NCsoxfan Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 I will preface this by saying I think we made the right move to rebuild last fall, and I'd still make the same decision today. That being said, what if we decided not to rebuild and kept the team together this year? What would our record be today, and would we be in the running for a wild card? Im going to guess they'd be in Minnesota's spot (2nd Wildcard), but not nearly strong enough to win in the playoffs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenksycat Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 About as good of a chance as they had the last 3 years of failing at the same goal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmags Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 Hmm. So let's think about what the roster would look like. I'm going to say had we still been competing, we'd be seeing C - Same, we'd have gone in with Navarro and ended up with Smith/Narvaez. Maybe Castro is a white sox. 1b - Abreu 2b - Lawrie / Yolmer 3b - Frazier RF - Melky CF - Vet retread that almost certainly is worse than Leury. LF - Avi DH - I wanna say someone like Chris Carter would have been signed. Starters - Sale/Q/Rodon/SHields/MiGo. I'm going to go out and saiy Holland was on our radar, and the other option I'd give you is them signing Jason Hammel RP - Benefit of doubt: Robertson/Jones/Kahnle/Swarzak/Jennings So here's my thing. Let's say injuries stay the same. Here are my assumptions: Lawrie gets reinjured Rodon has his injury Jones has his injury Burdi has injury What does that do? How are we different from last year? Pluses: -Our bullpen is better and we likely saw some of BUrdi pre-injury - RF is better than last year - Positional depth includes players like L Garcia/Y Sanches to provide much better production than last year, while Delmonico would eventually replace Carter - Sale/Q Minuses: - When Rodon comes in injured, we see the issues we already had last year. Fulmer would be up pitching and even though he was good to start year, I think that was AAA smoke and mirrors - Behind Fulmer is ... Holmberg? DO we have a different Rule 5 pick? What's behind that? So what is the pace for 2nd wild card...84 wins? I still don't see, even with Avi's year and Jose's, how our lack of SP depth doesn't take this team down. We'd have very bad MiGo stretches, very abd fulmer stretches and I guess a slightly better offense? Maybe the superb bullpen gets us in, I don't know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NCsoxfan Posted September 11, 2017 Author Share Posted September 11, 2017 QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 12:56 PM) Hmm. So let's think about what the roster would look like. I'm going to say had we still been competing, we'd be seeing C - Same, we'd have gone in with Navarro and ended up with Smith/Narvaez. Maybe Castro is a white sox. 1b - Abreu 2b - Lawrie / Yolmer 3b - Frazier RF - Melky CF - Vet retread that almost certainly is worse than Leury. LF - Avi DH - I wanna say someone like Chris Carter would have been signed. Starters - Sale/Q/Rodon/SHields/MiGo. I'm going to go out and saiy Holland was on our radar, and the other option I'd give you is them signing Jason Hammel RP - Benefit of doubt: Robertson/Jones/Kahnle/Swarzak/Jennings So here's my thing. Let's say injuries stay the same. Here are my assumptions: Lawrie gets reinjured Rodon has his injury Jones has his injury Burdi has injury What does that do? How are we different from last year? Pluses: -Our bullpen is better and we likely saw some of BUrdi pre-injury - RF is better than last year - Positional depth includes players like L Garcia/Y Sanches to provide much better production than last year, while Delmonico would eventually replace Carter - Sale/Q Minuses: - When Rodon comes in injured, we see the issues we already had last year. Fulmer would be up pitching and even though he was good to start year, I think that was AAA smoke and mirrors - Behind Fulmer is ... Holmberg? DO we have a different Rule 5 pick? What's behind that? So what is the pace for 2nd wild card...84 wins? I still don't see, even with Avi's year and Jose's, how our lack of SP depth doesn't take this team down. We'd have very bad MiGo stretches, very abd fulmer stretches and I guess a slightly better offense? Maybe the superb bullpen gets us in, I don't know. I think this is a good assessment. Yeah, Minnesota is 5 games over .500 in the second WC place and the Angels 3 games. We'd be banking on a strong bullpen and career years from Sale, Avi, Abreu, Kanhle, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmags Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 Wow I totally forgot about Eaton. I guess the question is whether we'd bank Eaton's injury. I don't know, We may very well have made playoffs with that bullpen. But yeah, basically we'd need hansen/Collins the next year to try and bolster the roster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Sacamano Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 I figure if they were in go-for it mode, they likely dump Garcia and he doesn't end up breaking out with us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmags Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 12:46 PM) I figure if they were in go-for it mode, they likely dump Garcia and he doesn't end up breaking out with us. Yeah I think this is right. Fits with the 2014-16 theme of "in trying to improve, we ended up worse" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eminor3rd Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 Eh, FanGraphs has us projected to finish 64-98, which sounds reasonable. You'd have to add 20 wins to that to get us over .500. Even assuming Sale would have had the same season and assuming we wouldn't have tried to replace Avi, I can't get us 20 wins with him, Quintana, and another half season of our bullpen and Todd Frazier. It looks like we'd probably have another 75 win season, which is like the worst possible outcome for a team not sure where to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmags Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 01:07 PM) Eh, FanGraphs has us projected to finish 64-98, which sounds reasonable. You'd have to add 20 wins to that to get us over .500. Even assuming Sale would have had the same season and assuming we wouldn't have tried to replace Avi, I can't get us 20 wins with him, Quintana, and another half season of our bullpen and Todd Frazier. It looks like we'd probably have another 75 win season, which is like the worst possible outcome for a team not sure where to go. I don't know. Depends on if you assume Eaton is injured. Basically 15 WAR between the big 3. So 5 for the rest. If Eaton is injured and you had released Garcia...then you have another 3 that I doubt is replaced correctly. Probably a negative WAR guy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hi8is Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 It would have been. All bad. At least now it's been bad with rays of good on the horizon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wanne Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 Hard to say who they would have brought in to play center field....maybe Granderson? We'd probably be contending for a WC spot...that's about it IMO. I will say this...I THANK GOD they decided to do it when they did or you wouldn't have guys you do now and your returns would look a ton different if you would have waited til this off-season. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Chappas Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 I thought this from time to time. If everyone had career years I think they go 85-77 make a wild card, lose to the Yankees or Indians/Houston/Boston but never really threaten to be better than this over time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg775 Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 (edited) QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 05:49 PM) About as good of a chance as they had the last 3 years of failing at the same goal. We'd have had a chance with Robin out of the way. However, with Cleveland on this kind of a roll they'd still have won the division and we wouldn't have made the wild card. But with Robin replaced by somebody competent, we may never have rebuilt in the first place. Robin was pretty darn bad. Edited September 11, 2017 by greg775 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenksycat Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 02:51 PM) We'd have had a chance with Robin out of the way. However, with Cleveland on this kind of a roll they'd still have won the division and we wouldn't have made the wild card. But with Robin replaced by somebody competent, we may never have rebuilt in the first place. Robin was pretty darn bad. So going from Robin to Rick added 8+ games to the win column? Interesting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg775 Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 08:55 PM) So going from Robin to Rick added 8+ games to the win column? Interesting I'm not saying it had to be Rick. When we got Robin wasn't Francona available? Remember I was talking about begging Leyland or LaRussa to save us? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenksycat Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 03:03 PM) I'm not saying it had to be Rick. When we got Robin wasn't Francona available? Remember I was talking about begging Leyland or LaRussa to save us? So again, Francona or Leyland or LaRussa were worth 8+ wins alone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OmarComing25 Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 How about a slightly different what if scenario? Say we never went for it in 2015 and continued to rebuild. Would we have been competitive this year? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenksycat Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 04:22 PM) How about a slightly different what if scenario? Say we never went for it in 2015 and continued to rebuild. Would we have been competitive this year? Returns for Sale, Q, & Eaton wouldn't have been as high Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg775 Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 (edited) QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 08:07 PM) So again, Francona or Leyland or LaRussa were worth 8+ wins alone? During a season in the Robin era? Yes. We're talking from Day One preparation in spring training through the regular season. Of course they'd be 8 or more wins better than Robin. Robin was that bad. Inexperienced and pretty much a managing buffoon. Great player? Of course. Manager? Horrific. Edited September 12, 2017 by greg775 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackSox13 Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 QUOTE (Tony @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 03:12 PM) That sums it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenksycat Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 05:09 PM) During a season in the Robin era? Yes. We're taking from Day One preparation in spring training through the regular season. Of course they'd be 8 or more wins better than Robin. Robin was that bad. Inexperienced and pretty much a managing buffoon. Great player? Of course. Manager? Horrific. lol I keep thinking I'll catch a non-insane post from you, but nope you don't break. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg775 Posted September 12, 2017 Share Posted September 12, 2017 QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 10:23 PM) lol I keep thinking I'll catch a non-insane post from you, but nope you don't break. Jenksy u make no sense. OK let's look at it quickly ... Robin: Worst manager in baseball; maybe second worse in Sox history behind Bevington. LaRussa, Leyland, Francona (who we coulda got) ... three of the best in baseball history. Eight games??? Hell yes. Do u realize how bad nice-guy Robin was and how good these three are??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jose Abreu Posted September 12, 2017 Share Posted September 12, 2017 QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 04:23 PM) Returns for Sale, Q, & Eaton wouldn't have been as high I'd argue that the return for Sale would've been much higher Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenksycat Posted September 12, 2017 Share Posted September 12, 2017 QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 10:52 PM) I'd argue that the return for Sale would've been much higher Offset by much lower returns for Q/Eaton. And really, getting the #1 hitting and pitching prospects in baseball in the same trade is a pretty solid return. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OmarComing25 Posted September 12, 2017 Share Posted September 12, 2017 But if we hadn't gone for it in 2015 I don't think we trade those three, we still would probably be looking to build around them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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