Thanks for the taco Mookie!
I am sad that you will never be a Red Sox player again but wish you continued success.
other names i have posted under: none
You cannot look at things in a vacuum. Mookie was entering his final year of control on a team that needed a rebuild. For a prime player, a rebuild isn’t exactly what you want to be a part of. No wonder Mookie “didn’t want to stay”. Why would he. He found a suitor with pockets just as large who was on the cusp of winning a title. He gets a ring, the Sox get a top 50 prospect and their RF for the next 5 seasons who will be a top or middle of the order hitter. Lamenting the loss of Mookie is one thing, but not seeing the reality and the fact that Bloom did incredibly well here is just sour grapes. 2020 would have sucked for the Sox with Mookie as well. Then, he would have been a FA and you could have gotten a 32nd draft pick rather than what you got this time around. The fact that you found a younger replacement under cheap control who can be an above average to all star level player is a great move. Snagging Downs with him is a winning GM move. Moving half of Price’s bloated contract is an elite move.
As a GM, players are assets. You want to sell high on them, pay them less than their worth and move on before they become negative value. Bloom is an expert at this. The Mookie deal was straight up gold
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
I dont think going all in to sign him was a good idea. These long term contracts are usually team beneficial early and player beneficial late. Even with Mookie, I doubt the Sox would have been title contenders before 2023-2024. They should be focusing on being playoff contenders for 2022, but I doubt they’re title contending at best until 2023. So you’re talking about burning the first two to three seasons of a massive contract for a player without any measurable benefit. New England fans are spoiled and fickle. If you’re okay enough to be in the playoff mix but clearly not a World Series caliber team, they tune out. So the added revenue from keeping mookie likely wouldn’t have equaled the cost of having him.
In short, if you’re in the window of contention, signing Mookie long term works. Kinda like the yanks with Cole. I wouldn’t have liked Cole’s deal unless the Yanks were title contenders. They clearly are and it’s a risk you take. The Sox clearly aren’t and it just isn’t worth the risk. I think the best thing happened for both the player and the team. The team needed to reboot. Mookie needed a long term deal and a title contender. Fans can lament losing Mookie all they want, but I think ownership did the right thing for the franchise. It’s the name on the front that matters.
Not sure if this has been posted here already, but the MLB Players Union has calculated the present value of Mookie's contract at $307 million, because of the deferred money of $115 million.
For whatever reason, this doesn't seem to have affected the AAV of the contract the way it did with Chris Sale's.
But what's painful about this is that in real dollars, the deal Mookie signed is actually only $7 million more than the Red Sox reported offer of $300 million, and it's for 2 more years.
What we'll never know is how much effect the pandemic had on Mookie's decision to take the deal.
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
It also might be possible for ownership to stop DD short of re-signing Betts at all costs because they decided he had spent his allowance.
I know you take the position that Betts’ contract is independent of the ones given to Price, Sale and Eovaldi, but that doesn’t mean Henry felt that way. His attitude might be “Hey I’d have another $362 million to spend, but you already doled that out to Price and Sale”.
I bet JH has a budget and once they got to the tipping point it was a "you can't get there from here" moment.
I wonder if JH spends less time fretting about particular roster moves than we do. To him, the budget is the budget. The ultimate value is the cash that comes in and the market value of the club. He probably doesn't even know who Tristan Casas is.
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
Well, the Sox haven't yet torn down the club. They dealt Mookie because they couldn't re-sign him. They replaced him with a starting RFer and filled an org need at 2b and C. They dumped Hembree and Workman because the team was out of it and neither were in their long term plans.
Until they move Devers or Xander, it's not a tear down IMO.
Henry has always said he is a Basebell Guy. But at the end of the day, he does not want to spend $240mill and miss the post-season. And at some point, pouring more money on to Betts makes a situation where even making the post-season still creates a money-losing venture.
I don't know where Henry stands agaist other owners regarding net worth. But his willingness to spend has been a godsend for this franchise, and if he suddenly reaches that limit and won't allow any more spending - which he has done before - I really can't blame him.
And as Dombrowski is an experienced GM, he needs to know how far he can take an owner's budget. And since he has worked with Henry before, he shouldn't be too surprised when Henry says he has spent enough and needs to dial back. Honestly, if a GM needs more than $180 million to build a winning team, exactly how good is he?