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The Baseball Reporter is Tony Mazz.

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on Boston's Home for Sports, 985, the Sports Hub. Okay, here we go. I've said this before, I'll say it again. The All-Star break is always a good opportunity to take stock of bigger picture issues. I feel the same way about off days during the midweek season.

You get a day off. It's really, in the case of the Red Sox, you can look at the Red Sox and say, what are they doing well? What are they not doing well? Again, lefties, righties, bigger picture issues with the ball club. Can do the same during the All-Star break, both with the state of the game, which we will continue to do. I want to get to some comments made by Rob Manfred, the commissioner, as well as specifically Tony Clark, the director of the Players Association last night. One of the comments he made pertains specifically to Mouquet's. It brings me to where I want to start tonight. A Marshall Hook is alongside Jim Murray's off. Here's a question. And Marshall, I want you to answer it. And I would like Jimmy Stewart, I'll produce it and answer it as well. And for that matter, you know what, Andrew, the intern and Billy Lanny, give me your two cents too. Okay? Just to answer the question. Four guys on the Red Sox right now that I would deem to be centerpieces of your lineup.

Four guys.

J.D. Martinez, Mookie Betts, Zander Bogart's, Raphael Devers.

The likelihood that you can keep all of those four guys for, call it, the next next five years is borderline zero.

You're not keeping all four.

Now, Bogart's has been re-signed, but you could still trade him in theory if you had some

sort of good offer.

But I think Bogart is going to stay.

Nonetheless, I include him because, again, he's part of that lineup core.

Those four guys really should be your two through five hitters, three through six, however you want to do it. They're the four guys that are the meat of your lineup. Then you fill in around them. But you can only keep three. Who goes? Which of those guys do you get rid of? And, Marsha, do you agree? The Red Sox aren't going to keep all four of those guys? Yeah, I would agree. Okay? The chances of keeping all four of those are microscopic. It's just not going to happen. Realistically, there's a budget, there's a payroll, too many external factors and variables from free agency and everything else. Someone's going. And don't forget the fact that the Red Sox have needs.

So they are going to make moves and trade players too.

And maybe it includes someone in that group.

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