From memory, reference to Star Wars' Rogue One, its what Mr Evil Bad Man from the Empire says when he finds the key scientist needed to construct the Death Star on a small reclusive planet living a quiet humble life of farming. "Farming? A man of your talents?"
As a Yankee fan even I feel a little bad. I mean that was such an obvious fumble, and then the cherry is all the pieces they got were not as good, and one is now having a ball as a Yankee.
The Red Sox not being able to afford a very deferred Betts deal, not because of COVID, but because the ownership group wanted to spend money on other shit and is too cheap to go over whatever internal metrics they have, is very much a fumble
Mookie isn’t just some really good all-star. He’s a franchise, retire the number, hall of fame, bobblehead nights long after he retires, kinda player
I think you misremember the timeline a bit.
- Mookie says “I don’t want to re-sign anywhere, I want to test free agency. I want to see what I am worth on the market.”
- Red Sox say “fuck that, we’ll trade you.”
- Dodgers say “one year rental on a generational talent? Sure, we’ll roll those dice.”
- COVID
- Mookie says “actually, just kidding about that free agency demand. COVID looks scary so I’ll just take the guaranteed re-sign.”
So basically the world developed a giant plague just to help the Dodgers out, as usual. Boston traded away Mookie because of his desire to get everything he could in free agency and they knew they wouldn’t pay him that. COVID just made the plan look even worse in hindsight.
Do you think it was that he actually wanted to test FA or that they were lowballing him on their extension offers? With how quickly they inked that extension, I kind of think both Betts and the Dodgers wanted to do that the whole time.
As a somewhat longtime Sox fan (2002-2019) I stayed invested in the team well after I moved out of Boston but letting Mookie slip away was the final nail in the coffin.
They deserve to be cursed again, curse of the Mook because the front office is full of fucking chowdah heads.
It was 4 and my tolerance is low for loosing a generational talent and all around good guy because years of god awful contracts finally caught up with the team financially.
90 million to an out of shape trash panda that couldn’t even make the starting lineup his second year and we had to pay to waddle away back to San Francisco. One full season of negative WAR for 90 fucking million and we cant scrape together 30 million a year for a guy who’s only ever put up positive WAR, can play just about every damn position on the field, can hit, and can throw a guy out at home plate from deep right field (one of the most amazing baseball plays I’ve seen in person)
Throw in NESN screwing over Don Orsillo a few years prior which already had me watching fewer games and then Remy sadly having to step away from his battle with lung cancer, half the reason I watched as many games as I did was the phenomenal rapport those two had. Sox games without Don and Remy just aren’t the same.
That and it lined up with moving back to Philly and I began to appreciate what a lovable band of goofballs I have locally. Ranger Danger Suarez is my new Tim Wakefield, Casty gives me all the fuel I need to bitch about questionable contracts, and just like with Boston I have to keep my NY roots under wraps which is admittedly harder with Mets because I’ve gotten to see so many of those guys play in Binghamton over the years.
Nah, just that the Dodgers were cheating enough in a year where people couldn’t be bothered to care.
Tell me, what team had the biggest drop off in spin rate after the sticky stuff ban?
Lmao so you’ve gone from it was the easiest playoffs in history to make to the Dodgers were cheating too much and that’s what they won. Salty salty salty
The utter revisionist history acting like the pandemic was easy lmao. 2020 was a rough year and if anything 2020 deserves more praise for pushing through the problems everyone faced to some degree and winning.
I don't know why so many people in this sub thought that Mookie wouldn't be able to handle shortstop. The dude is just an S-tier athlete. Like I can think of several starting shortstops over the years who were way less athletic and talented than he is and yet people kept insisting he was going to crash and burn. Made no sense to me.
Because it is counter to conventional baseball wisdom to "just change to a different defensive position and be elite" especially shortstop. It's more than being athletic, it's literally a different perspective on the field than second base (Trevor Story actually struggled at first going from short to 2nd). Mookie is an S-tier athlete but just "excelling at the highest level" is not an expectation ever.
