And hey, if he’s horrendous at it, then you learn that in spring training, and make him the DH like you did anyway. It was always irrational to tell Raffy to throw his glove in the dumpster and never field again. For a team that loves multi-position versatility for pretty much every other player too

Even without hindsight, this would have been just as if not smarter than Raffy at DH. The team clearly doesn’t value Casas long term, so if he was the DH they could have rotated the position like Breslow and most analytical GMs prefer. While at the same time, you keep Raffy’s positional value up.

In the end, the fun loving gamer in the video below wasn’t enough for FSG and they’ve been planting the seeds of this move ever since. It sucks that the fanbase continually has to endure the fallout of the most dysfunctional and dramatic front office in the sport. Adios Carita 🫡

Couple that with Breslow not being the GM who gave him that extension in the first place and here we are. Breslow’s analytical models see the contract as “underwater” like Jeff Passan said, so he didn’t want Raffy either. The second they brought a good soldier like Bergman on board, Raffy was gone.

Raffy wanted to just go out there and post. Making a long term commitment and finding “alignment” are about meeting people where they’re at and appreciating them for who they are. FSG got mad because he didn’t become someone he’s not.

When they fucked up the Mookie and Xander situations, they wanted Raffy to do the non-baseball stuff that they thought came with being the “face of the franchise” when he never wanted any of that. That was what you pay Mookie and Xander for. Similar to how Ortiz took that pressure of Pedey.

Coley Mick’s final thought on today’s episode of Section 10 had a similar message. No one fan base exemplifies Joon’s point more than Sox fans. We stayed through 86 years of misery and used the 2013 team to rally a broken community.This team means more to the fans than it ever will to Breslow or FSG

Pissing off your best player through terrible messaging and then trading him after you just swept your rival and finally got back above .500 to completely plummet the vibes in the locker room goes against that line of thinking.

This is what happens when you give yourself so little margin for error. Every win feels like it’s a must have and for better or worse Cora has been managing accordingly.

For anyone thinking this would have blocked Vladdy next year, my response would be to cross that bridge when we get to it.

The lineup construction works too if Cora was even halfway serious about Yoshida playing outfield again. Alonso could DH and provide a legit 1B backup to Casas, while Yoshida platoons with Ref in LF. Duran in CF, Wilyer in RF, and Ceddy to a super utility role.