If you are saying Sanchez is better than Wong and someone can just go out and sign Sanchez why would they bother to trade something for Wong?
Offseason rumors
- Thread starter opes
- Start date
- Status
Because Wong is 27 years old, makes the league minimum, and is under control for 5 more seasons.
I'm not saying he'd get you something special. But if the Red Sox aren't spending big (they aren't). Picking up Sanchez to provide power to the line up at C/DH while grabbing some arm depth for Wong would make a lot of sense.
However, is a very thin market for catchers. Most teams have established groups to this point.
I see Wong as a valuable member of this young core. I'd hate to see him go.
I've explained it three times and feel like everyone else on this board gets what I am saying, but if you're dead set on doing your whole provocative routine good for you.
Last edited:
So what are we looking at right now for position players
OF: Yoshida, Duran, O’Neill, Refsnyder, Abreu
IF: Devers, Story, Grissom, Casas, Reyes
C: Wong, McGuire
With the final spot to come down to one of Rafaela or Valdez, I guess. (edit: or Dalbec!)
Definitely feels like the team is lacking a bat or two. This is pretty lacking in high end talent and depth.
OF: Yoshida, Duran, O’Neill, Refsnyder, Abreu
IF: Devers, Story, Grissom, Casas, Reyes
C: Wong, McGuire
With the final spot to come down to one of Rafaela or Valdez, I guess. (edit: or Dalbec!)
Definitely feels like the team is lacking a bat or two. This is pretty lacking in high end talent and depth.
Last edited:
So the strength of the team is a thin group of B minus level talent. Yay.
I was really hoping the team would add more usable depth (pitching and hitting), so that players like Abreu would be able to start off in AAA and accumulate more experience.
Seems like the actual plan is the exact opposite
Honestly, signing Gary Sanchez to a reasonable deal would potentially make a heap of sense. I think Wong is a good player. I also think that Teel is the future, but he'd need a RH bat to complement him. Sanchez also had a 1.2 dWAR in 2023 so he's not a heaping pile of dung behind the plate. He's not Johnny Bench, but he's fine. And his RH power would be awesome for Boston. He strikes out a ton and hits for terrible average, but he can still hit bombs and even when he's not catching is a nice power threat as a pinch hitter.
I didn't forget about Pablo. I'm actually beginning to wonder if I would rather just pencil him in as backup 3B and move on from Bobby D.
Refsnyder's played 227 innings there in his career. Let's hope Casas can stay healthy so there isn't much of a need for anyone else to play there.
I don't think that was TRic's point. If Sanchez > Wong and is available, why would a team trade something for Wong when they could just sign Sanchez?
Teoscar Hernandez, who is 31 years old and signed a 1 year deal, would have the third highest ZiPs projection (2.1 WAR) behind only Devers (4 WAR) and Casas (2.5 WAR)
And a bunch of "starting pitchers" that are better served in the bullpen. Which isn't good enough to be given a B- in my book.
Also Pablo? He is third on the depth chart right now. And/or that is where you invest in a more reliable RH bat. To me, the value of Turner was he was at least plausible as a corner infielder. If we just live with Pablo as backup 3B, getting a RH hitting DH/OF/1B might be an easier mix. If I thought that Soler could play 1B for 20-25 games I would be a lot more interested in him.
Yeah, I want to be optimistic, but this looks like a pretty bad team, as currently constructed.
Yea I just can't see Wong having any real value.
I don't understand Wong as a starter. He is great at catching baserunners and is a great at base running for a catcher but he is not good at framing and is a hideous hitter despite being able to get the barrel of the bat on the ball at a decent clip. His plate discipline is awful especially for someone for as a little power as him. It might splitting hairs but I think McGuire is better than Wong. The team seems to really like Wong though.
At least it's bad and young (meaning pieces that might be good down the road). Which, at least in my opinion, is a heck of a lot better than bad and old, which the team was in 2022 and 2023.
Which, at a certain level, is why I don't really care about not signing Turner. He moves a 75 win team to a 77 win team, maybe. At that point, I couldn't care less. You'd be hoping entirely that some team makes another dumb offer at the 2023 deadline the way the Marlins apparently did, I suppose. But in terms of the team itself, he doesn't move the needle at all in my opinion.
The only real value that Wong has demonstrated thus far is being inexpensive to have on the roster. Maybe the pitchers like throwing to him, though I don't recall reading anything which makes that point. He'd be a perfectly cromulent backup, and perhaps that why they see in him when/if Teel arrives this year.
If Rob Refsnyder is on this team, i may throw up. He does exactly one thing well; hit LHP. But so do O'Neill, Dalbec, Soler, Duvall, Reyes, maybe Rafaela, etc. etc... He is not young, he has no power, he is at best an average defender, IMO completely redundant and complete waste of a roster spot blocking younger guys from getting at bats. Use him as a throw in for a team that needs a 5th OF who hits lefties or DFA him and eat 1.2m.
Rob Refsnyder is really not the problem.
He had a bad year against RHP largely because of a .224 BABIP, which is odd for a line drive rate of 22.4%. He's of course of modest utility but for guys in that roster spot, he's well above average.
He is clogging up a roster spot for a younger guy with more upside and definitely more power. He is a nice piece to have if he's your 5th OF on a playoff bound team. The Red Sox currently constructed are not that.
Going back over the past few posts, part of my current frustration is the combination of the talent level, and bad line up/team composition. Right now, it looks like a spring training line up.
Turner is no longer an option, but I have no faith in Dalbec, and I don't see a spot for Refsnyder on this team. I don't hate Refsynder, but he seems to me to be more valuable as a platoon player on a better team. I would still like to see them get a power RH bat, not so much out of hope that it is going to improve this year's team very much, but more so we can see how our younger players work within a standard line up construction.
Turner is no longer an option, but I have no faith in Dalbec, and I don't see a spot for Refsnyder on this team. I don't hate Refsynder, but he seems to me to be more valuable as a platoon player on a better team. I would still like to see them get a power RH bat, not so much out of hope that it is going to improve this year's team very much, but more so we can see how our younger players work within a standard line up construction.
Feels like I am reaching the final of the 5 stages of death concerning the Red Sox offseason watching the names come off the board today, and at this point it is fair to wonder how far under last year's payroll they intend to be. It all may change - but man losing Turner kind of hurts.
Turner really does not move the needle for this team. Love the guy, but he's probably going to be around 100 wrc+-110 wrc+ this year, tops, a A 1-1.5 WAR player who can back-up 1st and third base but inevitably got injured any time he attempted to doesn't do anything. That's a guy who just clogs up the payroll.
I understand the perceived need for a "right-handed bat" -- O'Neill does in a sense provide that, having a career .815 OPS against LHP -- but what this team really needs is to figure out what it has in Abreu, Rafaela, Grissom and in the young pitchers. There's enough upside in there to be a Wild Card team and enough downside to be out of the playoff picture again.
I hope they add Montgomery if he's there for 4/100 or 5/125 -- he's probably good for 2-4 WAR for at least the next three years -- but I'm also probably one of the only people on here who's perfectly happy if the ownership group decides to not spend (or wait to see who's left standing after the musical chairs ends) and wait for the next free agent class to see what they can land.
I understand the perceived need for a "right-handed bat" -- O'Neill does in a sense provide that, having a career .815 OPS against LHP -- but what this team really needs is to figure out what it has in Abreu, Rafaela, Grissom and in the young pitchers. There's enough upside in there to be a Wild Card team and enough downside to be out of the playoff picture again.
I hope they add Montgomery if he's there for 4/100 or 5/125 -- he's probably good for 2-4 WAR for at least the next three years -- but I'm also probably one of the only people on here who's perfectly happy if the ownership group decides to not spend (or wait to see who's left standing after the musical chairs ends) and wait for the next free agent class to see what they can land.
All of this sounds good...but what gives you any confidence that they are going to sign anyone worthwhile in next years free agent class? At this point, predicting any sort of big signing next year seems like just blind optimism/wish casting.
I agree with most of that but still would have liked to see Turner back, as he wasn't blocking any of the kids and filled a hole they couldn't while keeping Dalbec out of Boston.
As it stands, we can still do that adequately with a cheaper free agent (like Solano), and then the question becomes who's getting playing time in the OF. Do you DH Yoshida and start your OF with O'Neill, Duran and Abreu, putting Rafaela in AAA ready to swap in if (when) one of them fails?
As it stands, we can still do that adequately with a cheaper free agent (like Solano), and then the question becomes who's getting playing time in the OF. Do you DH Yoshida and start your OF with O'Neill, Duran and Abreu, putting Rafaela in AAA ready to swap in if (when) one of them fails?
