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.

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.

Indeed, I just hope he's better at medicinizing than he is on baseball commentaryg

I think it will be Swihart in pawtucket. That will be the perfect position to work with new defensive positions, and also if they simply want him to improve his catching fundamentals. Meanwhile, whatever else Vazquez needs to be a complete catcher, he won't get it in Pawtucket.

https://youtu.be/N7y2xcTAhcg

People gave Coco Crisp trouble for his glove? Huh. Wow. He was one of the better defenders we've had in recent years. Definitely better than Damon. And he turned it up to 12 for the championship year in 07 too, that was one of the single best seasons I've ever seen a centerfielder play, defensively

He's gonna get a chance whether ytou convince anyone to give him one or not. We don't have to like it though. His chance of being highly productive is pretty small

Umm I assume you were watching what happened last year when Sandy Leon was getting regular starts at catcher until team leadership felt they could rush Swihart into action? Catching depth is important, probably more so than for any other position. The physical burden of an everyday catcher is the hardest of any single position, and the chance of injury or breakdown greater at catcher than anywhere else. Getting rid of a quality backup like Hanigan, a guy who could start for a couple weeks straight if it was needed for some reason, is not a great idea when you don't have to.

You're technically right, but he's got no health problems at the moment, if he can hit well enough to hold down the 8 spot, he's good to go.

That's a bit of an oversimplication. His greatest personal value is at catcher in theory, but in practice his greatest value is as a hitter in the lineup, and if third base accomodates that, then his greatest value is as a third baseman.

I don't think it was so much taking plays off as the fact that he seemed to have some bugs in his decision making tree. Most of the time he'd play it normally and then every now and again his concentration would slip, or he'd do something goofy for some reason, like that throw that Damon had to cut off in center field. He wasn't a natural LF, but he did generally try to learn from his mistakes, and he was usually adequate as long as he had a good CF to play with.

An individual fan knows nothing. Collectively, the fans know everything.

No I agree with that, which is unfortunate for him because I do think he has the talent to man the bottom of a rotation, but it's unlikely he'll get the opportunity to prove it in the Red Sox system. Too many bright young sparks who need playing time while a team is trying to compete.

I disagree. We already have one controversy in the rotation, if Buchholz is injured again that's two. If the answer to who wins the 5th spot is "nobody" (and it certainly can be and has been in the past) and Buchholz goes back to his native soil as a permanent citizen of the Disabled List, then a trade might be done even before the deadline. Even if Buchholz is healthy, and the 5th starter isn't exactly blowing the doors off, the front office could still identify the rotation as a place where the team can be improved for a reasonable price and do a deal, which I would expect them to do if the team is in contention at the deadline, and as an effort to hedge the team's bets against Buchholz' inevitable post-deadline injury. They've certainly done it before, they've also paid for not doing it. I think we will import at least 1 starting pitcher this year..

I think that's obviously going to vary from starter to starter. We are going to have some starters in at the long end of the bullpen, so we can soak some innings if need be. I think Eddie will break camp with the team, we'll probably have another young pitcher in the 5 spot, and Buchholz is Buchholz, so I do think we will be leaning on Porcello and Price in particular to eat some innings given that we'll have inexperience at at least 2 other rotation slots this year, probably 3 by midseason.

I think Kelly should wind up in the bullpen and see if his stuff plays out better in relief. I wouldn't mind any of Owens Johnson or Wright in the 5th spot, personally I suspect we'll be bringing in a starter at the deadline anyhow, might as well let them all get some chances to increase their trade value or prove their usefulness to the team. I say I think we'll bring in a starter from the deadline because the history of this kind of 5th starter controversy usually ends that way, with a new talent being brought in from outside the organization as it existed in the spring, and other starters simply moving down the chain. We have the pieces to make a trade and a weak spot exists in our lower rotation, if we're in contention a deal for a starter will get done, IMHO it's a question of who and when.

I'd rather put Wright in the running for the rotation spot. Frankly I trust either of Owens or Johnson more in long relief than I trust wright. Not only does Wright have a better track record in limited samples as a starter than a reliever by nearly a full ERA run,not every catcher can handle a knuckleballer, so putting one in the bullpen limits your flexibility in an area where flexibility is crucial.

