Dojji

If there's something to talk about there's talk. Not a lot of people go out of their way to manufacture topics to cover up the dry spells. A lot of middle tier forums are like that.

I agree, I said at the outset that Bard should start in the minors. I think Bradley should too, but with the exuberance he's generating from his strong spring, it looks like i'll have to be proven right.

I'm an optimist, tried and true, through and through. Any player I want to like has to try really hard to get me to change my mind and I'm usually one of the last rats to leave the ship. I picked 2 because of my tendency to set low expectations in the first place, which isn't exactly polyanna territory.

I can tell you that a lot of people had that experience. A national celebration followed by a national did-that-really-happen?

So I have to ask, at what point do the Bruins decide to give a bigger role to Anton Khudobin? Of all the times the Bruins have coughed up the lead in the third, I'd have to look back but if I recall correctly, none of them is a Khudo game. Of course this is me suggesting this so YMM obviously V, but if Tuukka is going to do the Luongo thing, I might be inclined to see if what Kudo is showing is something he can sustain over multiple consecutive starts. With Rask on a 1 year deal and the team with both solid defense and a few other cap questions to answer, the cheaper of our two tenders showing he can play well enough to allow us to win consistently would be a huge thing.

Ciriaco is the kind of guy they made the backup infielder job for. Every team that doesn't have a guy like Ciriaco to back up their three more difficult infield positions, wants one. He'll never be mistaken for a starting caliber player, but he's the kind of guy who can roleplay for anyone. I'd expect to see one of those teams like the Cardinals who value the little things, pick Ciriaco up if and when we're ever done with him.

Indeed. Pretty much as long as Iglesias isn't putting up negative oWAR, he's going to be useful as a starter. And the standard for negative oWAR is a lot lower than people seem to think it is. I agree with trying to upgrade the SS position with a one year contract for Stephen Drew, but if worse comes to worst with Drew's concussion, betting on Iggy, Ciriaco, and the occasional cameo from Brock Holt to cover SS between them wouldn't be the worst organizational depth chart in the league by a long way.

I was thinking more along the lines of Trot Nixon actually. I am still amazed at just how quickly Trot disappeared from baseball due in large part to his injuries. Wouldn't be too shocked if Daniel Nava had done enough to crack the roster TBPH, at least to the point where he breaks camp with the team to allow the team the luxury of starting Bradley's clock when they want to. He's a platoon hitter whose platoon advantage plays well for what the Sox need right now, and he's done everything the team asked of him. If we're looking for a guy who's going to play off the bench he's probably as good as anyone we have, since I don't think you bring Bradley up and sit him on the bench.

My fondest memory is hearing the "1918" chant for the last time. Watching Game 7 of the ALCS was the most euphoric baseball experience I've ever had. Being able to enjoy a blowout at that point of a series that had gone the way this one had was just so awesome. No disrespect to the World Series itself, but the 2004 ALCS completely eclipsed anything I've ever experienced. A sweep of a great Cardinals team should have been one of the most impressive things that team did, but it didn't even hold a candle to the ALCS comeback. And are there two teams historied Sox fans longed to put away in humiliating fashion in the CS and WS more than the Yankees and the Cardinals? We're talking about probably the greatest and most historically successful franchise of each league, and what's more, the Cards had embarrassed us multiple times in our own quests for greatness.

Kinda is. Ever hear of run differential? Put crudely, it's how much more runs you scored than you allowed. The year we won it all, Lugo was that kind of SS (mostly) and we had Tek and Pedey and Coco up the middle as well, and that helped us create the best run differential in the league. The saber stat that plays on run differential is called pythag for no good reason, and it attenpts to take the rate of runs scored vs runs allowed and multiply that percentage by 162 to project the number of wins a team should have and it's usually pretty accurate. Which should surprise nobody -- you win games in baseball by scoring more runs than you allow, and efforts need to be applied along both vectors, not just focusing on hitting with the position players and pretending you can pile on expensive pitching to make up for it on the other end.. The two years the Red Sox won the world series, our shortstops were Orlando Cabrera, who was a D guy, and Julio Lugo, who wasn't usually a D guy but played like one that year. When we've tried to crowd offensive expectations into the SS position we wound up with guys like Edgar Renteria and Jed Lowrie, who didn't get it done for us for various reasons. Offense at shortstop is a luxury. Good defense is the fundamental need at that position. Same for catcher. We've never been so bad at that position -- historically, not just in the Henry era -- than we demanded that above all else the catcher must hit. Having a guy who can do what a catcher needs to do AND hit is great, but if you have to choose between the two, you favor catching fundamentals. Not offense. And the same goes for shortstops. It's a whole heck of a lot easier to make up for the lost runs offensively when your pitching staff flat out knows that the defense has his back and can attack the hitter with confidence.

