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Half Way Into the Season With Half Way to Go
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Post by maxwellsdemon on Jun 30, 2023 13:51:31 GMT -5
The failure to get under the tax cap last year has hurt what they could provide this season, however, I believe that the team has had a multi-year plan for a while and it is actually starting to come to fruition. 2 Years ago we constantly heard how the Sox couldn't develop pitching but here we are with Whitlock, Bello, Houck Winckowski and more in position to anchor a rotation for several cost controlled years. The middle infield is a disaster now but...Mayer and Yorke are on the way and Rafaela is a backup. First base, Casa is here and Blaze is moving up. Not to mention Anthony and Bleis a few years away to round out the outfield and Wong to hold down C at a reasonable price. All this means that starting next year and into 2025 they should have a solid offense and defensive base and the money (cap space) to add what they need. And this is not to mention how different things should be (and might have been this year) if Rafael were DEVERS instead of devers.
ETA: I forgot to mention the return of Story to the MI might help a bit also.
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Post by manfred on Jun 30, 2023 13:57:30 GMT -5
Two things: (1) if your injury risk guy is injured, your 6th/7th/8th starters need to fill in, and those guys probably aren't very good, and (2) there's a false dichotomy between injury risk and performance risk. As we've seen at times this season, pitchers coming off injury are no guarantee to perform at that same level when they return, and there's a real likelihood that they're healthy but just not that good anymore (or need time when they're got performing very well on the field in order to round back into form - see, e.g., the fact that Sale, on the year, still has a below-average ERA-). You also fundamentally misunderstand my point. I am not criticizing their signing of Kluber in isolation. I am criticizing the broader idea that the 2023 rotation was in good shape because they had a bunch of options like Sale, Paxton, Bello, Whitlock, Houck, etc. who have high ceilings but low floors. They chose to allocate resources more towards the position player side and the bullpen rather than allocating it to the rotation presumably because they were comfortable with the idea that, even though a lot of their options were high risk, they had a lot of those options and enough of them would work out such that, on the whole, they'd get good performance out of it. They took the same general approach with respect to the middle infield. You, specifically, continue to champion this idea that they had plans A through E and you can't blame them because it took awhile to find the right one that stuck. I am criticizing that logic. The risk of trying to fill a hole with a bunch of $10M or less guys rather than one $25M guy is that you're racking up bad performance trying to find which guy sticks. Sometimes it makes more sense to just sign the good, expensive guy rather than try and go bargain hunting for bruised apples. (Ironically, they were willing to pay more for more certainty for their bullpen, which is one area where I am more in favor of a "spaghetti against the wall" approach.) But this plan, as far as it goes, has worked out! Sale was not a good signing, but that's a sunk cost, and he gave them a good third of a season, so that's something. Paxton, at very low cost, has given them a very good quarter of a season and counting. Bello has been great. Whitlock has been good enough. Houck was pretty good, even if it's still unclear whether he can make it three times through the order, until he got hit in the face by a baseball, which no amount of "reliability" can prevent. And Crawford has emerged as a viable 5th starter.
Meanwhile, Kluber and Pivetta, the two "high floor" guys they did have, have pitched their way out of the rotation!
But okay, let's go with the notion that by investing money on $25 million starting pitchers you can substantially mitigate the sort of risk you are lamenting. How has that gone for the big money SP signings that were available this past offseason?
Verlander (2/86): 57 IP, 4.11 ERA DeGrom (5/185): 30 IP, 2.67 ERA, Tommy John Rodon (6/162): 0 IP
So do you think they should have gone with a "reliable" option like DeGrom or Rodon? Or should they have sucked it up and spent 43 million/year on Verlander to be a slight upgrade on Kutter Crawford? Below this tier the best options were... Eovaldi and Eflin. I’d argue Paxton has come at a big cost. If he didn’t spend all last season on the IL, they aren’t over the tax line, and they get real compensation for their lost FAs. They’ve had him on their payroll for two years to get the 8 starts he’s made to date.
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Post by scottysmalls on Jun 30, 2023 14:11:04 GMT -5
But this plan, as far as it goes, has worked out! Sale was not a good signing, but that's a sunk cost, and he gave them a good third of a season, so that's something. Paxton, at very low cost, has given them a very good quarter of a season and counting. Bello has been great. Whitlock has been good enough. Houck was pretty good, even if it's still unclear whether he can make it three times through the order, until he got hit in the face by a baseball, which no amount of "reliability" can prevent. And Crawford has emerged as a viable 5th starter.
