Hugh2

Yeah, I've also wondered if trading him was the best solution as well. Maybe you start him in the minors (because he has no optins left) and if he's hitting really well and staying a healthy a team bites. You never know as well, he may end up being needed down the line. If that's the case, and he's still in the teams plans, I would think he should try a few new positions in the minors. 2B/3B/LF would be well for him, especially if he hits.

To be fair, how many people can remember the 5th/6th/7th/8th starter options for any team outside of it's present year????

Because he was one of the top prospects in baseball only a few years ago, then got jerked around and lost a year to injury. Now he's looking great again and is still young with a lot of promise?

Years ago Johnson was pegged as a guy with a high floor who could be a #4 starter. Not the sexiest profile, but that's exactly what this team needs right now. It would be really great to see that out of Johnson, for everything he's been going through and for what this team needs right now.

Moon, you know I know that. Forgive me if I didn't make my point well enough. Yes, teams are going after Machado next year, as well as Harper and others. That's why no one is spending this year. Someone is going to miss out next year on these guys....actually a lot of teams are. IF, and this is perhaps a big if, but if Hanley has a really good year there is going to be a team with the cap space, cash and need for a bat that will take a chance on Hanley if it costs them nothing but money. Now maybe I'm wrong, but if Hanley has a good year I firmly believe that.

You cannot compare this year's market to next years. They are completely different animals and I think you know that Moon. Teams are not spending this year because they're trying to reset and get prepared for next year. If any of these were free agents a year earlier or later they'd be getting a lot more money.

I forgot to subtract JDM money but I believe my point still stands. If that money is off the books then you're losing JDM along with Sale, Betts, Bogaerts, JBJ, Vasquez, Moreland, Hanley, Porcello, Pomeranz, and Kimbrell. Yes, I agree that not all those guys are going to be getting paid in arbitration, that is a GREAT point. However, it could also not break down the way you think. Those arbitration guys might not be getting replaced with pre-arbitration guys, they are more likely to be replaced with contracts signed in FA because the system doesn't have any real talent in it right now aside from several guys. For other guys to come up and take the place of the more expensive arby guys you need to have a strong farm system and that was 1/2 of my point. Our farm is extremely weak. EDIT: with your point in mind we can up from 3-4 premium players added over the next 3 years. If we're staying in house that means we can sign Sale, Porcello, Betts, and Bogaerts. But it's probably likely 3 guys because replacing a closer, a BOTRS, a few role players etc etc etc really adds up too. Perhaps an alternative term for cliff that might make it easier for some people would be "potential tricky roster construction ahead"

Cliff Theory: Here's the Sox lineup in 2021 without any moves: Rotation: Price EROD Jay Groome Bryan Mata Tanner Houck. You have two proven MLB starters there. One has been a little lackluster the last few years, on the wrong side of his prime and will be 35 in 2021. Erod is the 2nd best pitcher in this bunch and he could be good by then, but he's also had a hard time staying healthy as a youngster so he could easily be the next Clay giving you 15 great starts a year and then getting injured by the time he's 28. Best case scenario is he's your #1 starter, and while I think he has good potential, he's never going to be as good as Chris Sale. The next 3 are prospects who have not pitched above low A ball. Yes, they have potential, but even in a system that has a knack for turning out pitching prospects, more fail than succeed. If you're lucky two of those guys are MLB pitchers with one of those two being a servicable reliever. Without a clean bill of health and an unprecedented hit on prospects that rotation is going to need 3-4 more names in a couple years. The lineup: Swihart S Travis Pedroia Devers Chatham Aneury Tavarez Benintendi Cole Brennan Michael Chavis Call me a donny downer but I don't see Pedroia being a healthy contributor at 37 years old. The only guys who have confidence being good at this point in time are Benintendi and Devers. Maybe you get some luck with guys like Swihart turning it around and perhaps a guy like Brennan emerges but you are still likely going to have 4-5 big holes on the field. The bullpen: Matt Barnes is the only guy on this team who will still be there. The only real potential I see for a shutdown reliever in our system is Tanner Houck, but that means you also have one more definite hole in the rotation by then as well. Your payroll then is going to be $133. It could be more like arbitration rises. By my calculations, you have the capacity to sign 3 big time free agents over the next 3 years to fill these holes. But you will be losing: Sale, Pomeranz, Porcello, Vazquez, Bogaerts, Bradley, Betts, JDM, maybe even Price. You will also be losing Kimbrel, Thornburg, and Smith. In the minors you might replace one of these guys with this group of talent. You might get real lucky in the draft and get one college guy who can fly up the system in the mold of Andrew Benintendi or Jacoby Ellsbury. But you're talking about replacing most of your team with almost nothing in the pipeline and the money to only add a few premium guys. The cliff isn't a certainty, no one knows what is going to happen, no one knows how prospects will develop, future trades that will take place, who will sign an extension, and who will drafted. The "cliff" is just a different way of saying things don't look good. Without something extraordinary happening it certainly looks like the team from years 2021-2023 will be a lot less star studed than 2018-2020 will be. There could also be a huge bounce. The cliff could be a very real thing but you also might have a stacked farm again by the year 2021 and ready to rebuild a monster sometime in the 2022-2024 years. Maybe we win a world series or two over the next couple years, stink for a few years and then are competitors again. We don't really know. But the "cliff" is a real representation of the long term outlook of the system. Yes, we don't really know what is going to happen but talking about the cliff is a much better representation of the future than just shrugging ones shoulders and going "IDK...they'll figure it out" We're looking at the team in 2-3 years and looking at our system and weighing that vs. past precedent of how many prospects pan out and how often FA pans out. Without a lot of good fortune, the team has a big capacity to suck in a few years. At the end of the day, I'm not going to stress about a game, I'm going to enjoy the next few years, but the concept of a cliff is very real.

