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Don't waste your time wondering why he wouldn't want Espada. Jerry's extensive track record with his dumb decisions have absolutely shown no wisdom or logic. 1. Let Hawk Harrelson, a play by play broadcaster with no prior GM or front office experience become his GM. 2. Allowed Hawk to fire Tony LaRussa even though he had a winning record. As we all know Jerry has confirmed it was one of the biggest regrets he made not stopping Hawk. Additionally Jerry also allowed Hawk to fire Asst. GM Dave Dombrowski and trade away rookie Bobby Bonilla for Jose DeLeon. 3. Jerry fired Larry Himes who drafted Jack McDowell '87, Robin Ventura '88, Frank Thomas '89, Alex Fernandez '90, Bob Wickman '90, Wickman was traded away to Cleveland by Himes replacement Ron Schueler. Btw, Wickman had a solid career at Cleveland and was a two time all-star and league leading saves leader twice and is currently 2nd on the all-time on saves list for Cleveland. 4. During the 1994 strike year Jerry was one of the major driving forces to convince the owners not to accept the players offer and allow the season to end at around 113 games...thus costing his own team, a legitimate chance at the 1994 World Series with arguably one the best teams in baseball that year. 5. Jerry overrides Rick Hahn and makes Hahn hire his buddy Tony LaRussa well past his prime both mentally and physically. Even though he made this massive mistake, Jerry doubles down to make an even dumber mistake of not firing Tony. 6. With his Bulls team, Jerry allowed Jerry Krauss to force out Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan and breaking up the dynasty and not allowing the Bulls to go after a 7th title. 7. With his Bulls team Jerry also allowed John Paxson to destroy the Bulls and allowed Paxton to keep the team in total mediocrity until his son Michael finally took the team over and removed Paxson to go out and sign Arturas Karnisovas. Paxson's final 4 seasons were 102-199 and probably would still be in charge if not for Michael Reinsdorf being finally allowed to step in and have full authority over the Bulls team, thus making logical changes which his father obviously was clueless on. This is why you can't even begin to wonder why Reinsdorf has made all these historical terrible decisions. He is plain and simply one of the worst owners of all time. -

We’re waiting for one thing with this organization. You know what it is. Until then, it’s mostly going to be about luck to win anything.

Whatever you do, just don’t strap it on.

There is a distinct chance the Sox take care of my interest in next season before the winter meetings.

I’ll pass on another old guy with heart issues

After reading this article, I’m 100% sure that a multi-year deal for Chapman will be how to Sox will use all of their limited budget this offseason: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/10/aroldis-chapman-to-be-left-off-yankees-alds-roster-after-skipping-team-workout.html

If Benetti stays, maybe by the end of his next contract he will get half way decent at calling a Home Run.

Let me go on the record and say I want a younger manager than Bochy & Washington.

On the Jason thing.... I love his passion for the sox and that after all the obstacles he's done what he's done. That's highly admirable and deserves a ton of respect. But on the flip side there is some things about Jason that annoy the s%*# out of me and if he moves on I wouldn't be totally sad

Trade Moncada so 3rd base can be added to the list of positional black holes that Hahn/KW are incapable of filling.

To be fair, so did our manager.

Based on what I've seen these guys aren't the smartest baseball players around, and I mean that from a purely baseball standpoint.

lol this is the way we talk in October. By december we'll be pining for Benintendi because we will be targeting like Adam Duvall because Hahn wants to prioritize power and gets a RHH off a down year.

No it can’t. There’s literally no one on earth who would give the same combination of lack of preparation, ignorance, and arrogance, while also having the ability to get anything he wanted by having the owner in his back pocket.

They shoulda known that last year.

If Tony should never have been the Sox manager because of his DUIs, what about Ron Washington and cocaine. And wasn't he accused of sexual assault as well?

Conforto was bad in 2021 before getting hurt and hasn’t played baseball in a long time. $12-15M seems like way more than he’ll get. I’d cut your guesstimate in 1/2

am I the only person here who doesn't care much for Benetti? I don't mind Stone, mostly due to his pitching analysis and he's funny

Of course his numbers trended down. He played hurt.

Is Lou piniella alive still? I’d imagine he’ll interview if so.

The best managers are extending the work of the entire organization onto the field. PD, scouting, fitness, analytics, training. Since the Sox are terrible on that it makes sense they need to just go after old school star managers.

Ron Washington, a frontrunner lol. This organization can’t get out of its own way.

Sox will have a “seat at the table” and offer 50 million WITH(!!!!) incentives.

Probably both.

That's a good point. Lack of arms with options in the pen was a killer. Ruiz is worth keeping at that price, but if he's brought back, you'd be looking at almost 0 flexibility in the pen again next year.

