CaliSoxFanViaSWside

Just like Morosi said Choi was available.

Giants should be thanking Hahn now that they will get a draft choice for Rodon instead of the Sox .

I tried to tell you when we were debating getting the extra year on Colas that things were grim and more than likely to get grimmer. This is no surprise to me at all. It's why I want Colas up from the start. Wins are just going to be to hard to come by in 2023 to sacrifice even 1 game to gain an extra year. Now it's up to trader Hahn to improve the Sox ? That's just the worst news possible. More 30 somethings and guys with a year of eligibility left traded for what little youth we have chasing down miracles to compete and we'll still be below .500. I suppose this will register with some that it's the official end to the rebuild. I've seen you other posts about trading away Cease now. I said the window was over and people needed to be hit on the head with a brick to believe it. Now I think you do.

Rays are looking to trade pitching to protect some of the rule 5 guys particularly Ryan Yarbrough, Yonny Chirinos and from the BP Shawn Armstrong. Choi is probably available too according to Morosi.

2023 season. We just finished the 2022 season.

Ha I don't trust Soxtalk and I don't have the education necessary but as owner I would upgrade everything behind the scenes related to player development , biometrics, analytics, scouting,allow Marco Paddy to do his job without any restrictions and fire just about everyone else. I'd hire as many people from the Rays and Houston as possible to accomplish all that. I'd emphasize middle of the diamond and LH and switch hitters, defense , starting pitching, speed and power. 1st base and catcher would be last on my list when drafting either internationally or college.

Zero chance it's Nimmo too given what Diaz just got from the Mets.

It's water under the bridge which means what's done is done. I mean we are always in agreement that the direction of the Sox and decisions by Hahn and the collective group of idiots in the FO were based on some run amok thoughts about relievers being the new market inefficiency.

All water under the bridge at this point regarding why they drafted him. His college resume didn't exactly scream starting pitcher so I wouldn't exactly say he was shoehorned into middle relief. They had a talented arm that was needed when you are trying to win and his arm fell apart which would have happened anyway. Best thing you can say is they put him in the minors as a starter in 2021 he gets injured earlier and is ready to pitch 6 months ago as a SP in the minors still developing a 3rd and 4th pitch and building up his arm towards 100 innings but have more service time.

Crochet may want to be a starter but that's a long road for a guy who hasn't pitched 65 innings since 2019. His quickest way back to the majors is as a reliever and for a young man with arm problems and lack of SP innings I'd be thinking more along the lines of qualifying for the MLB pension and a long career as a reliever rather than chasing the dream of being some guy with an ultra slim possibility to put enough 150 IP seasons together to get the big bucks.

Sox didn't ruin him. He hardly had any time as a starter in college. 2018 64 IP , 2019 65 IP. Tell me what were the Sox supposed to do and how they ruined him. He started a whole 13 games in his 3 years at Tennessee with 12 of them in his 1st 2 years and wasn't an outstanding pitcher those years by any stretch. He was drafted based on stuff and spin rates since Covid shut down the 2020 season for him when he was a Junior. But he did have a sore shoulder also. With 2 highly effective pitches he was destined to be a reliever. Should the Sox have not used him in that role in 2020? Based on results in 2020 with the Sox when he was throwing 100 all the time and got in a few games, it looked like they did the right thing. He was MLB ready from the start. Should he have been in the minors in 2021 being developed as a starter when the Sox were chasing a World Series appearance? Do you think using him as a reliever in 2021 caused him to have TJS ? If he was starting in the minors instead would he not have had TJS ? Like many young pitchers throwing 100 he was going to have the surgery soon no matter what the Sox did. If you put him in the minors right away and let him be a starter while never pitching for the Sox its likely he'd still have TJS and never pitches an inning for the Sox. Basically the only thing you can argue is that he would be a promising SP without having accrued any MLB service time but still recovering from TJS. If he was going to have TJS anyway I think he's pretty happy he got paid better than a minor leaguer and put some time toward getting an MLB pension.

Ha wasn't me . I'm not in Altadena anymore but close enough being in Pasadena and I'm in Altadena every couple of weeks to do grocery shopping and hit my favorite thrift shop. Plus I hardly ever buy lottery tickets but I should have given that massive amount !

I think until he plays in MLB Colas should be replaced on your list by Sheets. He had the 7th most AB's on the Sox. You're expecting Engel to be DFA'd and Sheets isn't on your roster. Based on time with the Sox last year until you know otherwise Sheets is on the 26. If others are correct that Colas will be held back to get the extra year there's no telling when he will be called up .He could have a slow start in AAA which would make it easier for the Sox to manipulate his service time. If they call him up right after they get the extra year it's too obvious . Mendick also barely played last year.

Very in depth. Thanks. Must've taken quite a while to put that together.

You mean like Colas ?

That new Diaz contract sends me a signal that Nimmo is out of the question if he was ever in the question.

