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And I said that myself at the time since I probably made 20 posts mentioning Outman's name once all the geniuses started telling me I was crazy to think he was better than the Dodgers ranked position player prospects. But no matter how many posts I made explaining why he was a great fit the geniuses who don't want to hear about it now were all saying we had to sign veteran free agents and I'd hear stuff about how I was basing it on his 16 PA in 2022 and Outman sucks. Sure they were in no position to trade him because the Dodgers actually don't mind trying to fit some young players into a championship caliber roster once in a while but the point remains that now they will have to be blown away even more to trade him. The point of scouting is to identify guys before they start performing at a high level in the majors. I'd like to see another person here find an unranked LH rookie CF with speed power and plays above average defense who comes in 3rd in ROY, puts up a 4.4 fWAR and is a positive in baserunning, defense and offense and a 12% BB rate to get to that 4.4 fWAR. I'd also like to acknowledge that not all people on this board were meatballs , some actually thought I made sense. Even Stone Garrett, the rare RH OF I suggested had a better year than Benintendi even though he started the year in the minors then broke his leg when his spikes got caught in OF padding trying to rob a HR. Dave Martinez his Manager on the Nats had nothing but praise for him. "His at-bats have been good, but he's been playing defense really well," Martinez said. "It stinks for us because he is one of our every-day players out there who is having a really good year." Martinez also praised Garrett as a clubhouse leader and fan favorite. "He means a lot to us," Martinez said. "He just has that presence about himself. Very soft-spoken, but he's one of the guys who liked to have fun, keep everyone loose. A great teammate." Garrrett finished with 1.2 fWar in 88 games and an OPS of .801,115wRC+ But I suppose I had to know if he was available because he was such a stud that the D'backs released him and the Nats picked him up. But hey welcome back to 2015 because Getz has to attempt to make the Sox competitive now and welcome to the same world Hahn had to live in of signing middling aging FA RH position players who suddenly forget how to play and get old and injured once they come to the Sox. Maybe Getz can even find another Tatis, Jr. type player to trade !

And we all know what this means. Welcome back to 2016. Attempt to sign a bunch of veteran Free Agents in the $1-15M range and some of them to 2 or more years. Might get 6 of them. Ignore any young LH hitter with any speed, power or defensive ability. Any advancement in the farm system created by the Trade Deadline trades will slowly fade down back into the 25th to 30th ranked farm system.

Stone is He Who Remains.

Do I need knowledge that players are available to suggest a trade ? If that's the criteria for suggesting trades then most who do it can expect you to censure them Some of them were actually traded or rumored to be available .Just from memory Daulton Varsho was traded and at some point the Orioles were said to be thinking about trading Anthony Santander. Kelenic might be been on the block too after repeatedly failing during his call ups. My main point was that Conforto would also have been a mistake and relating not signing him to the bigger mistake of signing Benintendi is a stretch of logic. The Sox should have been looking for younger guys . Plenty were available and traded the last 2 years. What's really nauseating is that very few here never realized that filling in the gaps with middling FA's was never going to help the Sox when their farm system was not producing the cheap young talent. The Sox needed to continue on a winning path should the core continue to keep being unproductive and injury plagued. Be it starting pitching or young LH hitting the Sox were failing miserably and that writing had been evident since the collapse in the 2nd half of 2021. Still most ( including me) believed that with a bit of health the Sox still might be able to contend with Moncada, Eloy, Vaughn and Robert and Cease having finished 2nd in Cy Young voting. But that never stopped me from saying they still needed to get younger not older. If it makes you feel less nauseous you might also recall that since they never made a trade for a young LH OF I was full on broad with giving Colas his shot. Of course I thought he was ready but he wasn't and on top of that the Sox now seem like they are not enamored with him. So I am perfecting willing to say I was wrong there. However as a fan we aren't privy to knowledge that you seem to think I have to possess in order to have an opinion. I gather as much info as I have available in regards to players I'd like to trade for who would seem to fit the Sox needs. So sorry I don't live up to your standards that I should also know who is available before suggesting any trade. I think your real point is that I continue to bring up Outman because I happened to be right about him and actually saying so breaks one of those macho rules about rubbing it in people's faces when it's perfectly fine for others to think I was nuts and make fun of my ideas at the time I was making those suggestions. Seems rather hypocritical to me.

