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Looks like the Sox just signed a haul of Latin American teenagers. Miguel Bleis, OF from DR, for $1.5m. Toolsy outfielder with a projectable frame expected to add plus power as he grows into his body. Luis Ravelo, SS from DR, $525,000. Listed as a RHH, but his Perfect Game writeup (since when...

The infield heading into 2021 has some worthwhile questions. On the left side of the infield, we have some well established incumbents. Xander Bogaerts is one of the best players in baseball. He has received MVP votes each of the last three years, a span during which he has hit .300/.372/.535...

The 2020 Red Sox had a horrible starting rotation. In 60 starts, they averaged 4.1 IP* and a 5.34 ERA. They conceded 49 HR, and had a K/BB ratio around 2. The team as a whole had an 85 ERA+. None of that is good. There were some bright spots, however. The last few weeks of the season saw...

Jackie Bradley, Jr. is a free agent. The 30 year-old has a career 92 OPS+, a sterling defensive reputation that is backed up by only some of the statistics. But as we all fondly remember, he had two All Star caliber seasons in 2015 and 2016, a two-year span in which he posted a line of...

Camp is starting, and there are a ton of actual baseball topics for us to sink our teeth into. While many of us are not sure how likely this season is to actually happen (I'm a skeptic), what with the sunbelt spiraling into COVID madness, for the purposes of this thread let's assume that a...

It's not every day that you trade away a "Mookie Betts" and end up with a player who might have an even better name. Like many here, I am not happy about the decision to trade Mookie, but unlike some of you, it seems to me that this was a very solid return under the circumstances. In...

John Henry, Sam Kennedy and other Red Sox brass have equivocated somewhat as to the budget new Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom will have to assemble a 2020 roster. After initially suggesting they wanted to see payroll down below the $208m CBT threshold — some $30m below the 2019 figure — they...

Perhaps slightly premature, but here goes: Eduardo Rodriguez has finally (*knocks wood*) thrown a healthy season. With three starts remaining, he has thrown 185.3 IP of 3.64 ERA baseball, going 17-6. He struck out 9.2/9, walked 3.3/9, and allowed 1.1 HR/9. He's averaging just a fraction shy of...

In the spirit of ChrisFont9's Yusniel Padrón-Artiles thread, crawling through Baseball-Reference I have just become aware of a Mexican pitcher named Jorge Rodriguez. Sox Prospects has him as our 37th best prospect. I had never heard of him. Apparently we acquired him as an IFA out of Ciudad...

Link to the Athletic story. Good to see Red Sox alumnus Ben Cherington doing good work for the game. I had long assumed that this wasn't something a team could do unilaterally, because being a first mover seems like such an obvious advantage. The June draft slotting and International draft...

I found this Fangraphs writeup of the Sox farm system by Longenhangen and McDaniel very interesting, and wanted to solicit people's thoughts here. As in many bad farm systems, the best players are years away. Near-term impact looks like Chavis (likely in trade), Lakins, Feltman, Poyner, and...

Tzu-Wei Lin is a 23 year-old glove-first infielder, who has also played some outfield. The Red Sox gave him the largest bonus ever to a Taiwanese position player, ~$2m. After years of offensive futility, he has adjusted his swing to get more fly balls. His minor league GO/FB ratios are pretty...

I thought it would be good to have a thread to keep track of news related to the 2017 International Signing period. I'll start. The Red Sox have been linked to the top prospect out of Venezuela — and certainly a top 5 International prospect overall — a 16 y/o switch-hitting catcher named Daniel...

I would also hate that, even if Abad's better than he's shown us, but it doesn't look like they'll need to. The 'pen will probably be: Kimbrel CL Thornburg RH SU (but with a reverse split! good against righties, great against lefties) Kelly RH SU 1 option Ross Jr. LH SU 1 option Barnes RH...

There's a consensus emerging in a few threads that the team has two real needs: a platoon partner for Young in LF that can move Holt back to the super-sub bench role where he's thrived, and another starting pitcher. There's a already a great thread for discussing LF possibilities. Let's talk...

At 6-7, the team has failed to get the hot start we hoped for. Betts is ice cold in the leadoff spot; the starting pitching has been up and down; the revamped bullpen has already taken four losses; Castillo and Swihart are in AAA; Smith and Rodriguez are on the DL; Kelly was bad, then hurt...

Here's something I've been thinking about as the roster has taken shape. Since the 2012 team failed to achieve lift off and was broken up, we've been looking forward to opening a new window with a new core. The 2013 team was very good, but unpredictably so — they got career years from a number...

So let's set aside our trade targets Sale and Gray and Carrasco and Quintana, and turn our attention to the FAs. SoxScout has been maintaining an awesome pitching spreadsheet here. Take a look. I won't reproduce that considerable effort, but I will provide links to the B-R and Fangraphs pages...

First a disclaimer: I KNOW THIS IS PREMATURE.    But, here's the thing: Joe Kelly's been pretty good his last three starts. Dare we start to hope?     With the pitching lesson from Pedro Martinez a few days before, we have a potential precipitating event.   3-0, 17 1/3 IP, 16 H, 7 BB to 16 K, 2...

To prevent this sort of discussion from spilling over into what are putatively news threads, I thought it would help to have a thread devoted to big picture discussion of the strategic and roster ramifications exposed by the trade deadline.    It's becoming clearer and clearer with each rumor...