2016 Red Sox Hot Stove Discussion Thread

[User Name]

He played a slightly below average to decent SS for years. He should be able to keep himself mentally involved in the IF. I get it, some of you don't like Hanley, but Jesus. It's not like he's Fatso Fatsoval.

[mvp 78]

He played a slightly below average to decent SS for years. He should be able to keep himself mentally involved in the IF. I get it, some of you don't like Hanley, but Jesus. It's not like he's Fatso Fatsoval.

 

This is basically what AGon said about Hanley last year, that moving him further away from the ball just took his head out of the game. Could it blow up in their faces? Sure. However, I have much higher hopes for Hanley than for Pablo.

[jung]

Sort of makes you wonder why people assume Hanley will make a good DH. DH is about as disconnected from the game as it gets. Good DH's don't just remember where they are in the batting order. They have to come up with a plan for succeeding at that position just like you have to have a plan to succeed at any position. Part of that plan is understanding how to stay engaged and focused when you are being asked not to play in the field, yet not to be ready for a pinch hitting role while staying as engaged as the guys playing in the field every half inning. So far I have not seen any indication that Hanley is willing to work at anything other than his biceps.

[User Name]

....yet he has done everything the Sox have asked of him, including dropping a ton of weight. How he fares at 1B remains to be seen, but the point that he may not be able to keep his head in the game while DHing is legitimate.

[a700hitter]

....yet he has done everything the Sox have asked of him, including dropping a ton of weight. How he fares at 1B remains to be seen, but the point that he may not be able to keep his head in the game while DHing is legitimate.

Hanley didn't lose the weight. He just gave it to Pablo to keep him warm in the Winter.

[User Name]

Then why the f*** won't Pablo give it back? And I thought that, because you can't turn fat into muscle, you can't do the opposite either. Definitely wrong on that one.

[cp176]

Fatso Fatsoval! Got to admit - this one gets me. I need this at least once a day. I do think that we all have to at least give Hanley a chance at first. Hanley is an athlete - In my opinion Fatsoval is not. He is so far away from being an athlete that I don't even think about Hanley and last year anymore. I'm for athletes not pretenders. Fatso Fatsoval needs to buy tickets to see the games. Maybe he could get a job chucking peanuts. No no wait - any potential profit would be eaten.

[cp176]

Hanley didn't lose the weight. He just gave it to Pablo to keep him warm in the Winter.

 

 

shade in the summer - warmth in the winter.

[a700hitter]

shade in the summer - warmth in the winter.

Shade! LOL!!!

[cp176]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2016/02/24/john-henry-says-red-sox-will-rely-less-analytics/95uy1OmoQw0ojxr7SRcOWO/story.html?event=event25

 

Ok - here we go . A debatable topic? Might drive some literally over the edge.

[a700hitter]

www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2016/02/24/john-henry-says-red-sox-will-rely-less-analytics/95uy1OmoQw0ojxr7SRcOWO/story.html?event=event25

 

Ok - here we go . A debatable topic? Might drive some literally over the edge.

Henry: “One of the things that we’ve done — and I’m fully accountable for this — is we have perhaps overly relied on numbers, and there were a whole host of things."

[Bellhorn04]

Henry and Werner are pissed about the last two seasons and they're trying to figure out how they happened. Henry has already said this year will be a disaster if they miss the playoffs again in Papi's last year. These guys want to win, you have to give them that.

[Dojji]

As at least 22 teams say every year, wanting it isn't enough. If the plan is bad the desire is irrelevant. And the plan has not been good for at least 8 years.

[Bellhorn04]

As at least 22 teams say every year, wanting it isn't enough. If the plan is bad the desire is irrelevant. And the plan has not been good for at least 8 years.

 

8 years? That would take in 2008 and 2009, when they won 95 games each year.

