35thstreetswarm

Yeah, the game 4 crowd was very good at the beginning of the game, especially considering it was mid-day on a work/school day after being canceled the day before and scrambling thousands of peoples' plans. I hope we can see a lot of night games in the future, especially weekend night games. I think that's when you'll really see the crowd at its full, fully-lubricated best.

Yes, I agree that it makes sense to look at their payrolls when they're attempting to compete rather than dinging them for having low payrolls during years when it was literally the point to have low payrolls. Here's their payroll ranks in years before the above chart, i.e. the last time they were really in a contending period. 2005: 13th 2006: 4th 2007: 5th 2008: 5th 2009: 12th 2010: 7th 2011: 5th Man, it's like Groundhog Day around here sometimes. The point is, the Sox have a history of top-of-market payrolls during contention periods.

They were rebuilding/tanking for much of this time, though.

Yeah, the Giolito reaction was priceless as well.

As we hunker down for a long, lockout-frozen Winter...remember the time we had a wild, electric, delirious, up-for-grabs crowd for a playoff game on the South Side? One that was at peak decibel level for hours and never seemed to let up? Remember cane guy? It's easy to forget given all that followed, but for one night that place was pure baseball joy. It was special. I had friends from across the country texting me about how insane the crowd looked and sounded on TV. Maybe I had gotten ground down by all the "attendance jokes" over the years, but I was honestly shocked at how great it was. Turns out we have the best crowd in MLB. This is good. Here's to hoping for lots more October blackouts.

So is it too early to praise the Sox for their high payroll, but not too early to rip them for their incomplete roster? The answer, of course, is it's too early to praise or trash the Sox for their work this offseason, but folks should probably pick a lane.

I'd like to bring Carlos back (obviously assuming the medicals are ok), but I have a sneaking suspicion the org is not that high on Carlos. I've heard the rumors about his work ethic, and TLR's public statements about his recovery at the end of the season were so strikingly negative that it almost seemed like the team was fighting his effort to build up value. Admittedly this is all pretty speculative, but I just got the strong impression in September and October that the team had already cut ties.

My cousin knew a guy who said Mendick is the starter. Can you believe that? Outrageous. Also, watch out for hypodermic needles with AIDS in the gas pump handles downtown, my other cousin said the ISISes are doing it

Can we just retitle this the "Leury Disinformation Thread"?

Phew

The latter.

OK, Cesar Hernandez, 32 opening day. Leury Garcia, 31 opening day. You're missing the point that the three players being compared are essentially the same age, so pointing out the age of one of them as some sort of differentiating factor is wrong.

Because it's November, so -- "duh." We have only cut players loose and haven't added almost anything yet. That statement is true for at the beginning of the offseason for essentially every team that didn't just sign a huge free agent yesterday. 2021 is also currently only 11/12ths as long as 2020 was.

Jean Segura: 31 Cesar Hernandez: 31 Leury Garcia: 30

Choose your WAR—he’s historically outperformed Hernandez and Garcia in all.

I have him at a 3.7 WAR for 2021, he has had multiple ~4 WAR+ seasons (one 6+, when he received 13 MVP votes), and is in fact a two-time all-star. He could be the same player as Cesar Hernandez or Leury Garcia, but it would be a fairly dramatic departure from all three players' known histories for that to happen.

They would literally have all-star talent at every position. If that's not enough for you I truly don't know what to tell you.

A "C" by what measure? Because those moves would result in one of the best and most balanced rosters in baseball. This is my problem with offseason talk. Fans get so myopic and wrapped up in grading who had the splashiest offseason and forget that the name of the game is having the best baseball team overall. It's the reason you can see people unironically say things like "it must be nice to be a Rangers fan..." No, it's not.

Does that make you the kid who cries throughout November because he hasn't gotten any Christmas presents yet?

Bummer -- would've been a great addition if he'd have been willing to split time with Grandal.

I'm not sure this analogy has the logic and universal appeal you think it does.

I think your plan would make most posters happy, even the gasket-blowers ?

I'm rarely (though sometimes) relieved about missing out on a signing because of money. But I do always try to remind myself that the "offseason winner" big free agent splashes rarely work out even though they seem like blindingly obvious successes at the time. I also try to remind myself that those who wanted us to play Padre and chase last season's big free agent prizes (including myself at times) were spectacularly, extravagantly wrong.

The off-season…the Mets’ time to shine

Longest possible time is still not that long in the scheme of things. A few months at most.