By that logic, the Sox should not have signed Napoli, Victorino, Drew, Dempster and Uehara after the dismal 2012 season. What was BC thinking?Originally Posted by moonslav59
By that logic, the Sox should not have signed Napoli, Victorino, Drew, Dempster and Uehara after the dismal 2012 season. What was BC thinking?
At that time, I felt those moves were a "halfway" attempt at trying to look just competitive enough to keep the fans in the loop. (Yes, I have been wrong many times before, and could be again on this position.)
I don't see us as having as good a foundation as that 2013 team before those moves, and we will likely have to focus on signing 5-6 mid range (or even lower) players, depending on our spending allowance, this winter. I'm sure some of the signings will be stop-gap signings and not about 2022 and beyond, and I'm not against the idea.
We do need someone to start some games for us in 2020, so had we signed Morton, I'd have been okay with the idea, but I'd rather we look at signing 2 year players[ that have higher upside in 2022. My guess is, we sign a bunch of one year deals, so my point may be moot.
BTW, I really disliked the Dempster signing and felt the Vic signing was needed but a year too long. I loved the Napoli and Uehara deals. I disliked the Drew deal, since as you know, I was a big Iggy fan.
When you say it's gonna happen now
When exactly do you mean?
The thing is, fans and the media always say things like a team is “1-2 away from competing” and I have no idea why. Nearly every team in MLB will win at least 40% of their games and less than 60% of their games, and the teams that fall outside that range don’t do so by much. So any team can become competitive in one season if they make the right moves. None of them are really that far removed from it.
And in some cases, the most limiting factor isn’t what you have or need, just how much you can spend...
I get that, and injuries or lack of injuries play a big part of the equation, too.
Our 2019 team looked pretty damn good, on paper. It was very close to the 2018 opening day roster (pre-Eovaldi & Pearce).
It wasn't that I felt we had no chance at winning it all in 2013, and I was thrilled with the Dodger trade that dumped CC, which allowed us the budget space to sign all those mid level free agents. I just felt we needed a better top of the rotation, and signing guys like Dempster never thrilled me. BTW, we may not have won without the Peavy acquisition. Lackey's situation was hard to value on opening day, and Buch was always a wild card (12-1 that year).
I'm not for giving up on 2021, but I do not think it's unreasonable to prefer any signings that are beyond 1 year deals to be for players that look to be just as good or better in 2022 and beyond.
(Maybe Morton will be.)
When you say it's gonna happen now
When exactly do you mean?
I think it's more frequent to hear or read it like 1-2 away from contending, or even winning it all. "Competing" may be just winning as many as you lose. Sox fans that liked the Mookie trade give two reasons (besides that he's too greedy, and Henry would never be able to afford another good player again): we got prospects back before he walked for nothing, and besides, "the Sox weren't goin anywaa anyways". But Dodger fans will go to their graves knowing Betts was the final piece that put them over the top in 2020.
I agree it's all about spending (though as much by how you spend, and not just how much). The '03 Sox were a Schilling, Foulke and Cabrera away from a ring, but the '12 Sox needed a Koji, Vic, Napoli, Drew and Gomes to compete/contend/conquer. The '18 Sox, as it turned out, needed a bit more than a Cashner, Owings and Gorkys Hernandez to repeat...
It's very hard to repeat in MLB, hasn't happened in the last 20 years.
It's easy to see in hindsight that when we won in 2018 we were at the end of our window. We were maxed out payroll-wise. Our ace was pitching with a damaged arm. Porcello was about at the end of his good years, and Price's durability was iffy.
Plus we had no good young pitching ready in the system.
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.
True, but we were looking at having full seasons from Eovaldi, Pearce, ERod and Sale and a Devers getting one year closer to peak prime.
Yes, Price's durability was iffy, but didn't we feel better about him after his 2018 playoff performance than ever before?
A step down may have been expected, but winning 108 games in 2018 allowed us to "step down" to 98 or 100 wins and still be a top contender.
I always felt like "the window" would end after 2019 or 2020- maybe even 2022.
When you say it's gonna happen now
When exactly do you mean?
Well, I was feeling pretty good at the start of 2019, and the season was certainly a bit of a shock.
Maybe you can attribute some of it to the 'hangover' effect. When a team goes all out and reaches their goal, a letdown can follow. Needless to say, Cora was criticized for how he handled spring training and the start of the season.
I liked the Eovaldi and Pearce signings, but they were total writeoffs.
We didn't know about Sale's health, and it turned out that all fears were justified. I think that was a huge factor, losing a guy that good and such a great competitor.
I think you can chalk most of it up to two words - S**t happens.
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.
Very true. The injury and durability issues came up harshly in 2019, but I don't think, even in hindsight, the window should have closed after 2018.
I think the whole "plan" was to build up a super team with a 5-6 year window, expecting a rebuild of some sort afterwards...maybe not expecting a "cliff" but knowing some sort of regrouping would be needed by 2022, at the latest.
IMO, part of Henry's loss of faith, or whatever we want to call it, in DD was that "the window" we invested so much into, only lasted 3 years- not 5+ years.
What a great 3 years that was, though!
When you say it's gonna happen now
When exactly do you mean?
So how do you explain the disappointing results in 2019?
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.
We were going into that season with five good veteran starting pitchers. Two of them were coming off great postseasons. Another was a former Cy Young, while a fourth was just coming into his own. The ace wasn't 100 percent, but at the time of his contract extension was still on a Hall of Fame trajectory.
Little did we know that all but Rodriquez -- the youngest, and least-used the previous October -- were burned out to some extent from the title run. Maybe the notorious hangover effect has always been more like a pedal-to-the-metal effect...
The injury and durability issues came up harshly.
I don't think that was expected to the extreme it occurred.
Also, we had too many unexpected declines:
While a decline was probably likely from Betts, after that great 2018 season, a 163 point OPS drop was rather extreme.
Pearce fell off a cliff, but the real cliff diving came with our pitching staff.
Only ERod improved his WAR, among our top innings pitchers:
Sale 6.2> 3.6
Porcello 2.4> 1.8
Price 2.4> 2.3
Eovaldi 1.5>-0.3 (and Nathan was not with the 2018 team all year!)
Much blame was directed towards our 2019 pen, but the SP'ers saw a huge decline. I don't think this sharp decline was to be expected.
Team SP'er WAR decline: 14.3 to 10.9 (65 less IP'd, too)
Team RP'er WAR (even without Kimbrel) 4.0 to 5.6 (78 more IP'd)
When you say it's gonna happen now
When exactly do you mean?
And Cora really did push the starting pitchers that postseason, using them in relief appearances to bolster the bullpen. It worked great, but it had to take a toll.
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.
The bullpen struggles were directly a product of the rotation struggles. That, and the gap at the back end of missing Kimbrel dominance (which began the previous autumn).
But the contrast between '18 and '19 wasn't just with the arms. As I posted about a week ago, it was with the legs, too. A hustling, aggressive offense that stole 125 bases in '18 returned basically the same starting lineup in '19... and only swiped 68. Why?
This. For those who blame '19 on Spring Training "preparation", I always cover for Cora... because I think he was covering for his players -- who had yet to recover.
Such a toll may be why it's so hard to repeat. It may explain, for example, why only one team in the National League has won back-to-back titles in 100 years: the '75/'76 Reds, who featured more Hall of Fame caliber regulars than any club in the past half century.
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