CaliSoxFanViaSWside

So you are saying that its possible all teams make cuts and therefore where the Sox rank in payroll will be in the same area meaning it's very possible that payroll is less than it was in 2020 which is what everyone is afraid of. Precisely my point.

I was just speculating. There were reports he was in a seedy bar in Indiana prior to coming to camp by a person on this board . If you wear a mask chances of catching Covid are extremely small.

Does a team like the Sox care about estimated excess value ? If our payroll is beyond a point that Jerry wants to pay how do you pay a whole team with one guy making that much for that long ? Stars and scrubs and not a lot of winning. Cheap youth, supplemented with short term veteran contracts with a payroll perhaps maxing out slightly above mid league level is the only way Reinsdorf wants to win a Championship. I fear Covid and looming labor dispute can sabotage the rebuild quickly. Give Jerry a reason to cut the budget and it's going to happen. I was planning to have the team payroll up near $175M but it's not feasible with the losses we have incurred. Not that it will ever come as direct as that.

Yes should have been "what teams are the most likely sellers this winter?" Instead it read like , "We (the Sox) are most likely sellers this winter", (rather than being buyers).

The most likely answer is no based on his speed or lack of it. Speed makes up for a lot of issues in the OF .It's hard enough to play OF getting good reads, taking good routes, being able to come in just as good as you can go back, being communicative and avoiding collisions with INF and OF's, how to think ahead of time when RHH and LHH are at the plate and how the ball slices from each one, how to set up for a throw and other details that I haven't mentioned.

The kid has got the world at his feet right now. I hope if he needed humbling that the late season slump did that. It always helps for a young player to have his head on straight. This is where I worry about Moncada. Was he being irresponsible in his life which could be why he got Covid ? Does he neglect the fact that his talent alone will not benefit him unless he also works hard and lives a smart structured life ? If there was a lesson to be learned I hope he learned it and doesn't forget it.

It all just depends on the talent pool available. If teams including the Sox end up non-tendering a lot of players there will be a large pool of semi talented players to sign for cheap. There will always be a certain amount that end up being well worth signing. The question always is can you find the right ones , that maybe 10 % of all supposedly underachieving, too expensive to tender contracts who resurrect their careers. Then it's about who is owed raises vs. how much salary if off loaded vs who you really intend to spend money on. Top guys like Bauer seem highly unlikely just based on how high the payroll went this year vs. how high we all thought it should or could go. Like you ,I wouldn't bet on the Sox taking advantage of teams dumping salary. More than likely the Sox could be the team to lead the dumping brigade.

Dumbest comment I ever saw from you and that's saying something.

You can find so many great pitchers who couldn't figure it out in the 1st few years. I always said how fast the young pitching develop would be the key to how the rebuild shakes out. The problem is and always will be if you have greatness in you how long does it take to appear? Same can be said even if you have a few good years. How long will it take ? Will injuries slow you down? Will they ruin you ? Look at Bassitt. He's 29 now and while always showing potential much like Rodon, injuries have been his curse. Unlike Rodon he always had nice peripherals . But there have been great pitchers who also struggled with command like Randy Johnson or Sandy Koufax. Koufax, in his MLB debut ,got in a jam and ended up striking Bobby Thomson on a fastball to end the threat. He said it was "probably the worst thing that could have happened to me," leading, as it did, to five seasons spent "trying to get out of trouble by throwing harder and harder and harder."Wiki It's so much more rare that young pitchers can excel immediately. The problem was the pitching ,theoretically, should have been here in the earlier years of the rebuild to let them take their knocks such as Giolito and Lopez. Giolito worked out great. Lopez may never find it. After that it was too many injuries leading to the young pitchers falling behind the young hitters . That's why I always said get as MLB quality starters as you can find in FA and trades. Everyone thought just Wheeler last year would have been fine but as we found out it wasn't. Even with the great year Keuchel had it wasn't enough. An injury to just 1 of your top pitchers can ruin a season. Now we can only hope Jerry has it in him to splurge a little on starting pitching. This is whats needed, not waiting and waiting to see if pitchers have greatness or even a few years of peak performance that coincides with the hitters. You can't fall in love with pitching prospects when you need guys who can go 6 innings right now. If you look too far ahead all the young guys on the team right now get more and more expensive while you are waiting for pitchers to develop or to lead the next great phase of the rebuild. I'd like to be able to win a Championship in the next few years or we may never get to the proposed 5+ years of making the playoffs.

