thxfrthmmrs

FWIW Lux is current #2 ranked prospect by MLB, Verdugo had a ~2.5-3 WAR rookie season in a little over half season worth of ABs. May is ranked in top 15 by Law, BP and FG. Most importantly, all 3 players are pretty advanced and are primed to take a big step forward in 2020. It’s a radical idea, maybe even The Show-esque idea, but I would argue that team is going to be better in 2021 than a Moncada led team, when you take into account the likely $50M payroll space you have to work with.

WARNING: Radical idea here. I mostly got this idea from a Red Sox article: https://www.providencejournal.com/sports/20191005/radical-strategy-may-be-just-what-sox-need Granted this guy (named Bill Koch, no less) is smoking crack with some of his ideas, but a more balanced version of the Devers to Dodgers trade is what I want to explore. Trade Moncada, Lopez, Burdi, Herrera to Dodgers for Turner, Lux, Verdugo, May Trade Anderson to Dbacks for Zac Gallen and Alek Thomas Yolmer is traded or non-tendered. Salary with arb and pre-arb is roughly $60M Free agency: Moustakas 3/$45M, Abreu 2/$30M with team option for 3rd, Hamels 1/$13 with team option for 2nd, Hendrick 1/$6, Cishek 2/$12M Salary is about $115M still having room to play with. If you're a dreamer, Rendon would been a fun add for about $20M AAV more than Moose. But as it stands, this team is ready to compete. CF Robert SS Lux (L) DH Abreu 1B turner 3B Moose (L) LF Eloy RF Verdugo (L) C McCann 2B Madrigal Bench: Hendrick/Leury/Collins/Mendick Rotation. Giolito/Hamels/Gallen/Cease/May with Kopech and Rodon as depth pieces BP: Colome/Bummer/Cishek/Fry/Marshall/Osich/Cordero/Lindgren Thoughts: Steep price to pay for LAD, and I think Dodgers' rationale for trade for Moncada is their one of the best teams in helping players cut down their K% and improving aprpoach. Moncada could be a top 5 player under their tutelage. They move 3 valuable young pieces in Lux, Verdugo and May, but none of them has similar upside and is proven like Yoan. Plus I think they're also one of the few teams that could fix ReyLo. For White Sox, moving Moncada is hard, and perhaps irrational, but they get immense value in return and fill holes in RF and SP with MLB ready, cost controlled talent. By moving Yoan and Timmy for younger players, they effective extended their window by a year or two, while remaining competitive in 2020. Verdugo and Gallen are someone I could see RH extending to buy out a few years of their free agency. Lastly, looking ahead to 2021, Turner walks and Vaughn is primed to take over. Sox should has PLENTY of payroll left to land a big fish, e.g. Betts if they still need him. If you were expecting a realistic offseason plan, that may have been disappointing.

I guess the case for arriving Friday is this game is a late start. They could fly back home immediately without having to re-adjust. But boy they look trash both sides of the football.

I think Cole’s case is different because he essentially became a different pitcher after working with Astros’ pitching staff and analytics team. I’m just wondering how much it will impact him negatively moving to a situation less suited for him to be successful.

Even if Cole wants to come here and JR opens the pocket for him, one thing I’m worried about is how much he will regress after leaving Astros. If he’s somewhere in between Pirates and Astros version, is he still worth a $240M contract?

I don’t know what the fuck I’m reading in this thread. Thanks Caufield.

There is no way I want Nova back. Dude isn’t good and there is no upside there. I’d take Gio Gonzalez any day of the week over Nova, whom I think won’t cost that much more.

I don’t think K is a huge issue as long as they’re getting on base. I also think the K rate should come down a bit once they learn to command the strike zone better and stop chasing so many bad pitches out of the zone.

Cooper staying = proves lifetime immunity does exist with JR.

Honestly I had been over the signing a superstar mentality since last offseason, there are a lot of external factors working against the Sox to making a viable strategy. Signing a Cole or Betts would have been nice, it will give us a nice 3-4 year window until we have to tear things down again. To your point in the last paragraph, and it’s a point beaten to death at this point, we need to revamp our philosophy and build a winning organization from ground up. The Houston Astros has already set the blueprint for winning as a mid market organization, we need to do the same, perhaps get ahead of it. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/how-the-houston-astros-are-winning-through-advanced-analytics This probably isn’t news to anyone, but to think Astros are already looking into the next phase of analytics driven baseball and combining big data with AI to help them improve scouting, player development, and in game decisions, while Sox still has one of the smallest analytics department in the league is a travesty. More than anything this rebuild should have focused on changing the way build our baseball team - acquiring top prospects and not fully committing to player development is a half baked solution. So it’s crazy to say, but I’d almost be more excited to bring in a Jeff Luhnow type of baseball mind and overhaul our operations with leading edge technology driven staff than a Betts signing.

There are two types of teams that would want to trade for Betts - the win now teams who do not have long term flexibility to afford Betts and would use him as a one year rental, and teams who want to keep Betts this year and beyond. Sox fall under the second category and I would find it hard to believe, given the position they're in, they would trade for Betts without knowing they could extend him. No matter what Betts says about free agency, he has a number in mind, if we could meet that number and he could risk even having a down year and still get the contract he's looking for, I can't see him turning it down. If Sox feel like they could give Betts a number he couldn't refuse (e.g. $50-100M more than Harper), then they acquire Betts, otherwise they shouldn't and they don't. I just can't see the bold part happening with the Sox. Heck I would rather be on the other side of it and acquiring a Betts at TDL at half the cost if we're a Betts away from being a playoff team.

