Hmm.
This is possible example of how polite should one be to people who can't be bothered to read.
So just how attentively deferential should I be to your point, @8slim? So you won't report me?
McAdam: “Full Throttle” may mean business as usual
- Thread starter Big Papi's Mango Salsa
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So just how attentively deferential should I be to your point, @8slim? So you won't report me?
Kenley wasn’t necessarily a bad deal. But in hindsight it seems a poor allocation of resources when you have zero starting pitching and Nate Eovaldi signs for almost the same 2/$32M guarantee a few weeks later.
Coming out of the 2022 offseason with a rotation of Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, ??, ???, ??? was an objectively horrible decision at the time.
It was widely reported the Sox made a 1/19 QO to Eovaldi and offered a multiple year deal alongside it. Eovaldi's agents urged him to play the market, and he eventually singed for something the Sox offered. e.g.: https://www.si.com/mlb/red-sox/prospects/red-sox-reportedly-pulled-offer-for-nathan-eovaldi-after-spending-elsewhere-scott7
We agree on Kluber. But the starting rotation included Pivetta (a league average starter for two years running) and Bello (a promising young starter.) So the ??? marks were not really unanswered.
@Rovin Romine,
We are making a concerted effort to up the level of discourse here, and you are shitting all over that effort. It stops now one way or the other. I know for a fact you've been privately repeatedly and respectfully asked to knock off the nonsense. Sad thing is, you have a lot to offer if you'd just take a little time to educate instead of pontificate. It is possible to relay to people that their arguments are flawed without treating them like a piece of shit.
As far as standards of discourse, you're currently not meeting ours here. We want people to learn from this place, after all these years I still do every day. We also want it to be fun to interact here. As I said in another post, of course there are times that sarcasm or snark fit a situation. The problem is that it's become your default response to anything you disagree with. That's not fun. Feel free to PM me, Abs or Sprowl if you feel our position isn't clear enough.
To everyone, this is the last we'll do of this sidetracking in this thread. Outside the sniping back and forth, it's become a pretty good one.
We really are making an active effort to clean things up around here, and RR's delivery is far from the only issue, so we again ask everyone to to try to bring their best to the table, and treat people the way you'd like to be treated.
No one needs to report you for us to see your act. And man, is it ever tired. You explained why you think it's ok for you to act like a raving asshole to people you disagree with. That explanation is rejected.
We are making a concerted effort to up the level of discourse here, and you are shitting all over that effort. It stops now one way or the other. I know for a fact you've been privately repeatedly and respectfully asked to knock off the nonsense. Sad thing is, you have a lot to offer if you'd just take a little time to educate instead of pontificate. It is possible to relay to people that their arguments are flawed without treating them like a piece of shit.
As far as standards of discourse, you're currently not meeting ours here. We want people to learn from this place, after all these years I still do every day. We also want it to be fun to interact here. As I said in another post, of course there are times that sarcasm or snark fit a situation. The problem is that it's become your default response to anything you disagree with. That's not fun. Feel free to PM me, Abs or Sprowl if you feel our position isn't clear enough.
To everyone, this is the last we'll do of this sidetracking in this thread. Outside the sniping back and forth, it's become a pretty good one.
We really are making an active effort to clean things up around here, and RR's delivery is far from the only issue, so we again ask everyone to to try to bring their best to the table, and treat people the way you'd like to be treated.
I don't think you need to be deferential but you need to start explaining where your goalposts are. You keep saying something bad would have happened if they kept the players on 2019 team and the team was due to a down turn. When people point out that the team had a terrible season, got lucky and got in the playoffs then let more players walk from 2019 and came in last the last two season (with this season looking like another lost season), I think people are trying to understand what worst case scenario you were envisioning. Instead of explaining you pivot to talking about how payroll needed to be cut. When people points out the Red Sox when spending in the last four years spent it poorly, you don't really address it or you say how it is dumb to sign long term contracts. Or you say a bad signing went well, and the question comes how?
Finally you keep harking back to the prospects and rebuilding the system. However the prospects that have came up were already in the system before 2019. There are some interesting prospects in the system now due to losing like Teel and Mayer but people are trying to understand why Mayer or Teel are worth losing so much. Neither guy has much of a chance to be as good as Mookie, not that is a bad thing. Mookie is a top five player in major league baseball and has been for years.