If there is one area the Sox are hoping to save money I'd think it would be hoping Smith and/or Thornburg could step up to replace Kimbrell.

If Hanley Ramirez has a season like 2016 again and his option vests he becomes tradeable. Teams are gearing up to spend big next year and someone who misses out on the big bats is going to have the money to spend to take a chance on him for one year. This is hypothetical and built on the basis that Hanley plays well enough for his option to vest. I also don't believe in looking at one player as a roadblock to not signing another (all things considered). It wouldn't be Hanley that stops the Sox from re-signing next year it would Hanley and Moreland, and Price, and JDM, etc etc etc. But again, I don't think Hanleys money is on the books for 2019. Perhaps some of you think he can hit with a .880 OPS and not be tradeable, I happen to disagree.

If Hanley puts up a .285/.340/.480 season a team will pay him for one year. We're talking about one year in a market that I'm certain teams are going to be spending the money opposed to this year. Even if I'm being a bit optimistic I'm sure we could get a team to eat the majority of it. I don't think this is a high certainty, but if that DOES happen, it's because he has a good season. If Hanley is having a good season alongside JDM in this lineup it might be worth it a thousand times over if the go to the WS. But I agree, that money could be put to much better use in 2019. Which is exactly why I'd shed it.

I agree. Where I was going with this is that I don't think Hanley should or will have his option vest unless he plays very well and steals at bats away from Moreland. If that does happen, I'm speculating we can move that 22 million dollars.

First off, I don't completely disagree with you. I think there's a good chance Hanleys' option does not vest between platooning and the risk of injury. However, platoons never work out to where player A gets 100% at bats against the RHP and player B gets 100% of the at bats vs. the LHP. Additionally, if Hanley is mashing, or at the very least performing better than a struggling Moreland he even then could get more at bats vs. RHP. In my personal opinion, giving the recent track record and age I wouldn't bank on Hanley having back to back good seasons. So if by chance injury and/or his play allows his option to vest I think the Sox could move him. If he's not productive I think the Sox are not going to give him the playing time.

I beg to differ for multiple reasons. 1. This year's free agent market seems to have been an anomaly. Teams have been trying to reset, and save their money for next year. 2. Morrison has one good year on his record after an entire career of playing at replacement level. 3. Morrison was a free agent, I'm talking about trading a player. If Hanley has a really good year, and there are a plethora of teams that have reset and have cash you might find a market for Hanley if there are a few teams who missed out on Machado, Donaldson, Harper, McCutchen + and that's just the hitters. If someone like Matt Harvey has a bounce back year the pitching market is stacked as well when Kershaw opts out. I'm not saying we get a lot for Hanley, but you can easily shed his money next year. There will be a team that missed out and will hope Hanley can replicate his 2018 if it's a good year. They won't be locked down by years or losing draft picks either. My point is, I think Hanley's play should dictate his playing time. I wouldn't be worried about that option vesting if he earns it he earns it.

If Hanley plays well enough so his option vests, couldn't we trade him next offseason?

Sometimes guys get rushed to the majors for how the perform on one side of the ball where's the other is lacking. People forget that these players are developing defensively as well. I don't think Devers is a future GG but I've heard a lot of good things about scouts believing he has the tools and the work ethic to develop into an average defender. If his bat is close to being as special as they say it is (and so far how it has looked) that is more than acceptable.

The Yankees lineup is stacked no doubt, but if the Sox lineup rebounds and guys and JDM has an effect in the middle guy like Bogaerts, Betts, Benintendi, JBJ, and Devers could potentially help us rival that with depth 1-9 no easy outs. The Yankees have a ton of talent in their rotation but a 37-year-old Sabathia has one wondering who the innings eater is on this team??? Everyone seems too young or too inconsistent to instill confidence in a healthy rotation going forward. Their bullpen should mititage this a bunch though. If the Yankees rotation stays healthy, and the Sox lineup rebounds, I think it's 2003 all over again with two 100 win teams in the east. Bank it.

