ChiSox59

Thanks! I think Abreu is due $19.67M in 22 tho.

Spot on. Tho I can guarantee you he uses the injury as his reasoning why everything changes. I call BS.

While it would create a significant amount of initial leg work, what would make this super useful is if it included current salary obligations. That will give us a pretty good idea of what is realistic on the FA market. I think as things stand, especially with Kimbrel and Cesar options exercised in this analysis, the Sox are nearing $170M payroll. Not great for a team that probably shouldn't be expected to be in the top 5 spenders in the game next season.

I just don't agree here. There were 2 plans of action that made sense in my mind: 1) Start him in the minors as opener. Very limited innings early on. Slowly work up to 3-4 inning starts by late May (call it 15-20 milb innings). Call him up in early June when you get the year of control back. At that point, the season is 1/3 over. Averaging 5 inning starts (and certainly giving extra rest where need) over the course of 15-18 starts puts him right around 100 innings by end of the season. Sure, he may be mostly fried by the postseason, but he was anyway and we got basically no benefit out of him anyway with the benefit of hindsight. Maybe his arm is stronger had they gone this route and he's not fried come October. But at least we'd at least have 5 years of control, 2 pre-arb years, and a stretched out front of the rotation stud heading into 2022. Best case scenario IMO. 2) Since they Sox decided that wasn't the best route for whatever reason, the other route was to use him in the MLB pen the first half the year and stretch him out in the 2nd half such that he was available come October. I think the innings shake out about the same as above (if he stays healthy), or maybe just slightly less. But the Sox ditched this plan for whatever reason - likely because TLR found him too valuable in the pen and was only focused on the present. We know how the 2nd half of the season shook out. Short of getting seriously hurt, this was a very bad scenario. We now have a guy who had primarily been used as a 1 inning reliever, has not started regularly since 2018, is not stretched out, another year of pre-arb control gone, and a ton of question marks heading in 2022. Very bad.

Obviously neither know how Michael's medicals looked when he returned, but they had PLENTY of time to stretch him out and give him regular starts down the stretch. They didn't do it until it was far too late. I hated the plan on Kopech from the beginning, and you and I have discussed it at length over the past year. I don't even think he should have been on the big league club until late May / early June. But is what it is. We now have just 4 years of control and 1 pre-arb year of a potentially elite SP who has yet to be stretched out. Not ideal. Most valuable portion of his control down the drain.

Giolito should have started game 1. TLR basically punted game 1 thinking we'd get shut down by LMJ. Had Gio gone game 1, who knows what happens. Maybe we still lose, but he would have also gone game 4 in that scenario and things could have looked a lot of different. Water under the bridge, but another mis-step in the LONGGGGGGGGG list of missteps for our storied manager in 2021.

Meadows is far from perfect, but I would be pretty ecstatic with that trade. I don't see how the Rays would be on board, but hopefully!

I don't know how anyone can look at how the Sox used Kopech this year and not call it blatant mis-management. It was terrible. But to each their own.

I couldn't be less concerned about Kopech's ability or performance as a reliever. Dude is a SP, and he has the ability to be an elite one. He can probably be a top 10 SP in the league even if everything doesn't click. I have two concerns - 1) health, which I worry about with every pitcher; and 2) the Sox piss-poor management of him in 2021. I don't think he's set up to pitch 180+ innings next year. Yes, I know a few vocal posters will disagree, but its not easy to go from 70 innings to 180+ after not pitching for 2 seasons. I think he'll start next year, but they're going to need to play some games with his innings at some point. For a rotation that is going to need him at all junctures, that's not ideal. I think they need to bring in a veteran SP assuming Sox extend and Rodon rejects QO.

Yeah, he’s not perfect. No doubt about it. But he’s one of the best offensive catchers in the game. The running game isn’t really his fault, tho he’s leaves something to be desired defensively as many catchers that can hit do. But he’s not suddenly becoming a backup catcher in 2022 like some here are going to push for all offseason.

He doesn’t. He just hates all things Grandal.

