YourWhatHurts

Great recap. I saw most of the game, not all of it, but I also remember him outright missing a pitch that he should have caught. I read posters talking about how lazy and unathletic he looks behind the plate sometimes and I agree. When I'm watching the game I'm usually doing other things and it is on in the background. I'm not watching it with a most critical eye and looking to nitpick things. But Grandal is so bad back there that he makes glaring mistakes and just has these outright shitty games that you really cannot miss even if you aren't paying the closest attention. When the Sox signed him I immediately thought of something I had thought of many times before. There are 2 things on my list of baseball events that I have seen which I will never see again in my lifetime no matter how much baseball I do or do not watch, and no matter how long I live. One was back to back #300 career home runs by Paulie and Dye. The other was seeing about half of a packed stadium in the World Series chant the name of a shitty backup catcher with no bat at all - definitely no McCann - because the starting catcher was such a butcher behind the plate that he was costing his team a championship. I was willing to give the guy a chance but my god. That play the other day where the ball went through is legs reminded me of old nintendo games like RBI Baseball where the video game characters would make stupid errors that looked so bad they were not even believable, like the ball would hit the fielder and bounce away with the fielder in some stupid crouch, etc. But that I think games like those were probably inspired by defenders the caliber of Grandal. I've seen enough at this point. I expect our other players to get better and not repeat the same mistakes. Grandal is just what he is at this point. And whoever made the comment in the game thread about at least it won't hurt his fWAR is spot on. Whatever fangraphs says, give me McCann instead. I think if we wanted a guy who would produce enough offense to perhaps outweigh his many defensive shortcomings we should have just kept Omar Narvaez.

There was a lot of badness yesterday. I expect Madrigal to learn from this and I expect Ricky to bench him to make him learn. I also expect Jose to learn from his mistake goofing off which cost the Sox an extra base. I don't expect OTOH Grandal to learn from any of it. Also the Cordero call actually worked. He got his ground ball and Yas didn't catch it. I don't have a problem with Detwiler starting the inning either. The Sox players threw that game away and there was really nothing Ricky could have done to stop it. That all said, it was a nice showing by Cease. He's still developing and there's no way I would trade him. Let the process play out with him. Same with Kopech IMO.

This is not a question of "What will the Sox do?" it is "What would you do?" Both are starting catchers so there is no option given to split time. It's one or the other: one stays and the other is gone.

I wouldn't touch Springer with a 10 ft pole. Why can't we just platoon Joc with Engel? Joc's deal isn't likely to become anything bad. I think this is a real no-brainer here. It's perfect. We have our 2 4th OFers in a platoon, both who can play CF as a backup, and it opens another bench spot. I'd actually overpay a bit if necessary on a 3-year deal to make that happen. That flexibility will be terrific to have. Springer is a bad contract waiting to happen IMO. I'm only interested if it's January or February and he is still unsigned.

Watching Mazara, I have no idea why this org which has seen the likes of Joe Borchard and Trayce Thompson decided they could "fix" Mazara. I have no idea how this guy has ever managed to hit over .220 but regardless, taking away contact from a guy who already shouldn't make as much contact as he was making, to add more loft, was probably a pretty shitty idea that never should have been hatched. Hopefully Mazara is to Menechino as Nestor Molina was to Marc Paddy, i.e. we hire a new guy and make a trade to bring in a player the new guy wants, but after realizing we fucked the pooch in doing so, we decide to kind of just let that player disappear off into the background and stop mentioning him, and make some necessary changes here and there, and try to forget it ever happened.

I agree with this.

If the Sox fire Ricky they'll botch it and hire Paulie. Kinda serious. 100% serious I bet they'd at least give 2 interviews to Thome if not hire him outright. I'd probably be meh about that. Sox gonna Sox but I like Thome.

I want Devers. I posted this is another thread, but a package for Devers excites me. Short-term view / Longterm view: C Grandal / Grandal 1B Abreu / Vaughn 2B Madrigal / Madrigal 3B Devers / Devers (extend this guy immediately) DH Eloy / Eloy SS Anderson / Anderson LF Vaughn / Moncada RF Moncada / FA or trade acquisition CF Robert / Robert

Woodruff is excellent but there's no way I'd trade Vaughn for him. No interest in Hader. He's not far away from being an uber expensive RP. I'd rather bid on him as a FA than give up elite talent for a RP, especially an expensive RP. There's no way I would trade Vaughn in any Woodruff/Hader package because IMO he'll end up the best player in the deal. Any deal with Vaughn, he's got a great chance at ending up as the best player in it. I don't think we need to trade for controllable SP. We can run out Giolito-Keuchel-Cease-Kopech-Dunning next year with maybe Lambert and Stiever in the mix. If we are going to add to SP via trade, who do you upgrade over? I think the Sox are in a spot where they are better off not trading for SP unless they can pay a price of Stiever+lesser pieces to upgrade over Dunning who has the lowest ceiling of the group. But even then he's also got the highest floor and is very likely to settle in as a 3/4 who eats up 200+ IP per season, so why even try to upgrade over that?

It's crazy that Mazara is hitting 86 points higher than EE. That has to be the softest .243 ever. It seems to me like it should be the other way. EE has still been a power threat, and even though it's a bad start, the pitchers have to worry about the longball. Nomar OTOH = Nomore.

I think Vaughn should play some LF in Schaumburg due to Abreu's contract. I think he might have to spend some time there to get to the bigs. I was thinking during the deadline that the Sox really should put together a big package for Devers. Given the fact that Abreu is here and won't be moved, I think if you trade for Devers, you could move Yoan to RF, play Vaughn in LF, put Eloy at DH with Abreu at 1B, and you just do this for 2021. Vaughn slides to 1B when Abreu gets the day off and Eloy sees some time in LF still. Then in 2022 you move Vaughn to 1B permanently and put Abreu into more of a bench role. I dunno. But I really like Vaughn and I really don't think he's going to get the chance to take 1B outright, and even if he does, Eloy is such a disaster defensively that I'd probably rather have Jose at 1B and Vaughn in the OF anyway.