I believe I’ve made my stance on this clear, but for the record, I voted yes, though it doesn’t “have” to be Bregman. I want a core bat added, and ideally one that can play an above average 3b or 1b defensively.
I also understand this means selling Yoshida for cents on the dollar, but honestly I’d rather have $1m extra per year to spend and the open DH slot than Yoshida (and I do think the Sox could get someone to pay $15m total of his salary, meaning the Red Sox get nothing back and pay about $13m for him to be elsewhere).
Cross posting from the other thread:
Here are games played going backward from last season, in mamy cases using minor league and rehab stints to count for games played:
1b - Casas - 75, 132, 103, 86. Average is 99 games played, so 63 games of open playing time (call it 280 PA)
2b - wide open anyway. I’ll just assume this is Campbell being good for 150 games. Leaves 12 open (55PA).
SS - Story - 30, 56, 96 (and Mayer 77, 78, 91). Average is 61 games (Story). Leaves 101 games (450PA)
3b - “Bregman” 145, 161, 155. Average is 153. 9 games left (40 PA)
LF - wide open anyway. I’ll just assume this is Anthony being good for 150 games also. 12 open (55PA)
CF - Duran 160, 113, 126, 93. Average is 123 games. 39 left (175PA).
RF - Abreu 135, 104, 129. Average is also 123 (175PA).
DH - Devers 138, 153, 141. Average is 144. 18 left (80PA).
Again, this is already penciling in 150 games started at 2b and LF for Campbell and Anthony. I find it highly likely these two are productive MLB players. It also already assumes Abreu playing about 125g in RF. Even if we assume Abreu gets to the point of playing 140g per year (ie missing only a few games off for the toughest LHP that the Sox face, you’re still looking around 1225PA.
Now let’s even assume that for some reason Casas 2023, and that is on the low end, becomes the norm and his 2024, 2022 and 2021 are outliers, and there are STILL about 1050 PAs left to split.
So people say “play the kids”, and I get that. I‘m assuming a) Campbell and Anthony are borderline All Stars beginning on opening day; b) Casas goes from averaging about 100 games to 145; c) that Abreu goes from his about 125g average to more like 145g. Even making all those assumptions, there are still over 1,000PAs to split among Mayer, Rafaela, Grissom and Hamilton.
If the Sox have acquired “Bregman” and each of those 4 things follow the best case, there is still plenty of playing time available. Not to mention that they’re also going to need some of these “panned out” players to move for controllable starting pitching as well, since I think we can all now accept they’re not going to sign top of the market FA starters (or shall we go through this again next year when they won’t sign Gallen or whatever).
Either way, I don’t think they’re actually going to acquire this hypothetical core bat, I just strongly think they should.