None of that alters the fact that it was only one disappointing season. Plus you're chucking stuff in there that wasn't even known at the time, like how Price and Sale were going to perform in the future. Betts wasn't a free agent until after 2020, and nobody knew exactly how interested the Dodgers were in him until we traded him.Originally Posted by Maxbialystock
So you're not really arguing in good faith.
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
I think Henry looked at more than just W-L records.
The Sox were falling in the standings, had the largest payroll in MLB history, had $300mill tied up in 3 oft-injured pitchers, had little time left on the deals for Betts and Bogaerts. Do you really think “one bad season” encompasses that? And I probably left out other factors and don’t know about even more…
"Falling in the standings" - sure, let's make it sound more dramatic than it really was. It was one bad season, no more, no less. And not as bad as some other Red Sox seasons Henry has been witnessing.
DD had inked Bogaerts to an extension through 2022, so that's wrong too.
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
True he snuck the Bogaerts thing in. And you ignored everything else.
You keep insisting it was one bad season. But in the set of 93, 93, 108, and 84, which number is the outlier?
The Sox did drop 24 games in the standings, which is a fact. But it also coincided with the vast improvements made in 2018 and 2019 with the other teams in the division.
"Snuck the Bogaerts thing in"? I'm not even sure what you're talking about.
I think it's pretty sad that you're trying to discredit what was a pretty good run. And 2021 wasn't bad either, with a lot of holdovers from 2019.
Last edited by Bellhorn04; 06-28-2024 at 12:18 PM.
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
Dombrowski made one mistake in 2019. That was to neglect the bullpen. That, coupled with injury and underperformance from the rotation , sunk the season. The starting lineup was very good. You should not omit that the Sox were coming off of three straight division titles, something they have not done before or since. Dombrowski had a great run.
Old school is good school.
You're missing the point. Not sure if I'm not being clear or you're deliberately ignoring it or both.
I'll take you one further - an 84 win season isn't a failure. It felt like one after 2018, absolutely. But 84 wins is a passing grade in my book.
But what did Dombrowski build? His teams won 93, 93, 108 and 84. The tendency, because they were all pennants, is to lump the first 3 in together. But the 108 win season is a clear outlier, not the 84 win season. And his other 3 seasons averaged 87 wins. (Slightly unfair math, yes). So the Sox were a team that was winning 87-93 wins, but doing so with the highest payroll in MLB. Not to mention the future commitments did not look so great, especially with $300mill commited to Price, Sale, and Eovaldi with nothing committed to Mookie. That money to those pitchers produced 14.4 fWAR (and counting) over 11 individual seasons (including Sale in 2024). I think this overall picture was simply not how Henry pictured running this team. With that much money dedicated for less than stellar results, Especially while competing with Tampa, who was nearly as good but for less than a quarter of the cost.
I mean, if you ran a business, would you decide spending 4 times as much for the same results was a good practice?
Not to mention, with Tampa and New York and Toronto all clearly getting better back then, was this 87-93 win team going to be good enough? And if not, what do you do? Spend even more? They were already number one in spending, and the results might not have been as good as they’re needed to be…
Last edited by notin; 06-28-2024 at 02:29 PM.
Not just unfair math, but wrong math. The average of 93+93+84 is 90. Which is the same number of wins the 2023 World Series champs had, BTW, and more than the 2021 champs, so it's not really a bad number.
Meanwhile, throwing out the 108 season as an "outlier" is ludicrous. We're talking about 1 of a population of 4.
Shall we throw out 2013 from Cherington's resume while we're at it?
You're abusing math and logic.
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
I think most people think of 2013 as a clear outlier in the Cherington years, which are most often described as “three last place finishes in 4 years,” are they not? If nothing else, that marginalizes his one title.
The entire point was Henry clearly didn’t like paying the top dollar for a 90 win team. And the East was getting better, and his expensive Sox team probably wasn’t as good as the 2018 team lead us to believe. And that was a big part of why DD was dismissed. And not solely because of 2019.
He wanted a cheaper winner, which he didn’t think he would get from DD, whose history of success is supported with large financial commitments, even in Miami.
Or we could ignore all that and go with your theory, which was what again?
Yes I did my math wrong. But if you include 2018, the standard deviation for his 4 years was 10 wins, which is a large variance and why it looks like the outlier over 2019. The standard deviation without 2018 is only 5.15.
The point is his run was less stable than many want to believe, especially for that money. 90 wins was good enough for a WSC in 2023. But in 2021, 90 wins puts you fifth in the AL East, the division we need to get out of to get into the playoffs…
Last edited by notin; 06-28-2024 at 03:50 PM.
I’m not so sure DD is fully to blame for not replacing Kimbrel and Kelly. I think the tightening on new spending began before DD left. Hell, DD almost traded Betts at the 2019 deadline. Does anyone think he wanted to do that any more or less than Bloom did?
That 2019 team still looked good on paper, but some extensions were about to kick in, arb raises accumulating and a farm that gave DD just Devers in 2017 and nothing on the horizon to temper the high-priced players need to fill out the 26 and 40 man roster in coming years. Not signing any RPers for 2019 was a clear sign of major changes coming.
IMO, JH looked at the state of the farm, the cost it would take to keep everybody or replace in kind via FAs was just going to get way too costly. I think that was the crux of the spat between JH and DD, along with some personal style issues.
The writing was on the wall, all along. The only realistic way we could have kept competing was to keep spending more and more, and I’m not just talking Betts. We lost more after K & K. Although Porcello had declined after his Cy Young, we lost him and others.
Although not known at the time, we were to see major injuries to Sale, Price, ERod and lesser injuries to Nate and others. Plus, Pedey was still on the books.
When you say it's gonna happen now
When exactly do you mean?
Finally you agree with me. I've been saying that for a month--that DD was about to break the bank at monte carlo--and that's why JH dumped him.
And that's also why right now JH is delighted that his basically no-name roster is in the hunt for the postseason. I'm sure he's still pissed about paying $17M to Sale while he is pitching brilliantly for the Braves, also the wasted Story contract, ditto the Yoshida contract, and the stupid $36M for Giolito for one season (and we won't know until next year whether he is "good" for that season).
Last edited by Maxbialystock; 06-28-2024 at 05:13 PM.
The bullpen actually pitched better in 2019, considering they were needed for about 100 more innings.
The big problem with the 2019 Sox was the rotation, with Sale, Price, Porcello and Eovaldi all pitching much worse than they did in the previous season for various reasons…
Bottom line. The bullpen blew a lot of leads. That is a fact.
Old school is good school.
Sox relief pitching: 2018- 46 saves. 20 blown saves. 2019: 33 saves. 31 blown saves. From a plus 26 to a plus 2. As usual, I will supply the facts. You will supply the spin and the " context" (aka excuses)
Old school is good school.
A few more facts,
2019 bullpen: 665 IP, 4.14 FIP/4.40 ERA, 10.5K/9, 5.6 fWAR
2018 bullpen: 561 IP, 3.90 FIP/3.72 ERA, 9.6K/9, 4.1 fWAR
“Spin” is looking at saves and blown saves and pretending it measures bullpen performance…
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote