Donny Lucy's Avocado Farm

I mean... he serves as an upgrade for the rotation that's for sure, and its not like he would break the bank. He signed for 2/16, right? He would have been a welcome addition all things considered.

How long we gotta wait for the Ivan Nova press release

Rick Hahn is the master of self-actualizing superlatives

That's almost 40m a year for a guy who will have direct impact on 33 or so games out of 162. I don't think even the Yankees are that dumb.

He also would have stood as a MASSIVE upgrade on 4 of the 5 starters from last season.

but... "All he had to do was essentially stay healthy"

The money will be spent..... on someone else's salary dump. That's a yikes from me. For what its worth, a "verified" twitter user whose bio list some Boston baseball stuff tweeted a bunch of eyeballs about an hour ago. All the comments were the typical entitled Red Sox fans "We're getting Cole?!?!?" that you'd expect.

a guy I went to highschool that could barely spell his name pitched in the Independent Leagues, for the Schaumburg Flyers. He could fog a mirror and throw fastballs though.

Sox could always sign Keon Barnum for some power from the left side... https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2019-independent-ball-player-of-the-year-keon-barnum/

Maybe the Sox accidentally signed Frank Castillo instead of Ozuna... and are trying to figure out what happened

I know that they are trying to change the culture as a part of the rebuild, but its just so fucking hard to look the other way on stuff like this. In Rick Hahn's time as GM, there have been more "cutout bin bargains" than signings that actually helped the team. Its just so damn hard to NOT be a pessimistic troll when it comes to this stuff.

dumpster diving... such a white sox thing.

That wasn't my point.

I'll just leave this here Just replace Wheeler with any viable, competent MLB starting pitcher. LITERALLY ANYONE is better than the garbage that occupied the bottom half of the rotation last year.

Machado would have played on the moon if the moon offered more guaranteed money.

I meant to look around the internet, because honestly I wasn't paying much attention to the peripheral reporting on the signing, but did the Sox PR/marketing machine present this in a "See, look what we did?" sort of way to fans when the deal was publicized?

This thread title is really misleading. /sarcasm?

This is a part of the problem. The financials of a contract that for most teams in the league would be business as usual, and the price you pay to "do business" (ie: field a competitive team) - is made out to be a monumental day in Sox franchise history that fans should relish. And its bullshit.

If this was twitter I would retweet this. So quoting you is all I can do here.

All this reminds me of Jermaine Dye signing in the 2004 offseason. JD could be penciled in for 2 or 3 war season and he was coming off of some "meh" seasons in Oakland still coming back from his leg injury. The big question mark from Sox fans back then was "how's his defense gonna play in RF". We all know how that ended for the Sox. Unless the Sox overpay dramatically for Ozuna, I don't see how this isn't a massive upgrade over Ryan Cordell, regardless of what Ozuna's projected WAR and batted ball exit velocity ratings are.

Understood. Sorry if I sounded stuffy.

Right. Because casual fans get the chance to go out and watch thousands of MiLB players and "scout tools" Sometimes stats are all you have to go by.

Ozuna probably doesn't want to sign here because he knows in a season or two, he'll be hitting 9th.

It would be nice to pencil a guy in at RF, and know exactly what to expect. 3 WAR a year is fine by me. Overpay, I don't care. I'm done with the AAAA revolving door. Get it done.