The guy you haven't been told about yet (because you didn't ask) who impressed a bit this spring was catching prospect Christian Vazquez. He didn't do much with the stick and he's been assigned to the minors, but he demonstrated an unbelievable throwing arm and probably caught some real attention for himself as a possible future backup catcher. He's unlikely to make the big leagues this year though unless we have some ridiculous luck with injuries.

As for me, you know when I'm starting to feel good about the team because I'm here. Posting. I'm a fan, I'll never go away entirely, but I can only bear so much disappointment and frustration, so sometimes I manage to give myself little breaks, watch two teams I don't care that much about or something. It's refreshing. And of course it should be obvious to anyone who chats with me that one of my pleasures is seeing someone nobody expected, come in and perform well out of the blue. And trying to predict who the next one might be. That said, my work schedule (did I mention I'd finally found a job? yaaaaay!) has me working evenings, so I donno how much baseball I'm even going to be able to watch this year except on weekends, and I've been so tired weekends I've barely had the energy to lift my head. Hooray for baseball on the radio. So I'll be kind of divorced from the hype of the media and forming my own opinions based on what I can observe. Expect them to diverge radically from the group as a result. Not that that's all that unusual for me.

If Iggy is our UT-INF, I'm happy with that.

Right. I'm getting sick of just throwing away inconvenient people.

Honestly there's worse ideas out there. Chien-Ming Wang's career died in 2008, but he was an adequate pitcher in a depth role as recently as 2011 (4.04 ERA in about 60 innings over 11 starts with the Nationals). If I was looking for even a 5th starter, I wouldn't even touch Wang, but for depth? That's what guys like that are on this earth for.

Who says Vazquez can't hit? He's not a candidate to bat in the middle of the order, but I'll take a guy with that glove and a .250 batting average as my starting catcher, and you can have Salty or Lavs or VMart, and we'll see who wins more games. There's so much more to catching than being able to hit 20 HR's. We really got spoiled by Tek in his prime if we expect every "starting catcher" to both hit and field at an all star level. Besides, for his level and his age, Christian Vazquez has shown some prowess with the stick. Again, not an all star, but he's shown real progress with his ability to work the count and his knowledge of the strike zone offensively. Combined with the fact that he's been about a year underage for the level of the minors he's playing at all along, besides the obvious challenge of learning to hit while also working on everything else a catcher needs to master, and I think there is some solid potential there, as long as you can put up with a catcher whose definition of "offense" is a medium-solid OBP and a few gap doubles. That said, he needs to produce this year, and produce next year, as he moves up the ranks, which I expect him to do rather slowly. This team will take its time with Vazquez, and they should. But when all's said and done, he has to be a dark horse in the mix for the catcher of the future debate -- even if he runs clean counter to what sox fans or the FO expect their COTF to look like.

He pitched about 140 innings last year. If he projects into the pen it's not because of durability. EDIT: Looking into it, his mechanics are a bit unconventional for a starter, that's where the "projects as an RP" stuff seems to come from. Sounds like his stuff isn't the issue per se, it's a concern about his ability to get outs the third time through the order with a high effort delivery. Still, he hasn't slowed down yet, so he's worth keeping an eye on. EDIT2: Whoops, didn't notice the new page. This post was about Brandon Workman.

Lester Buchholz Doubront Dempster Lackey Aceves Morales (Miller?) Webster (Wright?) de la Rosa (Doyle?) (Workman? Barnes? Hernandez? All fairly solid options for this layer of the depth chart) Personally I'm actually fairly intrigued by Terry Doyle's numbers. He's probably AAAA and he's not high on our depth chart, but his numbers in the minors aren't unimpressive, and apparently he's a 5 pitch guy. Things would have to go really pear-shaped to get him a shot, but I'd like to see him pitch maybe a game or two sometime this year if the team falls out of it.

