drewski6

Take away the top 3 who are simply not available....btw all guys who ive screamed about before they got THIS good....but too late now....James wood, jordan walker, corbin carroll.....those are like my 3 favorite players. Take them away and how many RF'ers left are better than abreu? 3-4 ??

Mayer, Anthony, Kristian Campbell, Casas has me a little skeptical of trading a bird in teh hand (abreu) for 2 in the bush (2 top prospects). And going forward outfield is a position of need, especially if you trade abreu.

i agree southpaw, im listening on offers but need a lot and am going in skeptical someone will meet my asking price and im not settling for whatever i can get cuz chapman and contreras are signed for next year and id like to try to keep gray around a little longer.

if we're out of it, a team acquiring contreras and chapman would get 2 playoff pushes (2026, 2027) vs our one (2027 only), so in theory, they would have near double value to anotehr team and they should be willing to pay us enough to make it worth it. Like you, Im skeptical its going to be that easy. I agree with your logic and skepticism. Im not sure there is an easy way out of this mess. Well, actually Im sure there is. Because the other AL teams are just as bad lol. Like Joe Brady says, sometimes it feels like the red sox can win the race by standing still cuz everyone else is sprinting backwards. I dont know. Selling makes some sense, but also retaining contreras and chapman for next year makes some sense too. Im definitely listening to offers on sonny gray and im willing to eat the 10m buyout if that greatly increases the return package....but a complication is that ive kind of grown to like sonny gray.

i can understand trading gray (if you eat into the 10m, I agree must be done, otherwise its pointless). I understand trading contreras just because of his age but he is signed next year at an affordable clip, and i lean towards not selling him (but i could be talked into it)....abreu though? wilyer? i dunno man, i hard to envision us giving up wilyer and being better in 2027. we would need sooooo much back, right? And that kind of goes for contreras too.

our 2 best hitters on a team that cant hit outgoing makes us better? i would hate to see the 2027 offense if you move abreu and contreras for prospects who are unlikely to be ready by 2027.

rule of thumb, dont keep around the acquisitions that got your predecessor fired. Guy getting interviewed: how did this job open? interviewer: last guy put all our reserves into a crypto scam Guy getting interviewed: ooooh, I love crypto. ^ see, thats bad interview technique

if you can get a 22 yr old average defense, 6'4 pure hitter for gray, sign me up....but can you? I dont want another 100 OPS+ with a glove.

thats one person btw (on a 1 yr deal), and its sonny gray and his value is dragged down by the 10m dead money that the trading team is on the hook for, and i agree that if you pay that down, you greatly increase his value , so maybe then sure.....but still a 36 yr old pitcher rental, what are we really expecting here? Might be better off just extending gray.

my hunch is that in a few weeks , we'll be in a similar place. Those of us who lean optimist and are happy with just a competitive team will want to buy. And those of us who think the goal is a championship and runner up is jsut the best loser will lean sell.

i dont think they should be buying anything, but i understand that im jaded because of like 3 of the last 5 years we fell apart like right after the deadline, and i was thinking wow, if you are going to fall apart, fall apart earlier, cuz then you can get something for your end of year free agents. My concern is this is yet another year where we win just enough to not take advantage of a deadline sellers market and then fizzle right after the deadline. Cuz its happened a few times in recent memory.

what i have bolded is condescending, but we'll overlook that. the truth is i thought our offense stunk all along. I never thought we were one big bat away. I dont think it works like that. I think we are 5 bats away. Keep: Cedeanne, Abreu, Contreras.....dont look for offense at C and everyone else doesnt hit well enough.....For next year you give anthony another shot....and you get 4 bats. And I dont mind like matt shaw, a 5'10 good defensive 3b who can hit average. I mean offense first players.

you can always play the game of what went against me that i couldnt control....but theres usually the flip side of things that did work out better than anticipated as well....and most of these things were at least in the universe of forseeable. Relying on Mayer and story as your middle infield was always dicey. One has never hit and the other has spend 4 of the last 5 years hurt.

