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Breaking News - Dombrowski out
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Post by jimed14 on Sept 13, 2019 12:15:06 GMT -5
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 13, 2019 12:19:35 GMT -5
Maybe he felt that Eovaldi would go home to Houston to pitch if he didn't offer more money. Sometimes players' first choices aren't Boston and it takes more money to change their mind. Certainly was the case with Price. How much more extra money should be thrown at a player is a different argument, but that's probably why Dombrowski got it done early. And if Eovaldi had, Dombrowski would have been forced to... sign a better pitcher for less money? He misread the market, badly, end of story. Morton is having an amazing year, but everybody acts like it was a slam dunk that Morton was going to be better than Eovaldi. Morton is an older pitcher with less stuff. Eovaldi is younger and the Red Sox thought that between Tampa's tinkering and their tinkering with Eovaldi that they had the makings of a front line pitcher who's only 29. Morton has better stuff than Eovaldi pretty much any way you want to measure it. Slightly less fastball velo, but Eovaldi has spent his whole career looking for a secondary pitch that's half as effective as Morton's curve. The vaunted cutter he added was working ok, but it wasn't even getting swings and misses. Like you were betting that Eovaldi had learned to pitch in this unconventional way, after a very short run of doing it, versus Morton who just has the classic rising fastball/hammer curve combo that generates a ton of strikeouts and has been a successful mode of pitching for a hundred years. It's clear that Dombrowski wanted Eovaldi to be in 2019's rotation and not Morton. In 2019, in hindsight, that's the wrong decision. Maybe in time Eovaldi stays healthy (for once) and he becomes the pitcher Dombrowski envisioned. I wouldn't bet my life on that, but I get the logic of why Dombrowski did what he did. I mean, I drafted Morton in most of my fantasy leagues and Eovaldi in none of them. Maybe I was the wrong one at the time and I just got lucky, but like... I don't know man, it seems like baseball 101 that you don't go super aggressive after the double TJ guy who's been pitching well for like five minutes. And to get back to my original point about nuance in this conversation, it's not like there was no reason at all to like Eovaldi or to try to bring him back, but that's different from blowing most of your budget on him on him so early in the offseason. If they'd held the line at three years and signed Eovaldi to a deal similar to Morton's, that would be one thing. Dombrowski gets away with his habit of overpaying because he tends to choose the right guy to overpay for, but in this instance he not only overpaid, he chose the wrong guy.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 13, 2019 12:24:17 GMT -5
I just don't get how the Kimbrel trade could be looked at as mediocre when Margot recently upgraded himself from nothing to a solid platoon player. It's not like Kimbrel offered the team nothing. He was a very good closer during his tenur here. He was bailed out greatly during the postseason run, but still converted his opportunities. They got their ring and the players traded away so far are easily replaceable for what they've given their respective teams. Where he screwed up was that he overspent on Pearce and Eovaldi and didn't acquire depth either through free agency or trade. While I'm not over the moon on the Sale extension or the Price contract, they don't win without Price, Sale could still be Sale, and the Xander Bogaerts extension is criminally under appreciated. I agree his biggest issue here is he didn't do anything all that creative like flip Porcello for Miley and have it work. Not a whole lot of outside the box thinking. I do think he'll throw in an extra player or 2 just to get deals done which will eventually burn you. Ok, so here's another issue: if Margot is easily replaceable, why hasn't he been replaced? JBJ could clearly use a platoon partner, and having JDM as a 4th outfielder means you kind of don't have a 4th outfielder. So if it's easy to get a Margot type... where is he? Either it's not as easy as you're making it seem, or Dombrowski just dropped the ball on an easy roster upgrade.
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Post by James Dunne on Sept 13, 2019 12:29:04 GMT -5
It's also not inconsistent to believe that the Kimbrel trade was fine because he was good (particularly in '17) and helped the Red Sox win and also that Margot is good and would be helping the Red Sox right now. Some of y'all are conflating the two issues. The 2019 Red Sox would be better if Margot was on the team. That's not an argument against the trade, it's just a thing that happens to be true.
