Explain, jerk

C- Nonexistent
1B - Good/Great
2B - Nonexistent
3B - Average at best
SS - Average and OLD
LF - Nonexistent
CF - Huge questions about health
RF - Looks good but likely not great
DH - Nonexistent

Anderson - 75/9 K/BB ratio tells you something
Rodon - Probably decent but control is worrisome
Sale - Great but long-term outlook mixed
Quintana - nice starter
Bullpen - Horrible, worst in baseball.

there is your core.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I think most people are high on Rodon and Garcia. I guess that's a big difference in judging the core

Garcia has never shown big power or big plate discipline. Those are HUGE red flags. Though he is a large strapping macho man and he can make some contact, so hopefully it will come.

Watching baseball for 35 years, I've finally figured out the likelihood that a minor league star will become a major league star is quite low:
Prior, Van Poppel, MacDonald, and so on.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

You are basically saying that even someone like Sale isn't someone you can build around. Besides Abreu, every thing you listed is either thinking the player will not meet even basic expectations or will regress.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Alexei is not average. He is streaky for sure, but above average with the bat and great with the glove.

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Note that most spots don't even have a viable candidate to have expectations of!

Alexei is old. He is what is is and is on the decline plane.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

It isn't a team. It's a core. You do know the difference right?

With the money and spots opening up, there are ways to fill in certain needs.

Also, Alexi was an all star this year!

Again, if you are saying that you can't build around Sale then your whole post is pretty much useless.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Wrong. He made his first AS game this year and is playing a gold glove caliber SS after really sucking with the glove for the most part last year. He is on pace to set a career high in avg, might get there in RBI, has double the HRs as last year, and will likely steal 20 bags again this year.

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A "core" is 7-8 proven guys, not 2.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

7-8 proven guys? That is what wins a World Series. I don't think anybody is saying the Sox are ready to win the WS this year or next year. However they absolutely have some guys in place that they can potentially build a WS caliber team around.

Also, don't even talk about the bullpen. 90% of the time they are a crapshoot year to year. Unless you have one of the top 10 closers/setup guys in the game, teams pretty much reassemble most of their bullpens from year to year.

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No, it isn't. If you have 7-8 proven guys you aren't rebuilding.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

you guys are worse than cub fans. You realize a baseball team has 25 players?

you gotta have depth out the wazoo because most baseball players never reach their potential and when they do it is only for a brief amount of time. the stars have to align, like the 05 Sox. Most of those guys were gone or sucked within 2 years after that.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Once again, you wouldn't even concede that Chris Sale is a piece you can build around.

Keep in mind you said that it is "not so good".

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

his arm is gonna fall off sometime in the next five years. build around that.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Good counterpoint.

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Hopefully one day we have 7-8 players who are better to build around than Chris Sale.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

how can you counterpoint idiocy?

the sox are 26th in terms of positional WAR at the major league level.
they have one positional prospect - Anderson - and he is raw as hell.

That is a "good core?" If that is the case, virtually every single team has a "good core" to build around.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

That is a horrible way to judge it. The Sox have multiple negative WAR players who won't be on the team going forward.

I don't think you are understanding the difference between a core and a team.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Quote your posts?

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This is completely idiotic and you should feel terrible for spending more than a handful of key strokes on it. Intelligent people kill themselves because they lack self esteem, but you charge ahead like a fearless retard with no regard for the stupid you inflict upon the world.

From the top:
C: Flowers is a starting catcher in today's MLB. That's the state of the position right now. He's an above average defensive C with a bat that is about league average for the position among starters. He could work on his pitch framing and try to squeeze another 50 points of OPS, if he does that he outperforms Brian McCann (who makes more money than all of Burkina Faso combined).

1B: MVP candidate (in a ludicrously weak year) in his rookie year is not straddling the line between good and great... he's great.

2B: Ever heard of Marcus Semien? I get that prospects aren't 100% locks but if you're gonna plug one in Semien is a very good option. Carlos Sanchez is liked by some people too, I'm not one of them but he's 22 and did very well for himself in AAA this year. Then there's Micah Johnson, who grades an 80 tool (rare). 2B has the most depth of any position in the Sox farm. It's not non existent you mouth breather.

3B: Is a problem because Gillaspie has to be in the OF to limit the defensive liabilities he has. Matt Davidson is also a corpse.

SS: Alexei Ramirez is a 31 year old All Star SS who deserved it. That makes him neither old nor bad.

LF: Depends if this is where Gillaspie plays next season. As of now it's a black hole, but the nice thing about LF is anyone can step in and ply it.

CF: Eaton can play, but if health really derails his career CF is the position Tim Anderson (and his ALARMING K/BB RATE OH GOD) will eventually settle in at. Giving Anderson a shot is an acceptable use of the CF position in 2016.

RF: He doesn't need to be great. Nobody expects hin to be great. If anyone does expect him to be great they are markedly dumber than you are, which is a feat.

DH: Who cares? Wanna pay someone $15m to not play the field and maybe provide a few extra homers? I don't either. Nor does anyone in baseball with a brain. Oakland has one of the game's best offenses and they do not have a full time DH.

Sale/Q: Are closer than you'd think. Quintana is putting together a hell of a year, and it's on the heels of 2 seasons where he has continued to improve. Just because Q has no wipeout slider doesn't mean he's automatically just 'nice'. Also, as far as pitchers go, they're all one pitch away from Dr James Andrews. Welcome to baseball.

Rodon: Control worrisome? Are you daft? The worry with Rodon is if his changeup can miss MLB bats and whether his asshole coaches at NC State killed his arm, not his control. Nobody worries seriously about his control.

The bullpen should all be euthanized.

I stopped reading when you said Ramirez was 31.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

America, welcome to the subdivision!!

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He's 32 going on 33. That hardly makes him ancient, he's not an NFL RB.

flowers is 21st of 26th catchers in WAR.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Kind of a critical age for baseball players too. But a lanky guy like Alexei lasts longer than a masher probably



Hitters

Using Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index tool—it will tell you the meaning of life if you ask the right questions—I drew up a list of the players with the best total WARs since 1980 and picked out 20 who fit the requirements of this sinister little experiment.

The experiment required players who were active starting at at least the age of 24 beginning in 1980 and who remained active through at least the age of 36.

I had to reject three players from consideration: Albert Pujols, Ozzie Smith and Ryne Sandberg.

Pujols was rejected because he's only played through his age-32 season. Smith's age-24 season happened in 1979. Sandberg didn't play in 1995, which would have been his age-35 season.

Excluding those three, I ended up with a sample size containing: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Rickey Henderson, Cal Ripken, Jr., Wade Boggs, Chipper Jones, Ken Griffey, Jr., Jeff Bagwell, Frank Thomas, Larry Walker, Derek Jeter, Jim Thome, Barry Larkin, Scott Rolen, Tim Raines, Rafael Palmeiro, Tony Gwynn, Kenny Lofton, Alan Trammell and Manny Ramirez.

Mush their production together, and their WAR progression between the ages of 24 and 36 looks a little something like this:

simple math.

Gillaspie's offensive production would place him 19th among leftfielders.

CORE!

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Take a look at who's ahead of him and wonder who's really much better aside from the obvious guys. It's a mess of a position.

Simple man. You are the one who has repeatedly said that Abreu was in his 30's because he is Cuban. I guess that joke only works for one Cuban player huh?

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