CaliSoxFanViaSWside

Lux is likely the Dodgers starting SS

He just didn't complete his sentence. Outman is just a guy who in his rookie season put up 4.4 fWar because he's a positive in every aspect of playing baseball, OBP .353, 12.0% BB rate, CF defense, power, speed/baserunning and another 5 years of control. Plus its coming from a guy who thinks TA was A+ on defense last year, thought Vaughn was a generational hitter and told me "Outman sucks" last off season . Outman proved a lot of people here wrong so those people want to see him fail or continue to question his ability. But as I said highly unlikely he's available even if the Dodgers end up with Ohtani in the OF. Sox won't be getting any type of player who was remotely good in MLB last year.

I'm glad you said it and not me?. But seriously the Sox could try to expand the trade to include Colas. Unfortunately he seems to be a head case but maybe the Dodgers could stick him in their hitting factory to see if they can coach him up quickly. Giving up a LH power hitting OF with a strong arm along with Cease would strengthen the return but Outman is now worth a lot. He does so much well, positive defensively in CF, walks, positive base runner, hits for power and LH. Dodgers aren't exactly flush in the OF . Might have to wait until we see if they get Ohtani if you think there's any hope of getting Outman and a high end starting pitching prospect. They lost Heyward and David Peralta and Betts might be playing 2nd base so that basically leaves Outman and Chris Taylor. If you try to include Benintendi in a trade it hurts what u get back for Cease. So getting Outman isn't likely now. Might not even be likely if they get Ohtani. I don't like that the top Dodgers prospects are catchers. It Getz acquires any more catching prospects we'll start making jokes the way we did about Hahn and relief pitchers. Just pay cheap price for a defensive veteran catcher. Don't waste Cease on catching prospects.

I thought I made it pretty clear that Getz just poached about to be non tendered guys who become Free agents once non-tendered plus some guys who fit in well with the flotsam at the bottom of the Sox 40 man roster. It's not a stroke of genius or anything and it may have been AAs idea but Idc care what ATL does, my take is a Sox perspective on how we might view the rest of the off season. Getz is trying to make it clear to any pitcher in Free Agency who considers a Sox offer that defense will be a priorty Will be interesting to see how things shake out. Might be working on a Cease trade very soon , maybe Vaughn too since he doesn't fit the athletic or good defense mold. Eloy still can play DH so moving him wouldn't seem to be as high a priorty as moving Cease and Vaughn to continue to The Getz Quest.

I'm actually encouraged by this trade. I made a post a week ago that Getz would or should be shopping among the non-tenders since the 40 was so weak. The encouraging part is by making the trade he didn't have to wrestle with other GMs and agents once non tenders become Free agents. He went to one of the most talented 40s in baseball or A. Anthopoulus came to him. I'd love to give Getz credit but this may have been AAs idea since it was the Braves who wanted Bummer at the trade deadline because the Phillies have a lot of good LH hitters. I have said that I wanted to see what Getz's 1st significant transaction would be because it would set the tone for what was to come. Maybe we can put to rest any notion that S. Perez or Merrifield end up on the Sox . With precious few dollars to work with and little talent to trade at least Getz held true to his word about SP depth and defense while increasing depth in the middle infield.

Well at least people looked at it before it sank .Thought there might be some talking points regarding some of the things Nastrini said.

From what I understand per Garfien , Atlanta wanted him at the trade deadline and Hahn didn't go for it. You can't compare what the Sox got for Graveman and Middleton. LH hard throwing sinkerballers who don't give up HRs are a different animal. If the Braves can find a way to get him to throw strikes without substantially increasing his HR rate everyone they gave up will be worth it. Those guys were nothing to them.

I like this post very much. Rays may not have ever won a World Series but they do have a strategy for having good teams on a very small budget. However I don't think I've ever seen a breakdown of the guys they traded ,who they got back, the level they were at , and when they started making an impact with the Rays. It all starts with scouting drafting and player development and everything that it entails. We've often seen how others teams staffs for these things dwarf the number of people the Sox have in those positions. There's no indication that Getz has been allowed to go full Rays. They'd have to do a heck of a lot more re: hiring staff. We also know JR rather pay for poor to mid MLB players than invest in youth. But it is better if he can even go partial Rays. But again still need a lot more developmental people.

