The Ultimate Champion

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 11, 2014 -> 09:32 AM) JR said back of the rotation starter, so that pretty much eliminates guys like Latos and Shields. If that's our plan we might as well sign no one. Throw out another prospect/project because the tanking continues. BTW as an aside anyone else think the whole "let's wait 'til July" stuff is ridiculous? Like, let's just spot patch a bit and plan on pissing away the first half of our season but hey, if we're surprised then maybe we'll change course! Stupid. They should either try to win or sign no one, and try to find another young arm with some potential to give Danks starts to.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 11, 2014 -> 09:24 AM) Unless the Sox have identified a flaw in his hitting mechanics....not that they're to be trusted too much with hitters, but perhaps there's reason to have a lot more faith in Steverson than Walker or Manto, so there's that. Perhaps? What do you mean "perhaps"?

Okay so here, consider this: Rotation: Sale-Shields/Latos-Quintana-Noesi-Rodon Pen: reclamation project/bargain signing for closer 7th & 8th primarily you have Putnam & Petricka Guerra is your 6th inning guy you sign/trade for a lefty setup man Carroll/Bassitt/Rienzo battle for the long man role 1 spot left for a lefty (ideally) but if all the lefties blow you take another righty L C Castro (trade for him amirite?) R 1B Abreu S 2B Sanchez R SS Alexei S 3B Headley (signing) S DH VMart L/R LF Platoon Connor & Tank, with Connor the backup 3B, some 1B time as well and Tank as your other player you may at another position should you desire L CF Eaton R RF Avi Bench: Some guy at C, Semien UT, Moistness, Leury for defense & s*** also running fast All we have to do is make a bunch of trades & signings and tear the free agent market a new asshole but hey it could be done....

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 11, 2014 -> 09:09 AM) I appreciate what Dunn did, too. But the entire SOX NATION wanted him to die in a brutal farming accident, so given that thought process, I'm not understanding the yearning for a higher risk version of the same thing as a replacement. Hey I just wanted him to go pound sand/eat dirt, not necessarily turn it into a commercial venture.

All I know is that if I was Rick Hahn & the Red Sox called and said they wanted to trade XMen Boogers for Abreu I'd tell him to go suck a fat hard one.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Sep 10, 2014 -> 09:39 PM) Hey, if Luhnow would take two of Danish, Montas, Hawkins then I would pick those two kids up and drive them down to Houston myself and pick McHugh up and drive him back to Chicago. Honestly, I think it would take more than two of those three kids. I would consider Anderson depending on what else Luhnow wanted. I haven't seen him or anything but IIRC on the radio they made it sound like McHugh is an overachiever type with pretty marginal stuff. Like their Carlos Torres or something. We'd need ceiling out of Montas/Danish etc. and if we're doing that then we need to think about Homer Bailey and those types.

Would anyone *NOT* do Tyler Flowers for Jason Castro straight-up? I think that one should be unanimous right? One 'no' vote for caulfield maybe. How much extra would you throw in to do this? Forget about the arb years, I didn't even know we wanted the rights to Tyler Flowers to begin with. This would be a great deal for us but I highly, highly doubt the Astros would bite. At the very least they would need more, at least one more good player or prospect. Flowers + Tank, is that fair? What's the most you'd give? I'd drive Semien AND a bag of balls to the airport to capitalize on this low risk/high reward scenario involving hit tool and so forth, no question. What about Danks + loads of cash and Tyler Flowers, lol, that one would be great! I don't that's realistic though. Houston as dumb as they are at least has to know that Castro is a talented guy. Flowers and Tank may interest them, and that one would be hard to pass up. However, a Connor/Tank DH platoon with both guys getting AB elsewhere (1B and LF for Tank, 3B and LF for Connor) could be a pretty productive situation for us, as long as we can keep Tank fresh enough to get his timing and keep it. That really might turn out well for us. And add Castro & Headley to the picture and we're getting much better defense at the hot corner which helps our pitchers and we're looking at a more balanced lineup with 2 more lefty bats against RHP.