Not sure what is worse ? Of course him being hurt is way worse. There's no other way to look at it.

Luis Robert being a high profile, potential once in a lifetime player helps as does a winning team after years of losing. Hope both Robert and the team get the support from management that allows them both to flourish.

Excuse me don't you manage every game not to lose ? I've never heard of a manager managing to purposely lose , have you ? If you actually mean something different like perhaps managing to win, how is that any different in a do or die game you must not lose , you must win. The do or die nature of the game means your best possible guys on the field and if they don't do the job then you lose. Too many of the Sox best guys either on the mound or in the lineup failed to perform. Blame the players . I have never seen so many blame the manager for lack of player performance . 9 walks ! How many teams win giving up 7 walks from their best pitchers ? Not counting the 2 Rodon gave up.

So in No.1 you ,mention 3 pitchers and all 3 weren't available. Detwiler was replaced by Rodon as you noted so bringing him up makes no sense. Gio was injured and didn't make the playoff roster. Cease had pitched in relief the day before. Lopez didn't make the playoff roster. No one wanted Rodon to pitch let alone start. How you can say Dunning was distracted and or confidence ruined is pure speculation.He was fully aware that a shaky start could get him an early hook. You weren't there. You weren't inside his head and there's no way you can say it had anything to do with the offense. If the offense was effected how in the heck does it jump out to a 3-0 lead ? Robert looked very effected hitting that 487 ft. HR and I saw Dunning smiling in the dugout looking pretty damn happy to see that HR. These arguments are ridiculous. 2. Why would Crochet follow him up? The game plan is your answer . Start a RH pitcher follow him up him a LH hopefully negating the LH power of the A's. No one cared if Crochet was an inexperienced rookie straight out of college. Everyone was excited to see him pitch just as they were in his earlier games. Were you complaining at any point on this board about him being on the team or pitching when he was throwing 101/102 MPH in his previous games or questioning why he was on the team ? If the answer to that is no , then questioning it now is pure unadulterated 100% hindsight . It is the whole reason he didn't pitch in the 1st 2 games. Crochet was not overused. He hadn't pitched in the 1st 2 games because they had plans for him in this game. He pitched 6 innings in the regular season. He pitched in Schaumburg which probably is a lot less stressful than pitching in minor league games. If you are going to follow the RH Dunning with LH's your choices are Bummer , Crochet, Rodon and Fry. Pick one besides Crochet the Sox were prepared to pitch right after Dunning. You draft guys to use them . If all the coaches thought he was good enough to play in the big leagues then he should be in the big leagues. He wanted to help the Sox in the playoffs that you can be sure of. He hadn't allowed a run in his previous 6 innings and struck out 2 of 2 once he came in the game. The results speak for themselves. The only possible thing you could say is to start Foster or Heuer all rookies with less experience starting then Dunning who all would've been on equally short leashes. Anyone who started knew what was at stake and the possibilities of an early exit . Destroyed confidence ? A distraction , effecting the offense ? Please this is the weakest sauce ever and I don't care what Frank Thomas thinks.

It must be very hard to remember back 100 years when you were so young.?

I brought him up a few days ago along with the Santander kid from The O's. Everyone else is just piggybacking off me . ?

Their you have it ?

Practically everyone on this board wanted Crochet to pitch. He was held out of the 1st 2 games for this very moment. If that's unfair I don't know what to tell you. He's on the team, he had pitched very well and he struck out the 1st 2 guys he pitched to .Its very unfortunate he wasn't feeling right. Right or wrong he was being counted on for about 6 outs .

I never put Rodon in the really good guys category. I put Heuer, Marshall Bummer Crochet and Foster there. No one expects they all do well but you also don't expect 3 of your top guys to be as bad as they were and also dont expect another one of your top guys to get hurt. The Sox used 9 pitchers Oakland used 8 even though their starter went 2 shaky innings and they didn't have one of their best injured. The difference between who won and lost was 9 walks by our guys and 3 by theirs, not how long Dunning pitched.