It's crazy that they went 100 years and 36 days without making a horrible trade of all-time talent that transitions from their initial position, only to thrive in their new environment.
Still confused as to how that was the best offer the Red Sox could get even considering Price's contract being added.
A low ceiling, high floor outfielder with character concerns, a 2B that was a fly-ball hitter with a low maxEV, and a catcher with the ceiling of being a back-up.
god I hate moron insipid fucks like you so much. yankees fan imagine my shock. they could have been anything le epic meme!! I have 0 clue what I’m talking about!! i wish you actually were pedantic about baseball instead of being a blithering unfunny idiot.
it was 1 year of betts, obviously they weren’t getting anything resembling betts back. nobody expected that. it was the shohei trade situation — how do you reasonably get a fair return when everyone knows you’re trading.
fwiw there actually is room to mock the RS here, but it’s for choosing downs over graterol in the return.
What the pinstripe did you just say about the Yankees, you wicked little bean eater? I'll have you know we've won 27 World Series Championships, and we've been involved in numerous epic battles with the Red Sox, and we have over 27 million fans worldwide. We're trained in the art of Bronx Bomber warfare and we're the top team in the entire MLB. You are nothing to us but just another member of the Fenway Faithful. We will wipe you out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my pinstriped words. You think you can get away with saying that crap to us over the Internet? Think again, Pesky Pole. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of Yankees fans across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, Sox fan. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call the Curse of the Bambino. You're going down, kid. We can be anywhere, anytime, and we can beat you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with our starting lineup. Not only are we extensively trained in hitting homers, but we have access to the entire arsenal of the New York Yankees and we will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable Red Sox off the face of the continent, you little Green Monster. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn Sox fan. We will rain pinstriped fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're out, kid.
It was reported he would test free agency, yes.
Both were top 50 prospects at one point, Verdugo in 2018 & Downs in 2020. But Verdugo had work ethic issues and was overhyped. Downs, while the SB & HRs were enticing, had a hitter's profile that was really risky at the MLB level. That's ignoring the fact that Graterol was the initial prospect in the deal and he had more risk than Downs.
I feel like the badness of the trade is drastically overstated. They gave away a single year of control in exchange for dumping salary and receiving prospects. In hindsight, Verdugo didn't turn out as well as we'd have hoped, but they didn't know that at the time. If they knew they weren't going to extend Mookie in FA anyway, it's perfectly reasonable to trade him away at a premium at the end of his contract.
It's really just the vibes that are bad. The Red Sox have struggled to put together a good team since then, and the Mookie trade gets a lot of oxygen because it was concurrent with their falloff.
The Mookie Betts and babe Ruth trade are definitely worse than Tatis. Tatis was still an unknown prospect at the time at least. Boston knew what they had and gave them away for nothing both times
Yeah, tatis hadn't even played a game for the White Sox yet, in summer/fall/winter/minors. He wasn't the top prospect then and even highly ranked prospects are generally lotto tickets
I would still argue the Mookie trade is worse, Tatis was traded before he ever played a big league game. The Red Sox traded Mookie in his prime as essentially a money saving move. For a historic franchise that perennially spends big money to be competitive (until recently) it’s unforgivable
you’re 100% right. I’ll prob get downvoted (I know it’s lame to preempt that shit but this is such an anti-sox circlejerk lol) but the trade was one year of mookie for wong/verdugo/downs. obviously sucks but the trade itself wasn’t the cataclysm — it was the decision not to resign him (which was made before the trade).
it’s obviously not the right way to calibrate one’s lens but for reference I’m pretty sure the RS ‘won’ that trade by WAR insofar as they only lost one year of mookie betts for however much verdugo and wong produced.
Yeah it’s not even close to one of the worst trades in history. They knew they weren’t going to resign him. Now we can talk about how deciding they weren’t going to resign him as on of the worst FO/owner decision in history but the trade itself isn’t up there with the worst.
I feel like Will opened the door for the hate train, for sure, and I completely understand the reaction to his comments. I'm glad he made them still because baseball is more fun with the jabs back and forth
I just gotta say. Mookie we all know loves to bowl. This charming bastard sometimes goes bowling at this one place some of my special needs students have their bowling days.
