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Nathan Eovaldi (re-signed: 4 years/$68 million)
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Post by telson13 on Dec 11, 2018 23:14:37 GMT -5
Huh? fWAR is FIP-based, meaning it’s heavily weighted towards outcomes largely controlled by the pitcher alone (TTO). BWAR is runs-based, but attempts to account for fielding and park effects ( I know you know that, I’m stating it for my point, not to be a wise ass) They’re measuring two somewhat different outcomes and each has its strengths and weaknesses as far as assessing performance. I look at both, because that provides the most information. I mean, I understand what you’re trying to say as far as isolating value, but just because fWAR is a better “predictor” than RA9 doesn’t mean it’s not measuring what happened. If you’re going to try to completely isolate “value,” then you can’t use that isolated information in a discussion about making a future decision, because the minute you do that, you’re predicting. That line of reasoning could be applied to any statistical assessment of performance: “OBP includes walks, which barely ever drive in runs, and depend a ton on the pitcher. And the minute you do that, you’re not talking about *hitting*. It’s SLG for me.” The difference between Pomeranz and Porcello falls somewhere in the middle...Pomeranz is arguably better up top and worse down low. There’s more variance in his outcomes. I think he’d be a terrific sign on a show-me deal, and if the Sox, say, signed Kikuchi or traded for Gray, I’d be OK with a Porcello move *and* a Pomeranz signing. But for a contending team, low risk is very important. I’d be ok with signing him and keeping Porcello. The Sox could easily pay down Porcello’s salary and get a 50+ FV prospect back, because the acquiring team would get a QO, increasing their “return.” But I think the real risk with Pomeranz is a higher-than-acceptable likelihood of 0 or negative WAR. That’s a 3- win swing from Porcello’s projections, which is very large. Do you agree with Fangraphs value on Porcello? They both agree on his best year, yet fangraphs almost lumps in 2015, 2017, and 2018 as close years value wise. I'm sorry but that doesn't match what I watched happen. It wasn't just bad or good luck and that is what Fangraphs is basically saying. 2015 and 2017 Porcello just got lit up game after game, he wasn't good. 2018 he had a few of those games that drove up his ERA, but overall he was very good, much more like 2016. Bwar shows that value which I saw with my own eyes, fwar acts like he was almost the same as 2017. www.fangraphs.com/library/misc/war/The big issues with fip is what Eric was talking about, they use average results for balls in play. So it helps Porcello when he's crazy bad at that and hurts him when he's good. It's a skill, I think we can all agree on that yet fwar acts like above or below .300 BAbip is just luck. Porcello when he's good limits BAbip and when he's bad it's the exact opposite. Hence why fip and fangraphs is horrible for Porcello. I back this up using statcast data, which shows exactly what I saw with my own eyes 2018 was much closer to 2016. 2015 and 2017 wasn't just bad luck. XWOBA the last four years .328, .274, .348, .304 Expected BA .269, .246, .269, .242 baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/rick-porcello-519144?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlbI think that’s a great rationale, thanks for explaining your thought process.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Dec 15, 2018 21:45:09 GMT -5
Re Joe Kelly ... so, if someone has a crush on you but if a bunch of other suitors emerge, that somehow changes the way they feel about you? Joe Kelly has made it really clear that he'd like to return here, and it follows from that that he'll take less money to serve the same role. The presence of widespread interest on the part of others doesn't change that.
No, a 20+ million dollar offer changes that. I'm not taking a 10+ million less dollars to stick with that girl. The Sox shouldn't offer Kelly anything more than 14 million for two years or something like that. Kelly should absolutely be taking the best offer after maxing out his performance in the world series. The Sox shouldn't be paying the freight for that performance. Also, what?!!! 25 million for Miller on a one year deal?!!! Ouch. Pure ouch. Just a lot of wishing and wanting here. weei.radio.com/blogs/rob-bradford/red-sox-offer-joe-kelly-comes-focusSo after making no sense supposedly, I ended up guessing that Joe Kelly got a 20+ million dollar offer. That was the truth. I also came out and said that the Sox offer shouldn't go past 2 years and 14 million. The Sox ended up with a offer to Kelly for 2 years and around 8-14 million dollars reportedly. The Sox only ended up offering Kelly a 2 year deal at less AAV dollars then the Dodgers' offer.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Dec 18, 2018 12:50:16 GMT -5
You keep throwing out the AAV that the Red Sox offered Kelly. I've never seen that reported. Do you have a link?
I've only seen they offered 2 years and the Dodgers offered 3, the only team to do so.