No one knows if he gets scored on or if he gets out of it. Its not a matter of having faith in him . Mike Fiers has much more experience pitching then Dunning and the Sox roughed him up for 2 innings and only had one run to show for it. If you think its panic nothing I can say will change your mind. And you can't say the game would've gone differently either better or worse if they had left him in or started the game with someone else. All i know was that I liked having a 3-0 lead until the 4th inning. DId you not like that ?

All i know is that was the win probability in the bottom of the 4th so we survived that huge mistake of taking Dunning out and going with the game plan. That win percent went way down and came way up for the A's because our really good pitchers weren't really good and the game plan got severely altered with the Crochet injury. How you blame those guys pitching bad or the Crochet injury on how Dunning was used I haven't got a clue. Maybe that's the bigger giant leap in logic. Maybe you just have no idea how to be nice. Someone else saif you were grumpy and SSK2 scolded you also for how you presented your argument. Doesn't mean I'm soft at all just that I prefer less crazy ways to express yourself.

You let Dunning stick around to give up a couple runs and you got the same people screaming that RR is an idiot or that you're an idiot . Not saying you are just you don't have fans here who see it any other way than their own and anyone who disagrees is an idiot. I love intelligent discussion and welcome opposing views but if you can't do it in a civilized way without throwing around insults and vastly proclaiming your way is the only way to look at it I can't deal with you. SO thank you for disagreeing in a more than welcome way .

Oakland tried to get innings from Fiers too and left him in to give up a run in 2 innings with 5 hits and its should've been more runs. Fiers is a vet, a guy with 2 career no hitters I think. They got 2 very shaky innings from him . Dunning is a rookie coming off TJ suregry with very limited exposure MLB hitters . The Sox didn't have anyone like Fiers . All they had was a bunch of rookies and Marshall and Cordero. Who wanted to see Cordero or Rodon start ? No one . I don't think everything had to go right to win . But everything going wrong means you probably don't win. We got too little too late from Cordero and Colome and hitters leaving way too many on base in the last 3 innings and really throughout the game.

Oakland hits righties better than lefties So you get the RH Dunning in to start. Ideally he pitches without giving up a run or maybe 1 run but definitely you want a scoreless 1st . Yank him when there's trouble and now you bring in the lefties hoping that you can get 3 innings from Crochet and Bummer combined to offset the LH hitting strength of the A's. The Crochet injury messed that up but we still got through those less innings without giving up any runs. It wasn't until the RHP of the Sox reappeared that the A's got runs but at that point you really needed a couple of scoreless innings from one of Heuer , Foster or Marshall and not one of them could do it.

So you would have preferred Dunning staying in the game in a do or die game because you were confident he gets that 3rd out and doesn't give up a run and put the Sox behind from the get go ? Maybe you didn't like that 72.4 % win win probability way after Dunning was removed and the Sox held a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the 4th ? Ok maybe you prefer instead the Sox started Heuer or Foster. Tell me how that would ve gone. Once again you can't. Face facts it was a meltdown from much more reliable arms than Dunning that led to the Sox loss and most of all Crochets injury. You keep thinking you're some baseball expert and so will I but some of the smarter minds on this website happen to agree with me. There was a game plan and they stuck to it with good results until the Crochet injury threw everything out of whack. You then needed some of those good pitchers to perform and they did not. Players not performing up to standards they have established is not the fault of the manager. Hitters failed, pitchers failed and got injured. You don't win giving up as many walks as the Sox good pitchers did. This was not my game plan . It was the Sox and I said at the beginning of that post you could disagree with that thought process but it was working until Heuer gave up the 2 run HR and all the bad from Rodon , Foster and Marshall helped along by a catchers interference from a batter who seems to be good at getting them. It is not panicked or little league thinking. It's doing what you have to do in a situation that warrants it. Fine you disagree with the thought process. It does not make you right and everyone else an idiot.

Hey tray thats what the odds said and the odds are based on solid info about having a 3 run lead at that time in the game.Could you have predicted Heuer, Foster and Marshall all with undrer 3.00 ERA would all be terrible ? Did you predict the Crochet injury ?