Hugh2

We traded 1 year of control, in a year we pressumably won't compete, a guy who is often injured, for SIX years of team control of a young stud. That's a win no matter what, just the chance itself is a win. This notion that the Sox won't spend because of this is beyond brainless. It's perfectly reasonable to assume the Sox won't spend on any big name free agents, it's perfectly reasonable to assume they're not as comitted to this team, It's perfectly reasonable to assume they don't want to compete with the top dogs for most free agents. But it's beyond recklessly abusrd to think that not saving $17 million (FOR ONE YEAR) is going to influence what they would spend on Snell or Montgomery. The Sox have a figure in their head that they would be willing to spend on those guys, and that figure may very well fall short of signing one, one might even say it would be a good bet they won't. But if that number, whatever it may be has NOTHING to do with $17 million. It's 17 million for one year, a year that even if they did go over the cap (which they won't at this point) they wouldn't even come close to paying harsh penalties associated with the next tier up, and even if they did go over they're in a position to reset next year. The Sox will either sign Montgomery or SNell, anyone who thinks they needed to save more money on a 1 year Chris Sale contract is beyond help or rationality. They're ready to be spoon fed whatever narrative the media spews at them that feeds their confirmation bias. The irony here is, they will clamor on when Snell and Jordan likely sign elsewhere, which is irrelavent. They're were likely not signing even if Atlanta ate 100% of Sales contract. It boggles my mind that this is apparent to people. It's perfectly possible to understand that fact and still see the Sox as being mismanaged and cheap. It's a not zero sum game.

You’re literally too dumb to have an honest rational conversation with. I bet you went to the school of hard knocks.

This is exactly what I said last week when everyone thought they were cutting payroll and weren't willing to go over the limit, stating that trading Chris Sales money prevented them from buying a better starting pitcher. It doesn't. Of course they still might not upgrade the rotation anyways.

I love how people make an assumption, purely based on their own cynicism. Then use that assumption as the basis of their opinion. Why can't we just argue the facts and when we do have conjecture base it in reality and precedent. I mean, you call something sad, something that you just guessed. I'm currently running 2 jobs on indeed. All those people come to me. I would be willing to bet if instead I approached people and tried poaching them from other positions, I too would get a lot of people who are already happy, well paid, and established on the other side of the country with their family. When you do that, you're obviously going to get no's. Another baseless opinion based purely on cynical driven pessimism that no one wants to come here. Like, there's only 30 of these jobs, if someone really wanted to a be a GM, they likely would have interviewed for it. I seriosly doubt there was one guy who turned us down who would have accepted an offer in NY/Toronto/Baltimore etc etc.

Would you feel better if they were doing the same job but all had a different title????

If promoting within and giving people all sorts of titles in the front office with a pay bump is "dithering" then literally BASEBALL is having a dithering moment, not the Boston Red Sox.

It's literally just a title, they could have named him supreme chancellor of pro scouting. This is what front office baseball has turned into all around the league. A guy is really good at his job, he could leave you and go elsewhere, you throw more money and a title at him, and move on. Some teams don't have more than 1-2 assistant GM's but rather have 3-4 assistant Vice Presidents. THis is nothing to be upset about.

I don't think it, I know it. It's happening all over baseball. Read up on some of the other front offices. Read above ^^^^

What do the Dodgers have? at least 3 assistant GM's I believe. https://www.truebluela.com/2022/1/18/22889800/brandon-gomes-general-manager-dodgers-front-office-promotions

Every front office is bloated nowadays. The good ones and the bad ones, so having multiple assistant GM's certainly has no correlation with the success or failures of the team. There's just nothing to really complain about here, again, this is happening all over baseball.

Yes, no one will be shocked, INCLUDING me. I also will not be shocked if he pitches very well. I suspect that if his head is right, as typically most men are a year post seperation that even if he isn't great he won't be as bad as he was the last 1/3 of last year. Even if he's the pitcher he was the first half that would be fine for 40/2. He's still only what, 28, 29???? I'm fairly optimistic on this signing. Not going to Vegas and betting on him winning a CY Young, but my take is certainly realistic.

I don't work for the Boston Red Sox, nor have I ever worked for a front office. I don't specifically know what their duties are.

At the end, but what did he do the first 2/3 of the season in Chicago (which was the majority of the season)????? In 121 innings he had a 3.79 era 118 ERA+ 7.9 H/9 9.7 K/9 Then he literally completely fell apart. I have no ideal why, but I find it interesting his fall from grace matches up perfectly with his wife filing for divorce and leaving him. That makes me think it's a head problem and NOT "stuff problem" Kluber was done, washed up. Giolito is 7-8 years younger. Look, I don't know if he's the next Kluber or not. Who does? but I think theres a lot more reasons to believe Lucas can bounce back in 2024 than there was for Kluber last year.

you have zero clue what duties come with that title, and I don't mean that as an insult, I don't either and probably nobody does in here. It's literally just a title with more pay so he doesn't leave. It seems highly plausible that he's going to be serving the team in a similiar fashion he is now. I don't think having 4 assistant GM's means 4 guys are splitting the work of one position. We don't know how those positions are defined.

