Thank goodness we now have WAR to help us evaluate a player's total net contributions.
Nobody is saying Devers does not make a net positive contribution. Nobody is remotely saying that.
In the old days, the conversation would have just acknowledged that Devers is really bad on defense. Because he is. Metrics would be considered. Numbers would be posted. Discussions would be had about their accuracy - about what was being measured and how. The conversation would have discussed other players who were bad defenders and what the prospects for improvement were. It would have considered moving Devers to other positions and how that might affect the roster overall. There'd be differing opinions in there, and some scoffing, but it would have been adult talk about actual baseball issues. And I know that because
we had that talk re: Beltre, and Youk, and Hanley, and Ortiz.
But today. . .today there is cadre of partisan posters who must, in every conversation, in every thread, yammer on and on and fucking on about ownership. Totally deaf to the fact that
nobody (not even Chawson) is wildly excited about how the team's done the past five years. Totally deaf to the fact that
everybody here wants to see the team do better and hopes they will - show me one person who wants a repeat of the past 5 years.
Those posters are the equivalent of that monomaniacal guy you go on a trip with who just complains and complains and complains - no matter how many ways you try, no matter how much you point out particular things to talk about, you can't just get them off their hobbyhorse. Everything relates back to it. Everything. I'm genuinely uninterested in naming names, because anybody can get in a rut, and I believe nearly all those posters can contribute if they got out of theirs.
But you know what? It
can just stop.
It needs to stop if we're going to talk about the Sox and baseball.*
*And for the reactive child-minds out there, let's carve off a few things for you, no. . .I'm not calling out anyone personally. No, nobody keeps a book on who says what. No, my saying this does not mean I'm somehow secretly arguing "ownership is good," and you need to respond to defend your manhood because you've somehow become personally invested in this concept. No, I'm not saying the business of baseball and roster-building isn't a germane topic for the board generally. And lastly, I'm not saying that Rafael Devers is some kind of puppy-killing shit-bag of a human being, who deserves all the scorn we can heap upon him.