When Lance Lynn was signed, I found it necessary to remind posters "this is not a Terry Ryan thread". I was inclined toward going ahead and starting such a thread, but was a little short on time. Deduno Abides's thread-starter here managed to encapsulate approximately what I would have said, had I done so. For context, I was a long-time supporter of Ryan, who felt about a year before he left it was time for him to go. This has been an unusual off-season, to put it mildly, with various useful players languishing on the open market even past the opening of Spring Training. Early estimates of contract values were regularly being under-achieved. It was the off-season that Terry Ryan was born to thrive in, and it's his bad luck that he didn't get the opportunity. Lowball offers were his stock in trade, and he likely would have succeeded in obtaining several useful players. I am very happy with the job our FO has done this time. Next off-season will likely be a different beast, and it remains to be seen what they will accomplish in a seller's market, if that's how it plays out. So far, so good, and the jury's still out. For many reasons, judging a FO takes a long time.