Dojji

I don't think we have the offense to win it all, but I think we have the arms to win a short series, so I think we get to the ALCS

why does that matter to you?

Securing the division is not a personal goal. Sometimes teams have to put their best foot forward right through the season. We're in that situation right now. Have you considered the possibility that Moon and you could be entirely right and we STILL don't actually have the option to follow up on it because the priority of winning the division takes precedent? There isn't a person in this thread that wouldn't like to rest our key players. We are not in a position to do so safely, without risking our advantageous playoff position that. That's the bottom line.

Resting key players down the stretch is a luxury. You earn that luxury by securing your playoff spot early. At the moment it's a luxury we don't have because we still have the division to play for. Everyone wants the option, but that doesn't entitle us to pretend we have it when we don't. When the division is in the bag, then it's time to start resting people. Not before. With a competitive division we don't have the luxury of behaving as if we've already clinched. These last 10 games are still important, we can't behave as if they are not.

The stats are about how to manage large sample sizes. This is a small sample size. When you have a chance to recover you play the odds. When you don't, and with 10 games to go in the season and a very competitive division we don't, you play it safe and rely on common sense.

2011 is a very real factor in what's happening here. We got ambushed because the whole team started relaxing at the start of September and we got bit hard in the butt. Those of us with actual working memories are seeing a certain paralell here. You can't take the division for granted in these circumstances. We do not have the luxury of resting our key pieces. Yeah in an ideal world I'd love to do it, but the Yankees are in a great position to pull a 2011, 1978 style ambush, and we need to guard against that. If the Yankees do steal the division, it had damn well better be over the best efforts of the Red Sox to stop them doing it. Nothing less is acceptable. The worst case scenario here is resting Sale only to have to use him in the play in game that we wouldn't have had to play if we hadn't outsmarted outselves. I'd rather avoid that.

When was the last time Sale had something to play for in September? One can trend downward at garbage time without fatigue being the main reason. Personally I think you're leaping to a conclusion. Anyway, haven't presented any actual argument in favor of the idea that resting him now will improve his numbers when it matters in October. This is because you don't have the data to actually do more than merely suggest such a thing. In a word, you're guessing.

Let's just say for the sake of argument that Anderson Espinosa comes on like gangbusters at some point in the next 5 years or so. Does that necessarily invalidate the value of Pomeranz now? Heck no. The Red Sox at the time of the trade were and still are trying to reestabish themselves as a top franchise in the AL East after a couple tough seasons. We had a legit chance to ramp up for a deep playoff run and that's a legitimate time to mortgage the future in favor of the present in a league where it's damn hard to be good year in and year out. Especially in light of our abysmal record in developing homegrown starting pitching, I am entirely fine in letting prospects go to bring in starting pitching from outside the organization. It's a defensible decision especially in the short term and when you're fighting for pennants, the short term is at least as important as the long term.

He had TJS mere months after the trade, so I wouldn't go THAT far.

Aaaaaactually... I do get what you're saying, I'm honestly convinced Mike Lowell torpedoed the team's chances in 2009 by playing through IIRC a hip pointer that he could have gotten operated on, cleaned out and back in the game b y the playoffs, and at the time we had Jed Lowrie available as 3B depth. He had the choice between playing 3 months with an increasingly debilitating injury, or getting the surgery he needed, cleaning out his hip, rehabbing for a month and taking the field in October. He made the wrong choice and was ineffective by September due to the limits imposed by his injury -- specifically the huge deficit in his already marginal range at third base. As a result his season bWAR was exactly zero, he was literally replacement level that year and trending downward by October It would have been better in the end simply to let Lowell go under the knife in July or August and get Jed Lowrie all the experience he needed to take over the position himself. There's always pros and cons to the decision to rest or play a player. Personally though I see no reason right now to shut down Sale other than paranoid timidity, and that's no way to run a baseball team.