Meanwhile, Kluber and Pivetta, the two "high floor" guys they did have, have pitched their way out of the rotation!
But okay, let's go with the notion that by investing money on $25 million starting pitchers you can substantially mitigate the sort of risk you are lamenting. How has that gone for the big money SP signings that were available this past offseason?
Verlander (2/86): 57 IP, 4.11 ERA DeGrom (5/185): 30 IP, 2.67 ERA, Tommy John Rodon (6/162): 0 IP
So do you think they should have gone with a "reliable" option like DeGrom or Rodon? Or should they have sucked it up and spent 43 million/year on Verlander to be a slight upgrade on Kutter Crawford? Below this tier the best options were... Eovaldi and Eflin. I’d argue Paxton has come at a big cost. If he didn’t spend all last season on the IL, they aren’t over the tax line, and they get real compensation for their lost FAs. They’ve had him on their payroll for two years to get the 8 starts he’s made to date. Eh, if we're doing hindsight there's worse offenses to complain about. Shoulda just traded Xander before the season then. You can play that game forever. Paxton's been worth his money.
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Post by manfred on Jun 30, 2023 14:17:34 GMT -5
I’d argue Paxton has come at a big cost. If he didn’t spend all last season on the IL, they aren’t over the tax line, and they get real compensation for their lost FAs. They’ve had him on their payroll for two years to get the 8 starts he’s made to date. Eh, if we're doing hindsight there's worse offenses to complain about. Shoulda just traded Xander before the season then. You can play that game forever. Paxton's been worth his money. It isn’t hindsight for me. I was against it from the start. Why should a team that has massive holes pay a guy not to play so he might come back the following year — for a year — when the team still isn’t very good?
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Post by scottysmalls on Jun 30, 2023 14:32:29 GMT -5
Eh, if we're doing hindsight there's worse offenses to complain about. Shoulda just traded Xander before the season then. You can play that game forever. Paxton's been worth his money. It isn’t hindsight for me. I was against it from the start. Why should a team that has massive holes pay a guy not to play so he might come back the following year — for a year — when the team still isn’t very good? Fair you have always been against it. What I meant by hindsight is Paxton was expected to come back in the second half last year and of course the team expects (or expected) to be better this year. Regardless, he's been pretty much worth the money they paid him, I just think there are more obvious places where mistakes were made. For example, if they were going to go over the luxury tax they should have added another outfielder or better bullpen arms before the season (in 2022).
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Post by orion09 on Jun 30, 2023 14:57:51 GMT -5
Well, all I know is that reading various websites, that Henry is upset, Bloom is upset, Cora is upset, and Verdugo is upset. What is all of this "upset" going to result in? To provide my views to the original question in this thread - since I picked the Sox to win 79 games, nothing I am seeing is surprising me in general. I am surprised when I read comments that the offense is not a problem, because it is very much clearly a problem - at the moment, THE problem. So I saw a roughly .500 team - but didn't see some of the ways that they've gotten there. For every comment that this or that one is coming back, it is equally likely that they won't - or won't last long - or someone currently healthy will go down. I wasn't crazy about the roster going into the season and feel even worse about it now. I think the next set of games leading up to the AS break may tell us a few things. But my current thought is that my original estimate of 79 games may be high. Is he? As far as I can tell, he hasn’t even given an interview about the Red Sox since February. Responsibility starts from the top. I think Bloom has overall done a pretty good job at evaluation and roster construction, with a few exceptions like inexplicably failing to sign a RF last year. By far my biggest problem with Bloom is the “shoot for 84 wins and the 3rd wild card” approach, and that ultimately stems from an ownership mandate. Yes, the current roster malaise is partly due to lack of production from the farm system, which itself stems from a combination of poor drafting/bad luck (no blame) and selling off prospects to build the 2018 team (no regrets). But it’s also partly because of the Sale contract, which led to directly to not resigning Mookie and resulting the chain reaction which we don’t need to rehash for the umpteenth time. And I’m sorry, that’s on ownership, not Dave Dombrowski. If you’re handing $150M to Chris Sale, you need to have a meeting where you examine the ramifications of that deal, and how they might lead to an inability/unwillingness to sign Betts.
