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Worst off-season ever?!?


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Just now, TaylorStSox said:

The relievers were always sign and trade for spects at deadline moves. That was obvious the moment those moves happened. Even if Machado signed yesterday, this team still doesn't compete for the playoff for at least another year. 

No one ever argued that point.

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4 minutes ago, TaylorStSox said:

So why even bring up the relievers? They're trade bait regardless of anything. 

Colome sure.  But Herrera is on a 2-year, $18 million dollar deal.  That is a bit pricey and his velocity supposedly dipped last year.  Colome and Herrera will earn $16 million combined this year that Hahn could have included in his Machado offer.

Edited by Harper2Sox
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5 minutes ago, fathom said:

Don’t forget bailing out the Indians by taking all of Alonso’s deal.  Would he even get a major league contract if he was a FA?  How about Josh Harrison signing for less than McCann today?

I think Alonso would have gotten a major league deal but no where near $9 million.  .740 OPS last year.  He sure hit like a backup first baseman.

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This may not be the worst ever, but it’s a colossal failure. Jay and Alonso acquisitions are worthless now. Fans are going to boo them as they are a daily reminder we did not get Manny. Hahn gets a F. I have zero confidence Sox will do any better signing guys going forward, they are not committed to adapting to current style of negotiating.

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51 minutes ago, fathom said:

Don’t forget bailing out the Indians by taking all of Alonso’s deal.  Would he even get a major league contract if he was a FA?  How about Josh Harrison signing for less than McCann today?

Worst offseason by far. What a joke. And the sad thing is, nothing will change. Jerry doesn't give a shit

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23 hours ago, Harper2Sox said:

Please name a realistic target that will be better than two 26 year old future Hall of Famers with minimal competition for their services.  I will wait patiently for your response.  This was the best offseason to spend big on a free agent.

Neither of these guys are HOF'ers. Machado has a career OPS in the low 800s. He's an allstar caliber player but you guys act like we missed on a transformative like Trout or Arod. We didn't.

There was a time when I would have said go out and sign the 5 WAR guy who may have the potential to give you 7 WAR in a good year for big money but in todays market that isn't where the value is. The value right now is with the veterans due to a combination of a bunch of things. The point is I'm confident there will be somebody worth signing when we are ready to be competitive whether that is a huge splash guy like Harper or Machado or more of a bunch of 3-4 WAR veterans to fill holes.

When you have guys like Grandal and Moose being forced to settle for one year deals. When you have Pollock signing for 60 million. Why would you even want to tie up Machado or Harper in a record breaking contract? Where is the upside when salaries are at best flat right now?

 

 

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29 minutes ago, wrathofhahn said:

Neither of these guys are HOF'ers. Machado has a career OPS in the low 800s. He's an allstar caliber player but you guys act like we missed on a transformative like Trout or Arod. We didn't.

There was a time when I would have said go out and sign the 5 WAR guy who may have the potential to give you 7 WAR in a good year for big money but in todays market that isn't where the value is. The value right now is with the veterans due to a combination of a bunch of things. The point is I'm confident there will be somebody worth signing when we are ready to be competitive whether that is a huge splash guy like Harper or Machado or more of a bunch of 3-4 WAR veterans to fill holes.

When you have guys like Grandal and Moose being forced to settle for one year deals. When you have Pollock signing for 60 million. Why would you even want to tie up Machado or Harper in a record breaking contract? Where is the upside when salaries are at best flat right now?

 

 

Follow baseball much?

Machado at 26 years old has a career .822 OPS, 4x All-Star, 2x Gold Glover, and a career WAR of 33.8.

Harper at 26 years old has a career .900 OPS, Rookie of the Year, 6x All-Star, 2015 MVP, and a career WAR of 27.4.

Harold Baines, Hall of Fame DH, has a career .820 OPS, 6x All-Star, zero Gold Gloves, and a career WAR of 38.7.

Unless Machado and Harper both get hit by a bus tomorrow, they will both eventually be in the Hall of Fame.  Also, while I agree with you on Grandal, Moustakas is not a very good player at all and I wouldn’t be excited about giving Pollock a 4 year deal at age 31.

Edited by Harper2Sox
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This offseason, in light of what has happened, has been a complete disaster.  Every move looks bad in context.

Catchers.

Letting Smith go for nothing, ok not too terrible, but he was a catcher that could hit and frame (if you dig that sort of thing) and was a guy to whom the pitchers seemed to like throwing.  Let him go for nothing.