I do agree that the idea he'd take significantly less money to stay in Boston was silly.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Dec 18, 2018 14:09:35 GMT -5
You keep throwing out the AAV that the Red Sox offered Kelly. I've never seen that reported. Do you have a link? I've only seen they offered 2 years and the Dodgers offered 3, the only team to do so. I do agree that the idea he'd take significantly less money to stay in Boston was silly. That Rob Bradford WEEI article had this line in it: "The annual average value of the two years proposed by the Sox also isn't believed to reach the level of Los Angeles' commitment" I could be mistaken but I interpreted that to mean that the Sox annual dollar value was lower than the 8.33 million/year average dollar value that the Dodgers signed Kelly for so I'm under the same impression as Pedro.
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Post by huskies15 on Dec 18, 2018 16:47:05 GMT -5
I had kind of forgotten we resigned Nasty Nate. Happy to have remembered/re-learned that fact. Happy Holidays
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Dec 18, 2018 19:00:32 GMT -5
You keep throwing out the AAV that the Red Sox offered Kelly. I've never seen that reported. Do you have a link? I've only seen they offered 2 years and the Dodgers offered 3, the only team to do so. I do agree that the idea he'd take significantly less money to stay in Boston was silly. "According to a major league source, Los Angeles out-bid the Red Sox by a significant margin, with Boston never willing to go past two years for the 30-year-old reliever. The Dodgers deal ultimately landed at three years, $25 million. The annual average value of the two years proposed by the Sox also isn't believed to reach the level of Los Angeles' commitment." weei.radio.com/blogs/rob-bradford/red-sox-offer-joe-kelly-comes-focusThe Sox were "believed" to have less AAV than the Dodgers. I'm just going to go ahead and believe that based on their history of what they're trying to spend on relievers this winter.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Dec 18, 2018 20:52:39 GMT -5
You keep throwing out the AAV that the Red Sox offered Kelly. I've never seen that reported. Do you have a link? I've only seen they offered 2 years and the Dodgers offered 3, the only team to do so. I do agree that the idea he'd take significantly less money to stay in Boston was silly. "According to a major league source, Los Angeles out-bid the Red Sox by a significant margin, with Boston never willing to go past two years for the 30-year-old reliever. The Dodgers deal ultimately landed at three years, $25 million. The annual average value of the two years proposed by the Sox also isn't believed to reach the level of Los Angeles' commitment." weei.radio.com/blogs/rob-bradford/red-sox-offer-joe-kelly-comes-focusThe Sox were "believed" to have less AAV than the Dodgers. I'm just going to go ahead and believe that based on their history of what they're trying to spend on relievers this winter. Right, I'd read that too, but was just confirming that you made up the numbers. That's what I thought. Thanks.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Dec 18, 2018 21:05:34 GMT -5
"According to a major league source, Los Angeles out-bid the Red Sox by a significant margin, with Boston never willing to go past two years for the 30-year-old reliever. The Dodgers deal ultimately landed at three years, $25 million. The annual average value of the two years proposed by the Sox also isn't believed to reach the level of Los Angeles' commitment." weei.radio.com/blogs/rob-bradford/red-sox-offer-joe-kelly-comes-focusThe Sox were "believed" to have less AAV than the Dodgers. I'm just going to go ahead and believe that based on their history of what they're trying to spend on relievers this winter. Right, I'd read that too, but was just confirming that you made up the numbers. That's what I thought. Thanks. I mean, if this report is all true, and I do believe this to be true, then the highest the Sox went on Kelly's AAV was 8 million, which would be 333.33 thousand less AAV wise than the Dodgers. It's not unrealistic to think the Sox had offered 4-7 (8 at most) AAV million dollars for 2 years on the Kelly contract. I just kind of put 2 and 2 together in this case based off of this report.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Dec 19, 2018 13:57:15 GMT -5
Right, I'd read that too, but was just confirming that you made up the numbers. That's what I thought. Thanks. I mean, if this report is all true, and I do believe this to be true, then the highest the Sox went on Kelly's AAV was 8 million, which would be 333.33 thousand less AAV wise than the Dodgers. It's not unrealistic to think the Sox had offered 4-7 (8 at most) AAV million dollars for 2 years on the Kelly contract. I just kind of put 2 and 2 together in this case based off of this report. You were just saying it like it was certain, so I asked if the numbers came from somewhere. If you'd mixed in a "presumably" or something I wouldn't have asked. But you have to admit that going down to 4m AAV is completely arbitrary on your part. I mean, I'd guess that the Sox were smarter than to bother offering him 2/8. Anyway, that's all fine, but you were just assuming a lot of stuff, and over the course of your posts it becomes fact.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Dec 19, 2018 17:02:23 GMT -5
I think a good guess is the Sox offered two years 14 to 16 million. I don't think they would even give Kelly an offer of two years 8 million. What would be the point? Just to insult the player with a crazy low offer that you know he won't accept? Just had to say something because guessing two years 8 million seems to be driven by something other than guessing what the actual offer was.
