This has been a really fun thread to catch up on this morning at SBux! Lots of angles to digest. My thoughts:
- I find it interesting that there are some in here worried that Chaim hasn’t made big FA moves and is trying to mirror the frugal ways of Tampa Bay, when he basically paid $17M for OF depth and two moderately good prospects. As some have said, that is a creative way for big market teams to be taking advantage of their position.
- Chaim seems to love roster flexibility — particularly defensively, and adding JBJ as OF depth (regardless if he ends up starting 125 games, being a late inning defensive replacement, etc.) does that, particularly if Schwarber is re-signed and you have the Schwarber/JDM conundrum of trying to balance big offensive upside against lousy defense thru a 162 game season.
- JBJ is the Sox version of Kevin Kiermaier — which Chaim obviously valued the elite defense with very marginal offense. While Kiermaier has been marginally better offensively to JBJ over his career (OPS+ 98 vs. 87+), they feel like relatively similar players historically.
- Seeing the updated lists of Top 30/Top 20 MLB prospects for the Red Sox in this thread has me pretty excited. It will continue to give them further flexibility to gather more elite talent thru trades eventually, and I look forward to the 10 year $400 million contract that Mayer gets in 2028 as Chaim eschews non-elite big FA contracts and locks up home grown stars.