Bone Chips said:
So I'll boil down your ridiculous argument into one sentence.... You feel that. 6/105 offer for Lester only made sense if they had the foresight he would have an awesome year. Got it.
And you're calling other people dumb?
I wasn't, really, I was calling what you said dumb, but you seem intent on saying dumb things so I may be forced to accept that it's not just that you said something dumb because everyone says dumb things, but that you actually are a butt reaming moron.
I'll refrain from coming to any conclusions for now and just point out that the conclusion you draw up above is incorrect. At no point in this discussion have I said what I feel about 6/105 for Lester in the spring because I don't have any feelings about it.
You said there was a deal to be made in spring training. You want it to sound like it was incredibly stupid for the Sox not to sign Lester to that contract which ignores the fact that in 2012 and 2013 he had as many months with an ERA over 7 as he did with an ERA below 3 and that he had an ERA below 3.5 four times in twelve months (sticking March in with April, and October in with September.)
Are you really suggesting that not signing that guy to a six year, hundred million dollar contract is a colossal blunder? Because it isn't. Not by any strech of anything resembling a reasonable imagination. A lot of guys with a recent history like that are going to crash and burn.
Not signing Lester to 6/105 in that situation is not a colossal blunder, and you can only think it is if you either assume, or have knowledge that his performance in 2014 would be much better than 2013. You're the one making that assumption and it isn't a reasonable one to make.
Fast forward a little, even to today and we have three more months of ERA below four, two more with an ERA below 3.5, and oh yeah, the one month he has with an ERA below 3 is also a month with an ERA below 2 and so far in July, an ERA below 1.
In short, it's entirely reasonable that 2014 to date or in it's entirety has or will convince management that Lester's good years aren't going to be a little bit above average the way 2013 was in its entirety, but well above average as he was from 2008 though 2011 and has been so far in 2014.
You're acting like the dollars are all important and his performance is irrelevant which is an absurd position to take when there is a decent chance that management is quite happy to pay an extra forty or fifty million for the higher level of confidence they have in his future performance based on the time that has elapsed (he's a year closer to the start of the contract) and the fact that his recent performance has been so much better than 2012.
Even if it costs them an extra fifty million, that's just a bit more than eight million a year which isn't all that big a deal for a team that regularly has a payroll twenty times that amount and has not one or two but several players who aren't going to be free agents until very late in the contract or later.
I mean, fuck, you act like changing your mind based on new data is a colossal blunder and that's just pure nonsense. It's an absurd position to take and rather than digging in, you should just say you spoke before you thought it through.
Edit--also, if you want to continue this, let's move over to the Lester thread, shall we?