Dojji

Gabbard did a lot to earn that love, just like Johnson has in my opinion. Until he got hurt, he was looking at a trajectory through the league as a journeyman bottom of the rotation starter, roughly at the Wade Miley level. Then his elbow blew out and he was never the same since. Gabbard came on the scene and spun some gems at a time when we were really hurting for SP depth, especially in late 2006 but also early to mid 2007 before Lester got reestablished when the team was so desperate that it was relying on the one and only Julian Tavarez for starts... in the middle of that time Gabbard threw a few really great games including a complete game shutout against the Royals. He averaged just under 6 IP/start at a time when our middle relief was getting utterly exposed and seemed to have a unique talent for wriggling out of trouble by inducing double play balls, which kept him in games longer than his raw talent should have let him.. Basically when Gabbard came up, we took to his relative competence on the mound like a starving man takes to a well cooked steak. He was a lot better than what else we were running in the rotation at the time (Kyle Snyder/Julian Tavarez) and was young enough to hope he might go on to have a respectably solid career. I was distressed when he was traded because cost controlled starting pitching depth was so valuable. The fact that we got a broken player in return did not help that impression either. Similarly, Johnson came in while multiple Boston starters were down (I think Sale and E-Rod were both out of action at the time), and was refreshingly adequate. Johnson proved reliable as long as you did not ask too much of him and he stabilized his slot in the rotation to prevent our injury problems from snowballing us and exposing the team down the stretch. And again, like Gabbard in 07, he's young enough that you can hope that with a little health, he'll improve a bit from his current level and make a go of it as a bottom of the rotation guy. If he doesn't you haven't lost a ton, but just like Gabbard, I think he's earned a chance to fail at it.

The Rangers broke Gabbard. It was so sad to watch.

I really don't understand your disdain for Kimbrel at all.

Humans are human no matter how well they're paid.

Just to further my point aboit Eovaldi Baseball Reference protections Nathan Eovaldi, 113 IP, 4.06 ERA, 103 strikeouts, 1.221 WHIP Brian Johnson: 91 IP, 4.15 ERA, 83 strikeouts, 1.385 WHIP Eovaldi is a little better than Johnson by their projections but they're in the same universe. He's really kind of inherently replaceable as a SP. With his overpowering stuff a conversion to relief would transform Eovaldi from a mediocre and kind of disappointing starter to a terror in late innings. It's not exactly a crazy notion.

Nah. He earned the award. He did bounce back, both from poor performances in years past and from the awful postseason stigma he'd been laboring under. Good for him. I for one actually have a great deal of confidence in Price going into next season. I think he'll pitch with renewed confidence that will reflect in his performance.

Quality of innings matters as much as quantity, especially as a late inning reliever. Eovaldi has overpowering stuff bit his track record is of a guy who struggles to be consistent over 150+ IP. He's almost too good to convert to relief, but his type of pitcher converts to that role extremely well. if an elite closer is important to your team, I'm under no doubt whatsoever that he'd be a great one. Whether he'd be more valuable as a moderately good starter is a valid question, but at least for the Red Sox, we need elite lockdown relief innings more than we want 160 innings of 4+ ERA starting, which is what Eovaldi's long term track record suggests he's good for. And I for one think he'd be an insanely good closer.

To put it another way, if we find ourselves with problems at first base, the first guy they're going to call up is Michael Chavis. Depending on how things go, the second guy might be Bobby dalbec. Ockimey is just not massively important to this team. His ceiling is Lyle Overbay. Not chopped liver, but not something you go out of your way for either. I wouldn't be too shocked to see him traded to fill some small need before the offseason is over, whether or not he's claimed.

Probably because Ock is right on that borderline where he's either a little more or a little less than 1 year away from the big leagues, and DD is hedging his bets. Ockimey isn't even a top 10 prospect in our own severely depleted system. He's an interesting prospect but not a big thumping bat, he's a doubles hitter at a position where people like home runs, and he struggled at the end of last year against AAA pitching. I think it's fair to gamble on him slipping under peoples' radars.

That's a quarter of a baseball season. When did that become a small sample size? The equivalent for a hitter would be around 180-200PAs. A depth starter (as in, below the #5 guy) making 13 starts is actually doing a lot more work for his team than he was expected to. Try using ERA+. It's there for a reason. Johnson put in an average season of pitching by that measurement. He was also good for 1.5 bWAR. That's actually solidly above average for a half season, and lines up with his other numbers. Not too many teams got 1.5 WAR from their #5 and again, this is based on only half a season of work. Stretching that out over 170 innings, assuming reasonable consistency, puts him somewhere between 1.8 and 2.2 WAR, which starts to become a number that you should be taking a bit more seriously than you appear to be. how many teams have a #5 that gave them 1.5 bWAR? In other words, placing solidly in the bottom third bWAR disagrees with that, giving Johnson 1.5, which is very respectable for a part time player These are the numbers that will prevent Johnson from being more than a decentish bottom of the rotation guy. They don't change the fact that he's shaping up into a decentish bottom of the rotation guy. Why the hell would you do that? We're trying to compare him to STARTING pitchers.

Kason Gabbard's numbers are inflated by a career year in 2007 which he never repeated. Johnson on the other hand has actually been fairly consistent in his cameos in the big league, grading out as average each of the last 2 years. Unless you want to say that if healthy Gabbard would have been a career 131 ERA+ pitcher, or in other words, an ace --and I loved Gabbard and I am absolutely not dumb enough to suggest that -- then your argument really isn't built on a strong foundation.

