about offering one player 25% of the cap. We are already paying one player $31M per year.

Lets see if the Nationals can field a competitive team with paying one player 25% of the cap money.

Yep... My point ultimately is that other teams have good players. It's not as thought we have the market cornered. Take a deep breath. Our record is pretty much the same as last year at this time. Do we miss Papi? yep. But we seem to be doing ok, especially since they gave in and grudgingly promoted Devers.

I dont like long term contracts (4 years look about right).....i can even live with this being Dustin"s final year. Players r commodities. U can always buy another one.

i'm not convinced he's worth $275M over 10 years....

4 runs on 5 hits, 2 2 run homers. Value of Power.

Brock Holt with OPS of .554. He just sucks. Does not belong. And he bats 2nd. John, have you lost your mind?

We'll have Devers through 2023. We'll have Beni through 2022. We'll have Price through 2022. We'll have Pedroia throuh 2021. We'll have E Rod through 2021. I think we'll extend both Pom and Sale. $20M on Porcello will free up for 2020. Same goes for Hanley and Pablo, thus freeing up $60M between 3 players. Looks to me like we'll have money to spend. We should trade Xander and even Betts if they look to walk. (say with 2 years of control left)

Everyone here thought we needed upgrade from Shaw last year. Look at his splits. It's always easy to look back after the fact. WHO THE FREAK WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE? DEVERS OR SHAW? SHAW ARRIVED 4 MONTHS LATE, THAT'S ALL. Mistake was giving Pablass $95M contract. That certainly wasn't DD's fault.

If all the seats were filled with quality players, we would not have finished DEAD FREAKIN' LAST three out of four years. All of you doomsdayers conveniently IGNORE that fact. DD is one for one and has chance to go two for two. He's made bold moves. DD has filled the bus with true ace in Sale. DD was smart enough to keep Devers and trade away Moncada. Not both as requested by the White Sox. Kimbrel will have good three years on the bus as it cruises. The one that got off the bus is in the body shop. I'm good with DD driving the bus.

Bingo.....100% correct. Their hitting became an issue only because we've been inadequate at so many positions. DH, 1B, SS, 3B, LF, RF (too high of expectation?). Catching is least of our concern. This goes back to construction of team. Three years ago, we decided that we didn't need a true ace and went with Miley (32), Porcello (28), Kelly (25), Rodriquez (21), Buchholtz (18) and Owens (18). Clearly not a winning formula. We overestimated our offense for 2017. We projected betters years from several players who in fact had their best years. Our expectation was tad high. We need defense up the middle, C, SS, 2B and CF. Corner position must hit for high average or hit for power. You can't be a .260 singles hitter. As much as I appreciate Moreland relative to his contract, he's settled into the player he's always been. We are still in first place with Price and perhaps Carson Smith returning. We've added bullpen depth. It's incredible to me that our two new 'acquisitions' hit 3rd and 5th in our batting order last night. They've given us much needed lift. My guess for next year is that we'll have to live with Hanley and his $20M contract. Upgrading 1st base is a must. Hopefully that was the plan after we reset our penalty rate in 2017.

With the current salary cap structure, Sox will need to plug in a rookie every year. We can 'overpay' only to limited number of contracts. Price obviously was costly in terms of eating up much of luxury tax threashhold. We'll eat $19M next two years for Pablo. Just think what we could have done with that money. For one, we could have extended Pomeranz. Devers will give us cliff years 2020-2023. This is Beni's rookie year. He can give us cliff years 2020, 2021, 2022. Include Price in this group along with Barnes and Hembree. E Rod will give us cliff years 2020 and 2021 as well Dustin Pedroia. Betts, JBJ, Leon, C Smith and Vazquez will hang with us in cliff year 2020.

Bogaerts, Moreland, Vazquez and Bradley.....that looks to be strong bottom of batting order. Better than first two batting 3rd and 4th in the lineup.

Beni has all of us fooled. That cool demeanor actually is his DUMB look.

Is Beni that f***ING stupid? Trade the f***ER. Rookie of the Year my ass. I can't stand f***ing dumb asses.

There's no reason NOT to play the hot hand. We all know who is hot and who is cooling off. I would love to see Brentz get the call. 22 homers is pretty impressive.

Home Runs matter. Really need to improve 1B for 2018. I want a power bat.

A 2 run homer to start the game. The kid can hit. It's amazing that Nunez and Devers are batting 3rd and 5th in the lineup. Shows how weak our bats were.

I'm opposed to moving Devers to 1B. Why? It's much easier to find 1B than a 3B. We've pretty much had a black hole at 3B. We finally find someone that can plug the hole and first thing you want to do is to move him? I would still go after Votto. Give them what they want. Travis, Swihart, Groome, and Beni. That should do it. Who cares about his age 34-37 years. He's similar to Beltre. He'll retain his power stroke. Power bat is a critical component of team offense. We've taking it granted over the years with Papi and Manny and others in our lineup. I'd reconstruct the team. LF, RF, 1B, 3B adn DH should all have some power.

Meanwhile Moncada is 4-38 with 1 HR, 6 BB, 16K's. Maybe DD knew something about Moncada and Devers. I was screaming for Moncada to get called up last season. Then we found out. I was screaming for Devers earlier to get called up. So far, it's worked. Why not give him a shot when his coaches in minors think he was ready? Fail or Succeed was irrelevant for me. Just have a look. It's worked fine. If he goes on a prolonged slump, bench him. That's what you do with non established players. I like to know the bad news immediately.

Give me a FA name.

I don't miss Papi......He's retired.

He told me to tell you, "it's wasn't me, it wasn't me, it was Rutledge"

You gotta see it to scout it.

https://www.overthemonster.com/2017/8/2/16082356/rafael-devers-red-sox-lineup-the-spark-theyve-been-looking-for Very Good Read on Devers Hitting.... Why not give the kid a chance? Thank you DD. We saved tons of prospects of being dealt just to acquire a third base rental.