thxfrthmmrs

Honestly I had been over the signing a superstar mentality since last offseason, there are a lot of external factors working against the Sox to making a viable strategy. Signing a Cole or Betts would have been nice, it will give us a nice 3-4 year window until we have to tear things down again. To your point in the last paragraph, and it’s a point beaten to death at this point, we need to revamp our philosophy and build a winning organization from ground up. The Houston Astros has already set the blueprint for winning as a mid market organization, we need to do the same, perhaps get ahead of it. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/how-the-houston-astros-are-winning-through-advanced-analytics This probably isn’t news to anyone, but to think Astros are already looking into the next phase of analytics driven baseball and combining big data with AI to help them improve scouting, player development, and in game decisions, while Sox still has one of the smallest analytics department in the league is a travesty. More than anything this rebuild should have focused on changing the way build our baseball team - acquiring top prospects and not fully committing to player development is a half baked solution. So it’s crazy to say, but I’d almost be more excited to bring in a Jeff Luhnow type of baseball mind and overhaul our operations with leading edge technology driven staff than a Betts signing.

There are two types of teams that would want to trade for Betts - the win now teams who do not have long term flexibility to afford Betts and would use him as a one year rental, and teams who want to keep Betts this year and beyond. Sox fall under the second category and I would find it hard to believe, given the position they're in, they would trade for Betts without knowing they could extend him. No matter what Betts says about free agency, he has a number in mind, if we could meet that number and he could risk even having a down year and still get the contract he's looking for, I can't see him turning it down. If Sox feel like they could give Betts a number he couldn't refuse (e.g. $50-100M more than Harper), then they acquire Betts, otherwise they shouldn't and they don't. I just can't see the bold part happening with the Sox. Heck I would rather be on the other side of it and acquiring a Betts at TDL at half the cost if we're a Betts away from being a playoff team.

In a perfect world, we sign a Wheeler/Stras type to a long term deal this off season, then Rich Hill/Alex Wood type to a 1+1 deal, and Calhoun and Gardner to 1 year deals and make the playoffs. Next offseason we sign Betts outright and give this one of the best offenses in the league (it would be extreme RHH, but who the hell cares).

Dom Smith has always reminded me of Yonder Alonso and Logan Morrison, the bad version of them that is, and he still does. His approach did improve but his EV is still pretty poor for a bat only player. Statcast had him as extremely lucky this year by measure of xwOBA. He worth taking a flyer on hoping he finally taps into his power, but I wouldn’t trade more than a B level guy for him.

Same goes for Indians who turned Ramirez, Clevinger, and Bieber into stars. Some team do it better than the others. And it's no coincidence that Dodgers and Astros are two of the best teams at elevating a player's career through their development. Investing in data analytics and having your development staff fully embrace the analytical significance and build plans based on it is the key. That to me is worth spending on than $15M on freaking Jon Jay and Yonder Alonso in 2019.

I like the Shaw idea. Meets our needs and even if he doesn't fully rebound, he'd be a nice LH bat off the bench.

With Robert and Nimmo’s history it makes sense to grab a 5th OF, guys like Maybin and Parra makes sense here. Plus if Mendick struggles in his role, Leury could fill in as the primary backup IF. I would lean toward using the last bench slot on someone who is versatile and do a bit of everything instead of a 1B/DH slug Sox has been prone to do. I wouldn’t mind a Grandal signing, but he won’t be my first option. It’s one thing to be skeptical of a McCann repeat, but Collins has shown enough to get a shot at backup/DH and eventually C of the future. Ironically Collins’ offensive prime could look a lot like Grandal in recent years. Spending big money on Grandal and having him spend a bulk of time at DH would be a waste of resource for me. Having potentially 2 catchers who could catch and hit (Grandal and McCann) would be a nice luxury, but I rather spend the $$ elsewhere.

I think there will be some competition for Kendrick this off-season. I like Matt Joyce as the OF version of Kendrick. He could play the 4th/5th OF and part time DH role. Lefty bat who gets on base at a high clip, he’d make a nice platoon bat off the bench.

Which site are you looking at? Statcast shows his change spin rate as high as ever and curve spin is slightly down. More than anything if our training staff is confident they could help him stay on the field, I wouldn’t mind a heavily incentive driven deal. Any James Shields deal isn’t flying under the radar with Sox fans.

I've posted a few times that we cannot address all of our needs by just throwing big money at free agents. Aside from trading from the farm, one potential avenue is to find reclamation projects, bounce back candidates in FA for cheap and they could potentially play a big role for us. For the sake of this exercise, let's keep consider anyone less than $5M AAV as a under the radar signing. (Scooter Gennett seems like a popular choice, but I still see him getting a 2 year contract north of $15M). With that said, who is our James McCann of the 2019 off season?

If Mets push for Stiever instead of Pilk I’d still do it. The offense is going to be that much better with a .370 OBP bat leading off for the next 3 years. On Cole, I have projected him at the magical $32M AAV months ago, but with a Co Cy Young likely coming, won’t be surprised if he gets another $30M on the total contract value.

Something's gotta give, at this point it's very likely JDM opts out and Mookie gets extended, outside chance of Mookie even getting traded.

