Dominikk85

You could also try to extend giolito and moncada.moncada is less likely to take it due to his huge signing bonus but giolito only had one good year so far and shouldn't require a huge deal because as a pitcher there is big risk and he might regress again or get hurt. A trade for a ML ready top prospect like lux or addell would work too but with their one really good season giolito and moncada aren't much more proven than those guys so teams might not want to give up those control years.

Lisle definitely has switched jobs pretty often and quickly. I do like some of his drills and use them with hitters I'm working with but he might not be the easiest person to work with.

I'm pretty sure they use some biomechanics. The question is how much of a streamlined process they have for that or whether they just occasionally play around with that.

Yes but communicating it and dumbing it down is important too. Many of the "gurus" like to throw around technical terms and show how smart they are and that isn't well received. That being said part of the problem also seems to be that old school coaches fight this and the sox FO does not enough to enforce that. In the end probably both were guilty. Lisle didn't communicate it well enough but also didn't get enough support by the front office and make data use more optional rather than enforcing this. The sox will still continue down this road and eventually improve but other teams don't sleep either.

Yeah basically sox didn't have a real plan for him and old school coaches didn't understand the technology and data stuff. Maybe it was also partially his fault, maybe he didn't dumb it down enough for them or he was too arrogant and they didn't even want to learn from him. Some data nerds are just too snarky and arrogant and let anyone feel they are the smartest in the room and that isn't always well received. Kyle boddy also can be a huge jackass but he is smart enough to know when he can't do that.

Wouldn't do it. He misses 30-50 games every season and with age that will get worse.

I like it. Mazara was a top20 overall prospect and is still only a year older than walker is now. There still is a chance he has a breakout in a different environment. He has shown good flashes, just not consistently.

Player dev is the new moneyball and some teams are quite ahead of the league. The sox haven't been good at this but the positive is that the sox have hired some more data driven guys like lisle or that johansen guy in the last years which means they are aware they need change. The negative are reports saying that the old school guys are still pretty much in power and while the sox have some smart guys the coaches don't always tend to listen to them. How can this be resolved? Imo the sox need to hire a powerful and strong data guy as a development coordinator, this needs to be done top down. Kyle boddy would have been ideal but he is with the reds now. I think hahn wants to get more modern but in the sox org it isn't always about merits and often about networking and tenure. I think this needs to be done top down. Hahn was probably thinking he could hire some guys and like that bring in the analytics backdoor but the old school guys tend to stand together and fight against that because they know their jobs are in danger. The astros and now also the Orioles have combatted that by mass firings of old school scouts and coaches and getting more nerd type of coaches instead of ex players. Do the sox need to go there or is there a softer way of implementing that?

Yes. He is not a terrible hitter but not a plus anymore and has lost his defensive ability. The sox don't need a below average hitting DH/corner guy.

Imo madrigal, robert and vaughn should be off the table unless we are talking a reasonably salary controlled under 28 year old ace like sale was. I could see a package around guys like walker, sheets or even collins for a mid tier starter with two plus years of control. Maybe they could get matt boyd plus a bullpen guy for walker, sheets and a third piece. Boyd had a 4.5 era last year but he is just 28 and had a very strong 30% k rate and 24% k-bb, he just had an extreme homer issue based on an 18% hr/fb rate. Fangraphs projects him for 3 war next season and he is under control for two more years.

Rookies are hard to predict. Some hit right away like acuna or soto and others take 2-3 years or never make it. There is a realistic path to 90 wins: let eloy hit 40 bombs, madrigal is a 2.5 win guy, robert a ROY contender, moncada has another 5 win season, abreu keeps it up and on the pitching side giolito keeps it up, rondon comes back, reylo takes a step forward. But it could also go the other way: moncada and giolito regress, madrigal and robert struggle, eloy gets hurt again and they are a low 70s team again. Most likely they are somewhere in between, young teams are tough to predict.

Renfroe has a lot of power and is a good fielder but with his high K rate and extreme pull approach he is a low obp guy. Pham has a .370 career obp while renfroe is sub 300 to date in his career. There is more upside for renfroe but pham has a much better chance to be a solid obp guy the next two years. What hurts the padres is of course course giving up edwards while only getting a marginal prospect back. Not sure how much power edwards can gain but he is a quite solid prospect

Don't forget free agent signings that didn't work (heyward, darvish, morrow). Cubs made a few bad decisions, but they still had a very nice run which shows how good this core is. What killed the cubs most was failure to develope pitchers. This year they invested massively into player development so we will see if that has an effect.

The dodgers also wouldn't let collins catch. They are very sabermetrically oriented and place a ton of value on framing and defense.

Well they can't go to 150+ this year because they need to leave some room for when arb salaries kick in. Unless they give out 1-2 year contracts that run out when arb for the core starts.

Good job by the marlins picking up aguilar and villar for cheap. Sure they come with bust potential but if everything goes right they could also combine for 60+ bombs and be nice trade candidates at the deadline plus neither is a long time burden on the payroll if they don't work.

Still was worth the gamble, a hundo plays if you can locate it which he wasn't able to do. Didn't work out but you can't teach velo so it was worth the gamble hoping he would find his command especially as the cost was minimal.

I hope they get to 180+ for 1-2 years at the end of the wIndow. Even if that means losing money they saved so much money in the rebuild that they should be able to go 20m into the negative for 2 years especially since they can save money after the window again if they start another rebuild in 2026 or so. Unfortunately many owners seem to not be willing to accept a single year loss of money even if the bottom line over 5 years is distinctly positive.

What do you think is realistic?

We obviously know they won't get close to the luxury tax anytime soon, but what is their payroll ceiling? I'm not talking 2019 but the ceiling during the next 5 years, obviously they need to allow for some room to go up as players hit arbitration. So far the highest payroll was around 130m in 2011 which is like 150m in today's baseball dollars. That was an outlier though, other than that the highest payrolls were like 115-120. Do you think a 150m payroll is realistic towards the end of the window? Talking about what will happen not what should happen of course.

Of course. But the point is even as a 2 win player he is worth that plus there is some upside albeit also some downside

I agree. The Os could have kept him and then traded him at the deadline maybe adding 2-3m to the deal and get a decent (but probably not great) prospect. The Os have a front office vultured from the Astros which is pretty smart so this is probably on the owner who doesn't want to pay him. But then again to be fair angelos wasn't that cheap, his payroll was 150M in 2016 and even 175m in 2017 which isn't bad for a dump like Baltimore. Maybe angelos paid some extra money for those years and now wants to get this money back while they tank.

I find the cock fight thing worse than punching a guy in the face, that is serious animal cruelty. In which place are cock fights still allowed?

I agree. I showed in my post above that the deal is about 10 mil under water (aging curve projection suggests 3/40) which isn't ideal but 10 mil over 3 years (3.3 per year) shouldn't cripple the payrol. The deal isn't great but it isn't that negative, at least not in a manner that should cripple the sox.

Do you think driveline guys getting hired by mlb while staying at driveline is an issue? Driveline announced for example they are doing a biomechanical study with justin stone who works for the cubs. Could it be an issue that driveline sucks knowledge out of several orgs and thus teams lose an edge? Then again driveline simply has that power currently.