ChiSox59

Not start Lynn in game 1 in a god awful matchup. Pretty much every bullpen decision he made the whole series. Pinch hitting Cesar for Engel to start na inning in game 2, and putting Leury in RF where he went on to cost multiple runs with missing a play Engel makes in his sleep. At that point, the series was over. Just plain got our asses kicked in game 4, but bringing Kopech in in that spot in game 4 was another curious one. Not arguing for his guys when there was an awful strike zone, but arguing over a completely meaningless HBP. Tony was fucking awful for the vast majority of the season. Sox xW-L was 97-76. Enough for HFA. At a minimum, Tony cost them that. However, when watching the season unfold with missed reviews, bad pen management, terrible lineups, over resting, etc., he cost them far more.

Three year contract.

Because I have eyes. He looked terrible in RF. There is a reason he was hardly used there. Unfortunately, he also looked terrible at 1B. When you have a LF that should be Vaughn but most likely will be Eloy, but in either event, you can't put Sheets in RF is the majority of the time. This isn't MLB the Show.

Well then maybe the manager shouldn't continually put his team in a terrible position to win games.

Hard pass on that from me. Sox need to sign a legitimate OF that hits from the left side and is at least a decent defender. Sheets is nothing more than an emergency OF.

Vaughn LF. Eloy DH. Abreu 1B. I am signing a lefty RF that ideally is at least an average defender (Conforto is the guy, ideally). Sheets is on bench or in AAA. He'll get plenty of ABs throughout the year. He also has 2 options years remaining. I am not subtracting from the core for Gavin Sheets.

Right!? Abreu is more than suitable to play 1B. IDGAF about Jake Burger. I am not penciling him into anything. He's purely injury insurance with 2 more option years. I am not trading anyone to make room for Jake Burger, or expecting Burger to fill the roles of any other guys mentioned. I was pretty much on the same board with Sheets when they sent him down, but he sure looked the part the 2nd half and we need LHH...bad. But I sure as shit am not trading Eloy or Vaughn and expecting Sheets to fill those shows over the next half decade. Abreu is a FA after 22. Sure, the org worships the guy and he probably comes back if he doesn't completely fall off a cliff in 22, but he's only under contract 1 more season and that solves alot of log jam issues down the road. Vaughn proved to be plenty capable of playing LF everyday and RF occasionally. In 22: LF/DH/1B: Eloy, Vaughn and Abreu RF: FA Sheets fills in at all those positions as bench piece, and fills in for IL stints. Again, situation clears slightly after 22 with Abreu (potentially) leaving for FA.

I am not ready to write Madrigal off as some oft-injured can never stay healthy guy. But I get why some people hang onto that. He's hasn't proven he can stay heathy. However - not sure how you can say the bolded about a pre-arb dude. IF he can play 80 game and produce 2 WAR, that has value. Quite a bit of it actually. Certainly not as much as he would have if he could be relied for a full season, but to say a guy making $650k and producing 4 WAR per 162 GP "isn't useful" is kind of silly.

Eloy isn't getting traded.

Then why exactly did you cite him as a bad contract? He likely created somewhere between $10-15M in surplus value this season if you're really looking at $ per WAR created. Grandal is not a bad contract.

Grandal was worth every single penny he was paid this year.

Yeah, I guess I just don't agree. Maybe we can turn Vaughn into a controllable left handed hitting stud at 2B or RF. Otherwise I don't see the point. Jose is going nowhere. Don't see Hahn selling low on Eloy.

Sure - but its also FARRRRR to early to make Vaughn a weak-side platoon player. Something has to give there.

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.