2017, 2018 Projected Sox Rosters

MLB 2019 looks spot-on except for the bullpen, which has some puzzlers.

The biggest one is Tyler Thornburg with a spot when he's a likely non-tender, and Carson Smith as a trade candidate when he's coming off of shoulder surgery after pitching pretty well, and has all 3 options left, making him probably the worst conceivable trade candidate. Thornburg should be either blue or omitted. Smith should either be listed as the last bullpen guy or, better yet, put on rehab in Pawtucket.

The other thing that doesn't make sense to me is trading Hembree and acquiring two guys instead of one. That second guy would have to be significantly better than Hembree, right? Or else the pair of moves makes no sense. They've already indicated that the closer is very likely to be an internal option. So the second "acquisition" would be one more guy in the Kelly / Barnes / Brasier class, and the acquisition cost or salary for such a guy would be high. It's a slightly better-than-lateral move whose cost would be very hard to justify even if they didn't have Lakins and Feltman enroute.

And I'm the guy who had Hembree as trade bait last year (at least in the Rule 5 thread) and maybe the year before!

The projected MLB roster looks great now, with one tweak which I bet is intended, based on what you've done in the past.

And that's to replace Alex Wilson and Tony Sipp with "Acquisition" and create a list of candidates that will appear if you hover over them. I think Kelly is still the front-runner for the RHR.

2021 looking very good right now. Some minor tweaks:

1) There's no way the bench ends up with both Christian Arroyo, a RHH 3B who was converted to play 2B and who has a troubling reverse platoon split, and Michael Chavis, a RHH 3B who was converted to play 2B and has a reverse platoon split. One (or both) will go if they acquire a 2B. The problem, of course, is to project one as a trade candidate.

You could hang that on Chavis because otherwise, they don't have a backup SS. But you had 5 bench players before Munoz was outrighted, so I think the tweak you actually want to make is to just add an OF acquisition to the bench, to replace him. No names necessary, since they will be the same as for CF.

2) Add Taijuan Walker to the SP possibles. At least two online sources have made that speculation, and I concur.

3) Add Jake Marisnick and Hunter Renfroe to the CF candidates.

4) Payamps has been a starter most of his ml career and has pitched much better as a starter than reliever in his recent years as a swingman. Meanwhile, Weber was much more effective as a reliever than as a starter last year with the Sox. So I would swap those two roles at Worcester.

I just caught something that we've all forgotten ... Whitlock is coming off TJ and can be started in rehab, and there's no reason why you wouldn't do that.

So you can restore Valdez to the main list. (Although I'd have Houck listed as a 6th as a starter instead.)

I know I'm not going to convince you to put Marwin as the starting 2B and Kiké as the starting CF with Renfroe on the bench, even though any numbers you run have that as the better lineup versus RHP. So I won't try.

But you bought the argument that Chavis needs to go to AAA and is of no value on an MLB bench, and Moreland or Shaw would be a much better bench piece. So why get rid of that now? Because Lou Merloni tweeted it? They had 2 spots to fill, that and CF, and Marwin fills the latter because it frees up Kiké to play a lot more OF, where's he's arguably more valuable than at 2B. Even if you don't buy the Kiké starting argument, that's really straightforward.

There's no logic to saying, well Marwin also happens to hit LH, therefore he's filling both roles! What role is Chavis filling? Spectator, mostly.