When you took about Bloom years, it is almost like you were part of alternative reality where things went well or part of the plan. You don't seem to understand the state of the team right now which is a puncher's chance at a wild card, at best. There doesn't seem to be a road to winning in the near future because the complete lack of pitching depth in the system, and the Red Sox insistence grabbing scrap heap pitching. In the past the Red Sox have always addressed this by aggressively trading away prospect for pitching. Pedro, Schilling, Beckett, and Sale while developing pitching talent like Lester, Buchholz, ERod, and Doubront while aggressively going after pitching free agents like Lackey, Matsuzaka, and Porcello. Now the last group has been a bit of a mixed bag but outside of Bello and Houck, the Red Sox have not followed their own formula to winning.
Your initial comment that I responded to had nothing to do with whether Jensen made sense for the Red Sox to sign. It was whether Bloom was good at identifying free agents who would perform to the value of their contracts. You said he wasn't, and pointed to Jensen as one of the culprits. Have a look:
Jensen pitched well for the Red Sox, and will likely either pitch well for them next year or be traded for assets that will help the Red Sox. He is not an example of Bloom being bad at identifying good free agents.
As to the decision to give Jensen that contract, the Red Sox were within striking distance of a playoff spot until falling off the cliff in the last six weeks or so of the season. Part of the reason they were hanging in there was the effective closing work Jensen did for them.
Now, would you have preferred that they spend that money on Eovaldi instead? They actually offered Eovaldi such a deal. He turned it down because he believed he could do better on the open market. He was wrong, as it turned out. But before he discovered that, the Sox went ahead and reallocated the money they'd offered him. When Eovaldi came back to them and asked for the same contract he'd been offered, the money had already been spent elsewhere and he wound up with the Rangers.
As for Sale, I suppose Bloom could have foreseen that he would fall off his bicycle and be unable to pitch. But short of that, he was healthy and ready to pitch. He actually pitched OK, too...when he wasn't falling off his bicycle.
Of course, none of that is what I was responding to in your original post.
EDIT: I just realized that I wrote "Jensen" 26 times when I meant "Jansen." I think it's because I'm always reminding myself that there's an extra "e" in Kenley--call it the Berkeley e--and I extended it to his last name as well.
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But the Rangers signed Seager and Semien in the 2021-22 offseason, and deGrom in the 2022-23 offseason, along with Eovaldi.
There actually aren't a lot of ways to build a winners. As mentioned repeatedly around here, teams generally win with premium talent, and there are only a couple of ways to bring in premium talent. And since BOS isn't getting them in free agency these days (I won't speculate as to motives), the paths are limited.
To answer your other question, if BOS can't produce premium talent out of their farm system, that's going to really hurt their future (maybe they can trade for a couple of people but trading for premium talent is a lot easier when there's premium talent in the farm system).
Yes, BOS has put a lot of eggs in the development basket for better or for worse. And if Anthony, Mayer, and Tell don't become quality starters, we're likely going to be having this same conversation in 2028 or so.
I'll just point out that BOS "outbid" MFYs for Matsuzaka but that's the exception that proves the rule.
And they probably miss the playoffs completely with a sub-90 win team if they don’t promote rookie Evan Carter in early September.
I think my position is pretty clear. The Sox had an existing and continuing MiL talent gap at the close of 2019. Resigning/extending FAs without shedding payroll would have raised their #1 payroll all the higher. Without internal talent, that was their only option if they wanted to keep their core players more or less intact and play the 2019 club into 2020 and 2021. That was the worst case scenario.
Perhaps you believe they could have remained competitive with a dead upper-minors solely through the FA market. The problem with that arugument is twofold: 1) you'd have to show the influx of talent via FA would have made them competitive, 2) they'd have had to spend like mad, even under a best case scenario. It's not impossible, but where's the end to that? How do you rebuild the farm with a bunch of mid-range picks?
I suspect they saw that gap and acted accordingly. Do I know that for a fact? No.
Perhaps they just decided overnight to being a mid market team with an upper-mid payroll. But there, as I said above, I think a more plausible scenario to they just decided not to be competitive anymore is. . .well, what they actually did and what they more or less said they would do = a competitive rebuild. Try to acquire younger talent (trade, waver and draft), sign short FA deals with longer deals for key younger players as opportune.
