5GoldGlovesOF,75

Some posts here and on other forums have defended our poor CBO as a company man merely following the mandates of ownership: "His budget was so limited, he had to recruit versatile utility men or back-ups to fill several positions (some they had never played fulltime or ever at the MLB level)... for years... He was only allowed to sign old castoff and rehabbing free agents for the rotation... and never allowed to trade prospects for healthy arms under 30... He was forced by the PR dept. to sign a strikeout-prone infielder with a bum elbow for $160 million (which they knew would be a lot less for a replacement of the soon-to-be-departing face of the franchise)... He was banned from trading most assets with expiring contracts at the last deadline, and from resigning them the next winter... And then, in the ultimate PR-stunt, he was forced to pay an all-or-nothing slugger more money for the next decade than the team offered a five-tool future Hall-of-Famer in his prime (who he was hired to trade, so they didn't have to pay market rate)... " If the above conjecture is actually factual -- and Chaim Bloom was just following orders and not truly responsible for such moves -- then doesn't it make sense why some reporters feel his job is safe, no matter the standings?

Liked an image.

The position player version of an overpaid Sale damaged goods/IL waiting to happen? Yep.

[quote= This may be an unpopular opinion but the Sox philosophy and strategy is a sound one......it's their execution of it that sucks. The way they've punished fans this year has been rather cruel and unusual.

Yet someone will defend him.

2020 may be the worst Sox team I have seen die.

Henry has so far accepted the rational of a five-year rebuild and pretension of contention, with Bloom and Kennedy as mouthpieces. The in-season promotion of top prospects at various levels of the minors provides promise for the future or at least contrives trade-bait hype for future transactions to fortify the big league roster. Henry has waited this long, and just might have the patience to keep Bloom through 2024 to at least finish his first five-year plan. Yeah, I typed that...

Talking heads in Boston now discussing firing Cora, while Tomase just wrote a column speculating "why Bloom may have a job for life." I don't see a scenario where both Bloom and Cora are axed together in sweeping organizational change. Cora has been as subtly outspoken as he can be with his oft-repeated, "the roster is the roster." His oft-criticized moves have all been made with the players he was assigned. Any honest fan still watching knows that the talent is just not there. But Cora will be long gone before next season. Bloom -- who isn't going anywhere because he is doing exactly what he was hired to do -- will finally be allowed to bring in his own man... and it won't be some recycled grizzled vet tasked with firing up wet tinder. The next Red Sox manager will be a young, first-time big league skipper; someone schooled in ivy halls whose MLB resume begins and ends at an analytics department. His main strength is he'll be really good at doing puzzles...

It wasn't my idea. A poster claimed that Red Sox world champs of the recent past didn't really care much about shortstop defense, so I looked up their dWAR, and thought I'd share that they were all positive defenders with the board.

I just can't see making a strong run with a weak defense. Recently, someone posted that shortstop wasn't really a focus (paraphrasing) of past Sox teams that won titles. I looked them up, and all had positive dWAR for Boston in '04, '07, '13 and '18: Cabrera 0.9, Lugo 0.8, Drew 0.2 and Bogaerts 0.1. While I'm not an expert on calculating WAR, I understand the acronym as a stat showing that all Red Sox championship shortstops this century were therefore better than a "replacement player." So far this year, Kike Hernandez is a negative dWAR shortstop. I'm not sure how his handful of games at second base or in centerfield factor into his total dWAR, but he has 14 errors at short and zero at any other position. Since WAR is now probably the most popular metric used to gauge player value, considering its very definition... how hard can it be to find a replacement player to replace a guy currently performing below the norms of a replacement player?

Posters here have been noting this since the offseason. If the pitchers don't have swing-and-miss stuff, the fielders better have sound fundamentals -- or you're sunk. Waiting for injured guys -- whose ailments, even in recovery, don't guarantee improved defense at the MLB level -- won't make a difference if it's too late. A big market team that is all-in contending for the postseason -- and not full of crap -- makes necessary moves to fill glaring holes with Big Leaguers in June.

As we age, maybe we've all been in relationships that are just broken, even irreparable. While we know the next one won't necessarily be better, we come to realize that it's still just time to move on.

Amazon uses cars for shipping. Nobody gets seasick unless they're texting.

So tonight will be the result of a climate change in Boston...

I really like Bello, and posted over the winter that the season would hinge not on Sale and Paxton, but on the development/recovery of Bello, Whitlock and Houck. But to answer your question: I don't know how anyone could say "yes" right now, when Eovaldi and Wacha were named the AL and NL Pitchers of the Month less than a couple weeks ago. And if you want to counter that they're both better than they were in Boston, the Sox aren't better yet for not having them in the rotation that has ranked near the bottom of MLB for the first third of the season.

Ties are worse. And uncomfortable. And any public educational institution requiring them of male employees is breaking the law of gender bias established by Title IX.

Don't rush them or you'll make them psychotic.

I know it happens, but Baez was billed as a top five shortstop in his recent free agent class. Where do we think Kike ranks on the list of big league shortstops this year? Or even on the list of good-glove, .230 centerfielders?

Welcome to the inbetweenside, Sox fans. Hey, Sam, does that mean for every other game at Fenway, you'll charge the lowest prices in MLB for tickets, parking and concessions?

I'm going to say the least informative stat is number of walks to 2023 Devers. If he walks more, does that mean he's becoming more selective, or do opponents realize the Sox have absolutely nobody that can protect him in the batting order (until maybe Duvall shows he can bop again with a bum wrist)? Or does it mean Raffy is adopting Casas' approach, looking only for the perfect pitch, and welcomes the base on balls? But does anyone even want their $300 million dollar man strolling to first every game, on an offensive incident that generates traffic on the bases, but only ever moves it one car at a time -- instead of swinging from the heels as much as possible trying to clear the bags?

The names already being discussed as trade bait for Boston are all damaged by time, and not really difference-makers in even a Wild Card race. Don't expect any better return than a prospect with maybe one decent asset, like Valdez' bat.

Maybe the inconsistencies and frustrations are just typical of a .500 team. Most of the roster is full of guys right now in various stages of their careers when most of the time they are not stars, but don't always suck.

If only we had a .400 hitter to trade for a Pablo Lopez...

If only Bloom is... If -- as the old adage goes -- pitching is indeed 70% of the game, and starting pitching is at least half of that (based on a meager 4.5-5 innings per start), then Bloom has failed pretty miserably in this most important category: acquiring sufficient young arm depth for his current and future staff. Of the quartet of Bello, Houck, Crawford and Whitlock, only the latter was added to the organization by Bloom. Paxton has been decent, but no one will be surprised by another IL trip or even a deadline trade before the end of the summer. We know Bloom doesn't want to deal any of his hitting prospects, probably until the front office has had enough time to identify potential core big leaguers. So we just have to be patient, and content with yet more one-year free agent signings next winter... in Year Five of the Pretension of Contention in the Bloom Rebuild.

Come on, we all blathered about losing the face that the franchise claimed was its Number One Priority. Bloom and the boys also claimed he was staying, up until the witching hour when they were suddenly stunned when Bogey left. Nobody is really pining for X anymore because we've learned in the Bloom Era that it's always time to move on from fan favorites. But everyone is lamenting the biggest blunder -- even beyond losing three decent starting pitchers -- and there's no denying this: Bloom still hasn't replaced the Red Sox starting shortstop with an actual starting shortstop.