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A good BP for a contender is vitally important and those kind of signings were right up JR's alley. Spend on veteran relief pitching that is normally cheaper than paying for Free Agent starting pitching and position players. Less money per year and less years, But as we all know Relief pitchers can be wildly inconsistent from year to year. The whole time they were just hoping guys like Giolito, Cease and Kopech would become stars. Gio was good for a few years then fell off right as Cease started getting good. Cease couldnt put 2 good years together. Keuchel fell off the table. Lynn got old and bad then suddenly found it again after being traded. Bunches of position players got injured year after year . Grandal got old and injured. Vaughn wasn't an OFer much to the surprise of the fans who all thought he played a decent LF his 1st year but thought Burger playing a much harder position at 3rd couldn't field. Those 1st defensive impressions stick in peoples heads. I got into many arguments with the Vaughn lovers over his defense in the OF. I'd keep telling them he's way too slow and going to get slower. He was just lucky that 1st year that not a lot of balls exposed him but a larger defensive sample size would expose him. Just like I got in many arguments about Burger after he was traded. They neglected any kind of decent LH hitting, holes in the OF and 2nd base while plenty of decent LH OF's got traded to other teams. The farm got weak fast especially in Starting pitching. They had 1st round draft picks that busted during the rebuild Fulmer, Collins, Madrigal traded for Kimbrel. Vaughn not becoming what everyone thought he could be as a hitter. They traded for Nomar Mazara which everyone hated because more people liked Steele Walker than Mazara who I actually thought was a decent change in Sox philosophy in that he was still young enough to get better. But, alas, he didn't and for once continued to stay bad after leaving the Sox. SO every off season since then I look for other young OFers I like. I liked plenty of guys this off season and seasons before that. I wanted Santander from Baltimore. I wanted Varsho before he was traded. This past off season I mention tons of guys the Sox should look into, Nootbar with the Cards, Outman with the Dodgers, Kelenic, Jesus Sanchez with the Marlins some of the Az. OFers since I knew Corbin Carrol would make some of them available. I was the nutjob around Soxtalk who thought unranked Outman was better than the Dodgers prospects in the top 100. I wasn't shy about saying so and took a lot of heat. Now I'm the nutjob who brags too much because he's been right too often which reminds a lot of people how wrong they were. I'm wrong plenty too. I thought Colas could have a decent year this year. As I said I liked the Mazara trade but neither team came out on top in that trade.

There's nothing to look forward to in the immediately future. Jerry still owns the team and Getz is a baby GM with Royals fever. Jerry isn't all of a sudden going to change his ways and give Getz all kinds of money to sign the best scouts and development people and add a bunch of sports science experts and double the amount of people working on the improvement of the kids on the farm. The guys are on their own. Too much complacency among people who work for the Sox in important positions and not enough people in other important positions. Funny how fast the Sox wanted to hire Getz and then the Red Sox let go of Chaim Bloom who would've been perfect for the Sox but Jerry would have never hired him because he'd want a couple million a year.

Whats amazing to me is when I reread the tradewinds thread is that so many people considered Burger a DH or 1st baseman. It just goes to show you how damaging early negative results are. It didn't even matter to people that he had played a decent if not good 3rd base with the Sox. Every little dribbler he couldnt make a play on or every hard hit ball that got by him just reinforced those thoughts . It's why we always have to remember that development isn't linear. There are so many examples of poor hitters and poor fielders getting better that we as fans fall into a trap of thinking players are worthless and overvaluing guys like Eder without checking their full body of work going back as far as you can. Sure Burger has a bad injury history but Ng needed a guy who could hit HR's and probably saw enough and heard enough from her talent evaluators that he could play a serviceable 3rd base and hit the ball really hard when he did hit it. So far with the Marlins that has paid dividends and he's making more contact. How well he holds up and manages to reproduce the results with the Marlins is anyone's guess but so far so good and people keep waiting for the other shoe to drop like with Rodon. The Sox didn't even think Rodon was worth a draft pick and he ended up with a great year with the Giants. Not so much after that . Giants must have sent a thank you gift to Hahn for that. Thanks for helping us out there Rick and Jerry for not costing us a draft pick I'm sure your farm system is overloaded with studs !

It's refreshing to see how well the Marlins have played against the cream of the NL when people thought they'd be buried by now when they started playing who has it been the Phillies, Brewers, Dodgers and Braves in the last 2 weeks ?

Maybe he saw what happened when he left in Urena which I thought was a terrible move. I think any time you pull a pitcher who is doing good but has been inconsistent throughout their career, It's not a bad move. You're trying to build confidence in starting pitchers . The parade of late inning relievers who don't belong in the majors giving up runs and possibly losing the game means nothing. The Sox need starters, these bums in the BP can be found anywhere.

ANd yet he refuses to do anything with that stance. I think he's proud of the fact he can ground a ball into right field when people are on base rather than hitting HR's. He's doing just what these hitting coaches are trying to make everyone do.

You're trying to figure out how to get starting pitching. Urena gave you 6 strong. Why leave him in? All you can do at that point is destroy what he accomplished in 6 and let him take the ball in another 5 days with some confidence. Suck is here to stay but do you really think some of these AAA/AAAA BP arms are going to be around ?

And the Vaughn 2 R HR is why these days with a guy you just picked up and gave u 6 credible innings is why you take the ball out of his hands and pat him om the ass and say good job. Might have actually gave them a game.