Trading Narvaez for Colome.  Ok, in a vacuum, I like this move.  I liked it at the time.  Narvaez is a decent offensive catcher.  Great discerning eye at the plate, decent hitter, little pop, with some serious deficiencies defensively.  That apparently the Sox didn't know how to fix.  I like Colome.  Good pitcher, back end guy, experienced, good stuff.  I like him.  He could help a decent team.  But on a team like this, well he is trade bait and that is pretty much it.  What makes this move bad, in my opinion, is that his contract is basically market rate.  For his rate (or pretty close) you could have just signed Joe Kelly, Cody Allen, Soria or for a little more, Ottavino.  

SIgned McCann.  I would certainly prefer either of the other guys to McCann.  Who they are paying more than either of the other two.  Seems like a net loss.

1B --

Brought in Alonso, let Davidson go.  No big deal with Davidson.  But Alonso, well makes no sense.  You helped a division rival shed payroll, you traded away a guy that at least was maybe something, and you brought in a guy that you frankly don't need.  What was that about not bringing in stop gaps?  I think I heard something...  Oh yeah and Justin Bour, who is superior in what, every way, signed for 2.5 million and Matt Adams signed for 4.

2B -- Nothing.  If Moncada stays there.  Fine.  If you end up needing to move him to 3rd, there could have been some attractive options.  But that is stretching it a bit. 

SS-- You got Tim.

3B--- hmmm, I seem to think something happened here.

OF-- Jay, fine as a 4th OFer. but if it weren't for the Sox, he probably would have gone to camp on a minor league deal.  There were a couple of guys they could have signed that would have made a decent impact who they didn't.  

Pitchers

Colome was already discussed.

Herrera is much the same boat.  I like him, on a different team, he helps.  Good reliever.  Market rate, fine.  But what does he do for a 100 loss team?  Trade bait?  Maybe.  He will help, but it won't matter.

Nova.  Yeesh.  For less, you could have had guys like Marco Estrada, Wade Miley, Tyson Ross, Mike Fiers, Derek Holland, Matt Shoemaker, Trevor Cahill and Lance Lynn.  Only Lynn and Fiers got multi year deals.  If you need a guy to eat innings on a bad team, you don't need to trade for a guy making 9 million, which is market rate, or above.

 

Pretty much every move has gone badly.  Every move has a simple move that would have been better.  If they had gotten Manny (or Harper, but I'm not holding out hope) moves like Colome and Herrera make sense.  Jay and Alonso make sense.  But without one of those guys, it is a disaster.  Everything went awry.  The Whale is what pulled this together.  Now it is just wasting what little money this team had on guys won't play any role when the team is good, and won't do much when they aren't. 

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1 hour ago, wrathofhahn said:

Neither of these guys are HOF'ers. Machado has a career OPS in the low 800s. He's an allstar caliber player but you guys act like we missed on a transformative like Trout or Arod. We didn't.

There was a time when I would have said go out and sign the 5 WAR guy who may have the potential to give you 7 WAR in a good year for big money but in todays market that isn't where the value is. The value right now is with the veterans due to a combination of a bunch of things. The point is I'm confident there will be somebody worth signing when we are ready to be competitive whether that is a huge splash guy like Harper or Machado or more of a bunch of 3-4 WAR veterans to fill holes.

When you have guys like Grandal and Moose being forced to settle for one year deals. When you have Pollock signing for 60 million. Why would you even want to tie up Machado or Harper in a record breaking contract? Where is the upside when salaries are at best flat right now?

 

 

Machado is ranked just outside the top 25 of all time based on total WAR by age 26.  

 

Lol, what?

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26 minutes ago, turnin' two said:

This offseason, in light of what has happened, has been a complete disaster.  Every move looks bad in context.

Catchers.

Letting Smith go for nothing, ok not too terrible, but he was a catcher that could hit and frame (if you dig that sort of thing) and was a guy to whom the pitchers seemed to like throwing.  Let him go for nothing.

Trading Narvaez for Colome.  Ok, in a vacuum, I like this move.  I liked it at the time.  Narvaez is a decent offensive catcher.  Great discerning eye at the plate, decent hitter, little pop, with some serious deficiencies defensively.  That apparently the Sox didn't know how to fix.  I like Colome.  Good pitcher, back end guy, experienced, good stuff.  I like him.  He could help a decent team.  But on a team like this, well he is trade bait and that is pretty much it.  What makes this move bad, in my opinion, is that his contract is basically market rate.  For his rate (or pretty close) you could have just signed Joe Kelly, Cody Allen, Soria or for a little more, Ottavino.  

