RavenOfProphecy

I'm not criticizing Theo for getting rid of Mota, I'm just pointing out that it wasn't enough to give away our best prospect, we had to throw in pitching too. As far as Reed: "He's great with the glove but no so much with the bat (Hey, that's one thing better than Coco.) His small time in the majors has seen him getting injured (Who was that guy who missed a third of the season with a broken finger again?) with his dirt dog style of play. The Mariners were asking for Papelbon or Lester in return (Both of these guys are better, but don't forget, we traded away someone considered to be a better prospect for a player who hasn't done so well.)"

Coco was the guy I had in mind when I was writing about that. Of course, I was happy to have Coco Crisp for this year, but I'm sure they could've gotten a hitter of the same quality as Crisp for cheaper and kept Marte (Baseball America's #14 prospect this year) and Mota. Hell, even Jeremy Giambi wouldn't have been bad, save for his defensive ability. He gets on base a lot, has some power, and his lack of speed isn't really exploited in Boston. I think Alex Sanchez is a free agent, he's got a lot of the same tools as Coco Crisp, plus steroids! He was batting .346 with a .373 OBP in 2005, and he's a lefty leadoff guy for under $1,000,000 (or at least close) who's also under thirty. It's not like you're missing out on much, at least based on so far.

Just checking. I have the same stance of people who don't get the point of my stuff as well. You're mistaken if you think I wrote this to somehow turn this message board against Theo Epstein or make Dan Duquette out to be a baseball god. I'm saying that Duquette is very underappreciated in Boston (remember the "Duquette Sucks!" chants?), and that Theo hasn't really done much other than add a few pieces (some might say unintentionally, as in the case of David Ortiz) to what was Duquette's team. It is obvious, as you pointed out, that they want to make the team their own, and it's certainly their right to do t hat if they feel, but it might not be the best course for the success of the Red Sox as a baseball team. I can't argue with the results so far, but taking a team who had six winning seasons out of eight under Duquette (one of the losing ones being the first year) and getting rid of almost all of the people who were part of the solution in less than three years doesn't seem like the best way to get back to the World Series.

What I wonder, though, is, what's the point of waiting four years for someone who might develop and then having to extend their contract when you can sign someone for the same contract who's under 30, and proven?

Anyways, was there not abundant proof in Moneyball that the only real reason to religiously follow the philosophy was because you didn't have money to keep your young players? This seems to be Theo's strategy: "Okay, I have Johnny Damon. But if I get rid of him and pick up a pick, I can get a guy who might be Damon in four years (Jacoby Ellsbury) and then, after a year or two, I can get rid of him at age 26 or so to save money and then pick up a rent-a-player to play until yet another possible Damon is ready four years later!" It's basically a continuous cycle of mediocrity. In ten years, you might have four years of prospects playing and six yeas of development and rent-a-players.

Got PMS? Basically, you said earlier that the best thing to do in a draft is get a lot of picks, thus raising your chance to get a great player. We all know that, but it's more important to find an efficient way of determining whether or not a player will be successful in the major leagues. Also, having a lot of picks generally occurs when type A or B free agents are let go (resulting in extra compensatory picks), meaning that you're basically breaking up a championship team in order to have a good team in four years. He's done a good job so far of keeping together a good major league team, but how long do you think it will go on when you're letting your major-leaguers leave for a compensatory pick or two?

Basically, he's able to put together teams that are successful in the regular season at getting wins for as cheap as possible, but in the playoffs, he's not really able to do much other than pray because the big teams can afford more talent and are taking on some of his principles, I guess you'd call it.

Okay, let me rephrase that: quality is more important than quantity. Your theory is basically to draft a whole lot of guys and hope that one or two of them are decent. I was saying that by looking at production, you can do a lot better than that with fewer draft picks. Also, for the 20% thing, that was actually used in Moneyball. Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta conducted a research of high-school pitcher which showed that less than 25% of the high school pitchers drafted made it into the MLB. I just used 20% because it seemed about right. Anyways, I'm not a fan of drafting 10 high school guys and then being happy if two turn out good, I'd rather draft five proven college guys and have three or four become solid players.

That's speculative at best. There's nothing to indicate that Theo had any say in this. It's just a case of people believing what they want to believe.

That's true. Basically, then, Mike Port is the guy who drafted Lester (even though we all know it was most likely Larry Lucchino's idea.) The point I was trying to make is that the top prospect in our farm system was not produced by our general manager at the time. This topic didn't start off as a thing between Dan Duquette and Theo Epstein, I was just trying to see what you guys thought about Theo and then it somehow degenerated into a bunch of people bickering like little kids. As an effect of this, however, it's not really fair to say that Theo Epstein had anything to do with transactions occuring from his resignation to his return (Lowell, Beckett, Marte, etc.) because he wasn't officially the general manger of the team.

Pretty basic - as riverside sluggers pointed out, they are more successful vs. Haren than Tek and Gonzo.

Okay, so basically what you're saying is that the MLB teams don't scout year-round and they just threw away any scouting Dan Duquette may have compiled and drafted those guys based on what, a month? I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's kind of like the whole "co-GM" thing, where the team was running kind of in line with what the administration had done prior to Theo leaving.

I wasn't pointing out anything specific with the Red Sox, I was just pointing out what I consider to be a pretty big flaw in your strategy. And as for the edit, I have no idea what you're talking about. Care to elaborate?

So, what do you guys predict for Snyder? I am thinking five innings, three earned runs, and a win or no decision. Beckett went six and gave up three, Schilling six and four.

