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Astros can have Brian McCann because they have Max Stassi. Castillo was bad again last year. The sox have a lot of young pitchers who could greatly benefit or maintain focus if they didn't have to deal with this. I don't care if they were a 0.0 WAR catcher if it allowed them a legitimate option to catch these players.

It doesn't mean they can't sign a good backup!

OTOH, one of the key pieces of the rebuild succeeding will require Hahn and co. to have shown marked improvement in their FA signings and pro scouting, which they were objectively the worst front office in baseball on from 2013-2016 (lol jimmy rollins). All of the marginal signings of today indicate whether the sox have revamped this dept. If they succeed, that's a good sign, but they are targeting poor choices again!

It's pretty clear at this point the sox are not a reliable source on how good Collins defense is progressing because they cannot identify catcher defense.

They just hired a new GM from the Dodgers. I don't see him aligned to last years strategy.

Weird modifier to put "Parker the player"? The athletic basically said considering the messaging it was clear the story probably implied he would be traded soon (which he is eligible on saturday).

Sox should have signed Jeff Mathis.

It's really weird. I mean, last year they made show of it with Castillos improvement and it being why they signed him. But like Flowers completely scarred them and they just keep throwing average offensive/terrible defensive catcher one after another, and trade away home grown completely acceptable catchers if that's their only goal.

tbh this is the least likely scenario and I'm actually okay with that one. Worst to me would be the first one you mentioned.

But of course your argument is that had minaya stayed in the minors he would be worse, and the only place players can develop is in the majors. That the sox could not at all identify what kind of pitcher minaya is without him being in the big leagues, and minaya will degrade every day he is in minors, and the sox cannot possibly risk creating any sort of competition out of the last spot of the bullpen between their relief prospects. The idea that sox would specifically harm themselves by cycling the last spot of the bullpen with the highest performing of the prospects rather than keeping the entire bullpen open in perpetuity is unnecessary. There is also attrition, injuries and others. Tommy Kahnle did not start in the 2017 bullpen. Did having David Robertson and like, dan Jennings, cause that? Would sox have been completely unable to tell that he may be better based on an extended aaa performance than others had webb not gone down? I have it as highly unlikely that is the case. I find it impossible to believe, actually.

Everyone hopefully this helps. Sometimes when you copy paste a link it captures some rich text, after posting a link pay attention to if you see a black banner appear on the bottom of the screen saying "pasted as rich text paste as plain text instead", click on "paste as plain text instead" and then you should see the gif/tweet/whatever embed load.

GMAB. When one of our bullpen arms actually can dominate AAA and can't come up I'll actually be receptive to them being "blocked" but seeing as how major league teams have a great resource, our AAA team (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-A_(baseball)), I think we can have them gain experience there, showing control and good k rates before then elevating them to the major league roster. Did we learn anything about Thiago Vieira last year that wasn't evident in Charlotte? Did Juan Minaya's 5 walks per nine in charloote say "he can only learn in the majors!" The only bullpen piece that earned a callup last year was Hamilton. The hyperventilating over roster spots ended last year.

Ottavino would be fun to have so I would like him. There really is nothing less fun than having a crappy bullpen. We can trade him whenever we need to.

And anyway “taking on salary while looking for OF help” sounds like a team trying to work with the dodgers who are offloading much shorter term deals.

Man I wish J4L would make an appearance again for this bulls season

If you guys would anticipate this article would have any information on Sox and Harper based on this tweet from nightengale, you would be wrong.

If I was Harper I’d want to fulfill the dreams of a tired adult man who posts on a baseball web site, and I don’t see why mlbn doesn’t represent this viewpoint.

Hey instead of a fireworks grand finale let’s just shoot one firework per hour over next 30 days. Enjoy everyone.

Yeah maybe not to the team but to the fans it would be a lot more fun to have a flurry of activity. People like the trade deadline! What if we got rid of that? It doesn’t really matter, players could move whenever. but it’s fun! Fans having fun can be a consideration.

I’m totally on your side.

I could definitely see DiPoto taking on Heyward for Happ fully confident that he could spin off Heyward only to have to trade something more valuable than Happ to get it done.

As long as there is a DiPoto in this world.

Hear hear

That Heyman article was the most pro harper to the sox thing i've read. Everyone that was at the meetings was abuzz about the sox making a move, on this forum it's straight panic. Cubs will try to clear salary because the cubs need to clear salary. And I'm sure they will offer the highest AAV they can for like a 4-5 year deal. But I don't think that does anything. But it may! Because Harper is a human with power to make a decision.

Is playing with your brother-in-law an attraction?