The bigger indictment of Dombrowski isn't that he made the Kimbrel trade. It's that he looked at the 2019 roster and didn't find a player to fill the role that we've been hypothetically putting Margot into. The fact the 2019 Red Sox REALLY could use Margot is true both because Margot is a good ballplayer but also because they just entirely neglected to fill the platoon CF/4th-OF role.
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Post by jimed14 on Sept 13, 2019 12:35:02 GMT -5
If they made some kind of handshake deal with JDM to play him in the outfield a few times a week, then they need to undo that or trade him. I really don't care what the defensive metrics say about him because he doesn't play enough for them to be meaningful. He is terrible defensively. I have fully bought into how important outfield defense is especially in today's game when there are more fly balls than ever and I don't see that ever going away. Plus, putting JDM in the outfield, just so someone like Vazquez or Travis can play DH is way worse than playing JDM at DH and a decent defensive 4th OF in the outfield.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Sept 13, 2019 12:48:32 GMT -5
I just don't get how the Kimbrel trade could be looked at as mediocre when Margot recently upgraded himself from nothing to a solid platoon player. It's not like Kimbrel offered the team nothing. He was a very good closer during his tenur here. He was bailed out greatly during the postseason run, but still converted his opportunities. They got their ring and the players traded away so far are easily replaceable for what they've given their respective teams. Where he screwed up was that he overspent on Pearce and Eovaldi and didn't acquire depth either through free agency or trade. While I'm not over the moon on the Sale extension or the Price contract, they don't win without Price, Sale could still be Sale, and the Xander Bogaerts extension is criminally under appreciated. I agree his biggest issue here is he didn't do anything all that creative like flip Porcello for Miley and have it work. Not a whole lot of outside the box thinking. I do think he'll throw in an extra player or 2 just to get deals done which will eventually burn you. Ok, so here's another issue: if Margot is easily replaceable, why hasn't he been replaced? JBJ could clearly use a platoon partner, and having JDM as a 4th outfielder means you kind of don't have a 4th outfielder. So if it's easy to get a Margot type... where is he? Either it's not as easy as you're making it seem, or Dombrowski just dropped the ball on an easy roster upgrade. Nicholas Castellanos seemed to get moved for minimal value. Last year, Dombrowski identified that guy as Pearce. He was right last year, but wrong this year. I think he dropped the ball because he hoped to strike gold with Pearce twice.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 13, 2019 13:10:54 GMT -5
Maybe he felt that Eovaldi would go home to Houston to pitch if he didn't offer more money. Sometimes players' first choices aren't Boston and it takes more money to change their mind. Certainly was the case with Price. How much more extra money should be thrown at a player is a different argument, but that's probably why Dombrowski got it done early. And if Eovaldi had, Dombrowski would have been forced to... sign a better pitcher for less money? He misread the market, badly, end of story. Morton is having an amazing year, but everybody acts like it was a slam dunk that Morton was going to be better than Eovaldi. Morton is an older pitcher with less stuff. Eovaldi is younger and the Red Sox thought that between Tampa's tinkering and their tinkering with Eovaldi that they had the makings of a front line pitcher who's only 29. Morton has better stuff than Eovaldi pretty much any way you want to measure it. Slightly less fastball velo, but Eovaldi has spent his whole career looking for a secondary pitch that's half as effective as Morton's curve. The vaunted cutter he added was working ok, but it wasn't even getting swings and misses. Like you were betting that Eovaldi had learned to pitch in this unconventional way, after a very short run of doing it, versus Morton who just has the classic rising fastball/hammer curve combo that generates a ton of strikeouts and has been a successful mode of pitching for a hundred years. It's clear that Dombrowski wanted Eovaldi to be in 2019's rotation and not Morton. In 2019, in hindsight, that's the wrong decision. Maybe in time Eovaldi stays healthy (for once) and he becomes the pitcher Dombrowski envisioned. I wouldn't bet my life on that, but I get the logic of why Dombrowski did what he did. I mean, I drafted Morton in most of my fantasy leagues and Eovaldi in none of them. Maybe I was the wrong one at the time