drewski6

I feel that you are underrating Tolle and Early.

I say one last like hes had more than one short stint at the top (of the singles division)

Jeff Hardy has one last WWE championship run in him

and id rather be retired at 41.

I understand that prospects go up and down in value drastically and there is something to be said for numbers. Roman, at one point, was like prospect #14 (I assume)

At least right now

I would rather be truly competetive 3 years followed by 4 years of rebuild then in third place 7 years in a row.

this is more of a case for keeping cheap players cheap. Because if you arent going to spend, you need to make the most out of your payroll. And the most efficient is the min wagers. So just gotta hope you get 5 prospects busting out at the same time, and you can grab a couple mid-tier FAs to fill in and maybe you have a team that can win a series in the playoffs. WE could be the Rays. But we'll have gaps between our playoff cores and we'll win the big one....WHen was the last time the Rays won it all? Remind me

None that Im crying about.

And why would we would have to sacrifice ANthony in 5 years? Couldnt we , you know, pay him market price in 5 years?

It doesnt always make more sense. It sometimes makes sense. Case by case. Too simplistic. Yes, very often, the better move is to keep your cheap players cheap and cram as much talent onto your team as you can in the short term. This is called "a competitive window", and its not a novel concept.

Saying we will always spend 244/yr regardless if we are good or not, regardless if we have multiple guys peaking at the same time or a long shot to compete anyways is just foolish This is just beyond oversimplified. Its also contradictory wiht your earlier comments. Like whne you said something like 10b over the next 30 yrs. If you told me I had 10b to spend over 30 yrs , I wouldnt allocate it evenly. Duh. At the poker table, you dont say I have 200 chips, and I want to last for 100 hands, so Ill use 2 chips for every hand. No. You gamble more the stack when you have the cards. You spend more on your team when you feel you are close. The Red Sox in 2025 and 2026 prioritized 2030.

But I hard disagree that its always soooo much better to lock up your youngsters and yay im so glad we are locking up our youngsters. We zapped Campbells trade value, and created a crunch for oursleves in 2026 when we could have kept cheap players cheap. But we spent money on our cheap players to prevent having to spend more down the line, and now we cant afford stars in their prime. Lets hope that a 40 yr old (ish) contreras can still hit .815 vs Alonso who would have a much better shot at clearing that hurdle.

There is some truth that we've been more aggressive lately because Breslow is more aggressive than gun-shy Bloom. And Ive said that I dont give Breslow enough credit for getting Crochet because I feel the deal was obvious and I laugh at people who cry about Teel. That was a deal you make 200 out of 100 times, in my opinion, but Im not sure if Bloom makes that deal. Cuz bloom is scared money and breslow isnt scared. So sure. If we can combine Blooms professionalism and non-ego with Breslows aggressiveness wed prob have a very good GM.

They were aggressive in the offseason, but they should have traded for a bat at the deadline, they dumped their most expensive player....They undid it. Aggressive means trying hard to win. They werent trying really hard when they just accepted that they would finish up the season not replacing any of the guys who got hurt (or traded) before the deadline.

You prefer more simple ways to determine our aggressiveness, I show how that can be misleading, and we come to different conclusions. The Red Sox, since 2019 have not been aggressive enough. And thats why we have more third/fourth/fifth place finishes than playoff series wins. "It makes no difference whether we spend $250M on FAs or our own players" I literally just showed you how/why it matters and it matters a lot. We could have Roman and Crochet at a tax hit of under 10m. But they will have a tax hit of 40m because we chose to extend them and buy future years. We could have kept them at a 10m cap hit, and added 30m tax hit externally and had a better team this year. That would have been very aggressive for 2026, but would have hurt us in 2029 onward because we would have missed our chance to extend crochet and RA at a discount. Whether or not we think it is the right move, my point is that forget about the actual 2026 team and join my in a more conceptual conversation. The concept is that sometimes it makes sense to keep your cheap guys cheap vs extend, so you can be more aggressive in the short term. Teams that spend/teams that trade/teams that win. They are aggressive. They dont say well we have this 1.8 WAR player here and I guess thats fine. I really care more about aggressiveness than payroll. The Red Sox were not aggressive in 2025 and they are not aggressive in 2026. The CBT is misleading and its higher because they bought future years for current players at a discount which raised such players 2026 CBT numbers. So in this case, the CBT is not a true reflection of how aggressive we have been. And we havent been aggressive. Now you may think 2026 wasnt the year to get aggressive and you think that its wise to raise our 2026 CBT by extending our own (rather than keep RA/Crochet/Cedanne/Campbell cheap), you may agree with all of that, and its not unreasonable. I may not even hard disagree. But where I disagree is when you jump out of the concrete (2026 RS) and into the conceptual (all future RS teams forever), becaue I do believe that sometimes it makes a ton of sense to keep your cheap players cheap (even if they are awesome) becuase it allows you to cram MORE under the CBT and be more aggressive in the short term. I can be sold that greatly increasing our CBT in 2026 by extending our own was the right move. I cannot be sold that extending your cheap players is always the right move. So for example, in 2007 we won (yay) with Pap, pedey, youk all making peanuts. Had we extended them in 2005 , we would have raised their CBT and we may not have been able to afford JD Drew, Mike Lowell, Beckett. Guys who cost more, and maybe werent as valuable from a WAR/$ spent as the youngsters but guys who contributed to your championship. And you were able to afford all of these guys JD, Lowell, Beckett, Pap, Youk, Pedey because you kept the latter 3 cheap.

