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Picking the Eagles . 33-27. What's everyone's pick ?

The trenches are the most important positions on the field after QB. Having said that QBs are better when they have time as are RB and others skilled positions Both offensive and defensive lines should've been prioritize last year but Poles prioritized RB , WR, and punter even after seeing how much the defense improve once they started having a pass rush. He hung Sweat out to dry and got him no help. He hung Williams out to dry by trying to patchwork the O line. He's lucky Williams wasn't mangled. Hopefully our new head coach sees that and knows you build from the ground up and not from the top down.

Hasnt happened yet. Truth or not ? Your crystal ball is irrelevant.

Sosa and Vargas both should get long looks because they are out of options. You can't send them down unless they clear waivers .

Wow NRI already made the team and now it's a plan. You know the plan without or without Drury.

What's your plan to make the team good again without spending money ? This might be the last year to hope to catch lightning in a bottle with some usable 1st halves. And yes again its not much of a plan , just like last year, but they are gathering up plenty of bodies to throw into the mix and try to increase the odds depth.I'm thinking 2nd half of the season will be mostly youth. Plenty of these guys will be outrighted and maybe even have productive years with other teams just like that 40 yr old reliever you got bent out of shape about. Honestly when you're choosing among a bunch of rejects its pretty difficult to know who to keep and give legitimate shots.

Why do I need 6-12 paragraphs when you ask for best case scenario ? Here it is in a nutshell . Everyone becomes great. Sox go 162-0 and sweep their way through the playoffs and World Series. Can't get any better than that.

Quintana

We'd sing and dance forever and a day.

Even with my cheap android smart TV in California I can figure out how to get a stream of Blackhawks and Bulls games on a TV browser. If I can get those games I'll be able to get Sox games too.

Can't help it if you think that way. Maybe you can say " told you so" in 5 years.

I actually never said he was a signing.I also mentioned Fajardo by mentioning the 17 yr. old, but not by name. I think it's inconsequential but it's difficult to say whoever you get back for Booser is going to be a better prospect than Fajardo. They will likely be impossible to compare until both either end up in the majors or never do. Relatively speaking pitching is the Sox strength so you're going to see them draw from it once in a while.

No idea what this means .It's so cloak and dagger. Am I supposed to know what you're talking about ? I think you're saying I'm making excuses for Getz but I'm stumped on what events are happening this week that's proven anything or the mysterious point you think you're making. Cease is on the market again. He hasn't been traded. Why don't you assess the trade market for his services right now and tell me exactly what the Padres should get for him just so I know you can do it not only just after the fact .

I'm not going to try to analyze the trade market that off season. You put a 5 tool guy who just had a huge year on the market who plays CF and you'll get interest if you don't ask for the moon . Getz put it out there he did want the moon.Dont think that was wise. You let the market come to you. You don't drive off customers by telling them how expensive your product is, especially with his injury history which you have to be reasonable about if you know it's likely he's at peak value. You start fielding offers , you compare them, you play them against each other .But you always know you have to make the deal. He is just too injury prone not to. Reinsdorf would've been thrilled .You're getting a possible $55 million off the books and buyers like the fact that the last $40M are option years so you were only paying $15M for 2024.

Ok let's not be delusional .The Sox just got done losing 101 games. Cease and Robert were in the market at the same time.No one was thinking there was anything wrong about the Sox trading Robert. If you want to hang onto that turn things around quickly BS then you haven't been paying attention to Reinsdorf very long. It obviously was a rebuild. If you were trading Cease you had to trade Robert 1st. Big year ,biggest, most valuable trade piece. And yes Getz couldn't have known about Crochet's huge year so it made it even more imperative to trade Robert.He was at that point in time your best trade piece. The Sox would've done a whole lot better than they're going to get for him in the future barring everything possible going right to reclaim some of his value.