and I just got lucky, but like... I don't know man, it seems like baseball 101 that you don't go super aggressive after the double TJ guy who's been pitching well for like five minutes. And to get back to my original point about nuance in this conversation, it's not like there was no reason at all to like Eovaldi or to try to bring him back, but that's different from blowing most of your budget on him on him so early in the offseason. If they'd held the line at three years and signed Eovaldi to a deal similar to Morton's, that would be one thing. Dombrowski gets away with his habit of overpaying because he t ends to choose the right guy to overpay for, but in this instance he not only overpaid, he chose the wrong guy. Morton is a guy who figured it out later in his career. My guess is that Dombrowski thought the same thing about Eovaldi. Perhaps baseball ops people not named Frank Wren or Tony LaRussa agreed with you. And if so, maybe that's part of the reason why he's out of a job. Normally Dombrowski has a good track record of making the correct decisions like that. He looked at talent, present age, and future to grow into something dominant and he chose Eovaldi over Morton. In 2019 it looks like the wrong decision. And like I said once Dombrowski chose Eovaldi he wanted to make sure he didn't lose him to Houston - thus overpayment although if Eovaldi had been what Dombrowski thought he was turning into a 4 year $68 million deal doesn't look so bad, but unfortunately they got injured (yet again) Eovaldi instead of the guy they were dreaming on, the guy they saw in Sept and Oct. I mean, sometimes, for some players, the light switches on later than others and Morton is an example of that. (Rich Hill is another one).
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 13, 2019 13:12:59 GMT -5
It's also not inconsistent to believe that the Kimbrel trade was fine because he was good (particularly in '17) and helped the Red Sox win and also that Margot is good and would be helping the Red Sox right now. Some of y'all are conflating the two issues. The 2019 Red Sox would be better if Margot was on the team. That's not an argument against the trade, it's just a thing that happens to be true. The bigger indictment of Dombrowski isn't that he made the Kimbrel trade. It's that he looked at the 2019 roster and didn't find a player to fill the role that we've been hypothetically putting Margot into. The fact the 2019 Red Sox REALLY could use Margot is true both because Margot is a good ballplayer but also because they just entirely neglected to fill the platoon CF/4th-OF role. I would ask shouldn't it be much easier (in theory) to get a RH hitting CF who can platoon and be the #4 OF and not be terrible? I mean this is something basic they could have done, but didn't. I mean Margot's role shouldn't have been that hard to replace in 2019, should it have? I mean this is the kind of thing done around the margins, and it seems to me to have gone overlooked again.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Sept 13, 2019 15:47:40 GMT -5
at a time when there's really nothing for a GM to do. That makes it seem as if there is a lot of drama, distrust and dysfunction behind the scenes. I don't disagree they could have handled this better, but the first quoted statement is why this was the correct time to make this move, no? This is the time to have an interim committee running baseball ops. They have nothing to do! They have a month to find a replacement and he'll be able to hit the ground running. The screw up was telling him in the middle of a game and it coming out at midnight. Meet with him in the afternoon at the park and have the release ready to go once you walk out. THAT was the weird timing. Early September is otherwise a perfect time to do this. I don't get how the timing makes it seem dysfunctional, etc. either. If Henry, Warner, and Kennedy have been talking about this for weeks, how would any of us know? I think you're projecting that a little bit.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Sept 13, 2019 16:45:19 GMT -5
To be fair the 4th OF spot was addressed, with Pearce. That he was injured all year isn't DD's fault. Had he performed to his career numbers as expected it wouldn't have been an issue. Career stat line of .254/.332/.440/.772 with .263/.347/.490/.838 vs LHP. For some reason I have it in my head he's slightly worse than his career numbers. So, I think it should be said that DD did address it, but over-spent on the 36 year old. It's just unfortunate he's been hurt all year. Still, he could have gotten someone else to fill that role.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Sept 13, 2019 16:53:28 GMT -5
Martinez played 20 fewer games in the outfield this year than last year, and was at a career low.
