35thstreetswarm

Yes, and ditto for the reverse--if they sign a big 2B (Semien) they can make do with in-house options in RF. I hope they just focus on one big addition rather than getting cute with two middling additions.

Jesus, man. Big "basement wallpapered with media clippings of JR with the eyes X'd out" energy

I’d put that in the “what else is he supposed to say?” file.

If I see credible information indicating Bochy was unavailable or unwilling to come here that might change things for me, as he was the clear best choice. I haven’t seen any, though. The answer is Bochy.

This is reaching weirdo obsession territory. A) we all know where you stand on Mr. wrong-shoe-size, and B) the retort is so obvious (he was a rookie who never played above A-ball before this season) that what you’re saying is near worthless. Give it a rest.

I’m just glad we beat the probable AL champs in the regular season, so now we’re better and closer to contention than we were three days ago

Today the Red Sox are revealing they were better all along…or maybe it’s just that the hot team wins

I agree with the general sentiment and cautious optimism about spending. But re #1, I have to note that four of the top five payroll teams are already long out of the picture, and the fifth -- the #1 payroll team -- is down 2-0 in its series (though admittedly may still be the odds-on favorite to win it all). Thankfully I still don't think you can easily and predictably buy a title in MLB (thank god, because the White Sox will never have the resources to do so).

Right. The quickest and most time-tested path to being wrong in sports is treating one season's postseason results as both definitive judgments on team quality, and perfectly predictive of the next season's team hierarchy. Yet sports conventional wisdom is built on it.

I assume the rest of the league also plays this schedule in the hypothetical?

I think we need to pump the brakes on Sheets around here. It’s a good thing Mercedes didn’t have his good two weeks in September/October or we might be penciling him in to next year’s lineup.

Damn -- that's the kind of thinking that could get a team to the League Divisional Series...

Amen. We're already down one young cost-controlled piece. Let that be a lesson to us for god's sake

Still waiting. Considering it's for tickets to multiple rounds of games for lots of folks, they should really make it snappy. I'm not in the interest-free loans business

I always struggle in the offseason with the "one big move" vs. "several small moves" dilemma. Question: how would people feel about signing Semien to play 2b and doing very little else (say bringing in one decent reliever and that's it)? Basically plugging RF with a combination of in-house options. That would give us an absolute beastmaster lineup and a solid rotation, albeit one with significant question marks given Kopech's innings limits. I think I'd be pretty happy.

With the innings limits some of our guys are facing a short season could be just what the doctor ordered!

Come on—I’d go to war with a Soxtalk-crowdsourced team over the Sox any day. By that I mean the San Diego Padres plus Trevor Bauer

I’m not on team TLR, but I’m also not going to pretend that the players liking him is a bad thing. Assuming it’s genuine it makes me feel better and slightly more hopeful that we can make it work with TLR at the helm.

Yeah, we certainly didn't see evidence of any special wily Hall of Famer playoff devil magic, that's for sure. The hope was that the Sox were lying in wait the second half of the season and we would see a whole new team come playoff time courtesy of TLR's motivational mastery, and that we'd see the "real" bullpen management when the games counted. Instead the team looked listless, plus we got the familiar questionable bullpen management that drove us nuts in the regular season.

That's not how I remember the collective opinion of the board at the time at all. Anyway, we had exactly one pitcher we had faith could shut Houston down. If the strategy was to win one in Houston it made sense to start him opposite a lefty we thought we could hit, rather than a guy who was White Sox kryptonite. And sure enough, McCullers completely shut us down. Giolito would not have changed the outcome. And I wholeheartedly agree with your arguments about how TLR mismanaged the second half game 2 -- but those are arguments in favor of starting Giolito in game 2, not against. Game 2 was completely winnable because Gio started it, and we got to Framber as expected. If it was Lynn in there we'd have had no chance.

Fair enough, if you're talking specifically about a "bottom" in terms of TLR behavior, which I'll never defend. When I think of "hitting bottom" in a season I imagine a scenario where things actually go poorly for the team, though. When your win total starts with a 9 and you're selling division championship swag I think you're a long way from the bottom.

I think that's sort of his point. Lynn was thrown out there opposite McCullers, who killed us, because of the possibility he'd be lit up. Nobody liked it, but there was at least a chance Lynn would shove and the alternatives--start Cease, who gets rocked worse than Lynn by Houston, or an injured Rodon--were worse. I don't think there was any other way to stack it up at the time. I think TLR was largely to blame for the game 2 loss, btw.

Wait "another bottom"? What was the previous "bottom"? In the last 12 months we went to the playoffs twice, and we just won the division with the heart of our lineup out half the season. I mean, losing in the playoffs is disappointing but let's not pretend the last 12 months have been like a series of catastrophes.

Unreal. Talk about your bad luck. Their staff is shaky behind him...and in a seven game series that will only be magnified. So Framber, Luis Garcia, ???, ???, Framber again? Yikes

Agreed - the Astros just played really, really well, even though they're a garbage organization for which I will never have any respect. Wouldn't surprise me to see them win it all this year. Their offense was on fire and we just couldn't keep them down. That said, folks should resist the urge to over-read the significance of this series. I already see a lot of posts suggesting that the Astros somehow definitively proved that they're better than the Sox and that we can't possibly overtake them without a major overhaul. (Kind of like the offseason posts saying Twins were "the champs" through which all roads to the AL Central crown led...ahem.) That's really premature. Look, the Astros will be around next year, but nothing is fixed in this sport and next year we may find that we're the ones with the hot hand. The Astros couldn't get past the Rays last year, then they lost Springer, and had no Verlander, and Greinke turned into a pumpkin. How could they logically overtake the Rays this year, especially with the Rays having the #1 seed? Well, the Rays could only manage one win against a pretty flawed Boston team. They won't even have to play them. The point is things change--often rapidly and unexpectedly. We just need to do the work to improve over the offseason, win the division again, and take our shot next year.