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Post by jimed14 on Dec 19, 2018 17:57:51 GMT -5
I mean, if this report is all true, and I do believe this to be true, then the highest the Sox went on Kelly's AAV was 8 million, which would be 333.33 thousand less AAV wise than the Dodgers. It's not unrealistic to think the Sox had offered 4-7 (8 at most) AAV million dollars for 2 years on the Kelly contract. I just kind of put 2 and 2 together in this case based off of this report. You were just saying it like it was certain, so I asked if the numbers came from somewhere. If you'd mixed in a "presumably" or something I wouldn't have asked. But you have to admit that going down to 4m AAV is completely arbitrary on your part. I mean, I'd guess that the Sox were smarter than to bother offering him 2/8. Anyway, that's all fine, but you were just assuming a lot of stuff, and over the course of your posts it becomes fact. They paid him $3.8 million last year when he wasn't a free agent, so it's safe to assume they wouldn't offend him with a $4m AAV deal. In fact, they wouldn't have even made an offer if it were that low because why would they? I assume that his agent gave them some kind of ballpark figure or comps. Instead of lowballing him, they would have said 'too rich for our blood, come back later if you have trouble finding what you want'.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Dec 19, 2018 18:03:04 GMT -5
It was just a guess. I didn't mean to state it as fact. If it came across that way, I'm sorry.
The 2/8-2/14 offer was a pure guesstimate. The Sox have lowballed pitchers before (Andrew Miller and Jon Lester) with contracts in the past, so maybe the Sox did it with Kelly. Probably not though.
I said from my first post about resigning Kelly that I would go to 2/14 million and not go past that. It seems like the Sox did the same. My post was called non sense and I felt the need to defend it afterwards.
Add- Andrew Miller and Lester both showed their preference for staying in Boston before signing elsewhere. Kelly did the same exact thing by telling everyone his preference for staying in Boston. Miller and Lester both got low ball offers at first. They ponied up for Lester by offering 135 million later in free agency (because they really wanted him back), but was still 20-32 million dollars short (with the option) to the Cubs offer.
Wouldn't surprise me if the Sox started by low balling Kelly either.
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Post by geostorm on Dec 19, 2018 18:07:44 GMT -5
It’s just my OCD, but is there any way a moderator can switch “resigned” to “re-signed” in the thread title? Maybe it's my OCD, but I found it interesting, this request for a subject line thread edit, when the thread seemed to veer off course from the "subject" matter, about 2 pages or so earlier.
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Post by jimed14 on Dec 19, 2018 18:44:15 GMT -5
To bring this full circle, Allen Craig was owed 3/$25.5M when they got him along with Joe Kelly.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Dec 19, 2018 18:57:12 GMT -5
Just because it's funny...
He didn't re-sign because he didn't sign in the first place.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 8, 2021 10:33:02 GMT -5
I've broken down his pitch use in his career, starting with his two decent years with the Yankees. This is mostly text instead of numbers! He had thrown a cutter a bit in 2012. After the Yankees sent him to the pen in July 2016, he apparently worked on it, because he reintroduced when he returned to the rotation on the 19th, junking his ineffective curve. He threw the cutter a ton (35%) and it’s never been more effective, very likely because hitters had never seen it. He made room for the new pitch by also cutting his FB, splitter, and slider usage (as a % of all pitches) by 7, 9, and 11%. When he returned from his surgery in 2018, the Rays reduced his cutter use over his first 4 starts (20%), then ramped him up to a near-Yankee level (34%); in fact, from then on, his pitch usage with them was essentially identical to his last 5 with NY ... they had him throw the curve a bit in his first 6 games, but he junked it again after it was killed. In terms of effectiveness, his FB was better the whole time, and the cutter nearly as good, but the splitter was subpar and then really bad. The pitch that he threw early instead of the cutter was the slider, and it was great; when he started throwing the cutter a lot more, it got destroyed. This makes a lot of sense, given how similar the pitches are; few pitchers throw both.