[cp176]

There has to be a balance. it is what many of us have been saying for a very long time. The times they are a changing but in some ways they ain't. It is very interesting to me, his when art meets science comment says a great deal. There has to be a balance. Recognize, and embrace the new but don't ever just abandon the old. Many of the people who are closest to the game are hands dirty people who probably could care less about advanced analytics. There is a time and a place for everything. I'm pretty sure that it is going to be a real good time to be a Red Sox fan. These guys aren't happy and they really want to win. I think that the pressure to perform also will be amped up on Sandoval, Porcello, and Ramirez in particular. it won't surprise me if one of these is just dropped before we get too far into the season. We just have many young athletic and hungry(not Fatsoval hungry) players ready to go. I think that these guys will actually be expected to perform.

[User Name]

8 years? That would take in 2008 and 2009, when they won 95 games each year.

 

He keeps pounding that drum, although it's incorrect. The plan wasn't even wrong in 2013, it's the follow up that sucked.

[mvp 78]

And they were a good team in 2011 that just sucked in September. If they had one halfway decent arm to useinstead of Wakefield, they would have made the playoffs.

[Dojji]

You can be a good team without a good plan. You can be a good team and still have a certain problem with roster decay. This team is nowhere near as talented right now as it was in 2007, and the seeds of that decline started to show upo in 08 or 09. That didn't mean those rosters were bad, but they lost something each year from the prior year.

 

The culprit was player development. Quick quiz, who were the premium top level high performance players the Red Sox developed internally between 2008 and 2012? Well there's Jacoby Ellsbury, and... hmm... uhhh.... errr..... well gee I can't even think of one, outside of relief pitchers who always just come and go. Can anyone else?

 

And at the same time how many players did we have who either suffered attrition or just left under a cloud? Lester and Papelbon spring to mind quickly. Manny. Daisuke Matsuzaka of course. Lowell and Youkilis both virtually disappeared overnight because of health concerns. We cut bait at the right time on Jason Bay but did struggle to replace the production after he was gone -- I mean, Johnny Gomes, seriously?

 

Pitching and hitting had the same problem. We were losing older players at an ordinary rate for the most part. However, the Red Sox developmental machine hit a very large snag with a large number of promising prospects fizzling out either at high levels, like Ryan Lavarnway or Garin Cecchini, or at the major league level like Will Middlebrooks. Until we found success with Xander Bogaerts this team's farm was under a very long dry spell, 4 years is forever when it comes to player development, and at the same time free agency was drying up, forcing us to take bad or awkward contracts all over the place. It would have been a miracle if the team had not declined somewhat in that environment.

 

We seem to be coming out of it now, whether it was a run of bad luck or bad implementation or bad drafting strategy. We've got Bogaerts, Betts, Eddie, and 2 young promising catchers, and the team has done a better job at correctly evaluating the talent to go after, the epic fail that is Pablo Sandoval notwithstanding. So there's some good signs. But let's not pretend that the team was run brilliantly at any point since maybe 2008, because the evidence suggests otherwise.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Dojji

[User Name]

I don't think you quite understand how player development works, especially for a big market team such as the Red Sox. Also, their plan didn't turn into crap until the last two years. It's impossible to sustain long periods of success in today's MLB. You have to at least partially rebuild at some point. When the Sox refused to do that when they had the chance, 2015 happened. Other than that, you're just spouting a whole lot of nonsense Dojji. But the plan was sound, and the execution good (save for some FA mishaps) up until 2013, with certain notable exceptions.

[sk7326]

Henry: “One of the things that we’ve done — and I’m fully accountable for this — is we have perhaps overly relied on numbers, and there were a whole host of things."

 

The horsepucky is strong here since the numbers were not in favor of the Sandoval signing.

[a700hitter]

And they were a good team in 2011 that just sucked in September. If they had one halfway decent arm to useinstead of Wakefield, they would have made the playoffs.

Everything that could have gone wrong in September 2011 went wrong. They had no starting pitching. They needed to add one decent arm and they were in the post season where they could have done well imo. Theo dropped the ball and was panicking the last weekend of the season trying to get Bruce Chen and Chris Capuano.

[sk7326]

You can be a good team without a good plan. You can be a good team and still have a certain problem with roster decay. This team is nowhere near as talented right now as it was in 2007, and the seeds of that decline started to show upo in 08 or 09. That didn't mean those rosters were bad, but they lost something each year from the prior year.