QUOTE (professa @ Sep 10, 2014 -> 06:21 PM) If we're giving them Flowers and Gillaspie, they better be giving us Castro and +++ back. Flowers actually has a higher fWAR than Castro this year, but not as much upside. I'd rather part with a prospect than Gillaspie although Houston might be interested in him because of how abysmal Dominguez has been this year. Are we onto something here??? I like Gillaspie and have since we got him, I even stood up to wite in his onslaught against him, but I still don't know if he's an everyday 3B or more of a platoon type. I like his bat skills, but I think Castro is the more talented of the two. Could we conceivably get Castro AND steal a player or two from Houston? I mean everyone else is doing it these days, why not us?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 10, 2014 -> 06:13 PM) To start who at 3B then, Semien or Davidson? Sandoval, Hanley Ramirez or Headley? Castro's WAR this season is less than a half point higher than Tyler. You can make an argument we're giving away the better player going forward in Tyler, and then weakening the offensively production at 3B in the process. I simply don't see them shelling out $75-100 for two huge injury risks in Sandoval or Hanley...but, I suppose it would be Sandoval, since the LH vs. RH issue vis a vis Ramirez. And I think he'd be more willing to accept a 2+option, 3+option deal at this point, coming off a mostly disappointing but now seemingly rebounding season, where his overall stats look fairly in line with his normal production levels. If it's Chase Headley, yuck! If the Astros thought that I'd pull my dick out and finish before they realize where I had just put it.

^I just came up with my offseason plan. Trade for Castro (L), sign Headley (S) no draft pick, maybe trade Connor for the right deal but try to keep him, and Connor/Tank is your DH platoon with both guys getting time in the OF and Connor at 3B.

QUOTE (hi8is @ Sep 10, 2014 -> 06:05 PM) They'd be silly not to take that deal... And I'm on the fence as to if the Sox should do so if the offer was on the table. If you put a gun to my head and say "take it or leave it" I'd probably take that deal, because I think Castro is the best player in the discussion. Just a s***ty year though. .230/.298/.381/.678 with 14 HR for Castro vs. .245/.302/.398/.701 with 14 HR for Flowers. And s***, if we could pull Castro for Flowers + Semien or something then it's not even a thought. Edit: He and Chase Headley have just had absolute dogs*** years completely out of nowhere. What happened there? It's easy to call Headley's 2012 a career year which he won't repeat or even come close to again, but he's just been garbage offensively this year. I wonder if you traded for Jason Castro, and put Headley at 3rd as a buy-low FA if you might strike a little gold under the wisdom of Master Steverson?

Also of the Either/Hamilton/EJax monster I think EJax is the best fit if the money is pretty close. Reason being, if the Sox want to wait until the deadline to deal Danks then we're looking at 4 lefties (very unlikley IMO) or perhaps the Sox screwing with Rodon and putting him in the pen --- and I'm telling you now, do not underestimate their ability to do that. So at least if you swap EJax for Danks then your rotation is Sale-EJax-Quintana-Noesi-Rodon for half a season and you look to shed the rest of EJax's deal around the deadline, and that way you get your L-R balance with Rodon starting in the rotation, and EJax is basically a placeholder for Beck/Danish/Montas or whoever else we may be interested in calling up at some point in July.

I think the best thing we can do with Danks is shop him hard as a veteran lefty 5th starter who should continue to grow into his repertoire, and offer to eat as much money as necessary to get him to that point. With Danks IMO we could at least get $5M per salary relief, hopefully a bit more. Let's say we can get $6M per off the books without getting anything back, for the sake of argument. If Danks is gone we really don't lose anything, we just gain another rotation slot to fill with someone who offers more potential while gaining an additional $6M in salary room. Even if the Sox just pocket that money in the end, it may at least improve our chances of upping the payroll a bit more later on when we have to. We really don't lose anything and we'd gain quite a bit. OTOH if we keep Danks in the rotation, while it is possible that the results would improve, he's not going to "pitch" his way back to a low-90's fastball, and so even with improved conditioning and a better understanding of his strengths and weaknesses and further growth as a pitcher, he's not going to do anything to convince anyone he's more than a back-end starter in terms of stuff. So, we really have little to gain there. If he stays he's better off in the bullpen, but I think the best thing for the Sox and Danks both is if he's starting somewhere else. Eithier, Hamilton, Jackson all make some sense one way or another, but at the end of the day, if we take on one of these guys, even if money is eaten on the other end, we're likely further limiting payroll room beyond the level at which Danks' deal limits us. And because of the room open, Danks deal isn't really going to hamper us much, it's just that he's redundant at best as a starter and really only valuable to us on the field potentially in the bullpen. With Rodon here Danks is likely to be our 4th best lefty starter. So it just makes baseball sense to take the extra bit of payroll room as the silver lining and ditch as much of the deal as possible.