The Sox passed on plenty of others besides Comforto. Plenty of young LH OFers have been available the last couple of years through trades. It's usually a good portion of my posting in the off season. You didn't seem particularly supportive when one of my trade candidates was James Outman especially when I said although he was unranked he was a better guy to go after than ranked guys like Busch and Vargas I think it was. You thought I was crazy. ?

When Ohtani started struggling in his 1st spring training with the Angels they talk about 2 guys influential in getting rid of his leg kick and switching to a toe tap. Albert Pujols planted the seed when Ohtani asked him about it. Pujols told him it's easier to recognize pitches without having to worry about your stride. So the seed was planted and then current Mets asst. hitting coach Eric Hinske is credited with suggesting Ohtani try a toe tap. But like many great players they are serious about getting better. You gather a lot of information, then you process it , run it through your mental strainer before you decide to take a particular course of action and keep the other stuff filed away if needed later. Supposedly Ohtani liked how he started hitting shots all over the park during BP after he went to the toe tap . It isn't always that obvious. Often players resist changes because they might feel uncomfortable with it at first. However the process is the same. Be a sponge of knowledge, strain the knowledge . Do or talk to good hitters who do what you are thinking of changing to, to get their thoughts on how it helps them. Implement change give it time. If it doesn't feel right or produce any results that feels like you are progressing, then see what else is in that bank of info you filed away. I always got the impression that this was what Burger was going through once he started getting time with the Sox. He did like to talk about that sim program he liked to use that he said wasn't available during road games. I remember after some games on the post game shows Garfien would bring it up and Ozzie Guillen would make jokes about it. Hard to know for sure if Ozzie thought what Burger was doing was a joke or if he was just clowning around poking fun at something foreign to him.

I'll be impressed if Thames says to Eloy. "Eloy is there some reason you've stuck with that goofy awkward looking batting stance that has produced such a high ground ball rate while also having many leg injuries ?"

He said he wants the SS job in 2024 but didn't care where they put him but he's not ruling out making the team . Glad to hear it but odds are definitely against it. Do we think he starts the season back in AA or AAA ?

I also lived the 1st 22 years of my life in Chicago and attended Disco Demolition and here in California the Sox pennant clinching game in '05 in Anaheim.

Trust me I am such a big Sox diehard I probably know more about the Sox than I ever have. I watch podcasts , read articles and usually watch games the way you're not supposed to online and now I've figured out how to get them on my TV too which I just tried with a Blackhawks game and finally watched it on a big screen not my SD computer monitor.

Ive seen a lot of projections now thats why I said 4yrs+ and 100M+ . Some are talking 200M+ which seems really high.

I've never thought of switching my fandom from the Sox and that's after now spending the majority of my life in So Cal . I know the Sox are bad and honestly a historically bad franchise. Family tradition was Sox fandom and I embraced it . It helped with my relationship with any sports minded member of my family. I got a World Series win from it. While I might write a lot about how JR is the root of all Sox problems I just don't take it personally. I'm entrenched in my fandom but not an emotional prisoner of it.

There's way too much talk about doing a prospect a disservice when talking about hurting their development. It's all sooo speculative. We have no idea why some guys make it and some don't. Was it something a coach suggested that was learned through some aspects of organizational philosophy tied to the sports science department and a multifaceted biomechanical study that broke them down and rebuilt a swing or arm angle combined with physical maturation, weight training the right muscles, a diet change, getting married, a new level of mental maturation ,1 or more of those things combined ? Too often we talk about bringing someone up too soon ruining a prospect . It's picking the low hanging fruit as a fan because we have zero clue what the player or the team is doing or has done to get to the point where he becomes a better player. Players with great talent and numbers can be brought up very young and the truly gifted ones physically and mentally can handle it. The majority will struggle at some point and wether or not that player was brought up early is only one among perhaps dozens of things that impact development. Being brought up early may even help some guys because no matter who you are you are going to have to hit MLB pitching at some point. With some the sooner you start facing them the faster you can start making those adjustments. How often do rookies come up and become really good players right away? I'd say almost never. So fans are always going to see young guys struggle and bam, grab that low hanging, brought up too soon, we ruined him fruit.

