bmags

Beat writers mostly.

This one was good!

Did I fall asleep and end up in my dad's email inbox?

What about Porcello on the cheap? It seemed like he rode his 4 seamer too hard this year and sox may let him go back to a sinker heavy pitcher. Seems like that pitch was a little unlucky this year but still largely looks the same.

Yep, just $40 million more to the presumed $110 mill payroll, and a reminder that we spent 43 mill last offseason.

Yeah I'd decline Yolmer and go after Jose Iglesias if depth is needed. Better bat, just as good if not better defense, would be able to give TA a break more often at SS

I could take Heywards average offensive production but the thing that I hate is his defense has fallen off considerably.

Slow burn was hearing the rumors in february when they "shouldn't" have had money left at that point, then seeing we weren't really tied to anyone, and still just hoping that was false, then getting to J2 and only signing a fairly small class with 2.1 going to yolbert, and then finally trading the rest of the space. Just a series of things confirming that though on its face the new CBA seemed to align international to the way the sox like to operate (fixed costs), in reality they will not be able to compete with other clubs because they don't care enough about it to set up the infrastructure and relationships to compete. I will say international is very skeezy and should be reformed, so advocating 10 year olds to leave home to hope to sign by 14 with your club is gross but I don't like them restricting themselves.

I was more disappointed with the Yolbert/2019 class than really even Machado, it was a slower burn, but just so ridiculous.

Hire JD as DH/hitting instructor

Not just that, but think about how many of our own top prospects now were from international and we had to trade significant, cost controlled mlb players to get them . (granted moncada was not cheap intl talent). Think about how the twins 104 win core was benefitted from the 2009 intl class. The rays #1 farm benefitted hugely from 2014. And yet the sox have had such small, low key years one after another. When we are competitive in 2023-24 we will solely be relying on drafting. That said, I do so hope that they still somehow pulled it off and get some decent prospects in Bailey, Rodriguez, Ramos, and Guzman.

Sweet this convo again

We are the only smart baseball fans, thou

dude come on, it takes 10 minutes to photoshop these guys and the press releases aren't chaucer. They have weeks before they'd need anything particularly time-intensive.

How would one prepare anyway?

Oh you were being serious. I thought you were doing a satirical telephone thing.

If we signed cole the implication being you should take advantage of as much of his contract as possible and max out the budget this year right? I still just don't like so much of the position players. I'd be okay if we loaded up on pitching though with a high end guy and multiple depth plays.

Just a heads up for those who saw it I'm moving DAs post to the other thread. This is just a weird Chili recall thread.

Out of curiousity say we learned that our payroll budget can be 145 (basically 2012 plus inflation) but can stretch with a winning team to 160-165. Would people want to be prudent this offseason to see what another year of needs are or would you fill up with this class? With just the pitching class and see how our position players do?

How do you even find this stuff.

Did Kluber pop up at all? I can't think of anyone else like him. edit: wow he is still only at 1300 innings.

The NFL wasn't between two different countries, it was within the US, the response to this has been largely bi-partisan. I agree it needs to be well coordinated, but as it stands the US is the one with the large trade deficit which is the side you'd want to be on.

Thanks this is very interesting. I guess for me I would bank on bumgarner as the surest thing for getting a productive pitcher for the next 4 years, whereas wheeler has the greatest upside of being an ace that grows in the second half of his career. Would you agree?

No, equal pressure from US (i.e. NBA fans, government, public pressure) that acquiescing also may have consequences. Their TNT/ESPN deal was 24 billion to 2024/25. Do you want to try and make up that revenue by growing an a market that you could lose with a tweet from one of your many outspoken athletes (that is part of your brand) or try to protect the US market and try to expand in places with less restrictive governments?

They won’t, if they can square the circle they will. But it’s why equal pressure in US will help.