JoeC

Don't make me answer that.

Not if we do a salary dump swap for an overpaid reliever in return.

To me, the owner's responsibilities are: 1. Hire the right staff (executives) who will make the right baseball decisions. Get the right leadership in place. 2. Give the baseball staff the resources ($$, namely) and autonomy to make the right decisions. Let the leadership do their jobs. To me JR has failed in these regards. The constant "promote within the family" mentality undercuts objective #1. Objective #2 you can make maybe make an argument for, but the fact is: This team is being out-contract-spent by the Twins The Twins have now committed 9-figure deals to 3 players I think of off the top of my head (Mauer, Buxton, and now Correa), whereas the Sox's largest contract is $75MM JR has shown to insert himself into lower-level decisions to undercut his own executive staff Hiring of a manager Refusing to pay top dollar for pitching after shelling out for Jaime Navarro The results are that, in 41 years of owning the team, he's brought home 1 World Series championship. He's brought home 1 AL pennant. If it weren't for literally lucking into the greatest basketball player who ever played, he'd have 1 championship in 78 combined years of sports ownership.

Or sprinting??

No. That said, there's a difference between accepting a less-than-a-starter's-production-level performance (in favor of positional versatility) and the absolute trainwreckingshitshow production level that Leury provided. He had a .500 OPS (OPS+ of 42... or 58% less productive than MLB average). For context, Neifi Perez's worst season with at least 100 PA's was an OPS+ of 44 (.564 OPS in 2002). I will agree with you that Garcia was put in a crap position and was set up to fail. I don't blame Leury for that - I blame TLR. TLR kept putting Leury in a position to fail... over and over again, including the asinine decision to hit him #3.

When your main value proposition as a player is your positional versatility, it is expected to be able to position shuffle.

To celebrate, I'm gonna pick seat 10D in Premium Economy on my next flight. Middle seat be damned!

Seems like he needs to get into the confectionary business.

Hiring Tony La Russa sent the worst message possible. Anything beyond that has been just semantics.

Would hate to lose Liam (love his attitude and candor, including owning up to when he sucks), but that's what it takes to get things done... then so be it.

I am OK with a Harrison-type production at 2B next year IF we plug the outfield holes.

He probably included it as part of his legendary "gift baskets" for his guests.

Shows how much demand there is for Guaranteed Rate Field dirt.

Thank you Jose. You are a model of consistency (including when you suck every April), class, and a personification of hustle and grit. I hate you for giving me a reason to cheer for Houston, but I hope you get the ring that Jerry and friends couldn't deliver for you.

...and an ASSISTANT hitting coach? This team's starting to act like it's important to teach guys to do stuff.

I mean, I didn't mean it to be "witty," but thank you. They've taken 2 catchers in the first round (including supplemental first round) in the past 12 drafts. Like you said, the draft is a crap shoot. Drafting catchers is even more of a crap shoot. My suggestion would be to work on developing catchers already in our system. Seems like they are somehow inadvertently doing that to produce adequate catchers, but to your point, it would be nice to develop someone who is an above-average receiver + bat.

…like they did with Collins?

Yep. Years of hoarding 1B / DH types will finally pay off.

Can I be the sarcastic / cynical asshole and unrealistically predict Vaughn + cash for Jose at the deadline?

That's the "put us over the edge" premium that we instead chose to give to our bullpen.

Ditto. My heart cries, but my head agrees with the move

That said, depending on how the Sox free up payroll elsewhere, this could be a high-ceiling signing. Two TJ surgeries is tough. There are not one but two holes in your elbow where the ligament is now surgically attached, so the bone itself is more prone to breakage. Penciling him in as a #5 starter puts you into a good position, and I hope that he doesn't have to be counted on to be anything more (read: "I hope the guys like Kopech, Gio, and Lynn can perform like they should").

The issue with the COVID protocol wasn't necessarily that he broke the protocol, but that he lied to the team about it afterwards. If you recall, this happened in 2020, when COVID fears were peaking. He (and Plesac) went out for dinner with friends (at the time a breach of protocol), then lied about it and boarded the team plane, thus putting the entire team and its short-term competitiveness into question. Heck - even Plesac said he broke protocol, and the team went out and got a car service to drive him back to Cleveland so he wouldn't have to risk exposing his teammates on the flight. Remember - positive COVID tests and exposures meant that you were immediately quarantined, and the team had to call up someone from their Taxi squad. With MLB's policies being a very strict "any exposure gets you quarantined" policy, if Clevinger would have been exposed to COVID, that could have put a vast majority of the Cleveland players into isolation, and therefore ineligible to play. Regardless of hindsight and what we may know about COVID now, looking at the potential consequences involved purely in terms of the impact on the baseball team, that was a stupid decision compounded by a breach of trust. His actions could have taken Cleveland out of the race very quickly.

Too soon