Post hoc, ergo proptor hoc

Fear the might of the Dojjarajah

They tried that in 2011. How well did that work for us? Don't get fancy. Focus on the task at hand until it is completed. We've seen how it works if you don't do it that way. As far as I can tell this idea the starting pitcher always benefits from rest is so much toxic brain fluff. We've all seen the guy who comes back after a rest period and can't find his rhythm. You're rolling the dice either way so I'd rather roll them in a way that secures the playoffs.

He's gonna finish with somewhere around 180 innings of 143 ERA+ and around 4 WAR. His production is very lterally the difference between our current place in the division standings and being tied with or half a game behind the Yankees. After the regression of Price and Porcello, it's impossible to understate just how critical Drew Pomeranz is to this rotation. Especially notable in light of the fact that Anderson Espinosa sucked last year and hasn't thrown a single pitch this year and had TJS after we successfully dumped him on San Diego. Especially because there was all this furor over how the Red Sox had supposedly spent Espinosa to purchase damage goods and those damaged goods have thrown over 200 innings of big league ball in the meanwhile. Just thought that was worth bringing up :D

You're ignoring our current run of success right now. An you just spent a long angry post explaining why "ignore" doesn't mean fail to notice.

Amazing how we've done that so consistently in each of the last 2 seasons. It's almost like spiting John Farrell has an asset value all its own.

This is your brain on confirmation bias. You've already decided Farrell is an idiot, so file everything new in one of two boxes. Box 1: THINGS THAT PROVE ME RIGHT Box 2: THINGS THAT I IGNORE. I'm a former addict myself, I know the struggles of a recovering confirmation bias addict. It's a hell of a drug.

I also think it's worth pointing out that Holt got a lot of the bad numbers he has this year while struggling with PCS so judging him based on a period of time when he was playing hurt with a literal brain injury is probably not fair.

Sounds like it averages out. In a position like catcher I wouldn't necessarily break the tie by favoring offense however. Leon is fine. He's a below average starter or a very good backup. And we know he has the capacity to play better than he is right now offensively if he can put a few good weeks together.

I agree, and I'm actually more or less content with the situation we find ourselves in with our backstops. They can hit a little, and both of them are heavily focused on their defense, which is exactly what you want if you can't have a do-everything guy. Catcher is not a problem for the Red Sox right now.

Worth noting that according to Baseball-Reference it's actually Leon with the higher WAR this year. Leon: oWAR 0.2 dWAR 1.0 WAR 0.8 CV oWAR 0.9 dWAR -0.3 WAR 0.2 Now I think the biggest illusion here is CV's negative dWAR. He's far more talented defensively than that, but dWAR is an amalgamation of real production rather than talent, and CV has been struggling a bit defensively this year, So maybe we shouldn't be so quick to "give the keys" to the less valuable catcher just because the lion's share of his current value is offensive?

Michael Chavis is a 3B prospect in the Red Sox system who has broken out this year between A+ and AA. He's basically been the guy one step behind Devers at 3B in the system. Always had the power but is starting to show increased consistency. he's climbed quickly in the Sox prospect rankings, he's currently in the #3 position in the Soxprospects.com rankings. While not nearly the caliber of prospect Devers is, Chavis is still interesting. He made it to Portland at age 22 which isn't bad. Soxprospects projects him to be a regular everyday player offensively, if not a great one. He's hit reasonably well in Portland but there's definitely a bit of a ways to go before he's fully ready to hit at the big league level. According to their scouting he's raw defensively at third base, which is fine because he wouldn't be competing directly with Devers anyhow. Devers probably has 3B locked up for the forseeable. I think however he is a potential option to move to first base, where we could use another young option since Sam Travis hasn't been making the most of his opportunities. I think it's time to start really paying attention to this guy as a legit prospect. He's less than 24 months from big league ready, and he's got an interesting set of talents. Thoughts?

You can have a pretty solid educated guess about many things, but while that can substitute for knowledge in most common sense cases, that's not actually the same as knowing

I don't like the idea of making changes for PC or flimsy reasons. Racists existed. They could even be racists and still contribute valuable things to society. We're excising a lot of valuable history from the public view simply because it feels uncomfortable. I resent that.

I would not trade either Beni or Bogaerts. Even for Stanton.