Not really - some of the takes here are borderline nutso, trying as they are to to shoe-horn a perfectly straightforward process into some kind of convoluted narrative.
McAdam: “Full Throttle” may mean business as usual
- Thread starter Big Papi's Mango Salsa
- Start date
This is from Dec. 22 so I assume you’ve seen it, but Rosenthal reported this:
The simplest explanation to me is that the Red Sox let him know they were genuinely interested and that the money would be there, but that YY wanted to play for the Dodgers. Maybe we made an offer, or maybe it didn’t get that far.
Looks like the Yankees affirmed that they made an offer, and maybe they’re just leaking that they topped out at $300M out of deference to Gerrit Cole.
“Willing“ is the wrong word, as this ownership group signed David Price. We may think that was a good signing because flags fly forever and all that, but from a business perspective, Henry had to pay the Dodgers to take Price’s contract off of his hands.
“Wanting” is a better word, as I don’t think this ownership group wants to be building its roster around elite free agents and their cost in this marketplace. It’s going to take a special candidate — someone young and healthy enough to be worth the gamble — for them to be in the mix. And even then, as we saw with Yamamoto, there are no guarantees that the player wants to come here.
And I’m fine with that! I’m a little bit older than ML free agency, and I would struggle to count the number of elite free agent signings that have been net positive for the Red Sox. Maybe Price, with the caveat mentioned above, probably Manny, though he was placed on waivers and ultimately traded for his antics. Am I forgetting someone?
I’m perfectly happy, happier even, to build from within, to address needs through trade, and to fill in around the edges. We don’t need to sign elite free agents except for the ones who are already here and should never be allowed to leave.
I agree with what you're saying. I don't think the Sox were going to get YY unless they absolutely blew everyone out of the water.
With that said, and maybe this is best over PM but, you have a weird thing where your opinion of the media and if they can be cited vacillates wildly depending on the topic. There are multiple threads where you basically shut down any media citation because it's not trustworthy and can't be used but on this particular topic, you cite Ken Rosenthal.
Other posters do this as well (including me) but most of them it depends on the quality of the reporter and it's not such a huge vacillation. You seem to pick and choose more
Again, you're mischaracterizing, misreading, or misunderstanding what I wrote. I'm not frustrated about any of this from the dealing with the Sox. If I'm finding a frustration it's that pointing out that there's a disconnect between FSG and what people here think they'll do with payroll, and the pushback on pulling out data points that I think paints a different picture of ownership.
The Sox don't come and tell us what they're doing, except for some very unfortunate soundbites ("re-signing X is our top priority", the whole "full throttle" nonsense). That's fine, and also falls in line with running a pretty leak-proof ship, which I think can only think is a good thing. But that means in order for us to figure out what they're doing and what they might spend money on in the future, we need to look at what they actually spent money on so far.
... And I have no interest in re-litigating the Mookie trade. My whole point is that once Ownership fired Dombrowski and traded Mookie, we've seen a different approach to how they do business and how they approach their FA signings. I don't think we can really look at what they've done and just assume that when the time is right we can expect a large splash.
The Sox are the 3rd most valuable franchise in a sport with significant limitations on spending to acquire new talent, but somehow they can't possibly compete with the Dodgers or Yankees? Those teams may have advantages in revenues, but I think you have to look at how their ownership groups choose to spend and what they invest in. Why exactly have the Sox been so obsessed with resetting their tax number since they traded Mookie?
The assumption is that FSG really wants to be "Dodgers East", but is that realistic? "Tampa Bay North" is a lot less sexy, but it seems like that description, pegged to revenues so there's a nice ROI, is a better bet of what we can hope for.
I don't buy the timeline thing at all. When you're signing a player to a decade or more that really doesn't apply since he'll be still be in his prime when we're expecting the top talent on the farm to mature.
Maybe, but if the Sox aren't reasonably in the bidding then it's definitely moot.
The Red Sox may have had information from Yoshida that YY intended to sign in LA.
Because without cost-controlled talent flowing up from the minors, they went into a rebuilding mode.
