SoxBlanco

I've never been more confident in a player not becoming a bust. All you have to do is watch his at-bats. He gives a professional at-bat almost every time up. He has a great approach with a great eye, and he has such a nice, compact swing. He's not going to have the same issues with chasing sliders low and away like Eloy and Robert did when they first came up. I'm so excited about this kid.

Yeah, poor joke attempt on my part. On a serious note, seems like low A is likely to start the year, right?

Between A and AA...what is that...Aa? Or A.5?

This seems like an appropriate thread to pull out a post from 6 months ago. @joesaiditstrue told us to bookmark his post, so I did. That prediction is not looking so good right now.

Yeah, that is pushing it a bit. James, do you think he breaks camp with the Sox and is on the opening day roster?

Completely agree. I share these same thoughts.

I think you missed the words “maybe” and “some”. Sounds like there is a plan in place for both Kopech and Crochet, where they are both on an innings limit but will both be available to contribute in the playoffs. Sounds good to me.

If Kopech and Crochet are actually both on the MLB team to start the year, then they should just use them as a combination starter to build up innings. Rotate which guy starts and which guy comes in relief. Start with 2 innings each and build up to 4-5 innings for the guy who starts. If there is no room in the rotation at the start of the year for the "combination starter", then just have both of them come in relief for a couple innings at a time. Eventually we will need another starter, and at that point, you start the rotation of which guy starts. Could a plan like that actually work?

I don’t think we’ll look to free agency for a starting pitcher. I think we’ll land a nice starting pitcher via trade at the deadline this year or next offseason.

I don't know how many lefties we will face, but I think we will win 123 out of the 125 games started by a righty. You might be thinking, "Wait a minute, if you know how many times we will face a righty, then you know how many times we will face a lefty". But I'm not sure how many ambidextrous starters we will face.

Wow, things just got very interesting.

I’d rather have Lynn and Rodon than Odorizzi and Dunning.

Agreed. He also knew (for the first time in his career) that he didn’t have to carry the load on offense. His approach was noticeably different, swinging at less pitches out of the zone.

Good stuff. Thanks, James and Mike. I can’t wait to see how our prospects do this year. This will be the first time in forever where we can excitedly follow the minor league guys while also rooting for a playoff caliber team in the big leagues. Should be a fun year.

Of course each individual try is still 25% no matter how many times you do it. But if you do it twice, you have a 43.75% of succeeding on at least one of the two independent tries.

If you do something twice that has a 25% chance of success, you have only a 43.75% of succeeding at least once. Not quite 50%.

Yeah, with the percentages he presented, there would be a 62.2% chance that at least one of them hits.

It’s the nature of message boards. I don’t think it’ll ever change, regardless of the team or sport. I agree with you, by the way.

How good can he be if Mazara hit a home run off of him in 2020? Can't wait to rock him in the World Series.

I’d say Leury Garcia is pretty darn close to what you are describing.

I'm not really sure how to answer that. This is a message board where fans discuss things. Are you saying that if we find out we did have an offer out to Bauer but it wasn't enough, we shouldn't post that information here? Or when we found out Joc turned down our original offer...should we not have discussed that here because it didn't matter at that point?

Do you think we haven't even discussed a creative offer with him?

I'd be more worried about not sticking to the plan if our bullpen wasn't so stacked. No reason to use him in high leverage situations all the time when you have the horses we have in the pen.