John Henry/Sox ownership/direction

Yes and how many times in Henry's ownership has the payroll been this low, just seems to me this is more so a new approach to save money than anything else. 





Ehh, invested in the minors some is diff than going to several games all the while watching most games. The major league team is as uninteresting as ever, esp with casas out.

Rafaela is fun, but the VAST majority of the roster aren't true building blocks.




Prorating with still a relatively small sample size will throw off numbers significantly esp when trying to forecast into future years, which is really what's important anyways. 

Like I don't think anyone sees duran as a 8+ WAR player going forward or that Houck is going to be 6+. 

Gerry, the guys who booed Williams and Yaz, hurled objects, and use racial epithets are the lowest of the lowest common denominator and dont truly represent the Red Sox fanbase. Perhaps Henry focused too much on them.

I wish I could say that I've been riding the ups and downs of the season but my frustration doesnt even come from individual games. It's coming from a place of really wanting to care but tired of the mediocrity. A down season or two where things dont go right? Sure, it happens, but we're in year 5 of 6 of this thing and the big 3 saviors are in AA and are probably 2 to 3 years away from really acclimating themselves to the point where they're playing at an ability level that resembles our hopes for them.

You mentioned you bet that they will provide big high priced talent in. They could and should.

My bigger issue is that waiting for that day has helped cause this long bridge of mediocrity to get there, assuming we do indeed get there.

The 2004 Red Sox are among the biggest joys experienced. That team was not built from the farm. Their farm wasnt yet ready with the Pedroias, Lesters, Papelbons, etc.

They were built through spending big money to land a premier slugger in Manny and yes, they did mortgage their future a bit to trade prospects Carl Pavano and Tony Armas for a year of Pedro and then signed him to a long term big money (for that time) deal. The rest of it was clever wheeling and dealing and Theo struck gold in the winter of 02-03 with Millar, Mueller, Arroyo, and some afterthought named Ortiz. And then used big money for that time to trade for and reel in Schilling and sign Foulke.

What they didnt do was say, wait til the system develops and then we'll chase top talent. Top talent was already there when Pedroia and company arrived so the weight of the world wasnt on their shoulders and they could integrate themselves in to a winning culture. As Pedro himself has pointed out, that culture needs to be reinstated and has been lacking.

This is different than bringing in veterans at the expense of the future. The future wasnt in place the first half of this decade due to poor drafting in the Cherington administration and penalties in their international program which I think created a time that they needed to spend money to paper over these lackings instead of just waiting. I think with the lower threshold to make the postseason the Sox would have had some more wins and been more competitive these past few years while waiting for the kids to truly develop. Certainly beats going 78-84.

The injuries suck and yeah, theyve gotten hit hard, but I think injuries are par for the course these days with pitching coaches preaching max velocity and breaking pitches doing things that are probably more extreme than before, creating injuries and a land where instead of injuries coming from the wear and tear of 200 plus innings seasons are now coming from max everything repertoire. Meanwhile the hitters are being taught launch angles which are designed for just hitting HRs against high velocity but dont emphasize contact.

I suspect every team is going through these injuries because of the changes in the style of the game. I'm not trying to say in the past injuries didnt occur. I just dont think they're as prevalent as they are today. I swear every damn day somebody on the team is getting hurt, any pitcher you follow will require TJS, just a matter of when, and these power hitters are killing their sides trying to hit the ball 500 feet. Its crazy.

Organization wise this trade deadline is going to be critical. I like the way that baseball ops is trending, Andrew Bailey deserves all the credit in the world for what hes done with this staff. Henry not wanting to spend like he did in the past aside, its going to critical to get extensions done for Casas and the young prospects coming up to avoid free agency issues down the road.

I could ditch the WAR-based argument if you like; I think the point stands up well in qualitative terms: the Red Sox are undergoing an obvious influx of young talent and more is on the way. There is clearly a very positive trajectory for the organization in this sense - and in exactly the way that is necessary to bring them out of the doldrums of mediocrity of the last few seasons. So to the original point: I think the "direction" of the organization is very clear, and positive.

If there's one thing we know about JH is that he's hands off on the details. And I don't think his commentary on the Red Sox being an asset is out of character to the comments he made early on in his tenure, it just comes off worse today when the team is middling than when the team was pumping out 95-win season. And for some reason, he and his PR team don't realize the negative impact on the fan base when he talks like that.

If anything I would argue his behavior hasn't changed at all, it was hidden in the 2000s because the product on the field was that good. What's changed is that he was supplemented in the 2000s by Lucchino and Theo and a hands off owner with two exceptional lieutenants was exactly what was needed.

There's stil something not making sense with the money, although I still point the finger at NESN revenues not looking good. Unfortunately, I think the other markets have caught up to us in terms of generating revenue so the days of perennially being in the top 2 of spending are likely in the past.

This rather simple, Red Sox should spend on average where they rank in revenue. Otherwise the owner is being cheap. You don't always have to give out huge mega deals, you can focus on short-term deals.

Our owner has lost touch with the fans, we pay crazy amounts to go to games, he charges $20 a month to watch the games! With that comes expectations, if he doesn't like that, lower prices!

He's gone from a great owner that wanted to win Championships to an owner that seems to care more about making money. It's a shame he's going to end his ownership doing this crap after the run he had.

It is the best wave of talent since but..

1. It probably won't come close to that wave

2. It won't be particularly tough to be the next best since. 


As for ownership avoiding a PR storm? Issue with that type of logic is henry seems to be doing the bare minimum to avoid it.  

At 0 point in Henry's tenure has boston been this conservative. I'm not expecting them to spend like the Mets but I'm also not expecting them to give off mid market vibes.  Have some type of hybrid approach where you develop, swing the occasional aggressive trade, sign the occasional elite FA etc.  You shouldn't rely on just the farm, that should be just a piece to the puzzle. 

Henry is operating in a very different manner relatively speaking, how many times has boston been outside the top 10 in payroll? 

In terms of "buying wins", say what you will but payroll is still correlating to a lot of wins. Obviously you'll have isolated exceptions on both ends of the spectrum but on average money 100% plays a massive factor. 

The "conservative" approach of just trying to win 85 games, sneak into a 3rd WC and seeing what happens is 1000% not what a team like boston should be trying to do.  Like I get it, you can't win 100 games every year but 85 wins and sneaking in shouldn't be it either. 

This is accurate, but is not atypical among a lot of intelligent people. They live with different reference points than most of the rest of us, and often have a circle of friends and colleagues who reinforce those reference points.

That said, I thought his statement about 1-20 or 1-30 odds of winning the World Series was obtuse, albeit accurate in a lawyerly sort of way. Raw percentages, sure, that's true, but it's an intentionally deflecting frame. After all, every team doesn't make the playoffs (yet, though I'm convinced Rob Manfred pines to turn MLB into the worst parts of the NHL).

If we embrace the crapshoot theory — that once you're in the playoffs, it's basically a crapshoot to advance — more honest frame would be: "Playoff teams have a 1-6 chance of making it to the World Series and a 1-12 chance of winning it."

This is still very simplistic and we could run a tighter odds model looking at the weighted odds since Wild Card system was introduced of teams making the playoffs getting to and winning the World Series, and then factor in the expanded Wild Card system.

All that said, Division winners have a 100% chance of making the playoffs. Teams not in the playoffs have a 0% chance of making it to the World Series. This is the conversation he purposely avoided with his silly 1-30 comment and made me roll my eyes.