I think even Chaim's detractors can finally see the plan starting to come together. Long way to go, but you can see it.
Trade Deadline Approach
- Thread starter tims4wins
- Start date
Sometimes I wonder what SoxProspects is doing with these ratings.
In '21, Jimenez had a 4.7% walk rate & 21.1% strikeout rate in A-Ball with a 105 wRC+ in his age 20 season.
& it's not like he was some huge pedigree guy. He signed for $10k as an IFA in '17. Not that that's the be all & end all, but combined with ok stats (crazy high BABIP in low-A in '19), seems like a strange ranking.
In '21, Jimenez had a 4.7% walk rate & 21.1% strikeout rate in A-Ball with a 105 wRC+ in his age 20 season.
& it's not like he was some huge pedigree guy. He signed for $10k as an IFA in '17. Not that that's the be all & end all, but combined with ok stats (crazy high BABIP in low-A in '19), seems like a strange ranking.
Though it's not a binary: trade your top ten prospects or not. There's 11-20, and 21-30, etc. Chaim could have bolstered the 21 team in addition to Schwarb without mortgaging the future (now fast becoming the present!). Since a championship is never guaranteed, well, when DO you GFIN? The 21 team had the best record in the AL just about this date 2 years ago, with a strong core at the end of their window. That seems like the condition to GFIN now as YTF himself was alluding. The farm wasn't as strong then - but would you have felt okay to give up a couple of good prospects then if the Red Sox had acquired another player who helped them win the WS? Get to the WS?
ANYWAY, spilt milk, etc. I'll be interested to see what Bloom does now. But I do agree with the original point - this is the beginning of next window opening: so not the time to cash in all your chips.
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As a Chaim detractor I generally agree with this. It’s actually hard to remember the last time I felt this positive about the organization as a whole. Maybe 2016-2017
GFIN is almost always a losing proposition for me. At least when it comes to making deadline moves (going for broke in the off-season is a different animal). I don't recall too many times where a team made a major acquisition at the deadline and picked up one or two or more high demand, all star+ level players who then carried them to the promised land. The most important acquisitions always seem to be somewhat low key pick ups to fill a specific role that pay off huge. In other words, way more Steve Pearce types pay off than Manny Machado types (to take two examples from 2018). Spending big doesn't really guarantee any better results than being "conservative" and low key. It's almost like the big spend trades are about appeasing the fans as much as increasing the team's championship odds.
Watching the Angels/Jays game. Jays up 4-1. Top of the 9th. bases loaded, one out and Ohtani get's pinch hit for. No info on why. If it's serious, Angels management has got to be kicking themselves in the head right about now.
As ever, all this exists on a continuum, not a binary. All a matter of degree: how many/what kind of reinforcements at what cost to bring in to shore up a team that has a realistic shot at winning it all. Surely we all agree there should be some. And maybe a stronger argument to be more aggressive when a team with a strong core is at the end of their contending window (that is: looks like it might be a while before the organization is in the same position again).
So, the framing of the question is not spend as big as possible or not, but where on the dial to dial up to. Creative trades can do the trick for sure (2004), not necessarily just all-stars. Would be nice to see WAR by players traded to a contending team, historically. (wish I had the time but sorry I don't!) ...
Other teams have to want what is available outside of the top ten prospects. Two years ago the Sox farm system wasn't ranked as highly as it is now. Players that we presently have ranked outside of the top 10 are likely to be more desirable than in '21. We also have to take into account that all 11-20s, 21-30s, etc... are not created equal. Sometime the players being made available aren't a positional fit or the talent falls short of the other team's expected return.