 

The culprit was player development. Quick quiz, who were the premium top level high performance players the Red Sox developed internally between 2008 and 2012? Well there's Jacoby Ellsbury, and... hmm... uhhh.... errr..... well gee I can't even think of one, outside of relief pitchers who always just come and go. Can anyone else?

 

And at the same time how many players did we have who either suffered attrition or just left under a cloud? Lester and Papelbon spring to mind quickly. Manny. Daisuke Matsuzaka of course. Lowell and Youkilis both virtually disappeared overnight because of health concerns. We cut bait at the right time on Jason Bay but did struggle to replace the production after he was gone -- I mean, Johnny Gomes, seriously?

 

Pitching and hitting had the same problem. We were losing older players at an ordinary rate for the most part. However, the Red Sox developmental machine hit a very large snag with a large number of promising prospects fizzling out either at high levels, like Ryan Lavarnway or Garin Cecchini, or at the major league level like Will Middlebrooks. Until we found success with Xander Bogaerts this team's farm was under a very long dry spell, 4 years is forever when it comes to player development, and at the same time free agency was drying up, forcing us to take bad or awkward contracts all over the place. It would have been a miracle if the team had not declined somewhat in that environment.

 

We seem to be coming out of it now, whether it was a run of bad luck or bad implementation or bad drafting strategy. We've got Bogaerts, Betts, Eddie, and 2 young promising catchers, and the team has done a better job at correctly evaluating the talent to go after, the epic fail that is Pablo Sandoval notwithstanding. So there's some good signs. But let's not pretend that the team was run brilliantly at any point since maybe 2008, because the evidence suggests otherwise.

 

Oh dear - numbering this:

 

1. This analysis totally whiffs on how trades work. Go back to 2006 and the Red Sox internally developed the stuff which got cashed into Josh Beckett, a 25 year old ace coming off of a rookie deal. The Red Sox farm system provided stuff to deal for Victor Martinez as a deadline bat, and the stuff to get Adrian Gonzalez - who was the premier catch of that offseason. Now, shoulder problems ended up turning him from the sort of player you write songs about into a good 1B. His tour here was a disappointment - and obviously he was dealt in the Dodgers pitchfork and torches trade. You have to consider the prospects used in trade as part of the farm bounty - because the front office certainly does. This team produced the greatest decade in its post-integration history, and it was done via farm and trades. Your analysis considers the former without the latter.

 

2. Where the team has made mistakes is almost entirely on the free agent front. That - from all evidence - looks a lot less like "overreliance on numbers" and much more like wantonly choosing the top name on the free agent heap. Pablo Sandoval was one of the two or three top free agents in the 2015 class. You could squint really hard and see a decent signing - good athlete, youngest of the premium FAs - but there was a lot of evidence against it, and signing him and Ramirez together smacked of "winning the press conference" more than any serious analysis.

 

3. It is hard to cite decline in 2008 - where we were 6 innings away from winning consecutive pennants. Also hard in 2009 where they just lost to an Anaheim team who also had a very successful decade. It is hard to cite in 2010 where they won 89 games despite having their two best position players injured for large chunks of the season. It is even hard to cite it in 2012 where a poor manager and crazy injury luck caused a spiral which they could not steer out of.

 

4. This team since this ownership took over managed to win 3 titles while successfully re-building the roster at least once ... this second rebuild has been trickier and less successful because of (I think) a lack of many of the stabilizing forces which helped the rebuild the first time around.

[User Name]

Oh dear - numbering this:

 

1. This analysis totally whiffs on how trades work. Go back to 2006 and the Red Sox internally developed the stuff which got cashed into Josh Beckett, a 25 year old ace coming off of a rookie deal. The Red Sox farm system provided stuff to deal for Victor Martinez as a deadline bat, and the stuff to get Adrian Gonzalez - who was the premier catch of that offseason. Now, shoulder problems ended up turning him from the sort of player you write songs about into a good 1B. His tour here was a disappointment - and obviously he was dealt in the Dodgers pitchfork and torches trade. You have to consider the prospects used in trade as part of the farm bounty - because the front office certainly does. This team produced the greatest decade in its post-integration history, and it was done via farm and trades. Your analysis considers the former without the latter.