It's not like teams like LA/NY don't make moves like this. I'm not hating this move in a vacuum because they refuse to sign/trade for reliable talent. I can be angry at both and like the upside of this move. The sum of all the parts might suck, but that doesn't make this an automatic bad contract either.

The Red Sox didn't invent multiple assistant G.M.s The Soxprospects podcast talked about this about 4 months ago right after the bloom firing, about how teams all over baseball are creating new positions, new titles, and having multiple assistant G.M.'s in an attempt to prevent top talent from being plucked from other organizations.

This is actually not as uncommon as one may think. A lot of organizations of multiple assistant GM's or haven't invented other titles in an attempt to retain talent. Tobon seems like one of the good guys, and they may want to hold onto him as long as they can and prevent him from being pluked by another organization.

I can't deny that the actions of this offseason do not look like that of a club that is all in, and to be honest I don't blame them, yet I myself am frustrated. However, I doubt they would sign a guy like Giolito if they didn't think they can get him right. Doesn't mean they will be successful, but oftem teams are. There's a new guy in town, new pitching coach, and other personel, who look at and evaluate these pitchers. They have something prove, but at the very least it's obvious they think Giolitos issues from the last 1/3 of last season are fixable. If they're right, he leaves, but at least they get a draft pick, OR they could even trade him at the deadline. We can sit here and August and talk about how Breslow is Bloom 2.0 and Giolito is Kluber 2.0. Or we may be talking about how great of a move it was.

This stats argument is just ridiculous. Advance stats are just stats, all a stat does is measure something. You're feelings are valid, ERA, W-L, all those stats tell us something, just like FIP, wRC+, and Z-contact% etc etc. All stats matters guys! honestly, it doesn't make sense to discount something just because you don't understand it, which seems to happen at times. There's no GM/POBO/Front office on earth that looks at a guy and uses a singular stat to judge them. Being able to measure different things tells you more,it's more information, and more information allows you to make better judgements and predictions. One of my favorite examples of this was Jarren Duran. And old schooler might of looked at his .195 batting average in AAA and thought "this guy SUCKS" but he was squaring up, and hitting the ball hard. The totality of the picture said this guy was getting unlucky with the number of hits he was getting but was hitting the ball well. He came up to the majors and IMMEDIATELY was getting better results. ERA is nice, but how much can ERA differentiate between having the best defense and the worse defense in baseball behind a pitcher? Do you want to chalk that s*** up to Voodoo, magic and just believe it's all somehow the same? we've been complaining about defense in here. DEFENSE FOLKS!!!! defense matters, if you truly believe defense matters then how can look at ERA without considering how defense might influence that stat? why WOULDN'T you want to know how good a pitcher really is when comparing pitcher A to pitcher B. It's not that more conventional stats don't matter, or don't tell you something, or aren't important. It's just an incomplete picture. Why would you want incomplete information. If you were wronglyfully accused of murder, would you want your defense lawyer to use a narrow set of facts in the defense and when provided with cameras from different angles and other witness, facts that might help you are going to want those things employed or not? It's that line of thinking that got Bartolo Colon a CY-Young award over Johan Santana in 2005, who was CLEARLY a much better pitcher.

Yeah, I never really bought into that either. The only time I think it could really screw with a guy is if they make an insanely aggressive move. Like promoting a guy from A ball to AA, and then straight to the majors after a month. Effectively going from A ball to the majors. Even then, I think the good ones will eventually set them selves right, but that can certainly mess with a kids development.

I know the Sox aren't going to do this, and it's probably the right thing to do to give him more time in AAA, but man....Rafaela really fits this roster perfect right now. He sets the defense in the outfield. He will give you GG defense in CF, pushing Yoshida to DH and plugging better speed on the corners with Duran/O'Neill. He can also back up at 2b/SS making the infield defense better. That level of versatilty also allows you to keep more of a one dimensional player such as Valdez on the roster who I think will really mash righties. You also don't have to spend any money on a OF/DH type and can go out and get a pitcher now and still stay under the cap....because apparently they have a budget now.

Imagine trading Mayer and Story going down, if anything Grissom makes Yorke expandable, or a SS further away.

The same way Yoshidas metrics suffer in LF at Fenway. Not that he's a great defender anywhere else, but Fenway does punish him. I wonder how he looks year two.

Of course, we won't see that alignment, unless Abreu establishes himself as a big leaguer, O'Neill stays healthy, and Rafaella gets the call up and sticks as a starter. But defensively that would be a very good outfield.

I wouldn't say Abreu is miles ahead of Verdugo because I haven't seen him. But O'Neill and Rafaela pass both the EYE test and the defensive metrics test. O'Neill and Rafaela are good defenders, Rafaela might win a gold glove if he gets the chance to start. MVP gives Judge too much credit, he's not a butcher but I'd call him a below average defender. Or maybe I give him too little because he was good at one point, but his defense has declined. Look I get it, the Yankees outfield is better, NO ONE is disputing that. You have to score at least 1 run to win a game, but on the defensive side of the ball our outfield, or at least THAT outfield would be better. It's entirely possibly to have a s*** team and have something better than someoen else.