Totally out of the blue, but... Would the Astros take Connor Gillaspie and Tyler Flowers for Jason Castro? If you think Connor is more a platoon type, and Flowers isn't going to get any better, then anyone think those 2 could get us Castro coming off a bad year? Of course you'd only do it thinking that Castro would turn it around here & could be extended. If this deal had been proposed several months ago it would have been laughable, but I think both Connor & Tyler have raised their status significantly since the offseason while Castro's stock has really fallen.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 06:45 PM) Well we're not on the same page here. In a weak FA class where there should be several large market buyers, guys like James Shields get valued based on how many better options are ahead of them/behind them, not based on how he fairly compares on a $/WAR scale. I think Shields is going to end up somewhere in the range of 5yr/$100m. I think, based on his performance trends (trading K's for contact, maintaining K/BB ratio by walking fewer and giving up more hits), he's going to be a notch worse immediately next year. That guy can still be a useful mid-rotation piece, but you can only reasonably EXPECT that for year one and maybe two of the deal. I'm not offended by the idea of him being overpaid after that, but that kind of contract can really hamper the team's ability to do other things when it's paid to a 4th or 5th starter. I mean think about how we're treating John Danks at $14m. Yeah, Shields has farther to fall, but he's a lot older and has a lot more miles on that arm, and he's going to be more like $18-20m. And the signs of decline are already there. I wouldn't like that deal either. As I said earlier though, I'm still on the fence re: any "big" moves as it is. I don't care about the second rounder - in fact I'd LOVE to exchange that pick for a proven player - but the players and the years.... I'm not just not sure there is a fit right now because of the number of holes on the team. One thing I do think is pretty dumb though is throwing money at the McCarthy tier of pitchers (not just him specifically) because the best we can hope is that we get him on a deal that fits what we're doing now and that we can recoup a decent spect for him at the deadline. I would much, much rather concentrate on developing another SP who could potentially be a core piece than throw some run of the mill vet out there (and yes, McCarthy & that tier is very run of the mill all things considered). I'm not in love with the idea of running out and making some big trade either. Now if it's Stanton or something that is different, but even there you have injury issues and the potential to lose the player to FA. You'd have to have a pretty good feeling about an extension before doing that. Also definitely count me in the camp of going 5/$100M on Shields vs. 7/$200M for Scherzer, for exactly the reasons you have mentioned here. Scherzer's deal will have a huge chance of blowing up in the face of whatever team gives him that. Look at the last CC deal - the Yanks should have called his bluff and let him walk. And while Tanaka's deal looked like it could be bad later, did anyone really think this early? Looking at the Mets with Santana, the Kevin Brown deal, the Yanks with Pavano, the Zito deal in SF where he was a lefthanded Scott Carroll on Day 1, etc. there's just too much evidence to say that a 7 year deal is a bad, bad thing to do. 5 I draw the line unless it is a special situation, but I don't want to do that for Shields. Shields - one last thing, I'm not disputing that he is in the early stages of his decline nor am I disputing that he will likely lose some of the physical stuff going forward. IMO he;s the type that can deal with physical regression better than others. Some athletes can't make it work anymore after they lose some of what they have physically, others however can, and Shields isn't the type that I'd look at and say "major injury risk" or "no durability/this guy can't hold up," or "this guy won't be able to record outs with lesser fastball velocity." So I think in some key ways he's safer (a whole lot safer than big fastball, big slider Scherzer by a mile) even though I've always seen Shields as a #3 who outplays his ability into a #2 type of role (very similar to the way I view Quintana). I don't really believe in #2's and #4's, just really 1's, 3's, and 5's, and Shields has never for me been a 1, just a real competitive type of 3. In the end, I'm not sure where you fall on this, but I just don't know about making veteran additions. I think 2016 is more the year we should be looking at, and if we do make a money move then go big or go home, get a RHSP who is good enough to slot between Sale and Q, because if you do you might win something. Otherwise, stay away from the vets for the most part and focus on adding more youth.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 04:42 PM) This. Does. Not. Matter. We have control of Jose Abreu for the next 5 years. Assuming he repeats this year, he's going to go to arbitration in the last 3 years because he'll opt out of his current contract and wind up with like $100 million over this 6 year period. We signed him when he was what, 26? That means we control his age 26-32 seasons. Frankly, at this point, I don't care whether we have control over him when he's 33-35. Tell me what the rest of the team around him looks like at the time and tell me how his performance is aging when he gets through his peak years and I'll tell you whether I think an extension is a good thing at that point. Jose Abreu could hit Free Agency at a comparable time in his career to when Pujols hit it. With some inflation, would you think it would be a good idea to sign a 31 year old Jose Abreu to something like a 10/$250 contract? Talk to me in 2018 and we can figure those things out. Otherwise, I don't care at all. First, I wouldn't give Shields 5 years. 