Hugh2

There’s more than one way to skin a cat. I’m just hoping this FO pulls the trigger next year and makes a run for a few years here. As bad as things seem right now I don’t think we are far from being that. But the team as constructed now is lost. I didn’t exactly have a hard on for Judge, just an ideal, but damn….imagine him destroying that green monster.

What? Big guys don’t deteriorate faster than little guys, If anything the opposite is true, unless of course we’re talking about fat people. Increased bone and muscle size is directly correlated with longevity. Andre the Giant suffered from gigantism, he was 7’4” pushing 500 lbs. Judge is a big boy, he doesn’t suffer from a condition in which his body is releasing excessive growth hormone at insanely unhealthy levels.

Suzuki isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire either. He would have been an upgrade out there right now, and I think he could take a 2nd year leap. We probably would have had to pay more than 85/5 to get him here. Regardless, JBJ starting was apparently an insanely weak plan B.

Sox made an offer on Suzuki, I guess they didn’t care enough to have a plan B

Many of us who didn’t immediately hate the trade did so under the assumption the Sox were going to sign Suzuki, or some other outfielder. We thought JBJ would be the 4th outfielder, but we were wrong.

This can’t be said enough, which rings 100x truer than my opinion of signing Stanton. Almost no free agent is ever worth the money. Of they’re worth it for a few years and are serviceable players by the end of the contract consider yourself winners. Timing is important, but at some point you have to spend big. Not saying it has to be Stanton, but someone at some point is getting signed for entirely way too much money and an amount higher than what most think is reasonable. I’d be willing to bet if we took a survey of how much it would take to keep Bogaerts in Boston that 90% of the answers would lowball the true number. I

We effectively have 3 left fielders right now. There's no good alignment, there's literally just the less shittiest alignment

Good, that may take them out of the running for other FA's we can pursue, which is why we should at least make a competitive bid and bid his price up. It's not like he's not a premium player at a position we desperately need to fill. Think of it this way, lets say Judge was with Boston and not NY and approaching free agency this year. Do we think a lot more people on this board would want to resign him? or do we think we'd all be wanting him to walk away? Again, you make a great point that NY is likely to make a big offer to stay in NY, we should at least be in the conversation.

We don’t want to sign Judge because he’s 30, yet Xander is 6 months younger. Judge has a track record and fills an immediate need. Signing a big contract shouldn’t exclude the Sox from signing others. Despite various claims, the Sox are consistently one of the biggest spenders. It’s even more justified to spend when you’re going for it. We’ve built the farm back up and reset the lux tax last year, if you plan on staying over you have a LOT of money to spend until you reach the next threshold.

Or maybe we can run Franchy out there, or Dalbec, or give Duran more of a chance. The lineup can use a boost, and we need an outfielder and we always complain about not having enough star power in the lineup, why wouldn't we want to go after Judge?

Well then you run Duran/Phem/Verdugo in your outfield, and that's a good awful outfield and I believe at some point the Sox need to be willing to go over the luxury tax for a few years and compete. That time is or at least SHOULD be on the horizon. That's also a problem for 2024, we have no idea how things play out and how much Bogaerts signs for.

My guess is it's coming any day now, if not later today. Jordan and Mayer got promoted during days off, Bleis didn't have an off day playing in the FCL, they have one tomorrow....Maybe tomorrow is the dya.

He's not a free agent this offseason, if they can sign him to an extension great, if they can't he's still on this team.

Well, I suppose it's a good thing we didn't empty the farm to compete for a 2nd wildcard spot this year.

WOuldn't mind Laureano, I don't think hes going to cost a lot either, I also wouldn't mind signing judge and running with Verdugo/Laureano/Judge. Resign Bogaerts and Vasquez and now you have a lineup you can believe in.

I think they're scared to death of him out there. Perhaps the better question is, who should our centerfielder be? We had one, but we DFA'd him because he couldn't hit, now we're stuck with a guy who can't hit or field. I'd take JBJ of Duran right now.

The last time everyone complained about no talent in the outfield was literally a year before we got the Benintendi/JBJ/Betts outfield that was outstanding. Things could look very different out there in two years, still, I don't see anything in the pipeline, we need at least one major upgrade out there to come from a trade/FA

It's not like they have options in the outfield. At best somebody gives you something marginally better.

With Plawecki gone after this season we need a back up. We need a starter as well, one of those three can stay in Boston.

I get that Bloom is getting harder and harder to defend, but I'm willing to bet he had almost zero involvement in moving Duran to the outfield. I could be wrong.

But at least Duran has some experience there, and this isn't saying much, but he was a much better defender at 2nd than he is in the outfield.

Nobody truly knows how these prospects will pan out, I like to think of prospects as lottery tickets (yeah, a bad example talking about actual people but whatever lol) with the higher end prospects giving you a larger chance of hitting. But hey, if you have a 90% chance of hitting it big you still lose 10% of the time, and if you have a 99% chance of not then 1% of the time you do hit it big. We have Lars Andersons and Rusney Castillos and we also have Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts too. It's just the way of prospectetum. One thing I recall recently is on a past Soxprospects podcast (I think about a year ago), the staff there talking about how they thought Duran was being over ranked by the national media, and they (who had the most eyes on him) where not as high on him. They always kind of pegged him as a 4th outfielder type, maybe more if he ever put it together and he could be a bat first LF type. They also compared it to the time when the national media was much higher on Lars Anderson than they were on him too. Even the best scouts are going to be wrong, A LOT, but I trust the guys who have the most eyes on players. I will say this, the guy who they think is being overhyped now is....Rafael Caddenne, who people think is going to be the next Mookie Betts, but I think a more appropriate ceiling for him might be Kike Hernandez, and that's still really really good. You're right about Casas, I do however have a higher degree of confidence he's going to pan out but nothing is guaranteed until they're there in the bigs doing it. I actually think Casas has the ability to hit better in the majors than he does in the minors, I think his true power doesn't show because he's so patient and pitcher seldomly challenge him. We shall see.

I think there's a real danger with having too many platoons, especially on this team, I'd rather have the extra arm in the pen...especially if they keep Whitlock there. I don't think DH is the position you should ever go light on, I'd rather have a plus defender at CF/SS/C hitting 9th. You either need a good bat, or use it as a rotation to rest players. I don't disagree that Casas and Hosmer play on the same team, but if Casas is hitting and Hosmer is not I don't expect that to last long. And if they're both hitting and the Sox have a viable DH, you trade Hosmer....and you get more for him than SD did because his salary is free.

Also, it's not like Daniel Nava and Johnny Gomes were lighting the world on fire and long-term options in the outfield in 2014 either. I think that's when they moved Betts to the outfield. With Pedroia as the 2nd baseman and no viable outfield options into the future other than JBJ (who was struggling), there were seemingly 2-3 open spots in the outfield for Betts. Betts might not be the best comparison because he was definitely moved to fit into the team, whereas Duran was moved because it was thought his tools would play up better in the outfield......again.....they were wrong.

I'm not entirely sure to be fair, but I do know at the time the Sox had a guy called Dustin Pedroia at 2nd, now he was riddled with injuries but this was at a point in time we were still hopeful he was going to come back and play for several more years. Duran was never a plus defender, but scouts had him pegged as an average defender at 2nd from what I remember. There was the belief his speed was wasted at 2nd and he might be better suited for the outfield.....sometimes scouts are wrong.