I mean, what is this confidence that you so desperately need? We never really know what they're going to do. That's life! It's not my money, so I don't get to choose, and there's no special privilege I get to watch a special baseball team that wins all the time just because I'm such a good guy and great fan.
More importantly, I find this insistence that expecting the FO to spend money in the future is "blind optimism/wishcasting" rank with recency bias. And when I say recency bias, I mean, like, this offseason recency bias. Expecting them to spend is not pollyannaish, it's what the FO has always done.
They've got a long history of dishing out money for free agents. JUST LAST YEAR they signed a likely future DH to a 10 year/300 million dollar deal. Just a few years ago they dished out an obscene amount of cash to extend Sale. They spent tons on David Price, they spent on Manny Ramirez, they spent on Carl Crawford and Pablo Sandoval, they spent on JD Drew and Trevor Story and so on and so forth. I'm sure we'll hear the same old saw about how some of those deals aren't "as big" as others, but the Devers deal was very, very big, and acting like it didn't happen doesn't help anyone's argument.
There's some signs that the FO is spending less, yes, but if the hold-up is they don't want another megadeal to a pitcher in his 30's to blow-up in their faces, I don't blame them, and I'm happy they're being prudent, as a fan.The Price deal, the Sale deal -- those totally bit them in the ass.
When they say that they intend to spend when they see a deal that fits their timeline, yeah, I believe them, because they've been doing that ever since they bought the team.
What I suspect is going on this offseason is Bloom failed to trade guys he needed to and get them to where they wanted to on a reset, so they canned him, and they hoped to land Yamamoto, but it didn't work out, and they don't like the frankly preposterous deals Snell and Montgomery have been agitating for, and so they're either astutely waiting till the price falls or looking for deals elsewhere. Soler plus Ryu or another would still put them in the hunt for the Wild Card, I think. And we'll see how the young guys shake out so they can really get into gear next year.
But - assuming he didn't want to be a bench player, he really kind of IS blocking one of the kids. Not in the sense of "there is another CI capable RHH DH" but in the sense of you have to put Yoshida somewhere and he's likely a worse defensive LF than Duran or Abreu and he's certainly not Rafaela.
Yoshida or Devers should be a DH and there is no option of a 3b in the system that is both good enough with the bat and glove (in combination) to push Devers there yet. But there are a ton of guys that are either redundant OF options or more middle infield options because that is really all that has been acquired for the past four seasons. So you kind of have to see if any of them are good enough to be MLB pieces, and part of that is likely going to come from moving Yoshida to DH, which means Turner would have blocked a young player, and thus just isn't worth it (because without top of the rotation starting pitching added, the season is pretty much all a function of seeing what can be part of the core and what isn't).
Maybe the start Rafaela in AAA for service time manipulation purposes, but we're not going to learn anything more about Rafaela with a 120is wRC+ in AAA where the talent of the pitchers isn't great enough to force him to adjust.
I like Turner and he's very, very easy to root for. He's the kind of guy you want on your team, especially as a model to the younger guys for how to be a pro.
But he doesn't in any way make this team go from last place to the playoffs. Not even close. The issue they're going to have is with pitching, and 39 year old Justin Turner obviously doesn't do anything to solve that.
But he doesn't in any way make this team go from last place to the playoffs. Not even close. The issue they're going to have is with pitching, and 39 year old Justin Turner obviously doesn't do anything to solve that.
Yeah, that's what I expect, and I'm fine with it. If they choose to not add Soler, I'm fine with that too. This future of this team is in some of those younger guys, and better to see who it is by parking Yoshida at DH than trying to squeeze blood out of a stone in Justin Turner. Rafaela can fill in just about anywhere, too -- I expect someone of the outfield and infield group will go down with some sort of injury, and then Rafaela will have a role to play.
That's fair if they definitely want to move Yoshida to DH right away, but personally I'd like to start him out back in LF in year 2, at the very least for home games. I want to give him every opportunity to improve and succeed this year cause I think his bat has really special potential.
This I don't agree with. This is a profitable business that can afford to spend money to provide the city a more interesting product. If FSG is literally increasing their after-tax profit that matters to me as a fan. It means they regard me as a mark.