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Post by jmei on Jun 30, 2023 15:08:47 GMT -5
This. If you're getting beat out by another team for essentially the same offer then...up the offer unless you have comparable alternative. They did not.Also, this ownership/front office completely failed to read the market in the off-season. AAVs rose dramatically, which should be no surprise since that has happened in the first full off-season after virtually every new CBA has been reached. Add to this that owners were newly flush having received at least $100M per team in revenues from various deals reached by MLB for rights, software, etc. Yet the Sox seemed to be caught off-guard by this. They also seemed to consider that Boston is no longer a destination for top-level free agents anymore. The chance to win consistently with the Sox has been diminished in the last 4-5 years. This is not seen as a playoff team - and they're doing zero to diminish that perception this year, so far. Add to this, Massachusetts also has it's new millionaire tax to accompany its already extensive state income tax and fees portfolio. Pro Tip: when you're offering the "same" salary as teams in tax-free Texas and Florida, your salary is actually significantly less, at least for 81 games a year. I would argue that it's unfair to frame the Eovaldi and Eflin contract negotiations as the Red Sox, "refusing to up their offer". This is from a Chad Jennings' article on the Athletic after Eflin signed with the Rays: "My understanding is that what transpired is that the Red Sox were the highest bidders, but Eflin is from Florida, and so the Rays were given an opportunity to match. If the Florida club put the same offer on the table, Eflin would sign... The Red Sox were not given an opportunity to raise their bid. They also didn’t know until the deal was done that the Rays were going to have the final opportunity to match." On the Eovaldi front, we've been down this road multiple times. Early in the offseason the Red Sox offered him what was reported to be a larger deal than what he actually got, but Eovaldi wanted to test the market. The Red Sox shifted to other signings and then Eovaldi came back asking if the deal was still on the table. The Red Sox obviously did not have that money anymore so he signed with Texas for less. I agree that it’s not a question of them not upping their offer enough, but describing it as “not making a high enough offer” gets you to about the same substantive place. If they offer each guy, say, $5-10M more than they did, does that get the deal done? That’s an impossible counterfactual to answer definitively, but it illustrates that at the end of the day, they could not sign their purported top targets in free agency, which is at least still partly on the front office.
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shagworthy
Veteran
My neckbeard game is on point.
Posts: 1,507
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Post by shagworthy on Jun 30, 2023 15:24:13 GMT -5
Regardless of the injuries in the rotation I still don't think pitching has been our problem. Our biggest problems have been offensive consistency and defense. It's painful to watch this club give up 2..3 extra chances a night to the opposing lineup because of bad defense and throws. That in and of itself has been their greatest flaw, they are such a poor defensive team that they demoralize their pitching staff and it forces them to press on offense to make up for all the miscues on defense.
I think the other mistake has been this focus on utility over production. It's great to have a guy (1 guy) who can play a ton of places, but it's only great if he can actually hit, or stay healthy. (See Kiké, and Arroyo). Utility has become such an industry-wide buzz word, but it's a buzz kill to the quality of the product on the field most of the time.
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Post by jmei on Jun 30, 2023 15:28:10 GMT -5
Fair point that my criticism is probably better directed at the middle infield situation than the starting pitching, but the front office made a conscious decision during the offseason that more resources should be put into the bullpen than the starting rotation, and that's a decision that I disagreed with at the time. Bello et al were reasonable guys to put into a rotation, but I think they really ought to have targeted a more established (lower risk) mid-rotation guy to fill out that group rather than Kluber. I don't love playing the "who would you have signed" game since no one knows who would have signed for what and it just invites cherry picking by all involved, but I would have signed someone more in the $15-20M range for the rotation (pushed harder for Eovaldi or Eflin or signed someone like Walker or Senga) and gone cheaper at closer. You need to place the Sox strategy into a context where the winning bid for basically every single expensive pitcher is completely out of line with a day one spreadsheet forecast (and for whatever it's worth, lately these pitchers have been falling short of their projections by a lot in aggregate) If you can fill up your budget with lower-tier bargain signings, and your roster is dire enough that all these 1.5 WAR players can see the field without pushing productive players to the bench or minors, then that's the way to go. It's not a golden ticket to winning, it's a 15% edge in a high variance game., Sometimes you end up with Hunter Renfroe and 2021 Kiké, and sometimes you end up with Corey Kluber and 2023 Kiké. I dunno, the high-variance strategy can make sense if you need to get superlative performance for cheap, but now that 85 wins means a playoff spot more often than not and they (hopefully) get more production from the farm system, query whether it makes more sense to sign lower variance players instead. Especially if your job security is dependent on getting into the playoffs.