Can’t have a bullpen full of guys who can’t be optioned. Plus Ruiz just isn’t very good. Time to finally cut bait on him.

Agreed. Ruiz gets a lot of hate because he’s been used poorly and put into some high leverage situations he clearly doesn’t belong. For a million you can do MUCH worse for a guy that can eat 60+ innings out of the pen….Someone has to do it. If we actually had minor league depth I could see wanting to replace him internally, but I’m not sure there’s single guy in the minors that can pitch in the majors next year.

I might seriously think about tendering Ruiz. He hasn’t been a below replacement player, and was positive in 2021. $1 million isn’t a lot, and perhaps most importantly they don’t have a ton of bullpen depth. Hendriks, Graveman, Kelly, Lopez, Lambert from the right hand side if everyone is healthy? Unless they are planning to sign another good money reliever, let Ruiz go and I guess Burr is the next guy up?

And since I was talking out of my ass based on what I saw from him this season I will back it up now that my eye test was extremely accurate. Checking statcast info Robert's 1st pitch swing % was 49% , highest on the team. His normal swing % is 61.5 % so thats of all the pitches he sees he swings 61.5% of the time ! and that leads to this. Guess who on the Sox gets the least amount of meatballs to hit ? It's Luis Robert whose Meatball % is 5.6%. Yes there is a statcast thing called Meatball % ! If anyone needs to lay off of pitches it's Robert and he couldn't even TRY to do it when he was hurt which was the perfect time to do it. Just terrible terrible coaching or Robert just not listening.

I'd totally cut ties with Engel, Crick, and Ruiz no problem. Especially Engel.

Cocaine would certainly be one way to get the team to hustle. They'd go from 65-70% effort to 125%!

It sucks though. This is no longer a super attractive job. It was perfect 2 years ago. Now, I dunno. I mean there’s only 30 of these positions so candidates can’t always be too picky, but a guy like Bochy probably can.

That'ss besides the point. As long as you are in there playing make the best of it and use it as a learning process. I'd be telling him look I know you're hurt and it hurts to swing. Look at the 1st 2 pitches .Look at the spin , the release point. They're supposed to know the pitchers' strengths and weaknesses and have a plan against them. He should know already how he is going to be pitched. It's up to him to learn to make pitchers throw him strikes and if they don't then take the bloody walk. Learning opportunity misused by a dumb player or dumb coaches not telling him what he should be doing .

People said the same thing with Tony and Cairo, how’d that go?

"it's not rocket surgery" and "you've got Shingo Takatsu out here blowing slaves" are my 2 fav DJ lines ever and still in frequent rotation in my lexicon.

I see your Dexter Fowler and raise you Nick Williams.

Great point! As we saw the Sox are last in number of people in the analytics dept. Lord knows Jerry wouldn't want to spend more money than necessary to run this team.

I love Ron Washington the defensive guru who you see working for hours with each fielder on their craft. Do you really think that is what we get when he is the manager. He wont have time. This is always the problem when you hire specialists for any professional managerial job. To be that all around leader they need to leave their specialty on the side, delegate and become a general. We see this all of the time in football. I would rather have someone that champions modern ways as well as defense. If Ron brings what the Braves bring to the table then sure. But I don't think that is what would happen.

I didn't like Benetti for a while. That may have been more me missing Hawk than anything against Jason. But I've grown to accept and even somewhat embrace him I guess. That said, I do prefer Len Kasper. If he ends up replacing Benetti, it will be an upgrade for me. And they can always tell Len that he can do the radio if they somehow turn this around and make the playoffs next year.

I last heard him with Kasper. He's getting there. I'm not sure he needs drawing out, since his early problem was yapping too much.

Hard not to improve considering how awful he was. 90% of his improvement comes from Jason drawing out his insight through asking him direct questions. Without Jason, he's toast.

this is true just because is has to be the most Kenny Williams thing ever.

I like everything about Quintana.

One guy I would think about trading is Hendriks. He's been great. Love him as a person and player but................the Sox would have won the divison without him in 2021 and would have been bad, like they were, without him in 2022. He's clearly in pain pitching now. The pitch clock next year may really bother him, as he will have less recovery time. And he should be worth something.

Vaughn seems closer to 5'10 1/2"

Sadly if the knucklehead Hahn gave more careful analysis to his roster in the minors and on the big league roster, he might have determined he didn't need another first baseman, since he drafted Sheets with a #2 pick a few years earlier and he also had one of the best 1B in baseball with Jose Abreu. Maybe he could have used that #3 overall first round pick more wisely for another SP or position player he needed more.

this has to cost someone their job, HAS TO

Thank you for the wonderful advice. I was in the middle of about 20 tasks and taking a crap, scrolling / reading on my iPhone when I posted that. Was thinking that on a board like this someone would take the time to post the numbers, which they graciously did.