Cueto to Sox (Official)

[southsider2k5]

2 hours ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

Probably not but Rodon's production still needed to be replaced, not just another body thrown at it, if you are genuinely serious about a championship quality rotation. You're not exactly going out on a limb with that prediction.

Then why are we talking about Rodon like he was going to automatically replicate his 21 production?

[raBBit]

6 minutes ago, Harold's Leg Lift said:

The legitimate injuries is why they only paid him $3M last year and didn't want to risk paying him $18M+ this season. 

So your view is his medicals were still sketchy following 2021? Seems like the Giants were comfortable enough with them and frankly their org has earned the benefit of the doubt with veteran arms

Edited April 6, 2022 by raBBit

[ptatc]

Just now, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

Then you tell me what the Sox should have done to replace Rodon's production and Keuchel's downfall and keep in mind that a big contract was out of the question.

Should have acquired another pitcher or 2 instead of an RF. Use the resources where the greater need was. A longer bullpen will help as well.

They don't have many trade pieces without subtracting from the MLB club. Kimbrel was one of them.

[Harold's Leg Lift]

2 minutes ago, raBBit said:

So your view is his medicals were still sketchy following 2021? Seems like the Giants were comfortable enough with them and frankly their org has earned the benefit of the doubt with veteran arms

The Sox know him better than anyone and they didn't trust him at that number.  The Sox had to make a decision back in November and didn't have the benefit of hindsight so it doesn't matter what the Giants or any other team thought.

[VAfan]

Reasons I wanted the Sox to keep Rodon.

1. Best starter on the Sox first half.
2. Best pitcher in AL first half.  
3. Built up to 132 innings last year after 2 years of next to nothing.  Suggests fatigue was his arm problem at the end of last year, not some structural issue.
4. Would have given the Sox 6 legit starters, plus Lopez.   
5. Could have used a 6-man rotation to lighten everyone's load, keep Keuchel from reaching the innings needed to vest him another year, and keep Kopech from being gassed before the playoffs.
6. If someone went down, could just shift to normal 5-man rotation to cover gaps.
7. Left handed
8. Only required 2-year commitment, with opt out after 1 year, if the Sox matched the Giants' offer.  Had a QO been attached to Rodon, would he have gotten even this much? 

At this point, it's water under the bridge.  The Sox are short on quality starters, and without Kelly for now and Crochet for the year, short in the bullpen as well. 

They are going to have to hit their way to a title, it appears.

[raBBit]

Just now, ptatc said:

Should have acquired another pitcher or 2 instead of an RF. Use the resources where the greater need was. A longer bullpen will help as well.

They don't have many trade pieces without subtracting from the MLB club. Kimbrel was one of them.

Yup. Just like last offseason when they acquired Lynn, the number 1 priority should have been a playoff caliber starting pitcher.

If Scherzer/Verlander/Ray were too rich/risky, then they should have gone to Gausman/Stroman or even Rodon. Unacceptable to just completely misjudge the market. Sox play in a great city, should have the highest playoff probability in baseball and a route to winning for years to come. They had a very enticing offer if they could just compete monetarily. They need to stop expecting the market to come down to their internal valuations which have been incredibly low. Especially with the minute potential the team had to acquire this type of player via trade, they should have understood the necessity to strike in FA and convert on a big arm early. I think they tried, but were woefully low on Verlander, Ray and probably others. Seems like they didn't give Rodon much thought or pursuit at all.  

[raBBit]

1 minute ago, Harold's Leg Lift said:

The Sox know him better than anyone and they didn't trust him at that number.  The Sox had to make a decision back in November and didn't have the benefit of hindsight so it doesn't matter what the Giants or any other team thought.

Regardless of their intent, Rodon was not going to accept the QO. Whether they thought he was worth 18.9m or not wouldn't have mattered. 

Plus, while I agree with exercising Kimbrel's option, it's kind of hard to make of sense of being willing to exercise Kimbrel at 16m when he was a disaster and not offer Rodon a few more to fill a serious hole that they ultimately never addressed. 

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

5 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

Then why are we talking about Rodon like he was going to automatically replicate his 21 production?

We aren't . We are talking about him being the best chance at replacing that production given that the Sox were never going to pay for a top of the rotation SP or apparently trade for one given the lack of minor league quality pitchers and not willing to trade Crochet, Vaughn, Sheets. Burger, Montgomery, Kopech or Vera.

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

5 minutes ago, Harold's Leg Lift said:

The Sox know him better than anyone and they didn't trust him at that number.  The Sox had to make a decision back in November and didn't have the benefit of hindsight so it doesn't matter what the Giants or any other team thought.

That's the other old tired argument, giving the Sox FO the benefit of the doubt on personnel decisions. How did that work out for you with Madrigal and Collins?

[ptatc]

4 minutes ago, VAfan said:

Reasons I wanted the Sox to keep Rodon.

