Chick Mercedes

Fair enough

Hmm. IIRC, I think most AL playoffs teams had 2 or more main starters with ERAs 4 or above. I'll have to go dig for stats. But with the Sox bullpen, I'm pretty optimistic about them shutting teams down after 5, pitching with leads due to the lineup, and more likely than not of not being being overused. There are a lot of arms.

if all Cease did was to maintain what he did last season, then that alone would be amazing for a 4th starter which might be enough for a WS run if the big 3 do their jobs. Hell, Cease could regress slightly and they'd still be ok. Team goes WAAY over the top if Rodon or somebody else is just league wide average as a 5th starter.

Just want to add an Amen. Usually I look at the team with rose colored glasses, and then by the end of the season...well you wonder why you didn't see the holes. But since the youth movement began, I'm more realistic every year because the previous organizational philosophy has been a failure, and you feel burned. After my namesake was traded I even quit on the team for a couple years, that was the final insult. But the clear direction the team has taken gives me something to hold onto ever subsequent season. As fans, all we ask for is a coherent pklan that makes sense. It isn't perfect as far as the way the scouting works,, but we don't demand perfection. The big team holes are clear, but the other slots have clear reasonable answers. And the holes are not being filled by players aquired via short term thinking. I do believe Hahn and co are long term planners. And the talent on the big club is young but fairly proven and exiting, and I am optimistic. These holes in the rotation are 1st world problems

For the most part, teams don’t take their best rotation prospects and stack them in their MLB bullpen. I don’t get it. We don’t even need them. If you’ll pitch them out of the pen this year, then why not instead get them ready in the minors to start later in the season if bad things happen? If they are still thought of as starters.

The pic may not matter. But it perhaps signals in his mind that we don’t have him locked up yet

By the odds, probably correct. Throws harder, but needs to work on secondary pitches. This does not seem like an optimal way to do that. Maybe the plan is, he doesn’t need to have a wide arsenal out of the pen. But if you want him to be a starter ASAP want him stretching out in the minors working on his pitches. They don’t even need him with the quality of this pen, and with Lopez and Rodon available. And there is no reason he can’t get his work in first at AA AAA and come out of the pen for the playoffs if things change. The context of this makes one curious what they really think of him as a starter. They have always said, needs of the club will never cancel out the need for properly developing prospects. Yet this plan basically ignored that rhetoric.

I could do both, if you ever elucidate a good argument for doing so. Message me, this is OT.

I'm not saying don't get Bauer. But on planet earth, that wasn't happening, Jerry has closed his wallet. So Cease is as good as any other ideas

Yoelqui is older more ready to play, and less of a question mark as some other younger prospects with higher upsides. Hence his high rating. Last I read Yoelqui was the number one prospect on one list, 10th on another. Paddy. Well he's gotten us Robert, Abreu, and my namesake. That's pretty good. But he doesn't get much room to work volume prospects. It's not his fault, the team had a different (Reinsdorfian Williamsesque) approach aside from those bigger fish. For example the Cuban SS (Sanchez) they just signed for 2 million seemed like a better idea to them than signing 4 Dominicans. High floor low ceiling. From what I uderstand they may be adjusting that. For the love of God I hope. I don't have much belief they will. They seem to be ready to give Colas 3 million.

Fair enough. But for a candidate to compete for a 5th man, it can work out as a bridge to Kopech. Not many teams stretch to 5 with a bunch more certaintly than this. Our offense is gonna carry us through it all. Personally I don't think Rodon was physically ready to pitch after all the down time issues. Velo is one thing, fitness and command is another. Hes throwing 96, and has had some time now to get his work in. We'll see.

with this offense, the team can afford to pencil in Cease without looking toward some of the other mediocre pitchers people wanted to aquire. That's the whole thing. Sure, you'de ideally like to find a superior alternative. Who was that? Bauer?

Indeed. I don't know how it was supposed to affect us differently, but we do have a fair amount of pitchers that would rather miss bats than pitch to contact. Cease could benefit though with his homer issues. Anyway, the league should not be deadening the ball in a world of shrinking revenues.

The part of this extended search for a #4, #5 guys is something which has left me a little confused as to why. I completely understand the desire to get 4 studs with an ERA of under 4 in the rotation. But some of the candidates mentioned in deals haven't been that in awhile, like Quintana. Cease and Kopech easlily project to be pitchers with reasonable ERAs for # 4, 5 starters. Hell ,even Rodon. Who else around the league at a reasonable price can be penciled in projecting better raw stats among all the pitchers mentioned? Certainly we may have to bridge to get to Koppech later in the season. But I don't see the need to look around past those 2.

Again, I'm not sure if it is right to engage along these lines, but if a new member can't be able to respond to incoming hostility toward a viewpoint that is willing to have a different preference than what the Sox have done in a couple cases, that's up to y'all to decide. I post a lot on the forum of a different Chicago team that has much more posts than this one, but if a new member came in and was forced to defend himself against other members over a reasonable username, the mods there would't try to intimidate him/her over this, I'm sure of that. I sure didn't want to have to talk about any of this. If you had a problem with anything that is going on, you should have messaged me instead of joining in to the derailment which was unfortunate, and I probably shouldn't have indulged either, but at that point I thought everyone was playing. I'm done talking about this here in this thread. Message me if you have anything further please.

I'm sorry this has become about me, I had no idea y'all would be this protective over a username. If this forum membership is unable to tolerate something that is not complete fealty to the organization's record, perhaps I should leave. A Sox fan for 45 years. I'm willing to rename the account, but perhaps this place isn't for me.

Just to add, that cannot be true about Hahn, because the team was on a glide path to failure no matter that happened with Tatis. Hahn generally seems like a truth teller, but he also said he supports hiring of Larussa. If they weren’t already embarrassed by the farm system, they must have been by the attendance numbers. I think the stale FO and new trends of the league i.e the Astros were bound to have the same effect as the you know who faceplant.

Wow. I was this close to going with Ron Leflore, but a natural tendency to be controversial is in my blood apparently. I will let the board name me, just don’t call me Vicky please. Back to the point of right field though, having such a donut hole farm system at the moment, a prospect trade for a question mark with a down pointing arrow seems like something we cannot afford to do. You do that when your prospects list does not have a similar prospect ready to step in soon

Its just gonna default to CJ Abrams! Uh oh, Ill take my ban hammer like a man now.

That’s all right. Troll detector on alert setting. Truth is I will carry the scars to the day I die along with the election of 2016. So I have to emote.

Ill get right on that Jack

All in all Engel and Eaton is good enough for now, and I’d rather bet on Cespedes for a long term solution than trade prospects given Cespedes (and possibly Colas)