4 is the most I'd go. BUT if we are going to be looking at Year 3 & Year 4 of a potential Shields contract then it is foolish to ignore the context of the years the contract is in. That's really what I am saying. If you sign someone like Shields you are hoping the deal goes as well as possible obviously, but you are prioritizing winning in the first 2-3 years of the deal, and that is your main concern. You can't just say that if Year 4 is terrible then the deal will be terrible, because you do not know what happens in Year 1, Year 2, or Year 3, and you especially don't know how those happenings effect the overall picture of Year 4. Perfect example: would the Tigers regret overpaying for IRoid and Maggs? Of course they wouldn't, because even though those deals were bad they got through them, and those deals helped take that franchise out of the cellar and make it relevant again. If we signed Shields and the last 2 years were crap, but the first 2 got us one trip deep into the playoffs and another a WS title, would anyone lament that deal? And you can't even assume he'd be bad in those years, for all we know he could be very good overall all 4 years of that deal while we win nothing. I don't think the main argument is what Shields is worth 3-4 years from now, what Abreu is worth 3-4 years from now, etc. it's really "is this team worth upgrading at a major level?" Because if so those upgrades will have to come from somewhere, and we'll either lose talent, we'll lose payroll room, or we will lose both, and no matter what, the results are not guaranteed. No matter what move we make, if there is logic behind it at the time, then it could help a lot or hurt a lot, or maybe be of little significance. We don't know, all we can really decide is whether we should try to get better now. I'm personally kind of on the fence about it, I'd like to see more youth in here first, but you HAVE to admit that a high quality RHSP between Sale & Q with Noesi as the 4 and Rodon coming up paints a potential playoffs picture PROVIDED we play D behind them & run out a bullpen that is worth a s***.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 04:20 PM) Because he's 33, his velocity has been on the decline, his strikeouts have been on the decline, and his WHIP has been on the rise. He is a textbook bad contract. I'm not saying he won't be useful next year, but he will not be useful for much longer than that, and you're going to give up a draft pick. If you do that, you need to be sure that your window is now. I think he's a good bet as far as being a pitcher, a workhorse, mechanics, that sort of thing. He's called "Big Game James" for a reason. He is obviously not an ideal, perfect world target but that goes with what I was saying. The ideal situations do not exist. The really good pitchers (Scherzer) get WAAAAAAAY more than anything we are going to spend, and anyone younger would want more years. FA is like 5-8 year deals or something if you are really good. I want no part of that & there has been no indication that the Sox do either. In terms of what is realistic for us ONLY and not what is ideal, what are our options for getting a very good SP: -Try to develop from within -Try to trade for/claim/cheaply acquire someone to develop -Trade for someone really good now -Sign someone in FA The first two will take time and may not work at all. They sound great but our situation will look very different when Alexei is older/gone and Abreu is opting into arbitration and getting paid like the megastar he is. Doesn't seem to help us much until later, when the cost savings on SP may help offset the rising value of our best assets (including other players like Eaton and maybe Connor hitting arb, maybe Avisail, etc.) The 3rd thing says we give up a lot of prospects. That would be tough to do right now. The last option is overpay on the back end of the deal and maybe you get a bad 4th year where he's pitching at half the value of his contract. And then you have the other things, like those other Abreu-related things.... IE is Abreu going to want to extend long term if we haven't won anything? If we sign someone like Shields, maybe we overpay by $3M in year 1, $5M in year 2, $7M in year 3, $10M in year 4 (just throwing out arbitrary and very negative values). So in total we overpay the guy by $25M over 4 years, and it amounts to like 25-30% or so of the value of his contract in total. BUT we also make the playoffs twice and are a contender all 4 seasons, and now when Abreu opts into arb we approach him with a deal that buys it out plus 2 years of FA. And because we're a winner he signs. What is the value of that? You either get better or you get worse. You either try to win or you try to lose. If the Sox think they are close enough, then go for it. Don't be afraid to make a bad deal because the bad deals are going to happen anyway (not trading Floyd, Keppinger, the Reed deal, etc. Hahn has already experienced this).

