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Post by juanpena on Jun 14, 2023 13:09:30 GMT -5
This does not say that Dombrowski gutted the department. It says that he failed to grow it. It also says that they had started to add to it while DD was still there. It’s bad that Dombrowski didn’t develop the department and it’s great that Bloom is doing do, but “gutted” means that there was a big, functioning department and Dombrowski made big cuts. There’s no need to make DD worse than he was to defend Bloom.
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Post by juanpena on Jun 1, 2023 20:17:45 GMT -5
Casas may have been performing better than his results indicated before, but he is lost now.
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Post by juanpena on May 13, 2023 19:53:53 GMT -5
we are all mad, but a lot more went wrong that inning than Hernandez. Let's practice proper blame assessment. When you’re a negative WAR player and in the 1st percentile of OAA, you’re going to get more grief when you spike a ball leading to the game losing run scoring. Especially when you spent the winter running your mouth off about how last year's team was comfortable with finishing last and how you're the leader of the team now.
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Post by juanpena on Apr 29, 2023 13:47:57 GMT -5
I disagree. A) I expect he has a ton of remedial stuff to work on and might as well do it in major league facilities, and B) TANSTAAPP. His chances of making it to the majors through years of performance and progression are slim under any circumstances. with that thinking he might as well have stayed in the military with an officers pension, then the airlines and a pilots pension. MLB minimum will not be long if he does not look like a possible MLB pitcher. If he was destined to not make the MLB much, much more money from airlines (I am a Certified Financial Planner). Draft rounds 20-40 were done away with, and I was very glad as the vast majority were better off taking a scholarship full ride than a small sign on bonus, no scholarship, and very low probability of EVER being on the 40 man roster… If he does want to be a pilot, I think he could go into it in a couple of years if baseball isn't working out. If he doesn't try to see if he can pitch, he might spend the rest of his life wondering if he could have done it.
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Post by juanpena on Apr 20, 2023 12:14:14 GMT -5
I'm not ready to pull the plug on Kluber yet, but I also don't think he'll automatically bounce back. Sometimes it takes longer than others, but Father Time always wins in the end. Madison Bumgarner wad DFA'd. He was basically washed-up at 30 and now is DFA'd at 33.
I hope Kluber has something left at 37, but I haven't seen it yet this year. His stuff has gotten to the point where he really has to shave corners, and if the command is even a little off, he's in trouble.
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Post by juanpena on Apr 3, 2023 19:34:34 GMT -5
His offspeed stuff isn't bad though. He should throw just change and curve/slider, f*ck the police. Yeah I’m a sucker for k rates for young SPs. His are always good but damn it just doesn’t want to translate to to production I guess K rates don't mean what they used to. As Eck says, everyone is trying to leave earth with every swing.
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Post by juanpena on Mar 30, 2023 15:08:13 GMT -5
Kluber has way less of a commitment and we got a comp pick for Eovaldi. I’m not gonna make any judgments before April is here Kluber is not going to have many multi-walk games, and just wait til the homers start flying in Texas... I want Kluber to succeed. Do you want Eovaldi—seemingly a great guy who gave the Sox everything he had—to fail in Texas because it will make Bloom look good? I hope if he pitches against the Sox they light him up but otherwise I want him to do well.
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Post by juanpena on Feb 22, 2023 14:03:06 GMT -5
Bombshell! Good thing the Phillies are contenders. We have a decent chance of getting him back. yup.. Doubt he will be able to stay on the 40 man the entire year I wouldn’t count on getting him back. In a 13-man staff, they can use him in the lowest-leverage situations as he develops.
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Post by juanpena on Jan 25, 2023 14:00:20 GMT -5
People have brought up Ort so, so many times as someone to DFA, but it seems obvious they need a guy or two with options they can keep in AAA as depth when the inevitable injuries hit, right? Am I missing something there? This is a bad argument. It’s good to have guys with options who can go up and down. You can certainly think that while believing a particular pitcher doesn’t deserve one of those spots. Some people could believe that Kelly, Mills and German are better and Ort is expendable. I haven’t seen enough of those three to make that judgment but it doesn’t mean arguing against Ort is an argument against a flexible roster.