Dream scenario: JDM for 4/$100M Cole for 7/$225M Resign Abreu 3/$45M Sign Cam Maybin 1/$4M Rich Hill 1/$5M base salary, incentives up to $10M based on IP Steve Cishek 2/$11M Trade Yolmer, Basabe, Pilkington, E Marshall for Nimmo Final payroll $135-140M depending on incentives Starting lineup post Robert and Madrigal grad: Nimmo RF, JDM DH, Abreu 1B, Moncada 3B, Eloy LF, Anderson SS, Robert CF, McCann C, Madrigal 2B Bench: Leury, Maybin, Mendick, Collins SP: Cole/Gio/Cease/Hill/Lopez to start with Kopech/Rodon due back RP: Colome/Bummer/Cishek/Fry/Herrera/Cordero/Osich Forget wildcard, this is a legit division winning team. I think if JDM opts out, we're right in the middle of the running for him. In a more optimistic-realistic scenario, we get Wheeler or Odorizzi instead of Cole, and payroll ends up around $120-125M And lastly, in a more pessimistic-realistic scenario, JDM doesn't opt out or he turns us down, we sign Moustakas (3/$45m), and Wheeler (4/$68M) as our 2 big FA acquisitions, with same remaining pieces as before, final payroll around $110-$115M.

A picture of Ron wearing an autographed Abreu jersey and captioned with "3 more years".

Hard to call it spitballing and prove a point when all numbers are on the low side. Realistically, Sox may be able to add an impact player or two along with a few role players, but definitely can’t address all needs by doling out cash. While it’s possible we push $120M payroll at the end, its also possible that they leave some of the money to spend mid season, depending if they’re in position to compete.

We need an L here. If Yolmer leading off and Castillo at DH helps us get there then let’s do it.

Point is you aren't adding all those resources and still stay within payroll budget. You are getting either of Moose or Grandal, and if you add Gardner you'd like have to sacrifice in SP or RP help. With how bad the bullpen has been, you'd have to spend more than $6M to upgrade. We likely have $60M (upper limit) to spend after extending Abreu. Unless you're projecting based on 2010 salaries, you have to cut corner somewhere. While people are against trading from the farm you have to trade a few of the top 15 prospects if you want to address all the holes in the offseason.

Use BBRef payroll projections, it's your friend. Rodon and Leury are also Arb eligible. Even if we nontender Yolmer, they're at around $48M before an Abreu extension. While I agree the final payroll will be between $120-130M, you've also estimated severely underestimated what these guys would get. Unless there is no one else offering these guys contract, you have to bump all your projections up by 25% at least. And in Grandal's case, he's not opting out of his deal to take less money than what's he's guaranteed, especially after a 5.2 fWAR season.

So your takeaway from this article is rather than BoSox sending prospects you’d send two young pitchers plus a Top 20 prospect for Sale, while the article suggests otherwise.

Ya, as I alluded to they might be away to get away with this major flaw because they have built up a lot of talents through trades and Robert signing. It’s a testament to help freaking talented Moncada, Eloy, and Robert are. Going forward they do not have that luxury if they don’t start emphasizing on plate discipline. What the Twins are doing right now are the exception, not the rule. It’s no coincidence most of the top 10 “plate discipline” teams are playoff teams.

On the flip side, if you teach the minor leaguers to refine their approach and be more selective early on, you are giving them a better chance to succeed. If a guy like Sosa or Bush are better plate disciplined, they’d rank a full grade higher as prospects. I think they need to do that in the long term, short term I agree you have to seek MLB guys who could take smarter ABs to balance out guys like TA or Abreu who are notorious free swingers. Though with success teams are having with advanced statistics, guys who have strong plate discipline won’t be cheap to acquire.

I think that's the hope, I just don't know how much they would improved in this system. Last 3 years, Sox ranked among the worst in K%, BB% and O Swing% and has actually gotten worse each year. Some of it is personnel because we were fielding such a shitty team, but the holdovers like Abreu, TA, Leury, and Moncada (this one is understandable) has gotten worse each year as well. Even Avi has gotten worse progressively worse in 2017 and 18 before bouncing back slightly this year. At some point, we have to pinpoint and find out where the issue is coming from, especially since the same issue is happening in the low minors, and it isn't always just the players.

I would be down with Grandal and Nimmo addition, but think Nimmo should be leading off with TA in the 2 hole. Part of the reason for my post was also I’m not sure how much emphasis this team places on plate discipline, which is why I’m skeptical they would go after the Grandal/Nimmo type. It would be so White Sox to go after Puig/Dickerson, making it the worst disciplined team by far.

It’s no secret that Sox as a team and as an organization are terribly disciplined on offense, but looking at the underlying numbers makes it even more scary. 2019 YTD rankings (Low rank = bad) BB%: 30th K%: 27th O Swing (out of zone swing): 27th O Contact (contact on out of zone swing): 29th Z Swing (zone swing): 15th Z Contact (contact on zone swing): 23rd Swinging Strike: 29th BABIP: 1st (highest) In summary, Sox are taking a lot of bad swings and are unsurprisingly missing on those swings. You could call them aggressive, but their swing % in the zone is right around league average. An aggressive team would be swinging at those pitches at a higher rate. It’s seems more like the case they’re swinging at pitches outside of thezone because they couldn’t read if they were. They also are pretty poor on making contact in general, as evident by a less than ideal Z Contact rate. And despite a league best BABIP they’re still a bottom 5 offense in terms of runs scored. I said as an organization because the same K/BB issue is prevalent in the low minors. AZL, GF and Kanny are among the worst disciplined teams in their leagues. Looking at ahead to next year, you’d expect Eloy and Moncada to make some improvements due to natural progression, but the case against it is this team hasn’t helped Anderson, Avery and Leury improve their plate discipline over the years. Madrigal should be a welcomed change with his sound hitting approach, but as talented as Robert is, his approach still needs a lot of work. Is this an organizational philosophy and Sox just don’t care about plate discipline, or they just haven’t emphasized plate discipline to their “young” hitters yet. I think if unaddressed, they may still have enough talent to overcome this weakness and become a playoff caliber offense if they bring in a big bat or two, but they have potential to be a much better team if they emphasize more on strong plate discipline.

If double play combo in the sense when Adam Dunn is coming up to bat, then they’re a pretty good double play combo.