Juan Soto

It’s kind of our fault for even looking for legit MLB rumors because they essentially don’t exist anymore

Predictions on when Soto will sign? Really hoping it's pre-winter meetings I can't handle the nonsense rumor mill for much longer

Did we ever figure out what that hype was all about?

I think that's three on camera interviews in two days for Papi. I guess this is some kind of deliberate strategy.

Curious what the opt out situation will be. We haven’t really seen any in mega contracts of this scale (Mookie, Ohtani, Harper) but Soto can probably get one if he wants?

Pepen (obvious massive grain of salt) says he wants 12-14 at 45 per with opt outs after the third and fourth years. I would think those opt outs would drive the AAV below 45 were he to get them, but who knows.

I feel like if they can reel in Soto it would raise the pressure on getting at least one of the big 4 extended, mainly Anthony. Romany Anthony has a long long way to go but we very well could be looking at him as a mega contract candidate if he does break through this year and is as advertised. I would hate to run into a scenario where they have to let a potential 27 year old home grown stud go due to Soto.

I'd probably try and get Anthony signed to an extension ASAP if I was Breslow either way though. Something like what Chourio got would be a good start, 8/82M with two club options at the end for $25M.

To me, this doesn't have any real impact on the situation. But it's definitely not a positive.

Judge probably just dropped his phone

For Soto's contract, I'm thinking:

659mil/13yrs
300mil deferred
~43mil AAV
opt-out after year 4 or 5 - team can cancel opt-out by adding 52mil for year 14

Total up to 711mil (~611mil in current value) for reporting to claim largest contract

Yoshida has hit about 12% better than the average major leaguer so he has value and more so than those on our bench. His fit on the team is less than ideal however and they still owe him $18.6M for the next 3 seasons. I've been saying this for nearly a year the team wants to play Story and Yoshida to build up their value so they can reach a theoretical point they'd be willing to subsidize the respective contracts just enough where they become tradeable. I don't see  the last sentence as a debatable topic but one that the Sox are surely exploring as a strong option, the part that can be debated until the cows come home are when and how much would they be willing to eat. I do think both Campbell and Grissom will be productive major leaguers and while the team would like to have more RH batting positional players I don't see the need to force that. One exception to that is giving both these RH hitting prospects a chance. One already had some success at his first try as a major leaguer. In his first 156 PA he was 19% better than an average MLB hitter and developed by Atlanta. I think this seasons slow start and recency bias has you overtly pessimistic about him. Perhaps Campbell mans second and Grissom players LF not so sure on Grissoms' ability to play LF but an easy solution to balancing the line-up at least short term without forcing the issue, their really isn't a need to, would be to let both play. One caveat I did not mention is this is all based on Abreu headlining or co headlining a trade for Crochet.
I think an ideal role for Rafaela is as a Super Utility player as he'd make the team that much deeper and less risk adverse to injury. I could see him getting around 400 at bats in that role possibly more depending on Story's health and or if Mayer is traded.