Hugh2

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.

If a lot of these guys hold out until after the June draft, I wonder if they might be a possibility to Boston then?

Groome doesn't strike me as the type you bring up from A ball and mess up his development. He doesn't have that one stand out tool that might be able to help a team down the stretch, like an elite 101 MPH fastball. The dude has all the potential in the world but he has a long road developmental wise. I've been called crazy for even more rational thoughts.

First off, I don't any player, coach, gm, or anybody truly deserves blind allegiance without any question. If there was such a level to be attained, Dave D certainly hasn't reached Bill Belichick status. This guy has what is it, one championship? twenty years ago? I think he's fine, and very well could put together what amounts to a WS winning team here, but people are batshit crazy if they think none of his moves should be criticized.

Is this suppose to be the potential game 1,2 and 3 starters for this year? If so, I think we can take Jay Groome out of the pen.

He also had the overall #2, and then the overall #1 pick in the draft when he drafted those guys. There's a huge difference between draft with the first pick and drafting in the back of the first round. Also, I'd like to add that I think we as fans give too much credit to the G.M. for draft results. There are countless scouts, directors, and crosscheckers putting in thousands of hours within the organization that go into making these decisions. I'd actually be willing to be that after the first round pick, most G.M.s don't even make another pick

I'm not against Swihart making the roster, and I'm going to be excited if he does and rooting for him but...BUT (but usually precedes something stupid, eh?). But he's out of options. My point is, I'm not going to be crying foul if they decide to keep him in Pawtucket. If Swihart is struggling at the MLB by the time Pedroia comes back the Sox are going to have a tough decision to make.

I'm fine with guys like Johnson as depth options, but there isn't really an argument against trying to increase your depth. Pitching, pitching, and more pitching. Dumpster diving can't hurt anyone if you're paying a guy peanuts in Pawtucket with an opt-out. The difference between those guys and has-beens is potential. Sometimes you catch a guy who has something left, and when you do that you're going to get much better production than a guy whose ceiling is a BOTRS up/down guy.

Trade away existing talent? Like who? we're already losing Kimbrel and Pomeranz at the end of this year, Sale and Porcello the year after next. There's no way we replace all this talent without staying over the luxury tax. ....Which I'm totally fine with by the way.

when calculating future payroll costs, keep in mind there are going to be pretty big arbitration jumps the next couple years.

It's really hard to attribute a certain level of credit to a G.M. Obviously there is more credit/blame to go there than anywhere else in the organization but it's still more complex than usually presented. Ben, for all his faults built up a good farm, and even Theos guys came into the system when he was assistant G.M. what level of influence did he have in those decisions? His biggest folly, whether you want to blame him or the organization has a whole has been drafting and developing pitching. I'm not the biggest DD guy but one thing he has done is use the assets within this organization to build up the rotation and the bullpen. Yes, we have zero depth now, but that's because we have Sale, Pomeranz, Kimbrell, Smith etc. The farm is important but sometimes the point of having assets is to trade them for what you need. I have no idea what DD's plan is, or to what level he has a plan this year but if you step back and look at this team as a whole it's blatantly obvious what he's done. He took a team that was rich in talent on one side of the ball and kept the young cost controlled MLB ready players, and he moved other assets to build up the other side of the ball. The results have been two straight division wins, and it looks like this team should be just as strong for at least another 2-3 years.

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Alternatively, how would you build depth in AAA? in the absence of MLB ready talent I think mediocre and has-beens are pretty much all you got. Can't hurt the MLB team in Pawtucket, and you might catch lightening in a bottle. Depth can make a big difference by the time you tally up 162 games at the end of the year.