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 04:08 PM) My last sentence is key. I'll stand by the point about persevering with Cleto rather than giving Lindstrom another shot. The odds of it happening are about 5-10% at best (and it wouldn't be in a high leverage role like at times this year). As for the "career" argument, that hasn't been used once to defend Adam Dunn staying around as opposed to someone like Andy Wilkins. In fact, John Danks has had a MUCH better career than anyone who's likely to replace him in the Sox rotation at the moment. Alexei Ramirez has had a much better career than Sanchez/Semien/Micah Johnson will ever have. You have to look at BOTH career performance, what have you done for me lately and then factor in the injury issue/s (for example, the same calculus of risk adding Justin Morneau as the full-time DH and giving up some talented minor leaguers in the process rather than just paying for one in free agency). The Sox aren't stupid. If they believed all along that Wilkins had the potential to be a starter next season, Dunn would have been gone in June, July or early August. Look, my Lindstrom comment was under the assumption that we had a much better rotation. If the Sox go out and add a high quality SP to their rotation in the offseason then they'd better have a much better answer than "Maikel Cleto" in response to any question at all dealing with the pen. You have to rely on vets. Lindstrom, were he on another team, would still be a target. He should be a cheap veteran with experience working late in the game. It's generally safer to target types like that in FA for bullpen help than it is to throw 3-4 year deals at relievers coming off excellent seasons. Speaking of KW (Linebrink) we already know this.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 04:15 PM) That river boat gambling style wasn't sustainable. It was a year to year fix, and the flawed philosophy of bankrupting the minor league system to keep the big league team competitive, combined with the Dominican fiasco, is something we're just starting to get out from under 3-4 years later down the line. The Swisher move, Teahen extension, Edwin Jackson and Teahen to Toronto for crap...and Swisher dumping, Sergio Santos for crap...those were all TERRIBLE and set the franchise back. Extending Danks. Signing Dunn. When everything went right (Quentin/Danks/Alexei/Floyd), it allowed us to be competitive or win the World Series in 2005, but only for a season or so at a time. The Rios and first Peavy move didn't really work out very well in the end, either. I guess they were fun and exciting and made for a lot of ink/press compared to the style of Ventura/Hahn, but in the end the meter wasn't moved far enough to register as more than a blip. God we have to rehash this again. There's nothing wrong with gambling. Gambling is done every day. You gamble that you won't get killed everytime you get in your automobile and drive around, but you wear a seatbelt and try to drive a safe car with an airbag as added protection to better your odds. Trading prospects for proven players, as a rule, is gambling with the odds overwhelmingly in your favor. The fact that Kenny's good moves is a long list while his bad moves are a shorter list full of easily identifiable moves is an example of this. You can't be a GM without taking risks, without gambling.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 04:02 PM) Following this logic, we would also have just eaten the whole Dunn deal before 2012. That would have precluded any hopes of contending in that season. The bigger issue is the fact that we're not blocking a young Brandon McCarthy by acquiring Javy like we did in 2006. As things stand now, we don't have ANYONE you could trot out there in his spot, other than guys like Bassit, Carroll, Rienzo, Beck...Rodon's not being blocked by Danks, but simply by avoiding his Super 2 issues. If contending "now" mattered more than player control, then the Cubs would have brought up Bryant in August/September to help sell season tickets for 2015. Clearly, the calculus of that equation leaned in the same direction which the White Sox are choosing with Rodon. I'm not even sure how many more season ticket packages we could/would have sold had Rodon come up and performed sort of in line with what Kip Wells did as a rookie. 500? 750? 