I understood the point. I just think it's meaningless. A lot of hitters, especially those whose home parks are hitter friendly, have home/road splits. Judge's home OPS is 103 points higher than his road OPS. Does that mean if he signed elsewhere he'd be a more pedestrian player? Or is it simply a matter of both the player's comfort and park effects?
Judge's splits are from earlier in his career mostly, this year he had a better OPS on the road (1.141) than at home (1.081).
I don't think you are too far off with this line of thinking. It feels a lot like this ownership is not really aiming for the fanbase that is here on SoSH these days.
More precisely X is an OPS+ 114 hitter at home and 87 on the road. I hated to see him go, but there’s a ginormous difference between X and Judge as hitters.
I could not agree with you more. While the Red Sox brain trust is hardly blameless (their P.R. chops and minor league prospect scouting both seem to leave much room for improvement), I don't think they were wrong to balk at paying the winter 2022 market rate for Xander. I think the deal Preller handed out (12th largest contract in MLB according to https://theanalyst.com/na/2022/12/the-highest-paid-major-league-baseball-players-and-largest-contracts-in-mlb-history/) only makes sense if (A) he (Preller) were cryogenically frozen for the past 3 years or (B) the Padres organization's in-house web browser does not support HTML (and therefore precludes the organization from accessing the "Splits" link on Baseball Reference).
Could not disagree more. 9+ years of home/road split data is surprisingly un-noisy (only Covid-shortened season of 2020 bucks the trend).
I can't tell if this is good news or bad news for the Red Sox.
How do we know they "massively overpaid" for Yoshida? Do we know that Steve Cohen or A.J. Preller wasn't offering $85M?
Boras wrapping up negotiations for Yoshida less than a day into the 30-day posting period suggests we made a pretty crazy offer.
I'm going to go on record as saying that 50th-percentile projection is horsesh!t. I'll happily eat crow if I'm proven wrong. There's little margin for error with Yoshida since he's a defensive liability and there's some concern that the move from NPB to MLB will cause a noteworthy dropoff in his numbers just like it did with Seiya Suzuki.
I mean, this one is probably straight up fake. Not sure we've been truly been competitive on any conventional elite FA all this offseason.
If this rumor is true about the Red Sox offer being a lower AAV than the Mets offer, Occam's Razor could apply. Senga might not have put much value on the extra 2 years and $20 million that the Red Sox were allegedly offering. And that's before any consideration for the opt-out after year 3 in the Mets deal.
Well, there's overpay relative to the production and overpay relative to other teams' bids, which we also don't know much about. I think the Sox identified what he was worth to them (playing in Fenway seems apt for Yoshida's swing) and wanted to get it done quickly, because they rather desperately needed an outfielder, Nimmo wasn't a good fit (signed to be CF, bad Fenway swing) and Benintendi is (likely) not an option.
This is a message board where we all get to speculate and express our opinions, favorable or unfavorable, on a variety of topics including but not limited to the performance of the Red Sox front office. Nowhere in my posts did I say that I was mad or express anger. I simply don't think that highly of the Yoshida deal terms. If you want to thread police posts where someone disagrees with your take or don't want to read any unfavorable views of the Red Sox front office, you should feel free to just ignore my posts and/or find another message board.
Some people here long for the days of Dombrowski, because he'd identify who he wanted and go out and get him. That's what Bloom did with Yoshida. In keeping with the theme of almost every thread on the board, who gives a crap if it's above some projected value. If that's his target, go out and get him. It's only money.
I think you're probably right.
Okay, sure - sorry to strike a nerve. What I'm specifically responding to is you citing a "massive overpay" for Yoshida as evidence that, in your words, "seemingly don't know what they're doing" and/or are out of their depth."
We'll have to agree to disagree. I've posted upthread supporting the decision to not re-sign Bogaerts based on his steep home/road splits and declining production so the "collective anger and grief" and "cynical, uncharitable reads of Bloom and the front office" don't apply to me. I'm in the minority, but I'd be fine letting Bogaerts and Devers both walk because I don't like the risk/reward profile on their free agent contracts especially considering their defensive profiles. I feel the same way about Yoshida's contract. I also don't believe that an "avalanche of cynicism" on a Red Sox message board has much of any bearing on the players.
In the spirit of being open-minded, it looks like the Red Sox view Seiya Suzuki as a reasonable comp for Yoshida since they both received similar contracts -- 5/$85 mil vs 5/$90 mil. And Suzuki's 2022 stat-line might have been artificially depressed by random, untimely injuries -- he apparently started and ended the season hot and could have otherwise matched the ZiPS projection. And that projection would have yielded a 3-4 WAR player, thereby justifying the contract.
Boy has this joke gotten funnier!!
This dude has 186 followers on Twitter. There is less than 0 chance he has any actual sources or insight.
World Champs in 2018. A game away from the World Series in 2021.
Has Bloom signed anyone to a contract including an opt out? He does seem to value as much team control/ flexibility as he can maintain: Story’s contract is a straight up $/years, no opt outs, no NTC. We know we’ve lost out on some of the short 1 year deals for reclamation project pitchers because he wanted a team option for a second year.
Arguably the closest he's come to a contract with an opt-out is Paxton. It's all semantics with a deal that short, but it was effectively a 2/$10M deal with an opt-out after one, and Paxton chose to stay.
Story has an opt out after 2025 that the Sox can cancel by picking up a 7th year for $25M ($20M incremental over a $5M buyout). Not quite the full upside to price to market, but it does add another $20M guaranteed to the deal to not allow him to exercise.