In a perfect world, we sign a Wheeler/Stras type to a long term deal this off season, then Rich Hill/Alex Wood type to a 1+1 deal, and Calhoun and Gardner to 1 year deals and make the playoffs. Next offseason we sign Betts outright and give this one of the best offenses in the league (it would be extreme RHH, but who the hell cares).

Dom Smith has always reminded me of Yonder Alonso and Logan Morrison, the bad version of them that is, and he still does. His approach did improve but his EV is still pretty poor for a bat only player. Statcast had him as extremely lucky this year by measure of xwOBA. He worth taking a flyer on hoping he finally taps into his power, but I wouldn’t trade more than a B level guy for him.

Same goes for Indians who turned Ramirez, Clevinger, and Bieber into stars. Some team do it better than the others. And it's no coincidence that Dodgers and Astros are two of the best teams at elevating a player's career through their development. Investing in data analytics and having your development staff fully embrace the analytical significance and build plans based on it is the key. That to me is worth spending on than $15M on freaking Jon Jay and Yonder Alonso in 2019.

I like the Shaw idea. Meets our needs and even if he doesn't fully rebound, he'd be a nice LH bat off the bench.

With Robert and Nimmo’s history it makes sense to grab a 5th OF, guys like Maybin and Parra makes sense here. Plus if Mendick struggles in his role, Leury could fill in as the primary backup IF. I would lean toward using the last bench slot on someone who is versatile and do a bit of everything instead of a 1B/DH slug Sox has been prone to do. I wouldn’t mind a Grandal signing, but he won’t be my first option. It’s one thing to be skeptical of a McCann repeat, but Collins has shown enough to get a shot at backup/DH and eventually C of the future. Ironically Collins’ offensive prime could look a lot like Grandal in recent years. Spending big money on Grandal and having him spend a bulk of time at DH would be a waste of resource for me. Having potentially 2 catchers who could catch and hit (Grandal and McCann) would be a nice luxury, but I rather spend the $$ elsewhere.

I think there will be some competition for Kendrick this off-season. I like Matt Joyce as the OF version of Kendrick. He could play the 4th/5th OF and part time DH role. Lefty bat who gets on base at a high clip, he’d make a nice platoon bat off the bench.

Which site are you looking at? Statcast shows his change spin rate as high as ever and curve spin is slightly down. More than anything if our training staff is confident they could help him stay on the field, I wouldn’t mind a heavily incentive driven deal. Any James Shields deal isn’t flying under the radar with Sox fans.

I've posted a few times that we cannot address all of our needs by just throwing big money at free agents. Aside from trading from the farm, one potential avenue is to find reclamation projects, bounce back candidates in FA for cheap and they could potentially play a big role for us. For the sake of this exercise, let's keep consider anyone less than $5M AAV as a under the radar signing. (Scooter Gennett seems like a popular choice, but I still see him getting a 2 year contract north of $15M). With that said, who is our James McCann of the 2019 off season?

If Mets push for Stiever instead of Pilk I’d still do it. The offense is going to be that much better with a .370 OBP bat leading off for the next 3 years. On Cole, I have projected him at the magical $32M AAV months ago, but with a Co Cy Young likely coming, won’t be surprised if he gets another $30M on the total contract value.

Something's gotta give, at this point it's very likely JDM opts out and Mookie gets extended, outside chance of Mookie even getting traded.

Dream scenario: JDM for 4/$100M Cole for 7/$225M Resign Abreu 3/$45M Sign Cam Maybin 1/$4M Rich Hill 1/$5M base salary, incentives up to $10M based on IP Steve Cishek 2/$11M Trade Yolmer, Basabe, Pilkington, E Marshall for Nimmo Final payroll $135-140M depending on incentives Starting lineup post Robert and Madrigal grad: Nimmo RF, JDM DH, Abreu 1B, Moncada 3B, Eloy LF, Anderson SS, Robert CF, McCann C, Madrigal 2B Bench: Leury, Maybin, Mendick, Collins SP: Cole/Gio/Cease/Hill/Lopez to start with Kopech/Rodon due back RP: Colome/Bummer/Cishek/Fry/Herrera/Cordero/Osich Forget wildcard, this is a legit division winning team. I think if JDM opts out, we're right in the middle of the running for him. In a more optimistic-realistic scenario, we get Wheeler or Odorizzi instead of Cole, and payroll ends up around $120-125M And lastly, in a more pessimistic-realistic scenario, JDM doesn't opt out or he turns us down, we sign Moustakas (3/$45m), and Wheeler (4/$68M) as our 2 big FA acquisitions, with same remaining pieces as before, final payroll around $110-$115M.

A picture of Ron wearing an autographed Abreu jersey and captioned with "3 more years".

Hard to call it spitballing and prove a point when all numbers are on the low side. Realistically, Sox may be able to add an impact player or two along with a few role players, but definitely can’t address all needs by doling out cash. While it’s possible we push $120M payroll at the end, its also possible that they leave some of the money to spend mid season, depending if they’re in position to compete.

We need an L here. If Yolmer leading off and Castillo at DH helps us get there then let’s do it.