This maybe be a bit apples to oranges, but close enough that you would get my point. Would you grade a student who's not yet finished the test? I mean so if everyone shits all over these moves now and things kick in when Sale and Schwarber return and IF Houck gives us every bit of what we could hope for and IF one or both of these relievers pitch better than expected and IF one of Pivetta/Rodriguez/Perez regains form and IF the Sox bring home a championship should Chaim's approach be labeled a failed tradeline based on what we feel now? It's like trying to grade an active off season, how do you evaluate until following the season's played out? How does one properly evaluate the Mookie trade until we see how Downs, Wong and for that matter Verdugo progress. I remember a lot of moaning about the likes of Napoli, Victorino and Dempster all being brought in at somewhere near $13M per year each (Napoli was later adjusted) in the off season leading up to 2013, but................
I see what you mean by something still being in process (the test not being completed). But my mind is flip flopping around itself here and I certainly might be being obtuse about probability etc (I'm in the arts, ain't in science or law or anything like that so I admit my ignorance) ... I'm stuck on, well ...ANY choice, when viewed with enough time will tell us if it is a "good" choice or not. That's hindsight thinking. So, a grade now is an assessment of the
likelihood of a favorable outcome .... It is a gamble that Schwarber can play first base and gets healthy soon ....it's a gamble that Houck can maintain his excellence in ML level ...
The question - were there other options (and here admittedly we are working with crazy conjecture) that may have given a better likelihood of a favorable outcome? That were slightly less of a gamble?
I play a lot of backgammon. The whole game is to take small risks to create higher probabilities for future positive outcomes. But there's a lotta luck. A player playing probability better than their opponent can still lose ....cuz of luck. So - if I make a move that has good math behind it and still lose, my move can still be seen as good, despite the outcome. Anyway, I guess that's all obvious, forgive me.
A SECOND question is what Bloom's decision reveals about his assessment of the current team, and the organization, and the weighing of present vs. future. This is subjective, but he certainly can be criticized in this regard. If 0 is total GFIN (Dodgers, trade the farm) and 10 don't give up any assets save for the future, Bloom seemed to be an 8 here .... I was hoping he'd be more like 5 ...be a bit more aggressive ....that's sorta the subtextual evaluation.
I understand he couldn't do what the Dodgers did. But I can't understand why he couldn't do what the Giants did to get Bryant ...or maybe spend that capital to get
one of the second echelon of starting pitchers like Gibson.
Schwarber I do think is a good get ... but he's injured and will miss what may be the most crucial stretch of the regular season.