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I think management has to do something to make this team better this deadline. I think we are starting to see a team that might be a lot better than we all expected and with a few tweaks might be right there. They seem to have the perfect blend of up and comers and veterans. I do now think Bloom is starting to show why he was so successful in Tampa, and was not thinking I would feel that way a few months back and felt like he was still operating like he had in Tampa. I mean he did sign Story to a big contract and let's not forget Devers 300 million contract was the biggest ever by the Sox. The reality is, is that Xander was, utimately not worth what he got and that contract will become a very bad one. Most of us on this board knew it was way too much, but it felt lime Boston forgot they are big market. As far as Mookie, his contract has been pretty decent but it seemed that if we didn't we might lose him for nothing. We also know smaller guys seem to lose their skill sets quicker, however he seems to be more of a power hitter as of late and he has been worth his contract as far as sports goes..., but I don't expect it to ultimately age well. As we look at the Sox this season they seem to be like a 2007 lite or more like 2013, with a good mix of vets and personality, very deep but not extraordinary, as that team was a huge surprise... If Bloom can sacrifice some up and coming middle infield, which we have"potentially" a lot of, for a guy that can remain with the core for a few years, and grab a middle rotation pitcher this team might compete with anyone. Obviously those are not small feats, but as we may doubted this version of our Sox we saw that they might have been less stale and more like the version we have been used to in the past near 20 years.
I suppose it’s a form of progress that you’re no longer regularly accusing Bloom of being indecisive and instead are describing him as conservative and tepid. Unfortunately, you appear to be no closer today to understanding what’s going on with Red Sox than you were back then. Bloom is not some guy who carries only a hammer and thus walks around looking for nails to drive. That‘s how you’re painting him in your imagined scenario above. All he wanted to do in 2021, you tell us, was use his hammer to drive nails, which was the wrong approach for a team that actually needed a bit of sawing here and some sanding there. Two years later, though, the team has somehow transformed enough—having nothing to do with tepid Bloom’s conservative actions, of course—that it is now miraculously at a moment where the exact thing it requires is someone who knows how to drive nails. What luck that Bloom knows how to do that!
Bloom was hired to perform a stealth rebuild of the Red Sox. It can be reasonably argued that the team should instead have tanked for two or three seasons to speed things up. For reasons most likely owing to the team believing that the fan base and media would not accept such an approach, the organization decided instead on this hybrid approach of competing at the periphery while rebuilding. Bloom would have been a fine choice to oversee either project, and most likely would have preferred a full tank, but this is the one he was hired to do. Every move he has made has been consistent with that approach. Some have not worked out, this is baseball after all, but many have. Regardless of their outcome, however, nearly all of his moves have been consistent with the hybrid approach. (Not getting under the luxury tax last year was a mistake, in my estimation, and one that deviated from optimal hybrid strategy. Again, no one is perfect.)
Bloom has displayed discipline in executing the plan. You started out by calling this discipline indecisiveness because you didn’t understand, or didn’t agree with, a hybrid approach that, by definition, demanded both competing and rebuilding. Now, as the plan is beginning to bear fruit, and the is swinging more to the compete side of things, you have moved on to calling it conservative. Was blowing the rest of baseball out of the water with the offer for Yoshida conservative? Was signing Jansen as closer, when many in baseball thought he’d never be able to successfully adjust to the new pitch clock rules, a conservative move? When the situation calls for discipline, Bloom has been disciplined. When it calls for aggressive action, he has been aggressive. There is nothing preventing you right now from acknowledging that you’ve been largely off base in your criticisms of Bloom and depictions of his personality. You can acknowledge that he knew all along what he was doing, and that it was his very ”indecisiveness,” “tepidness,” and “conservatism“ that have led this team to the rosy scenario you yourself described above. Or you can simply keep doing what you’ve been doing.
If only you could apply this wisdom to your assessment of Bloom’s actions as president of baseball operations for the Boston Red Sox.
If the Pads are really selling, then the guy I predict will most interest the Red Sox is this dude with his tiny walk rate, experience both starting and relieving, and a reasonable contract (player option for next year). I think there were reports that they tried to sign him in the offseason, but that might be my own bad memory. I doubt he'd cost much.
Interesting take, but I don’t see it this way. I agree with @cantor44 that Bloom missed an opportunity in 21. To his credit he has grown and improved. I do believe he got outplayed by the situation at the beginning of his tenure. But I’ll admit that he seems to have learned from prior mistakes. Looking forward to the next 3 days!
LOL.
