7/6-7/8 Red Sox @ Royals Series Thread

I'm guessing Philips will get first shot. He's decent but not great defensive second baseman.

While he does have the bad spin rates I’m pretty sure I recall seeing something where his release point adds a perceived tick or two. So he has that going for him at least. I’ll try and find it

And I feel like he's going to get traded, so it's probably a much greater distance to their second best player. 

Excellent game by the Sox. It's amazing to record 60 wins while having their losses still in the 20s. Also nice to open up a little daylight between themselves and NY. Hopefully David Price rebounds and pitches the way he has against all other non-Yankee teams.

Betts, JDM, and Sale are superstars and a team like KC had no shot against them. Also nice to see Devers get a day off as Cora is resting his regulars, which will help keep them fresh.

My initial impression of Thornburg is that he might be able to help. Still way too early to know. I thought he gave up some hard contact.

Either way it's clear that the Sox still need to add another high leverage reliever and that Thornburg will likely pitch more in the middle like Hembree does.

Upgrading the utility infielder slot is easy. Just call up Lin. No need to expend resources there.

The bullpen does need some help.

In the playoffs they'll need somebody beyond Kelly and Barnes to bridge the gap to Kimbrel. Kelly and Barnes are not guys I trust to go into Yankee Stadium and shut down the Yankees.

The utility infielder isn't going to be a difference maker the way a high leverage relief arm is going to be in the post-season.

You can't just throw Buttrey or whoever into the mix and expect instant high leverage success in the playoffs. That's unfair to do. That's why I think the Sox need to go outside the organization to upgrade.

But the utility infielder thing. The outside upgrade over Lin would be extremely marginal. In a playoff setting Bogaerts is going to play everyday and if the Sox pass on getting a 2b, then Holt and probably Brandon Phillips, if not Nunez will probably share 2b.

You could argue that 2b might be in need of a bigger upgrade than even a bullpen arm. I wouldn't, but I could see the case for it. It's certainly a bigger need than simply just promoting Lin to be the 2nd utility infielder.

Yeah, not ecstatic about that one. I hope they are just throwing that out there for no reason.

Rodney scares me. An internal option seems less dicey. At some point, the DD trend of overpaying in trades for relievers must stop.

Lol, Rodney is such a bad idea that I didn't even consider him a trade option.

He has been smoke and mirrors for years now. Talk about a heart attack reliever. To his credit, he keeps finding a job, but that doesn't mean his job should be to set up Kimbrel on a 100 win team with world series aspirations.

Rodney also has one of the worst groundball rates of his career this year. He's really old too and has miles on that arm. Just a disaster waiting to happen if he came here.

The more I see crap relievers being interested by the Sox, the more I just want to go get Dozier and hope Thornburg or Wright or Pomeranz comes back to peak perfomancd.

I mean if your options are-

A) Acquire a great 2B the past 3-4 years in Dozier and go with what you have

or

B) Trade for a guy like Rodney and call up a guy like Brandon Phillips

Then give me option A.

Not for me. The Sox wouldn't need to go crazy on Dozier who is only having a 1 WAR season (not great) and he's a rental. I just don't see either price being all that great for either option. Maybe Dozier gets a top 10 prospect somewhere, I'm not sure. Either way, I'd trade a top 5-20 prospect on a Dozier if it came down to it.

Why Benny?