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Post by julyanmorley on Jun 30, 2023 15:30:36 GMT -5
It is weird to me how few offers are made in contract negotiations. It seems like in free agency, you make one offer and if the player strongly prefers your team maybe you can get a second chance. There's not a lot of back and forth. It's even worse with players under contract. Devers received two offers ever as far as I'm aware, until the last mile haggling. Zero offers to Casas and Bello so far, not even a heavily team friendly deal that they only take if they're very risk averse.
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Post by jmei on Jun 30, 2023 15:40:52 GMT -5
Two things: (1) if your injury risk guy is injured, your 6th/7th/8th starters need to fill in, and those guys probably aren't very good, and (2) there's a false dichotomy between injury risk and performance risk. As we've seen at times this season, pitchers coming off injury are no guarantee to perform at that same level when they return, and there's a real likelihood that they're healthy but just not that good anymore (or need time when they're got performing very well on the field in order to round back into form - see, e.g., the fact that Sale, on the year, still has a below-average ERA-). You also fundamentally misunderstand my point. I am not criticizing their signing of Kluber in isolation. I am criticizing the broader idea that the 2023 rotation was in good shape because they had a bunch of options like Sale, Paxton, Bello, Whitlock, Houck, etc. who have high ceilings but low floors. They chose to allocate resources more towards the position player side and the bullpen rather than allocating it to the rotation presumably because they were comfortable with the idea that, even though a lot of their options were high risk, they had a lot of those options and enough of them would work out such that, on the whole, they'd get good performance out of it. They took the same general approach with respect to the middle infield. You, specifically, continue to champion this idea that they had plans A through E and you can't blame them because it took awhile to find the right one that stuck. I am criticizing that logic. The risk of trying to fill a hole with a bunch of $10M or less guys rather than one $25M guy is that you're racking up bad performance trying to find which guy sticks. Sometimes it makes more sense to just sign the good, expensive guy rather than try and go bargain hunting for bruised apples. (Ironically, they were willing to pay more for more certainty for their bullpen, which is one area where I am more in favor of a "spaghetti against the wall" approach.) But this plan, as far as it goes, has worked out! Sale was not a good signing, but that's a sunk cost, and he gave them a good third of a season, so that's something. Paxton, at very low cost, has given them a very good quarter of a season and counting. Bello has been great. Whitlock has been good enough. Houck was pretty good, even if it's still unclear whether he can make it three times through the order, until he got hit in the face by a baseball, which no amount of "reliability" can prevent. And Crawford has emerged as a viable 5th starter. Meanwhile, Kluber and Pivetta, the two "high floor" guys they did have, have pitched their way out of the rotation! But okay, let's go with the notion that by investing money on $25 million starting pitchers you can substantially mitigate the sort of risk you are lamenting. How has that gone for the big money SP signings that were available this past offseason? Verlander (2/86): 57 IP, 4.11 ERA DeGrom (5/185): 30 IP, 2.67 ERA, Tommy John Rodon (6/162): 0 IP So do you think they should have gone with a "reliable" option like DeGrom or Rodon? Or should they have sucked it up and spent 43 million/year on Verlander to be a slight upgrade on Kutter Crawford? Below this tier the best options were... Eovaldi and Eflin. You cannot say it has worked out if they’ve gotten bottom third of the league starting pitching performance to date and are currently running out a four-man rotation. Signing Kluber was a mistake. Relying on Sale to stay healthy was a mistake. Relying on Pivetta was a mistake. Those aren’t the worst mistakes a front office has made, nor can I really excoriate them for it too much since, as separately noted, it’s a high-variance game and this is a small sample size, but you want your front office to be able to beat the market, they haven’t been able to do so consistently and it’s pollyannaish to pretend otherwise.
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Post by jerrygarciaparra on Jun 30, 2023 15:51:04 GMT -5
I’d argue Paxton has come at a big cost. If he didn’t spend all last season on the IL, they aren’t over the tax line, and they get real compensation for their lost FAs. They’ve had him on their payroll for two years to get the 8 starts he’s made to date. Eh, if we're doing hindsight there's worse offenses to complain about. Shoulda just traded Xander before the season then. You can play that game forever. Paxton's been worth his money.for a guy with Paxton's talent, at 14 million for 2 years, we should be getting major surplus. The lost starts mean something, i really can't buy into this. I know you are making a point about value, but the missed starts directly con tribute to less capable pitchers having to pitch. In that regard, it was extremely risky and can never really be worth his money. Strict adherence to value, it doesn't speak to productivity requirements.