I do understand that this is (today) a possible WC team, not a division leader. I don't think I've ever suggested otherwise - it's certainly never crossed my mind otherwise.
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This gets tossed around every now and again, and I know you were just using it as the exception anyway, but they definitely didn’t outbid the Yankees for Matsuzaka.
They did offer 33% more than second place Mets during posting, but then subtracted that excess value from the offer they made to Matsuzaka who was then take-it-or-leave it AND leave your team out of a $51.11111million payout and him out $52 million.
I think the Red Sox were willing to pay ~100 million all in for him, where maybe others had higher ceiling, and figured a clever way to not have to win the bidding and still win the bidding…so to speak.
It was legit and clever, but to be honest I kind of think they fucked him. (Edit- it also drove rue changes) Now he didn’t have a gyro ball so there you go.
The total compensation they paid for him I believe is less than what they would’ve received from the Yankees, and the salary he got was wayyyy less than he would have gotten from NYY.
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It's really doesn't need to be pointed out because Matsuzaka wasn't a free agent. It was a blind auction to pay the Seibo Lions for negotiating rights. The Red Sox "outbid" the Yankees because the Yankees didn't know what the Sox had bid and couldn't counter it. The record posting fee to that point was $13M (Ichiro). The Yankees reportedly bid $32-33M. The Mets bid was around $39-40M. Everyone involved was going over the top. The Sox just went over-over the top.
I don't think it's a stretch that if it were a true free agent pursuit like Yamamoto was, the Yankees and Mets might have upped their bids upon learning what the Sox were offering. I mean, Matsuzaka was repped by Scott Boras. We don't think he wouldn't have been playing one side against the other to increase the payout?
This is the core of what I was getting at. I've seen 2025 lineups posted here that show an entire homegrown roster that is the key to winning in the second half of the decade. Based on projections, that team would probably win 60 games. Now I fully admit a lot can happen in the next year to make those 2025 projections a lot rosier, but the inverse is also true. Mayer sort of gets a pass because of his shoulder, but he wasn't hitting at AA before that (which isn't a knock as he got promoted and was still young for the league. But it's not a feather in his cap either). Teel has 26 games in the minors under his belt, and Anthony has 469 minor league at-bats. There is a lot of projection happening here to pencil these guys in for 2025 yet it's just kind of become an accepted fact here by a few people. If these guys aren't ready to contribute in 2025 where do we go from there? Responses like "well thems the breaks, you move on and try again" don't make me feel a whole lot better about the future of the franchise. Other prospects can emerge but they all have their own issues or they'd be ranked higher.
You aren't capable of determining true value with this contract. You can go use your models and take what they say some theoretical value is but the inescapable fact is that it was not an open market transaction. We simply cannot know what his market was at the time (again I get you can model it but that's not the same as an actual auction result).
I fully understand that you believe you are right and Devers extension is a prime example that the Red Sox will pay market prices for top talent. I don't agree - to me it shows they will pay up when they have edges and/or discounts - nothing more. We can probably move on from this topic now.
Well he was a free agent and the Sox did outbid the MFYs on the posting fee (and the rights to negotiate the contract) but however you and RHF want to characterize it doesn't really matter to me.
Red Sox outbid MFYs for Moncada too.
So if you're not going to build by developing prospects, what is your plan? Buy a complete team of free agents? Trade all of your prospects for established players from other teams? I don't think either of those are viable.
I just think it's fun and hopeful to put together future lineups full of prospects. It's not realistic, but it's also a lot easier than guessing what else might happen in a few years. Other prospects, currently much lower rated(some just because of age), will emerge as contributors. Trades will be made for people like Grissom, and Abreu, and Winckowski, and Pivetta that will give us contributing pieces to successful teams. Maybe a big trade or two will actually be made, like the one that got us Sale, or Kimbrel, or Beckett, or Schilling, or Pedro, as examples. That's also fun to dream on but even harder to predict. And there will be some FA signings as well, some splashier than others, some considered "scrap heap" guys buy some, etc.
