Dojji

You're not covering yourself with glory trying to compare rookie contracts and one shots with a guy who we paid to be a consistent year-in-year-out closer. Jonathan Papelbon pulled in 11-13M a year once his cost controlled years were gone Brian Wilson wasn't consistent enough to earn top dollar and still maxed out at $10M/year Wade Davis earned 15M or so AAV after helping the Royals contend over the last few years. He's not performing well this year, I suspect he was hurt by park factors in Colorado somewhat, but up to that point he had been impressively consistent. And even with his struggles he's still the NL's saves leader. Jason Isringhausen, another highly consistent closer, was well known for having signed team friendly contracts to stay with his preferred team, and still made 7-8M/year BEFORE the major revenue spike that drove everyone's salary demands through the roof Kenley Jansen, the converted catcher who's become one of the National League's best power relievers over the last 8 seasons, is going to be earning nearly $20M next year. And that's without what the Yankees were willing to pay for Mo and his help in winning 5 separate World Series. When it comes to money, the Yankees are outliers. But the bottom line is that teams pay for consistent closers because they know what the alternative is I'll say it again. The more you price-lock yourself at a position, the more times you have to go back to the well and find a quality replacement, and every time you do, you run the risk of something going wrong like it did with Miller, Hanrahan, Jenks, Betances, etc after Papelbon, until we got incredibly lucky that Uehara's arm held up for 3 straight seasons as a closer despite being older than dirt in baseball terms. And then after we rode Koji like a rented mule, and he couldn't do it anymore, we had to replace him again. And rather than losing perhaos multiple seasons to the Closer Audition Carousel like happened in 09-13, DD did what he had to do to secure the position for multiple seasons to ensure the team could be as likely to contend as possible. The alternative of "wasting money" in most baseball positions is an audition carousel until someone sticks, and that can take awhile to prosecute, similar to 2003 and 2009-2011 This works great in small markets and it's a lot of how smaller teams build up to contention, but big markets usually need to trade resources for time. Shortening the process of discovering our next closer is exactly why we bought high on Kimbrel, and as close as we were to contention with the young players coming into their own after '15, it was absolutely the correct move

I can't be too upset about anyone giving up a solo shot to one of the best hitters on the opposing team. I am a little concerned about Kimbrel and walks this year, but beyond that, it's hard to deny that he's been one of the most effective RP's in the league.

I didn't say Little didn't screw up up. But you can't completely dismiss the dismal regular season performance by that year's bullpen. The Red Sox had exactly 2 relievers with a serious sample size of innings pitched and a sub-4 ERA, and one of them (Kim) wasn't available in the postseason. Again, it was still a mistake by Little, if only because Pedro himself said he was done, he gave his point-to-heaven that he always did after he thought he should come out, and that should have been a red flag for Little that Pedro didn't have a lot left in his arm. But he lived through that regular season and knew the pen was due for a regression to the mean, and that made it easier to take a risky decision that backfired spectacularly.

he had 2 bad games this week. Last night he gave a solo HR to a good hitter. If that's the worst we see from Kimbrel, we're doing pretty well out of all this.

Just because ump reviews aren't public, don't make the mistake of believing there's no quality control. The data is far too available for me to think MLB isn't quietly talking to umps who have a bad night. Also lot of umpires self-police, and many of them are as passionate about the game, if not more so, than the people on this forum. There are a few who abuse their authority, but they're so visible exactly because they're exceptions.

We need GPS. I'm not sure we're in the same county anymore. Kimmi is clinging gamely onto this idea that you can get the same production we're gettihg right now for Kimbrel, consistently, for less than we paid for him. I have no idea why she's so sure of this because she's admitted as such that closers have a kind of value that's difficult to properly quantify, AND that Kimbrel is among the very best in the business, which means that there aren't a lot of relief pitchers who can consistently replicate his value at all, and of the ones that are, how many of those are even acquirable from their current teams, much less more affordable than Kimbrel? Frankly, I honestly think Kimmi's holding onto this argument more because of her staunch defense of Ben Cherington (and resulting downplaying of DD's moves) than because she actually believes this argument she's making. She can speak for herself, but I strongly suspect the overall position Kimmi's taking here is a lot less "I actually believe this on its merits" and a lot more "I feel like I should take this position because of my overall opposition against DD's high leverage trades in the 2016 and 2017offseasons."