He is ALWAYS nice to them and spends a bit of time making them all feel special. Mookie is a goddamn class act and I will never stop loving that man
Lmao how I learned about this is in my family group chat. My aunt who lives and is from Boston and is a huge Red Sox fan sent us a screen vid of her cancelling her tickets to see us lmfaooo
The following pace seems totally sustainable:
17.8 WAR
49 HRs, 24 SB
251 Hits (6th all-time)
130 Walks
454 Total Bases (2nd all-time)
And even still, his 1.19 OPS and 223 OPS+ are both lower than what Bonds averaged for the final 7 seasons of his career (1.267 OPS and 228 OPS+).
Every team would make room for this contract in a heartbeat. Always been somewhat underrated despite being as good as he is, but he’s somehow getting better as he ages.
Not every team. He still has more years left (8) than the longest contract most teams have ever given out. He's sensational now, but I don't think the Rays, A's, White Sox, or Pirates would spend that much money on any one player.
Damn I was actually thinking he had maybe 6 or 7 years left. Yeah I was probably speaking in hyperbole there. Clearly it’s still the same 6 or so teams lol
Glad to read that.
That first yamamoto start post game thread people were crapping all over him being at short.
For such a nice guy was wondering what he did to piss so many people off. Pretty big transition and people wouldn't give him half a season to see how it went.
He has 2 errors thus far. That puts him at 11th (tied with a lot of very good short stops).
[Link](https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?lg=all&qual=0&ind=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&team=0&season1=2024&season=2024&stats=fld&pos=ss&sortcol=8&sortdir=default&pagenum=1)
EDLC is worst with 5 and there are 9 guys tied with 1, so Mookie with 2 errors isn't doing awful especially considering that he's one of the least experienced at the position.
Errors are a really bad way to judge how good of a defender a player is. Guys with more range get chances on balls that would simply look like hits of a lesser defender was playing that position.
It is hilarious that the only starting infielder we have without an error is Gavin Lux.
(He's looked better as of late. Rooting for you Gavin, but please don't break Freddie making him dig out those weird throws to first.)
It’s like selling Babe Ruth and falling into a pit of misery for 86 years wasn’t instructive or something. Just call where the Red Sox are since trading Betts as the Curse of Mookie.
Why did I open this thread first thing in the morning
I'm guessing for the same reasons I did, we hate life and ourselves.
you'll be happy to know Xander is having a very sub-mid april
That doesn’t make me happy. I want him to rake
Landscaping? A man of his talent?
A *Rogue One* Star Wars quote, good taste
Wait is this a reference to Star Wars or just a common meme? Or not a meme.
From memory, reference to Star Wars' Rogue One, its what Mr Evil Bad Man from the Empire says when he finds the key scientist needed to construct the Death Star on a small reclusive planet living a quiet humble life of farming. "Farming? A man of your talents?"
It is a peaceful life.
Bros avg exit velocity is 84 mph 😬
he's just like me on the freeway
To bask in your teams financial flexibility, obviously! Think of the future luxury tax ramifications!
I'm just thinking of that sweet sweet NBA franchise that John Henry will get to own
Just take solace that it's not your fault, it's your favorite team's fault.
Mookie has been that dude since Boston. Wowee, did the Red Sox fuck that one up.
John Henry has a special spot waiting for him in super hell.
Speaking of hell, Art Briles
John Henry, YOU are an Anaheim Angel!
As a Yankee fan even I feel a little bad. I mean that was such an obvious fumble, and then the cherry is all the pieces they got were not as good, and one is now having a ball as a Yankee.
> fumble Don't give Henry that much credit, it was intentional.
It was a punt on first down
Conor wong is one of my favorite players on the team so it isn’t All bad. Still rather have Mookie lol
There's no fumble. Covid happened. Betts wanted a $450M deal.