I guess I'd say they hope Booser is a flip candidate.Thats the whole point of getting these older arms for very cheap. We always joke about Coop can fix him but Coop came across as an old school crusty SOB while Bannister comes across as an enlightened guru of modern pitching theories. This is Getz putting any future trade value to improve the depth in the minors in Bannisters hands and the next 2 drafts. Yes it sucks you have to believe in miracles but that's just the way it is. Anyone of those older guys they picked puts up good numbers and they become tradable for A+ or higher, 3 options 6/7 yrs of control. Yes it is more valuable than what you give up because you turned a 1/2 season you got for very low level pitching surplus into a guy who just might have a future and closer to reaching MLB than a 17 yr old . Might not happen the way they want it to but might not happen the way you think it will either. It's not exactly rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic . It's close but they are actually thinking they're making a better ship.

I'm still ok with what he got for Cease as were many others. The fans expectations were out of whack with what he was worth. The problems was his 1st decent year was 2021 3 bWar, then 2nd in Cy Young 6.4 bWar , followed by 2023s 2.4 Unfortunately he had his worst season in 3 years on the worst team he had pitched for. Also unfortunately the trade keeps looking worse when prospects get hurt or regress and your MLB pitcher rebounds to about middle ground between his 2022 and 2023. So it looks worse.Guys with better track records get more and selling high gets more. Sox were selling low despite peripherals and the market reflected that. And I think there was some loss of velocity also. And I do not blindly stick up for Getz. I think he was in a terrible position, just as the fans are in a terrible position. I can blame the puppet master a lot more than I can blame the puppets. Again unfortunately JR gets to hide while Getz is at the forefront of every move that is made making him the biggest puppet target even though his decisions are always based on the guidelines set by the JR Hated the Fedde trade .You could say Fedde had a better year than Cease bWar 5.6 to Cease 4.2 , little bit better ERA. But probably not many people would say Fedde is more valuable , but he had more value than Getz got for him. Do you want to know the biggest mistake Getz made so far ? The move he didn't make. He should've made trading Robert his top priority before he traded Cease. But once again after that 5 WAR season fans thought he had finally arrived.No way the Sox could get equal value for him. I'd like to see that thread again. But if he had got traded most probably would've thought he didn't get enough. People here referred to him as a superstar. I think I spoke up once and said he wasn't a superstar.Superstars have track records of above average play multiple years in a row. You cannot get greedy and ignore that he was consistently injured up until that year. Trading Robert could've been the best opportunity to get the position prospects the Sox desperately needed. It also might've created a little momentum towards trading Cease. I'll critique myself the same way I critique others. I don't know what kind of offers the Sox got for Robert that off season. But I did know that holding onto Robert was a way bigger risk than holding onto Cease . It sucks when you have to trade a guy at peak value for fans but it sucks worse now that they have to hope that a guy like him doesn't end up the same as Moncada. He'll never get anywhere near that value he had after 2023. He'll need a Crochetian type miracle and some major OF injuries among contenders to recover value.

A Magic 8 Ball has 10 positive answers , 5 negative and 5 neutral. You're just as likely to get the correct answer using that as asking anyone here.

Clearly the right move if you can guarantee he stays healthy & bounces back .A near 5 ERA 1st half means you are another half season+ away from his Cy Young type year. I don't know what makes you think that would make for a better market. Downside has to be figured along with upside. Then you likely choose the middle ground . I wasn't as worried about him staying healthy but a wicked shot up the middle or a collision covering 1st can happen. There's also a chance that he just didn't buckle down pitching for a lousy team. Putting him back in the same situation doesn't guarantee he gets the same results pitching for the Sox as he did in SD. That's an alternate universe result. Also if the offers weren't there when every team had a legit shot at such good peripherals despite the ERA then where are the good offers now coming from that are supposed to pop up with another bad 1st half + and less control ? I may maximize the lack of offers as dealing with the predatory nature of the other GMs knowing JR is just biding his time wanting to rid himself of salary but that's because everyone else minimizes the effect of being in the position that he's in. Sure he chose it, most upwardly mobile executives would take a promotion like that as a challenge but that doesn't make things any easier or as black and white as you want to make it. I doubt there's many here who knows much about being being a well paid executives in charge of turning a crappy team into a winner with JR doing his best to prepare the franchise for his heirs. There's no pressure on us from the cheapest of cheap seats. But I'm looking ahead not back so sharpen your pitchforks. I don't feel any more powerful arguing moot points where that past that didn't happen can now become your reality. If you think everything you said had a better than 50/50 chance of playing out , then more power to you.

