The Rockies are adding players, not subtracting. So Gonzalez, whom they turned down offers for at the deadline last season, will probably cost a lot more than one late first round pick.Originally Posted by sk7326
Plus he's not the same hitter away from Coors...
Why would they flip Moreland (which they can't do without his permission until mid-June anyway)? Put Moreland on the bench and move Hernandez to Pawtucket.
As for the "admitting a mistake", not remotely true. GMs make moves based on changing circumstances all the time. That's how Dombrowski signed Fielder. Heck thats how Epstein signed Adrian Beltre. The mistake would be NOT signing someone like Moreland and hoping/waiting to get Bautista in the Nelson Cruz deal with no fallback option in place.
Maybe the market for Bautista will pick up. But if it doesn't, I would expect Dombrowski to see if he can get a Nelson Cruz type deal in place....
I don't think that Bautista is the answer at all but the number of runs they scored last year doesn't paint the whole picture. When you score the runs matters quite a bit as well. You lose Shaw and Papi, you lose 50 + hr's and how many rbi's? I get the fact that we have strengthened the pitching. I hope it is enough.
Losing Shaw should allow for us to gain on offense.
Beni all year.
Young all year.
Leon all year.
Moreland added for RHPs.
I'm not pretending that all of this will make up for the loss of Papi, but with other improvements made to this team, I don't think we need to look for all Papi's numbers to be replaced.
If I had to bet, I'd say we will score withing 50 runs of last year's team. I'd even bet on scoring the same over finishing 100 runs lower.
I'd think he's a pretty good answer if he can be had on a Nelson Cruz type deal. ..
I'm not sure I would count Leon all year as a plus. He certainly fell way off from his hot streak. Also, are you counting on Sandoval as a plus before he shows he can do something good?
Well, if he sucks, Swihart should be better, but seriously, I think Leon and Vaz will be a huge upgrade over this:
.585 Vaz (184 PAs)
.468 Hanigan (113)
.500 Holaday (35)
These 332 PAs were more than Leon's 283 PAs at an .845 OPS.
Think of it this way, if Leon can give us .680 at 400 PAs, and Vaz can give us .650 at 200 PAs, our catcher OPS will be .670, will be an improvement on 2016's .665 total catcher OPS.
Maybe they won't do that, but I certainly think they could. Anything from Swihart should up those numbers.
Hope you are right. if you were trying to sell me something, with this reasoning I would not buy it though. obviously I feel a little differently than most do about Shaw. You might certainly cut into the production that both Papi and Shaw gave us but I would be beyond pleased and surprised if they match it.
I don't think that they are planning to go in this direction but I think that it would be worth a try.
^^This. Offense is not a concern to me, especially in light of the improvement in pitching.
Except, it really doesn't. Not in terms of assessing how good the offense is.
Losing Papi's offense hurts. But the Sox will simply go from being the best offense in the league by 100 runs to merely being one of the best offenses in the league. Or, they could still be the best offense in the league, but only by 20 runs rather than 100.
Shaw did give us some early season production, especially with the RBIs, but I really didn't expect it to continue going forward.
but it just as easily might.
taking that production out of the lineup is a concern with respect to our offense to me.
It should concern any Sox fan.
"Hating the Yankees like it's a religion since 94'" RIP Mike.
"It's also a simple and indisputable fact that WAR isn't the be-all end-all in valuations, especially in real life. Wanna know why? Because an ace in run-prevention for 120 innings means more often than not, a sub-standard pitcher covering for the rest of the IP that pitcher fails to provide. You can't see value in a vacuum when a player does not provide full-time production."
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