The problem I have with your post is the quote, "Knowing that the attrition rate is high, what would be the best way to improve draft performance? In my view, the best way to assure a successful draft class in each year is to increase the number of early round picks." This is not true, at least in my opinion. If you have ten picks in the first three rounds and you draft nine high school pitchers, are you going to have a good draft? Probably not, because only about 20% of those players become good. That's two solid players out of ten. I believe you should draft for production in college first and foremost - while many of the great baseball players did not attend college, they are still far more risky, as the level of competition in high school is nowhere near the MLB, or even single A ball. Look at Josh Hamilton and Billy Beane. Those guys were supposed to be superstars, and they aren't anything special in retrospect.

Duquette brought up Nomar Garciaparra and Shea Hillenbrand (both have done more than Papelbon and Hansen), and had Casey Fossum, Manny Delcarmen, Freddy Sanchez, Kevin Youkilis, Kelly Shoppach, Jon Lester, Brandon Moss etc. waiting in the wings. EDIT: I mean, Pedroia, Ellsbury, etc. could flop in the majors and bat .240. We don't know. Same with Moss. But at least Duquette was responsible for a league-average pitcher, a good reliever, a .350 batter, and guy with an on-base over .400, a quality catcher, a 5-0 pitcher (and our top prospect), and a former top-100 guy in the wings. Seems like a good minor league system to me.

Thank you for saving me the time.

I liked the 11 of 16 stat. Nice job with that. I am in agreement that we should try to find another option, but it's not worth just cutting him, in my opinion. If we could trade him for a minor leaguer with just a tad of upside and some stuff, it would be worth it.

I really like Kyle Snyder. He's been very solid for us this year. Hopefully he keeps it up. I am usually pretty confident when he starts, and this is no exception, especially when we've been hitting the cover off the ball against the A's over the past two games.

Okay, for the second thing, that's pretty much a granted. So I'm not going to spend much time responding to that, but for the first thing...I know where you're coming from, but Pedro was what, 32 when he asked for a four year deal? That would make him about 36 at the end of his contract. There are PLENTY of old pitchers still playing and doing a hell of a job. A lot of the best guys are still up past 36. Curt Schilling, John Smoltz, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, hell, when David Wells was 36, he was a pretty good pitcher. If you'd put Pedro up there with the first four guys I'd mentioned, then you have to assume that he'd be a great pitcher over each of the four years. Personally, I would find it more risky to try and replace the wins by Pedro Martinez (50 wins) and Derek Lowe (52) over the past three years with an pitcher with a losing record and a 40+ year-old man (yes, Derek Lowe won more games than Pedro over three years. Go figure.) Matt Clement is 18-11 so far, and Wells is 15-8 or so. So basically, these two combined aren't going to reach Pedro's total. So far this season we've paid $14 million for five wins and six losses from the two combined. That's almost three million a win. On a side note, does anyone know where I can find the team payrolls from 1994-2002? I want to see how much Dan Duquette paid for his team.

It's true that Dan Duquette traded away a lot of prospects, and correct me if I'm wrong, but he brought up far more established players than Theo (obviously, because he was there longer, but hey, is Jon Lester not our top prospect, at least until tomorrow? We can't give Theo full credit yet for drafting good prospects. I think we have to see that those prospects are actually as good as advertised before we go out and do that. Rocco Baldelli was a #2 prospect, but he hasn't been a great draft pick. I'm not going to go look at it right now, but judging by other people on that list under him, I'm sure they could have made a better pick. Josh Hamilton, Sean Burroughs, Juan Cruz, Ryan Anderson, Jon Rauch...all were high top-100 guys (I think all but Hamilton were in the top ten) and none have done much of anything on the major leagues. So, I will take a wait-and-see approach with our minor league talent and hope for the best.

My point was what you pointed out in the third paragraph. Still, most of his trades and signings were ill-advised in that spot (other than Scott Williamson, who's not even with the team.) Kim was scouted horribly. I believe I read somewhere that he only threw about 86 on the gun but it was misread by scouts as being much faster (this may have been due to his delivery.) It might have been in Johnny Damon's book. Theo did do a good job signing Keith Foulke (who probably was the World Series MVP in my opinion) but even that doesn't seem too smart in retrospect because I think we all know he's got nothing left (or at least, it looks that way.)

I know what you're saying about Clemens leaving and the team declining after that, but we declined after we got rid of Pedro, no? Here's what happened after we dropped Clemens: 1996: 85-77 (Third Place, AL East) - Last year of Clemens 1997: 78-84 (Fourth Place, AL East) - First year without Clemens 1998: 92-70 (Second Place, AL East, Wild Card) - Second year without Clemens It seems as though the team took a hit originally but overall, the team improved seven wins on the 1996 team. Now, let's look at the Pedro situation: 2004: 98-64 (Second Place, Al East, World Series Champions) - Last year of Pedro 2005: 95-67 (Second Place, AL East, Wild Card) - First year without him Dropping seven wins and dropping three but being eliminated two rounds earlier in the playoffs are both bad. It's not like we did better without Pedro. Clement somehow got to 18-10 last year, but he's 5-5 this year (23-15 cumulative) and another of his moves, David Wells, hasn't been a smash hit, either. Basically, if you're saying it's a risk to re-sign Pedro for four years, isn't it a risk to give a big-money contract to a guy coming off of a 9-13 season and a multi-year deal to a guy on the wrong side of 40?

Wow, this guy Halsey is doing terrible, much to my delight.