I have long not been a proponent of a full-blown rebuild, largely because I think in the end it's much easier said than really done. I have gradually moved further and further towards a pretty skeptical position on Cherington, due largely to the complete wasting away of Hayes and even Oliva at this point, but if his strategy really is a kind of patient, retool/rebuild, I think there's still some reason for optimism.
The biggest questions I have are 1) what's the target year for really trying to compete? and 2) where is the star power going to come from?
#2 is why I'm so frustrated about Hayes, when we are trotting JT Riddle or Jose Osuna – two players who very well could be decently useful bench pieces in their own way – most days.
I do not really see us getting a lot of value for the various trade pieces that we have. I do think, whatever happens via trades, it is an absolute necessity to clear ground in order to play the young players regularly after the deadline. Tucker has finally started to earn his opportunity of late, but my anti-BC line would be to say that we've sort of wasted three weeks of only intermittent playing time for him to do this.
My sense is that Frazier might pick up half decent assets, and if Kela is healthy, he could too. Perhaps RichRod. Most other options I would assume don't garner much, if anything at all. What I'm most covetous of to be honest are other young players who could use an opportunity to play repeatedly and see what happens – Frazier, Barreto, and Andujar being the three most notable. I don't know that we have the bullets to get any of them, but if Oakland comes knocking about A. Frazier, then I hope we'd take on Barreto in return. He brings the possibility of power which we sorely need and which could help supplement Hayes being more of a 15 HR guy who gives you ace defense. Just thinking out loud, but possibly:
Hayes at third, Tucker/Newman at SS, and Barreto/Newman at 2B, with one of Tucker/Newman being a kind of super utility, and Erik Gonzalez being an excellent defensive depth option. That might not be horrible, but it's a lot of unproven guys and still leaves 1B totally unsolved, as Bell clearly doesn't seem like the answer. What to do about Bell is an entirely different post, but a hot take someone floated to me recently, which I think I'd consider rolling the dice on, is to try and extend him now and buy out one free agent year. I doubt he would be willing to go for it since his value has never been lower, but maybe he takes a guarantee in light of that and you then hope that the contract enables him to relax more or something and find a happy medium as a 1B/DH masher.
Put differently re: Bell, I'm more than ready to move on from him, but trading him for very little is potentially a mistake. Him continuing to suck a lot and then go on a few hot streaks also does very little. If you believe in him a little bit, then express it by offering what probably amounts to a raise over what he'd garner in arbitration in exchange for one year of free agency as an option year or something.
2021, assuming it will be a normal season, was always going to be somewhat more important than 2020 anyways IMO. We have to sort out which players fill which roles as part of a solid, supplementary core and which potential players can become more of the star level talent that can get the team back to decency. I do not really agree with the idea that we need catchers. Organizationally, we could use some, but perhaps the biggest positive story of this miserable season has actually been Stallings. We don't have depth behind him, but if he's healthy, he is a perfectly competent #1A catcher: his defense and framing are absolutely elite and it certainly looks like he can provide average offensive production. The problem is elsewhere in the lineup.
We need pitching, pitching, and more pitching, and then we need actual big offensive production from certain spots in the lineup. The former is not really too much of a surprise given that your top penciled in guys basically everywhere got hurt – even if for many of them, it's still an open question if they would have performed decently. Same goes for offense, except obviously, guys have been healthy and just underperformed like crazy. If the offense had performed even a little bit, I think we'd just have a few more wins to show for it, which concretely only means less or no distance between us and other teams on the Road to Rocker.