BillyWilliams

Quick reminder, that was last year which has nothing at all to do with this year.......

Should this thread be renamed the rafael devers thread?

lol

I think there are a handful of teams that could win it all this year, just like last year. Way too many variables over the course of a long season to come out and say "this is definitely the team that will win it all"

....

Which neither I nor the article claimed. Once again you clearly show that you skipped the "Reading is Fundamental" part of growing up.

I thought it was a good read as well. Should once again be an interesting battle!

They seem pretty good to me!

What would you know about pre-2004 sox fans? You think baseball was invented in 2004.....

Most of these are down right horrible........ What if we created every baseball team's name from scratch? By Michael Clair Feb. 20th, 2019 Baseball team names are sacred. It's almost impossible to think of the Boston baseball team as anything other than the Red Sox. Even a team like the Dodgers, who were so named because of their Brooklyn "trolley dodging" roots, doesn't seem out of place in Los Angeles any longer. However, the most classic team names weren't created after a group sat down and decided "this is what our team should be called." The best names emerged organically from sportswriters and fans. The Cardinals were so dubbed because a sportswriter wanted to note the "Cardinal Red" socks that the team wore. The Yankees were so called because "Highlanders" took up too much space in a newspaper headline. So, what if the teams were named today? What if we got to redo the entire league? We decided to try and figure that out, complete with brand new logos, too. We gave ourselves a few ground rules: - The name should be something related to the team's area or its history. - The logos could be more lively, but they should not be as cartoon-y as Minor League logos. - Overused names like "Wildcats" should be avoided. - Some team names are new and/or good fits (looking at you, Rockies). But for this exercise, everyone gets a new team name. OK? Let's get to it. Arizona Diamondbacks: Arizona Chupacabras It's time we embraced the Southwest's most terrifying cryptozoological legend: The Chupacabra. Atlanta Braves: Atlanta Peaches I mean, Georgia is known as the Peach State after all. Baltimore Orioles: Baltimore Crabs The Orioles serve crab-topped hot dogs at Camden Yards -- which is an awesome idea, by the way -- so of course the new team should be represented by the lowly sand spider known as the crab. Boston Red Sox: Boston Scholars Boston is basically one giant college campus already, so the team may as well reflect that. Chicago Cubs: Chicago Goats After the Cubs won the 2016 World Series, the Billy Goat curse was finally lifted. Now it's time to pay homage to this goat god, lest they anger him again. Chicago White Sox: Chicago Hawks The White Sox don't even wear white socks, so the name barely makes sense. With the legendary one-of-a-kind broadcaster Hawk Harrelson now retired, there's only one option: Name the team for him and his nose. Harkening back to when the White Sox wore the sky blues, and Harrelson's love of a light blue suit, the team also has a new sky blue look. Cincinnati Reds: Cincinnati Pigs The Reds aren't even directly connected to the real original redlegs -- that would be the Braves. So, in honor of the city's traditional title as "Porkopolis," enter the throwback-style logo for the Pigs. Cleveland Guardians: Cleveland Rocks In my personal opinion, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is an affront to all things that rock music represents. But it does live in Cleveland. Also, isn't everyone's favorite Cleveland-themed song about how the town rocks? Colorado Rockies: Colorado Triceratops During construction of Coors Field, the Rockies found triceratops bones underneath the field. While mountain ranges are cool, dinosaurs are cooler. Detroit Tigers: Detroit Nain Rouge Nain Rouge, which is French for "Red Dwarf," is at the center of a piece of Detroit folklore. The story goes that Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the founder of Detroit, was told by a fortuneteller to appease the Nain Rouge, but when he encountered the creature, Cadillac beat him with his cane while shouting "out of my way, you red imp!" Naturally, when people spot the Nain Rouge, it means disaster will soon follow. So, hopefully to appease him, the city gets together for the "Marche du Nain Rouge." That's fun, so we chose to name the team in his honor. Houston Astros: Houston Eagles With this team