I don’t think the judgment or criticism is being placed on Breslow nor should it be. GM’s make the calls on scrap heap/diamond in the rough guys. Owners make the call on high 8 to 9 figure deals. All of the negativity should be directed to the ownership level for how this team has fared since ‘18.
The Red Sox have had two “top of the market” players who contributed to the four titles? See above. I should have included Lackey too, probably. They threw their financial might around for ages.
Sure but this is a different conversation. And there’s no evidence that they’re “out on acquiring premium talent.”
I really liked your post a few days ago, about the labor share of revenues in MLB being constantly slipping lower and lower. I agree 100 percent that it’s a problem, and that ownerships, and certainly FSG among them, need to spend more.
The Sox bullpen in 2022 was a huge problem and some investment was required. If I recall, the available 2B last offseason were terrible.
The FSG stood on the shoah of the haboah. And I saw a non-compehetivah club arise out of the Fenway. It had ten free agents and seven arb players, with ten league average pitchers, and on each head a thou-are-not-fucking-Pedro. The non-compehetivah club I saw resembled a Tamper Bay, but had a manager like those of an Astro and a GM like that of a Yalie. The FSG gave the non-compehetivah club its powah and its post-seasons and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, put thereon by the RIGHTEOUS FAN, but the fatal wound had been healed by the power of spin. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the non-compehetivah club. People worshiped the FSG because it had given authority to the non-compehetivah club, and they also worshiped the non-compehetivah club and asked, “Who is like the non-compehetivah club? Who can win a series against it? Even though Alex Corah is a cheating shitbag who can't manage a bullpen?”
Happy new year.
Wrong. It's a caricature of a subset of Red Sox Fans who, even now, whine like:
That’s like, what, $500k? A million? Where’s the rest of the money, Kennedy? Where’s the fuh-kin muh-NEE, Kennedy?
Well said. My view as well. Make the Dodgers match a massive deal or make YY leave a lot of dinero on the table to go where he wanted to go (the Dodgers). I doubt the Sox did that, which is fine, but that would be the only way to get YY.
This is one of these times where I really wish I had posted earlier so I don't come off like Captain Hindsight, but I think it was obvious from the get go this was the only realistic chance they had to acquire YY.
Given the reports that they have to shed salary to sign a targeted free agent and stay under the threshold, I would say that all signs point toward them offering what would have been a team friendly deal.
What about the "reports" that had them offering 300M? (or maybe that fits within the definition of "team-friendly"?)
By team friendly meaning a lot lower then they needed to be to be considered seriously by Yamamoto, then yes.
If the salary shedding/staying under the threshold rumor is true (which I don't believe is), either they never would have been in on YY considering where the market for him was clearly headed OR they changed tack after missing out on him because he was the only player they were willing to go over the threshold for. Either way, I don't believe for a second that whatever offer they may have made to wasn't 100% intended to be competitive and serious. Doesn't mean it ultimately was competitive, but when you have the spending titans of the game involved, the Sox are going to come up short every time. History demonstrates that irrefutably.
It was also reported that those "300 mil offers" were incorrect. The newest "reports" seem to support that idea if they are trying to stay under the threshold and shed salary to be able to sign someone.
I’m still not sure this has risen to the level of ‘report’ yet.
Merloni had an interesting observation on the latest Carrabis podcast, which was essentially if they had an offer to be proud of we would have heard it a la recent Yankees, Toronto, Mets offer leaks.
1) That's not what "team friendly" means.
I did NOT say that. I said that they're not going to outbid the likes of the Yankees and Dodgers if they're all going after the same player because they never have before. That doesn't mean they're unwilling to pay retail price for a free agent at all. Team friendly, to me, suggests a contract that is below retail price and intentionally so (like the Braves have with Ozzie Albies or Ronald Acuna). Being outbid by itself doesn't mean the offer was "team friendly" in the least.
Wasn't the shedding "report" one tweet? (I don't pay close attention to the socials on sports).
You being unable to understand something doesn't mean I'm being condescending.
Happy new year. I meant your post here (in the salary cap thread) though you’re right someone else linked the research on declining labor share of revenues.
You don't know the source or context of those "reports", nor do I. So let me ask you this, if the Sox are indeed looking to "shed salary" could it be possible that is with the eye toward making multiple moves rather than just one? Might that $10M in savings after the Sale trade have been enough to get them at the level that they can bring in the player(s) that they are now targeting and still stay under the threshold? Do they need to move another player to get to where they want to be? My answer is that we don't know, which is kind of my point.
Where I'm at too. There's a sweet spot where they will probably go after guys at the top, but it's not as indiscriminate as we might assume. But at least in the SP market none of the other teams are still flinging money around like we might have expected in the wake of the Yamamoto deal. All signs point to agents saying "the YY market is the new market now!" and the teams saying "oh hell no it isn't!" It's been over a week and none of the other supposed finalists or would-be finalists have gone and scooped up Montgomery, Snell or anyone else -- except the Sox signing Giolito at a pre-YY price.
A little outside the scope of your point here, but what we got in Price was the breakdown of a body that had just thrown too much. The dude pitched an insane number of innings in his 20s, and we got a couple of those, but also two where his time was cut very short by mounting injuries.
To add a bit of nuance to that Montgomery's already had TJ surgery, and he's just thrown 218 innings (including the post season) this past year.
Why? He's finally healthy and you want to sell at rock bottom? We need him as a defensive anchor on the infield.
I disagree: Occam's Razor says that they met in L.A. and discussed parameters of a deal, and then they were not serious, so there was no trip to Boston.
Money bridges gaps in almost all cases in my experience. If Boston isn't as attractive as LA or NYC, you find the amount that makes it doable. Employers do this all the time for sought after candidates.
Outside the scope of the point I was making but it’s a good point too — though partly to do with Price being promoted at such a young age and throwing fewer MiLB innings.
There were multiple reports they made a second offer and were in the final mix of interested teams. Would they have bothered to keep going if they were not serious after the initial LA meeting? Or would they have pivoted as other teams did and singed a mid-tier starter prior to the YY signing as insurance?
You've had a lot of experience choosing between multiple generational-wealth deals in your 20s?
Why didn’t Yamamoto go to the Yankees or the Mets? Is it because they weren’t serious bidders? Is it possible to be a serious bidder and still not win the bidding?
LINK
Kinda sorta: http://www.espn.com/page2/tvlistings/show38transcript.html
That was NOT an auction. Back then, everyone submitted one bid and the team with the highest bid won, and then had rights to negotiate a contract with the player. That is not a free agent. Can you provide an example of an actual free agent?
“According to a baseball source, the Red Sox have told at least one free agent target that they need to shed more payroll before pursuing him as aggressively as they want to,” Cotillo wrote. seems like a report to me. What is your definition of a report?
Apples and oranges. It's easy to win a blind bid by splashing the pot unexpectedly. You really think that if the Yankees knew the Sox were bidding $51M just for his rights, they wouldn't have bid $52M?
OK, that was a really long article and hard to follow. My understanding is that the Yankees were not in on Manny, so the Sox weren't competing with them for him. If this article says otherwise then I stand corrected.