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Post by incandenza on Jun 30, 2023 16:10:52 GMT -5
But this plan, as far as it goes, has worked out! Sale was not a good signing, but that's a sunk cost, and he gave them a good third of a season, so that's something. Paxton, at very low cost, has given them a very good quarter of a season and counting. Bello has been great. Whitlock has been good enough. Houck was pretty good, even if it's still unclear whether he can make it three times through the order, until he got hit in the face by a baseball, which no amount of "reliability" can prevent. And Crawford has emerged as a viable 5th starter. Meanwhile, Kluber and Pivetta, the two "high floor" guys they did have, have pitched their way out of the rotation! But okay, let's go with the notion that by investing money on $25 million starting pitchers you can substantially mitigate the sort of risk you are lamenting. How has that gone for the big money SP signings that were available this past offseason? Verlander (2/86): 57 IP, 4.11 ERA DeGrom (5/185): 30 IP, 2.67 ERA, Tommy John Rodon (6/162): 0 IP So do you think they should have gone with a "reliable" option like DeGrom or Rodon? Or should they have sucked it up and spent 43 million/year on Verlander to be a slight upgrade on Kutter Crawford? Below this tier the best options were... Eovaldi and Eflin. You cannot say it has worked out if they’ve gotten bottom third of the league starting pitching performance to date and are currently running out a four-man rotation. Signing Kluber was a mistake. Relying on Sale to stay healthy was a mistake. Relying on Pivetta was a mistake. Those aren’t the worst mistakes a front office has made, nor can I really excoriate them for it too much since, as separately noted, it’s a high-variance game and this is a small sample size, but you want your front office to be able to beat the market, they haven’t been able to do so consistently and it’s pollyannaish to pretend otherwise. I am in fact going to say that they've done rather well in evaluating free agent pitching talent. Kluber was a miss. On the other side of the ledger are Paxton, last season's Wacha and Hill. Other guys (Richards, Perez) have been roughly worth what they paid for them. And the fact that they thought highly of all the right guys this past offseason speaks will of their evaluative ability.
What you seem to be saying is that they're underinvesting in starting pitching. I actually think the biggest problem is just that the one time they did make a big SP investment it turned out terribly. (That, of course, was under the previous administration.) If Sale had done what, say, Cole or Gausman have done, their rotation would look a lot more "reliable." But they made a bad bet, and you only get so many of those; more's the pity.
I actually would like them to sign a top-tier pitcher next offseason, maybe Nola. But I have enough confidence in their evaluative ability to trust whatever they decide to do there.
To your other point, that the results have actually been bad for them: well, as far as RA9 goes a lot of that is defense. If we look at FIP they're 20th and by xFIP they're 7th and by K/BB they're 5th, so a lot turns on how much the high HR rate really reflects their ability as opposed to just being bad luck. If anyone wants to dive into the statcast stuff they could probably paint a more precise picture, but I'm not really up to it myself.
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Post by julyanmorley on Jun 30, 2023 16:12:28 GMT -5
I dunno, the high-variance strategy can make sense if you need to get superlative performance for cheap, but now that 85 wins means a playoff spot more often than not and they (hopefully) get more production from the farm system, query whether it makes more sense to sign lower variance players instead. Especially if your job security is dependent on getting into the playoffs. I mean, signing three $10 million players is the lower variance strategy compared to signing one $30 million player. I am skeptical that these forecasted differences in performance variance matter enough to worry about it rather than just focusing on cramming the most mean WAR you can into the roster/budget. I guess there are some extreme cases like giving deGrom a truckload of cash where it's something to think about.
Also, they're at 7.9 million per WAR in free agency, not pollyannaish to think they can beat the market by a tick! And while we're here I would like to take this moment to cash in the karma I earned for not puffing my chest too much after they destroyed the market in 2021.
Anyway I feel bad for disagreeing with you so much since I'd like you to post more. Cheers.