Most fan reactions are over reactions and totally meatball . It's funny how mentioning playing a real OF the LH guy on the bench who is there to like ,you know, play once in a while in April, over the 1B playing OFer golden haired struggling mightily draft pick who was in over his head just to give him some breathing room is still remembered as some kind of outlandish suggestion. OMG he actually suggested playing a bench player for a few games over the best hitting college player in the last 20 years who will be a superstar but is currently looking like a stiff. Mercy what a maroon !

Mercedes was just a Sox minor leaguer I saw while perusing stats that stood out. I knew nothing about him . My initial inquiries were just to ask if the Future Sox people knew anything about him. Outman I did quite a bit of research on.

Getz jackpot dumpster dive while he takes one thing out out of his shopping cart . More removed today. Getz will be in homeless GM heaven picking through all the non tenders. Owner laughs at idea of acquiring Ohtani, expects a quick turnaround back to contention while slashing payroll. GM Getzy the glitzy garbage gatherer. Go Getzy Go !

I agree he'd be a marked man but with just a little more offensive talent these defenses wouldn't be able to concentrate as much on Bedard as much they are now. The Hawks can't sustain any time in the offensive zone and get badly outplayed in their own end. Only goaltending and strong defense from the young guys and the recent offensive explosion of Bedard is keeping them in this game. If he get's injured they won't be able to compete just for a higher draft choice. I don't want to see that happen just to wait on more talent. He's a franchise player even moreso than Kane was. He needs help.

He's the real deal and a marked man. Hawks are going to need more offensive firepower fast. If they just had a decent powerplay and a couple more speed offensive guys (talented with the puck , good passers) they could be a playoff team right now. Can't have Foligno and Perry as stables of the PP. They are too slow. They're fine if you can get the PP set up but the Hawks just don't have the offensive talent to use them in front of the net. I love me Foligno and Perry and they have important roles to play in guiding the young guys. Until then Bedard is taking too many hard hits and will be injured soon if they don't accelerate the rebuild to surround him with better talent.

And I said that myself at the time since I probably made 20 posts mentioning Outman's name once all the geniuses started telling me I was crazy to think he was better than the Dodgers ranked position player prospects. But no matter how many posts I made explaining why he was a great fit the geniuses who don't want to hear about it now were all saying we had to sign veteran free agents and I'd hear stuff about how I was basing it on his 16 PA in 2022 and Outman sucks. Sure they were in no position to trade him because the Dodgers actually don't mind trying to fit some young players into a championship caliber roster once in a while but the point remains that now they will have to be blown away even more to trade him. The point of scouting is to identify guys before they start performing at a high level in the majors. I'd like to see another person here find an unranked LH rookie CF with speed power and plays above average defense who comes in 3rd in ROY, puts up a 4.4 fWAR and is a positive in baserunning, defense and offense and a 12% BB rate to get to that 4.4 fWAR. I'd also like to acknowledge that not all people on this board were meatballs , some actually thought I made sense. Even Stone Garrett, the rare RH OF I suggested had a better year than Benintendi even though he started the year in the minors then broke his leg when his spikes got caught in OF padding trying to rob a HR. Dave Martinez his Manager on the Nats had nothing but praise for him. "His at-bats have been good, but he's been playing defense really well," Martinez said. "It stinks for us because he is one of our every-day players out there who is having a really good year." Martinez also praised Garrett as a clubhouse leader and fan favorite. "He means a lot to us," Martinez said. "He just has that presence about himself. Very soft-spoken, but he's one of the guys who liked to have fun, keep everyone loose. A great teammate." Garrrett finished with 1.2 fWar in 88 games and an OPS of .801,115wRC+ But I suppose I had to know if he was available because he was such a stud that the D'backs released him and the Nats picked him up. But hey welcome back to 2015 because Getz has to attempt to make the Sox competitive now and welcome to the same world Hahn had to live in of signing middling aging FA RH position players who suddenly forget how to play and get old and injured once they come to the Sox. Maybe Getz can even find another Tatis, Jr. type player to trade !

And we all know what this means. Welcome back to 2016. Attempt to sign a bunch of veteran Free Agents in the $1-15M range and some of them to 2 or more years. Might get 6 of them. Ignore any young LH hitter with any speed, power or defensive ability. Any advancement in the farm system created by the Trade Deadline trades will slowly fade down back into the 25th to 30th ranked farm system.

Stone is He Who Remains.