name, we're staying in the space-themed world of Houston sports by honoring Apollo 11's call sign of "Eagle." But we're also paying homage to the Negro League Newark Eagles, who moved to Houston for the 1949-50 seasons. Kansas City Royals: Kansas City Swing Here in America, we don't go for monarchies. And we definitely wouldn't name baseball teams after livestock shows, which is where the Royals originally got their name. However, jazz music -- the most American music genre -- is the perfect match for baseball -- the most American sport. We also incorporated the musical note into the old K.C. A's logo for a sweet combination of the past and present. Los Angeles Angels: Orange County Rally Monkeys The Angels play in Anaheim, which is in Orange County, not Los Angeles County. Considering they already have one of the most unique symbols that fans rally behind, it only makes sense to give the team over to the monkey. Cue up the Disturbed. Los Angeles Dodgers: LA Avocados Public transit is a joke in Los Angeles, so it's time to move away from the trolley dodger identity. Enter: Every millennial's favorite toast topping, the avocado. (Note the baseball: It's the same one from the Dodgers' soaring ball logo, just in a new color scheme.) Miami Marlins: Miami Nights We saw the direction the new Marlins logo started to go, but we went all the way. This is the Art Deco party of your dreams. Milwaukee Brewers: Milwaukee Oktoberfest Milwaukee and beer go hand in hand. But where the Brewers stop at the beer, we celebrate the month of October, when baseball is at its zenith and beer is at its most appreciated. Minnesota Twins: Minnesota Princes In place of caps, they shall wear raspberry berets. New York Mets: Queens Capitals Among some circles, especially culinary ones, Queens is considered the international capital of the world. Let's turn the Metropolitans into something both hyper-local and cosmopolitan -- just like Queens. And what better symbol of that than the unisphere, which was constructed for the 1964 New York World's Fair and now resides in Flushing Meadows, Queens? New York Yankees: New York Champions The team's identity is already all about the "27 RINGZ BABY!" So, stop hiding from it. Embrace it. Be the villain. Oakland Athletics: Oakland Green Beans The Athletics name had already been used in two cities before the team got to Oakland. It's time they had their own identity. Cleveland's baseball team was once named after Nap Lajoie, so this team should be named after Billy Beane -- and that sweet green color that is all their own. Philadelphia Phillies: Philadelphia Franklins Phillies? C'mon, Philadelphia. You can do better than that. How about getting inspiration from the great Philadelphian and founder of electricity, Benjamin Franklin? Pittsburgh Pirates: Pittsburgh Stars Everyone already loves Pittsburgh's '70s throwbacks, and nothing says Pirates baseball quite like Willie Stargell and the stars he gave out for good performance. Now it's official. St. Louis Cardinals: St. Louis Explorers St. Louis is already known as the "Gateway to the West" in honor of Lewis and Clark and the pioneers who set forth from the city, so shouldn't the team be known as the explorers rather than some bird? San Diego Padres: San Diego Surfers The only thing that would make this one better would be if the team kept the Friar as its mascot, but he has to go surfing before every home game. San Francisco Giants: San Francisco Cove Dogs When the Giants first moved to Oracle Park, Portuguese water dogs were used in the cove to retrieve home run balls. Because of safety concerns, that program was phased out, but now they'll forever live on as the representative of the team. Seattle Mariners: Seattle King Salmon Let's keep it aquatic, with a fish that is unique to the Pacific Northwest. Of course, we are also referencing the all-time great Mariner King Felix with the name, too. Tampa Bay Rays: The Tampa Juice There aren't enough teams that wear green or orange. So, let's get positively Floridian and embrace the juice. Texas Rangers: Texas Cattlemen It may not seem like a huge departure from the Rangers, but when you're in Texas, you have to stick with the cowboy standbys. Toronto Blue Jays: Toronto Bats There are about eight species of bats that live in Ontario, and that's more than enough to make the baseball pun live on forever. Washington Nationals: Washington Cherry Blossoms More teams should be named after beautiful flowers. What if we created every baseball team's name from scratch? | MLB.com WWW.MLB.COM The Official Site of Major League Baseball