I root for each one of these guys to succeed and Jiminez is still only 23, but it's astonishing how fast he fell. I'm trying to think of any similar prospect in recent memory to do so well in the lower minors (full season, not DSL, etc.), and completely fall flat in high A. I spot-checked a couple of names that I could recall, but most of them are guys like Antoni Flores, who excelled in Short Season Leagues but never did much in full-season. I guess maybe Brandon Jacobs (nowhere near as well-regarded as Jiminez at his peak)?
He's still a premium athlete and I hope he figures it out, but it's been a rough couple of years for him.
I guess this begs the question of what opportunity he missed, exactly? Was there an obvious trade he failed to make that would have turned a team that got within two games of the World Series into a pennant winner and perhaps a title winner? From where I sit, he got the steal of the deadline in Schwarber because he was willing to acquire a guy on the IL and trust he'd be healthy (and he was). Even the lesser deadline deals netted a couple relievers, one of whom was absolutely nails in the stretch run and propped up a collapsing back end of the pen (Barnes in particular). Was there something else he could have done but chose not to as opposed to being outbid by teams with deeper trade reserves?
I suppose its possible, but since we're dealing in hindsight ("missed an opportunity"), how does a team that loses in 6 in the ALCS miss an opportunity? An opportunity to do what? (unless you're saying that he missed an opportunity to further upgrade the team so they could have beaten Houston and Atlanta). Especially since right now, the major league team is doing pretty well, and the minor league system is doing pretty well (according to those who measure such things).
And what does "outplayed by the situation" even mean? People make it sound like he was a 12year old admitted to MIT and the presence of "all those girls" messed him up.
EDIT: Hit post before reading @Red(s)Hawks.
Right, they lost because their bats went ice cold. Nothing Bloom could’ve done changes that.
As others have already stated, please expand on your thinking here. What opportunities did he miss?
EDIT: Worth point out, by the way, that Cantor was one of many on the board who howled when Bloom traded for Schwarber precisely because he was in the IL (he also accused Bloom of not valuing winning), and then howled a few months later when Bloom chose not to resign Schwarber despite his outsize performance during the playoff run. Bad to trade for him, apparently, and then bad not to resign him. The food is terrible, and the portions are so small.
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And even if there was theoretically "something," it was a choice to keep the team within the same guardrails that ended them terrible last year, but not terrible this year, while rebuilding the foundation that will make them not-terrible for several years in a row. All while not intentionally building a shitty team, like several other teams have done, with mixed results. He's the guy bringing clean water and indoor plumbing to a society; and some people are complaining about the color of their toilet.
Yeah it’s hard to imagine another trade he could have realistically done at the 2021 deadline that had a larger impact than Schwarber and Robles had. They performed incredibly down the stretch in a pressure-packed playoff race and he didn’t give much up for them.
The 2021 trade deadline is an example of a strong GM performance, not the other way around.
No one really improved as much as the Red Sox and he gave up virtually nothing to get there. He was creative and projected the acquisitions incredibly well.
I think evaluators got fooled by a 254 PA sample in low-A (when that used to be a thing), where he ran ridiculously well with BABIP.
During that season he had a 5.1% walk rate, 15% strikeout rate, 3 homers, & a very unsustainable .413 BABIP which led to a 158 wRC+.
In his 1st 2 seasons he stole 30 bases... but was caught 20 times which is a bit of a red flag, too.
As he moved up, he couldn't maintain the lower strikeout rate (jumping to around 25%), didn't improve the paltry walk rate, & the BABIP luck normalized.
Not sure if he also bought into his own hype, or if the pandemic season hurt him more than most, but I think the main thing is that his underlying stuff was never as impressive as it may have looked on the surface.
Maybe all of the na sayers that wanted Bloom fired will now admit
that based on what we assume his marching orders were has done
a pretty credible job of mixing and matching to put us in position
to be a playoff contender every year for the foreseeable future.
I would love to see him doing something dramatic this weekend
but my gut tells me that’s not going to happen.
that based on what we assume his marching orders were has done
a pretty credible job of mixing and matching to put us in position
to be a playoff contender every year for the foreseeable future.