SIgned McCann.  I would certainly prefer either of the other guys to McCann.  Who they are paying more than either of the other two.  Seems like a net loss.

1B --

Brought in Alonso, let Davidson go.  No big deal with Davidson.  But Alonso, well makes no sense.  You helped a division rival shed payroll, you traded away a guy that at least was maybe something, and you brought in a guy that you frankly don't need.  What was that about not bringing in stop gaps?  I think I heard something...  Oh yeah and Justin Bour, who is superior in what, every way, signed for 2.5 million and Matt Adams signed for 4.

2B -- Nothing.  If Moncada stays there.  Fine.  If you end up needing to move him to 3rd, there could have been some attractive options.  But that is stretching it a bit. 

SS-- You got Tim.

3B--- hmmm, I seem to think something happened here.

OF-- Jay, fine as a 4th OFer. but if it weren't for the Sox, he probably would have gone to camp on a minor league deal.  There were a couple of guys they could have signed that would have made a decent impact who they didn't.  

Pitchers

Colome was already discussed.

Herrera is much the same boat.  I like him, on a different team, he helps.  Good reliever.  Market rate, fine.  But what does he do for a 100 loss team?  Trade bait?  Maybe.  He will help, but it won't matter.

Nova.  Yeesh.  For less, you could have had guys like Marco Estrada, Wade Miley, Tyson Ross, Mike Fiers, Derek Holland, Matt Shoemaker, Trevor Cahill and Lance Lynn.  Only Lynn and Fiers got multi year deals.  If you need a guy to eat innings on a bad team, you don't need to trade for a guy making 9 million, which is market rate, or above.

 

Pretty much every move has gone badly.  Every move has a simple move that would have been better.  If they had gotten Manny (or Harper, but I'm not holding out hope) moves like Colome and Herrera make sense.  Jay and Alonso make sense.  But without one of those guys, it is a disaster.  Everything went awry.  The Whale is what pulled this together.  Now it is just wasting what little money this team had on guys won't play any role when the team is good, and won't do much when they aren't. 

It was always gonna be Machado/Harper or bust. We got bust with a capital B. 

2019 is gonna be another tank, err cough cough, developmental year. Guys like Jay and Alonso have no business on this roster and will hopefully be traded and/or released soon.  Herrera and Colome can hopefully be flipped in July for more Cordell, Mederios, Clarkin type prospects. 

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11 hours ago, OneDog847 said:

It was always gonna be Machado/Harper or bust. We got bust with a capital B. 

2019 is gonna be another tank, err cough cough, developmental year. Guys like Jay and Alonso have no business on this roster and will hopefully be traded and/or released soon.  Herrera and Colome can hopefully be flipped in July for more Cordell, Mederios, Clarkin type prospects. 

Yeah, which makes the failure that much worse, and more glaring.  They made all these supplementary moves, then they cheaped out, and were out maneuvered when it came to the most important part of it.   

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14 hours ago, BackDoorBreach said:

Machado is ranked just outside the top 25 of all time based on total WAR by age 26.  

 

Lol, what?

 

14 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

He was 22nd for fWAR, all-time under age 25.

 

Machado is great and I disagree with everyone who acts like he isn't worth the deal he got... but I keep seeing these stats and I think they are a little misleading.  On the radio, Bernstein was even listing guys with less WAR than Machado at age 26 and they were all-timers.  

Correct me if I'm wrong, but using WAR in this context is essentially like referencing a counting stat, no?  So a guy who debuts super early like Machado and is good immediately will have a historically high WAR.  A guy like Chipper Jones really didn't start playing in MLB until he was 23.  So he'll have 3 years of WAR compared to 7 on these lists.

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On 2/20/2019 at 8:51 PM, Harper2Sox said:

Yep, if nothing else happens, it will likely be one of the worst.  How many times did Hahn say he wouldn’t be signing stop-gaps and only be adding players that can expedite the rebuild on a long-term basis?  He signed all the stop-gap guys and missed out on his single long-term target.  Oops.  How can anyone trust a word Hahn says anymore?

Ivan Nova - $9 million (1 year)
Yonder Alonso - $9 million (hopefully only 1 year)
Kelvin Herrera - $9 million (likely 2 years)
Alex Colome - $7.325 million (likely 2 years)
Jon Jay - $4 million (1 year)
James McCann - $2.5 million (1 year)

Manny Machado - WHIFF!