I think it just gets to a point that most of us agree on, that there isn't one way to build a winning team. And it almost has to be a multi-pronged approach. Hey, I'm as much of a prospect humper as anyone, but I certainly acknowledge that plenty of prospects flame out, some are better used in trades, and some will be what we hope they will be. But when we sit around daydreaming about future years, it's a lot easier to plug in names that we control as opposed to guessing who we might trade for or sign in a couple of years.
At least, that's how I look at it.
No, I never said any of that. I think counting on three prospects, who still have a lot to prove, to impact this franchise positively in 2025 is a risky strategy. So yes next off-season they might have to find other ways to fill out some of the roster if these guys falter. That could include a big FA bat, or trading some prospects for a bat. That doesn't mean you don't continue to try to develop a pipeline.
I have nothing to add other than to say thank you. This is the crux of most of these arguments
The real problem here is even if Teel and Mayer are the next coming of Xander and Varitek, that still doesn't give you a championship team without some pitching.
It is a mix. You have a homegrown 1B, cost controlled OFs and 2B. You are also spending a buttload on a bad SS. You can spend to fill in the holes.
Has anyone really suggested that it's all riding on the three top prospects? That the team shouldn't or won't try to fill the roster out with free agents or trades?
I think it's like BMHH said about the projected lineups for the future. It's more about the fun of projecting and doing it with prospects is a lot easier to do than guessing which free agents or trade acquisitions will be brought in 2-3 years down the line. I don't think anyone is doing it with a firm belief that the whole lineup for 2025 and beyond is already in the organization.
Right, but as you know, that wasn't a free agency pursuit. (I suspect you're actually making this same point, I am just laying it out to clarify.) Every team put in a blind bid and the team with the highest bid was given exclusive negotiating rights with Daisuke. If it had been an auction, I'm sure we agree that the Yankees would have won it.
I had moved on when I said "believe what you want, I guess." It's clear that you're set in your opinion and no evidence short of paying $30m a 31 yo pitcher will change your opinion, but I think you would need a lot of precedent on the free agent market where similar players were getting significantly more than Devers got to consider his deal a "discount." There has been exactly 1 contract ever signed for a 3b with more total value than his (also signed with 1 year remaining before free agency). Only 3 position player contracts have ever exceeded his number in free agency. Is there a chance that in an open bidding market that Devers would have gotten more than that? Sure, I guess, but it feels very unlikely. So like I said, believe what you want, but it seems to be requiring some effort. Have a good one.
All riding on it? No. Fully penciling them into the lineup for 2025? Yes. I have also seen folks dismiss the pursuit of other hitters because "we don't want to block Mayer or Anthony."
I get that Eovaldi tried to wait it out but it's still an error on their part. Eovaldi signed with Texas on the same day the Red Sox signed Kluber. They couldn't find $6M somewhere to pay the clearly better pitcher who wanted to come back instead? If staying under the cap was really the issue, they couldn't have pivoted earlier to Senga ($15M AAV) or Bassitt ($21M AAV) instead of signing Kenley Jansen to a $16M AAV and Kluber to $10M?
At the time, Pivetta was coming off his worst year in Boston (18th percentile xERA). Chris Sale hadn't pitched in three years. Brayan Bello looked promising for 55 innings in 2022 but was far from a sure thing (and still is). They planned to fill out the rest of the rotation with stretched out Houck/Whitlock when neither had thrown more than 70 innings or so in a season.
This is more of a rant than anything in response to your post, but now I'm worried that with 2024 they're going in the same direction. They signed Giolito, a guy who gave up 41 home runs last year. I get it, he's a bounce back candidate, had a good first half, and a much much better stopgap than someone who was morgue-bound in Kluber. But he's still a stopgap. If it works out and you want him long-term? E-Rod's contract is probably the floor. Maybe you have something in Pivetta now with the sweeper he added in the second half. But he's 31 and a pending free agent. We went through the "let's stretch out Crawford, Whitlock, Houck and see what you got" experiment last year. Pray for better health and hope it works out this year? I'm a bit more optimistic on Crawford this time around but I think we have the answer at this point for Whitlock and Houck.
It just seems like there's zero vision to building out a starting rotation. You have one bona fide starting pitcher right now under longterm control. And as optimistic as we all are about Bello, he got hit hard in the second half and the swing and miss he demonstrated in the minors hasn't translated so far. I think it will, but he needs to adjust.