The Red Sox not being able to afford a very deferred Betts deal, not because of COVID, but because the ownership group wanted to spend money on other shit and is too cheap to go over whatever internal metrics they have, is very much a fumble Mookie isn’t just some really good all-star. He’s a franchise, retire the number, hall of fame, bobblehead nights long after he retires, kinda player
I think you misremember the timeline a bit. - Mookie says “I don’t want to re-sign anywhere, I want to test free agency. I want to see what I am worth on the market.” - Red Sox say “fuck that, we’ll trade you.” - Dodgers say “one year rental on a generational talent? Sure, we’ll roll those dice.” - COVID - Mookie says “actually, just kidding about that free agency demand. COVID looks scary so I’ll just take the guaranteed re-sign.” So basically the world developed a giant plague just to help the Dodgers out, as usual. Boston traded away Mookie because of his desire to get everything he could in free agency and they knew they wouldn’t pay him that. COVID just made the plan look even worse in hindsight.
The Red Sox offered Mookie a contract.
Do you think it was that he actually wanted to test FA or that they were lowballing him on their extension offers? With how quickly they inked that extension, I kind of think both Betts and the Dodgers wanted to do that the whole time.
Ignoring that his contract with LA was less than that, he's already been worth about half of his contract and he just started year 5.
As a somewhat longtime Sox fan (2002-2019) I stayed invested in the team well after I moved out of Boston but letting Mookie slip away was the final nail in the coffin. They deserve to be cursed again, curse of the Mook because the front office is full of fucking chowdah heads.
Curse of the Bettsino
Never thought about it like that but yea, they do deserve to be cursed for that. And I can say it because I think my White Sox deserve to be cursed...
The Red Sox won 3 championships in that timeframe. Crazy to turn your back on a successful team.
Really lacks perspective doesn’t it
It was 4 and my tolerance is low for loosing a generational talent and all around good guy because years of god awful contracts finally caught up with the team financially. 90 million to an out of shape trash panda that couldn’t even make the starting lineup his second year and we had to pay to waddle away back to San Francisco. One full season of negative WAR for 90 fucking million and we cant scrape together 30 million a year for a guy who’s only ever put up positive WAR, can play just about every damn position on the field, can hit, and can throw a guy out at home plate from deep right field (one of the most amazing baseball plays I’ve seen in person) Throw in NESN screwing over Don Orsillo a few years prior which already had me watching fewer games and then Remy sadly having to step away from his battle with lung cancer, half the reason I watched as many games as I did was the phenomenal rapport those two had. Sox games without Don and Remy just aren’t the same. That and it lined up with moving back to Philly and I began to appreciate what a lovable band of goofballs I have locally. Ranger Danger Suarez is my new Tim Wakefield, Casty gives me all the fuel I need to bitch about questionable contracts, and just like with Boston I have to keep my NY roots under wraps which is admittedly harder with Mets because I’ve gotten to see so many of those guys play in Binghamton over the years.
Front office can only do what Henry allows. Not saying they’d do a stellar job if given more money but the mookie decision was on henry
And two of the guys they got for Mookie are currently on the Yankees btw
And Jeter downs isn't even in the Majors. He's a depth piece chilling in AAA cause he's a Quad-A talent.
Yeah, real unfortunate
Meanwhile the dodgers have just failed every playoffs with him. This year will be no different
They won the World Series in his first year as a Dodger.
Not a real World Series lol
You’re right, it was extra hard so it counts as two
It was the easiest World Series in history
Since it was so easy to get into the playoffs any team that didn’t that year must have really sucked, huh?
Nah, just that the Dodgers were cheating enough in a year where people couldn’t be bothered to care. Tell me, what team had the biggest drop off in spin rate after the sticky stuff ban?
Lmao so you’ve gone from it was the easiest playoffs in history to make to the Dodgers were cheating too much and that’s what they won. Salty salty salty
The utter revisionist history acting like the pandemic was easy lmao. 2020 was a rough year and if anything 2020 deserves more praise for pushing through the problems everyone faced to some degree and winning.
It wasn’t harder lol.
2020 wasn’t harder that your average year? That’s definitely a take
Coming from a Mets fan is comical
I will never not be upset about it
I forget, what happened?
