Hugh2

Neither did I, I just recently look at the statcast page. Marte on the other hand, despite being older still has elite bat speed.

Well the argument there was against people who explicitly said "Now is the time" to make moves (which I don't disagree with) in which the farm should be used to make such trades. That's not hyperbole, I reject the notion that all the chips should be thrown in with no regard for the future. Signing Bregman and trade Mayer for Marte might make the team better in 2026. Bregman, despite being a year younger actually shows much more early signs of decline. The team could be hamstrung from as early on as 2027 on, heck for all you know Bregman will fall off a cliff next year. We are in here arguing Marte vs. Mayer, perhaps the argument should be Mayer vs. Bregman. Given what's available out there, and the concern that Bregman is not going to hold up. a Mayer/Story/Marte/? infield is probably going to add much more value over the next 5 years than a Bregman/Story/Marte/? infield.

The options are concerning. Both Bo Bichette and Alex Bregman have very poor bat speed. Bregman in the 30% precentile and Bo in the 12th. Typically, players with poor bat speed do not age well. These are the guys, who when they have other elite talent play well in their 20's but then fall off a cliff. Another argument against trading Mayer for Marte is because if you do trade for Marte perhaps Mayer is your better option at 3B moving forward. That leaves 1B. I like a Contreras trade, I also could get on board with an Okamoto signing. Mayer/Story/Marte/Okamoto. Or Mayer/Story/Marte/Contreras.

I wouldn't have a problem rolling the dice with Casas at 1B with good depth options and a big bat added elsewhere. I'm also not against the Contreras trade either.

I like that analogy

Maybe, but you know guys are going to advance, so it's not like they should of been a shocker.

Well I can't really respond to this seeing how the "hyperbole" is blank. But if I had to guess, I'd guess I counter that with something because I"m certainly not trying to be hypoerbolic. It's funny, because it almost feels like youre' making an argument to keep Mayer. He plugs up a hole, and trading him away creates another hole. So we are literally at the time to keep a guy like Mayer and go out and either A.) trade assets you don't need RIGHT NOW or B.) sign a free agent. If you keep Mayer in AAA, you have 3 roster holes in just your infield alone. I've heard the argument to let him cook in AAA a bit more. They're strong and compelling, but at this point I think you just let him finish cooking at the MLB level, bat him 9th vs. LHP and sit him versus some. If one guy in the bottom of your lineup is killing you then your team is crap and 100% NOT "In that time now" mode.

I think we can 100% be focused on the presetn without trading Mayer+ for Marte. I'm not convinced we can't keep Mayer and still trade for Marte.

Love this post, and it should be repeated every single day around here. People have been brainwashed into thinking we HAVE to go through down cycles, lose games and get high draft picks. Bridging years should never mean becoming a losing franchise.

If spending had everything to do with it the Mets would be better but LA blows them away because they do everything else better on top of spending. I'd rather be LAD lite than NYM lite.

Lets try this with more brevity. If the Sox should be "all in" and they've traded a record number of top 20 prospects in the past two years............shouldn't the focus be on signing guys and spending some money?

I violenty disagree with this post. I certainly do not take it personally. I don't disagree with you, not completely. I just don't agree that we have to trade away guys like Mayer to "go for it now" sure you have to trade away high end prospects sometimes but we've already done a lot of htat lately. I think you can do too little of that, but I think you can also do too much. We've traded more top 20 prospects in the last 2 years than I can remember. We traded two of our #1 draft picks in consecutive years plus two other guys to get Crochet. That's great, I love that move but you have to agument that with FA and developing your own guys. If you don't, then you're shortening your window to a couple years or being the Padres. I reject the notion that we have competitive windows, you should always be competitive, the FO just really messed this team up after it broke up the 2018 squad. You can not spend money on groceries and be malnurished, conversely you can spend all your money on one big feast and then still be malnurished the rest of the year. You need to retain assets, because maybe you need moves to make in 2027, 2028, 2029 etc etc etc. And I'm sorry, Marte for as good as he is, is nowhere CLOSE to the guy you throw all your chips in and go all in.

This is a good point, who knows what we will get. One thing that has me optimistic is he should have been fully recovered for a while and with a full offseason. Maybe the innings get limited at the end of the year but he should be fine. If the stuff has ticked up he's going to make a lot of people eat crow around here. The dream scenario is he pitches like a stud and returns a draft pick.

Maybe, one can still wonder what a DD operation looks like if he's conforming to the constraints put under him by the Henry regime. Everything that makes DD a good G.M. is stripped away from his predecessors.

Well......wasn't he fired? presumably for not doing what he was being told to do. I'm trying to imagine what it would look like if he was John Henrys good little boy and did what he was told. He'd probably look just as inept as Bloom.

The whole point in developing guys like the big three and getting them to the bigs is to augment them with veterans and proven talent around them E.G. actually signing guys to free agency. The absence of doing so just makes you the.......well apparently it makes you the Boston Red Sox.

If the front half of your rotation is strong, I actually love these types of moves. You have your Crochets at the top locking down the rotation and if Sandoval busts it's whatever because you have a strong 1-4, and if he does what you think he can do your team is a ton better and you can offer the Q.O. and receive draft pick compensation and more $$$ in the draft. Personally, I think the Sox should do one of these every single year, as long as they're not their primary moves.

I wonder how Dave D would have operated if he wasn't fired and agreed to conform to John Henry's mandate of no long term contracts and to build up the farm?

Yeah but it wasn't so much that we went over a cliff and more like John Henry drove us off one.

We like shiny new object kids because we know that they're cheap. If the Sox actually acted like the 3rd largest market in the country they'd use that to augment a team of FA talent mixed in with the youth. That's how LA does it, they sign big time guys but they actually develop and bring up their own young talent as well. Also, when I have a "roman anthony" as my "shiny new toy" I've been on him for 3 years....the FA Shiny new Toy crows literally has a new toy they want every month. So that analogy doesn't really apply to the prospect model.

I've been a firm believer that Patrick was a lock for the rotation, the 4th or 5th spot. He does a lot of things the Sox like and you can imagine that they see a guy that they think they can adjust and turn into the guy he was in 2022. He has great breaking stuff, I could see a scenario where if he comes back and has added a tick or two of velocity that he's going to shut a lot of people up around here. The thing is, he's done nothing for us and doesn't have much of a track record before he came here. He was injured all of last year and didn't contribute anything but the Sox knew that. I know there was some hope he might be able to come back at the end of last year but this signing was all about 2026. Now with that said, could the Sox still shift gears and decide that he's just not the guy anymore and other moves can move him down? Maybe they have more confidence in Oviedo, Crawford, and Early to fill out those 4th and 5th spots and move on???? I'm actually at a place now where that would not surprise me.

Wouldn't win now be more in line with, well lets' keep Mayer for 3B and trade for Marte (with other pieces) to play 2nd. Or play Mayer at 2nd and sign Bregman to play 3rd? What I find fascinating about this whole thread is how somewhere Mayer has to be traded for the Sox to be competitive and there's no one else we could possibly trade for.

Easily? I have a lot of faith that Roman Anthony is going to be an absolute monster sooner rather than later. He was the #1 prospect in all of baseball for good reason.

Per Bradfo the Market for Duran is heating up.