Everything Went Right For The 2018 Red Sox. Are The Champs Destined To Regress? By Neil Paine J.D. Martinez and the Boston Red Sox must fight regression this year. It’s hard to imagine things going more right for the Boston Red Sox than they did last season. Boston jumped out to a scorching 17-2 start, was 38 games over .500 by the All-Star break, posted the most regular-season wins (108) by an MLB team in 17 years, and then steamrolled through the playoffs with an 11-3 postseason record en route to a World Series title. Statistically, it was probably the most impressive performance any major team had in 2018. But now the calendar has flipped to 2019, and as spring training warms up for the Sox in Fort Myers, Florida, Boston must focus on defending its crown — and staving off the inevitable regression that comes in the wake of a season as charmed as the one the Red Sox just enjoyed. As a rule, clubs that win a crazy number of ballgames in one season tend to come back down to earth quickly in the next. Of the 32 teams that cracked the century mark in wins (per 162 games) since 1990, 28 had an inferior record the next year, and 24 failed to return to the 100-win club. (Thirteen failed to break even 95 wins.) On average, these 32 triple-digit winners declined by 9.6 wins the following season. Teams that won substantially more than 100 games have tended to regress even harder. The 2002 Mariners, for example, won “only” 93 games after the 2001 squad tied a major league record with 116 wins; the 1999 Yankees won 98 a year after the team took home 114. The inescapable truth is that few major league teams actually have 100 wins of “true talent” on their rosters, much less 108. Most of these huge winners were aided by some not-insignificant amount of luck along the way. And it’s hard to argue that the Red Sox weren’t one of the luckier teams in baseball last season. According to the Pythagorean expectation, a team with Boston’s runs scored and allowed should have won four games fewer than it actually did. Furthermore, a team with Boston’s particular statistical profile (its singles, doubles, walks, etc. — both for and against) should have had a Pythagorean record five games worse than it actually did. Add up those two categories, and the Red Sox benefited from an MLB-high 10 extra wins of luck, whether through prevailing in the relative toss-ups of close games or through stringing hits together (or stranding opposing runners) in an unusually favorable manner. On top of all that, there’s another way a team can have everything go right for it, and that’s at the player level: Did everyone outperform their expected levels of performance at once? Injuries can often play a role here — though the Red Sox were in the middle of the pack in terms of man-games lost to the injured list. More pertinently, Boston also saw a number of players post career-best seasons last year, from American League MVP Mookie Betts (10.6 wins above replacement) to blockbuster free-agent signing J.D. Martinez (6.1), plus young up-and-comers such as Andrew Benintendi (4.1) and even longtime puzzles such as Eduardo Rodriguez (2.7). Altogether, 12 of Boston’s 21 regulars (those who played at least 2 percent of the team’s available playing time) exceeded their established level of WAR, with only Jackie Bradley Jr., Eduardo Nunez and the catching tandem of Sandy Leon and Christian Vazquez significantly undershooting their previous production levels during the 2018 regular season. And this is to say nothing of the unexpected performances the team received in the postseason from the likes of Steve Pearce — a fizzled-out former prospect who arrived in Boston via a midseason trade and ultimately won World Series MVP — or Nathan Eovaldi, another castoff who had a 1.61 ERA in 22 1/3 postseason innings. (Or, in general, the amazingly fortuitous splits the team had in crucial playoff situations.) All of those different ingredients explain how a team that won 93 games in 2017 suddenly exploded for 108 and won the championship a year later. But again, the pull of baseball’s gravity is strong. Based on data since 1990, we’d expect a team that improved by 15 games between seasons to give back about 5.2 wins the next season. It’s just another data point to toss onto the heap of statistical indicators that foretell a decline for the Red Sox heading into 2019. The good news for Boston is that if your starting point is a 108-win team, you have a ton of room to regress and still be one of the best teams in baseball. Even if the Sox didn’t truly have 108 wins of talent on the roster last year, they still played like a 98-win team according to their underlying statistics, and almost all of that team will be back this season (with the notable exception of closer Craig Kimbrel). According to an early preseason version of our 2019 MLB projections, we rate Boston as the third-best team in baseball, with a 95-67 projected record and a 10 percent chance of repeating as champs, which is also tied for third-best in MLB. Trouble is, that might make the Red Sox only the second-best team in their own division. Our simulations consider the arch rival New York Yankees just as likely as Boston to win the World Series and actually think that New York is ever-so-slightly better talent-wise. Although the Sox got the better of the Yankees last season, winning 13 of 23 games (including an August sweep and a four-game division series victory), for all intents and purposes, our projections have the two teams in an absolute dead heat as we look ahead to 2019: AVG. SIMULATED SEASON CHANCE TO… TEAM ELO RATING WINS LOSSES RUN DIFF. MAKE PLAYOFFS WIN DIVISION WIN WORLD SERIES Yankees 1566 95 67 +137 74% 41% 10% Red Sox 1564 95 67 +136 74 41 10 Rays 1527 86 76 +50 42 15 3 Blue Jays 1483 75 87 -52 13 3 1 Orioles 1421 60 102 -198 1 Based on 100,000 simulations of the 2019 MLB season And the Red Sox could be running out of time to make the most of their current core. By 2021, Betts, Bradley, Chris Sale, Xander Bogaerts and Rick Porcello (plus potentially Martinez, who has an opt-out clause) will have all hit free agency. And team president Dave Dombrowski built 2018’s champion in part by bucking MLB’s prospect-hoarding trend and emptying out the farm system’s next generation in favor of short-term wins, so reinforcements aren’t exactly on the way. The result of Dombrowski’s moves was a championship, and one of baseball’s all-time great single season performances, so I’m pretty sure it was worth it. The question now is how steep the drop-off will be in 2019 — and beyond. In many ways, Boston caught lightning in a bottle last season, enjoying the kind of magical year that comes along only once every decade or so. But if history is any guide, the follow-up will have trouble coming close to matching the original. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-went-right-for-the-2018-red-sox-are-the-champs-destined-to-regress/

So when the sox set a value on a player and refuse to go above that it's "smart baseball" but when Cashman does it he's an idiot. Got it, thanks........

I must have missed the part in that post where I said I wanted Machado .........

Not at all. Just wanted to point out the "damned if we do, damned if we don't" scenario...........

I don't know what the exact plan they have is but I believe you are in the minority who think they would consistently carry a payroll that high.....

Even figuring adding $100M to that $173M and needing to pay 34 more players works out to roughly $2.9M/player Do you think they carry a $273M payroll?

But both of their "career norms" are relatively small sample sizes, no?

My point was he was going to trash it either way..........

So you honestly think they are going to carry a $300M++ recurring payroll??!!

What was devers' and vaz's replacements' numbers over their respective seasons numbers?

I guess they could keep everyone if they went with a $300M++ payroll.............

Love James Woods, the guy is awesome.

Nobody said that, but I'm pretty sure most sox fans would be ecstatic if pedrioa puts up Torres' numbers from last year this coming season.

Highly improbable.........

He may, but even if he doesn't it will still be in the neighborhood of $20M which doesn't change my point that the sox would then have over 1/3 of their payroll tied up in 3 players.