Having Verdugo or Kike is fine in a vacuum. Having an outfield that can't produce a single player that cap put up an 800 ops is a terrible idea.
You mean the point where Sale was completely healthy in January? Also offense doesn't work that way. If you have an outfield that has three players that put up a 780 to 800 ops and then you have a couple infielders that can put up an 800 plus ops, that is enough offense. What you want is for Bloom to have a crystal ball.
No idea why an .800 OPS is the magical barrier, but they put up .777 (107 OPS+) and .786 OPS (108 OPS+) the year before. Doesn't seem unreasonable to think that at least Verdugo, who put up back to back OPS over .800 in 2019-2020, couldn't improve on that.
So you went in expecting that in a best case scenario they're kind of average?
Entire career? Come on. From the time he became a full time starter (2012) until his UCL tore and he required Tommy John (end of 2019), he was on the IL exactly twice. He averaged 29 starts and 192 innings per season over those eight years. That's not an entire career of being injury prone.
Arroyo worked into RF with JBJ in right for much of the first couple months, then he got hurt, then Story got hurt... you can look up the rest. And as pointed out above, there was a strike and the idea of adding another OF never happened. There was some idea that Duran would be in the mix before he became the full time CF. Honestly, I don't need to regurgitate the entire story of 2022.
Changing this to last 5 years doesn't meaningfully change the argument. Coming into the year the average amount of starts he had:
They were a mediocre team despite a ton of injuries, how exactly is that bottoming out?
You weren't being asked to regurgitate the entire story of 2022, you were being asked how Verdugo could be the replacement for Renfroe when he was already slated for LF. And I guess now your answer is that the plan wasn't Verdugo (even though you just wrote that) but actually a JBJ/Arroyo platoon and that plan got ruined by injuries. Really? Remember, this all started with people saying that expecting anything out of JBJ was a mistake, and you responding that that only happened because of injuries. And yet now you are saying JBJ (and his .497 OPS) was slated to be the strong side of a platoon in RF and that his planned platoon partner was a career 2B (without a single appearance in the OF before the season) with less than 250 ABs combined in the past two seasons. And I guess it was that guy going down to injury that ruined this brilliant plan.
So basically you made up your mind and no one and no fact will change it. Bravo
That’s a bit harsh I think. What I intended to write was that if Bloom has a good off-season, then he should continue with his plan.
Wait wait. Your first post said he has to fill additional holes mentioned above. You also mentioned offloading JDM. That is an odd use of wording for a free agent. So are you saying in your second post that he has less to do? Also my apologies. For some reason, I read near zero for absolute zero.
I think they also planned to have Whitlock & Houck as starters, but... what's your point?
I find you more of a Bloom-centrist & have no issue with your postings on the subject even if I generally disagree. A fair % of the board, though, has these unrealistic demands & expectations of things that aren't actually possible.
I feel like it's worth noting that even though Sale didn't spend much time on the IL before his surgery, he had a habit of basically falling apart every September, which is where he got the reputation for not being very durable (and why people here weren't happy with the extension when he signed it). His career OPS allowed in September is .750, which is a.) not particularly good, and b.) 100 points worse than his OPS allowed for any other month on the calendar. The only year where he had a good September for the Red Sox was 2018, which happened because the Sox managed his workload carefully and cut his IP down from 200+ to 150. So I don't think it was unreasonable to be skeptical of Sale's durability.
If the standard is 2018 then it’s going to be basically impossible for Bloom to beat because that was one of the best baseball teams in major league history. Great regular season, dominant in the postseason against two 100-win teams and then beat the always-competitive Dodgers.
This may be a dumb opinion, but I do think there's also somewhat of a secret sauce that can improve a team's chances in the post season as it's a slightly different game & in that regard I'd much rather emulate the Astros than the Yankees because I don't think that part is fully a fluke.
IT'S A SECRET.