I wish one of the beat guys or reporters would at least as him about this.

"So Rick, earlier in the offseason you said no stop gaps would be signed/traded for and your focus would only be on adding players that helped the club long term.  You've sine added almost 10 veterans on short term deals and spent close to $50M on them, and have yet to add a player that projects to help this club beyond 2020.  Please explain."

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22 hours ago, Harper2Sox said:

Follow baseball much?

Machado at 26 years old has a career .822 OPS, 4x All-Star, 2x Gold Glover, and a career WAR of 33.8.

Harper at 26 years old has a career .900 OPS, Rookie of the Year, 6x All-Star, 2015 MVP, and a career WAR of 27.4.

Harold Baines, Hall of Fame DH, has a career .820 OPS, 6x All-Star, zero Gold Gloves, and a career WAR of 38.7.

Unless Machado and Harper both get hit by a bus tomorrow, they will both eventually be in the Hall of Fame.  Also, while I agree with you on Grandal, Moustakas is not a very good player at all and I wouldn’t be excited about giving Pollock a 4 year deal at age 31.

I'm not going to play around with a bunch of straw mans.

The last three years Machado is 13th in league in combined WAR.

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2016&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=21,d

And in case I wasn't clear in my other post I am not saying Machado isn;t an allstar. He's certainly better then Harper because he at least profiles to continue to play the field moving forward but he just got paid 300 million a record breaking deal. It's hard to do that unless you are Arod. Or someone like Trout if he was allowed to hit FA. It's hard to do that for a player who averages 4-5 WAR most seasons. Who has a average BR of 4.8. 5.2 per 650 PA games BR.

Arod before he hit FA averaged 7.1 WAR per 650 PA. I don't think it's sort of unreasonable if you are going to pay someone a record breaking deal and make them the highest paid ever they be the best player in baseball or at least in that conversation consistently. Machado isn't. He may in a good year.

As fans noone really cares about budgets and whatever but still I saw people say offer him 400. Offer both Machado and Harper 400 million. I'd ask why? Where is this urge necessary to lock these guys up on a 10 year deal? The market trends do not indicate there being huge salary increases in the coming years. So what if Machado is 26? This team won't compete for at least two years anyways. There won't be a 28-29 year guy in 2021 that is available?

As far Baines goes first of all it's a different era in 1980 when Baines entered the league and he played until his 40's. Machado is what 26 lets see him get to 30 first and if he does get to 40 then you can compare their career numbers.

 

Edited by wrathofhahn
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23 hours ago, Harper2Sox said:

Follow baseball much?

Machado at 26 years old has a career .822 OPS, 4x All-Star, 2x Gold Glover, and a career WAR of 33.8.

Harper at 26 years old has a career .900 OPS, Rookie of the Year, 6x All-Star, 2015 MVP, and a career WAR of 27.4.

Harold Baines, Hall of Fame DH, has a career .820 OPS, 6x All-Star, zero Gold Gloves, and a career WAR of 38.7.

Unless Machado and Harper both get hit by a bus tomorrow, they will both eventually be in the Hall of Fame.  Also, while I agree with you on Grandal, Moustakas is not a very good player at all and I wouldn’t be excited about giving Pollock a 4 year deal at age 31.

Machado is awesome but he is absolutely not a guaranteed HOF'er. 

Sizemore and Chavez are two guys you can look at - no baseball much? Sizemore was better his first four years than Manny. Chavez started out on fire. Nothing is guaranteed. 

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22 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Machado is awesome but he is absolutely not a guaranteed HOF'er. 

Sizemore and Chavez are two guys you can look at - no baseball much? Sizemore was better his first four years than Manny. Chavez started out on fire. Nothing is guaranteed. 

Basically, the “bust” (meaning C.Crawford, Heyward, Sizemore, Chavez outcomes) rate of the players who started out on HoF trajectories in the last 20-30 years (based on before age 25/26 numbers) was around 10/26...just a notch under 40%.

Edited by caulfield12
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Crawford and Heyward weren't shocking to me. Sizemore was all injuries so that just happens - kid was an animal. Chavez was kind of like Heyward - lot of defensive value.

11 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Basically, the “bust” (meaning C.Crawford, Heyward, Sizemore, Chavez outcomes) rate of the players who started out on HoF trajectories in the last 20-30 years (based on before age 25/26 numbers) was around 10/26...just a notch under 40%

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