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Sosa could be Jeff Kent. I mean, probably not, but his “bad defense” is definitely overstated. He’s a better defender than former top prospect Jackson Holliday. His inability to lay off literally every pitch can be fixed. It’s worked for a bunch of other guys. To me, he’s shown more than (doesn’t) Chase.

"Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic writes that the A’s proposed a four-year deal to HaSeong Kim, $48MM total. It’s unclear if that would have included any opt-out opportunities, though it seems safe to assume they wouldn’t have risked a four-year commitment that allowed him to opt out after just one season. The A’s have a franchise shortstop in Jacob Wilson but are looking for second and/or third base help." mlbtraderumors.com At least it's a somewhat intriguing bargain rate offer. Kim betting here that he can earn a lot more than $28 million over the next three seasons after one year with ATL, presumably at SS.

I think you're making a good case for him except the OBP is just terrible. You e got to be more than a . 295 OBP when your BA is .265 You're right the Sox cant afford to trade his power. And as much as they want to improve defensivelyand get more left handed on the infield they still need power and guys to trade. That might mean giving Sosa and Vargas their AB's and hope the bats and gloves of both show enough progress to be worth more than they are now. All of the young position players need to hit the ground running. Cannot get off to an atrocious April start again. Robert, Teel, Vargas, Sosa, C. Montgomery, Quero, Meidroth, Baldwin need to hit the ground running. Pitchers have to do their part too. It'd be nice to get some quality starts and rack up some saves.

There's no way to get anything besides the equivalent of Brayan Ramos OR Oscar Colas at their high points. #80-120 prospects at their high points. And that's likely sending along $8-10 million. Just for taking his contract on, you're lucky to get a subscription to Netflix for one year out of it. Not to mention the price to fully insure the contract on top of that, adding another $2-3...of Lloyd's of London will even take that on that kind of risk. If a compensation pick was out there in the 30s to add into the current draft pool pot, that's probably more valuable and even buys Getz more time if he takes a prep player.

So its a more expensive, proven in Japan version of Tim Elko. Except he's LH and Elko is RH . Elko should go to Japan. He might be a star there. I know I'm cheapening his value considering he was a superstar in Japan while still very young. Ill be interested in following him since we are hearing scouts call him a boom or bust kind of guy. I think its more likely he'll hit a lot of bombs and K a lot and be neither a bust nor a boom. He'll be worth his contract. Im highly skeptical the Sox get him because money as usual even if he signs a fairly reasonable contract. Sox arent doing reasonable if it involves 3+ years over $50M. There's no way JR wants to pay anyone during the strike season.

i feel like Rosenthal is putting this out there because buyers want it out there. But really i dont see any evidence of what Ken is saying.. for a few years now teams have been really reticent to trade top prospects. Even for Crochet, we had to take a catcher and an injured guy to get Top 100 guys. Teams now believe other teams are too good at evaluating their guys. Maybe we taught them that in the Semien and Tatis debacles

From Rosenthal Execs saying “no team wants prospects” if that’s the case Getz needs to get Jerry to pay whatever he needs to, to try and get themselves two top 100 prospects back for Robert

Not all of them, because parts of reddit are getting blocked by the Chinese firewall AND even my VPN, so I can only see the headline was a discussion of his hitting against velocity. Which I assumed would provide useful information germane to the topic. That said...there's already a huge discrepancy between his age 20-23 numbers and his productivity over the last what is essentially 1.25 seasons. A lot of posts in general are therefore instead focusing on his WBC numbers. But that's also out of date and limited. Which finally doubles back to the one Sox scout in country making a determination. That and the fact he's still going to end up with a deal bigger than Benintendi or Grandal.

I’m just repeating what your link says…did you read your links?

Look’s like Ohtani’s was slightly higher. However, he also only played there through his age 22 season. Murakami has played there through his age 25.

Is that really possible in roughly 2 months of NPB at bats this year? That's the equivalent of let's say just 1.5 games head to head against Matsumoto.

That’s supposedly based on a 24 pitch sample this year and he was at .324 in the year before when he played a full season

One social media post that went viral suggested he batted just .095 last year in NPB action against pitches of 93 MPH or higher. For context, the average fastball velocity in Major League Baseball sits around 94 MPH. https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1ougnu9/has_anyone_else_seen_the_data_on_munetaka/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjOwtWzzMORAxV2FjQIHYDdBE8QFnoECAkQAg&usg=AOvVaw0lTCrur9CejA8TYPwGUkhq

Murakami looks like it is quite a bit higher at glance.

Yes it was

I think they will, especially with new ownership but even if that’s not the case, I trust FO to use money more wisely than the last regime

Which one?

Just an extremely los angeles angels signing.

And he's anywhere from $40-80 million depending on years/including posting fees. The biggest problem there is age...you're looking at a 31 year old 1B in 2028, with significant concerns about bat speed drop offs. Ichiro and Ohtani are unicorns. There are very few examples of DH types from Japan turning out well in their 30s...Hideki Matsui I guess. Seiya Suzuki has held up pretty well so far. Yoshida with Boston is the expensive counter point.

Okamotos deadline is January 5th. There was at least some genuine interest from the Sox there.

"MLB Trade Rumors says Murakami might get an eight-year, $180 million deal. That's an AAV of $22.5 million, which the Cubs could easily afford and still stay under the first luxury tax level. Also, since Murakami was posted Nov. 7, his posting window ends at 4 p.m. Dec. 22, next Monday." Crazy amount of variance here...anywhere from $80-180 million is quite unusual, but the floor/ceiling arguments are similar. Classic boom/bust power hitter. Japanese Babe Ruth or the hitting equivalent of Hideki Irabu.

You sound like you know more, I'm more commenting in that I don't believe the sox will sign helpful free agents, but I leave an open area for DHs, 1b, and Relief (also known as the positions you can get under 80 million)

Was his K-rate that high in Japan? The keyword. He didn’t say hitter in general.

I mean, that Ohtani guy has been pretty good