On the list of things Dombrowski IL did wrong, the "4th outfielder" situation in 2019 is way down the list. Generally he hasn't been great on the fringes of the roster, for sure, but JD Martinez playing a little outfield isn't the symptom of that issue.
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Post by jimed14 on Sept 13, 2019 17:32:56 GMT -5
To be fair the 4th OF spot was addressed, with Pearce. That he was injured all year isn't DD's fault. Had he performed to his career numbers as expected it wouldn't have been an issue. Pearce was not ever the 4th OF and could only play LF. They needed someone to platoon with JBJ, and spell Benintendi and Mookie. Pearce is about as bad as JDM in the OF. Pearce couldn't platoon with JBJ when he was platooning with Moreland.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Sept 13, 2019 17:36:15 GMT -5
To be fair the 4th OF spot was addressed, with Pearce. That he was injured all year isn't DD's fault. Had he performed to his career numbers as expected it wouldn't have been an issue. Pearce was not ever the 4th OF and could only play LF. They needed someone to platoon with JBJ, and spell Benintendi and Mookie. Pearce is about as bad as JDM in the OF. Pearce couldn't platoon with JBJ when he was platooning with Moreland. All 3 OFers can play CF. There's flexibility with a corner 4OFer
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 13, 2019 17:37:09 GMT -5
Off the top of my head: Margot, Buttrey, Logan Allen, Shaun Anderson, Beeks, and Dubon are all players who would be on the team right now and have some upside. The Basabes, Kopech, Nogosek, and Espinal all could help in the future. I would have Kopech ranked 2nd if he were still in the system. That's not a commentary on the trades those players were involved in, as the got value when they needed to and won because of it. He got talent back! But he has traded a fair amount of talent, and the 2019 team us weaker because of it. The mediocre 2019 team is worth the 2016 to 2018 run, but also invites fair questions as to whether he was the right guy going forward. For the umpteenth time, this team was not mediocre, and anyone who views them that way will be incapable of rationally assessing what should be done in the off-season.
They have a mediocre won/loss record. That's not anything like the same thing, and history is littered with GM's who made atrocious decisions by confusing the two.
The 2019 Red Sox, compared to last year as of 9/8, were down 13.5 wins of clutch, situational performance. I could re-run my figures and verify they'd they'd lost some more ground since then, but let's just round that 13.5 up to 14 ... if the Sox had pitched as well with runners on as they did last year, and hit as well when tied or just behind in the late innings (great at both instead of awful), they'd be 4 games up for the first W/C.
The Yankees have had problems with their starting pitching nearly as bad as we have. Are they a mediocre team? They've gained about 6 wins of clutch relative to last year.
You have to understand this. You are not an 85-win team with a super-star in his walk year. You are a 93-win team that spent all year failing to get the job done when it counted.
Since the same players were the best team in MLB the previous year at doing exactly that, this obviously has no predictive year-to-year value at all.
An 85-win team with a shaky rotation should seriously think about trading their walk-year superstar. For one thing, if you're an 85-win team, you probably have other areas you need to improve in.
A 93 win team -- even with a rotation filled with question marks-- has no business trading their walk-year superstar. A team that actually did that would be mocked. The rotation currently ranks 17th in MLB in Win Probability Added, but it ranks 10th in SIERA, 11th in xFIP-, and 11th in WPA/LI.
The Yankees rotation ranks 1st in MLB in FanGraph's "Clutch" statistic and the Red Sox rank last, the difference being 6.4 wins.