Our pitching was very good last year and carried us, our offense struggled. We added more to our pitching this offseason than our offense Pump the breaks on bats for pitching.

Lodolo is a boss , but at this point in time, to think the pitching needs more help than the bats is nothing but pure delulu stubbornness. We have the best rotation in the AL East , maybe the entire AL and 0 top 25 hitters. Z-E-R-O

Yes, I didnt think of the slots and pools, I DIDNT THINK OF THE POOLS But touche, good point

You see UtahSox make good points about how not all revenue bases are the same, and its a SHAM to compare sox to league averages when us (fanbase) provides them with more resources than 80-90% the legaue. Almost like there are "expected expenditure" tiers. Lets simplify for the purposes of this post there are three expected expenditure tiers, the top is easy, thats the spenders. But the bottom tier, the cheapest, those guys forget external acquisitions, they cant even keep their own players when they hit primes. They can borderline keep players when they hit arb! Like the Pirates of a few years ago, or the As, they know they cant even afford to keep guys who it arb 2, so they start loooking to trade guys almot immediately after breaking out and they have a revolving door or high draft picks, development, and prospects. There are only a few teams in this bottom tier, just like how there are only a few in the top tier, theres usually a glut in the middle or "the pack" if you will Locking up our own players proves we are not in that bottom tier. We are not the Pirates, we are not the A's. Even the pirates and the a's are barely the pirates and the a's anymore (or at least to the extent they use to be) because the getting is good for rich aholes (have you looked outside). I dont really care, man. Had we never extended Crochet, RA, Cedanne, Campbell , we'd have enough room between us and the second tax line to bring in 2 more stars. But we didnt. Instead we locked up RA, Crochet, Cedanne, Campbell because we dont want to be in a position where we are having to pay them market value, so we zapped our cap for 2026 and 2027. We did spend, but it was to prevent future spending later. This is called a coupon. We bought coupons. We bought a discount on RA's and Crochets prime years (and overpaid for Campbell and cedannes) because we were scared we'd have to pay stars at star money prices (oh the horror) and we are unwilling to do that, so we traded our cap room in 2026,2027,2028 for future discounts on the aforementioned 4. And I know that we could have spent on the short term even after making those extensions. But we didnt. So yes we are spending. We are buying coupon books on RA and Crochet so we can keep them through their primes unlike Mookie and Devers because great players cost great money, and we were unwilling to have them through their primes. We wont sign a free agent, but we will trade prospects for other teams free agents if such team eats some money and so they cost less (Contreras, Gray). We wont hold a FA superstar making close to what they deserve (Betts, Devers) but if we can lock ya up young and get your prime years at a discount, we'll carry you then through your prime (RA, Crochet). So yes, we do spend nad we do buy. We buy discounts and coupon books and we arent quite the pure bottom dwellers (who would trade RA and Crochet rather than lock em up at a discount) - but what we do have is a fantastic recipe for a series of third place finishes.

Mark Melancon

getting rid of your depth to not lose 10 draft spots doesnt feel like its worth the squeeze to me. Id rather Masa be in AAA in case needed than trying to chop 5m off the tax line And i do understand how it can be the difference between whetehr you can fit bregman under second tax line or having to fall back to a 2ish WAR third baseman. But I honestly think if they want breg ,theyll just pay a little more tax.

I dont think the tax line matters as much as some think. Even the 10 draft pick spots isnt much cuz teams are drafting for signability and overslot vs underslot. Its not like baseketball or football where pick 10 vs pick 20 is huge.

100% Going by CBT and going by total cash outlay are both imperfect. And btw there are others too (which Im sure you know). None of them are perfect, but the CBT can be expanded by a creative GM and also (like you mention) its not a hard cap. The Red Sox bought discounted years for Cedanne, RA, Campbell, Crochet (think he had 2 years left on his deal when we got him). And due to the rules, these extensions recalculated the CBT for each of these guys and raised it significantly for 2026. We could have had Cedanne, RA, Campbell, Crochet all making peanuts in 2026 with minimal tax hit, and most of these guys arent getting a ton of cash in 2026 either (exception Crochet) because they are trying to keep the cash outlay close to each players performance and they care less about the CBT hit getting out of whack with performance. These players have higher CBT hits and obvs, if we had a 280m tax hit with cedanne/RA/Campbell/Crochet making peanuts we prob have a better team than a 280m tax hit with cedanne/RA/Campbell/Crochet making what they make. Someone could be glad for it (I think its overrated), but it doesnt change the fact that the CBT shoots up when you extend, and you could just as easily keep them cheap and spend that money shopping for external fortifications and this is a big reason why the CBT isnt the only metric for aggressiveness. Trading prospects matters too. Becuase if you refuse to part with any, thats still a non-aggressive mentality. Its really not about and shouldnt be about just trying to obtain and cram as much value as you can. This is what that article that I found a month ago went into. At some point you have to try to line it up and make a serious push. NOt just always looking all future years evenly. "Over the life of the..." thinking at some point hits a wall. Theres a time to think about the short term.

I agree.