I think unless a team is sold on him as a 3B as well, the market for Dalbec will probably still be pretty soft even with his strong second half. RHH first baseman with pop (and little else) aren't exactly a scarce commodity. Not saying it isn't the right time to "sell high" but I think even at his peak, the return probably is going to be underwhelming. Especially if the patchwork replacement turns out to be more expensive but not necessarily more productive.
Fair. I do think the Sox would be OK with one year of a patchwork that is more expensive but no more productive if they can get something else for Dalbec. Then you hope Casas can take over in August or at least 2023.
The entire impetus of this discussion is that not only is Devers not capable of holding 3B defensively, but that having him there also keeps X at SS, further eroding the infield defense. I am not entirely sure that is true myself since defensive metrics seem to be a black box where the team has way more information than the public. If the FO feels that the defense needs to be improved now or in near future, the only options are letting one or both of X and Devers go or finding a new spot to play them. Maybe the FO thinks the overall value of having bats like that at premium defensive positions is worth it and things will stay exactly as they are. My opinion is that maybe that is ok for now but in 2 or 3 years it won't be and I would like to keep cheering for two great farm raised players. Devers moving to DH makes his bat worth even less, so it may be a worthwhile experiment to see if he can track a fly ball.
I think we’ll be more active than this. This plan reminds me a little bit of the 2018-19 offseason, which was woefully inactive (Benintendi non-trade, Porcello non-trade, Pearce re-signing). Of course a lot comes down to the CBA, but it seems like a missed opportunity to stand pat again with a huge FA class and several teams trimming payroll or having a fire sale (Oakland, Minnesota, San Diego, Colorado). Besides, the 2023 FA class looks really bleak besides Trea Turner, Bogaerts, Eovaldi and Kiké.
Same reason we were pulling him at 60 pitches: we see him as a SIRP and other teams see him as a SP.
Why would you want to do that? Houck and Whitlock are only going to get better as they go along and are cheap. You just don't give those pieces away when you don't have to.
They've got five pitchers right now who could slot into the rotation (Sale, Eovaldi, Pivetta, Houck, Whitlock) and the expectation is that they're going to acquire at least one more (re-signing ERod or signing/trading for someone else). If they want to hedge against one or both of Houck and Whitlock not having the stamina for the rotation, the way to do that is keep them both and use the odd man out of the bullpen. Trading one or the other isn't hedging, it's the opposite of that.
I think the idea is that they'd actually be selling HIGH on Dalbec, coming off a 25-hr season in which he came on like gangbusters in the last couple of months of the year. So it wouldn't be selling low or giving up. It would be assessing his trade value as being pretty high and taking advantage of that.
Sure... I'm just not too sure that many other GM's will look past his first half. I don't think they'd be getting good value for him. Obviously YMMV. For me- playing the imaginary role of a competitor's GM- I'm interested but not giving up too much. I worry that his 2nd half will be the sole outlier of his career. The return the Sox would get wouldn't be worth it IMO for what those other GM's will be willing to part with. Obviously if he has a consistent good year (30HR power, .850 plus OPS and shows improvemently defensively) he'll be worth an assload more. If I'm Bloom I obviously put out feelers this off-season, but I think it's more likely he'll gamble that Dalbec will do just that.
Sure, that’d also be a way to hedge against both of them adapting to full-time starting roles. But when was the last time we successfully converted one reliever to the rotation, let alone two in a season? If there’s a team that values Houck as a long-term, 5-6 inning starter more and we see him as maybe 50 percent likely to be that, now may be a time to reallocate his value elsewhere on the diamond.
Houck was a starter until late in the season, so his conversion isn't really a conversion. Whitlock was a starter prior to this season so it's not like he's never done it before. Of the two, I have lower expectations for Whitlock to stick in the rotation.
Streaky or not, if he's finishing the season with an OPS over .800, 30 HRs and solid defense at 1B, that's HUGE value for a guy making barely above the minimum. There were 8 players who meet that description who played at least half their games at 1B in 2021: Guerrero, Olson, Alonzo, Votto, Muncy, Freeman, Goldschmidt, Abreu. Live with that? I think Bloom would do backflips if Dalbec did that.
His defense was a better at first, but still not great. He's tall with great reach, so he should be a perfect target for throws from the infielders. If he could get that part of his game down, the range at first doesn't matter as much.
