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This has literally been the response to every single story that has come up in 2019 on international free agency, but it's impossible to have this opinion when looking at the whole. They basically voluntarily punted on a 3rd straight latam class. That's a huge disadvantage.

Nats are definitely one of the best free agent spenders (and traders). Their daniel murphy acquisition was also insanely good.

Yes, this is a good example. The sox are so in on the cuban pipeline because those players have played professionally and seen as less risky, not because of objections to the process.

Prior to being in Cleveland yonder was with the As for his best years.

I refuse to use the word moral for this. The international operations do have a reason for moral opposition. This is more how JR is just an old school owner that puts a lot more effort than other owners in "how the league should operate", often in terms of profitability and restricting other owners for pushing everyone into foolishly risky investments. (Hi amateur drafting and international)

oof. Austin Martin just sounds like a name that will terrorize sox for years. Not a lot of lhp at the top I see.

This has been my theory since the Badler story broke. The sox are being told to refuse to play by JR so they can hold greater leverage to get owners to get in line at the next CBA, so they are using the pool of actual 16 year olds, as the top players had been signed already. And as we've seen with our relative success with Jose Rodriguez/Guzman, players do randomly get better there! It's just the issue of constantly playing from a more restricted field than the rest of the league and then relying on free agency to solve all problems - which is much more expensive. And finally - then blaming fans for not having more money.

Robert was 19 with professional baseball experience. I'm 80% certain it's not about JR's moral convictions and more about him feeling that "young players are a crapshoot", because they jump with joy every time an older player is available - on top of their incredible tilt toward college players in the amateur draft. As always with the sox, there is probably some deep seeded horror over paying for juan silverio and it proved to never pay for 16 year olds, but there is never the same prejudice against throwing millions at old DHs that have the worst years of their lives.

They clearly intend to regardless. The Bauer trade signaled that.

I was wondering where the reds would come into play

Unfortunately Hahn will not respond with anything interesting and you don’t get follow ups. He’ll just defend Paddy. I ask about intl every year

People aren’t upset that Castillo was gone, but that they traded away pool money to avoid paying 500k

They could have done that without this.

To be so sure there are not players worth signing, you’d have to feel like you have the most well tuned latam operation in baseball. The fact that it’s a crap shoot should make them even less confident in their MO of signing small classes and trading for old bullpen relievers. This is a strategy issue, so it’s Hahns fault, but he’ll blame Paddy.

It ain’t over til it’s over fellas

This is correct, and turned the opportunity to spend $250k into actual $500k.

We should add up how much we saved in international and see if it matches the overage in the amateur draft

Sox saved 500k. Cole is ours.

It is truly funny. Beautiful financial engineering.

You'd probably be looking at converting current bullpen pieces for nimmo (bummer)

Yeah, playoffs where you can show off as a multi-inning reliever/stopper like Hader certainly are getting paid, in part because they so rarely get to show that off in the regular season.

Why is that? Because the luxury tax escalates for consecutive seasons. If they spent last year, they would have been less able to this year - a year where a number of contracts began to expire, and then ellsbury expires next year. They are in a much more manageable position to dip in a few years even with another monster contract.

Exactly. I love this cute putting our heads in the sand and screaming that the market will work in Sox favor but the Yankees dipped under the luxury tax so that they could jump back over it with fewer penalties. And they’ll keep doing that dance.

Yet Corbin was bid up to $140 million. Corbin has he been in this class would be considered close to wheeler, and there are many more bidders.