 

2. Where the team has made mistakes is almost entirely on the free agent front. That - from all evidence - looks a lot less like "overreliance on numbers" and much more like wantonly choosing the top name on the free agent heap. Pablo Sandoval was one of the two or three top free agents in the 2015 class. You could squint really hard and see a decent signing - good athlete, youngest of the premium FAs - but there was a lot of evidence against it, and signing him and Ramirez together smacked of "winning the press conference" more than any serious analysis.

 

3. It is hard to cite decline in 2008 - where we were 6 innings away from winning consecutive pennants. Also hard in 2009 where they just lost to an Anaheim team who also had a very successful decade. It is hard to cite in 2010 where they won 89 games despite having their two best position players injured for large chunks of the season. It is even hard to cite it in 2012 where a poor manager and crazy injury luck caused a spiral which they could not steer out of.

 

4. This team since this ownership took over managed to win 3 titles while successfully re-building the roster at least once ... this second rebuild has been trickier and less successful because of (I think) a lack of many of the stabilizing forces which helped the rebuild the first time around.

 

Excellent analysis.

[mvp 78]

I don't think you quite understand how player development works, especially for a big market team such as the Red Sox. Also, their plan didn't turn into crap until the last two years. It's impossible to sustain long periods of success in today's MLB. You have to at least partially rebuild at some point. When the Sox refused to do that when they had the chance, 2015 happened. Other than that, you're just spouting a whole lot of nonsense Dojji. But the plan was sound, and the execution good (save for some FA mishaps) up until 2013, with certain notable exceptions.

 

The answer to Dojji's question was simply "Anthony Rizzo."

[mvp 78]

Everything that could have gone wrong in September 2011 went wrong. They had no starting pitching. They needed to add one decent arm and they were in the post season where they could have done well imo. Theo dropped the ball and was panicking the last weekend of the season trying to get Bruce Chen and Chris Capuano.

 

Yeah, I remember sport radio being abuzz about trying to sign Bruce Chen for the one game playoff. Like that would have worked...

[Kimmi]

Henry and Werner are pissed about the last two seasons and they're trying to figure out how they happened. Henry has already said this year will be a disaster if they miss the playoffs again in Papi's last year. These guys want to win, you have to give them that.

 

Unfortunately, this is Henry overreacting to the past 2 seasons. Since he became the owner of the Sox, the team has been one of the most successful franchises in baseball, winning 3 World Series Championships by being ahead in the game in analytics. For him to do a complete 180 on his philosophy is a complete knee-jerk reaction to two bad seasons.

 

Passan nails it in this article:

 

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/wicked-mistake--owner-admits-red-sox--overly-relied-on-numbers-045735533-mlb.html

[Kimmi]

There has to be a balance. it is what many of us have been saying for a very long time. The times they are a changing but in some ways they ain't. It is very interesting to me, his when art meets science comment says a great deal. There has to be a balance. Recognize, and embrace the new but don't ever just abandon the old. Many of the people who are closest to the game are hands dirty people who probably could care less about advanced analytics. There is a time and a place for everything. I'm pretty sure that it is going to be a real good time to be a Red Sox fan. These guys aren't happy and they really want to win. I think that the pressure to perform also will be amped up on Sandoval, Porcello, and Ramirez in particular. it won't surprise me if one of these is just dropped before we get too far into the season. We just have many young athletic and hungry(not Fatsoval hungry) players ready to go. I think that these guys will actually be expected to perform.

 

No one has ever said otherwise.

[Kimmi]

And they were a good team in 2011 that just sucked in September. If they had one halfway decent arm to useinstead of Wakefield, they would have made the playoffs.

 

And the knee-jerk reaction to that collapse brought us Bobby Valentine.

 

Knee-jerk reactions are not good.

[Kimmi]

The horsepucky is strong here since the numbers were not in favor of the Sandoval signing.

 

Thank you.

[Kimmi]

It's interesting that on the one hand Henry said that the Sox relied too heavily on numbers, then on the other hand he said that the Sox weren't as much into analytics as most people thought.