GreenSox

Mauricio would need to be a stud, because McCann is just another bad contract to take on.

Seattle: possibly, if they think Flexen is a legit #4 or so. Kelenic is just a shot in the dark, but fine for a throw-in. NY: ridiculous to have to throw in Crochet for this. This isn't "top prospect in baseball" Torres - he's an up and down player whose D grades out poorly. Tex: Negative. We have several guys who assuredly can match Smith's c. 550 OPS. Dunning doesn't seem to have made much progress.

I admire your indulgence for 2013, when the team went from 86 wins to 63 wins in the first year of Hahn's leadership.

Benintendi is certainly the "Surest thing" and his the highest floor. But it's still annoying that the Sox can't find someone from minors who can slap it out at .750 and play better defense than he does. Signing him is like using capital on relievers - you can overpay the market by 30%, but the numbers still won't be eyepopping; in the end its hole-plugging and not "premium talent."

A long-term deal at a "beat the Yankees offer" price; yes.

The one advantage of Gallo is that, while he's likely to be terrible, they'd only be stuck with him for a year; to that end, I'd prefer Conforto as the 1 year guy. Completely uninterested in a multi-year encumbrance with Benintendi.

Yea Conforto and Benintendi are decent. I would guess Benintendi. They apparently loved him in draft (and used the Red Sox taking him as their Fulmer excuse); and he played for the Royals, so that's a plus with the FO. I wish his D hadn't taken such a turn for the worse (at least according to fangraphs)

Is there a LF available to sign who doesn't suck?

They've been really protective of their top prospects; even ones that aren't that great; they wouldn't move Clint Frazier, e.g.

Certainly prefer Stripling at 2/$25 over Joe Kelly at 2/$18.5, even if Kelly was good. Stripling has had 1 bad year out of 7. I'd take him.

Any good late inning reliever, closer or not, needs to be able to clean up someone else's mess. Graveman just wasn't very good last year.

But the context in which they decline Rodon but pick up Kimbrel's option, makes the move indefensible. The risks on Kimbrel were higher, and the value much smaller. Part of this, I'm sure, was due to the Hahn/Haber general fixation on relievers, from allocating a large part of the budget to them, to using multiple high draft picks on relievers, and then to Kimbrel over Rodon.

This winter, Rick Hahn has had "a place at the table" and Jeremey Haber has had "good conversations" with other clubs. If the results don't flow from this righteous effort, we can all take comfort knowing that no one will be more disappointed than Rick.

They've done many contract dumps; some to create room, others just to dump.

I certainly hope they don't give him away, or use him to move another contract. But they've done that before. And then I wonder who they could sign that would require additional payroll room; if it's Gallo, that would be ridiculous.

I knew this guy couldn't hit, but after checking Fangrahps I have learned that he can't defend either. Oh Joy! Gavin Floyd was kind of a basket-case with the Phillies. Productive for the Sox. (as an aside, Garcia for Floyd and Gio was perhaps Williams' best trade). Also McCann Also, Quentin as mentioned above, although after 3 years, the Sox just jettisoned him for a AAAA pitcher for some reason.

They don't have any money to spend because it was wasted last offseason by the Front Office. And they have so many holes because the rebuild was ridiculously thin, with marginal improvement, if that, in the farm and player development. The first good season out of a 3/4 year rebuild and the farm is ranked #30. Inexcusable. The FO didn't even try to shore up infrastructure (analytics, e.g.) that could compensate for the owner's reluctance to signed high price players. Now why JR puts up with such a FO is beyond me; there's no way he tolerates poor performance in his non-baseball businesses.

There's no way that JR became a billionaire employing slugs as his top managers and executives. And yet, with this baseball team, that's exactly what he does.

All things that were said in 2016, and here we are.

Just a point of order: that's nowhere near one of the 5 worst trades in Sox history. Probably not even in the top 10 worst trades this century.

key word

I agree. But the only one of those I can recall Hahn making was Narvaez for Colome. The Dodgers could clearly use Anderson, but they don't really have a lot of young major leaguers to trade. You'd likely have to get a 3rd team that is rebuilding involved: Pirates?

If you want to retool the minor league system, those trades are generally best done in July. Anderson's value should be higher with improved play, Giolito's value should be higher with a better season and the value of pitchers, esp. on short term deals, is higher in July. One caveat, however, that this is one lazy front office that has frequently napped during July. And even for the rebuild, they took only the sales of Sale, Eaton and Quintana seriously; the rest were lazy moves or giveaways for Rule 5 eligible players.

Oh for the days of "premium talent", even if it turned into Yonder Alonso.

Unbelievable, isn't it?