Hugh2

This is confusing.

I was totally making this up, but how effing hilarious would it be if true. I won’t complain. Is LAD out of the running? I know they reset this year but I thought I read Trevor Bauer being reinstated out the Dodgers on the hook for his salary putting them above the luxury tax threshold this year. They might bow out and reset. My concern is if he’s ok coming to the west coast that puts the Mets and Yankees in the running. Unless of course, Yoshida convinces him to come here. Everyone!!!! We have to be very very nice to Yoshida, we want him to like it here.

This was obviously a mistake. He threw two innings in spring training. He effectively had zero spring training. Bello should have never started yesterday, he should have started in Worcester today. And maybe even 1-2 more starts down there. Spring trainings serves a purpose that Bello didn’t get the luxury of. It’s not worth judging him over because the Sox messed him up. If he’s as good as they say, he will be fine after a few starts I’m not worried.

Maybe Ohtani wants to play with Yoshida, so the sox overpaid him and stayed under the luxury tax to go hard after him next year.

I was thinking this same thing while making this argument. I suppose I had a problem with not leading a Yoshida even though I’m not trying to advocate him leading off. Weird concept I know. But I was thinking Cora does this less than other managers and he does move things around. He deserves credit for that, but that mentality still exists in the game today and I find it slightly annoying

Yes! I don’t even need Yoshida to be a power hitter, if he can just become a gap power guy he will be fine with his approach.

Same, especially with the OBP the 3rd highest in the team. Think how much better his OBP would be if he was just at the Mendoza line, he’d be a .400 guy. Plate discipline is a great predictor of future success. If he can identify strokes and balls it means he has the mental acuity, reaction time, and Intelligence to identify MLB pitching. I think Yoshida will be fine. Probably .750 ops by the end of the year if not +

Crawford is already on the roster with a Kelly out he’s not replacing anyone.

I mean someone has to go when Paxton/Mondesi/story come back. But until then, who are you replacing them with?

How much more miller lite does 18 million get you>?

I don't think the posting fee matters. At least when comparing players. Like Shwarber needs help haha

2025. No chris sale in 2025

I thought it was pretty obvious. It extends beyond just getting rid of Bloom. They need to take a top-down to the bottom and back-up to-the-top approach at evaluating this organization. There's something fundamentally wrong with the concept of not developing a TOTRS in almost TWO decades. That's not a few executives at the top, that's scouts, managers from A ball up, coaches (pitching coaches to strength and conditioning) to all player developmental personnel. I'm not saying they're all inept and unable to do their jobs but it's blatantly obvious the organization as a whole is doing a s*** job. I'm just acknowledging that it goes much deeper and is a more complex problem than just blaming the guy at the top. Bloom very well may be s*** at his job, but he's not all that is wrong with this organization, far from it.

And WAde Boggs topped at 4.5 million

Supposedly Bloom wasn't able to bring a lot of the guys with him. Sometimes you can't, but you're right, it's on him to bring in people.....like he doesn't have contacts in any other organization? Also, if you're expecting a guy to come in and bring all the other guys from another organization (like they're just going to let that happen) then your organization is in big trouble. There's value in continuity. There should be competent people in this organzation no matter who the director of operations is. You replace a director and guy here and there, the guy funneling information collected, no G.M. (btw Bloom is not a G.M.) is still making decisions based on the guts of the orgnaizaiton. Bloom didn't change that. You think you get elected President of the united states and replace millions of jobs? no, you elect the people at the top. The people who keep things running or actually have any clue what is happening are there before and after. When an organization LOSSES that type of competent continuity they are in BIG trouble and no G.M. is going to turn that around. It's going to take a long time. So whoever replaces Bloom and decides to clean house, isn't going to be able to be fully evaluated at his job until a point of time in the future in which he's probably already been fired. Because that's what the Sox do now, at some point people are going to not want to come here if they're just goint to be rotated out and blamed for everything.