He's unfortunately going nowhere. Just hope he's willing to learn from his mistakes. The NBA load management bullshit didn't work. This team played like shit for months, and it didn't magically flip the switch in October.

For sure - never sucks to have too many good offensive playere. But I hate it if it makes Vaughn a weakside platoon player, which is basically what this does with a healthy lineup. Eloy and Abreu aren't sitting. AV is going to be really good.

I don't know that I agree. Sure, Eloy and Vaughn have plenty of value as is. I am not saying they're worthless. But trading either of them coming off disappointing 2021s wouldn't make a lot of sense. They're both monster 2022's away from being wildly valuable pieces. And they're both extremely talented offensive players.

Do hey love him enough to do 1 of the following? 1) Sell low on Eloy or Vaughn. 2) Sport an OF regularly including 2 of Eloy, Vaughn and Sheets. If the answer to either of those questions is yes, we have the wrong people making decisions.

I'd be open to selling high on Sheets as I am not convinced he's suddenly a lefty masher in the bigs, but man, he sure looked the part. But we need leftys so that would be a little ass backwards, but he is a DH only so just makes the log jam worse. No way I am trading Eloy or Vaughn coming off 21 - would just be stupid. Abreu is going nowhere. Nor is Yaz. So yeah, not really sure there is much wiggle room there. Only way all these guys fit is if Sox stay in house with RF and commit to a dog shit OF defense.

Exactly. $25M gets you Conforto and Tepera. Conforto probably makes this team slightly better than it was a week ago, but the team would still need a 2B, another pen arm or two, and a vet SP to kick Kuechel in the ass / support for Kopech. Plus anything we wanted to do for the bench like brining back Leury and/or Billy, back up catcher, etc.

The entire staff is terrible at it. Yaz isn't great at controlling the running game, but so much of it is on the pitchers. Only so much you can do when the pitchers continually allow runners to get unreal jumps.

Why would the Astros throw at Abreu tho? Because of an obviously unintentional HBP of Altuve earlier in the game? The pitch actually did look intentional, but I don't know they would do that. Retaliation for calling them cheaters? At least we know how to get TLR riled up. That's the only life we saw from him the whole series. What a joke.

He does. He posted about it daily for months. Then went silent when Grandal was one the hottest hitter in the league when healthy. That said - no way to deny that Yaz looked helpless controlling the running game in the ALDS. Big fan of his - and frankly - don't think its all his fault. But it needs to be remedied, and certainly bringing in a backup catcher that is good defensively should be on the to-do list.

Jsut not the much room to work with unless Jerry is willing to spend with the big boys. $25M doesn't go very far.

Bottom line is Sox just played terrible in 3/4 games. SP was flat awful. Defense was poor all around. Bad managerial decision after bad managerial decision. Got no help from the umps. Just an all around disaster. We were told for months how TLR was getting this team ready for this series, and then we just see a complete microcosm of all of this team's shortcomings continually rear its ugly head in a 5 game series. The better team won. It hurts. Just wish the Sox would have played better. The certainly were a better team than they showed.

No argument from me. I said it was a terrible trade the day it happened and that Heuer had a decent chance to be just as good as Kimbrel rest of way. Was slightly tongue in cheek, but it went even worse than anyone could imagine. Terrible trade. The brightside is - as much as I love Madrigal and wish we still had him - he isn't really the answer to what ails this team. He helps some weaknesses, but is at best an average defender, hits from the wrong side of plate, etc. It just sucks we both 1) sold low and 2) got nothing in return. I feel like we could have turned Madrigal into something that was much more beneficial to the window than pushing all the chips in on the bullpen. Oh well. The Sox can recover from this trade.

You certainly disappeared in the 2nd half of the season when Grandal was one of the hottest hitters on the planet. Funny how that works.

Someone else mentioned this earlier, but Segura is an interesting contract for contract swap. Make about the same. Wish Segura batted left handed but its a a solid idea. Something like that may be as good as we can do unless we're just essentially dumping the contract for a warm body, in which case why not just decline the option.