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Post by juanpena on Dec 10, 2022 11:41:22 GMT -5
They told him to see what was out there, and they fully intended to match or beat any offer to keep him in Boston. We don't know this.
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Post by juanpena on Dec 10, 2022 0:39:36 GMT -5
That remains a near-best case scenario to be⦠maybe the same as a last place team. No one thinks this is it, so it is moot. But it is madness to think this team is better for the off season (consider most of the guys being cited were already here. The off season is X, JDM out, Yoshida in. That is a beating).
This year's rotation could still use another solid starter, but it is in so much better shape. Sale, Paxton, and Whitlock are all on track to come into the year healthy.
Serious, non-snarky question: Is Paxton likely to be ready to start the season? I can't find anything that indicates whether he is expected to be healthy or not.
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Post by juanpena on Dec 8, 2022 1:26:39 GMT -5
Red Sox screwed around with him now he's gone. Last year didn't they offer 1 year for 30 million on his contract he had. Let's hope they don't do this to Devers but starting to look that way. I'm going to assume you're naive about this, but Scott Boras is his agent and his clients always go to free agency to maximize their dollars. That's why they choose him for an agent.
If a Boras client gets an offer that literally everyone believes is an overpay (by about 40%!), from a team that is really good to play for, there's nothing you can do. At any point in time.
Devers does not have Boras as an agent.
Jered Weaver left a ton of money on the table by signing early. It's always the player's call. Maybe he wouldn't have signed, but he was NEVER going to sign that lowball offer.
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Post by juanpena on Nov 27, 2022 13:23:48 GMT -5
Can you trust the projections of someone who doesn't know the difference between peak and peek?
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Post by juanpena on Oct 23, 2022 23:17:44 GMT -5
No ring for Machado Serious question: Aside from the additional $$$$ he'd get from the WS winners' share, do you think he even cares? This is a punk who once said he was never going to be the kind of player who hustles all the time. He fits some people's perception of the spoiled modern-day athlete. I absolutely think he does. I don't like him, but I think winning a ring means a lot to all these guys. He has enough money for his great-grandkids, but you can't buy a world championship.
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Post by juanpena on Oct 11, 2022 11:36:38 GMT -5
The Rays scored one run in 24 innings in getting swept in the playoffs. The Blue Jays blew an 8-1 lead in being swept in the playoffs. Maybe the division wasn't that great. There is a big difference between a team built to win a lot of regular season games with depth, and a team built to win a WS (where you can use elite starters out of the bullpen like the 2018 Sox did). Elite pitching wins WS, where depth gets you to the dance - more like musical chairs…. I figured the wink at the end would sell the fact that it was a joke.
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Post by juanpena on Oct 8, 2022 19:31:40 GMT -5
I think what some are frustrated by is not acknowledging what the team was up against this year. They played in one of the toughest divisions in recent memory along with suffering an absurd amount of injuries. The Rays scored one run in 24 innings in getting swept in the playoffs. The Blue Jays blew an 8-1 lead in being swept in the playoffs. Maybe the division wasn't that great.
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Post by juanpena on Oct 5, 2022 12:13:33 GMT -5
Are we sure about that?
Bogaerts $25M Judge $40M Devers $22M Story $23M Verdugo $6M Kiké $10M Casas <$1M Cordero/Dalbec <$2M
McGuire/Wong <$2M
Rest of 25 Man Roster
Arroyo $2M
Refsnyder $1M
Sale $26M Whitlock $5M Hill $5M
Pivetta $3M Bello <$1M
Barnes $9M Strahm $3M
Brasier $2M Schreiber $1M
Taylor $1M Houck $1M Crawford $1M
Rest of 40 Man Roster & Benefits ~32M
TOTAL ~223M
Luxury Tax Threshold = $233M
Even if you get Judge at $40M and Bogey at $25M and make this work, that is a scary-bad starting staff. Pivetta always takes the ball but is maddeningly inconsistent and was awful against good teams this year. Hill wants to only pitch part of the season. Who knows how many innings Sale can pitch after basically missing three full seasons? Can Whitlock handle a starter's workload? And while I like Bello a lot, but he is bound to have growing pains next year.
