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Yep. Imagine having to tell Conforto we really want you to pick us over the others but the best contract we could give you is a 4 year deal with club option in year 3 because we have two OF prospects who may be ready then. That is utter failure as a GM.

Our competitive window is now, you get the guy who’s going to improve the team at present the most and worry about the Cespedes/Colas problem in 2 years.

The craze for bullpen spending started when the likes of Miller, Davis, Chapman became multi-inning shutdown weapons that you can throw into a game at any point in the game and shutdown the opponent regardless of matchup. There are a few players who legitimately fit the bill and deliver consistently, the aforementioned guys, Hader, Jansen, Hendriks amongst a select few. However there is a more conventional wisdom that predates this, and that’s RP are extremely volatile and it’s never a good idea to pay for par performances. If you’re paying big money to Joe Kelly (3rd largest RP contract this off season) to be that shutdown weapon for you in a playoff game, you’re taking a huge gamble that won’t likely pay off. In fact, the Rockies infamously spent over $100M a few years ago on their BP and that failed miserably. Again, that was completely due to giving BP arms big dollars based on what they did in the past and all of those arms broke down pretty quickly.

Look, the people who are defending this signing (and the Harrison one) probably thinks we could still afford the RF and SP we wanted, and that we’d be able to trade Kimbrel without eating any money. With Kimbrel’s market shrinking we should have traded Kimbrel and figure out how much we have available to spend, go sign an RF and sign or trade for an SP before targeting another RP. My prediction is this is no longer the case or worse yet the Sox never wanted to throw big money at Conforto and will go sign someone for $10M instead. I would be less critical of this move however if we still end up with Conforto and someone like Manaea even though I think we’re overpaying Kelly.

I was looking for buy low guys who has signed he was the first one that came to mind. It doesn’t have to be Yates but someone similar who fits the bill. With the accelerated FA timeline I would expect a number of RP will be willing to take a discounted deal over the next few weeks and make sure they have a job come opening day. FWIW from what I just gathered looks like Yates is on track for May/June. While Kelly may not be a go on OD with his biceps injury.

I haven’t seen that he’s only getting $5M in 2022. But more importantly what’s his luxury tax hit?

I would look at whoever is left after my signings on offense and pitching and see how much I could spend. It’s much much easier to get good values from bargain hunting RP than RF or SP. But to answer your question I would have looked at buying low on someone like Kirby Yates who signed for 2/$8M or an under the radar guy like John Curtiss who’s still unsigned.

Yet they had holes to fill at RF, 2B and needed another mid rotation SP. The savings at the aforementioned positions should be allocated at those spots instead of throwing big money at Kelly.

Completely agreed on the priorities. I would never throw big money on two BP arms and then try to bargain hunt for RF, 2B and SP. Imagine if the bullpen expenditures took us out of the running for Conforto and we have to settle for Joc or someone worse.

Good analysis.

Even if he’s getting traded, overspending on BP is the reason why we lost Madrigal. We’re being managed by someone who is about a decade or two behind in baseball who insists on throwing all the resources at BP and paying for past performance, while successful orgs invest in scouting and pitching development to develop their BP arms (see Rays’ spending on BP). I’m more ok if we threw the money at someone other than Kelly. Kelly was decent with Dodgers last year but was used in low leverage situations, and yet we’re paying him like an 7th or 8th inning high leverage arm. For comparison, Raisel Iglesias, who is arguably a top 5 reliever in baseball, got $14.5M AAV, which is basically what we’re paying Harrison and Kelly (longer contract and all). Also FWIW the Dodgers who have unlimited payroll could have kept Kelly for $8M this year, yet they declined the option. We’re paying him $17M for next 2 years.

Doesn't it help if he's already 23 (24 in Sept)? In fact he's almost exactly 1 year younger than Cespedes, who signed last January and played stateside. I would think at that age they would rather try to get to majors as early as possible and make league minimum instead of minor league salary.

I'm glad J Rod, Adolfo, and to some extend Sosa are showing some success on the LatAM side. They're the first young J2 signings that have been able to progress past the Low A level since J2 system began. Having those names graduate to the MLB level would be a major win for the LatAM scouting and player development team. Unfortunately on the US prep side success is just as hard to come by. The list of recent prep hitter - Zangari, Curbelo, Abbot, Delgado, Weaver, Bush, Beard, Gladney, Glass, and Krogman have all failed or are failing to develop. When I say they're bad, they have been really bad... sub .200 hitters with 40% + k rate and 1/8 BB/K rates, those are astonishingly bad number. Prospects are a crapshoot and even more so for high schoolers who aren't top 3 round talents. But you would think out of all those names, at least one would have a modicum of success at low minors or at least develop passable plate discipline, but no we have seen no evidence of it at all, whether it's a scouting issue or player development issue is another debate. For Sox to continue a produce a pipeline of prospects who could contribute at MLB level they need to start hitting on some of these players, or at least develop them into org players. They're player scouting/development in general still have a lot of catching up to do to be able to build a continuous pipeline for the team and catch up to some of the better farms in the league.

His comp is Juan Soto… Not too bad.

I might be the high man on Yolbert but he’s a top 10 prospect for me right now, might be closer to top 5. I hope he could tap into that power more consistently.

If Yolbert could keep this up, he should be the starting 2B for the Sox by OD 2023.

It’s early but we might have an interesting prospect in Veras. Big power corner IF with comps to Edwin Encarnacion, and nephew of Fernando Tatis.

Why though? I am not sure if there are many teams that do not spend the 5% overage that’s why I had thought Burke and Gosswein would go for more than what people are projecting. In a way, with this class, I was hoping they didn’t spend the full 5% overage and sign the picks for what they would have gotten on another team. Sox has a tendency to overpay for college signings, their bonus to Gosswein, picks 6-12 which are all college seniors (including some 5th year seniors) only continues that trend. That limited their ability to go after another HS pick like Butler this draft, and would continue to do so going forward.

Lots of gaudy SB numbers in A ball this year due to changes to run game (in low A there is a 2 PO attempt limit per AB). I think his 2019 SB numbers are more indicative of his skills on the base paths.

As you said, the guy crawled his way to the majors after 10 years in the minors, he has dealt with a lot of adversity and setbacks along the way. I don’t think the TLR incident would have been enough to break him and force him to retire. From the BLA article, he’s struggled financially (no surprises given milb pay) and has a large family to feed. There’s gotta be more to the story then the TLR incident to make him step away from the game.

Wow he really did retire…

Yea but if he work himself back to a DH/1B role for a second division team he could be making so much more. Too early for him to call quits on that.

How in the world is Yermin who barely made any money playing professional baseball retiring at 28?

Winner stays at SS in 2024 loser moves to catcher.

Probably due to aggressive assignments in low minors and most of the prospects there hasn’t been doing that well. I am not sure if there will be too many low minor promotions for the key prospects, but I could see one or all of Adolfo, Romy, and Pilkington moving to AAA at some point.