Why leave Urena in to start the 7th ? Take the ball after 6 and say fine job Jose ! Petey Grifol blows ! So what if the relievers suck .Half them won't be here next year. Urena could be . SO now instead of giving up 2 runs in 6 innings Urena has now given up 6 runs in 6.1 inning .

He might be one of those selfish Wideouts trying to get back into being a No.1 or 2 guy and getting paid and not playing for the team. He needs to understand that you have block and do the little team game things. Thing is he's closer to being out of football if that's his attitude than ever getting a legit chance to be a top WR again. On a side note. I didn't know if i was going to get the Bears game on Sunday being in L.A. I knew it was being featured in the rest of the country. So I had Fox on and all the expert talking heads picked the Bears and I couldn't believe it. I don't follow football as religiously as I follow baseball so I thought maybe I'm just missing why everyone is so excited about the Bears. They sucked last year in a lot of aspects of the game kind of like the Sox do now. I know in football a lot depends on the QB but i saw nothing to indicate that Fields could make the leap to a top notch QB. Sure he can run but could the Bears throw the ball ? Not without protection they will never find out and the offensive line didn't show me anything great. Injuries have hurt but exposed the lack of depth there. I didn't see anything up front on the defensive line that made me think they'd be so much better than last year . Last year they were pitiful pressuring the QB. If you can't get consistent pressure you can't play defense. It's that simple . A good D line makes everyone better . Interceptions come , turnovers come all as a result of pressure on the QB. Any way back to the pregame talking heads. I actually thought the Bears were going to lose and it wouldn't be close. Unfortunately I got the Seattle game. I thought about coming on here and saying what I just said but I thought eh what do I know ? I don't follow the Bears that closely and maybe I'm missing why everyone was so excited. Maybe it helps some times to take a step back from your fandom.

Did they just have a run in and runners on 1st and 3rd and no outs and got a Sheets K and Andrus DP ? Damn they suck.

When the Jazz Chisholm rumors were going around. I 'm sure I'm on record somewhere of saying that was never going to happen but I wouldn't mind getting Jesus Sanchez. Breakout year for him this year.About 100+ AB's less than Burger this year but still very good numbers. This was in my quest for more LH OF's in the off season. I thought Sanchez, Outman and Kelenic were all decent bets to produce. I also liked Nootbaar. He's another guy having a breakout year. I also liked some of the AZ OF's. I would've had a pretty good off season betting on almost all of those guys. Instead we got Benintendi . Of course the Sox in their infinite wisdom thought throwing money at the problem to was the answer. I wanted to go young.

Since I'm the resident SOx guy high on Burger , (no slight to Caulfield) I think you underestimate his defense at 3rd. It's basically the only position he's played with the Marlins. He has 4 errors on the year. He isn't a guy who covers a great amount of ground but he wouldnt be nearing 3 fWAR if he was a waste at 3rd base .You have to play at least decent defense for your WAR to climb above 0 which is why we've never seen Vaughn's WAR get much higher than 0. Also in the past, (probably in this thread ) I talked about Burger being able to improve just based on that .225 BABIP with the Sox. His hard contact rates are very good so all he had to do was make more contact and the hard hit rate would take care of the BABIP rising which is what he is doing with the Marlins since his K rate is about 10% less than it was with the Sox.

Moncada (7), Vaughn (19) and Colas (5) hit HR's . Andrus had 4 hits. Toussaint got the win with 6 IP 2 runs, 2 hits, 3 walks and 6K Win #1 in the Chris Getz era after 5 straight losses.

Getz' 1st win !!!

Robert doesn't do so good with RISP.

Looks like it'll be Shaw in the 9th.

Way to go Bummer ?

The Sox would just declare him untradeable and then he'd suck again as soon as they gave him another contract.

Sure all you have to do is read the thread. I didnt judge it right away even with being a big Burger fan. Trades don't work that way. They take time to figure out who won the trade in a one for one deal. But the more I dove into Eder he reminded me of Crochet in that he doesn't have much of a body of work of starting and still appears to be attempting to find a rhythm after TJS . What bothers me is thathe didn't have much of a body of work and anyone could see that. It's like he had 2 good starts right before he was traded like it was an indication he was back to the form he displayed pre TJ. But that was just not enough to trade a potential multi year 30+ HR hitter who had proven he could hit the ball really hard in the majors and that the only thing he had to do witting wise was make more contact and continue hitting the ball hard when he makes more contact. His fielding will never be excellent but it has proven to be very adequate since he settled into the position. He was pegged by Sox fans as a poor fielder because of early jitters or whatever cause him to play sloppily at the beginning. He was also pegged by "he is who we thought he was" because of his age despite missing basically 3 years , as low batting average, low OBP. So there was a lot to say he was bad at , at the time of the trade, but it never meant he couldn't get better. I was encouraged that he could get better because of everything I read about him. He just appeared to be highly motivated once he overcame his Achilles injuries.

I'm actually happy for Burger. If it's true Miami made some suggestions that Burger took to right away and this is the result then it's just more damning evidence that everyone they hire has no idea what they are doing. Burger was 2/3 HR,(31) single, HBP in Miami's 6-3 win tonight. 4th HR since Friday. The only thing the Burger doubters can cling to now to say it was an even or good trade is the hope his current hot streak isn't indicative of permanent results. However he's hit for average and power and basically played like one of the best players in baseball since the trade.

If the Sox have a 10 run inning they still lose.

You don't need leadership when you suck. Let whatever cream you have rise to the top.

Charlotte pitchers pitching like Charlotte pitchers.

Which position player pitches today for the Sox ?