I think people put way too much confidence in a coaching staff for crediting a teams success. Perhaps I could have worded my opinion more in-depth. 2012 was riddled with underperformance and injury. There's just too much conversation to re-hash to really go back and argue the "chicken and beer" and contemplate why that happened. Honestly, it was probably a combination of everything. But Whatever Ben C. did seemed to work. He cut the fat out, shed some payroll, and added mid-value talent that completely turned that team around in 2013. NOW, I think that teams success was obviously due to it's core talent of guys like Ortiz, Ellsbury, and Lester so in hindsight calling it a "s*** team" was definitely poor wording on my part. The odd thing about it all, is the exact formula that worked in 2013 completely fell apart in 2014. Charrington seemed to fall into this big time G.M. trap of keeping the team competitive and selling MLB pieces to try and buy low on other MLb pieces and it completely fell apart for him. The Lackey trade was one of the worse trades I've seen in my lifetime. Getting rid of Lester and Lackey was just irresponsible. How can you trade away your number 1 and number 2 pitcher and make sideways moves to try and compete? You mine as well sell them off for farm pieces and if he had done that we could probably have the same level of talent on this team now with a stronger farm system intact. But I suppose hindsight is 20/20. I wasn't a big fan of the Dave Dambrowski hiring but I've come around on him a bit. He's the right G.M. for this job. I think Ben C. gets too much crap but I also don't think he had the balls to pull off the moves that Dave.

Ok, thank you for clarifying that. I also wasn't trying to be a dick I was just trying to respond. I'm by no means a shining example of spelling and grammar, and I know between spell check, being in a hurry, or just texting from a device it gets insanely easy for things to get jumbled up. Personally, I don't think any G.M. should be safe from criticism and that is even truer in a fan forum. What I was trying to convey was that there is a feeling amongst some fans that a G.M. should never be criticized if he has attained a certain level of success and never be questioned. I meant to say there are some who feel this way, not you. I do think success commands benefit of the doubt but I also think one would be naive to believe a G.M. or a coach could never make a mistake. The greatest ones to ever live made ton of mistakes, they just made less ones than everyone else.

I honestly don't know what you're trying to say here.

Ben was also left an organization that was devoid of any pitching talent, aside from Jon Lester who was an impending free agent. You could say not resigning Lester was a huge mistake but that still builds into the argument me and Notin are making. Ben was handed a s*** team, and sold off and rebuilt in such a way that gave him a WS in 2013, the 2014 team that failed was the same 2013 team that won it all. 2015 is where I think he truly failed as a G.M. He got cute and thought he could be smarter than everyone else and sold off MLB assets for other MLB assets. Porcello actually ended up being a pretty good deal but the Lackey trade was an absolute disaster. Ben was a different kind of G.M. I think he was the right guy at that time, he kept and built up the farm but I don't think he had the balls to pull the trigger and move those assets the way DD has. DD was the right man at the right time as his record is much better on the trading side of the ball.

I can't think of a good example in baseball but have you heard of Bill Belichik of the Patriots? There are many fans who will call into WEEI and always say you can't question the pats because....well...look at the results.

Oh, that's your argument? One year as an anecdotal remedy that the #2 pick overall can suck? I can find you #1 overall picks that suck. It's blatantly obvious you're picking from a much richer pool of talent at the top of the draft and the rate of success is astronomically higher with the first two picks. And if that's your anecdote, then let's look at that draft. DD is addicted to drafting polished college pitchers, honestly look at his history he takes a ton of college pitchers in the first round. So he opts to draft Andrew miller over Clayton Kershaw, Tim Lincecum, and and Max Scherzer. Perhaps another reason you used this year was that there was much better talent in 7-11 range then there was between the 1-6 range. But this too is another anecdote. I've looked at the draft, I've looked at every pick in the top couple rounds many times over for the past 30 years. This was an anamoly, the talent at the top of the draft is almost always better than the rest. There's always a valuable player or two at the end of the first round or the rest of the draft most years and a team gets lucky with a Mike Trout but your chances of drafting premium talent increase ten fold when you have the #1 overall pick or the #2 overall pick in the draft. So I'll say it again...you take away those first two picks DD had (because the teams sucked) and how is his drafting record when he's picked in the back of the first round? It's not as good as the cumulative record of Theo and Ben picking there, not even close. Dave Dambrowski is really good at trading, but that seems to be it.

I agree.

ehh. If you have the #1 pick in the entire draft it's because your team sucks. He had the #1 pick overall and #2 overall. It's pretty freaking hard to mess up those picks in any sport. After that, he doesn't really have a great record of drafting, it's not horrible but it's very meh.