That does not follow. If you look at "what they've done" in the past 20 or so years, they've signed players when they can and they've traded for key players (especially pitching) when they need to.
Have they ever signed the #1 FA in any season? Was it a feature of any of their WS victories?
"No" you say? And, "No."
Hmm.
When the Sox drop down to a $90M budget or so, we'll take you seriously.
https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/al-east/tampa-bay-rays/
David Price?
He was certainly one of the highest rated pitchers on the market that off-season along with Zack Greinke, who got fewer years and dollars at a higher AAV but is also two years older. It should be noted that neither the Yankees or Dodgers were big players in that market (the Dodgers let Greinke walk). The Sox will spend at the top of the market when they can, but there are clearly certain teams/markets that, if they are after the same player, are going to beat the Sox at every turn.
Right, it wasn't a great contract but they got a WS out of it and Dombro took his victory lap. Another recent top-of-the-market signing was Cole, who has paid off OK for the Yankees but not on a team on the cusp of a title.
I think he'd be the closest, but it's not like he was a clear-cut better FA than Greinke, Heyward, or Davis.
But the greater point stands - the handwringing over Model A not working only makes sense if Model A ever worked.
My whole argument is that something has changed in the approach by Ownership post-Mookie, but sure let's go back 20 years to establish the pattern. 2003 - 2015 seem very relevant now.
If you're fine with the way they spend the revenues they're pulling in, I'm glad you've enjoyed the last few years.
Sure, that's exactly what I postulated, that the Sox are going to reduce payroll to $90M
I think it's a lot more likely that they want to build "Atlanta North," but they can't lock up players until they develop them. Let's see what they do with Bello and Casas.
This is exactly my thought and the hinge on which I’ve placed my attention. If they start buying out pre-Arb years like the Braves, we’ll have our template, I think. The difference will be seen if/when the bigger-market Sox compete meaningfully for top shelf FA talent/pitchers — something, (notwithstanding YY), we really haven’t seen since Dombrowski.
I'll add one more thought here and let it go because we appear to be talking past each other.
Dombrowski was fired and Bloom was hired with precise orders to oversee a hybrid rebuild/compete effort. Of course he was operating in a different manner than Dombrowski had. Of course they stopped spending at the same level. But now Bloom has been fired and they have hired Brewslow and have announced that they are going to compete. That is why the past 20 years are relevant. Because they demonstrate that the owners of the Boston Red Sox will spend money when they are in a competitive window. And now they are telling us that they are in a competitive window.
Your entire point appears to be that the Bloom years represented not a strategic and temporary rebuilding phase but an entirely new and permanent way of doing business for the Red Sox. And to support that point you are presenting as evidence that the Sox didn't outbid the Yankees and the Dodgers for Yamamoto. Boiled down, your point is that if the Sox were serious about spending and competing, they would have managed to sign Yamamoto. And because they didn't, they are just running the club like Tampa Bay North. And what I'm saying is that losing a top free agent to one of those teams has been standard operating procedure for decades and decades for the Sox. It tells us absolutely nothing about their spending plans going forward in this competitive window.
I'll give you the final word if you'd like a final weigh-in on the topic.
Oooh, where do I sign up for this?
If any of the reported : ) semi-arbitrary FO salary cap ceilings are actually in place, I'm hoping its because they plan to use that space in season for extensions. Starting with those two, of course.
Not sure if they've changed or the market changed around them, but this is where they still have something to prove...at least to me.
Before, it was only the Yankees that splashed the pot and if you could avoid their prime targets you might still find FA success (same with Mets 1.0). Now you are tied for fourth (after Dodgers, Yankees, Mets 2.0) with about half dozen or more teams in any given offseason. Jays may be creeping past sustainably as well? They need a plan that doesn't involve beating 'The Big 3+' for elite FAs, and using the money to buy prospects like Grissom couldn't make me happier. Well, unless he could pitch 6 innings every week or so.
Yes. It's a stupid argument.