1000? At any rate, not enough to offset the value of keeping a potential ace from reaching Super 2. Finally, we're not a team like the Giants who can afford to stow away guys like Lincecum or Zito in the pen...and probably never will be. Knowing what we know now, lets say we ate enough of Dunn's deal at an earlier point to make him a $5M per player. I bet the return would have been better than the reliever we got for one. For two, how would we have been any *worse*? We'd have had payroll room and another roster spot. How could things have gotten anything but better? With Dunn we made our mistake and learned our lesson, then chose to hang on to him forever at no benefit to the organization. This was intelligent in what way? Next, the first question I posed was the value of a "contending" club, and how do you define that? What is that value? If the difference between Danks and Rodon is potentially several wins, how do you define the value of those wins? The Giants didn't "afford" anything, Lincecum was already paid for. No matter what happened they had to pay him. So they decided to make a baseball move in an attempt to make the team better rather than worse, and they ignored the money owed because there was no nlogical reason to focu on it, because it didn't matter, because it was already obligated and nothing could have been done about it.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 04:00 PM) If you want to sign a bad deal like Shields, you have to have a better plan offensively than "Avisail Garcia might realize his potential." Abreu isn't enough on his own, and all of our other best hitters fall into the category of "ehhh he might not be horrible given his position." 1) How do you KNOW Shields is a bad deal? 2) If you KNOW this, please let me know what crystal ball you are using and where I can find it. 3) Please then let me use that crystal ball, or at least use it for me and tell me who you KNOW is not going to be a bad deal? None of us KNOW anything. We can only ASSUME. Shields is a good bet to be able to pitch well alter into his career. Granted, I wouldn't be in a rush to throw 5 years at him at any amount, but the reality is this: -If you want a good player you should be prepared to overpay -in free agency you overpay via money and potentially a draft pick (2nd rounder in our case) -through trade you overpay via minor league talent I would much rather keep the talent, or do like what the Cubs said they would do re: additions, i.e. use one or the other, not both (why they didn't give up money AND talent for Hamels). Shields or someone else can come via payroll room, and so what if we overpay a few million? If it means the difference between exciting baseball and s***ty baseball, and it means the difference between keeping our minor leaguers or trading them, go for it. One thing I loved about KW is that he wasn't afraid to make a bad deal. He made logical moves for the most part which is why most of them turned out well. He made some bad moves too, took on some bad deals & gave up Gio, but he wasn't afraid to f*** it up. If you're afraid to deal and only want the most ideal trades & best contracts possible then good luck ever getting better, because trying to do that without taking a risk is impossible.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 03:50 PM) Where would you plan on getting defensive improvement next year? Avisail Garcia? Gillaspie? Marginal from Abreu? Sanchez at best will be equal to Beckham, Micah a downgrade. Doing much better than Flowers/Nieto won't be easy, either. Finally, an Alexei Ramirez trade downgrades that position as well. If nothing else is clear, it's improving that DeAza/Viciedo spot offensively and defensively that was a black hole for most of 2014. Perhaps Semien playing more games at 3B/LF can help, but it's not going to be a Top 10-15 defense in MLB, that's pretty clear...not unless you DH Avisail (won't happen) and completely give up on Viciedo (likely not to happen YET, either). Bringing back Lindstrom? YUCK TUC. I'd rather have Cleto's potential than whatever Lindstrom is likely to produce at this stage in his career...but I don't think we'll see either one of those guys if everything goes according to plan in the offseason. REALLY? Think about that for a second here. I'll let you do that. "Baseball go in hand, baseball thrown where? Where go baseball?" "Hmmm" "I like food." -Recent thoughts of Maikel Cleto OTOH Matt Lindstrom has put together something called a career. Which is likelier to occur in your opinion, a good player with a track record turning in a good season or a s***ty player who people have been dreaming on for years magically finding it? Cleto is another one who is immediately on the chopping block. If we don't need the roster spot then he'll compete for a role in Spring. Otherwise.... definitely a waiver/outright candidate as soon better players start hitting the waiver wire.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Sep 9, 2014 -> 03:14 PM) Oh absolutely. With as many holes as they have I really don't see them as contenders in 2015. Its not that I don't have faith in Hahn but theres just a whole lot of work to be done. Let's not forget that Danks got off to a pretty decent start this season so allowing him to start next season buys the Sox an opportunity at trading him IF he pitches well. If the Sox are ever going to have a chance of trading Danks, he must start. Working out of the pen will kill any chance of trading him due to his salary. I guess it comes down to three ways this could play out. 1- start him and hope to build some kind of value so he can be traded. ( admittedly wishful thinking) 2- stick him in the pen and hope he can turn into a quality long reliever.