Get the 2023 playoff tickets ready!

At this point, I don't much care about playoff tickets, I just care that the middle of the diamond looks like less of a frustrating void than it did this time yesterday, which is good, because today's when payments for partial season ticket packages are due.

Can Duvall play shortstop?

Is there where I make "the final piece!" joke?

Can Duvall play shortstop?

And pitch? Preferably start? Maybe it's one of those LL deals where the best kid on the team alternates between pitching and playing SS?

Well the Sox front office heard all about Duval making waves in the playoffs and maybe they got a little confused.

Wait, is this 2021 NL RBI Champ ADAM DUVALL????

To be clear, I am not excited about Adam Duvall being on my favorite team in 2023. We are looking at a lineup with a stud, two guys who could be really good and part of the next great Red Sox team, and then six guys who will almost certainly have nothing to do with the next great Red Sox team:

C- McGuire
1B - Casas
2B - Hernandez (?)
3B - Devers
SS - Veteran acquisition (?)
OF - Verdugo
OF - Duvall
OF - Yoshida
DH - Turner

I mean, if we didn't sign Duvall, we'd probably be putting Hernandez out there, and try to find a 2B or something. It helps raise the floor for 2023, but has nothing to do with 2024, 2025, or beyond. How many of the nine players above will likely be on the team in 2025? Three?

Is the offensive production from Duvall really that much more? Hernandez is an actual centerfielder -more starts in CF last year than Duvall in his career.

#8 ... as #7 suggests, at the moment, Hernandez is needed more at 2B and maybe SS than CF. Duvall's hardly a great option but there are no CF available anywhere, I'm not sure there are any 2B available anywhere. Slap a SS in there and you get a Hernandez/Duvall/SS/Arroyo/Duran rotation across those 3 positions plus 4th OF and backup 3B -- uninspiring but probably not embarrassing.

It's almost as if since Plan A (watch Bogaerts leave) had no chance of failure, it never occurred to anybody to have a Plan B.

7...You mean Yoshida and Casas, right?

Captain: Yes, in #7, the stud is obviously Devers, but I didn't name the two guys who could be really good long-term parts of the team: Yoshida and Casas.

I should add that I think Reese McGuire is actually a pretty good solution for catcher for the next few years. He will be 28 this year, costs the team virtually nothing, has a strong defensive reputation (and stats to back it up), and is a decent hitter. He was a high-pedigree prospect and draft pick, and got caught in the Blue Jays logjam of catching talent.

I am shaking my head about Bloom a lot lately, but he made an interesting pair of trades at the deadline last year involving catchers, right? The Vazquez trade to Houston got the attention, and they got two mid-tier prospects for Vazquez. One of them, Enmanuel Valdez, can hit - but it is not clear his glove is good enough at any position. Personally, I thought they should have saved the Turner money, and done a young platoon at DH involving Valdez getting most of the PAs against RHP.

Meanwhile, Bloom traded Jake Diekman, who was pretty lousy for Boston, and got McGuire back. Then, they put him at catcher to replace Vazquez, and arguably improved at the position, while also retaining control over McGuire for the next three years. (Vazquez was a free agent.) Those were a pair of really good moves.

What confuses me is why the team didn't do whatever it took to get JD Martinez's remaining salary off the roster, and go under the Luxury Tax level. The moves at catcher were about the future; keeping Martinez (and Eovaldi) were about competing in 2022. Just weird.

What confuses me is why the team didn't do whatever it took to get JD Martinez's remaining salary off the roster, and go under the Luxury Tax level. The moves at catcher were about the future; keeping Martinez (and Eovaldi) were about competing in 2022. Just weird.

JD Martinez in June: .232 .319 .394
JD Martinez in July: .210 .253 .346

Not many teams want to trade for a DH putting up those numbers, especially when they guy will cost them $7-8 million or so. He did have a good start to the season, but who get's traded in May?

Eovaldi - no clue. He did get hurt in June, missed a month, but you'd think someone would have at least taken on his contract if not send something of potential value back.

Guess Bloom knew the team would be under this year, so there's really no penalty for being over in '22 other than paying an extra $1.2 million.

To your point, jacksone: I wonder if the Red Sox could have pulled the reverse of the Ottavino-and-German for cash trade in the winter of 2020, where they basically got a prospect in exchange for taking salary of the Yankees' hands. That's also what (I guess) Bloom was shooting to do in the Renfroe-for-JBJ plus two prospects deal last off-season.