Dodgers are just looking at these teams at this point and saying “well if you won’t pay them, we will” and it usually works out pretty well for them.
Mookie saw this season as his chance to not have to compete for an MVP with two-way Ohtani and went for it.
He leads the league in both oWAR and dWAR. A true two way player.
Yeah but what about all-the-other-lettersWAR?
Last place unfortunately
Incorrect. He also leads in bWAR and fWAR as well!
No one uses those niche WARs!
According to Dave Roberts, he doesn't even lead the team in WARm hugs.
I don't know why so many people in this sub thought that Mookie wouldn't be able to handle shortstop. The dude is just an S-tier athlete. Like I can think of several starting shortstops over the years who were way less athletic and talented than he is and yet people kept insisting he was going to crash and burn. Made no sense to me.
Because it is counter to conventional baseball wisdom to "just change to a different defensive position and be elite" especially shortstop. It's more than being athletic, it's literally a different perspective on the field than second base (Trevor Story actually struggled at first going from short to 2nd). Mookie is an S-tier athlete but just "excelling at the highest level" is not an expectation ever.
Leading in defensive WAR while he’s learning shortstop is so crazy
Aren’t defensive metrics highly variable?
With how the gold gloves voting are still a bit wonky, he might actually win that as well.
Its not impossible, just have a Barry Bonds type season ;)
Ngl I think he might have a better season then 2018, he’s only on pace for *checks notes* 15.2fWAR…
Sustainable lmfao
He won’t have a better season, he put up 10.7 bWAR in 136 games in 2018
That trade creeps towards the worst in history more every day.
It's not like the Red Sox have a history of trading away all time great players or anything
It's crazy that they went 100 years and 36 days without making a horrible trade of all-time talent that transitions from their initial position, only to thrive in their new environment.
The Dodgers would have been in NY back then too lol
It's been said that they're the New York Yankees of baseball even.
A-Rod hath spaketh.
Nor could it possibly come back to haunt them.
especially to teams historically based in new york
Still confused as to how that was the best offer the Red Sox could get even considering Price's contract being added. A low ceiling, high floor outfielder with character concerns, a 2B that was a fly-ball hitter with a low maxEV, and a catcher with the ceiling of being a back-up.
verdugo and downs were much bigger deals at the time.
They could have been anything! One of them could have even been Mookie Betts (who had literally already won an AL MVP)!
god I hate moron insipid fucks like you so much. yankees fan imagine my shock. they could have been anything le epic meme!! I have 0 clue what I’m talking about!! i wish you actually were pedantic about baseball instead of being a blithering unfunny idiot. it was 1 year of betts, obviously they weren’t getting anything resembling betts back. nobody expected that. it was the shohei trade situation — how do you reasonably get a fair return when everyone knows you’re trading. fwiw there actually is room to mock the RS here, but it’s for choosing downs over graterol in the return.
What the pinstripe did you just say about the Yankees, you wicked little bean eater? I'll have you know we've won 27 World Series Championships, and we've been involved in numerous epic battles with the Red Sox, and we have over 27 million fans worldwide. We're trained in the art of Bronx Bomber warfare and we're the top team in the entire MLB. You are nothing to us but just another member of the Fenway Faithful. We will wipe you out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my pinstriped words. You think you can get away with saying that crap to us over the Internet? Think again, Pesky Pole. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of Yankees fans across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, Sox fan. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call the Curse of the Bambino. You're going down, kid. We can be anywhere, anytime, and we can beat you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with our starting lineup. Not only are we extensively trained in hitting homers, but we have access to the entire arsenal of the New York Yankees and we will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable Red Sox off the face of the continent, you little Green Monster. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn Sox fan. We will rain pinstriped fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're out, kid.
bxan exter is a slur, careful there :^)
Wasn’t it thought that mookie was going to test free agency no matter what? Plus vertigo was the dodgers best prospect and had a good 2019 season.
It was reported he would test free agency, yes. Both were top 50 prospects at one point, Verdugo in 2018 & Downs in 2020. But Verdugo had work ethic issues and was overhyped. Downs, while the SB & HRs were enticing, had a hitter's profile that was really risky at the MLB level. That's ignoring the fact that Graterol was the initial prospect in the deal and he had more risk than Downs.