Under DDo, they did a very interesting thing: they immediately reintroduced the curve as an occasional (6%) pitch. It was really inconsistent but overall somewhat subpar. They made room for the curve by throwing a bit fewer FB and splitters. This stretch, through his early 2019 IL stint, had his most effective FB ever, but the cutter devolved into a supbar pitch, and the splitter decayed even further. The slider (10%) was very good in 2018, but was hit hard the next year.
When he returned from the IL in late July 2019 he had a very different mix. FB 45%, cutter down to 20%, curve up to 21%, slider junked. Curve was still unreliable, cutter was average, FB subpar, splitter good.
Bloom's big change was to reintroduce the slider at 13%, cutting 6% from FB (and thus bringing it back to the original DDo level), 5% from curve, and 2% from cutter. And it was good! But in these first 5 games the cutter was just destroyed -- there's that vexing inability to throw both pitches, again. The splitter was feast or famine but overall declined to a new low.
In his last start before his IL stint, the splitter was great, and it's stayed that way since, surviving the immediately subsequent IL stint plus the offseason. In fact, everything worked except the cutter, which was still hammered. But when he came back, it, too was great ... and for the first time in his career he had all five pitches working well.
The narrative here is not what you'd expect.The Rays basically didn’t do anything with him. The Dombrowski regime did a counter-intuitive thing, resurrecting his curve. It took a while, but it turned out to be a great idea. Bloom built on that, doubtlessly working (at first) with Zack Scott and his team. But he has also resurrected his splitter, and he seems to have solved the problem of the cutter and slider canceling each other. That really suggests trying something at least a little bit different with one or both of the pitches, plus a learning curve. Or maybe not! Maybe the resurrection of the splitter and the friendly cohabitation of the cutter and slider is a small-sample mirage. But that an injury intervened after his first good start, and that he hasn't missed a beat after an off-season, gives solid grounds for optimism that they really have figured out how to harness his always-evident huge potential.
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Post by unitspin on Apr 8, 2021 11:20:54 GMT -5
Cool stuff, being revised a bit ... The high hopes of a repeat turning into the team being retooled for the next 3 year, what could have been.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 8, 2021 13:07:29 GMT -5
Here are the numbers for the narrative above, which I've just put in place. Read that first!
First five columns show pitch use and the last 5 are R/100 picthes, relative to average.
When FA% FC% CU% FS% SL% FA-r FC-r CU-r FS-r SL-r NY 15-16 until .486 .075 .224 .210 -0.10 -1.84 0.78 -0.47 Last 5 NY .413 .353 .136 .098 0.13 2.25 2.68 -2.79 Rays first 4 .416 .198 .022 .146 .204 0.88 2.21 -19.24 -0.27 4.66 Rays rest .411 .338 .011 .147 .091 0.84 2.05 2.67 -1.64 -6.08 DDo to 2019 IL .384 .333 .064 .123 .097 1.24 -0.79 -0.31 -2.14 1.30 DD rest .452 .197 .215 .125 .010 -0.94 -0.01 -0.54 0.50 1.27 2020 first 5 .386 .178 .160 .144 .131 -0.09 -7.34 2.04 -2.69 1.67 Last 6 .396 .202 .188 .126 .089 0.54 1.42 2.70 2.69 6.45
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Post by manfred on Apr 8, 2021 13:18:15 GMT -5
It is funny to think an extension most of us — even me, a DD defender — thought was a big mistake might turn out to have been really wise. I always worry about health, but I used to see Eovaldi as a guy who would be a hot and cold starter at the back end even when healthy. Now I feel like if he can go a whole season he can be a legit front line guy — which would make his contract a bargain.
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shagworthy
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Post by shagworthy on Apr 8, 2021 13:53:34 GMT -5
It is funny to think an extension most of us — even me, a DD defender — thought was a big mistake might turn out to have been really wise. I always worry about health, but I used to see Eovaldi as a guy who would be a hot and cold starter at the back end even when healthy. Now I feel like if he can go a whole season he can be a legit front line guy — which would make his contract a bargain. Thank you for giving me a temporary blood pressure spike Manfred! I saw this in the forum and my brain went NFW they re-upped on him again!! There was a very foul stream of consciousness playing in my head until I realized this was the original thread from when they originally did the deal...
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Post by pasadenasox on Apr 9, 2021 19:50:44 GMT -5
Hopefully this will end up perceived like the John Lackey contract did in it's final seasons after being regarded equally poorly prior. No rush to deal him, though.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 10, 2021 5:18:00 GMT -5
Looking at the big picture here ...