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Post by scottysmalls on Jun 30, 2023 16:21:05 GMT -5
Eh, if we're doing hindsight there's worse offenses to complain about. Shoulda just traded Xander before the season then. You can play that game forever. Paxton's been worth his money.for a guy with Paxton's talent, at 14 million for 2 years, we should be getting major surplus. The lost starts mean something, i really can't buy into this. I know you are making a point about value, but the missed starts directly con tribute to less capable pitchers having to pitch. In that regard, it was extremely risky and can never really be worth his money. Strict adherence to value, it doesn't speak to productivity requirements. The luxury tax cost is $9.8M, by fWAR he's been worth $8.8M so far this season and by bWAR more than that. What you are saying about missed starts contributing to less capable pitchers having to pitch is exactly what WAR captures, and in Paxton's situation they knew he wasn't going to be ready at the start of the season so because it wasn't a surprise that has even less of an effect in this case where they could prepare to have a better than replacement value pitcher in there.
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Post by Guidas on Jun 30, 2023 16:27:12 GMT -5
Eh, if we're doing hindsight there's worse offenses to complain about. Shoulda just traded Xander before the season then. You can play that game forever. Paxton's been worth his money.for a guy with Paxton's talent, at 14 million for 2 years, we should be getting major surplus. The lost starts mean something, i really can't buy into this. I know you are making a point about value, but the missed starts directly con tribute to less capable pitchers having to pitch. In that regard, it was extremely risky and can never really be worth his money. Strict adherence to value, it doesn't speak to productivity requirements. Fangraphs has him producing $8.8 million in eight starts this year. So, if the Sox get hot and he stays and stays healthy, he should be able to earn out, plus some. If he's traded, we can do the calculation to see if whomever the Sox get produces the excess value.
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Post by e on Jun 30, 2023 16:40:49 GMT -5
I would argue that it's unfair to frame the Eovaldi and Eflin contract negotiations as the Red Sox, "refusing to up their offer". This is from a Chad Jennings' article on the Athletic after Eflin signed with the Rays: "My understanding is that what transpired is that the Red Sox were the highest bidders, but Eflin is from Florida, and so the Rays were given an opportunity to match. If the Florida club put the same offer on the table, Eflin would sign... The Red Sox were not given an opportunity to raise their bid. They also didn’t know until the deal was done that the Rays were going to have the final opportunity to match." On the Eovaldi front, we've been down this road multiple times. Early in the offseason the Red Sox offered him what was reported to be a larger deal than what he actually got, but Eovaldi wanted to test the market. The Red Sox shifted to other signings and then Eovaldi came back asking if the deal was still on the table. The Red Sox obviously did not have that money anymore so he signed with Texas for less. I agree that it’s not a question of them not upping their offer enough, but describing it as “not making a high enough offer” gets you to about the same substantive place. If they offer each guy, say, $5-10M more than they did, does that get the deal done? That’s an impossible counterfactual to answer definitively, but it illustrates that at the end of the day, they could not sign their purported top targets in free agency, which is at least still partly on the front office. I disagree on blaming the front office for not getting deals done for Eovaldi or Eflin. Maybe offering $5-10M on Eflin's deal could have gotten it done, but the Red Sox had no way of knowing the Rays were given the opportunity to match their offer. Why would they offer more money on a deal when they were already the frontrunners? Adding $5-10M in hindsight looks smart, but there is no way for them to know it was needed. Then looking at Eovaldi, I don't consider it fair to knock the front office for not adding more to their original offer when Eovaldi ended up signing for less. Even if they add $5-10M more, it seems like Eovaldi saw the market booming early on and was set on waiting to see if he can get a bigger deal as well. The front office moved off of him because they most likely had a price they were comfortable going to, and Eovaldi was looking for more(at the time). That whole situation was all about timing, so I guess you can knock them for not waiting around, but I don't think that's the wisest strategy considering how crazy the offseason was shaping up to be. Along with that, if you want to wait for Eovaldi, you probably lose out on Jansen and Martin(at the time of those signings you couldn't assume Eovaldi would only cost $17M AAV). I personally don't love either of those signings, but the bullpen would definitely be worse off without them. If Eovaldi asked early in the offseason for the offer the Rangers gave him and the Red Sox said no, I'd be frustrated. If Eflin turned back around and gave the Red Sox the chance to improve their offer and the Red Sox said no, I'd also be frustrated. I wish Eflin or Eovaldi was on this team and Kluber was nowhere near it, but at the end of the day it's not like the front office put zero effort into trying to improve the rotation. They made legit offers, but it did not work out.
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