Let's look at what happened. At the close of 2019 the Sox had an aging club of injured high-priced players who could not compete. They also had no talent in the upper minors expected for several years. That's what changed. It's not like they decided to junk the team overnight.
Take a look: View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l9hPh7ITusWGngIWJdPqwN_kL5e9ci_ygCsg9ng02LM/edit#gid=573401688
and: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BOS/2019.shtml
It's not a disaster of a team if you're dazzled by names. But then you see they only won 84 games.
Oh, and it's also the most expensive club in MLB, with gimpy starting pitching in Sale and Price. And to keep it together you'll have to sign Betts and Boegarts. And there is NO ONE in the minors who is going to contribute anything to the ML club in the next couple of years - Dalbec or Sam Travis is your 1B. If you get lucky.
So, if you have half-a-brain as a GM or owner, you don't throw money away on the premium years of a couple of high-end FAs; because that would mean you're wasting those years during the rebuild/restock, and getting stuck with the back end of those deals when you're hoping to be competitive. It's the Ohtani/Trout Angels model.
What you can do is grit your teeth, hold onto your MiL talent, draft well, trade to get younger. You send off some talent (Betts) to carry away bad cash (Price). Meanwhile you extend your SS (Boegarts) and hope your key pitcher (Sale) recovers. You spread your budget around to try to get FA players that will keep you in the hunt if things break right (2021) or aren't derailed by insane amounts of injuries (2022.) Those are going to be short-term contracts (Perez, Richards, Moreland, Paxton, Wacha, Renfroe, Strahm, Hernandez, Hill, Diekman, Kluber, Duval, Jansen, Martin, Turner), or trade for rentals like Schwarber. Sometimes you rehab guys, sometimes you overpay guys to avoid having a stable of longer contracts. You also look ahead to the 23-24-25-26 window and grab impact players for longer terms if you can - Trevor Story in 2022. Yoshida in 2023.
You always try to trade nothing (Benintendi/Hembree) for something (Winckowski/Pivetta) and grab what longer-term controllable talent you can. Sometimes (Renfroe for JBJ/Binelas/Hamilton) it does not work out. But most of the time it does: Pivetta, Winckowski, Whitlock, Schreiber, Jacques, Abreu, Valdez, Bernardino, Reyes, Campbell. And that, plus your minors finally bearing fruit (Bello, Casas, Houck, Crawford, Duran, Dalbec, Murphy) - that gets you your core for your next window.
If the 2021-23 teams had a healthy Sale, they're within striking distance. If he's a gimp, you've got to replace him, then add pieces on top of that. It worked in one of the 3 years. It might have worked for 2 of the 3 but the injury bug bit everyone in 2022.
Part of that failure to compete may have been Bloom's unwillingness to do another Schwarber-like deal in 2022 or 2023. . .but even there, McGuire, Abreu, and Valdez are useful pieces just one year later for the corpses of Deikman and Vazquez.
I think they made a good run of it. 2020 was a punt year in many ways. 2021 was glorious. 2022 was a health train wreck as much as 2006 was. 2023 was not good, but I think they underplayed.
With 20/20 hindsight, maybe they trade Sale and commit to a 2020-21 rebuild. Maybe they extend Mookie and let Devers walk. But if they kicked Sale to the curb immediately, they'd still have the problem of the talent gap in the upper minors from 2019-2022 or so (Casas wasn't getting here faster). And so maybe that's "worse" and we don't even get a single year of competition for Betts' prime years.
But they weren't spoiled for choice, and you cannot premium-FA your way into a broad and controllable talent depth on a club without a couple of losing seasons to firesale off FAs for younger talent.
Mostly, they made very good FA signings to plug holes, and some truly excellent trades. They didn't deal off significant MiL assets, and so today have a talent base to build on.
So I'm fine with it.
No, you argued they're Tamper Bay Noath. Literally.
Because they didn't sign two FAs whose hearts were set on the Dodgers.
And yes, they will spend on complimentary and over-the-top FAs to take a club with a talent-base into competition.