You're basing this off a speculation piece. You realize that, right? Personally I'm fine with our level of depth, which is actually better than it's been for awhile if we can keep hold of Aceves. Between Aceves, Morales and de la Rosa we have some big league experience, and our pitching depth in terms of guys who could be 6 months or less away looks good -- along with de la Rosa, Barnes is in range if he has a strong start to the year in the minors, and Webster's a very solid pitching prospect. In terms of underrated prospects -- keep an eye on Brandon Workman. He's kind of under the radar because he's an older prospect for his level, and hes not considered in the same sphere as the big 3 of Barns, Webster, and de la Rosa, but he's performed fairly solidly when called on, throws in the mid 90's, has a solid K and K/BB rate in the minors, and he's rising fairly steadily through the ranks. With a strong year this year he ought to break into AAA sometime around the all star break and if he does that, maybe he makes himself an option.

That and if you look at the numbers, his approach is already pretty advanced, especially for his age. OBP is his leading skill, which for a guy who's never going to hit THAT much, is what you like to see, especially in a 22 year old kid who just broke into AA at age 21 -- which is really young, ridiculously so for a catcher. Also interesting to note, Vazquez was put into a regimen of fall and winter ball to stretch his total number of games played last year to exactly 120. They went out of their way to expand his workload last year to see if he could take a starting catcher's worth of games. Seems to me that I'm not the only one leaving the door open.

Ridiculous statement. Have you seen the level of talent the bottom half of the league generally works with at the catching position? Vazquez has every chance to compete at least with those. Personally I think he has more potential than that but that's just my opinion. And as much as I can't find it in me to hate Salty, I'd take a black hole in the lineup if it put a better catcher behind the dish for our pitchers, considering what doing the exact opposite has looked like over the past 2 seasons. Vazquez has a great chance to become a backup catcher. Unless he gets hurt, that arm alone guarantees someone will give him a shot, so I honestly hope that someone is us. He has to hit this year and next in the minors in full years in AA and AAA respectively to get himself into the discussion of a starter, and he may or may not, but to sound off right now about how he has zero chance, does nothing more than reveal your ignorance.

I've heard good things about Swihart, that said I haven't seen nearly enough to make any judgments of his future. I'm certainly concerned about the way Lavarnway is trending. As a guy who values defense at catcher I'm not as enamored of Lavs as I have been and I'm not sure he has what it takes to push Salty for a job in the areas where it matters, which is defensively. The catcher who has me most excited right now is obviously Christian Vazquez. I'll be monitoring his offensive progress closely to see if he has any chance to hit enough to squeak by as the catching version of Jose Iglesias. That throwing arm is a generational tool and a catcher doesn't need much more than an arm like that to be a backup catcher. He'll make the majors at some point, I have no doubt at all. My question is can he hit at least a little, because if he can, he can build a case to start even on a team like this one.

It's a completely different dynamic. The simple fact is that the top prospects will always find a way to get themselves to the big leagues eventually if they're any good, and many times even if they're not. No need to rush them. Jackie Bradley will eventually make the majors if he's anything close to what scouts and fans think he has the potential to be, no matter how cautious or aggressive you are. So since, for these guys, the minors are simply about learning how to be the best big leaguer you can be, it pays to go slow. Guys like Nava and Linares, if they don't get their chances when they're ready to go, you never know what you might have had. THese guys have to claw for every chance they get, and when I think they deserve one, it always comes with the knowledge that their window to get that chance is going to be short, and based on their continued ability to play at a high enough level to keep themselves in the back of the GM's mind. For a guy like Linares the minors isn't necessarily a through road, so I'm always excited to see guys like that break through and make their mark

Disagreed. We just don't know that yet. He's athletic enough if his bat works out, the question is how hard he's prepared to work to remain light enough to play the position.

I see a comp to Rico Petrocelli. Wound up at third, but only after he produced at SS for 3 years then slowed down too much as he filled out. I think Bogaerts ought to be able to keep up at SS while he's younger, then as he fills out a bit, gains muscle and loses that spry, youthful energy, he shifts to the corners.