I would love to see him doing something dramatic this weekend
but my gut tells me that’s not going to happen.
Remember those Houck for Kim discussions/rumors? The price is significantly higher now, but I wonder if that’s an option. Houck, Yorke, and a lottery ticket for Kim and Hader? Maybe SD would prefer something involving Verdugo?
Kim/Story until Meyer is good and ready is a pretty awesome MI for this year and next.
Kim/Story until Meyer is good and ready is a pretty awesome MI for this year and next.
Yeah, Kim has been tremendous. Don’t think Houck/Yorke/Lotto ticket comes close to getting that package though.
Oy - I have. I have said all along he has done some things well, and others not as well. Now, maybe that assessment itself was inaccurate, and he'll prove himself better than my sense of him. I'm non ideological about him, and have blanched at those that felt he was above any criticism at all. I actually do think that he's lining up something really exciting, AND seemed to flub the last two deadlines. AND I do admit what he has built has more potential sooner than I thought it would.
So, while I know some folks enjoy disliking me/my posts, maybe the same wisdom can be applied to me (if we were sitting around a bar talking face to face, it would be).
I understood/understand the hybrid approach, you certainly don't need to condescend. Bloom could have sold more departing players last year and gotten under the tax. He could have added one more quill in 2021 to a championship run. Neither would have be an affront to the hybrid approach or the future. And YES - the tension between pleasing a fan base and rebuilding a team was evident, and did lead to some hedging.
But I'll give you this, in the subtextual ego dance: I probably did underestimate Bloom; OR, the turnaround is happening faster than I thought and hats off to him.
I'll keep doing what I'm doing sure: pursuing my creative life, being a dad, teaching college students, taking care of older folks in the generation above. If that's what you mean ...
I think there's a lot of value to adding the right top 50-ish prospects to your organization -- we've seen this in Tampa, which, of course, has informed Bloom's approach. I think Boston's vision, however, if that of similar organizations like the Astros and Dodgers. The former has done well to extend young players early (Yordan), while the latter adds $$ in FA to the equation as well (Mookie). All these teams seem to have never-ending "next man up!" solutions to attrition. Is a Jonathan Aranda, Curtis Mead, or Vaughn Grissom up for grabs? If so. I'd be tempted. I think a Paxton and Turner package could get it done. If we're talking lesser prospects, however, I'm with you.
This is a convincing argument, for sure; you do well here to differentiate last season for this year. If the Red Sox do indeed add at the deadline, SP/MI seems like the way to go. Even if that's the case, though, it's going to take a lot of luck (health, especially) to make a run. But the way the last few weeks are gone, I can't deny that the stars seem to be aligning for at least an (highly) interesting end to the season.
The premise behind your analysis seems to be that a GM has to be the equivalent of a .600 hitter. And even if he is, you're going to fixate on the 4 outs every 10 ABs.
No, that’s not what I meant at all, of course. And this response makes clear that you are going to keep doing what you have been doing. And that is certainly your right.
I'm confused here, please help me understand your point. In addition to the questions of what opportunities were missed, what trade deadline deals have since been made to exhibit that he's learned from "prior mistakes"? I mean Kike's been moved for a couple of hopeful AAA pieces, but at the major league level that freed up a roster spot for Reyes' return but hasn't added anything yet.
And that defense and baserunning are not a consideration, and that BABIP is of no concern whatsoever.
There are multiple facets here but fixating on the main roster and only on that singular period at the trade deadline is beyond shortsighted.
I'll just note - as someone who has argued for tanking - that the path the Sox and Bloom chose is waaay more difficult than just shredding the roster and getting a #1 or #2 pick several years in a row.
Tanking isn't foolproof and obviously injuries are out of everyone's control but drafting the Rutschmans and Holidays of the draft class seems to me a lot easier than having to mine for talent picking in the 10s and 20s. From the discussions in the minor league threads, Bloom seems to have done an impressive job either bringing talent into the organization or developing the talent that was in the organization without having a lot of obvious advantages (like drafting at the top or being able to sign multiple guys to overslot deals like Theo did).
