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As a long-term move, Upton makes sense on the surface -- the swing in productivity on both sides of the ball from Avi to Upton would be staggering, and the guy is only 28 -- but the cost is high, even if he's "worth it" in terms of dollars to productivity. Realistically, if you're going to have "building block" players that eat up ~$20-25m of your yearly payroll, you have to be willing to continually increase said payroll to patch up the holes that inevitably appear elsewhere. The Dodgers make it work, but the Sox have yet to show such a tendency. Otherwise, it ends up as more of a "HAIL MARY" move, like the Padres just became famous for. I can't support a move for Upton in that context.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 7, 2015 -> 10:44 AM) I think this is real. Now, lucky for him, with the royals success even non-closers are getting paid 10 million per now if dominant. But this is certainly a risk. I don't think there's a ton of evidence that teams are still paying free agent money for saves / NOT paying for holds. Arbitration, now, is another story.

QUOTE (LDF @ Dec 7, 2015 -> 10:28 AM) above avg to great players starts off as a prospects. But the ones that are 25 years old and signed to long-term, below market rate contracts are what you HOPE the prospects turn into. Those guys are the epitome of "building blocks."

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Dec 6, 2015 -> 10:44 PM) I'm okay with Upton if they get rid of Melky and trade Eaton. Avi-Trayce-Upton is a much better OF. Much rather sign Upton than trade young players to rent an overrated fraud like Frazier. For the life of me, I don't understand this obsession with moving Eaton. Why in the world would you sign a $100m+ outfielder just to cancel the gain out by getting rid of a similarly valuable outfielder who makes 80% less money?

Despite Lawrie's recent mediocrity, I'm pretty sure he still has significantly more value than Avi.

I can't imagine Hahn committing substantial resources to starting pitching this year.

QUOTE (Sockin @ Dec 4, 2015 -> 01:41 PM) Sale calls Hahn to discuss direction of Sox I think the implication that non-tendering Tyler Flowers indicates any sort of "direction" is funny.

QUOTE (knightni @ Dec 4, 2015 -> 08:31 AM) Pick up a bad contract in the deal, but at a more useful position (Ethier, Crawford, Frazier) ?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Dec 3, 2015 -> 10:08 AM) Wasn't the worst strike called a ball in 2015 Samardzija pitching and Flowers catching? It was something like 2 inches from dead center but Flowers was really awkward trying to catch it as he was set up on the corner. It looked so much like a ball, even Hawk didn't complain. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-worst-c...-of-the-season/

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Dec 3, 2015 -> 10:05 AM) Agree about pitch-framing, but looking back in past years Flowers didn't rate too highly there (2014 he was below average, 2013 only slightly above average), is this something that we can be sure is a permanent change? There does seem to be a consensus that pitch framing can be taught, so a catcher improving over time makes sense.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 3, 2015 -> 08:46 AM) Looking at the pitch framing statistics, most of the guys at the top of the heap were personal catchers for some of the best pitchers in baseball. Are we going to say that the pitcher is elite because of the framing of his pitches or say that the strikes called outside the zone are because the pitcher is elite? It will be interesting to see where he ends up because Sale almost single handedly puts Flowers at the top of the stack rankings. And I am not sure I am on board with Flowers' pitching framing being the reason he gets so many called strikes. This is why FanGraphs doesn't include it in fWAR, despite the fact that Prospectus clamors for it. Cameron isn't ready to assign 100% of the value of the "stolen strikes" to the catcher, but there isn't any data at all pointing to what fraction the the pitcher or catcher. It's universally acknowledged that it is a skill of the catcher and adds value, but the amount of value is not known. Certainly, it's some fraction of the actual value of the added strikes.

The night of the Peavy trade, when we found out which teams are involved, I said: "I'll be happy as long as we don't end up with Will Middlebrooks or Avisail Garcia." It seems pretty likely that we're about to have both at once!

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Dec 2, 2015 -> 04:39 PM) Did you read the quotes on MLBTR? That's what I was referring to. Yeah, that's what my "lol" was referring to also. Sorry for unclear. I am lazy with posts sometimes.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Dec 2, 2015 -> 03:02 PM) fWAR is useless. Doesn't make sense. lol

I wish Gordon all the luck in the world, but I sure as HELL wish we could have just cut bait about 3 f***ing years ago.

QUOTE (shipps @ Dec 1, 2015 -> 06:08 PM) I will let you know when I have... https://www.youtube.com/embed/gpaOy8b8X6A

What a thread

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Dec 1, 2015 -> 05:57 PM) If he can still be okay behind the plate, I'd love for him to take Flowers roster spots and also take some at bats away from Laroche. Unfortunately I don't see us doing that anyways. He's supposedly extra-bad behind the plate, and I don't know that the difference between his bat and Flowers is enough to justify both the defense loss and the Chris Sale sadness.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Dec 1, 2015 -> 05:53 PM) He elected to go to free agency. I know he has been a name that has been thrown around here the last couple years. I would like to bring him in, I think he still has good upside even though his numbers away from Coors have been pretty bad. I liked the idea of Rosario as a back C/platooner for LaRoche, but then we signed Avila. The ship has sailed, methinks.

QUOTE (Knuckles @ Dec 1, 2015 -> 05:36 PM) Samardzija gonna cash in. Maybe. The problem with these "precedent-setting" deals is that they have the secondary effect of removing the deepest pocket from the bidding pool. There are four teams that are going to commit big on a starter before Samardzija's name gets pulled, and the Tigers and BoSox are already out.

He'd have to be practically free, and we'd have to be confident he could play third base for us. I'm not sure either of those conditions can be met.

I think Brett Lawrie should be considered a target if he can be had at a price that reflects his risk. If he didn't have warts, he wouldn't be available in the first place. For those that feel the Sox are in a payroll bind while also pot-committed, the only way to make up the talent gap cheaply is to gamble on some upside.

QUOTE (Baron @ Nov 26, 2015 -> 01:10 PM) Nice assumption there. I'll answer the previous question though. I dont think he handled Zach Duke,Adam LaRoche and Tyler Flowers correctly regarding to matchups. Zach Duke's big selling point was that he had neutral platoon splits. In order to platoon Tyler Flowers, one first needs a left-handed player with which to platoon him. LaRoche should be platooned at this point, but you could argue that if he wasn't going to get in his groove and be an effective everyday hitter, the Sox weren't going anywhere anyway, so they were giving him every chance to get it going.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Nov 25, 2015 -> 11:38 PM) Who's b****ing just saying Avila will not play more than Flowers. Because of the negligible difference in their salaries?

QUOTE (Dam8610 @ Nov 25, 2015 -> 11:05 PM) I went a bit overboard by saying "conservatively", but Quintana has been worth 9.9 fWAR over the last two years, so saying he's a 5 WAR pitcher is reasonable. Conservatively, he'd be a 4 WAR per year pitcher. This doesn't address that calling Puig a 4 WAR per year OF is fairly generous. I think it's reasonable to call them both 4-ish win players. Quintana's contract is better and he's coming off a better season, so he's got more value. Some of that is negated by the fact that pitchers are more volatile than position players. I agree that Quintana has more value than Puig, but the difference is not anywhere in the same universe as including either Seager or Urias, let alone both of them. Including Avi is nothing; he's close to worthless right now. Montas is nice but again not even close to either of those other guys.