I’d respectfully ask you to quote the entire thought. Which was that the line up is essentially set the next three years, to be put together from players currently on the Red Sox / WooSox.
The infield is Casas, Campbell, Devers, Story. Possible changes - Mayer, Grissom, Hamilton, maybe Rafaela. All are in the organization. The OF is Anthony, Duran, Abreu, possibly Rafaela or Garcia here too. The DH is Yoshida. None of those are likely to change. Edit - Wong is of course here too. Like Story and Yoshida, he is under contract (control) the next 3 seasons, and highly unlikely to be jettisoned or replaced in the starting line up for that time. Though I suppose moving on from Wong as he gets expensive is possible to keep costs down. I’d honestly just kind of forgotten about him.
They might make fringe moves (another Refsnyder, some bench bat), but, much as I’d like one to, and been begging for since Bogaerts left, it’s highly unlikely there is a core bat coming from outside any time soon.
If you think those players will not make up the line up, then it’s silly I suppose. So which ones do you think are gone?
Wait I was assured it was Jordan Montgomery. No use in revisiting it they will just complain about his contract. Lets look back though. Other than Ohtani, what FA last year that they didn't sign would have made an over the top difference? Would you still want their contract now?
Interesting question. I don’t think it’s likely for a team to go from last place to AL Title contender in one off season, but there were plenty of guys I wanted and still would want.
Obviously the Sox were never signing all of these, and further tough to say because I generally don’t like 1yr deals, and lots of guys signed them. But I’ve wanted SPs with term and core bats with term added for a long time.
But last year I desperately wanted Nola then Monty (but had no interest in the 1yr deal he signed). I‘d still want both guys on the staff on a higher deal than Nola got, and if I could have Monty for let’s say 4/$100m (I believe I wanted 5/$125m last year), I would have still preferred those to Gio (that the Sox signed). Still would (I think Montgomery is very likely to bounce back to 30 start, 3.50ish ERA guy he’s been consistently, we’ll see.)
I‘ve also been begging to add core bats for years. I wanted Chapman (moving Devers off 3b is not new for me) and Hernandez as well. Though I had no desire on either (or anyone) for one year. Would have wanted Chapman at the deal he just signed or Teoscar at the 4/$80m that the totally unreliable Daniel Judgaport said we were signing him for one, assuredly. He was further down the list, but I also wanted Lourdes Gurriell and would have taken his deal.
On the pitching side, Nola and Monty excepted, I had didn’t really want Gray or ERod. I would have wanted Stroman (but only for more than 2 years) and Imanaga (but only for more than 2 years). One of those would look horrible now and one really good. I had no interst in Lugo and was massively wrong there, and no interest in Nick Martinez (and was a little wrong).
On Gio, I like(d) the pitcher and hated the deal. I don’t really like one year deals. Similar to Buehler (though AFTER landing the ToR guy and having the 1, 2 and 3 here long term, I dislike it much less). FWIW, I’d far rather have given Eovaldi 3/$80 if he’d have come back here for a bit more money than signing Buehler to 1yr and Sandoval as I’m generally against signing someone for just one year.
On the RP side, I only really advocate paying for guys with closing experience, so I would have taken Hader at his deal, but that’s about it. Though I also didn’t advocate for it because the team had Jansen.
Those are kind of off the top of my head. But my wanting a ToR pitcher (and we got one with Crochet - this is awesome), upgrading from Crawford, and wanting to add core bats, ideally to move Devers to DH, move on from planning on Story, or if necessary play some LF and then move to DH as the kids come up and show they belong are not something new this year for me.
(Those moves or any like them are clearly not in the cards any time soon, but I thought it was an interesting look back.)