1. Best starter on the Sox first half.
2. Best pitcher in AL first half.  
3. Built up to 132 innings last year after 2 years of next to nothing.  Suggests fatigue was his arm problem at the end of last year, not some structural issue.
4. Would have given the Sox 6 legit starters, plus Lopez.   
5. Could have used a 6-man rotation to lighten everyone's load, keep Keuchel from reaching the innings needed to vest him another year, and keep Kopech from being gassed before the playoffs.
6. If someone went down, could just shift to normal 5-man rotation to cover gaps.
7. Left handed
8. Only required 2-year commitment, with opt out after 1 year, if the Sox matched the Giants' offer.  Had a QO been attached to Rodon, would he have gotten even this much? 

At this point, it's water under the bridge.  The Sox are short on quality starters, and without Kelly for now and Crochet for the year, short in the bullpen as well. 

They are going to have to hit their way to a title, it appears.

The problem with a 6 man rotation is that it throws all of the pitchers off for their between start workouts.  Pitchers need to work more to maintain between starts because of the way they throw with maximum effort now. They really can't afford that time between. 

 A better solution would probably to skip a start while continuing the work between or just shorten the innings per start and make the bullpen longer.

[ptatc]

Just now, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

That's the other old tired argument, giving the Sox FO the benefit of the doubt on personnel decisions. How did that work out for you with Madrigal and Collins?

You aren't talking FO here though. It's the medical team.

[Harold's Leg Lift]

3 minutes ago, raBBit said:

Regardless of their intent, Rodon was not going to accept the QO. Whether they thought he was worth 18.9m or not wouldn't have mattered. 

Plus, while I agree with exercising Kimbrel's option, it's kind of hard to make of sense of being willing to exercise Kimbrel at 16m when he was a disaster and not offer Rodon a few more to fill a serious hole that they ultimately never addressed. 

Again we don't know that.  With the uncertainty of the lockout looming Boras could've very easily accepted the QO and with it secure a 600% pay increase and said thank you very much.  

[Balta1701]

38 minutes ago, ptatc said:

Some of this depends on defense vs. offense. Do they sit Grandal for poor defense. Same with Jimenez. That's losing a ton of offense.

Can they afford to pull a pitcher early with who is available?

I think it's more important for good coaching decisions during the season to make sure the pitchers are ready for the postseason. The pitchers ready for the postseason may dictate if someone can be pulled early in the postseason game.

1. No they did not need to sit Grandal for poor defense as their backups were worse. However, they could absolutely have been smarter if they had been better coached.

For an example, lets imagine that Rodon lets several runners on, including a runner on third. Lets also imagine he's out of gas, his fastball isn't where it was 2 innings beforehand. Let's also imagine Correa is up. Given that Grandal sometimes struggles with blocking balls in the dirt, he is unlikely to call for the slider. This sets up a situation where Correa can guess a fastball is coming, and that fastball will be hittable. The right decision was to bring in someone else to face Correa as Rodon had given everything he could give, his fastball was notably slower on the radar gun, and Grandal wasn't going to want to call a breaking ball. This is a situation where you know your players' strengths and weaknesses and make a decision based on them.

2. Pulling Jimenez for defense is a lot different than pulling Engel, bringing in Cesar to pinch hit for him because of "reasons", and moving Leury to RF. With how bad Cesar was offensively the last 2 months, the latter is a completely bizarre decision. 

3. Yes, they actually had plenty of pitchers consistently available. In game 2 where Giolito should have been pulled early, the whole bullpen was rested, in fact you can find my posts in that game thread saying "The one thing we can't do is let Giolito get in trouble and then lose the game, there are too many pitchers available". The only pitcher who shouldn't have been used was Crochet, who was used in mopup duty the night before and was bad enough on back-to-back games that you'd have to be really dumb to bring him into that game early because there's almost no way he'd avoid giving up a run (Narrator: that happened).

4. They also had Lance Lynn available on normal rest for a starter in game 4. Instead of using him, at home, they went to Kopech - 40 hours after he had thrown 45 high stress pitches in game 3, and then once he got out of trouble in one inning, they left him out there for the next inning (Lynn could literally have come in to start a clean inning). Kopech never once threw that many pitches and then threw again on two days rest the whole year, so the decision to leave him out there was just baffling. Even Tony LaRussa said before the game that Kopech was probably the one guy who wasn't available, but Lynn should be ready to go.

In each of these cases, the runs were hung on the pitcher (Giolito in game 2, Crochet in game 2, Kimbrel and Bummer in game 2, Rodon in game 4, Kopech in game 4), and all of these situations were just plain stupid decisions.

[raBBit]

2 minutes ago, Harold's Leg Lift said:

Again we don't know that.  With the uncertainty of the lockout looming Boras could've very easily accepted the QO and with it secure a 600% pay increase and said thank you very much.  