And here's the other half of the pitching problem. It's one thing to pass on free agent starters and instead go stop gap after stop gap when you've got a talent pipeline in the system like they seemingly have with position players. But they've got nothing besides some kids in A ball. And almost any team trading a major league pitcher we would like to see Boston acquire is going to want some minor league pitching in return to compensate even if that's not the centerpiece.
And as bad as that is, they've dedicated almost no resources in the draft or international free agency to fixing the problem. The strategy of don't take risks with starting pitcher free agents is one thing. OK, I get it. But they're also not willing to take any risks with draft resources. For four straight drafts its been the same strategy in the middle rounds of signing high school bats to big overslot bonuses while going well underslot on low ceiling college pitchers. At some point you have to get uncomfortable and take a swing, somewhere.
The tangential issue that you imply but don't come right out and state - let's suppose that the Anthony/Mayer/Teel trio just become good major leaguers, not All-Stars - well that's all fine and well but not going to get BOS into any championship contender status, without a very expensive purchase of free agents.
Or they get very very lucky I suppose.
They should have done what BAL did. They may still have to.
I've seen that with Mayer, but not Anthony. In Mayer's case it's justifiable. He's a top draft pick with a skillset that seems like it will be in the majors in a year or so. That gives you (if you're lucky) 6 years of control of a good player at a premium defensive position. Since we already have one long-term MI contract in Story, and since Mayer's bat would not have the same value in the OF, it makes sense not to commit to a second long-term MI contract at premium FA prices.
If Story wasn't on the roster, it would be very different.
Unless. . .the Sox were in GFIN mode, in which case you accelerate the window to now by signing a FA and trading a blocked Mayer's future for something else on the club you need right now. Which is likely (if in GFIN mode) a player in arb or a FA, rather than another prospect.
But I don't think they're quite set up for GFIN. So no, I wouldn't trade Mayer at this point. Nor would I block him with a long term FA contract.
I mean, they expected Paxton to be ready by opening day, as well, and the previously mentioned Bello and Pivetta were already here. So it was more like: Sale, Bello, Pivetta, Paxton, Kluber. I know Cora decided on Kluber as the "Opening Day" starter, but I think he was always looked at as more of a back half rotation guy, to be honest, and based on his 2022 numbers he could have been a solid piece. Unfortunately, he turned into one of the worst pitchers I have ever seen pitch, Paxton suffered a setback and wouldn't pitch until May, and Pivetta came out of the gate completely ineffective.
I think they could have set themselves up better for 2023, but the plan was never Sale, Kluber, ????????.
Agreed with the bolded. And as much as some might have wanted it another way, they were also planning on Whitlock, Houck and possibly Crawford and Winckowski to be a factor in the rotation (which 3 of them were). Basically they had at least 8-9 guys in the running for the rotation when spring training began. A far cry from "??????"
We've talked about this elsewhere, but I disagree that "they've dedicated almost no resources in the draft or international free agency to fixing the problem." They've dedicated all of the resources they are able to; the issue is that this isn't 2004 anymore and teams just can't buy their way to building a great farm system.
We've been through this elsewhere, but they've taken their swings on position players, who apparently are more likely to hit, and taken flyers on college middle relievers in hopes of developing them. They aren't the only team to be doing this. Don't want to re-hash all of the Bloom arguments but no one can question that the system is better now than when he got there (not really interested in debating how much better).
The method they apparently chose (rebuild the farm while trying to "compete") is a very slow and inexact way of doing this IMO.
In retrospect, and generally, perhaps. But we'd need more information on Kluber - did they agree to a deal and only announced it on the same day? What was their internal projection for Kluber? Was it a reasonable one that Kluber massively underperformed on, or did they really mess up on assessing Kluber's ability?
They're clearly going to have to add from outside the org at some point. But that's not an impossible problem to solve.
I think we’d all be reticent to trading Mayer but I wonder what everyone’s price is. For instance, if you can get a young, controllable SP for a Mayer+ package, that wouldn’t necessarily be a GFIN move and it would be one that I would strongly consider.
