we know that that worked in 2013 - but we don't know that that means it is a sustainable model of team building going forward. we have arguably seen the downside of that model in 3 of the last 4yrs...with our biggest weakness last year arguably being our clear lack of elite performers.
In the end i'm not sure HOW you acquire those elite performers is more important than THAT you acquire them.
We can argue which method is better for getting that talent - but i'm not convinced that our 2013 model (i.e. getting 15+war from the bargain bin) from is a dependable blueprint for doing that.
I'd actually say that the biggest weakness in 2015 was a clear abundance of truly awful performances. For the first half of the season, the Red Sox got basically zero (or worse) from 1B, LF, C, and 3B. On the pitching side, SP2, SP3, SP4 and SP5 were all pretty lousy. The bullpen beyond Uehara and Tazawa were replacement level or worse. Rodriguez did help stabilize things, but the damage was done. There were just so many terrible performances on that team in the first half. If you make those players merely average instead of godawful, that probably adds 8-10 wins in the first half, and the Red Sox are at about 50-39 and leading the AL East at the break.
I think getting 5+ win level performances (my own personal definition of "elite", although I guess one could argue for 4) out of players is probably strongly predictive of a team to make the playoffs, and it's also really important not to have total zeros. I think it's tough to predict who's going to turn that 5+ win performance in, though. It's often not the guys you've stuck the "elite" tag on beforehand. I mean, the Royals elite player was...Lorenzo Cain? I mean, he turned in a great season, but I'm not sure many (any?) people had him tagged as a 6+ win player going into 2015. The Cards' elite players were Jason Heyward and...Matt Carpenter? John Lackey? Carlos Martinez and Grichuk were solid, but I don't think you'd say they were "elite". Are Garcia and Lynn "elite"? If the Red Sox acquired one of them last season, I'm not sure people would have thought they'd just acquired a #1 elite starter. Just looking at the
depth of the Cards pitching staff last year, the number of guys who came up to give great pitching performances is just totally insane. I mean look at those goddamn ERA+s going all the way down the page. It's kind of making me angry just looking at that. How the hell did they do that?
Anyway, I got off track, but basically we probably all agree that Dombrowski should get the best players he can and then we hope they luck into awesome seasons all at the same time. If they're "elite" or whatever, great. If they're merely very good, I'm happy with that too. What's a real problem is if they totally suck.