( an awfully expensive one at that) 3- start him in hope he regains his old form for a contending Sox team. ( not very likely, IMO) What is the value of a contending team? In terms of attendance? In terms of concessions? In terms of advertising dollars? In terms of market share, especially as the Cubs are starting to get more attention now that their exciting young players are coming up? In terms of late season interest piqued by a potential playoff run? Etc. Etc. Etc. OTOH, what is the cost of John Danks contract? $28.5M or so combined over 2 years. A quality 5th starter is probably a $5-9M/year pitcher on the market depending on the offseason. Very s***ty SP have gotten good amounts of money. What is a quality LH reliver worth on the open market? We paid Scott Downs $4M this year I think, something like that. If Danks can *at least* be a quality reliever, what are we really eating in terms of performance? Maybe $20M, maybe $22M if he's barely conscious when he takes the mound? And is that amount worth taking a big dump all over the 2015 season *if* after the offseason we think we really do have a shot at a WC or better? Jerry Reinspickle would probably say so. Lower the ass, drop the turd, why pay someone to play elsewhere? Well, I would disagree. In keeping Danks to our own detriment all we'd be doing is quantifying "stubbornness" as some monetary value which is basically the money owed to John Danks minus the worth of his performance on the open market. But really whatever that value is we'd have to compare that figure to the approximate value of all the opportunities missed because of it. And it would probably be the case that stubbornness for the sake of it looked foolish in the end. With Dunn we missed the forest for the trees, hopefully we don't do the same with Danks. At least with Dunn, Avi got hurt and made him look less of an anchor, but with Danks you have Rodon behind him and that obviously changes things.

I think in a vacuum the absolute best move we could make would be to sign (or trade for) a #2 RHSP and set Rodon up at the #5. If we have to put Danks in the pen, well, at least we have a long man & a lefty specialist who can throw a strike. If we can move Danks & get out of some of his salary then that is ideal, but then we'd need 2 lefties in our pen instead of just one. But just thinking for a second, even if we had to overpay (annual salary) for someone like Shields to get a 3 or max 4 year deal (it's always the years that are the problem, not as much an annual salary thing) then think about what this rotation would do for us: Sale-Shields-Quintana-Noesi-Rodon You are going to need a quality long man there. Scott Carroll isn't a starter, but could he do a job similar to what DJ Carrasco did for us for a couple years and Luis Vizcaino did for us in '05, i.e. work 70IP or so without s***ting the bed? I think he could, conceivably, because he has shown as much this season. If not, maybe an improved Rienzo, who does have mcuh better stuff as well as some experience now, could handle that role. Thinking of the above rotation along with a quality long man backing it up (Rodon's innings limits & Noesi developing are the main issues), you should generally have 6.1 - 7IP covered. And holy s*** at that. If we can more or less do that then Guerra can be a 6th inning guy, Putnam and Petricka are the primary 7th & 8th inning guys, and so you add an arm like Lindstrom returning or another vet as insurance and he's a 6th to 8th swingman/righty specialist. Now you've got most of a bullpen, you just need a closer and a couple lefties, which is doable over an offseason. I wouldn't look to spend a lot of cash on a closer, but there are always reclamation/low value veteran types out there that would be interested in the chance to compete for a closer gig in ST assuming it is a short-term deal. We'd be in a good spot. I think if you add an arm like Shields or Latos, Bailey, etc. then: 1) The rotation is better 3-5 2) Your bullpen is a s***load better because now you are limiting the innings going to s***ty players & your better arms are typically operating in set roles 3) Your offense becomes less of an concern, and now you can think more about prioritizing defense to build around your pitching staff. Nothing is ever certain, but it's a lot easier to project quality out of 5 guys in a rotation, 3 of which are proven, than it is to project 9 guys in the offense staying healthy and performing well enough (even IF Abreu counts for like 3 of them on his own). 4) You do all of this in one move. And if it comes via a signing, you just forfeit a 2nd round pick and money, which is a lot less than the Anderson + Montas + Danish + Hawkins type of package other teams are going to ask for in return for a very good SP. 5) If it is a signing then it means we still have MIF depth to trade & we can maybe keep Alexei for 2015 **IF*** we think we're good enough and/or the type of quality return isn't out there.

