YourWhatHurts

Carlos will get more than that per year over 2+ years with an opt out provision after 2022 ie the new thing which the Sox won't do. IMO 20M in 2022, 22M PO or MO, TO for like $22M in 2023 with a $3M buyout. Something like that.

We're nowhere near the luxury tax and the AL Central is only going to get tougher going forward. There's zero excuse to head into 2022 ST with an obvious hole anywhere on the roster. But yeah I agree with you that they are unlikely to spend big on anyone.

Marshall & Goodwin will be non-tendered. I bet Cordero comes back for like $800-900k. The Sox will nontender him to sign him to a new deal if they have to. Everyone else gets tendered at those numbers and it's possible 1-2 of Fry/Lopez/Engel will go in trades.

No team should be underestimated, not even the Pirates. But that said I hope SF wins because if the Sox advance I would rather play them than LAD. Similarly I would rather the Sox play BOS over NYY, BOS over TB, and ATL over MIL. So far so good.

Nice post. BTW wsd has every bit as much business determining who can and who can not be Sox fans as the Ligue family. In fact the Ligues should adopt him and then they should all get drunk together and go jerk each other off and then go hold hands and jump off a bridge together. On a mostly unrelated note, if there was a fandom draft kind of like the racial draft skit on Chapelle's show I might think about drafting Bill Murray from the North Side. Probably not until the 3rd round or so but I'd do it. I would also consider him in a trade.

Yeah they get used to looking at the batters eye for signals that tell them what pitch is coming next.

I like how the offense continues here. Don't lose any momentum going into tomorrow.

Give Leury credit. If I was their manager and the guy on the mound was threatening to walk Leury fucking Garcia I'd lose my shit too. Yumi can't throw anything but meat. And hey Leury again!

Kimberly coming in but his sponsor Liam is there with him in case he has 1 too many. Baby steps.

It is literally an upgrade over like every single category of baseball playing ability except for pure contact / lack of Ks. No way the Sox spend money like that. None. My little thought revolves around Abrams from the Padres in a deal where some salary exchanges hands and we give them an upgrade somewhere while taking on ideally one of their highly-paid SP. I bet the Padres are going to be desperate to make moves again this offseason and now they won't have much room to spend / take on salary.

Madrigal was always going to be a liability on defense given his lack of defensive tools. Upgrading over Madrigal was already a good idea. What the Sox lost when they traded him for Kimbrel was trade value and opportunity. It was more than anything an opportunity cost wasted that could have resulted in at least an elite RP, or as part of a package for an above-average or better RF/SP/C/2B which another team was going to lose to FA anyway (and who would be willing to sign to play for us). I am absolutely positive that for Madrigal straight-up they could have at least gotten a Staumont type of player if not that guy himself: an electric pre-arb or 1st year arb back-end RP who is controllable for several years. The fact that the Sox added Heuer and the Cubs took back no salary is really a joke. I get the thought behind the move, but I don't get the prioritization of a second closer over RF or another Tepera type. I argued all the way up to the deadline that the Sox pen was going to be hard to improve at the highest levels, because if Bummer and Heuer turned it around then there's no one they could have gotten that would have been an improvement over those guys anyway, and if Bummer and Heuer did not turn it around, then the chances of winning anything were very slim. But at least the pen was an area loaded with high-end talent, even if much of that talent was underperforming. Contrast that to the RF position and it's night and day, because there is no talent to put out there in RF. No depth at all. Re: Semien, not a chance the Sox spend that kind of money. The Sox will sign Chris Taylor to what will become a bad deal and there will be like a thousand articles about what a genius move it is all offseason, then the regular season will start and it will be apparent that Sox gonna Sox.

Those situations almost never happen. That's why it's called ... wait for it ... "lightning in a bottle." Yes they are. I'm not sure what your issue is. You're talking about the Giants giving you hope. WTF? You're delusional. The Sox spent the vast majority of the 2010's running out Giants-like teams, relying on wrong-side-of-30's former All-Star veterans, spot-patched with hopeful overachiever types on make-good deals and MiLB contracts. This worked so well that they had to finally undergo a full scale rebuild. But sure let's pine for the days of bringing in the likes of Mat Latos, Ervin Santana, Jimmy Rollins, etc. or do our version of trading for Evan Longoria where we bring in a guy whose best years are behind him hoping that he can still be a quality player. Reality is, the SF Giants are a team composed of a bunch of moves that the previous GM got fired for and the current GM largely didn't make or wouldn't have made. And the spot patching is likely simply a result of a combination of a mandate from ownership to at least half-heartedly try plus an attempt to load up on veteran mid-season trade chips.

Not sure who put the laughing emoji on my post above or why, but I am guessing it relates to the Giants. Yes they are a fluke. I pity the fool who gives a zillion dollars and years to one of their flukey overachieving impending FAs in the offseason. There are probaby more guys on that team than on any other who will very shortly become the recipients of bad contracts. What they are doing is amazing but it's just for this year. Look at how Zaidi approached the deadline. Even he knows it's a fluke, he just won't come out and say it obviously. He's still planning to reload/retool if not rebuild.