But not *consistently.* It's not like we're not planning on competing next year or the years after that, Kimmi. You can get performance on the cheap if you're lucky. If you're really lucky you can even dredge up a guy like Koji who can close effectively on the cheap for multiple seasons. But if you want consistency, you're eventually going to have to pay for it. There's only a few consistently good closers in baseball and they are in HIGH demand. And finding that consistent closer is the hallmark of a perennial contender. The less you're willing to pay for a good closer, the more times you'll have to start over again from square one trying to find a good one. That's what letting Papelbon go *should* have taught us. Looks like we have a few slow learners in the group. If putting a cost limit on your closer limits your ability to find a consistent high performance player for the role (and it does) then why do it? Makes no sense to me. It's too important to the momentum of the team, and for securing high leverage wins, to be the area I go cheap on

I think you're better than this, Kimmi. You're dismissing an unquantifyable value simply because it can't be quantified, and engaging in an absurd chain of nonlogic. You're basically talking about taking a very expensive car, with all the best parts money can buy, best engine, best tires, best drive train, and then using a Chinese knockoff set of brakepads on it. I mean, sure, that's PROBABLY not going to bite you in the ass in any one trip to the grocery store, but it's not exactly the first area I'd decide to cheap out in!

This is exactly the logical fallacy I've been trying to call out. "Because closers are all fallible, there's no difference between one fallible closer and another and there's no risk difference in having a cheap, extremely fallible closer over an expensive, somewhat fallible closer." This could not possibly be more wrong. We would have made the World Series in 2003 if we had had a trustworthy bullpen to turn the game over to in Game 7. It was the SEVERE undependability of our bullpen and the tenuous nature of our closing situation in the 2003 playoffs that tempted Grady Little into his fatal mistake. And yet the 2003 playoff bullpen model is the one you're proposing to emulate. Even though we've ONLY EVER WON WORLD SERIES WITH QUALITY CLOSERS. 2004: Foulke, specifically acquired to close in the wake of the 2003 disaster 2007 Papelbon, probably the best closer we ever had 2013: getting SUPER DUPER LUCKY with Koji stepping into the role despite his age THAT is the opportunity cost in going cheap on the closer's role.

I'll always take a 7 or 8 inning performance from any starter without quibbling over whether he should have gone 9. But then, I actually trust the bullpen probably more than most people here. Mostly because I don't listen to sports media and I don't get that extra spoonfed helping of panic from the sewer rats on the local station every time they have a less than ideal game

I'm still holding out on that one. As good as ihe's looked in two starts, it was two starts. he's made one heck of a first impression, but let's see him carry that forward through the rest of the season. His inconsistency is something of a legend after all. But then, so was Porcello's before he got here. I'm not ruling it out. I'm just saying we should be in wait-and-see mode.

Sometimes the deep thinker drowns in his own smug self-superiority too. I'd rather think objectively, with an eye on both sides of the argument, then focus on being "deep" for its own sake.

Near as I understand it, the logic is that since no closer is perfect, buy the cheapest imperfect closer possible. No consideration given to the value of stop-loss, opportunity cost, or the need for optimum performance in high leverage situations. No, because performance can not be perfect, there's apparently no need to invest resources to optimize it. Can you imagine that logic being applied to ANY other baseball role? Because hitters can't bat 1.000 we should invest in McNoodlebat players for 500,000 each? That'll look good in the pocket book. Not so much from the stand. Because starters can't pitch an ERA of 0, no need to invest in an ace? Run a rotation of AAAA guys for maximum savings! Does that make any sense to anyone here? Then why apply that exact same logic to the closer's role?

