The search for an ace

[Kimmi]

Price and Grienke in that order for me. I don't think that you go wrong going with either one. I like Price's age, his fastball, and his cockiness. Grienke is just flat out good. The detractors would point to Price's struggles in the post season. Meaningless dribble. You got to get there first. For Grienke, it seems to be about his past issues with anxiety and depression. Some think he could not handle the scrutiny of the Boston press and the Boston fanbase. Joke - they play baseball in a few other fairly raucous places where the press and fans have been known to be just as obnoxious us we can be. He wins a lot more than he loses also. We tend to like guys like that.

 

Price's struggles in the postseason should really be of no concern. The guy can pitch, no question about it. I think he has the perfect mental make up for pitching in a city like Boston and for being the leader of a staff. In terms of free agents, he's the guy I most want, contract aside.

 

Not knowing Greinke personally, I have no idea whether he can pitch in a pressure cooker like Boston. I don't think it's quite the same in LA. His anxiety might not be an issue at all. However, I think it's a legitimate consideration when you're handing out that kind of money and giving up a draft pick to sign him. Not that I would be unhappy if the Sox signed him.

[cp176]

Price's struggles in the postseason should really be of no concern. The guy can pitch, no question about it. I think he has the perfect mental make up for pitching in a city like Boston and for being the leader of a staff. In terms of free agents, he's the guy I most want, contract aside.

 

Not knowing Greinke personally, I have no idea whether he can pitch in a pressure cooker like Boston. I don't think it's quite the same in LA. His anxiety might not be an issue at all. However, I think it's a legitimate consideration when you're handing out that kind of money and giving up a draft pick to sign him. Not that I would be unhappy if the Sox signed him.

 

I like either one. I do like Price more. I think that they would both be fine. I don't know if people think that it is a good thing to think that Boston is a special place to play in for lots of reasons or not. I love New England and I love our teams but I never considered it to be worth bragging rights to think of us as just being nasty enough to keep some people from wanting to play here. My guess is that lots of other teams and cities upon a closer look are just as tough to play in. You don't have to have a "special type of toughness" to play in Boston. You have to have that special type of toughness just to get to the big leagues in general. Greinke would be just fine here. Once again, he doesn't seem to lose much. I am with you about the draft pick. That would hurt. Ultimately I am betting on the $ talking. I don't think that the image of what the city is in anyone's mind, will play that much of a role.

[Spudboy]

I'd rather have Miley than Buchholz.

 

Me too.

[jacksonianmarch]

I'd rather have Miley than Buchholz.

 

Depends on what you need. If you are going into 2016 with your rotation as is, you gotta take Buchholz. He has the higher ceiling and since you'd need top end performance over endurance due to the shitbums occupying the rotation, you'd need to roll the dice on performance. If you end up getting a legit 1 and 2 with ERod and Porcello as the 3 and 4, then Miley is your guy. You would need a steady presence rather than a top notch starter

[mvp 78]

Buch is far from top notch more often than not. Not worth it imo. I'd rather steady and reliable than injured and s*****.

[Bellhorn04]

Whether we like it or not, we may very well need both Buchholz and Miley this year. We're not exactly loaded with good starting pitching.

[Soxfan83]

Yep. Unless we get another second tier arm via free agency on top of our ace. And if we're going to be paying Price 6/ 180-200, I can't see us spending more than that this year on starting pitching. Atleast for now. Maybe if wee still in the hunt come July they will add another big arm to get us over the hump if need be...we just need a decent year from Buch. Maybe around 150 innings or so..I'll hold my breath for that though.

[GomesBeard]

Price and Grienke in that order for me. I don't think that you go wrong going with either one. I like Price's age, his fastball, and his cockiness. Grienke is just flat out good. The detractors would point to Price's struggles in the post season. Meaningless dribble. You got to get there first. For Grienke, it seems to be about his past issues with anxiety and depression. Some think he could not handle the scrutiny of the Boston press and the Boston fanbase. Joke - they play baseball in a few other fairly raucous places where the press and fans have been known to be just as obnoxious us we can be. He wins a lot more than he loses also. We tend to like guys like that.

 

X2. Price does have that 'ace' make-up - cockiness/nastiness - like Pedro. Not quite THAT much, but he has it. That's been missing from our rotation for a while.

[Spudboy]

X2. Price does have that 'ace' make-up - cockiness/nastiness - like Pedro. Not quite THAT much, but he has it. That's been missing from our rotation for a while.