A guy like Luzardo gets me close but I can’t quite get there given he’s already in arbitration. For me, keeping Mayer is more about the lack of likely worthwhile trade options and less about him being blocked.
It will definitely be interesting to revisit because, as we all know, prospects can have wild swings in valuation from year to year. I just hope that his shoulder holds up to allow him to continue to build value.
What does long term control even get you in the era of Tommy John Surgery for everyone? That pitcher you think is going to plug into the rotation two years from now might miss the entire season rehabbing. As long as the rotation looks set for 2024, I'm not worried that you can't plan out who's taking the ball Opening Day in 2026.
If they had a model to show Kluber was going to be a lot better, that model is really broken. Kluber had a decent 2022 with a completely unrealistic walk rate in 2022. His velocity was all but gone, and he was surviving on pounding a cutter in the zone. It was a matter of time before hitters caught up to it.
Eh, I don't know. The velocity certainly was down from his prime but he had an above-average swinging strike rate in 2022, and one of the best chase rates in baseball (38.8%, 4th among 104 starters who threw 130 innings in 2022). He was clearly getting batters to chase.
Clearly didn't work out, but Kluber's 2022 profile looked a lot like Porcello in his early Boston years.
He was throwing sub 90 fastball with 83 mph change up. His curveball was actually better last season to the season before. You need to take a look at the player and say "Geez, he had some statistical greatness does this pass my eye test?" You could easily see Kluber was running on fumes at 37.
I'll just add that choices like this are really risk management. If you have fungible guys keeping SS warm for Mayer and then promoting him as soon as possible, you are playing the high risk game with the hopes of high reward. The alternative is making a conservative assumption about his future and having other players there. The downside is that you've spent money at middle infield that you might have spent on pitching (assuming a limited budget) and you're muddying his pathway to playing time, possibly holding him back. That's safer because your floor isn't a hole at short due to a failed prospect, it's just a bunch of pretty good players spread around. But if you go all in on Mayer (once he returns this year and shows he's back on track), then your ceiling is stud SS producing at a high level and more money spent somewhere else. If you are chasing titles and nothing short of it is acceptable, you probably lean into the risk, no?
Plus the cutter wasn't new in 2022. He started throwing it in 2017 and had good results with it up until he didn't. I wasn't a fan of the signing at the time, but it was certainly defensible.
Edit: Responding to TR and chawson.
Edit: Responding to TR and chawson.
I’m not arguing that Bloom failed to improve the farm system. And I’m aware that his draft strategy of spending the bulk of the bonus pool on hitters and taking flyers on college pitchers was intentional and has been successfully used by other teams.
I’m saying that for a team with very little pitching in the player development system to begin with, it led to a good but very lopsided farm system. And combined with an organizational aversion to the starting pitching free agent market, it maybe wasn’t the best strategy. I also think we’re seeing that trading from this lopsided but talented player development system for top end pitching talent is way easier said than done.
Even the other teams that have been successful building their rotations with the same strategy were willing to take risks on more volatile starting pitchers in the draft at times. Sure, Cleveland hit on Tanner Bibee well underslot. They also drafted Logan Allen and paid him a slot seven figure bonus. They drafted McKenzie and paid him well over slot. The Dodgers were successful signing guys like Pepiot and Gavin Stone in recent years. But they've also spent serious draft equity on Walker Buehler and Bobby Miller (both late 1sts) and went overslot on Dustin May. In 2021, Seattle had a coup signing college relievers like Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo to underslot deals. But before that they also took swings at everyone's favorite trade targets Logan Gilbert and George Kirby signing each to ~$3M bonuses.
Oh the cutter was his pitch in his prime but it fell off when he got injured. He finally got back at Tampa but it was pretty spent when he walked in the door.
Wasn‘t the other part of the strategy to use the international money to sign a gaggle of arms with a recognition that there would be heavy attrition but in the hopes that some of those pitchers would develop? That strategy may well fail, but it would not yet be reflected in prospects who are ML-ready or even necessarily in the high minors.
Fair enough. My WAG is that if given a truth serum, Bloom would say that the farm system was in such a state that he couldn't afford many busts so he went the safer route. Or that could be just a rationalization. At any rate, you're absolutely correct the Sox have a lopsided farm system. Maybe some of the Latin American arms they've signed will pan out but that's an even longer wait that a typical draftee.
