YourWhatHurts

It won't be Ozzie It will be someone with MLB coaching experience It doesn't have to be a person with MLB managerial experience but is preferrable Recent WS experience is preferrable Fluency in Spanish is preferred but not absolutely necessary; the coaching staff must be capable of communicating with the players however It will be someone from the outside

Same here except for 162 games per year. He needs a "handler" though to cut him off and keep him on track, and stop him from getting too grumpy. Maybe his son can be like an assistant producer who sits alongside him and controls the mute button, and then another producer can get involved on the audio side to make sure that only relevant content gets added. Every Hawk addition could come at the expense of Benetti's nonsense. I'd love it.

I should have said draft and international FA as I was thinking about the farm system, but you really cannot knock the number of excellent players that have come out of that organization under Theo. Teams don't rebuild to find league average players or pieces of the puzzle, they rebuild to find key cogs. And even though they traded some of them, they got and/or developed Baez, Bryant, Rizzo for Cashner, Contreras, Eloy & Gleyber Torres and they're all huge pieces, and then Schwarber still has a ton of hitting ability and Cease has an ace ceiling. For a guy who didn't have a Sale, Q or Eaton to trade, much less all 3, that's pretty excellent no matter how you slice it. If you have the key cogs, you can always pick up the spare parts to contend.

Also: "(Town name) yyyyyyyyyyeeeesssssssssss! They got my money in (town name)."

"Get up! Get up! ...it won't." And when the Sox make an error in a key situation, or turn a single error into a comedy of errors, or continue a comedy of errors: (about 3 or 4 straight minutes of absolute silence, then usually one of the following) "...phhhhhhhhhhhh...... Wow." or "And that'll do it. We'll go to the (top or bottom) of the (inning number)." And then maybe he'd say nothing, or say "We're in trouble," or refuse to read the score, or just make another long groan. Also Catfish Hunter was the best teammate he ever had, and Mark Buehrle is a lot like Catfish Hunter. And Ted Williams used to believe that the uppercut swing was the best kind of swing and he would fight people who argued against him (who knows how adored he'd be over that now with all the launch angle stuff).

That was like almost every Jermaine Dye HR IIRC.

Jay Marriotti is a what you call a hiney bird. (Long dramatic pause) Do you know what a hiney bird is? (Another long dramatic pause following this rhetorical question) A hiney hird is a bird that flies in perfectly concentric circles, over and over again, until it eventually disappears up it's own be-hind and is gone forever. Jay Marriotti is a hiney bird.

I agree that we won't see Theo here, but the second part he has already dispelled. His best work with the Cubs was before he really started spending money. Heyward was a disaster, the Darvish deal only yielded about half of the 2019 season and the shortened 60 game 2020 season as a quality result, and both the Chatwood and Kimbrel signings were terrible. His work overseeing the drafts has been great, even though he missed on pitching (he still gets credit for drafting and partially developing Cease).

Jose Abreu also has kept his child-like qualities. Will he ever lose them? What about Eloy? Does Eloy have child-like qualities, and if so, will he ever lose them?

Probably my favorite Hawkism which is never repeated is "Sphincter time!" and I also miss the comments like "You couldn't pull a credit card out of my be-hind with a pair pliers" which he would also make when talking about yellow hammer curveballs and such. I hope I don't get a bunch of b****ing about making this thread. Sometimes it seems like people around here have lost their child-like qualities. Both AJ and Mark have never lost their child-like qualities.

Right. His wife told her mother and 3 friends about the experience afterwards. He was honest about what happened, he said it would never happen again, he cleaned up the whole mess himself, and then he gave her some money to go shopping with when he was done. The overwhelming consensus was that on the whole, Yaz's value over a replacement husband only increased.

Whatever the WAR says, Realmuto is a much better defensive catcher. And it makes sense because in Realmuto you are talking about getting a guy who will be the next guy worth talking about after Fisk and then AJ. He'd be locked up for many years and nobody would be talking about moving him off of the position by midseason 2021 and especially by the 2021-22 offseason. But mark my words those conversations will be coming re: Grandal even if I don't say a word about it personally. Yas is a good hitter though and lefty bat is nice. But we already have enough DHs here. The fit really isn't great or necessary. As a short-term fix, fine, but anytime there is a player the quality of Realmuto on the market I think you have to take a shot. It's such an extreme rarity.

BTW just in case anyone cared, Yas burned the shit out of his scrambled eggs this morning. What happened was that there was a spider crawling across the ceiling in the kitchen, and it was really high on the ceiling but still kind of in the area where the stove is, and he was watching the spider because the spider may have been poisonous, but regardless, if the spider decided to descend on some silk into his eggs then certainly his eggs would be ruined. So he watched the spider for about 4 or 5 minutes until he smelled something burning which is exactly when he realized he fucked his eggs. So then he took the pan off of the flame and went to flip the eggs over with the spatula to see if they could be salvaged, but then just as he was flipping the eggs, out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the spider descending from the ceiling, at which point he dropped the pan onto the floor with the spatula in it. But then as he tried to catch the spatula with one hand, somehow he accidentally kicked the pan with the eggs in it about 6 feet across the floor until it hit the bottom of the refrigerator. When his wife came in and asked what happened, he of course explained himself and said it would never happen again.