The Yankees rank 4th in MLB in "Clutch" hitting and the Red Sox rank 29th, the difference being 7.3 wins.
(The bullpens rank 7th and 17th, the difference being 1.4 wins.)
We're 19.5 games behind the Yankees, which, if it represented the talent, would indeed call for a rebuild, which would begin with trading Mookie. But it's 4.5 wins of talent and 15 wins of clutch.
You have a single known weakness. You can work on it in the off-season. There's no reason you can't go into next season as a 95-win team on paper.
And the Sox with Mookie and Xander are one of the teams in MLB that project to do best in the post-season relative to their won-lost record, while the Yankees are one of the worst. Of the best hitters in MLB, Betts and Bogaerts have been two of the three best at hitting good pitching (again, relatively), while Judge, Stanton, and Sanchez are the three worst.
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Post by jimed14 on Sept 13, 2019 17:42:12 GMT -5
Pearce was not ever the 4th OF and could only play LF. They needed someone to platoon with JBJ, and spell Benintendi and Mookie. Pearce is about as bad as JDM in the OF. Pearce couldn't platoon with JBJ when he was platooning with Moreland. All 3 OFers can play CF. There's flexibility with a corner 4OFer Pearce is not good against RHP until a small sample last season. He was always going to play 1B against LHP. So why would anyone think he was the 4th OF?
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Post by jimed14 on Sept 13, 2019 21:23:19 GMT -5
Pearce is not good against RHP until a small sample last season. He was always going to play 1B against LHP. So why would anyone think he was the 4th OF?Pearce has played 312 of his 632 career games in the OF. Career OPS+ is 108. He also has a career OPS of .734 against RHP and a .790 OPS against RHP over the past 3 years (2016-2018). So, aside from his successful career as an outfielder, no reason to think that at all. How can he platoon for two players at the same time?
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Post by bosox81 on Sept 13, 2019 22:43:30 GMT -5
It's like Dombrowski wants who he wants and maxes out his credit cards to always get what he wants. Exactly. He has Cherington (and Theo to some extent) to thank for the very high prospect capital available to spend and John Henry for the FA capital. Yeah, DD was an awesome spender and got rewarded for it. But now that the prospect capital is gone and there is no money to spend, what useful talent does DD have to keep running this team? Good to move on.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Sept 13, 2019 22:47:08 GMT -5
Pearce was not ever the 4th OF and could only play LF. They needed someone to platoon with JBJ, and spell Benintendi and Mookie. Pearce is about as bad as JDM in the OF. Pearce couldn't platoon with JBJ when he was platooning with Moreland. All 3 OFers can play CF. There's flexibility with a corner 4OFer Not Benintendi anymore. I'm not even sure he could even be a adequate RF at this point anymore.
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gerry
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Post by gerry on Sept 14, 2019 3:52:21 GMT -5
All 3 OFers can play CF. There's flexibility with a corner 4OFer Not Benintendi anymore. I'm not even sure he could even be a adequate RF at this point anymore. IMO it’s way too early to declare that about a still young, still learning, still high ceiling talent. In fact this down year hasn’t been a bad one, just a difficult one. Looking forward to the real Beni in 2020.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Sept 14, 2019 3:58:37 GMT -5
Not Benintendi anymore. I'm not even sure he could even be a adequate RF at this point anymore. IMO it’s way too early to declare that about a still young, still learning, still high ceiling talent. In fact this down year hasn’t been a bad one, just a difficult one. Looking forward to the real Beni in 2020. To quote the infamous Matt Picard around here, "He's had the range of a fire hydrant this year." I don't know how Benny gets his range back going forward. Change of diet, less strength exercises. I don't know. Offensively he's declined, but still fine. It's his defense and range that has me seeing red flags with his game.