I dont mind contextualizing, but in Breslows case they feel more like excuses. Hes in yr 3, the budget went up and the team went south. He himself knew the offense wasnt good enough. At the beginning of the offense he said it would be a huge focus then later in the offseason he declared proudly "we're a pitching and defense first" team. And mostly, it hasnt worked out.

can you use one finger of a monkey paw to wish for a second monkey paw and go from 5 wishes to 9? See , at least in aladdin , robin williams genie clears up some of this , "no wishing for more wishes"...i dont know if the same rules apply to a monkey paw, but i would think the magic is different.

we would have....the 11th ranked offense....oh what could have been.!! You see, you cant fault breslow. Because sure many respected analysts looked at us and said bottom 10 offense, not a real threat to go anywhere.....But if you got your hand on a monkey paw from the simpsons and wished for duran to hit like 24 and masa to hit like japan and story to hit like coors and mayer to hit like he never has .... homer is still going to burn the last one on a dry turkey sandwich .....then we dould have had a .....dun dun dun......average offense!! Queue the duckboats. What we would need is 2 monkey paws.

In fact, quite the opposite is true. Old regime guys get discarded. Often you eat the contracts. You dont marry what you inherited from a failed regime.

reindeer people have nothing on the dinobots.

you can put all your eggs in one basket and count your chickens before they hatch stick your head in the oven and give yourself a tan dare to be stupid, dare to be stupid.

transformers animated movie counters with weird al's "dare to be stupid" , which is a rare weird al non parody song.

If you are using Duran as an example to show that some fans will find a way to justify and defend the actions made by executives and CBO - I am with you 10000% If you are implying that Duran is not merely a microcosm , you lose me. If we simulate 1000 iterations of a universe where we kept duran but made different moves around him.....but we simulary 1000 iterateions when we traded duran....you will find a mixed bag of outcomes. Duran is an example only. But its not like how we handled duran is the primary reason for why we have a 28% of making playoffs (hey up from 15% 2 weeks ago).

youre missing the point that nobody cares.

Be likeable or win

this is a lot of words. Breslow deserves to lose his job because he is a pompous jerk and if you are going to be a pompous jerk you better have the results. And he as of right now, does not have the results.

Good post, and my issue is that when I voiced concerns last year about Breslows ability to treat people with respect and not make interpersonal conflicts worse, I was told a good amount of yeah, hes a jerk but I mean, we are going to make the playoffs so yay! And all that matters is record. And then its like okay, now we are in last place, so the whole "you have to accept Breslow's shortcomings because our record" does not apply, so again I voice concerns with Breslow's ability to human....Im told record/standings dont matter. The only thing that does matter is that people here called for a few signings that probably wouldnt have worked out , so breslows job is safe. And bellhorn returned and I noticed him say something like we are just knuckleheads on a forum, thats not a fair bar for breslow and im surprised to even see that raised.....and hes right. Breslow should have been fired long ago for a lack of leadership, a lack of an ability to be a human. Thats why he is known as bresbot. That is why even Theo voiced that he doesnt get human beings. You need to be able to communicate and you need to understand humans to be in any leadership role. And that is not arguable. The best IT department head is not the best coder. The best baseball manager is not hte best baseball player. And Ive seen it with my eyes. Yes, you have grumbly senior coders who moan that they are better at the technical side of their job than their boss, but manager of IT job description and coder are different. As a CBO, there is an expectation of leadership capabilities. Of communication capabilities. And Breslow fails to meet that. Last year, I begrudgingly accepted well, he got us to the playoffs despite his flaws.....But I am not willing to accept okay, sure , hes terrible and communicating, and sure he went all in on pitching and defense and now we cant hit, and sure hes ruined relationships, and yes we took a huge step back record-wise but breslow gets a pass because joey bagadonuts on a forum wanted bregman and that wouldnt have worked out (even though thats impossible to know).