1) We certainly didn't build a version of the Twins that beat our asses in the early 2000's. Maybe we built something like the high octane offense / limited pitching and defense Twins, but I'd much rather we be the pitching-and-defense Twins if we're going to emulate any kind of Twins model. 2) The playoffs are not a crapshoot. Every year you have a pretty good idea of the teams most likely to win it. It's not so cut and dry as in basketball, but it's pretty clear usually who the best teams are. This year it's probably the Rays and Dodgers, but the Red Sox and especially the Giants have seriously overachieved. What we really need is SP talent + Bullpen talent + defense + dynamic offense capable of both scoring in bunches via the HR and XBH and also capable of scoring even it's only necessary to make outs in the appropriate manner, e.g. sacrifices and hitting behind the runner. We're pretty close but we have sacrificed defense at premium positions (C with all of them, 2B with Madrgial early & all of Cesar's mis-plays later) and we've sacrificed offense in RF which is still at least a 50/50 Offense/Defense position. And then our bullpen has drastically underachieved all season, and we really don't have that proven ace stopper at the front of our rotation. We're close though. 3) The Giants are a total fluke. Don't even worry about them. Yes there are lots of 2005 Sox vibes but I would just ignore them. Total fluke, still. The best team to emulate in the NL is the Dodgers, and even though I hate the Dodgers and hate to say it, it's still the truth. 4) Pitching and Defense should be our focus in the offseason. And as far as the bullpen goes, unfortunately all you can ever do is stack up talent and see what happens. The Sox have probably the deepest and most talented RP core in baseball, and if not, if must be top-5 at worst. You can go all the way down to Charlotte with guys like Burr, Fry, Foster, Lopez, etc. who are all in probably most MLB bullpens. And then we had guys like Burdi who most other orgs probably wouldn't have let go, and we've got guys like Schryver and Dopico who have some ability and likely would have already been given a shot on lesser teams in rebuilding situations. We're really deep in the pen, but year to year you just never know who's going to be good and who is going to suck.

Have you seen his contract? 1 year 9M. Cheapest mid-rotation or better starter in all of baseball who was available. So keep laughing.

Cease belongs in this spot. Best stuff in the rotation right now. Even if he's nails, our shitty offense may do nothing, and Abreu may again come up empty and choke again when it really counts the most. And the defense may still fail to make plays, and there may still be shitty baserunning blunders like Robert getting thrown trying to take 2B with 2 outs and a guy who can HR at the plate. As great as Rodon has been, it's real hard to say T92 Rodon is our best guy right now. One other thing I will say is this: even if 2021 doesn't turn out to be our year, at least we're not the Asstros. Dusty Baker is an even worse manager, their window is closing while ours is wide open, and more than anything, our WS title was both dominant and legitimate, and yet theirs is an asterisk as big as their logo - in fact their logo may as well be an H with a giant asterisk on it. They're all dirty ballsuckers and losers, and cheaters and scum, and the Sox are always better. And no matter what, the 2022 Sox team wipes their asses with the 2022 Asstros anyway. So yeah.

It's the baseball version of GarPax in the FO. That's the dorf's fault. And yes, the players sucked yesterday, but also TLR didn't have to be manager and the VP doesn't have to be KW. The dorf's cheapskate moves of Lynn and Rodon turned out great. He won the offseason by default. But then again failing to pay for a legit RF really hurt. A good portion of what could have been Springer's money ultimately went to giant minuses in Kimbrel and Eaton who have only been considerably worse than the non-roster guys we already had in Charlotte.

Rule #1: Grandal is behind the plate, not because he belongs there defensively, but because the other alternative is actually worse. But we must all pray for him to catch the fucking baseball. Rule #2: Engel plays RF regardless. No more Leury in RF, no matter what hand the SP throws with. Rule #3: Kimbrel needs to be on a plane back to Chicago, and after he arrives, should be quarantined for the rest of the month of October.

RISP and he has an AB like that, and then you defend the guy? What is wrong with you?

Ok we can have that argument all day long. You load up on Ecksteins and Grinderstads and I'll take the uber-talented assholes all day long. Leadership Smeadership. And WTF kind of leadership is it when you go down the way Abreu went down in Game 2 this year and in the last game in 2020? That's jabroniship, not leadership. May as well have been Daniel Palka or Ross Gload in the box.

A 3-run homer makes the game 9-7. Reguardless a quality AB is to be expected. I cannot reasonably expect quality ABs from the likes of Hernandez or Leury but I can expect them out of Abreu.

Disagree. It's TA and in largest part due to the fact that he plays a premium position. If it's not TA then it's Robert. It's certainly not Abreu who is potentially replaceable on his own team.

Well hey there genius what do you think he is paid to do? And who is the guy who is at the forfront of the 1B/DH logjam? And who is making the most money? Sorry to have to spell it out for you. Maybe you should think more on your own.

What do you want to do, blame Leury? Is Leury the RBI guy? Abreu should have the best ABs because that is what his job is.

96 and 96, on 0-1 and 0-2. 2 fastballs in a row. I watched this shit last season. This is what Abreu did when it counted last season vs. the A's and now he's doing it again. He choked and there's no way around it. A Vaughn/Sheets platoon at a discount can give you this, and maybe you can take his salary and buy a guy who won't choke in return.