They beat you down huh Moon ? Hang in there only a few days left .I need a break also ,I have us trading Groome and Vaz for JT Realmutto and looking to upgrade Mitch at the break ....hell I have Swihart beating out Sandy for the 2 catchers position and us trading Leon ....I then have us getting Cobb...I need the season to start yesterday I'm going nuts with risky trades lolOriginally Posted by moonslav59
Blake plays 3b tomorrow ...pretty amazing player .
I'll make the boring prediction that none of those moves happen. I think the exciting left this off-season is demoting Holt to AAA
Travis is prospect non grata here at Talksox.
I like his swing too.
"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."
Watched Walden pitch today. Not bad! Ball came out really well. Intriguing!
His velocity is not there yet. Announcers said that some of his pitches were hitting 90-91, but mainly high 80’s. He just allows too many baserunners and gives up too many hits. He is a pitcher who pitches to a 1.4 WHIP which translates into a lot of runs. His outing wasn’t that solid. He was facing their B lineup— no Mauer, Dozier or Sano. He should have buzzsawed through them, but didn’t. So far this spring he has faced mainly B lineups and he has not dominated these bench and minor league hitters. He has struggled.
The King of TalkSox has Spoken.
He's always had a nice swing. It looks like maybe he's found some power.
Too bad he's sqeezed out of 1B right now with $29M spent there this year.
I think that if Sam keeps plugging along, he will get his chance. if his power numbers really start to look like they are for real, he may get his chance sooner as opposed to later. I hope now I get to hear how blocked he is because we have Hanley and Mitch ahead of him with their disastrous contracts and oh how fucked we are because the cliff is coming and our glory daze are numbered and blah blah blah blah - bullshit - think I said that a few times before.
One more thing that I just don't get here, is why are some of our more prolific posters so hot to swing deals and make trades right now. We have a damned good team here. Why not just relax and enjoy watching the growth that we have. I hope that we hold a pat hand just as is. There is 0 not to like about this team.
I get it. You don't like him.
All I said is that he ended up with a solid outing, which he did.
What does Travis getting his shot have to do with the cliff?
If Hanley and Moreland are not performing and Travis is, he will get his chance. If Hanley and Moreland are hitting, Travis will be blocked.
It is a tired refrain for me that is all. I don't believe in the cliff theory. I thought you knew that. Doom and gloom - that is all it says to me. It wasn't directed at you so much as to the people who have consistently been whining about the Ramirez and Moreland contracts. Maybe I have said things differently but I certainly am not the first person to mention this and if it continues to be such a hot topic I will continue to make my feelings known.
Cliff Theory:
Here's the Sox lineup in 2021 without any moves:
Rotation:
Price
EROD
Jay Groome
Bryan Mata
Tanner Houck.
You have two proven MLB starters there. One has been a little lackluster the last few years, on the wrong side of his prime and will be 35 in 2021. Erod is the 2nd best pitcher in this bunch and he could be good by then, but he's also had a hard time staying healthy as a youngster so he could easily be the next Clay giving you 15 great starts a year and then getting injured by the time he's 28. Best case scenario is he's your #1 starter, and while I think he has good potential, he's never going to be as good as Chris Sale.
The next 3 are prospects who have not pitched above low A ball. Yes, they have potential, but even in a system that has a knack for turning out pitching prospects, more fail than succeed. If you're lucky two of those guys are MLB pitchers with one of those two being a servicable reliever.
Without a clean bill of health and an unprecedented hit on prospects that rotation is going to need 3-4 more names in a couple years.
The lineup:
Swihart
S Travis
Pedroia
Devers
Chatham
Aneury Tavarez
Benintendi
Cole Brennan
Michael Chavis
Call me a donny downer but I don't see Pedroia being a healthy contributor at 37 years old. The only guys who have confidence being good at this point in time are Benintendi and Devers. Maybe you get some luck with guys like Swihart turning it around and perhaps a guy like Brennan emerges but you are still likely going to have 4-5 big holes on the field.
The bullpen:
Matt Barnes is the only guy on this team who will still be there. The only real potential I see for a shutdown reliever in our system is Tanner Houck, but that means you also have one more definite hole in the rotation by then as well.
Your payroll then is going to be $133. It could be more like arbitration rises.
By my calculations, you have the capacity to sign 3 big time free agents over the next 3 years to fill these holes. But you will be losing: Sale, Pomeranz, Porcello, Vazquez, Bogaerts, Bradley, Betts, JDM, maybe even Price. You will also be losing Kimbrel, Thornburg, and Smith.
In the minors you might replace one of these guys with this group of talent. You might get real lucky in the draft and get one college guy who can fly up the system in the mold of Andrew Benintendi or Jacoby Ellsbury. But you're talking about replacing most of your team with almost nothing in the pipeline and the money to only add a few premium guys.
The cliff isn't a certainty, no one knows what is going to happen, no one knows how prospects will develop, future trades that will take place, who will sign an extension, and who will drafted. The "cliff" is just a different way of saying things don't look good. Without something extraordinary happening it certainly looks like the team from years 2021-2023 will be a lot less star studed than 2018-2020 will be.
There could also be a huge bounce. The cliff could be a very real thing but you also might have a stacked farm again by the year 2021 and ready to rebuild a monster sometime in the 2022-2024 years. Maybe we win a world series or two over the next couple years, stink for a few years and then are competitors again. We don't really know. But the "cliff" is a real representation of the long term outlook of the system. Yes, we don't really know what is going to happen but talking about the cliff is a much better representation of the future than just shrugging ones shoulders and going "IDK...they'll figure it out" We're looking at the team in 2-3 years and looking at our system and weighing that vs. past precedent of how many prospects pan out and how often FA pans out. Without a lot of good fortune, the team has a big capacity to suck in a few years.
At the end of the day, I'm not going to stress about a game, I'm going to enjoy the next few years, but the concept of a cliff is very real.
Yes, we can afford to bench $29M in 2018 and $6.5M or $29M in 2019, so Travis can get a look-see.
Yes, Travis could be one of those pieces we are looking for to get us beyond "the cliff", but too bad he won't give us any salary relief until 2020, assuming we let HRam vest like some here are unconcerned with.
Well put.
(Note: we might still have JD Martinez in 2021, but only if he's not been doing too well.)
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