SoxBlanco

Is that 1.000 career BABIP sustainable? If so, I'll take him.

Correct.

No he didn’t.

Absolutely. And I'm not convinced Grandal is completely washed. I don't think he will ever be what he was in his prime, but I expect him to be much better than last year if he can stay healthy (yes, I know that's a big "if"). Hell, we're only about 14 months removed from a time when Grandal was completely carrying the offense.

When I read that tweet, my first thought was… ”Nice, Hahn is already trying to get inside the agents’ heads by making it seem like we don’t need to sign any outfielders.”

This is simply false.

Since the debacle last season.

Zero chance it’s Pederson over those 4 guys. His defense is terrible.

Yep. Colas and one of Nimmo, Conforto, Benintendi, Gallo. Let the young guys battle for the 2B job, and sign a SP. It’s a pretty simple offseason, actually.

I almost forgot about him. When is he scheduled to be fully healthy, and what’s the plan for him this year?

Bryan Ramos, José Rodríguez, Yolbert Sánchez, Luis Mieses and Kade McClure.

Totally agree. The power rankings don’t bother me at all. In fact, they deserve a shitty power ranking. I do think the team will use that as motivation. Combine that with new coaching, and I don’t expect anybody to be sleepwalking through games next year.

I still like the Sox to win the division next year.

And he skipped AA and AAA.

I don’t look at it as a Jose/Vaughn swap. I think of it as replacing Jose and Sheets with Vaughn and whichever outfielder we sign. When you take defense into account, I think it’s a nice swap. And if you think Vaughn will continue to improve at the plate like I do, that makes it even better.

Does our front office agree with that assessment?

No, but they did with Springer in 2014.

I appreciate the numbers crunched here and the work you put into it, but it completely takes the human element out of things. Who knows what could have happened if the team stayed healthy, won more games early, and then got some momentum and came out each night with energy. Maybe they get some momentum and everyone starts playing better. Hitting a baseball is very difficult, and it becomes even more difficult when you start pressing (or when the whole team starts pressing). Hell, maybe Cleveland doesn’t win as many games if they weren’t playing from the top spot in the division for as long as they did. The bottom line is that it’s a complete unknown. Maybe everything I typed it BS, and eliminating the injuries wouldn’t have mattered. But I do know the game of baseball is not as simple as adding/subtracting WAR to a win total.

If we sign Conforto for $14M and let Abreu walk, we’d still have around $15M to sign another SP, right? Then let the young guys battle for the 2B job.

If they did want to sign Turner, I think they’d trade Anderson. That won’t happen either, but I think that’s more likely than keeping both, especially with Anderson getting closer to free agency.

Just finally got a chance to listen to this interview. I was down on Lucas so much this past season, but it’s hard not to love him when you hear an interview like this.

Some Benintendi talk happening in the manager thread right now, so I figured we should bring it over here. How would everyone feel if he was our outfield acquisition this offseason? I would obviously prefer Nimmo, but he seems more of a long shot. Given our recent history of doing nothing, I think I would be satisfied with Benintendi. Would you guys prefer Benintendi or Conforto, if you had a choice between those two?

That's fair. I am cautiously optimistic with the Grifol hire. But I tend to be a glass half-full kind of guy, and I am already getting excited for next season.

Just curious: Are you just annoyed at that choice of words to describe Grifol? Or do you not like the hire?

Doesn’t tell me much of anything, actually.