I don't think that anyone here dislikes you. May I offer an observation? You have often accused Bloom of hedging through posts that are rife with your own brand of verbal, gymnastic hedging. Bloom didn't do A ,B or C when he had an opportunity. Perhaps he'll prove me wrong, but.... Bloom seems adverse to risk, maybe he has a plan that will come to fruition, but...I now see that Bloom may have had a plan all along and it seems to be taking shape, but.... It appears that Bloom's plan has taken shape sooner that thought, but.... It's like you have to hang onto that but for some reason, but IMO it's OK to see the other side of the coin without conditions.
Agreed, the White Sox are a great illustration of this. They were a miserable team from 2013-19, solid in a useless 2020 season (when they lost the Wild Card game) and good in 2021 (losing in the ALDS). Now they are clearing the decks for another lengthy rebuild.
I can’t say whether they intentionally “tanked,” but they functionally did, and have almost nothing to show for it. For a young person inclined to like baseball, that’s almost an entire adolescence of very little excitement generated from the hometown team.
Also it should be mentioned how much easier it is to build a team in the AL Central as opposed to the AL East.
Agree! People have an annoying habit of saying that a team should do something at the deadline in the abstract, like they can just grab players for free. Chances are there were deals available for rental bats in '21 that could have maybe made a difference... for Casas and Bello or some shit like that. I'm sure Bloom passed on all sorts of terrible ideas.
Just yesterday PeteAbe, trying to sound less miserable than usual, suggested the Sox reward the current team's efforts and buy at the deadline. Buy what?? Didn't say. Just symbolically buy something I guess. I wish there were no trade deadline so we would only have to do the whole "who won the transaction" bullshit phase once a year. Oh and Congratulations 2022 Winter Transaction Champion New York Mets!
Roster building is not a TV show. Smart GMs don't make moves to feed media narratives. Bloom seems pretty good at blowing off media narratives in favor of actually building the team.
And imagine if the Red Sox tried to tank this year. How would they manage to lose more games than the Royals and A's? The "best" you might end up doing is 4th worst after them and the Rockies.
The ChiSox can also be a cautionary tale about how highly rated farm systems can underwhelm. By all accounts, they had a really good major league team in 20/21 and a top 5-10 farm system. Guys like Kopech, Vaughn, Crochet, Stiever really haven’t panned out, and they moved others like Madrigal and Dunning.
But a team with a core of Moncada, Anderson, Jimenez, Robert, Cease, Giolito, Kopech looked like a pretty good bet to be a long term contender a few years ago. Shit happens, or doesn’t.
But a team with a core of Moncada, Anderson, Jimenez, Robert, Cease, Giolito, Kopech looked like a pretty good bet to be a long term contender a few years ago. Shit happens, or doesn’t.
Awesome. Wish SoSH had a 'like' button sometimes.
Let's hope that Henry, Warner and company are equally proficient at ignoring those narratives as well. An exciting playoff push helps - Fenway has looked electric during the recent homestand.
Watching highlights of the Orioles' defeat of the NYY last night made me think that what's less than wonderful about the 23 Red Sox is its poor defense, and mostly at third base. I can't see anything the Sox could do that would increase the likelihood of a crucial post-season win than getting a replacement for that defense for the late innings. Maybe they have that in Turner, especially with Story returning and filling up the right side of the infield.
Adding another starting pitcher for low cost (Rich Hill?) also seems like a good idea. Little moves seem to be all that's needed.
Adding another starting pitcher for low cost (Rich Hill?) also seems like a good idea. Little moves seem to be all that's needed.
There is a lottery now for the draft, you can see the odds for the 2023 picks (the draft just held in June) in this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Major_League_Baseball_draft
The Braves acquired their starting outfield via in season trade and won the World Series.
Maybe we split the difference between PeteAbe and Shank and do nothing, roll the dice with 3 or 4 of the Story/Sale/Whitlock/Houck/Kluber/McGuire returning to fill holes. Piss them both off.