The thing about Dalbec is that he’s not one or the other of these guys, and he’s not somewhere in between. Across several minor league seasons and one and a half big league ones, we know that he is *both* of these players. He is and has always been incredibly streaky, putting up long stretches of total suck followed by stretches of total
Hmm. Doesn't this mean that our lost pick for an FA signing would be a higher and more expensive one that it would be otherwise? 2.5 instead of 2.24?
And Pete Abe has a column up suggesting signing Correa and moving Bogaerts to 2b. Yep, that would help defensively. Also create a payroll crisis and block multiple prospects. And Sox fans would hate him. But sure.
No, you’re right. What I mean is that the Sox may find the difference between pick #41 (the Fabian pick) and #65 fairly negligible.
A payroll crisis? We have about $65m on the books for 2023. And we don’t even know the new CBA’s roster-building penalties for exceeding the luxury tax.
Well that's before paying Bogaerts again, Devers for the first time, some combination of JD and/or Schwarber, E-Rod... You're right, they could afford a $30m deal, but that limits what they can do anywhere else.
I think there may be some confirmation bias at work here. Mientkiewicz might have been better than all of them (except maybe prime Hernandez). His hitting was average at best. Maybe it was the Ausmus Theory* at work, but Rico Brogna was thought to be a great defensive 1B. When I was a kid, Jim Spencer annually made only 1 or 2 errors, but wasn't much of a hitter.
This year, the 3B starts went to Devers (151), Gonzalez (6), Dalbec (4), and Arauz (1). I believe Arroyo could play there as well since it's where he played most often before he came to the Sox (in the majors, he primarily played SS then 3B in the minors).
Jesus, I hope they aren't thinking like that. That's akin to the Luchhino desire to be in the headlines all year round that Theo used to butt up against (and was part of his Gorilla suit escape/sabattical). It's the attitude that led to Lackey and Gonzalez and Crawford and Hanley and Sandoval and Price. Spend money, make a big splash, out-headline the rest of the teams in town and boost those NESN ratings. The Red Sox don't have to be the #1 sports franchise in Boston to rake in the revenue and put/keep a really good team on the field.
I don’t care about any other sports besides baseball, so forgive me if I’m out of my lane making a Pats argument.
I'm fine with a lack of fiscal prudence. But only if they're going to do that and stick to that philosophy. In the last decade, they've gone through a couple different low points in no small part because they spent themselves into a corner and decided to budget their way out instead of spend more. I'd prefer if they're going to pinch pennies when they're up against the luxury tax, they not carelessly spend their way into that position time and again. If they're going to have buyer's remorse less than two years into giving Carl Crawford $150M, maybe don't give Carl Crawford $150M.
I am not sure that anyone ever argues against a contract out of concern for billionaires; we do so out of concern that doing so prevents the team from signing someone else. The caps are bright lines in other sports but not so much in baseball, so there is room for you to say that they should just pay players. They can do that. But even if your team is willing to exceed the cap, you also have to consider whether the contract you're giving out would be movable if you ever needed to get a guy out of town. We just lived through them dealing Betts in part to get off the Price contract (or some of it anyway). I am not saying you have to agree to respect fiscal prudence, but in today's game, even before we consider the draft pick penalty, giving out these contracts is going to have ripple effects. Maybe the next CBA will simplify things more. Billionaires don't like being told they can't do something.
Cosign to the cosign. No way Shaw is back. Iglesias only back if they let him start everyday, which I'm not sure they would be up for (though could be interesting). Aaruz likely plays a similar role next year as last - on the Worcester shuttle. I do agree, though, the main task seems to me to acquire 3 quality arms.
He's lost a couple ticks on his fastball and his barrel % is up. Strikeouts down. So I am not sure if what he has lost can be reclaimed.
Just came here to post the same thing, @nvalvo! News to me and very interesting. Seems like it could be a missed opportunity to not sign a top FA.
I think you're probably right about this.
Yes, in various threads throughout the year, I've been pointing this out (part of my argument for a somewhat more aggressive GFIN mode this past year, but that's water under the bridge). A year from now the team faces massive potential changes - a real changing of the guard. That might well mean - if the team starts well in 2022 - that Bloom and co. are aggressive about trying to win a championship (especially with a revived farm). And, as you say, if the CBA goes through, there is the opportunity to go over the tax in 2022, dipping back under in 2023, with a youth movement leading the way, as the team begins to assemble a new core.
Thrilled for her she got the offer but equally thrilled she saw writing on the wall. Mets are a problem