I believe so…. And yes. They’re mostly in low minors but I can’t comment much on this. JM3 would be able to fill you in on who those would be
Yep, but the devil's in the details. Are you talking about a guy who has peaked who has 3 years of control left, or a guy with 5 years who might potentially be good but hasn't fully proved it yet? I don't think you acquire either of those at the same point - you want the second much closer to whatever peak window you're predicting.
Complaining that the Red Sox assembled a system that is strong but lopsided is like complaining that someone is rich, but all of their savings is in Euros.
Positional prospects can be traded for pitching. I would rather have the 10th ranked farm system with nothing but shortstops than the 25th ranked that is well balanced.
Positional prospects can be traded for pitching. I would rather have the 10th ranked farm system with nothing but shortstops than the 25th ranked that is well balanced.
Absolutely and that is why I almost kind of understand why GMs like Bloom get a little gunshy. That’s not an easy needle to thread. A pitcher who is established at a young age with 4+ years of control is going to cost more than Mayer. If you take a risk on a guy, say Luzardo from 3-4 years ago, you may have a couple of subpar years as they develop. This is why 2024 Luzardo is somewhat intriguing to me because he has 3 years remaining and appears to be on the upswing with potentially elite upside.
There aren’t many prospect combos not involving our top 3 guys that I wouldn’t trade for Luzardo but Miami likely doesn’t do any of those. End of the day, I think Breslow holds onto all 3 guys and it’s probably the right call unless an unexpected guy like Gilbert or Kirby becomes available.
A couple notes on claims made in this thread today, don't know who said them originally and they're unrelated but both seemed in need of a fact check.
Mayer did not struggle in AA before his injury this year; he was injured May 7th, when he was still in A+, but then tried to tough it out with an additional 43 games after his promotion: https://www.nbcsportsboston.com/mlb/boston-red-sox/marcelo-mayer-opens-up-about-season-ending-shoulder-injury/551898/
So everyone say your prayers for Marcelo's shoulder and hope he's back to 100% this spring.
Senga wanted to play in a big city for a winning team (and clearly a team already over $300m payroll has to be winning, right?), getting him wasn't as easy as just paying an extra $5m or whatever: https://theathletic.com/4842670/2023/09/08/mets-kodai-senga-rookie-billy-eppler?source=user-shared-article
Mayer did not struggle in AA before his injury this year; he was injured May 7th, when he was still in A+, but then tried to tough it out with an additional 43 games after his promotion: https://www.nbcsportsboston.com/mlb/boston-red-sox/marcelo-mayer-opens-up-about-season-ending-shoulder-injury/551898/
So everyone say your prayers for Marcelo's shoulder and hope he's back to 100% this spring.
Senga wanted to play in a big city for a winning team (and clearly a team already over $300m payroll has to be winning, right?), getting him wasn't as easy as just paying an extra $5m or whatever: https://theathletic.com/4842670/2023/09/08/mets-kodai-senga-rookie-billy-eppler?source=user-shared-article
Four highest-ranked IFA pitching prospects in the system. All in high-A and AA, and considered good prospects, with at least some chance to be starters. Young and working their way up. Not all will hit, but it's a nice base. Lots of others lower down in the system.
Luis Perales is the number 7 prospect according to SP. He was an international free agent, signing with the Sox in 2019. He ended last season in high-A Greenville.
Wikelman Gonzalez is their number 9 prospect in the organization. He was also an international free agent, signing with the Sox in 2018. Ended the season at AA Portland.
Yordanny Monegro is their number 20 prospect, IFA signed in 2020. He ended the season in high-A Greenville.
Angel Bastardo is their number 27 prospect, IFA signed in 2018 (I personally have Bastardo ahead of Monegro) He ended the season in AA Portland.
When Mookie and Xander were prospects, I was absolutely giddy with what the future held for Boston.
This, right now, is the most excited I've ever been regarding prospects for this organization. Anthony, Teel, Mayer, Bleis, Rafaela, Abreu, Yorke, Gonzalez, Romero, Jordan, even Fitts.... there's a ton of talent in the system now and some of it - hopefully a good chunk of it - is going to pan out and be something special.