Also, Yoshida is making $18 million a year. Star players are getting $40 million a year now, so...I'm not sure we can consider Yoshida a "luxury model" But we can hope he turns it around and performs like one.

Yes because he’s appeasing grown babies. I don’t like it. Man the eff up and do your job. Look at Jensen. How many players with problems with the pitch clock are going to struggle this year and blame it on the pitch clock.? But he made his weakness his strength. That’s a man, that’s a real athlete, that’s a team player right there. That’s the type of work ethic I look for as a business owner. If a guy is going to become a worse hitter because he mentally can’t handle a change in the batting order he doesn’t have the emotions to handle being a pro athlete, and certainly not in this market. Alex Cora, like most other managers, make decisions that statistically are not the most optimal but because they have to manage people’s “feelings”. f*** your feelings batting 7th instead on 4th (or whatever) when you’re getting paid tens of millions of dollars. If I’m wrong here I have zero interest in ever being right. It’s a philosophical aspect of the game that absolutely makes me sick

Which makes me think the issue runs deeper than just Bloom. It's easy to have a guy to blame, but I'm interested in fixing actual problems. For example. Lets say Yoshida is a complete bust. That's on Bloom, and that's fine, I love "the buck stops here" mentality. But true accountability recognizes that Bloom isn't a scout. The Sox have a scouting department that is going to Bloom and telling him we think this player is going to be this. Bloom is only as good as the information he's getting fed. If that personal sucks within your organization then it doesn't matter who your G.M. or director of baseball operations are. Much like a team isn't defined by one player, neither is the organization. If this team misses the playoffs this year, they need to take a good long hard look at their internal processes. If it's the end of Bloom so be it, but they can't just bring in a new guy who brings in a guy or two and expect that to fix everything. Henry has a lot of work to do.

8 of the top 10 WAR players on the twins last year for players that came from their organization. For the Sox it was 4. That means they either spend more money to bring players in unlike a mid market team, OR they have not been good lately at developing talent recently. Unless I'm missing something?

How would leading off make it worse? The absolute best thing you can do as a lead off hitter is get on base. That's what you want there, an on base machine. Yoshida is 3rd on the team in OBP right now. I'm not advocating for him in the leadoff spot, I don't want him there. I just don't think it's a horrible ideal right now when you consider what the results are and what they have.

I completely disagree, kids don't get paid millions of millions of dollars to play games. There are situations where guys are hit out of position strictly to stroke their ego. You should have the mental competency to be able to handle hitting 2nd one day and hitting 5th next and still be a professional. For the record, this happens. There's just some guys who fight it. They should fight it with their performance otherwise do what's best for the team. If I was paying someone good money, I'd expect them to be a good employee.

I don't think there's a problem with #1 I think if you have a problem with number 1 you need to start questioning your internal evaluation process and scouting department. Because what else is there after 1 and 2? sign 40 million a year superstars? Those guys break down too and often end up being horrible contracts. So, big or small, it all comes down to how well you hit. Bloom just hasn't hit on some important pieces, Story, Kike, Kluber, and Yoshida have not done much of anything so far this year. We've seen #2 work, and we've seen it fail miserably. Sometimes you have to question wheter the strategy is s***, or if the people trying to execute it just suck at their jobs. I'm inclined to believe the later right now.

But Verdugo has been killing it. I was hoping he would have a break out year this year. Some guys seem to check out when they get paid and others take off. Verdugo seems like the kind of guy who would reward you for paying him. I hope the Sox explore an extension with him this year.

Yeah I wasn’t being that serious. But on a serious note, I always found it annoying that a guy could get paid millions and millions of dollars and not be expected to be able to change position in a batting order. I mean shiiiit, I barely make 1/10th of a million and I can’t change where my desk is at. If the wanted to pay me $15 million I’ll move my desk to the can if they asked me too.

He's 3rd on the team in OBP. Maybe he should hit lead off.