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The point of making the playoffs is to hope to eventually winning it all right? If the expectation is to only win a bunch of regular season games and secure a playoff spot with no expectations of outcome, then sure, they will do fine the next 3 years.

Cespedes is 24 and Colas is 23, both are at least another year away. There is a reason the farm is ranked dead last in MLB. While it's easy to look at the farm in a vacuum and say we have a couple of nice prospects that could help the team someday (which is an exercise you can do for any other farm system), their collective talent and depth doesn't measure up against other farms. Now on to your main point. We lose Abreu after this season, Gio and Grandal after 2023. By 2024, we have $126M committed just 9 players, that's before the arb raises for Cease and Kopech. We may be able to keep the core for 2024, but they'd have to make some tough decisions in 2025. Without significant contributions from the farm, they're a crossroad at that point facing tough decisions to either sign aging vets to try to keep the team competitive ala 2013-2017, retool, or rebuild altogether. Regardless if they sign Conforto to a 4 year deal or not, it really doesn't matter. So the question is do you want to just be good enough from 2022-2025 to have a chance to make the playoffs, or load up in those years to try to get as far as you can in the playoffs? The answer is pretty easy for me.

I just remembered, you are the same guy who was making a bunch of excuses for Reynaldo Lopez and preferred him over Musgrove and telling everyone why it would have been a mistake to trade prospects for him? Sounds like more of the same here. Just a bunch of excuses for Kimbrel. He’s getting paid $16M and got tired after 35 innings? It would be a mistake to give Conforto more than 1 year? The amount of water carrying here… I don’t even know where to begin.

Is Sheets for Manaea a fair deal? One year of Lynn costed us Dunning and Weems. Now Lynn was more valuable than Manaea, and same could be said about Dunning compared to Sheets. So is Manaea for Sheet plus very low level prospect enough? Unfortunately competition seems very heavy at this point.

Who do we trust more? Mike or Hector Gomez?

Yes, absolutely with these deals. He's worth 16.2 bWAR if you prorate 2020. He's still 29 though, if he puts up 4 war on average the next 3 years, and 2 WARs every year after, the contract would still have surplus value. And he should eclipse those numbers.

They weren't the only one though. Yankees were also hit hard with injury (in addition to the expected Severino missed season), Blue Jays lost Springer for half of the season and had their entire bullpen on the IR at one point (they lost way mamy games late inning games during this stretch). Sox also had overachievers like Goodwin, Lamb and Yermin that helped carry the team briefly. Yes, healthy Eloy and Robert would have added 5-6 wins to the ledger, but still wouldn't make up for playing in a tougher schedule in a tougher division when all teams' health are considered. And if you consider improvements they made since then, Rays having top prospects like Baz, Patino coming up, getting a full season of Wander, Yankees and Jays making roster moves, it's hard to argue that Sox are better than those teams at this point in time.

Re-read my post then. It isn't about JR being cheap at this point, he has spent, it's how the money was spent. Not willing pay a star for 8 seasons yet overpaying a bunch of replacement level players EVERY SEASON is basically of the resource allocation criticism. We're heading into year 4 of the Manny/Harper deals, they have been worth every penny since the signing, still in their prime, and no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

It's actually pretty easy to answer this. Sox had 93 wins last season, 2 wins ahead of the 4th place team in AL East. Would they have made the playoffs had they played in the ALE and having to play the top 4 teams 72 times a year? That's not counting the Astros, and also Dodgers, Braves, and Giants in the NL.

They've made some great firesale trades and went with their guts to open up the checkbook for Robert that has helped build a playoff caliber roster. However they failed to repeat the same results since then to improve the team via trades and refused to spend near the top of the market for free agents. Overall team talent has not improved since then and other organizations have caught up and passed them by. To top it off, player development has been more of the same. They had a great start, there were many paths they could have taken to turn this into a true championship caliber roster, yet they chose the wrong path seemingly every time.

More than the move they've made, it's also the moves they didn't make. The money that could have gone to any of Harper/Manny/Wheeler/Springer etc. is end up allocated to likes of Keuchel and Kimbrel while resorting to trotting Yermin at OF and Vaughn/Sheet at 2B. I think they deserve every blame they've gotten the last 3 years.

Good thing my myopia hasn't allowed me to go to a different section of the forum to read that up.

Well, a weird way of looking at this is if Joc signs next then Conforto has gotta be Hahn’s endgame right?

Our future ranking, if factoring in the farm, places in the middle of the pack. Only saving grace being the extensions Hahn was able to pull off.

Expecting the worst from here till end of the off season save you the trouble of any dramatic outbursts at the end. I call it the Parkman mentality. But seriously, I do really hope they pull it off at the end, but have very low expectations.

Ahh yes. I am sure if and when Conforto signs else where I am sure VAfan will reassure us in the other thread that we didn't need RF upgrade and that we're as good as any team out there.

Seriously, who hasn't lost it yet this offseason with this bullshit plan? I want to know because I commend you for your patience and your positivity.

The gift of TLR that keeps on giving.

Yea I like Misner but that's great value for Wendle. I would have gladly dealt Adolfo + for him, and he would have been a great fit at 2B over Leury and Harrison.

They signed fine relievers but have overpaid in the process, especially in the case of Kelly who is injured. You didn't expect 2B to be a splash, but that's just a byproduct of not having expectation for this FO, not that they were not capable. Had it not been the Kelly and VV signing, they could have walked away with Escobar and McHugh. The fact that Kimbrel is still on the roster is likely the reason they didn't QO Rodon or we weren't able to give Conforto the money he's looking for. I am in the camp of losing all my patience with the FO this offseason, and I was on the other side defending them every single year prior. Honestly it's the vicious cycle every time, at the start of offseason we identify a couple of tier 1/2 free agents we expect the FO to go after that would been a great fit on this roster, rumors come up and we get excited, but with each passing day deal isn't getting done the likelihood of the deal happen diminishes and we end up sobbing and venting when it's all over. And with how the offseason has been progressing (poor spending of resources, and lack of advancement in Conforto talks) I don't see how this one would turn out any different.

The entire NL west is after him. The Dodgers/Padres whoever doesn’t get Freeman will be willing open up the checkbook.

Unfortunately to sign impact free agents that moves the needle you’d need to commit long term. Otherwise you’d end up exactly we are.

I am pretty sure 4/$80-85M would be the offer we gave Conforto. If Schwarber got this deal, I think Conforto would get 5 years and more dollars

There were no rumors because Rick Hahn is happy with this roster.

Oof, so that sets the Conforto market out of our range then. Joc and Rosario, come on down.