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Excellent summary. Punting 2020 was so perfect -- a tank job on a worthless season that netted us Mayer, who is either a developing stud or a strong trade piece. I wish they had the guts to message to the fanbase what they were actually doing. It wouldn't have stopped the CHB zombies from whatever they have going on, but it would probably tone down all of the overreactions.
Also I would call 2023 a health train wreck too.
I think Henry overreacted to an “unlucky clustering of injuries” for that 19 team- which had a +73 run differential (about the same as the ballyhooed 21 team), looked longingly at TB, and dreamed of winning without spending money on FA starters. Yet, here we are five years later and the two youngest SP on that team, E-Rod and Eovaldi, would be the top two starters on the 2024 Sox.
Bur, I do think Henry feels like he got burned with Price, Sale, etc- the idea that he was suddenly going to give out massive deals to FA pitchers once they were off the books never really made sense (while acknowledging that shifts in philosophy do happen)…and is prob the right thing to do, in the long run.
Bur, I do think Henry feels like he got burned with Price, Sale, etc- the idea that he was suddenly going to give out massive deals to FA pitchers once they were off the books never really made sense (while acknowledging that shifts in philosophy do happen)…and is prob the right thing to do, in the long run.
Oh hey! Don't know if you know this. Don't want to embarrass you if you don't. But just because a player is on the team at one point, they don't then play for that team for free forever. At some point, they can actually just leave via free agency.
So you might want to think about that before making your arguments.
Its easy to see how a business can get comfortable with marginal upgrades versus big ones when its clients not only reliably show up every day but zealously defend/sell the strategy to anyone who will listen. That's a great franchise to own.
Go back to the Fall of '19. You have players on the books - Price and Sale - for $60 million a year for the next 3 years. Maybe those two contracts kind of broke FSG's thinking.
Wait, so you think the Red Sox tanked an entire season by botching an entire offseason so bad purposely because they knew a virus coming in March that would make the baseball season worthless? All to get the fifth pick in a MLB draft which would lead to getting a top 20 prospect.
And you wish that John Henry had the guts to tell the fan base that not only did he have advanced knowledge of COVID ("Look guys have you ever had sex with pengula? It's fantastic!") but they have been tanking for the last four soon to be five years to get good draft picks ... in baseball. Hell they even had a good season in 2021 by accident so they let everyone of those old winners walk for nothing because tank! Not like solid reliable losers like Trevor Story.
I guess I didn't realize how brave Fenway Sports Group was to do the Process 2: Electric Boogaloo in the sport that it makes the least sense to do it in.
I am going to be honest, I really wish John Henry had the guts to tell us this genius plan outright, as season ticket sales are still going.
It was Price and Sale on top of Hanley/Sandoval/Rusney on top of Crawford/Lackey/Beckett that made Henry say enough.
Devers was the exception after the loss of Bogaerts.
Yeah, the 2019 team paid Price, Porcello, Eovaldi, and Sale $83M for 4.4 bWAR. It’s no wonder that the guy writing the checks decided that investing a lot of money in pitchers was risky.
Kennedy's Pay Pigs are the marketing department, and they pay to be there. Results may be damned but think of the ROI!
Yeah, I’d like to know how they “tanked” 2020. I don’t think they tanked - they just sucked. They didn’t announce Sale’s TJ surgery until 3/19 right before the season. JD had a .680 OPS. Benintendi was awful and then got hurt (if my memory is correct). Pen was a mess.
They didn’t tank, they just were very bad due to a variety of factors. And we were all perfectly fine with the result because it netted us Mayer.
Yes it does, literally every FO in the history of sports does, as does basically every ownership group, coaching staff and roster of players. Everyone is giving off the record stuff to reporters all the time, and they all have an agenda, just like they do on everything they publicly put their name on.
I get that people want every story that is remotely negative to be just people making stuff up, but..... that's not the case. Sure occasionally things are just pure speculation, but that's more often the radio guys that you should no have no credibility. More often it's piecing together things they are told by a wide variety of sources.
Not this post in particula, but there has been a lot of stuff on this board recently where people are desperate to spin things in the most positive way, so every story that isn't an on the record direct quote for someone employed by FSG is somehow garbage.
