Didn’t Gammons’ tweet say that the truth would come out someday? Or words to that effect?
Gammons is the master of this- just casually throwing in tidbits of info years after the fact, as if they are common knowledge.
There’s no way that’s what that Gammons tweet meant. He said that something had changed and that Breslow wasn’t given the budget he was told he was going to have. I mean it’s pretty cut and dry what Gammons is getting at
Your take on what Breslow said could be construed as confirmation bias too, couldn't it?
Well no, not really in this case, as I said, I stepped back and looked at it from a lot of angles before responding, one of those which you brought to my attention. Through examining several different scenarios, I landed where I landed. It's really a demonstration of dealing with/overcoming any confirmation bias I had to begin with. And in this case, I didn't really have a strong opinion I was trying to confirm. I basically took a long look at your hypothesis, and found it lacking any evidentiary value. Others are certainly entitled to do their own examination and reach their own conclusions.
An appropriate baseline for Montgomery might be the MLBTR projection of 6/150.
Right but as his market softens, why sign him at his demand?
The statement by Kennedy seems to leave every possible interpretation open:
This makes a lot of sense to me. Even if we think Breslow is too inexperienced or overmatched with these kinds of negotiations (I do not), there are a lot of current Sox FO personnel who were around when DD waited out J.D. Martinez's market, reportedly agreeing to terms on February 19th, 2018.
Which is worse though, parsing every word, or seizing on the one word or phrase that seems to be the big one and running with it?
It is silly. But the narrative fits the situation at the moment.
However, you're leaving out the fact that unlike the Red Sox, the Yankees, Rangers and Mets have already blown past various tax thresholds:
I think most Red Sox fans would be fine with them not going over the 237 million this year. It's the possibility that they may not even approach that line that has people wondering what's going on. Plenty of time left, of course.
They have almost no payroll commitments beyond this year. The fact that it would be so easy for them to dip under again next year is why people are having a hard time understanding why they are crying poor now.
Having reset last year, and with the current Collective Bargaining Agreement ending after the 2026 season, I'd argue that there is no justification for the Sox to stay under the initial $237 million threshold, this year or for the next 3 seasons. There is a whole thread on this topic, including the impact on international signing budget and compensatory picks, but the take-home message is that the primary penalty is just money and its is not even that much: if the Sox have a CBT payroll of $277 million this year, the penalty would a payment of $12.8 million.
If the Dodgers offer River Ryan or Kyle Hurt for Jansen, the Sox should be sending Jansen before the Dodgers can change their mind.
I don't think that Montgomery's coming here, but just for the fun of it... I think that the Sox become very competitive IF the team moved both Jansen and Duran and could somehow snag a good defensive RH corner OF with a good bat and a couple of years of control and added Montgomery. Like I said, just for funsies.
I think the simplest explanation is that they made that full throttle comment, it took on a life of its own, every agent leaked that the Red Sox were in on every player making it seem like we were repeatedly failing, we didn't Yamamoto because he wanted to go to the Dodgers, we haven't gotten any of the other FAs because none of them really made sense for the team, and now we're dialing back the full throttle comment because it puts us in a better position to deal with what's actually happening, which is that we're waiting for Montgomery to accept that his market isn't as big as Scott Boras made it seem at the beginning of the offseason.
I like your theory, but every reporter who covers the Sox seems utterly convinced they have no intention of trying to sign Montgomery or Snell. Which would mean that when Kennedy said the payroll would probably be lower, he was more or less preparing everyone for this.
Given the expectation (rightly or wrongly) that they will soon have a huge influx of young, cost-controlled talent coming up from the minors, what possible harm can signing Montgomery really do? Yes it will be expensive. But they'd still be well under the luxury tax, now and for the foreseeable future as these young guys come up. He's a solid pitcher who would help without putting the team in any sort of bind.
Not only that, but the idea that the Sox are going to suddenly be able to get whatever FA they want when MAT are ready and will really go for it then is kind of silly. We just went through an entire offseason where the common refrain was "Free Agent X was always going to sign with Team Y, so the Sox never stood a chance" - no idea why that is suddenly going to stop being the case when the Sox decide they are ready to compete. If JM is available and makes the team better, I would rather sign him now then lose out later this offseason and go into next offseason with possibly even more pitching question marks.
Yeah, pretty much, but I think that's very dependent on the terms of whatever contract Montgomery eventually signs. I think that will go a long way in illustrating to me the level of financial commitment in ways that I haven't seen with other moves/non moves so far. Even Turner doesn't bother me a lot, I like him, but there are a lot of reasons to take a pass there.
Good way to look at it. Waiting to see @CR67dream's reaction when one or both of JMont and Snell sign for a backloaded 2/$50m.
Recall the years Bloom managed to not get under the threshold despite clearly strategizing in that direction, adopting fiscal discipline and still fielding a competitive team is hard. Sucking at it is easy.
I think Cotillo has been a lot more spot on this off-season than any of us hoped, but 1) that is what leads to things like signing Hanley Ramirez to play LF; 2) stunting a year of growth of Xander Bogaerts by bringing back Stephen Drew and 3) pretty drastically over-paying for a good but not elite LHH hitter to in essence fill your DH role when you already have two elite LH bats that profile better at DH anyway.
With you on this. I think they are waiting see see whether Montgomery gets anything close to what he is asking for, or if the price comes down to something the Sox think is reasonable. Time will tell.
I think this is fair if and when they have actually passed on all of these players. There are still a ton of guys on the board, many of them quite good, and deals to be made. If the Sox don't make any further moves, I'm sure I and others will be happy to eat crow, so long as it's as slow-cooked as this offseason has been.
FanGraphs with an article on Justin Turner's signing, which they're pretty lukewarm about.
I get that he's not great anymore. But he's pretty good and seemingly would take a Part Time role with the team and can step in without a horrifying drop in overall performance from Casas or Devers. He provides RH power off the bench if he's not starting, etc.... all these things we all know.
