thxfrthmmrs

The best thing we could hope for is this team continues to slide and becomes sellers at the deadline, makes a few moves to retool, TLR relieved of his duties and we do this again next season.

No, this has been a .500 team for the last 120 games or so now. Great pitching isn’t going to overcome poorly hitting and field and awful lineups and managerial decisions.

I would assume other deals they looked at had them eating money and getting marginal value in return. There is a reason they couldn’t get a deal done until a week before season start.

It was a high risk low reward move. It was done to save face for the disaster of a trade They were a week before the season starts away from being stuck with him. Had Kenley Jansen resigned with Dodgers they’d be screwed. With the $16M I rather they sign someone outright who could stay on the field more so than Pollock.

It seems like he failed at all 4 of the points you mentioned, not sure if you are being serious asking if he could have done more. 1) Wouldn’t have been an issue had they declined his option, or better yet not trade for him… 2) They brought in an injury prone at RF so you could use the injury excuse at the end. 3) Big F. 4) How is this not a failure? Even if you want to use the injury excuse Keuchel was still penciled in as the 5th starter with everyone healthy. That is an absolute failure. 5) Again you used the injury excuse. It’s like no one has seen that one coming. What has Hahn done to add depth to this team?

For once I wholeheartedly agree with Parkman. This is the issue I keep seeing with this board during the off season. People who ignored how bad the off season turned out to be because they somehow believed this core was a lot better they actually have shown and this is easily still a playoff team. Part of it is people were still valuing the players based on their former top 5 or 10 prospect reputation, other part of it is not realizing how good other teams or other players actually are. In reality no one on this team will finish top 10 in MVP voting for one reason or another. Robert and Eloy won’t likely play for than 120 games. Moncada isn’t the 30/30 MVP caliber player we thought he’d be. Vaughn hasn’t yet develop into the middle of the order bat we thought he could be. Madrigal is gone. We have some pretty awesome pitchers but that ain’t enough to carry this dreadful offense. We can blame injuries but that’s always going to be there with this group. It isn’t as if we didn’t see this coming. The Sox basically played .500 baseball since the ASB last year and got embarrassed by the astros in the playoffs. Perhaps the 1st half was an aberration and .500 baseball is what we could expect from this team and this manager.

Also I’ve had Yolbert as a top 5 prospects by midpoint last year. He’s not getting a lot of love from the industry, but I could see him being a Madrigal lite on offense while being more consistent on defense.

Anyone knows Mena’s repertoire or how hard he throws?

This shit is getting old.

Rodon would have replaced Keuchel in the rotation, so a similar comparison would be preferring Haseley over Eloy, which no one is saying, despite Eloy always being injured. I would take chance with Rodon at the cost of QO over Keuchel any day. This wouldn’t be as big of a deal had they not extend the QO but brought in a Gausman or Ray or traded for Montas or Manaea. That would have at least tell me that they recognize the issue with the backend of rotation, they didn’t feel comfortable with Rodon, but brought in someone else to replace him. But the fact that they let Rodon go for nothing (not even a QO) and then did nothing to strengthen the rotation just makes this a more and more silly decision with each passing day.

Fans have every right to be upset with the organization for making mistakes. Fan opinion of how terrible the Bulls are run is part of the reason why GarPax is no longer with the team. If it’s up to JR, GarPax would have a job for life with the Bulls.

Enough with this crap. You’ve been carrying water this whole thread about Sox not needing Rodon, and now it’s becoming the team wasn’t as good as you think and the FO made a huge mistake to not bring him back and now you backtracking to say that fans shouldn’t follow the team if they are critical and want call out the team for their fuckups? Give me a fucking break. If you want to be a fair weather fan like you do with the Blackhawks so be it, but don’t ride on your high horse when people are calling out the organization when they make mistakes. This shit about not following the team if you don’t agree with their front office is so played out.

When you job is secured no matter what, why not keep making dumb lineup decisions just to troll the fans?

Why should we be concerned? The people who have been carrying water for the FO the whole offseason keep telling us regular season doesn’t matter. Fact of the matter is this team is built with very little depth to withstand injuries and struggles from our star players. Trotting Keuchel, VV, Lambert out there automatically puts the team behind the eight ball. We have gotten no production from 2B and RF (who knows how many games we will get from Pollock). TLR, poor fielding and baseball fundamentals continues to get into the way of winning and getting more out of our players. I’ve predicted in the bold prediction thread that this team may win the ALC, but it would be by less than 5 games. I still stand by that prediction.

If you think we would run away with this division, think again.

Astros were able to extend their window through advanced scouting, player development, and using data analytics to improve their production overall. They lost key contributors over the years but were able to inject homegrown stars like Yordan and Tucker. Then they were able to develop under the radar prospects like Framber, Urquidy, Luis Garcia into legit front line starters. Even established vets like Cole and Verlander had career years after joining them. Not to mentioned they’re able to build bullpen by developing them instead of spending a fortune. The theme here is elite player development and getting more out of their players. I don’t see Sox having any of those infrastructures in place to enjoy an extended run like the Astros.

No guarantees, but I rather play them with HFA then no HFA. Playing first 2 games at home and splitting 1-1 or maybe even going 2-0 would have put less pressure on them going into games 3 and 4, you could tell they were already deflated coming home. Astros might still have pulled out in 5, but having HFA could have changed dynamics of the series.

+8% of winning overall in the playoff for teams with HFA, and that bumps up to +20% for World Series, dating back to 1969. Also with expanded playoffs better seeding would only help. It pretty crazy we’re debating whether we should have Kelly, VV, Harrison over Rodon. Really, it’s nuts.

As I pointed earlier in the thread, Rodon may miss some time during the season, but he would have pitched into October in all but 2 seasons in his 7 seasons as a pro, had the Sox made the playoffs. I will take those odds 10 times out of 10, especially since 2 out of the 3 guys you mentioned may not even be on the roster come October. Also regular season record, seeding, and home field advantage matters, so let’s not chalk anything Rodon could have provided in the regular season as insignificant.

They’ve already got in two years in a row but exited early. This was supposed to be the year they take a major step forward but with the way the off-season went it’s far from likely. The frustration with is off-season is they had the financial resources to really improve the team but failed miserably. This thread will serve as a constant reminder that the money went to Kelly, Velazquez and Harrison could have at least went to a QO for Rodon, however many innings he could give you at Cy level performance.

What’s this depth you speaking of? There is a huge difference between depth and quality depth. You really think they could keep winning games with only 2 starters hitting over .250 and 3/5 of the rotation that has no business starting for a contending team? Get a reality check.

Look it up.

The fact that one of the most well run organizations out there gave him 2 years and $26M more than the QO to him tells you something about how dumb this move is.

We are rolling Velazquez, Kechuel, and Lambert out there and people are still defending the FO for not at least putting QO on Rodon. This is absolutely comical.

My point is that doesn’t indicate he will pitch 100 innings and got hurt for rest of the year and miss the playoffs. Since his debut, there is only 1 season he didn’t pitch in September.