What Can Be Done to Fix the Sox?

Napoli and Victorino won't get anything. But, could be sweeteners in a deal. Buchholz + Vic to a team like the Cubbies. Or, Koji + Nap to Pittsburgh. We'd have to pay all of Vic or Nap's salary.

I can't see Buch being a serious trade candidate unless you get back good pitching depth back. If you are bold enough to write in a 2016 rotation of Porcello, ERod, Miley, Kelly, Johnson, that leaves you with Owens and Wright as the only true SP depth. We could dip into the very deep SP free agent market, but that is certain to be expensive and this team already has 113M committed to 9 players in 2016

I wonder what kind of return it would take to justify trading Tazawa/Uehara.

Don't overreact to this year's problems. And don't jeopardize the future trying to rescue this year.

People hate to hear about bad luck, but it's crap luck to have the (roughly) 5th and 12th best catchers in MLB both get injured, leaving you with a pair of guys who have been -1.0 WAR (including framing) in just 64 games. Add that to some bad luck on balls in play, and then players start pressing. Bad mindsets get entrenched.

What can be done? I would start working out Hanley at 1B. I'd start playing Ortiz there 2-3 times a month vs. RHP, and continue platooning him at DH with Hanley. At some point fairly soon I want to hand the CF job to JBJ, with Rusney getting the regular LF innings that Hanley doesn't. At some point I hope Napoli gets hot, looks great, and can be dealt for something interesting, opening up Hanley at 1B and Rusney regularly in the OF.

Sandoval wouldn't be the first expensive FA to flop in his first year and then go on to be precisely the solid guy who was expected. Combine that with the stopgap 1B / DH solution (if Hanley is -15 / 150 at 1B, that just costs you a win if he only starts 90 games at 1B), and add the big catching upgrade, and the 2016 offense and defense is looking like what we expected from this year.

You would need a RH hitting 1B in the scenario where Hanley moves to 1B, and for the end of this year that can be Craig. Maybe someone else next year. Plenty of alternatives in the world for the Nava bench spot, should he not come back in the second half.

We may have widely different opinions on many things but there definitely is strong support on this site for getting Hanley out of LF as much as possible and bringing up JBJ. I wonder how long it is going to take for Sox management to do it.
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Breslow reactivated and Shaw sent back to Pawtucket. Definitely not something that will do much for the team. I don't understand them keeping Bianci. I would have liked Shaw to get some chances at both 1st and 3rd. There have been good reports coming from Pawtucket about his fielding at both positions, and he has been mashing at the plate. 

1. I would like to see Shaw play. Maybe they figure they want to give the playing time to the current group. Shaw is first option year, seems like this year he is just a bench fill in. Wait til next year.
2. Trading Napoli doesn't do anything that benching Napoli wouldn't do. Eventually, or soon, give Napoli the Carp role and 1B is now open.
3. Playing Ortiz 2 days per week at 1B gets Hanley out of LF a bit.

When the team finishes last and under .500 three years out of four it's not luck.  It's a bad team.  If the Red Sox go into this off-season with the mindset that they have just been unlucky all this time, they will be in last for an awfully long time.

Jeff Bianchi DFA. Guess they read this site.

Thank you. This luck narrative is excuse making.

I was reading Alex Speier's blurb about the Sox that mentions that they're getting outscored a run per game. At the current pace they're going, and there's little evidence to think the pace will subside substantially, they could wind up being outscored by 150 runs. That's a distinct possibility.

He mentioned they haven't been outscored that bad in a season since 1932 when they went 43-111.

We know runs scored/runs allowed does a pretty good job describing the quality of a baseball team.

If the Sox go 67-95 or thereabouts getting outscored by 150 runs or so, that's not an unlucky team. That's a really bad team. Honestly, if it were another team being outscored by 150 runs or so, wouldn't we be classifying them as a terrible team rather than a team who had too much bad luck?

Again, the Sox have been relatively healthy. They haven't been decimated by injuries as they had been in other years where they were competing. Wished they had better luck in late 2008 when Lowell and Beckett got hurt late in the season and Bartolo Colon hadn't decided to find the fountain of youth - that team could have repeated as Champions, but that was some bad luck. 2015 is not bad luck.

You could say, well the pitching isn't that bad. OK, fine, maybe it's not and it's the defense that's wretched. Maybe they should score more runs they do, but stranding runners like crazy and banging into DPs makes their offense look less. But still at some point, the bottom line is the bottom line, especially when it's a last place finish 3 years out of 4.

If it were two in four years, I'd agree with you. But three in four is...well, we're getting close to a good sample size here.

Regardless of exactly where they finished, the Sox have been bad three of the past four seasons. It's no longer a coincidence.

I can definitely agree with the Lackey trade.  Looking back it was and still is the "scratch your head" trade that was made during that season.  While it was an interesting concept to add to the 40 man roster versus going the typical approach of MLB talent for prospects, it didn't work at all.  Joe Kelly has been below league average and Craig is off the 40 man roster in AAA.  I won't go into the Lester fiasco.