Agreed. Brewer has more potential big league utility on this team than the #5 second baseman on the depth chart is ever likely to.

Baseball Reference projects Brewer to pitch 33 big league innings with a 4.20 ERA and a 1.36 WHIP with just under 9 k/9 and a bb/9 of 3.6. I'd love that to be accurate, that's a good result from a depth relief arm.

The fact that we thought Quiroz had some value is why he was tradable at all. Brewer looks interesting, and we have Holt, Nunez, Lin and Hernandez in the mix at 2B, even assuming no Pedroia.

I think it's fair to be a little more optimistic about Johnson relative to the Kason Gabbards of the world. Personally I think Johnson would be in the rotation of all but a handful of MLB teams right now, low cost guys who can pitch roughly average innings and pull down a few quality starts are what the bottom of the rotation is all about. Look around and count the number of teams whose 5th starter is worse than Brian Johnson. If that number isn't at least 24 I'll eat my Red Sox cap. Brian Johnson has looked exactly average so far over his big league career. Putting and average starter for the 5th spot is a sign you're doing things right, if you can actually afford to stash that guy in the minors, you probably have a great rotation. Kason Gabbard himself I remember as kind of a sad story. Guy was making a good try at securing a big league career for himself when his elbow blew out. I loved Gabbard, he debuted on my birthday so I followed him after that. He was a bright spot in the terrible second half of the 2006 season and he put up some good performances in 07 before he was traded. He had a chance to make it.

Not so sure about that. Look at his AAA numbers. brewer didn't show up well in his rookie season but apparently he has a very nasty low 90's cutter and looks like he might just sneak into the middle echelons of someone's bullpen at some point. Trying to set up the next Brasier? At the very least it cost us very little.

I'm curious whether they might add Jhon Nunez. He's not much, but in terms of in-house emergency catching options, he's probably the best we have unless we sign some MLFAs

Moving Hanley made room for Pearce. That's a win right there.

Yes it is. Do you really think he's immune to injury in right field? At best, the injury risk concern is an excuse, at worst it's pure sophistry. He could get hurt at second base, he could get hurt in right field, he could slip in the shower tomorrow and never play another inning. And again, if playing the infield is such an obvious physical hazard why do so many teams put their best offensive players at first base which is second only to catcher for hazards and cheap shot opportunities?

Agreed. Right now Eovaldi's value is inflated due to his lights out postseason. I don't think the team that signs him as a starter for big money is going to be happy with the results.

Jose Ramirez just qualified as an MVP finalist with a substantially lower offensive total than Betts had. If you don't think Betts would win MVP awards as a 2B I have no idea what to say to you. As for refusing extensions... we haven't come to that bridge yet, so we don't know how we're going to cross it. All I know is he was teasing Cora to try him at 2B at a couple points this season. Again, I freely admit this is pure specilation. But if it's something he really cares about, and you want to keep him on the team, there's a certain logic to giving him the role he wants, wouldn't you say? I conceded that we would downgrade the outfield. That outfield configuration would still be borderline elite once everyone settled in. In compensation, we'd radically upgrade our infield. You seem quick to point out the disadvantages without acknowledging the advantages... I consider that mildly dishonest. Probably someone who's better with the bat than our current crop of second basemen. Remember in this scenario it's neither Betts nor JD who's taken out of the lineup, it's Brock Holt and Eduardo Nunez. You'd have some options. Just like we have now when someone's resting and JD is in the field. Maybe start by giving Steve Pearce a go. Anyone think Pearce can't outhit either one of Holt or Nunez? The only guy on that list I'd definitely go for is LeMahieu. He's an amazing defender with a bit of stick and I'd absolutely love to have him Believe me, if we picked up a professional 2B, especially a defensive wizard like LeMahieu, Betts could stay in right field forever. However, I'm worried that Pedroia represents the absolute worst of both worlds at the moment, he still technically has a job which means we won't sign a replacement, and then Pedroia will be immediately injured again and unable to do the job himself. That's why I feel like we're restricted to internal options at the moment. It would be extremely gratifying if that were not the case but I strongly believe that the FO is going to care about not embarrassing Pedroia, and that Pedroia is going to try to hang onto his job long after it makes no real sense to keep fighting.

Yes. Again with the "over their heads." Brock Holt in particular had the single best year of his career last year. He had his best year ever in OBP, SLG, and RBI, tied for his best year in home runs and was just a couple points shy of his high water mark in batting average. If that isn't "playing over one's head" I don't know what is. Again, expecting Brock Holt to repeat his career year isn't smart. We need a professional second sacker.

You have to look at and assess the risk of injury when evaluating any signing. A guy who can't stay healthy is even more useless than a guy who sucks in some ways. Anyway, it's his injury track record that makes me think that converting him to relief would help him. He was an absolute monster out of the pen in the playoffs this year, and if we went to war with him as our closer I honestly think he'd earn his money and we'd have a dominant back end.

Now with that said I would absolutely love it if we signed Eovaldi in order to Papelbon him. He's an absolutely perfect candidate to convert into a closer, if he's willing to try it. I don't think anyone in this forum wouldn't be willing to see the Sox try a move like that. Stretch him out in camp in order to stay adaptable, but I have to think that Eovaldi would make an absolutely magnificent closer. And he'd probably make more money than his current track record as a 3-4 level starter would afford him.

I really doubt it. Mostly because I think that the Sox FO realizes he played way over his head for us. Sign Eovaldi to close, I'm 100% down for that, I think he'd be one hell of a closer. But he's shown time and time and time again that he is neither consistent enough nor durable enough to stand the test of time as a full time starting pitcher.