Price v lester is a false dilemma in the end. If people think we wouldn't have gotten Price if we had Lester, then I just disagree, especially if the rest of the rotation had still badly underperformed last year..

But that doesn't really answer the question, since Mookie's gonna be in the lineup anyway. The real question is who replaces the outfield slot in the lineup. Right now it's either Young or Holt.

The guy I wanted this offseason was Ben Zobrist. The guy is a strong hitting mittle infielder, switch hits and plays nearly every position, you can put him wherever you have a hole. That kind of versatility is worth its weight in gold since it adds a very good bat without sacrificing any roster flexibility at all -- an incredibly rare asset. We can get by without him, but he would have made the team better. Theo got a really good deal on him too considering everything he brings to the table.

Then it's on ownership because they don't realize that the game of baseball is not the same game that it was when they took over. You can't just buy multiple top talents on the FA market anymore, if you ever could. Parity means that more and more small markets are able to keep their stars, and many of the stars that would have hit the market are being traded and subsequently signed unless there's a reason not to simply re-sign them. So the guys that get to market are the ones there was a reason not to re-sign, either too badly flawed to make into a franchise centerpiece, or their pricepoint is too high even for a team with a payroll of between 70-90M, which is what the KC Royals spent on their championship roster and thanks to revenue sharing nearly every team in MLB can now afford to spend at least that much. What that means is that 1 year turnarounds are harder than ever because fewer players than ever, and fewer of the best players than ever, are hitting FA, and unfortunately Henry and company think that 1 year turnarounds aren't that hard because of the "turnarounds" (really reversals of unusual bad luck and/or management) of 07 and 13. They have unrealistic expectations which leads to their GM's making occasionally unrealistic decisions, and as easy as it would be to blame the GM, that really goes right over his head to ownership, who need to provide a consistent vision of what they want the team to be that makes sense on the bottom line. At least Dumbo is a seasoned and experienced enough GM that he knows when to tell the owner where to stick it. Cherington was too young to do the same, so we got the disastrously schizophrenic 14-15 offseason. I really feel that Cherington's youth will turn out to have translated into an inability to tell ownership "No, that's a terrible idea, here's how we need to do this if you don't want to be made to look ridiculous" and was probably a contributing factor to the whole debacle last year. If he got fired, it was because he did what he was told and it made his boss look bad. Never be a yes man. I think that the very least you can say of Dumbo is that he has his own ideas and he's going to battle with ownership to get that vision across and probably save ownership from itself a few times. That's why it's better to have a veteran GM take the office for a large market team over an internally promoted rookie GM most of the time.

Spring Training numbers mean nothing. If he's showing poise at the plate and his approach looks good, he could be 1 for the entire Spring cycle and still break camp with the team

I disagree, I think the reverse is actually true. Those three bad years are marked by ever declining offenses and rotations that had become less and less dependable. That's a bad combination no matter how you dress it up. THe rotation we had by 2012 couldn't hold a candle to the one we'd used to win in 2007, and 2013 only looked better because John Lackey finally managed to pull his act together. This roster has been eroding steadily for years, that's on Theo not ben. And it's going to take more than 1-2 offseasons to fix that kind of entropy.

You still need to produce a few runs no matter how good your defense is. You can't defend against the home run ball. The corner outfielder spots are usually the best places to hide a run producing bat. If we don't have that, and we're already also weak on the infield corners, we may have some seriously persistent problems getting men across home plate.

But so many ifs were answered positively, it's not quite unprecedented, but I think "fluke" is the right word when we got good results on all of our questionmarks that year. We gambled on so many different levels and got so many more positive results from those gambles than one could reasonably expect that I think you can't conclude that 2013 was anything other than a fluke, especially when you compare it to all the seasons around it. Highlights to this are the positive results on Stephen Drew, John Lackey, Koji Uehara, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and of all people Clay Buchholz who gave us the best half season he ever has given us that year. Also featured prominently were a career year from Shane Victorino and the last year of effectiveness from both Johnny Gomes and Daniel Nava. That was also the last year that Dustin Pedroia played a full season, the only truly great year we got out of Mike Napoli, and the last year David Ortiz crossed the .950 OPS threshhold. Yeah, I'd say "fluke" is a fully appropriate term for the 2013 season for the Boston Red Sox and you're full of very hot air if you want to try to pretend otherwise.