Do I need knowledge that players are available to suggest a trade ? If that's the criteria for suggesting trades then most who do it can expect you to censure them Some of them were actually traded or rumored to be available .Just from memory Daulton Varsho was traded and at some point the Orioles were said to be thinking about trading Anthony Santander. Kelenic might be been on the block too after repeatedly failing during his call ups. My main point was that Conforto would also have been a mistake and relating not signing him to the bigger mistake of signing Benintendi is a stretch of logic. The Sox should have been looking for younger guys . Plenty were available and traded the last 2 years. What's really nauseating is that very few here never realized that filling in the gaps with middling FA's was never going to help the Sox when their farm system was not producing the cheap young talent. The Sox needed to continue on a winning path should the core continue to keep being unproductive and injury plagued. Be it starting pitching or young LH hitting the Sox were failing miserably and that writing had been evident since the collapse in the 2nd half of 2021. Still most ( including me) believed that with a bit of health the Sox still might be able to contend with Moncada, Eloy, Vaughn and Robert and Cease having finished 2nd in Cy Young voting. But that never stopped me from saying they still needed to get younger not older. If it makes you feel less nauseous you might also recall that since they never made a trade for a young LH OF I was full on broad with giving Colas his shot. Of course I thought he was ready but he wasn't and on top of that the Sox now seem like they are not enamored with him. So I am perfecting willing to say I was wrong there. However as a fan we aren't privy to knowledge that you seem to think I have to possess in order to have an opinion. I gather as much info as I have available in regards to players I'd like to trade for who would seem to fit the Sox needs. So sorry I don't live up to your standards that I should also know who is available before suggesting any trade. I think your real point is that I continue to bring up Outman because I happened to be right about him and actually saying so breaks one of those macho rules about rubbing it in people's faces when it's perfectly fine for others to think I was nuts and make fun of my ideas at the time I was making those suggestions. Seems rather hypocritical to me.

The Sox passed on plenty of others besides Comforto. Plenty of young LH OFers have been available the last couple of years through trades. It's usually a good portion of my posting in the off season. You didn't seem particularly supportive when one of my trade candidates was James Outman especially when I said although he was unranked he was a better guy to go after than ranked guys like Busch and Vargas I think it was. You thought I was crazy. ?

When Ohtani started struggling in his 1st spring training with the Angels they talk about 2 guys influential in getting rid of his leg kick and switching to a toe tap. Albert Pujols planted the seed when Ohtani asked him about it. Pujols told him it's easier to recognize pitches without having to worry about your stride. So the seed was planted and then current Mets asst. hitting coach Eric Hinske is credited with suggesting Ohtani try a toe tap. But like many great players they are serious about getting better. You gather a lot of information, then you process it , run it through your mental strainer before you decide to take a particular course of action and keep the other stuff filed away if needed later. Supposedly Ohtani liked how he started hitting shots all over the park during BP after he went to the toe tap . It isn't always that obvious. Often players resist changes because they might feel uncomfortable with it at first. However the process is the same. Be a sponge of knowledge, strain the knowledge . Do or talk to good hitters who do what you are thinking of changing to, to get their thoughts on how it helps them. Implement change give it time. If it doesn't feel right or produce any results that feels like you are progressing, then see what else is in that bank of info you filed away. I always got the impression that this was what Burger was going through once he started getting time with the Sox. He did like to talk about that sim program he liked to use that he said wasn't available during road games. I remember after some games on the post game shows Garfien would bring it up and Ozzie Guillen would make jokes about it. Hard to know for sure if Ozzie thought what Burger was doing was a joke or if he was just clowning around poking fun at something foreign to him.

I'll be impressed if Thames says to Eloy. "Eloy is there some reason you've stuck with that goofy awkward looking batting stance that has produced such a high ground ball rate while also having many leg injuries ?"

He said he wants the SS job in 2024 but didn't care where they put him but he's not ruling out making the team . Glad to hear it but odds are definitely against it. Do we think he starts the season back in AA or AAA ?

I also lived the 1st 22 years of my life in Chicago and attended Disco Demolition and here in California the Sox pennant clinching game in '05 in Anaheim.

Trust me I am such a big Sox diehard I probably know more about the Sox than I ever have. I watch podcasts , read articles and usually watch games the way you're not supposed to online and now I've figured out how to get them on my TV too which I just tried with a Blackhawks game and finally watched it on a big screen not my SD computer monitor.

Ive seen a lot of projections now thats why I said 4yrs+ and 100M+ . Some are talking 200M+ which seems really high.