Jose with a broken arm and 2 broken legs is a better pure hitter than any of those guys have ever been in their lives. My only concern is whether the Sox will DH him when necessary, and even if they do, whether that move will be enough given Eloy's presence in LF.

If Giolito won't sign an extension here then it makes sense to deal him to the highest bidder with 1-2 years left before FA, but only if we already have in-house replacements already here and performing. Even the guys with extensions could be traded with 1-2 years left. There's the possibility also of reworking the contract as part of an extension, depending on the situation. The Sox will most likely need to make at least 1-2 deals later on to bring in the youth necessary to extend the contention window and delay the next eventual rebuild, which is what they will try to do.

If anyone seriously believes that JT Realmuto is only a marginal upgrade over Yasmani Grandal, all I can say is ?

Well gee I guess there will be no offseason for anyone then. No one is going to spend any money and no organization will have a different plan than the one they had the year prior. Got it. I bet teams like the Blue Jays for instance just aren't going to try to get better until owners quit crying poor. Your shilling for ownership at every turn is truly pathetic and digusting. You shill not only for reinsdorf but everyone else too.

You wouldn't want to upgrade to Realmuto?

It's a best of 3. It's an insult to teams like the Twins and Cubs for example who are division winners that they have to play teams like this year's Astros and Marlins and get swept by them. I'm not just talking about the Cubs and Twins but just making a point. Anyone can win 2 baseball games. The teams with the better records generally have better records because they have better depth, and making those teams play a short series against other teams without such depth only caters to lesser teams while hurting greater teams. There is no question of the talent in our division. It's a quality top 3 and if the Indians ever spent any money they could have been a juggernaut since their WS appearance. The Twins have flaws but are as dangerous as anyone, and we're very clearly on the rise to prominence. Also the NL Central is a quality division in its top 4 teams. There may not be a single great team in there, but 4 out of 5 teams can flat out beat you, at least on some days. And even the Tigers and Royals are getting better pretty quickly. Re: our needs, it all remains to be seen, but we have enough young talent that theoretically we could do nothing at all and end up a significantly better team. We have young guys like Cease who are bandied about in trade ideas who could end up as better players than they guys they would be traded for in 2 years or less.

Also maybe the Yankees would take Grandal since they may be souring on Gary Sanchez. Grandal for Sanchez and Ottavino would be a move I think they would make.

I think the Cubs would (looking to move Contreras anyway, if they move Contreras first), and I think the Red Sox, Nationals, maybe the Mets, also the Angels would. Perhaps the Padres would if we ate money, but if we ate money on a Padres deal that might be the best destination because we could conceivably get a really nice prospect out of them. I know that my list includes teams that should rebuild, but I'm not sure the Nats, Mets, or Angels ownership will do so, and I think the Red Sox are probably just looking to retool and will expect to be contending again, somehow, in 2022 at the latest. Depending on what happens with COVID etc., if playoff teams get added over this offseason before teams really start making moves, I can see the Red Sox trying to make a couple moves to grab the last AL playoff spot in 2021, just because that seems to be the way they work.

There should be no question that the C position will get significantly worse defensively with McCann gone, and most likely, the pitchers ERAs will increase. McCann leaving means more time behind the plate for Grandal who will be 1 year older, and it's most likely going to be Collins picking up the rest of the ABs. If it's Grandal + Collins + Yermin behind the plate, oh boy, we're going to be baaaad back there. If there is one guy I would be 100% on board with throwing big money at this offseason it is Realmuto. Grandal's contract is moveable for sure and he doesn't have a NTC. Sure it could be seen as a "shrewd" move, but signing Grandal with McCann already here coming off of an All-Star season was already a shrewd move behind the plate. Realmuto is p4p one of the best players in all of baseball. He's the best C in baseball and would be a serious addition to our core. He's the best C in the game IMO since Yadier Molina, and Yadier IMO is the best one since Ivan Rodriguez. I would absolutely throw money at him. And I think there would be several teams willing to take Grandal off of our hands and still give us a good prospect because his deal is not bad at all and he is still a good player, just nowhere near as good as Realmuto. Edit: I'll add one more thing: Realmuto as a C is a better longterm, big money investment than Machado or Harper would have been, and because he's a C, no matter how great he is, I don't think he can do better than 6 years guaranteed with any options after that being heavily incentivized.

Sale + Vazquez for Grandal + Reynaldo ???

The problems are really Eloy and Abreu. Vaughn is a prototypical 1B. Abreu was better at 1B this year but his future is at DH and Eloy already is a DH. Grandal is no elite defensive C either and really is probably best off spending some time at 1B and DH as well. We really need to fix this issue defensively going forward IMO, and the answer definitely has nothing to do with Vaughn, who fits his position better than anyone else in the conversation.

I don't think so. The Sox have had high pools and I believe it is because they have sucked in the standings.