Eminor3rd

Yes paywall? Not blaming the messenger, just sayin

I think the lack of defense/position probably limits his earning cap a bit more than the typical case.

You can’t pick one dude who has a handful of similar characteristics and expect it to be a meaningful comp. Whether it’s comping Mayo to Bryant or it’s comping every right handed hitting 1B to Andrew Vaughn.

1 to 1 anecdotal prospect comps are completely useless, no matter which direction you're arguing in.

He better never get happy OR mad. And enough with the jokes, we don’t need that. But hopefully he’s really funny. The most important thing is he needs to clearly support the team on the broadcast, so he can relate with the fans. But definitely don’t want him to be a homer. He needs to be bold and progressive, but always stay in his lane and never rock the boat.

I was hoping for a little more shove on Grant Taylor

Wow

I mean, we’re already this deep in the “culture over talent” zone, I’m not sure why we’d divert now. May as well see what happens.

I’m not sure their need is as high as it seems at first glance. They have a bunch of dudes set to come off the IL mid season, and the offense to carry in the meantime.

I’m starting to want to hold Cease now. I’m reaching the threshold of hopelessness where I don’t think there’s any path to contention, ever, and so it’s becoming more valuable just to have a fun pitcher to watch once a week. It’s like when you decide you’re just gonna “drive your car into the ground” instead of trade it in while it still has value. I’m resigning myself to having a problematic vehicle for the foreseeable future but at least I won’t have to make payments on it.

I’m not sure we need this one to work out any more than we needed all the others to work.

He’s not a lot like kikuchi, at least when Kikuchi first came over, though. Kikuchi always had command issues, threw harder than Imanaga does. They are both fastball/slider heavy though.

Idk, Yamamoto is a hell of a lot better. Admittedly, I haven’t watched nearly as much Imanaga (because it’s harder for me to get games from his league) as I have of both Yamamoto/Senga, but I’d put Imanaga below Senga pretty comfortably. It’s not a super fair comparison because they’ve got opposite strengths and weaknesses, it Senga’s raw stuff was always undoubtedly MLB quality, whereas there are some questions there with Imanaga. Im also surprised he didn’t get more, just because of the market. But it makes sense that Senga outdid him.

Maybe. He pitched in a bandbox in Japan, too. He’s a high spin guy, which is often credited for his homer prevention. We’ll see if it’s enough to work over here.

Yeah, I mean the Sox are going to use 15+ starters this year as it looks today, might as well get 60-70 innings of five-and-dive out of Crochet as part of it. The bullpen is going to be complete trash, but all of these junkheap starter projects have to land somewhere, so maybe its best if they see if one or two can reinvent themselves as 7th-8th inning guys anyway.

I think he'll be alright. The fastball has a ton of depth to it despite its velocity, and his command is excellent. No chance he misses enough bats to be more than 3-4 at most, IMO, but if they're paying $15m/yr, that's totally fine. Tbh, I'm more worried about his health than anything else. He's been banged up a bit and has had an arm surgery already.

I really don’t think it’s about forgiveness. It’s just not really tenable to expect a fanbase to accept that their pbp guy is a clear homophobe. Sure, he deserves to be able to make a living, but at this point he’s just not a realistic candidate to be the public face of a sports team like that. At the minimum, practically every homosexual member of the fanbase will be constantly aware that this dude doesn’t respect their existence, and that his continued employment is a tacit endorsement by the team that it’s okay to hold those views. More realistically, that extends to any fan that feels sympathetic to the cause on any significant level. There’s just not a case to be made that you should hire that guy for that job. I think we talk too much about “deserving” jobs in situations like this, when it really has nothing to do with it. He’s not being “cancelled” for his “slip,” he’s just no longer a job fit because of what the “slip” showed everyone about him.

It’s not the fact that he said something stupid, it’s the fact that when you listen to what he said, it’s really really difficult to believe he didn’t mean it. This was not a case of stumbling over a word or improper context, he was quite articulate, he just didn’t think anyone was listening. It doesn’t matter what you think about second chances — it’s really hard for a fanbase to swallow that its broadcaster is a homophobe, whether he apologized for it or not.

Never fall into the trap of expecting Reinsdorf to make decisions with logic. He’s like my four-year old daughter, in that they both get frustrated and stubborn when they find out the world doesn’t work how they wanted it to, and sometimes grumpily go on pretending that it does even so — the only difference between him and her is that he has billions of dollars and everyone has to listen to him. Reinsdorf sees the Royals championship window and pines for it — suck dick for 30 years, obtain exactly one good prospect for each spot on the field, have them all break out at the exactly same time and win a championship with a bottom-third payroll. That is the dream for him. It doesn’t matter that it’s a demonstrably terrible plan that failed for decades for multiple franchises before it improbably worked once, akin to watching your broke neighbor finally win big money on a scratchy lottery ticket and then deciding to mimic his life decisions, Reinsdorf is going to press on pretending it makes sense no matter how much evidence to the contrary that is shoved into his path every day, just like my daughter is going to continue to ask me if we can put the Christmas tree back up so Santa will come back this weekend. You can explain the calendar all you want, and on some level she understands, but it hasn’t stopped her from carrying on anyway. So I wouldn’t put anything past him. He’s also a proven liar, so you’d think the whole story about hiring Getz as part of a plan to avoid a rebuild was textbook bullshit, but he’s also the most delusional business person I’ve ever had the misfortune of spending this much time thinking about, so he might actually really believe himself. In that case, he may actually want Ortiz.

Jfc what an overpay

I don’t think anyone expects anyone to “spend like crazy” in terms of total outlay. JR has spent enough money, in aggregate. What we’d hope for in an owner is simply one that doesn't flush the money down the toilet by self-imposing idyiosyncratic limitations, like “not believing in investing in the international market,” or “not making long term offers to pitchers,” or “tying up player rewards in earned incentives,” or “valuing the opinions of those outside the organization,” etc. The best anyone could hope for is an average outcome, but the roll of the dice would unquestionably be valuable.

Player A is peak Sandy Koufax and Player B is Chris Flexen minus his 2023.

f*** Bob Nightingale, but let's be honest, f*** Jerry Reinsdorf for putting him up to it.

This will go down as the saddest offseason acquisition crop in modern history.

Not the worst idea for the banner, tbh