sullythered

At least I've seen individual games where Ruiz has decent command and pitches well. Diekman is, well, I don't know what he is, but he aint a major league pitcher. Even if it's a small percentage chance, Ruiz still has the potential to be effective because of his stuff and occasional very good outing. There is zero chance Diekman will improve, because he's been exactly this for many years now.

WTF are you on about? Nobody is every going to want that embarrassment back here. Nobody. If Grifol turned out to be the worst manager in baseball (he won't be, despite whatever the ultra-overreacting sky-is-falling doomsayers wanna say), he would still be a GIANT upgrade over LaRussa. That numbskull was HISTORICALLY terrible. Like, more than once last year, he made a boneheaded decision so inexplicable that it had never happened before in the history of baseball. Like, literally. The Sox would be better off with no manager at all than they were with LaRussa here.

Yoan sells every little ding like he's Shawn Michaels, but I don't see how anybody can call him soft. He's dramatic, but he doesn't miss much time at all. He doesn't "act tough" but the proof is in the pudding.

Historically, $100 mil+ free agents fail to meet expectations (previous career norms) around 2/3rds of the time. Don't get me wrong, I think we should spend ALL the money, I just prefer it spread out on several pretty big contracts as opposed to one or two huge ones

He has been brutal in meaningful games for several years. When the cubs were in the hunt, he was absolute trash, then pitched well when it didn't matter, then got traded to contender, mega-trash. And in four Red Sox postseason a, his ERA was around 4 and a half, never better than 4.15. He is a fraud.

He was visibly faster around the bases and in the outfield when he returned.

I was basically going off the eye test. He clearly worked on his foot speed, he was a much faster player when he returned both around the bases and in the outfield. His jumps are still not awesome, but they're certainly improved. And he's a young guy who works hard. I have no reason to believe that he won't continue to improve.

After returning, Eloy was vastly improved defensively last year.

Yeah, not only doubling down, but now speaking in a demeaning way about your stud pitcher? What a leader of men.

You have to really do some mental gymnastics to make it true, but I'm almost positive the people saying biggest reliever contract ever mean that it's $54 mil guaranteed, even if he pitches three years for the Sox. In that case, he technically has the highest AAV of any reliever ever.

They are definitely not picking up that fourth year. They might as well say it right now. The only reason it's there is to make the AAV look higher than it actually is. This is a 3 year deal for $39 mil. The 1.5 a year each year for a decade is basically nothing, big picture.

I did see the Mr. Show live show. I wanna say they had to call it something different, because like you said, it was years after Mr. Show aired, but I could be wrong about that. I remember laughing my ass off, though.

It feels like every pitcher in professional baseball gets TJ at some point, these days. I was actually happy when I first heard that Cease had "gotten his out of the way" years ago.

Bob Odenkirk is tied with Jim Thome for the nicest celebrity I've ever met, in person. I don't like bothering famous people out in public, but way back in the day, when I was working as a route driver for a spring water company, I got assigned to deliver to both the set and the office for the movie "Let's go to Prison". I didn't expect to see Bob Odenkirk while I was there, but when I saw him in the office like ten feet from where I was setting up a water cooler, I had to dork out to him over my love for "Mr. Show". Not only was he not annoyed that the water guy was bugging him on the set of his film, but he got up and came over and enthusiastically engaged me in conversation for like ten minutes. Awesome, awesome guy (at least on that day). Whenever I see his name mentioned I feel compelled to mention that.

They acquired very raw, super young talent. Basically lottery ticket prospects. That's not at all in line with what they are outwardly saying, that they are going to do a "re-tooling" ala Boston, not rebuild. Then they traded their most valuable piece for guys that, if they're super lucky, two of them pan out, and in maybe four or five years.