Late in 2016 he introduced a terrific new pitch, his cutter, and had a .275 wOBA allowed in his final 5 starts, the last of which lasted just an inning in Fenway. He tore a flexor tendon off the bone, requiring surgery, and damaged his UCL enough to require his second Tommy John surgery.
One of the savviest teams in MLB, the Rays, signed him to a cheap 2-year contract, knowing that the first year would be all rehab and the start of 2018 likely a work in progress.
He returned on May 30 and was surprisingly good in his first five starts, with a .303 xwOBA that would have ranked 56th among 145 pitchers with 400+ BFP. That's a better-than-average third starter.
From that point onward, starting 6/26 to the end of the post-season, he had a .266 xwOBA, .263 after adjusting conservatively for the quality of the hitters he faced in the post-season, which was 20% of his workload (that's using the overall team xwOBA's, not the actual hitters he faced). That would rank 8th in MLB, after deGrom, Sale, Verlander, Scherzer, Buehler, Nola, and Bauer. That's an ace.
It's worth noting that this great stretch (that started with his last five starts for the Rays) had a big bump in the middle, after his great first two starts for us -- a month with a .315 xwOBA but .400 wOBA. So the overall numbers do not represent a probably unrepeatable hot streak. If you regard that .400 wOBA as real (and we'll see in a bit that it likely was, to a degree), you can take his wOBA in this stretch, which is .010 higher ... that would rank 11th. Still an ace.
His last appearance in 2018, of course, had him throwing 97 pitches on 1 day of rest after throwing 29 total pitches on back-to-back days. That's an insane workload for anybody, let alone a guy one year removed from two surgeries. But he did it willingly, it was inspirational, and it helped win a WS.
You think he deserves a mulligan for a while, in terms of performance and maybe even further injuries, after that?
In 2019 he barely pitched in ST and was destroyed in his first three starts, then had a great one against the Yankees ... and went on the IL. He came back as a reliever, and after a rough debut, had a .205 xwOBA (and .303 wOBA) over three weeks. They put him back in the rotation, stretching him out gradually, and he was never any good (.348 x, .373 actual), with just one good and one lucky start out of 8.
Last year, disrupted in so many ways, began with 5 rough starts (.335 / .388. Note that whenever he pitches badly, his wOBA is a lot worse than his xwOBA. That's probably a real thing, e.g., allowing hitters to pull the ball consistently instead of getting more balls hit to CF).
This rough stretch totaled just 95 innings, the equivalent of half a season, but stretched out to more than a year and a half. It's unclear whether he needed all that time to recover, or just that many innings, or whether COVID contributed.
Since then he's pitched like an ace ... again. It's only 6 starts, but the first and only time in his career that he pitched this well for this long, he maintained it (in terms of overall numbers) through season's end.
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Post by blizzards39 on Apr 24, 2021 1:01:07 GMT -5
EVOs contract starting to look pretty nice.
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Post by dyoungteach on Apr 24, 2021 2:51:49 GMT -5
EVOs contract starting to look pretty nice. NOT being Debby downer. Legit it is till he’s injured again. His stuff is so good when healthy. You can’t do this but the “smart” play might be to trade him while he’s playing so good and you could get a great return on him. It won’t happen but unless he reverses his history it would be the smart play.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Apr 24, 2021 7:41:33 GMT -5
EVOs contract starting to look pretty nice. NOT being Debby downer. Legit it is till he’s injured again. His stuff is so good when healthy. You can’t do this but the “smart” play might be to trade him while he’s playing so good and you could get a great return on him. It won’t happen but unless he reverses his history it would be the smart play. Depends on the circumstances. The smart play is to trade him - if your team has tanked, but if you actually have a chance to make the playoffs there's no way you trade him. If you have any desire to legitimately compete this year then it's not a "smart" play to trade him. I mean, if the team is right there and at this point the Sox aren't exactly that far off from competing, they are in first place as I type this, right? - then that doesn't make sense. If they collapsed and fell apart, sure trade Eovaldi, deal JDM, anybody who is not part of the next Red Sox core....but strangely enough you have to deal with the reality in front of your face and that reality is that the Red Sox have a reasonable chance of competing this season. They have a few holes to fix, but it doesn't look like anything that's unfixable that you have to mortgage the future for. I mean, what kind of message does that send to your fanbase or even the players if you're punting the season while you are still very much in the hunt for a playoff spot? Think that would want to make a player like X stay? It's one thing to do this kind of thing when you're team is down and out, but unexpectedly that is not the case here. While I think the Sox will probably fall toward .500, that is irrelevant - the reality is that they have a legit reason now to think that they're in the playoff hunt.
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