The offseason is not over - but the fact you have national press now suggesting that FSG is changing is disturbing for a fan. We will see but at this point I see no real plan to compete with the better teams in the division. And to be clear Anthony/Mayer are interesting - but the Orioles won the division and STILL have a better farm system than we do.
And he increases the problem with pitching. If he is regularly DHing that means bad fielders like Devers, Yoshida and Casas are always in the field (rather than rotating through as DH), making it harder for the pitchers to get outs.
I think there are more than enough at bats to go around. Abreu and Rafaela and Duran should all get a ton of at bats based on the current roster. Problem is there is just no depth.
You wouldn't ever use a young player you care about in Refsnyder's end of the bench role. Someone younger should get consistent at bats, so either the strong side of a platoon or better in the big leagues or sent down to AAA.
While I agree with everything you wrote, couldn't you make this argument about almost every single player in baseball? Even guys like Trout and Ohtani. In isolation, no one player moves the needle. But when you combine several moves, then things start to get better. The Sox haven't really made any of those types of moves. They've done some stuff on the margins, but that's not how you go from last to the playoffs.
Everyone keeps saying this but the player literally does not exist that you are describing. Assigning a formula of "he doesn't make you a playoff team" = "Do not pursue" to every single free agents means you will never sign any free agents.
Edit: What @tims4wins said
Well you need Devers and Casas in the field as often as possible given that the backup options there are [checks notes] nothing at all. I would guess that passing on Turner and seemingly every other bat-first player on the market is first and foremost about not wanting to spend money but also that the plan is to make Yoshida the regular DH who starts in the OF every now and again ala JD Martinez.
My guess is that they want Yoshida to DH 80 games or so (plus or minus 20), to both improve the defense and see what the kids can do with the playing time. So not enough ABs for Turner barring injury to Casas,, in which case JT probably can't be an everyday 1B anyway). I love JT and what he brought to the team last year, but I can't cry over them not giving him $13M for 300-350 ABs.
Well, for the crux is that for this team, that player DOES exist. Heck, there are ostensibly two, both still on the free agent market (I'm not a Snell guy, per se, but I don't at all doubt that he is a top half of the rotation starter).
This team is two top half of the rotation starters away from being not only a legitimate contender for all three Wild Card spots, but for the division as well. Yes, they're "last place" in the AL East because the division is bonkers, I'm still very down on the team, but they're going to win 75-80 games. I lean 75 but 80 is certainly possible.
The point being that going from lets say Wilyer Abreu for 450 AB to 39 year old Justin Turner for 450 AB (while Tuner is likely better) isn't that big of a jump.
But going from Josh Winckowski, Tanner Houck, and even Nick Pivetta to Jordan Montgomery or Blake Snell is a massive improvement (as well as then the subsequent fact that replacing whatever is at the bottom of the bullpen with Tanner Houck and Josh Winckowski would be a pretty large upgrade there too). Unfortunately, there is nothing that makes me believe either of these pitching moves are going to take place.
I apologize for not adding anything other to the discussion than replying to this post with an “Amen.”
This is close to what I expect too.
Breslow was pretty clear in early November in saying that Yoshida won't be the full-time DH. From the Athletic on Dec. 6.
1B is the question mark but Rafaela’s glove can just as easily replace Devers in the field as it could Yoshida in the OF (by pushing Duran to LF and Yoshida to DH). He has experience at 3b and is almost certainly a huge upgrade defensively from Devers. I would hope when they have a ground ball pitcher starting he’ll get some play there.
I'm not saying that anyone presently on this team should step into Refsnyder's role as an end of the bench guy against LHP. This team doesn't set up like that. I've stated on here more than once that i think Rafaela should be on this team as a super U, playing regularly all over the field and hitting in the 9 hole. And what exactly does RR give you that Tyler O'Neill potentially couldn't? He has 2 gold gloves, is 4 years younger, his career .OPS is about 100 points higher (.776-.678) and has 78 career HR and 40 SB and 10 WAR to RR's 13 HR and 17 SB and .8 career WAR. Tell me again why he should even get some of O'Neill's AB's?
I gotta be honest, I don't think that this team should have any interest in anyone who's not a good fielder as a back up at the corners and in the middle.
I think as it's currently set up O'Neill is the everyday RF and Refsnyder platoons with Abreu.
On the other hand the photos from last winter show someone seriously working on their conditioning. He just might have a future as a 1B/3B/LF utilityman.
- Status