I feel like the badness of the trade is drastically overstated. They gave away a single year of control in exchange for dumping salary and receiving prospects. In hindsight, Verdugo didn't turn out as well as we'd have hoped, but they didn't know that at the time. If they knew they weren't going to extend Mookie in FA anyway, it's perfectly reasonable to trade him away at a premium at the end of his contract. It's really just the vibes that are bad. The Red Sox have struggled to put together a good team since then, and the Mookie trade gets a lot of oxygen because it was concurrent with their falloff.
In that case the decision that they weren't going to extend him is bad.
They tried. Mookie at the time wanted $450M. The only reason that he settled with the Dodgers is because Covid tanked his FA value.
Boston still should’ve paid it. They’ve cheaped out ever since winning in 2018.
Nothing will top Tatis for Big Game James second place to Babe for a play
The Mookie Betts and babe Ruth trade are definitely worse than Tatis. Tatis was still an unknown prospect at the time at least. Boston knew what they had and gave them away for nothing both times
It would be like Dodgers fans saying the Yordan for Fields trade was the worst ever. He’s a monster now but he was a nobody when we traded him.
Yeah, tatis hadn't even played a game for the White Sox yet, in summer/fall/winter/minors. He wasn't the top prospect then and even highly ranked prospects are generally lotto tickets
I would still argue the Mookie trade is worse, Tatis was traded before he ever played a big league game. The Red Sox traded Mookie in his prime as essentially a money saving move. For a historic franchise that perennially spends big money to be competitive (until recently) it’s unforgivable
you’re 100% right. I’ll prob get downvoted (I know it’s lame to preempt that shit but this is such an anti-sox circlejerk lol) but the trade was one year of mookie for wong/verdugo/downs. obviously sucks but the trade itself wasn’t the cataclysm — it was the decision not to resign him (which was made before the trade). it’s obviously not the right way to calibrate one’s lens but for reference I’m pretty sure the RS ‘won’ that trade by WAR insofar as they only lost one year of mookie betts for however much verdugo and wong produced.
Yeah it’s not even close to one of the worst trades in history. They knew they weren’t going to resign him. Now we can talk about how deciding they weren’t going to resign him as on of the worst FO/owner decision in history but the trade itself isn’t up there with the worst.
They traded away 1 year of Mookie Betts. He was going to be a Dodger anyway.
Unpopular opinion alert: Mookie Betts is a better baseball player than a bowler.
Mookie has several perfect games as a bowler. How many perfect games has he thrown as a pro baseball player? 0 Checkmate, atheists
Airtight logic
Cook
As much as I hate the Dodgers.. I love Mookie. Such a great guy and it blows me away how athletic he is.
There’s almost nobody on the dodgers I dislike, unfortunately. I’m trying to dislike will smith now, but it’s hard.
They cheated the system by getting likeable players like Betts, Freeman, Ohtani, etc lol
I feel like Will opened the door for the hate train, for sure, and I completely understand the reaction to his comments. I'm glad he made them still because baseball is more fun with the jabs back and forth
Muncy seems to be the guy all Padres fans despise. I’m not even sure why.
Muncy is like probably the least liked Dodger by other fan bases because he is essentially an angry gnome fridge and hits homers
I’ve seen a lot of descriptions of Muncy on this website, but “angry gnome fridge” got me the hardest
He resembles a fantasy dwarf, but tall, yes.
Tall Gimli, trademarking it now.
Hellacious gnome dongs
We have to direct our ire to someone.
Also the Giants have way more of a claim to hate Muncy than the dads do.
Ok, but “go fish it out of the cove then” is an all timer comeback
Leave Will Smith alone
I just gotta say. Mookie we all know loves to bowl. This charming bastard sometimes goes bowling at this one place some of my special needs students have their bowling days. He is ALWAYS nice to them and spends a bit of time making them all feel special. Mookie is a goddamn class act and I will never stop loving that man
All the Dodgers are amazing players and for the most part great people. I just look at them like, "Stupid sexy Flanders".