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gerry
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Post by gerry on Sept 14, 2019 4:06:50 GMT -5
IMO it’s way too early to declare that about a still young, still learning, still high ceiling talent. In fact this down year hasn’t been a bad one, just a difficult one. Looking forward to the real Beni in 2020. To quote the infamous Matt Picard around here, "He's had the range of a fire hydrant this year." I don't know how Benny gets his range back going forward. Change of diet, less strength exercises. I don't know. Offensively he's declined, but still fine. It's his defense and range that has me seeing red flags with his game. Yes, I get it. Along with a bunch of players, he hasn’t been himself. I don’t think it’s his talent, maybe something personal or team related or his health or fatigue. Who knows. This season is over very soon and offseason healing begins soon after. Beni is worth the wait. He is preparing to enter his prime and I am hoping for a really good one. Cheers.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 14, 2019 5:38:46 GMT -5
Sampson, Ellsbury, Frazier, Benintendi. There's a pattern here.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Sept 14, 2019 11:58:14 GMT -5
It's like Dombrowski wants who he wants and maxes out his credit cards to always get what he wants. Exactly. He has Cherington (and Theo to some extent) to thank for the very high prospect capital available to spend and John Henry for the FA capital. Yeah, DD was an awesome spender and got rewarded for it. But now that the prospect capital is gone and there is no money to spend, what useful talent does DD have to keep running this team? Good to move on. He's the GM that helped build the Expos, he built the Marlins. Then traded off all the talent after winning the world series and that talent won another one years later. It's like people only remember his time with the Tigers with an old owner wanting to win at all costs. He made two huge trades for Kimbrel and Sale but nothing since then, which isn't what he did with Detroit. He does what the owners ask him to do. Every GM will max out his budget and if we are resetting the tax the owner should have made that clear and had him do short-term deals. It's like our owner was on the fence and no playoffs had him take the reduce spending path. I just find it funny DD isn't the guy because he traded Margot who could help as a platoon guy. Like every single GM has traded guys that could help. People are talking about bringing back Ben, he traded Redick a guy that would go on to produce 40 bwar and force us to trade Lester and Lackey for major league ready OFs. DD useful talent is that he knows how to judge talent. He's very good at telling if value is peak or the exact opposite. Something Ben had zero ability doing. What new talent will the new guy bring? So many people are acting like DD can't do something just because an owner hasn't asked him to do it since his days at the Marlins. This screams there were some heads butting in the front office. Yet I feel the true extent is being overblown. Our owner wants to reduce payroll and firing DD will also most likely save money. He's being used as a scapegoat before he was even given a chance.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 14, 2019 16:27:54 GMT -5
Exactly. He has Cherington (and Theo to some extent) to thank for the very high prospect capital available to spend and John Henry for the FA capital. Yeah, DD was an awesome spender and got rewarded for it. But now that the prospect capital is gone and there is no money to spend, what useful talent does DD have to keep running this team? Good to move on. He's the GM that helped build the Expos, he built the Marlins. Then traded off all the talent after winning the world series and that talent won another one years later. It's like people only remember his time with the Tigers with an old owner wanting to win at all costs. He made two huge trades for Kimbrel and Sale but nothing since then, which isn't what he did with Detroit. He does what the owners ask him to do. Yeah amazing how he didn't make another big trade once the Red Sox had no top 100 guys left.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Sept 14, 2019 17:48:04 GMT -5
He's the GM that helped build the Expos, he built the Marlins. Then traded off all the talent after winning the world series and that talent won another one years later. It's like people only remember his time with the Tigers with an old owner wanting to win at all costs. He made two huge trades for Kimbrel and Sale but nothing since then, which isn't what he did with Detroit. He does what the owners ask him to do. Yeah amazing how he didn't make another big trade once the Red Sox had no top 100 guys left. Chavis has made top 100 list for the last two years. What's your point? He clearly could have made a bunch of big trades and tons of guys in our top 20 could be gone. It's what he did in Detroit, he never stopped.
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