steveno89

Worst case the Sox will still control Eloy for the next seven seasons. I'm not at all worried about an extension until he proves himself at the mlb level + remains healthy.

Really depends on which Cole shows up in 2019. If he puts up another 6+ WAR season he is ticketed for $130-150 million over 5-6 years. If he puts up a 3 WAR season then I think he's getting 4-5 years and $80-100 million.

Qualifying offers can tend to hurt free agent's value as well. I wonder if no QO was attached how the market for Kimbrel/Keuchel would be.

We'll all be keeping an eye on Madrigal as he starts the season in high A ball. I fully expect him to finish the second half of the season in AA though.

After what just happened this offseason, I have serious doubts about our ability to make big additions in future offseasons as well. If we weren't going to be players for 26 year old stars, why would we pony up for 29-30 year old guys? It very well may be a year early, but you cannot control when premium talent will be available for only money. Using our financial flexibility to sign elite players should absolutely be a large part of our rebuilding effort. I believe they did try hard for Machado, and felt they had the best offer until the Padres blew them out of the water at the last minute. Fault still lies with the organization for not getting it done.

I do not see Keuchel getting 5 years at this point. a 3-4 year deal is far more likely. Qualifying offer hurts his value.

The difficulty is that in reality you are dealing with real money. It’s easy for fans to suggest taking on $18 million in salary to net prospects, but in practice is a much more difficult to thing to sell ownership on.

It really can go either way. The upside tends to be higher with elite high school prospects, but stars can come from the college ranks as well. I worry about the Sox ability to develop a high end HS position prospect as well, especially due to lack of track record. The last one they tried was Hawkins, who failed miserably.

After a disastrous 2018 season, I have dropped expectations considerably for Hansen. He should begin the season as a starter, but I think he might figure things out enough to be a reliever. Too soon to write him off, but he's in dangerous territory

The only real knocks on Vaughn are the position, 1B, is tough to draft that high unless the bat is special...which his might very well be. Teams will stop pitching to him if he keeps this up

Sox probably offered 7 years, $200 million...but if every incentive is hit and vesting options reached the total value could be $350 million Or some BS. Most likely the Sox did not even submit a bid

Even if the rebuild was done in good faith, which I still believe it was, this offseason has been terrible from a PR standpoint. The organization has ZERO excuse to cry poor and not be aggressively bidding on Machado/Harper. They have enjoyed one of the lowest payrolls in the league the past few seasons, and have virtually nothing on the books moving forward. They knew and targeted this offseason for two years and failed miserably to land a single free agent of note that can help medium to long term. I expect the response to be a crucifixion

Agreed. When a pitching prospect is ready I strongly believe they should be called up to the majors. The exception is with elite position player prospects like Vlad Jr, Eloy, etc. where the additional season of control down the line is very important. Predicting where a pitcher will end up in 6 seasons is impossible.

We need to see strides from Giolito, Rodon, Lopez in the rotation otherwise we are essentially starting from scratch regarding starting pitching. Nova is a stopgap band-aid at this point. I never said that I am using wins and losses as my sole metric either. At some point the franchise needs to turn the corner and try to win games instead of tanking.

If the Sox lose 100 games this year, we all should have grave concerns about the rebuild. That would mean our young players struggled to produce and 2021 contention would be in serious jeopardy.