Snopek

It’s all relative to expectations. We were sold the idea that this was a team contending for multiple championships. The A’s, Pirates, Rockies and Reds are not even pretending to be competitive like the Sox are.

Let Gene Honda do play by play over the PA system. Also, assigned seating by first name. I suppose I’m just rooting for chaos at this point.

Guaranteed Wait ™️

I have indeed always wanted to experience the park by sitting at a buffalo wild wings that is inside a parking garage.

In the spirit of your excellent post, you can’t even trust that this is the low point.

Targeting that pitcher with back issues is more Hahn’s style.

Uhhh

Now that we’re done pretending good moves will be made, it seems like we’ve officially entered the blowing everything out of proportion part of the offseason.

“Basically stay healthy” has turned into “Basically stay healthy and also everyone perform to their absolute ceiling and oh look a shooting star everyone make a wish”

Seems good if it has him touching 753 mph

15 Philip Humbers. Bring it on.

I don’t disagree with this, but it continues to be incredibly frustrating that they put all their eggs in the bounce back basket. Like, hey assholes, you know you can make internal improvements AND add more players from the outside to fill holes, right? No? You’re just gonna count on everyone staying healthy and bouncing back? Okay then.

I think of this offseason as similar to one of those Hahn in-season classic lines: Injured player returning is our big trade deadline acquisition. I feel like they’re hoping the new staff and organizational approach will help Yoan, Eloy, Robert, etc unlock their full potential, and those will essentially be viewed as their huge free agent additions. That might happen, and I do like the new approach. But in typical Sox fashion, they’re putting all their eggs in this basket and not complimenting it with more impactful additions. ‘Good enough’ is still their overall philosophy it seems.

Lol’ing at the idea of kids approaching robots for autographs.

Sure, it could happen. There’s still a lot of talent on the team, so the upside is there. And maybe the new manager and staff are able to harness all that talent and turn it into success. Realistically, though, my expectations are not very high. They have too many “if” scenarios where they’d need those outcomes to be very favorable. It’s a lot to ask and a lot to overcome, and I don’t particularly like those odds.

I suppose I was too naïve at that time to realize that what the sustained success thing actually meant was "if everything breaks our way, we will be not completely irrelevant for several years in a row."

If you operate the way the Sox do, windows are a real thing. You don't spend on premium players and you don't draft or develop talent especially well, you're not consistently fielding a competitive team year in and year out.

That's, uh, certainly one way to look at it.

If you're suggesting that adding great players to a team does not guarantee success, well, sure. So the alternative is not doing that because there's a chance it might not work out?

They say doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, but what they don’t tell you is getting it right one of those times is the definition of a super genius front office.

Love the reactive approach of letting the first four months of the season play out first so they can see if they caught all the breaks they were hoping to.

Ayyye my random former player as username spirit animal gets a mention. For...*rereads post* ...not good reasons.

This thread rules.

Interesting poll, but I struggle with the "fully healthy" thing. What does a fully healthy TLR even look like? I don't think he was necessarily healthy when he took the job, but well enough to deal with the stress and travel of the job. Until he wasn't. Sort of a ticking time bomb thing. I feel like it all just finally caught up to him to the point where there's really no coming back from it.