Stories that are obviously sourced from agents have value, now you can consider what advantage comes from leaking the story, but it isn't nothing. Same for stuff that is likely sourced from execs within the league or other clubs. Same for stuff that comes from within the club.
No, but when the spring/summer of 2020 arrived in lockstep with Tommy John surgery for Sale, a near-fatal heart condition for E-Rod, a debilitating ribcage injury rendering Benintendi useless and pandemic-related conditioning issues for Devers, there was little point to playing for anything, especially because no one in their right mind actually gave a shit about baseball.
It was 100 percent the correct thing to do to run out a grab bag of randos with semi-interesting analytics like Dylan Covey, Zack Godley, Chris Mazza, Andrew Triggs, and (oh look hey) Jeffrey Springs to see what they have.
Of large, multi year contracts: Damon and both JDs. All the other good signings were small money which augments your point. Think they would have done well to retain Beltre though.
2019 wasn't so great but guys like Price, Sale, Porcello and Martinez were big parts of the 2018 juggernaut. I've heard forever that the Beckett trade was a success because of 2007. What you're trying to do is accumulate enough talent that it might all come together one year and add to the number of titles in our lifetimes...or so I'm told @TomRicardo
Two questions before a response:
1) Are you referring to Werner's comments where they are announcing that they are going to compete?
2) Do you really think the internal expectation of ownership was that they werent going to compete in 2022 and 2023? Ownership's behavior strongly indicates otherwise (e.g., Bloom being fired, a number of short term deals being signed, not being under the tax in 2022, spending 200M+ on a team generally). Otherwise I'm not sure I understand what's different now. They have been planning on competing since the beginning of 2021.
I think ownership has changed to some degree, but also the market has changed substantially (I think this is part of OCD's point)and they havent adjusted or arent willing to adjust to the new normal on player valuations and contract structures. They've been pretty consistent over their entire ownership that they do not like to hand out long term big money deals. Henry spoke long ago about not liking long deals that take players late into expected decline (and hell they waived Manny early on in their ownership to try to get out from the prior ownership's one large commitment). Unfortunately the free agent landscape is completely different than it was five plus years ago and certainly way different than what it was when they signed Price in late 2015. How many years does a 30 year old Price get in today's market? 9?
The four to seven year deals that they used to give out dont get them into the conversation with top talent so they'd rather chart a different course, which results in a meaningfully different strategy and comparative spend to any other big market spend who are much more willing to engage on long term big money deals. If people dont like recent history, the Sox in Henry's ownership have only handed out two deals for longer than 7 years (Pedroia, Devers); with one of those deals being incredibly team friendly at the time of signing (Pedroia). They have never gone longer than seven on a free agent (and only have three 7 year deals, including Gonzalez who was on the roster already). This is just a different approach then the other big market teams and ultimately will mean that they will spend less as its hard to push $250M+ (assuming Henry would even want to, I personally have my doubts he does) when you arent stacking long term big money deals together.
They've typically had one of these long term deals on the books at a time (Manny --> Pedroia --> Devers). For a long time, this wasnt really an issue because the number of deals in the market that were going more than say eight years was the absolute fringe of the market (for example David Price was an elite signing at the time and was only 7 years). I look at that history and see an ownership group that is happy to spend money on four to six year deals and potentially seven on the right player, but very uncomfortable with anything exceeding that. I think this is also an issue for pre-arb players as the deals that for example the Braves are handing out are often 7-10 year structures. When the Red Sox were signing similar deals back in the Theo era (Lester, Buchholz, 1st Pedroia deal) it was always in the 4-6 year range excluding club options (i.e., only the guaranteed years).
Perhaps the Devers deal is a sign they are willing to consider other longer term deals, but I wouldn't bet on it. If they dont get comfortable with those terms, they are really going to have to make hay on player development and the fickle mid market (which historically has had worse outcomes and lower EV) or they will continue to be all over place in whether they contend or not. Basically operate like a perhaps above average mid market team.