Very much disagree with this. What we need to learn to do is adequately assess what the job of a closer is. Right now we're not doing that and it's leading to some extremely wonky conclusions about what the purpose of a closer is supposed to be. By any objective standard Kimbrel is one of the best closers in baseball right now and worth every penny of his contract. But because contribution in a stop-loss position like Closer is hard to quantify (because the closer is only generally noticed when he fails), certain people are reaching the mistaken conclusion that difficult-to-quantify values don't exist or don't matter. Both conclusions are wrong. We need to be able to at least adequately ballpark the proper value of a top end closer before we can even answer the question of whether it's OK to go cheap at the position. The fact that sabermetrics can't actually give a reliable value for negative consequences avoided is no excuse to pretend that that value doesn't exist. It never ceases to amaze me that people claim to put value in numbers and statistics without even a general understanding of how to use them. I'm a statistical novice myself, but at least i recognize the fact that failing to quantify something doesn't deprive it of value.

Which goes to illustrate that literally no closer is perfect. If the best there ever will be blew multiple must win games over his extremely long career, we probably shouldn't ask *more* than that of the closer du jour, or act all outraged when a blown save happens

We're talking about two whole failures in how many years of pitching in the postseason? Mo was the best relief pitcher we'll see in our lifetimes, anyone else would have blown more games than he did You CAN'T assess relievers by their failures. The fact that Sox fans insist on doing so is why even Papelbon's welcome wore out here. You know, the literal best closer the Red Sox have ever had? Won us a World Series? Still disrespected by the fans over his few failures and basically shot his way out of town? We'll never have a Mo if we can 't learn to understand what the job of closer actually is.

Of course there is. Metrics are terrible at measuring opportunity cost, and the greatest value of closers is in avoiding losses.

This is the Boston Red Sox. Why are we pinching pennies? Almost the same production. you mean he can blow 1 game 7 instead of 0? I mean that's almost the same production. 1 is pretty close to 0 after all.

Closer is a very underappreciated position until you suddenly don't have a good one. Closers are a lot like scuba gear. Substandard third rate gear can work most of the time, but "works most of the time" can kill you.

Dang, not what you want to hear. Poor guy, best of luck to him in this battle.

We got to see some great pitching performances, some really good hitting performances, and one clutch back breaking come back. That was an absolute slaughter. They're calling it a new Boston Massacre in the New York media. Delicious! Amazing! Wonderful to live through! I still remember the massacre of '06. Talk about disheartening, but at least we were in most of the games, in fact IIRC we had a lead in 4 of those 5 games at one point or another despite the massive flaws in the 06 roster. These Yankees weren't even competitive in 3 of the 4 games, and the one time they were competitive, we broke their backs by killing their closer in the 9th. One of the best rivalry experiences in my memory. So fun to go back over those 4 games and review the highlights. Pierce. Porcello. Eovaldi. And finally, Benintendi, the Invisible Superstar. And we moved the Yankees all the way out of the division race in a single weekend. We'll be remembering this one for a very long time. The rotation was outstanding, even the replacement guy did his job. The bullpen was barely used outside of the Johnson game, so they should be pretty fresh for the August stretch too, and the Yankee bullpen is blown to smithereens. In short we gave our main rivals a memorable whupping and the division is probably ours now. So fun.

Leon is very rapidly cementing his place as the team's starting catcher. Poor Swihart.

That would make sense if he didn't need that reliever tomorrow too. And probably the next day as well. It really is better to limit how much a reliever pitches in any one outing if you need him healthy all the way through October. I'm thinking about the pile of bloody bones out behind the bullpen from workhorse relievers who did great for one or two years then lost everything. Manny Delcarmen springs to mind, so does Alfredo Aceves and Dan Bard. Lots of history of careers ruined 'doing it the old-fashioned way' I'm a big of convention, but it makes a very poor reason to kill a man or ruin his career

DD has run the team the way a fan wishes he could have run it. A real fan wouldn't have been anywhere near as efficient

So happy we have this guy, he's a great catcher. Can't believe we got him for cash considerations