If you're talking about Jack Parkman who asked , he didnt specify a field , just the players . I quoted you and the other guy because you 2 said RF. While I agree Gallo can play LF and RF there's no need for him in RF and he has played most of his games this year and his career in LF. Oddly enough the Rangers were the only team to keep him out of LF and played him mostly in CF and RF in 2020 and 21. I suppose he could play CF better than Pollock. Would be nice to have some interchangeable parts in the OF though after what we have witnessed the last couple of years. Gallo, Robert, Colas and Pollock can all play CF . But in my view Robert belongs in CF , Colas in RF and anothe LHB in LF be it Bnintendi, Conforto or Gallo . I wouldn't exactly mind a LHH CF either to move Roberet to LF since he hasn't exactly played CF that well since that huge injury he had. Someone speedy and LH to take advantage of the new pickoff and shift rules.

Maybe you saw this post coming from me but why are we talking about RF .? That's Colas' spot. He's custom made for RF with that big arm of his. Do you really think he couldn't just step right in and possibly lead this team in HR and OF assists ? He jumped into the top 100 prospects based on 400 AB's. If he was any other prospect who had spend 3 seasons making his way from below A to AAA and was 22 he would be in the top 20 by now. He's the real deal. The Sox cannot afford much. If you really want to choose between Conforto , Benintendi, Gallo etc make it for LF, Thats Benintedi's and Gallo's main spot anyway.

Exactly that's the year they were 18 games under .500. When you want to win games you don't do it. Every game matters to winning organizations ! Players miss enough games with injuries , deaths and births in their families, dizzy spells, viruses, tripping over bases.

When you are .500 for 1.5 years the window is either over or it isn't. If you think it's over fine, 15 games is nothing. If you think the Sox can make enough changes to contend again for the Central when their budget might not allow for changes and you get rid of Abreu, your guy who is consistently on the field and usually your best player, your offense is going to need all the help it can get. All this we can afford a extra loss talk or 2 or 3 or whatever playing inferior talent and sacrificing offense and defense doesn't fly with me. Pollock can't hit RHP and is going to be 35 soon. Grandal ,Robert , Eloy , Anderson Moncada aren't we usually losing enough games from them with injuries and you want to sacrifice even more games ? No. Who's going to replace the wins Cueto gave us ? You're looking at a lot of games headed to the loss column already when these things occur if Abreu is gone, Gio doesn't recover, Cueto gone, Andrus gone, Pollock sucking and aging. Hendriks another year older locked into Kelly and Diekman and more than likely doing little in the off season to improve.

You actually want to win games ? You do realize the Sox have been a .500 team for 1.5 years right ?

I don't believe in doing that. What's more important right now ,winning games and keeping your potential superstar happy or 2029 ? . Just a question I don't actually know the answer to yet , did the Astros play the service time game with Jeremy Pena ?

If he was feeling so good about himself why did he have that twitter outburst. I tried to find more about it but I must be googling the wrong thing. As I recall he said something about being a slave. ahh here it is :

Why can't Colas just be that LH RF from the start ? If you bring in another OF who hits LH ,stick him in LF and Pollock is your bench guy. It makes no sense for Colas to sit against LHP because he can hit them . Why wait for things to go off the rails ? Haven't we seen enough of going off the rails from Sox FO, TLR and players performance and injuries in the last 1.5 years to last a lifetime ? Imagine how truly bad the Sox might've been without the "lucky" acquisition of Cueto after the Lynn injury. Cease and Vaughn were the 2 young stars who improved from the previous year. Kopech got into the rotation and had the usual ups and downs of a 1st year starter just as I predicted much to the chagrin of those who shouted from the rooftops that we didn't need Rodon because Kopech would replace him.

I can't understand how anyone would defend the Sox on their evaluations and development of any talent under their wings. Obviously Colas had to start somewhere in the system to shake off the rust which is why his A+ numbers weren't as good as his AA numbers and he spent a lot of time there. Perhaps too much time. I would understand your defense much better if you were talking about some fresh faced 19-21 who had been through the system and tore up lower levels and started the year @ A+. Here you had a seasoned guy who had already played in the Japanese majors. He traveled a long road to finally get his shot in the states. I know it's water under the bridge at this point . We are all so paranoid about ruining prospects that when special ones come along you get ultraconservative on handling them. I never think it's a good idea to imagine worst case scenarios like you did. We do that all the time because we are used to seeing worst case scenarios happen with guys like Eloy, Moncada, Kopech, Crochet, Robert mainly because of injuries . We expect our prospects to fail. Early in Cease's career there were many doubters here. Easy to say prospects won't make it . The odds are with you in that respect. The hard thing to do is to predict success when it comes to Sox prospects because we know they aren't renowned for developing their talent. I remember Spring Training last year. I kept looking forward to hearing about Colas in some games and he had like 1 or 2 AB in ST and I was wondering why . Did he get hurt ? Didn't seem like it. Maybe it was because he was just so rusty at the time. He's made some big adjustments along the way from Cuba to Japan to the states and from A+ to AAA. A lot of guys with lesser talent surrounded by cultures foreign to him , being homesick etc. would have wilted under the physical and mental strain. If he was some college player and highly drafted or progressed through a system from the lowest level of the minors, he would've easily been in the top 20 prospects instead of the number 96 prospect. But even the guys who do the rankings got on board but it took them a few months after seeing how Colas ripped apart AA before he got that ranking.