 

I Agree.

 

Price is a bad man on the mound. It would be nice to see in a Boston uni again.

[cp176]

X2. Price does have that 'ace' make-up - cockiness/nastiness - like Pedro. Not quite THAT much, but he has it. That's been missing from our rotation for a while.

 

You bet!

[cp176]

I Agree.

 

Price is a bad man on the mound. It would be nice to see in a Boston uni again.

 

 

Absolutely!

[Soxfan83]

Agreed!

[Kimmi]

I like either one. I do like Price more. I think that they would both be fine. I don't know if people think that it is a good thing to think that Boston is a special place to play in for lots of reasons or not. I love New England and I love our teams but I never considered it to be worth bragging rights to think of us as just being nasty enough to keep some people from wanting to play here. My guess is that lots of other teams and cities upon a closer look are just as tough to play in. You don't have to have a "special type of toughness" to play in Boston. You have to have that special type of toughness just to get to the big leagues in general. Greinke would be just fine here. Once again, he doesn't seem to lose much. I am with you about the draft pick. That would hurt. Ultimately I am betting on the $ talking. I don't think that the image of what the city is in anyone's mind, will play that much of a role.

 

I agree that you have to have that special type of mental toughness just to play in the majors. Greinke would probably be fine here, though we have seen a few players who played well elsewhere, but for some reason were not able to play well here.

 

On a slightly different note, I read a good piece by Lauber today about the probability of Price and Greinke being able to pitch well through the duration of their contracts. He quoted some scouts who feel that Price and Greinke are both pretty good bets based on their ability to reinvent themselves as they lose velocity off their fastballs. Both pitchers have already shown an adjustment to relying less on that pitch. The scouts also noted that the mechanics of both pitchers bodes well for long term durability.

[Kimmi]

Buch is far from top notch more often than not. Not worth it imo. I'd rather steady and reliable than injured and s*****.

 

Salary differences aside, Buchholz was worth more to the team last year than Miley was, in 80 fewer innings.

[Kimmi]

Woohoo!

[Kimmi]

Speaking of Price, how do you think Ben Cherington feels right now? He executes the desire of ownership last winter not to mortgage the farm or make an ill-advised contract offer to Lester, losing his ace in the process.

 

Now a year later, Dave Dombrowski comes aboard and the Red Sox are in on every big starting pitcher available. Just a hunch, but I believe Cherington could've thrown $200 million at Price or Zack Greinke, too. . . .

 

And along these lines, so much for the Red Sox Way. In the last five years alone, we've seen them spend huge on free agents, only to have it blow up in their faces, switch to a value model that won a World Series, swing back to semi-high free agents when the value thing imploded, and now we're on the cusp of watching them go hog wild in free agency while trading away prospects for a closer.

 

Two thumbs up for this excerpt.

[Soxfan83]

Salary differences aside, Buchholz was worth more to the team last year than Miley was, in 80 fewer innings.

 

Agreed

[Spudboy]

Yeah if you dig on the whole WAR thing I guess you would swear that Buch is of more value than Miley.

 

I don't and I have opinions that I formed on my own without someones else's formula dictating what I think.

 

And there is no way you can separate a players contract when approximating his value.

[a700hitter]

Two thumbs up for this excerpt.

 

Yet, he managed to spend $180 million on payroll in 2015 and without getting an ace?

[Bellhorn04]

Two thumbs up for this excerpt.

 

Who did this quote come from?

[cp176]

Who did this quote come from?

 

Tomase - Not one of my favorites. I doubt he writes very much what he believes. I've felt for a long time that stirring the pot is his about his major goal. Interesting - yes. He might even encourage people to think about things on occasion. It is a definite skill to write to a perspective that you know you don't truly believe in and make people think that you do. Lots of opinions but very few facts coming from him.

[Bellhorn04]

Maybe Tomase missed it, but the Red Sox did offer Lester 135 million, according to reports.

 

Cherington had a pretty generous budget last year, IMO. They did manage to find a little over 400 million in the sock drawer for Castillo, Moncada, Hanley, Panda and Porcello.

 

It seems kind of silly to suggest that Ben wasn't given any money to spend.

[cp176]

Maybe Tomase missed it, but the Red Sox did offer Lester 135 million, according to reports.

 

Cherington had a pretty generous budget last year, IMO. They did manage to find a little over 400 million in the sock drawer for Castillo, Moncada, Hanley, Panda and Porcello.