A couple thoughts on the Danks stuff... 1) It makes no sense to "replace" Danks with someone earning salary, it makes sense to replace Danks with Rodon who is earning the minimum. It also makes sense to replace Carroll with Noesi. The $$$ spent would need to go to a rotation upgrade at the #2 slot otherwise there's really no reason to spend it (might as well trade for a prospect/project with ability & throw him out there). Our future rotation should be: Sale-RHP-Quintana-Noesi-Rodon, and Noesi can't be that 2. We're not going to run out a 4 or especially 5 lefty rotation, s***, remember the uproar over Axelrod takign the 5th spot from Santiago? We're not doing 4 lefties, we are having 3. 2) A lot of what has been suggested here about another righty is crap, i.e. throwing money at Brandon McCarthy and the handful of innings he may pitch. I'm not sure why so many people like that idea anyway. But if you add a Shields or something along those lines, an actual #2/#3 quality starter, you are upgrading the rotation as a whole, not just replacing Danks. You would be upgrading every spot 3-5, making Q a 3 and Noesi a 4 and Rodon a 5, while getting your L-R balance. The other ideas like trading for Homer Bailey if possible, signing Latos, etc. these are a lot better than McCarthy. We need a #2 not a #4/#5 if we want to try to win anything. 3) Danks (and here we go back to the same thing I tried to get people to understand with Dunn) is guaranteed IIRC $28.5M combined over the next 2 seasons. The Sox are *obligated* to pay him, but they are not *obligated* to pitch him 150+IP during those 2 seasons. They can really do anything they want with him as long as he gets paid. So, if you can move him to another team and get that club to take on maybe $12-16M of that obligation ($6M-$8M per over 2 seasons) then you are just clearing money out, which would be wise for us. I really hope we don't go through the Dunn s*** again with Danks, but if there is even a *hint* around ST of a better pitcher/pitching prospect having to start in Charlotte or the bullpen to "work on something" so we can run Danks out there, it'll be pretty obvious what is going on. And at that point, in a sane world, if the Sox can't find any salary relief then he just goes to the pen like IIRC both Odalis & Oliver Perez had to do in recent years as lefties signed to big deals. My guess: the Sox will be whiners abotu Danks, not move him over the offseason, and Rodon will start in the pen for "innings concerns" as a means of trying to build Danks trade value for July. Which is bulls***, but I'd put good odds on that. 4) Danks reportedly received interest from the Yanks and Marlins so maybe they would hvae some level of interest. In a more radical idea, I think the perfect fit might be the Houston Astros. Not only is Danks a Texas native who came up through the Rangers system, he's also a perfect candidate for their "piggy back" system they seem to be trying to bring up to the Majors. Danks isn't much of a "durability" starter anymore, but he can definitely give you 5 innings. Also the Astros are stupid. So would they take on Danks at $6M per or so? If they would then we'd have more cash available, and even if we had to go back to the same 5th starter clusterf*** we had this year, at least there is a chance we'd pick up another project like Noesi was and have some shot at greater future value than what Danks provides. 5) Lastly the money again - we really need to stop acting like babies about this stuff. All the Sox want to do is act like babies about playing s***ty players on s***ty deals instead of paying them to go elsewhere.... well look around the league, just about every team with anything resembling a competitive payroll has to deal with this stuff at least once every few years. Bad contracts are an inescapable economic reality of the game of baseball, might as well get used to it and make performance-based decisions instead of "woe is me" emotionally charged baby whiner decisions. Even if some team offers to take Danks at $5M per for 2015-16 then you save $10M and open up a rotation slot for someone with a shot to be better. Paying Danks just to be bad accomplishes nothing, and no matter whether Danks is our #5 or Scott Carroll/heap of garbage is our #5 we're not going to be winning anything anyway.