I actually do know that Rodon was not going to accept the QO. He did like Chicago and want to stay but was not going to accept the QO. 

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

12 minutes ago, ptatc said:

Should have acquired another pitcher or 2 instead of an RF. Use the resources where the greater need was. A longer bullpen will help as well.

They don't have many trade pieces without subtracting from the MLB club. Kimbrel was one of them.

Right,  that's where we do agree but the question always has been how do they do that given the no big contracts quandry. Address the SP 1st and then go from there regarding the BP ,RF, and 2nd.

I put myself out there to be disagreed with by saying it should have been Rodon and I give everyone a chance who disagrees the chance to say I told you so when he gets injured. But I sure don't see any real good top of rotation suggestions  that could 've been signed or traded for without either a big multiyear contract or trading the guys I already mentioned.

[bmags]

I feel like the sox would have really benefitted from the Rule 5 draft.

[ptatc]

Just now, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

Right,  that's where we do agree but the question always has been how do they do that given the no big contracts quandry. Address the SP 1st and then go from there regarding the BP ,RF, and 2nd.

I put myself out there to be disagreed with by saying it should have been Rodon and I give everyone a chance who disagrees the chance to say I told you so when he gets injured. But I sure don't see any real good top of rotation suggestions  that could 've been signed or traded for without either a big multiyear contract or trading the guys I already mentioned.

They didn't need top of the rotations guys though. They couldn't really afford the large multi-year deals and with Giolito, Lynn, Cease and Kopech that isn't the best use of resources.  They just needed a dependable 3-4 or 4-5 guy to give them innings to not stress everyone else.

[Harold's Leg Lift]

5 minutes ago, raBBit said:

I actually do know that Rodon was not going to accept the QO. He did like Chicago and want to stay but was not going to accept the QO. 

So you're saying Rick Hahn knew Rodon was going to turn down the QO but decided he just didn't want the 2nd round pick?

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

9 minutes ago, ptatc said:

You aren't talking FO here though. It's the medical team.

It's still up to the Sox FO to make the ultimate decision. Giants seemed to be able to pull the trigger . Would they not have access to some kind of medical info on him before they signed on the dotted line ? Or is that kind of info limited in it's scope  for Free agents but readily available for trades ?

[chitownsportsfan]

8 minutes ago, bmags said:

I feel like the sox would have really benefitted from the Rule 5 draft.

How? they are already dealing with a 40 man crunch.

[ptatc]

Just now, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

It's still up to the Sox FO to make the ultimate decision. Giants seemed to be able to pull the trigger . Would they not have access to some kind of medical info on him before they signed on the dotted line ? Or is that kind of info limited in it's scope  for Free agents but readily available for trades ?

They all have access to the information.  The problem is the records only show much. Imaging shows structure but not necessarily function. For example, they've done studies of people wit no history of back pain and did MRI on them. Depending on the study 40-60% we're diagnosed with an disc herniation.

Working with someone on a daily basis tells you more than medical records.

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

5 minutes ago, ptatc said:

They didn't need top of the rotations guys though. They couldn't really afford the large multi-year deals and with Giolito, Lynn, Cease and Kopech that isn't the best use of resources.  They just needed a dependable 3-4 or 4-5 guy to give them innings to not stress everyone else.

Aren't guys like Stroman who apparently didn't like LaRussa or Gausman who signed for 5yrs /$110M from the 2 names I just saw mentioned by someone else. I need names and numbers just not a dependable vague 3,4,5.

[raBBit]

9 minutes ago, Harold's Leg Lift said:

So you're saying Rick Hahn knew Rodon was going to turn down the QO but decided he just didn't want the 2nd round pick?

I am saying that Rodon was not going to accept the QO. Not anything about Hahn but obviously it seems like Hahn thought he may take it given they didn't offer it. The Sox, like in many other cases with other players this offseason, seemed to have underestimated Rodon's market and didn't want to risk the 18.9m that they didn't think he'd get. It was the wrong call.

[ptatc]

3 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

Aren't guys like Stroman who apparently didn't like LaRussa or Gausman who signed for 5yrs /$110M from the 2 names I just saw mentioned by someone else. I need names and numbers just not a dependable vague 3,4,5.

Any pitcher that pitched 150 innings or more last year. I don't know who was available for traded, Manea was obviously. 

[Greg Hibbard]

2 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

We're going to be quite fortunate to have ONE elite starter at the rate we're going.  But who knows, maybe a fresh-armed Lynn will end up being a blessing in disguise. 

And still not seeing an easy path towards acquiring an ACE at the trade deadline due to our payroll and dearth of minor league impact talent. 

I get it, but I'm so tired of the payroll argument we make on this board to explain away the position of our ownership.

Why not Sheets or Burger for an ace?