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Post by juanpena on Oct 1, 2022 19:01:39 GMT -5
Might be one of those things where it gets worse before it gets better. The Sox got hit hard with injuries but that doesnt really encapsulate why they're so bad. The Ray's lost Franco and their top pitchers and keep rolling. A lot of teams have injuries. What pitchers these days stay healthy?They are just so inferior to Toronto, Tampa, and New York, although Toronto has beaten them to a pulp in a way I've never seen. Get outscored 16-0 over 2 days? That's nothing. They lost 28-5 in a game against them. And Baltimore is already better and that gulf will also widen as their farm system is among the best in baseball. I know the Sox have money to spend but its hard to see how they narrow the gap. This isn't a case of they're suddenly healthy again and they're good to go. This team flat out isn't particularly good. I'll give you the Rays, and the reason they've been able to overcome injuries is that they have a powerful pipeline of young talent that's running at full blast. That's not the case for the Red Sox because of how the farm bottom out in the late 2010s (though it's starting to get better; Casas and Bello, among others, are starting to be able to plug some holes).
But it's too much to wand wave their injuries away with "well every team has injuries." Their top three starters (Sale, Eovaldi, Wacha) combined for 228 innings. For the Yankees, Cole, Cortes, and Taillon combined for 517 IP. For the Blue Jays Gausman, Manoah, and Stripling combined for 485. The Mariners got 495 out of their top three. Etc. Through injuries the Red Sox essentially redistributed a fifth of their innings from front line starters to the likes of Winckowski, Seabold, and Crawford.
Anyway, no, it's not the only problem with the team. But it has definitely been their single biggest problem.
Cortes began the season as the Yankees No. 5 starter, after Cole, Severino (who's lost significant time due to injury), Taillon and Montgomery. Stripling wasn't even in the Jays rotation to start year. The starters were Gausman, Berrios, Ryu, Manoah and Kikuchi. Their No. 3 starter to open the season, Ryu, threw 27 innings.
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Post by juanpena on Sept 13, 2022 21:33:03 GMT -5
Why is Familia on the team? Wouldn't experience in the majors be valuable for Frank Germa
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Post by juanpena on Sept 13, 2022 20:29:48 GMT -5
In all seriousness, how do we know what is not a "Bloom-style move"? He literally hasn't had a normal offseason yet. I don't say that to defend anything he has or hasn't done, but we know "a Bloom-style move during an offseason with a long lockout in the middle of it" and "a Bloom-style move during a worldwide pandemic." I think that's a relevant thing to consider before we act like we know what a typical Bloom move is not. Serious, non-snarky question: Wasn't the 2020-21 offseason pretty normal? In 2020, the offseason was mostly done when the pandemic hit, but still sometimes guys become available at the end of spring training, so I'll grant you that one. And in 2021-22, the lockout -- even though everyone knew it was coming -- affected all teams, so that was . But MLB wound up having a 2020 season, and it seemed obvious there would be a 2021 season that would start on or close to schedule, with vaccines on the way that would likely allow full attendance fairly early in the season. While the rest of us were watching everything there was to watch on Netflix, people in baseball front offices could monitor data as always and meet among themselves on Zoom or Google meetings. So much business in done virtually anyway, so there didn't need to be in-person winter meetings to get trade talks started. Free agents were signing as normal -- and Bloom got a great deal for Kiké Hernandez. There was even a Rule 5 draft, and Bloom got a steal in Garrett Whitlock. Seemed like a pretty normal offseason.
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Post by juanpena on Sept 9, 2022 20:35:21 GMT -5
In his brief career, Bello has left the mound with six runners on base. The bullpen has allowed all six to score.
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Post by juanpena on Sept 9, 2022 20:29:36 GMT -5
How to break the spirit of a young pitcher: Don't score much for him and have a crap bullpen behind him.
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Post by juanpena on Sept 7, 2022 20:31:53 GMT -5
What the hell was that from McGuire?
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Post by juanpena on Sept 7, 2022 20:16:47 GMT -5
Arroyo is a spunky overachiever who works hard, but has it ever occurred to him that the SECOND pitch might be better?
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Post by juanpena on Sept 6, 2022 8:24:00 GMT -5
I thought Joe Jackson permanently banned.
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