Fans overvalue the expected returns all the time. It's pretty safe to say that because of Cease's down year that GMs were not offering a lot. So the question becomes do you hold him and risk him having a season that will diminish his value further. There will also be fans who since they believe the player is worth more who advocate holding a player who has been healthy and hoping for a rebound to enhance value. In retrospect it came down to should they have held him. Arguing about the return is pretty irrelevant if Getz took the best deal offered. We don't know if he was offered a high ranked position player . As fans we are always operating with vast levels of ignorance until we find snippets of information that hint at incompetence like with the Fedde and Fletcher trades. You get partial stories with 2nd hand knowledge. We also have no empathy for GMs. There is only your track record. As such Getz has only done a minor reshuffling of bodies after the fallout and trying to hire good people to help the survivors while the King claims funds are extremely limited . Outside sources lower offers for your remaining assets knowing that your options are limited. You're lucky I'm here to save your sorry ass. Without me you'd get nothing. And you surely cannot afford to get nothing .Your situation is dire. Your resources are dwindling. The vultures are circling. This is the situation I see and why I am more empathetic towards this rebuilding effort. The current King is old. Perhaps the foundation can be laid that will result in a stronger structure when all is said and done. Going to need a really good new King.

Every organization has players rising and falling. It's no different with the Sox. Obviously in a rebuild you hope to acquire prospects who will rise but it's not always the case. Fail rates among all prospects are much higher than successes. Hiring the right people in the right position in the infrastructure will help facilitate advancement.Being an educator I'm sure you never tell your students to give up hope. You say put your nose to the grindstone . Most people educating you want you to succeed but it takes time and effort and you will fail along the way. You must always rise and face challenges .

Plus you put Sasaki being able to make his own choice after a few seasons playing professional baseball on the Dodgers that tends to tip the scales quite a bit more than a trade that never happened likely due to multiple reasons. Plus it continues the trend of negative focuses no matter what good news pops up. I don't think Getz has done a great job but he is balancing the scales a bit after he probably wasn't quite prepared how to approach his 1st season as GM under Reinsdorf's monetary restrictions. He's done much better since the Grifol firing to bring in new people highly thought of in development circles. He's clearly leaning on Bannister to try to develop and create arms out of thin air. Among the 6 Sox prospects in the top 100 ESPN also put 5 Sox in the 101-200 range, most closer to 200 than 101. So if other ranking services did the same the 2nd 100 would be a lot different than the 1st 100 is from each ranking system. 2024 sucked from the MLB perspective but it was pretty good from the MiLB scene. Of course it was jump started by the trades made before Getz was hired just to be fair about it. I know it also got a huge boost from Crochet unexpectedly coming out of nowhere to pitch more innings than almost anyone thought possible. It happened under Getz' , Bannister's and Katz' watch but not everyone wants to say they had anything to do with it despite Crochet himself praising those involved. Being fair is not everyone's cup of tea. Many vloggers and bloggers are starting to see some progress and every new hire has been pretty eloquent expressing the necessary optimism inherent in coaching youth and the opportunity to work from the ground up on building something strong. They're doing pretty much the only thing they can without much allocated to player payroll. How long it takes to see anything resembling even a .500 team is anyone's guess. The franchise still has many different directions it can travel in the next 5+ years.

Yeah you'd be a much better GM under JR 😂

Guess you don't have much faith that he'll have a strong , healthy 1st half. I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that way. He's been consistently injured and may have caught whatever it was that led to the Great Demise that plagued Anderson, Jimenez, Moncada, Benintendi, and Vaughn ( not that he was actually ever any good ).

Throw up all the asterisks you want . The team that won the Series that year still counts as a Championship. It's just typical of most Sox ownership to not even have that much success. Their rebuild ran into COVID and labor strife 2 major setbacks and their own incompetentcy. Reinsdorf would sabotage his own teams chance at a Championship in 94. Then they had one of the best RH hitters in baseball history and jerked him around with diminished skills clause. Besides my point was the Orioles could end up the same way, good start to a rebuild but not able to finish it off. My point wasn't that the Sox did a great job with the rebuild. They certainly did not in spectacularly crazy bad ways. Management was arrogant and petty and started believing their own press clippings.