Wow. I guess tongue in cheek comments don't work here, like at all. Obviously they didn't literally tank. Jesus.
Do you follow the sport? MLB transactions were frozen from mid/late March to late June that year. What would you want them to have done?
Yes. Obviously they didn't literally tank. They bottomed out at the right time, when the season was going to be historically uninteresting and strange.
People making bad arguments?
But go ahead, maybe I misread you. Spell out the point you we're trying to make. Is it that we should have resigned E-Rod and Eovaldi?
You said they punted. Was that tongue-in-cheek? I don’t think they punted - they just had a bunch of bad stuff happen to take them down, some of which couldn’t have been foreseen. In any event, I am very pro-tank when it’s needed (e.g., 2023 Patriots) so I didn’t mind one bit with how that season unfolded.
Can you please read this as a thread and not just overreact to a subsequent comment devoid of any context? I was quoting Rovin who said punted and gave plenty of context to what he meant.
This is a fantastic post. The issue really is long term contract ebb and flow in value. There are a ton of big contracts coming out now so giving one to someone four years ago looks brilliant in retrospect. It is hard sometimes to see the market however it is pretty evident teams are willing to spend right now because they are trying to pump up their Regional Sports Networks. Live Sports is the only thing keeping live television aka cable alive right now. MLBAM is willing to to make streaming local networks for teams that want it.
I am not entirely sure Red Sox keeping away from long big money contracts is just a FO philosophical belief. I do think the Red Sox are unsure about whether paying to win can really return a ROI on NESN anymore.
Overreact? I didn’t overreact. I responded to a post. And I would advise against using terminology like “overreact” in your reaponses if you are interested in honest discussion. There was zero emotion in my post and the fact that you characterized it using that word is pretty illuminating. I was trying to engage and you are already getting defensive, for no particular reason.
OK well you and TomRicardo had the same response, the latter being much more strident in nature, and both basically cherry-picked a single word out from a post that was a response to a post that, if taken together, was pretty clear in its meaning. So I am getting annoyed for a particular reason, albeit more at TR's response than yours.
Look if you can just read what I wrote, then ignore that and then take inference from another post that was saying similar things but sounds bad when someone distills our wordy bad take into the nonsensical bullet point it is, and ignore all that and change the context so I don't sound deranged that would be great.
Of course this is the point of someone trying to say coming in last 3 out of the last 4 years is a good thing. Hell it will be a better thing next year because:
1) Dombrowski's draft picks and minor league signings will have another year to settle into the majors.
2) Another moderately high draft pick that can end up a top 100 prospect! Probably a player up the middle because pitching is bullshit.
3) "The Red Sox ownership had their seventh epiphany today, which has given me an epiphany of my own. Sam Kennedy is a genius. He has to be. If he isn't, I've given almost five years of my life to an idiot. That is unacceptable. Therefore ownership is genius and I will die protecting their vision."
It’s all good. I like your posts. I like a lot of the posters here, even those I disagree with. I don’t understand why this thread has gotten so contentious where a group of presumed adults feel the need to denigrate and condescendingly mock others’ viewpoints on a regular basis.
It’s clear there is a fundamental gap between certain posters but this constant need to prove one is right and the other side is wrong is just perplexing to me. I get it’s how the internet works in 2024 but, like, aren’t we all Red Sox fans at the end of the day?
Why must we all treat each other so poorly? This is not directed at you.
This is misunderstandings on top of misunderstandings. I can't even begin to unwrap this. You seem to think I am saying everything is awesome, when in fact all I was saying was, in response to RR, that their embarking on a rebuild would have been more palatable if they were up front about it.
Thank you. I am training myself to not react too strongly to opinions I disagree with for this reason (this thread was more of a process thing but we can let it go) and hope to contribute less to the negative tone of discourse this year. I was probably guilty of it too much in the past. I too appreciate your input generally and I think we have agreed plenty in recent weeks.
I have run a less contentious sports blog for years and just chalk it up to the written word just not being an adequate substitution for in-person contact. If we were all at a bar lobbing our views back and forth, I don't think things would feel very contentious at all.