Except the whole thread is supposed to be about doing your best to compete quickly with $190M. Calling someone out for signing an older pitcher to a multi-year deal or a position player would be one of those things likely to happen if you were trying your best within that budget to create a winning team. It's all a silly exercise with a practically impossible task. You'd have to overpay someone or another to get them to come to a pitiful losing team. If you're looking for a bunch of 1 year bounce back candidates it's not like you're the only team looking for those types to trade off at the deadline to get more prospects. You're talking about a rebuild strategy. This thread is about insta-compete with an unlikely high payroll budget so if the top priority is competing your spending has to reflect that with a secondary goal of if we aren't competing by the trade deadline then I might have to trade off anyone who I signed who actually did bounceback even if I signed them to a relatively cheap contract with an option year. A contract like that which offers a team option for a 2nd year with a significant increase in pay would be a good incentive to get someone to sign here , even though guaranteed money is the best incentive ,which often means some of your bounceback guys get 2 year contracts instead.

He would've been a better get last year since he was one of a dozen or so young mostly LH OF I suggested the last 2 off seasons. Have to get guys like him coming off rookie struggles or multiple call ups over a couple of years that reduce their value or some unranked but overlooked guys. My past suggestions were Nootbaar, James Outman, Kelenic , Varsho, Santander among the lefties and the RH Stone Garrett. I really like Colas but alas he might be another guy with a 10 cent head .

I'll wait until I see who's non-tendered for depth purposes. All the starting pitching FA have pretty much been mentioned. I think you need an impact signing for 5 years or so which would mean the biggest Sox contract ever and a similar contract the following year. That would mean dumping Moncada and Eloy between now and after the season. Guys in my head for this year, Bellinger, Soler. I agree prospects most ready for the majors need to get a shot Sosa, Colas even though both looked bad. Maybe Colas gets traded since the Sox don't seem overly fond of him. Outside of that I'll continue to stress left-handed fast powerful, OBP, defensive youth like I have done in the past. Problem is places those types usually play is OF and Robert and Benintendi take up 2 of 3 available spots and Bellinger is going to get way more than he should considering before last year he was pretty bad and people weren't sure he was capable of overcoming his injuries. He was very good last year but now he may get 4+ yrs and well over $100M. The Sox throughout their history have the worst hitting LH players in baseball . This needs to change in our ballpark. I wish they had listened to me last year and gone after a trade for Outman or someone similar instead of wasting money on Benintendi. Now he's just another salary that needs to be dumped. Of course anyone taking a stab at this exercise has to believe JR is going to spend money and that a rookie GM isn't as infatuated with Salvy Perez and Merrifield as has been speculated and he's only retaining Grifol because it's pointless to fire him knowing how bad they are going to be next year . May as well just keep him so you're not paying 2 managers. Just tell Grifol what to do and who to play if he wants to keep his job and if he doesn't like it he can quit and forfeit the remainder of his contract.

Good observation.

Night and day between the 1st and 2nd half for him. Hostile environment . Bears outcoached 2nd half. NO made adjustments.

That's all she wrote. Bagent under pressure fumbles after the hit NO recovers.

Another holding penalty this time on D. Wright.

LOL so now NO doinks one off the upright from 47 yds. Still a 1 score game. Another chance.

3rd down and 4 . Pass batted down. Punt. Facemask penalty on Bears on Velus Jones. 15 yards .NO gets the ball again in Bears territory.

Bagent will get another shot at it with plenty of time. Unfortunately they will have to go 98 yds to get a TD.

Yeah he was behind the receivers .

3rd and 10 Kmet catch for 11. Another INT for Bagent. Just couldn't find any open receivers for most of the downs. Had time just nothing there.