 

It seems kind of silly to suggest that Ben wasn't given any money to spend.

 

Tomase picks and chooses very well. Putting faith in this piece of writing, a person has to assume that the current Sox situation is the same as last year. That the free agent market is the same as well. It isn't whether anyone likes it or not. Saying that you would not pursue the best pitchers available because of a team philosophy when you have the funds would be ridiculous. Team needs this time around say that we need to go after the best we can. If we can get two of them, even better. Probably won't happen, but it would not bother me and I do not believe that it would hurt the future development of this team at all. Just my opinion. Also, I am willing to give Ben all of the credit that he deserves for the young players that we have in our system but with respect to his free agent signings - not so much. If he gets credit for the farm, he takes the blame for the free agents he signed and didn't sign.

[Bellhorn04]

Tomase is right that the Red Sox organization has flipped-flopped with their 'philosophy'. Personally, I don't care. What does that really matter? There's no guaranteed way to success in MLB. There are a lot of teams in the hunt and a lot of money in the game. Every move you make carries risks.

[cp176]

Tomase is right that the Red Sox organization has flipped-flopped with their 'philosophy'. Personally, I don't care. What does that really matter? There's no guaranteed way to success in MLB. There are a lot of teams in the hunt and a lot of money in the game. Every move you make carries risks.

 

It looks like if they ever really had this as an over riding philosophy (which I doubt they did) they have amended it a bit to try to make the team better. I'm sure that their preference remains to sign shorter term contracts with younger players. Sounds like what everybody would like to do in a fantasy world. Looks to me like they want to be a better team this time around and are willing to do what they need to do. All the better for us.

[Kimmi]

Yeah if you dig on the whole WAR thing I guess you would swear that Buch is of more value than Miley.

 

I don't and I have opinions that I formed on my own without someones else's formula dictating what I think.

 

And there is no way you can separate a players contract when approximating his value.

 

Like it or not, WAR does a very good job as a descriptive stat. That said, without looking at WAR, if I had to choose which I'd prefer for this season between the performances that we got from Buchholz and Miley last year, I'd still take the 1/2 season of ace-like pitching from Buchholz over the full season of Miley. This is not a knock on Miley, as I am a big fan. Buchholz was just that good last year.

 

All that said, I know that you can't separate a player's contract from his value. Buchholz is still a great value at $13 mil, but Miley would be the better value in terms of WAR/salary.

[User Name]

We heavily disagree here. You're underselling the value of IP. Not only that, Buch has the ability to not only not pitch a lot of innings, but also get terrible results in the process, or pitch decent innings but get terrible results, as he did in 2012 and 2014. There's value in consistency, and Buchholz is nothing if not inconsistent.

[Kimmi]

Yet, he managed to spend $180 million on payroll in 2015 and without getting an ace?

 

It's not the lack of payroll. Henry has always been willing to spend, and Ben had plenty of money to work with during his time as GM. However, Henry has been quite open about his reluctance to giving long term contracts to pitchers in their 30s.

 

Dombrowski has more or less been given the clearance to obtain that one "big fish". Ben was never given the okay to do that. He could have easily re-signed Lester or signed Scherzer last offseason if he had that clearance.

 

That's the point of the first statement I bolded. Dombrowski will surely get a lot of praise for being able to get us an ace, while Ben is still being criticized for not getting an ace for us last offseason. Dombrowski and Ben are not operating under the same conditions though. It's unfair to criticize Ben for not being able to sign an ace when he did not have the okay to hand out a huge contract like Dombrowski has.

[Kimmi]

Maybe Tomase missed it, but the Red Sox did offer Lester 135 million, according to reports.

 

Cherington had a pretty generous budget last year, IMO. They did manage to find a little over 400 million in the sock drawer for Castillo, Moncada, Hanley, Panda and Porcello.

 

It seems kind of silly to suggest that Ben wasn't given any money to spend.

 

As I just posted to a700, it's not that Ben wasn't given any money to spend, and I don't think that that is the suggestion. It's that Ben was not given the okay to spend HUGE on either retaining Lester or signing a free agent stud pitcher.

 

Dombrowski has that okay, and it seems like Henry has given him a directive to get us an ace at almost any cost. If Ben had the okay to spend whatever he wanted on an ace, I'm sure he could do just as good a job of landing Price as Dombrowski can. I'm not sure that Ben would agree with it though.

[User Name]

They didn't retain Lester because they didn't want to (ownership).