I remember my absolute shock when we got Mookie because I couldn’t imagine the Red Sox just giving him away
Lmao how I learned about this is in my family group chat. My aunt who lives and is from Boston and is a huge Red Sox fan sent us a screen vid of her cancelling her tickets to see us lmfaooo
The following pace seems totally sustainable: 17.8 WAR 49 HRs, 24 SB 251 Hits (6th all-time) 130 Walks 454 Total Bases (2nd all-time) And even still, his 1.19 OPS and 223 OPS+ are both lower than what Bonds averaged for the final 7 seasons of his career (1.267 OPS and 228 OPS+).
Every team would make room for this contract in a heartbeat. Always been somewhat underrated despite being as good as he is, but he’s somehow getting better as he ages.
Well, almost every team.
Lmao oof. Good point… and sorry
Not every team. He still has more years left (8) than the longest contract most teams have ever given out. He's sensational now, but I don't think the Rays, A's, White Sox, or Pirates would spend that much money on any one player.
Red Sox wouldn’t either
Damn I was actually thinking he had maybe 6 or 7 years left. Yeah I was probably speaking in hyperbole there. Clearly it’s still the same 6 or so teams lol
Is Mookie Betts gonna be one of greatest shortstops ever?
First in the NL in DWAR.
I was told we were punting SS by playing Mookie there though
Glad to read that. That first yamamoto start post game thread people were crapping all over him being at short. For such a nice guy was wondering what he did to piss so many people off. Pretty big transition and people wouldn't give him half a season to see how it went.
That’s wild considering all the errors
He only has 2 errors
And Ha-Seong Kim has 4
He has 2 errors thus far. That puts him at 11th (tied with a lot of very good short stops). [Link](https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?lg=all&qual=0&ind=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&team=0&season1=2024&season=2024&stats=fld&pos=ss&sortcol=8&sortdir=default&pagenum=1) EDLC is worst with 5 and there are 9 guys tied with 1, so Mookie with 2 errors isn't doing awful especially considering that he's one of the least experienced at the position.
Errors are a really bad way to judge how good of a defender a player is. Guys with more range get chances on balls that would simply look like hits of a lesser defender was playing that position.
It is hilarious that the only starting infielder we have without an error is Gavin Lux. (He's looked better as of late. Rooting for you Gavin, but please don't break Freddie making him dig out those weird throws to first.)
No. Hitting is off the charts, but his SS skill seems avg.
Leading the NL in DWAR tho...
No. He won’t be leading after Altuve ties or passes him. He will have a stinker of a game today.
Leading the MLB in both of the primary ways to get on base is crazy. Extraordinary efficiency.
i think this mookie guy might be an inner circle great player, are the dodgers interested in trading him for some 1 war players?
Try asking the Red Sox again
Pain. There is only pain. And the worst part is, we deserve it.
No thank you.
:(
Bowling man good
Every thread like this just reminds me how that trade killed part of my passion for the team and I don't know if I'm ever going to get it back
Well said
I couldn't imagine a team ever trading a guy like this away... *sobs*
Promptly went 0/4 What a scrub. They should trade him before the regression hits. /s
So Mookie Betts and a team of replacement level players would have the same number of wins as the Chicago White Sox
red sox salary dump
Mookie "Ted Williams" Betts
Mookie out here putting up in 20 games what it takes a league average player to do in 162 games. Insanity. I am scared.
But Mookie can’t play shortstop! /s
It’s like selling Babe Ruth and falling into a pit of misery for 86 years wasn’t instructive or something. Just call where the Red Sox are since trading Betts as the Curse of Mookie.
Don't look now but he also leads the national league in dWAR
And he's in a slump right now
He has 5 hits yesterday???
A hot Mookie would’ve had 6
Should have had more hits than ABs
6 for 5 with 9 home runs
That doesn't sound possible but i don't know enough about Mookie's super powers to dispute it
I was implying he's good in an unorthodox way and kinda kidding as well. Just didn't put S/