No but JD would have made their lineup as a DH. Still bummed we didn’t trade him there for some prospects like we did with CV
No but JD would have made their lineup as a DH. Still bummed we didn’t trade him there for some prospects like we did with CV
He picked a bad time to go completely cold at the plate. If he'd hit a couple of those home runs he hit after the deadline before it passed, maybe they get more than the offer for organizational flotsam and jetsam. I still think they should have taken the offer if it meant getting under the LT threshold, but maybe that wasn't part of the deal and they were going to have to kick in some money to make it worth the Mets' (or whomever's) while.
This assumes the Astros were interested in Martinez, which maybe they weren't. Brantley was on the IL but had not yet been transferred to the 60-day IL, so perhaps there was hope he'd be back. Plus they acquired Mancini who obviously was going to split time between DH and 1B. Not a lot of room to add JD.
I think if everything was identical but BOS was a smaller low-pressure market, Bloom would have come in, looked at their situation and where the other teams in the division stood, and done a full teardown/rebuild a la HOU/BAL. Not just trading Betts, but Devers and Bogaerts and anyone else with value, and I think if that had happened, BOS would be in better position today (no need to argue this either way as we will never know).
My only point with Bloom is that he didn't acquire JBJ to do anything other than maybe sneak out one decent season, at least defensively, before he was let go, and that the only players involved in that transaction that Bloom cares about at all are the prospects because he is trying to rebuild the franchise from the ground up. They've made it pretty clear, and for people to be continually trying to judge Bloom's performance on a year's results when he didn't push *any* of his chips in seems pointless.
I don't think his system or strategy needs to necessarily special or different from other teams to require patience to see whether or not it bears fruit. This isn't the NBA or the NFL where a GM can get near instant results from his first draft. Doesn't matter who's at the helm, it's generally going to take 3-4 years at minimum before we see what kind of talent he's able to find and develop. It took a year and a half for Theo's first draftee to make a major league appearance (the immortal Abe Alvarez) but it was nearly three years before a draftee of consequence broke in (Jonathan Papelbon). Considering Bloom got five bites at the apple (4 signed) in his first draft compared to 52 picks for Theo (34 signed), I doubt the fruit will be forthcoming quite as fast. But it has to come eventually, and that's when he should be judged on it.
Bloom is trying to get the farm system built back up to the point where he can start promoting players to provide a cheap compliment to the more expensive players he will eventually sign, or to trade some of the prospects for young, cheapish talent. Also, by having a farm system that can provide value, either through trade or promotion, it allows Bloom to make big free agent signings without worrying too much about the signing not working out. For example, if the Yanks sign Judge they are not going to be overly concerned if he turns into Eric Hosmer as unlikely as that is. They can either promote a player from the minors who can provide some of the of value from Judge for cheap or they can use the prospects to trade for talent that can do the same thing. It is kind of team building 101.
You want to know what's in the black box, right? I feel like we can't really answer your question unless we work for the team and have all of their proprietary info and whatnot.
All that you mention above is about player acquisition. Player development is what do you do with the players once you get them. It seems that some organizations have a method that is working better than others. The Astros, Guardians, and Rays churn them out pitchers every year. I think @jon abbey could give better insight on how the Yankees develop pitching. The Royals are at the other end of the spectrum as they spent a lot of draft capital on pitching and none of them improved.
Of course a lot of this isn’t really public info but one huge thing NY did is they completely revamped a lot of their coaching structure a few years ago. I detailed it a bunch here:
I’m curious about that as well. So far Bloom has not been very good at resigning our big stars, and the board seems to be split on whether he is doing a good job at value recognition in filling out the lineup every offseason.
I would have liked him to get under the tax level and pick up at least something for guys that weren't going to help us anyway. GMs need to be successful when selling too.
This seems a little extreme at this snapshot in time. The Mookie thing has been relitigated to oblivion, and maybe let's wait until Xander and Devers are actually not re-signed before coming to this conclusion.
