Dojji

Tito put faith in his guys and would sometimes let them try to work out of situations where they really should have been pulled -- I'm not saying it as a criticism, just as a fact.

This is where I stand. Buchholz has had chance after chance after chance after chance after chance. At this point it's done, the book is written, time to close the cover. Just another in the long history of extremely talented MLB pitchers who just never managed to put it all together for whatever reason.

if you had to overvalue one attribute, power would be a good one to pick. Both of these players have very good approaches at the plate. it's really a question of preference whether you like .280/.350/.450 more than .300/.380/.420, just to speak in general, purely theoretical terms. besides, we're comparing Benintendi to a palyer who is currently leading the league in BA and putting up a slash line of .346/.397/.495/.891. If he can swing that well, the question of whether to get high OBP's based on walks or putting a great swing on the ball, is kind of a moot one. I seem to recall another shortstop we had in living memory who didn't take a ton of walks, but put up that kind of slash line on a regular basis due to elite offensive skills. Just saying. I know we're all trying not to put Nomar on bogaerts, but it's exciting to see that kind of talent at our shortstop position and an end of the shortstop roulette we had to deal with from year to year ever since.

Damn, you're right. My memory is just not very good anymore :/ I used to be able to be a lot more confident in how well I recalled things. my overall point stands though. The Royals rotation was not very good when they won the world Series. For the most part their job was to hold the team in the game until late innings and let the bats and the bullpen carry the game. It worked well enough for their purposes.

The Kansas City Royals just won the world series with a bunch of durable, middling quality starters, a dynamite bullpen and a deep lineup. Sure they went out and rented Cueto, but Cueto was less than brilliant for them. Shields was their rotation leader for most of that season and he's more of a super-3 than an ace -- very very very durable, but more of a great supporting piece than a true rotation leader. Durable #3 types don't put you over the top, but they do put you in the picture, and the more you have, the better a chance you have to bring other assets into play to help you win.

Yeah about that. That standard of a "quality" start was arrived at right in the middle of the Steroid Era, when a pitcher with a 4.50 ERA was consdered average. In fact in 2007 Tim Wakefield won 17 games and had an ERA of 4.76 and his ERA+ was 100 -- exactly average. In that era a quality start per se made sense, since that was the level required to allow a team with an average offense to score 5 runs and win a game. Now an average team scores somewhere between 3 and 4 runs in a game so a pitcher with a 4.50 ERA is considered awful, therefore the quality start stat needs to be reexamined as an actually valuable standard of performance. You can not be an average pitcher anymore if you keep your ERA at 4.50, as you could when the quality start was first conceived of. I'm not saying throw the stat out completely, I'm saying that it can't always be a minimum standard of success. And also that the fact that Buchholz barely met even that extremely low bar in his last start, cannot possibly be viewed as a bright spot.

Similarly, if Buchholz walks the bases loaded and then escapes with his life thanks to a heroic play by the defense, how many bad pitches did he make?

a .793 road OPS is excellent.

Depth guys in the bullpen have been very impressive so far this year, especially Hembree.

I think what most people saw bogey as a guy who could be an average SS while he was young and spry, but as he filled out into his late 20's early 30's may need to come off the position or accept below average defense at SS... Basically A-Rod lite, before he became Slappy and A-Roid and all the other things we hate him for now. which might still happen, although Bogaerts has worked hard to improve at SS so it may also not. If he can fill out enough to reach his power ceiling while remaining mobile enough to play good defense, we'll have a guhy who would be the centerpiece of any franchise.

It can be both at the same time -- a price can be too high for us, and still be considered a lowball by them. Negotiations are like that.

Frankly I'm getting a bit nervous about how we're going to pay all these guys. We have the kind of homegrown roster that's going to be very expensive in a few years.

Implying that there is only one true building block? Our Killer B's (Bogaerts, Betts, Bradley) are jointly the true building block. If Benintendi wants to join the B-hive, he's welcome.

but the fact that nobody's media is showing interest is telling.

you can count on the red sox to slowly whittle away the underperformers. losing lyons in favor of much more tc and eck is probably something they intend to do once the opportunity arises. between tc and a little eckersley i do not see any need at all for lyons on non o'brien days and both of those two are better than lyons by a lot ... just to kick the hornet's nest a bit who would be in favor of replacing lyons entirely... with schilling?

and if any of that actually mattered teams would actually want him. there has been no suggestion from a non-Red Sox non-Boston source of any interest at all in obtaining Buchholz from the Red Sox. In other words no other team and the media in no other baseball market is thinking ''hey, we need to acquire Clay Buchholz, he can help us.'' Abstractions like WAR aside I find that very telling when considering his REAL value. As sick as i am of the sadistic carnival ride ride the guy has been for us, we're pretty much stuck with Buchholz, more's the pity

i don't find it useful to directly compare ceiling on prospects that are not competing for the same position no, and analyses of any one prospect's potential are not at all intended to be used in that way. Benintendi is an outfielder and both his role and his potential are judged on his ability to fill the role of an outfielder. Comparing an infielder directly to an outfielder isn't as dumb as say comparing a infielder and a catcher or a DHand a pitchet, but it still has too many translation errors to yield an unambiguous answer It is enough for me that Benintendi has a very very high ceiling without squabbling about who else he may or may not be somehow ''better'' than also i do feel it bears repeating that as good as Bogaerts is playing right now he still has an upper ceiling of his own that at 23 he still has plenty of time to reach. Bogaerts has the potential to be a superstar, one of the top 4 or 5 best players in the league in the next 4-5 years, Benintendi could fall way way short on that and still realize a very impressive career for himself.

Bogaerts was not a consensus to stick at SS. No one said it was impossible, but a lot of people predicted he'd eventually have to move to the corners. And his offensive ceiling was considered very high from day 1. There were somewhat inappropriate comparisons to Nomar Garciaparra. bogaerts was and is considered to have 25-30 HR power potential if he hits his peak. It's hard to remember sometimes considering how much baseball he has under his belt that Bogaerts is still just 23 and has some filling out ahead of him. What we have now is an incredibly valuable ballplayer. what we have now is not the highest Bogaerts might aspire to, and that's exciting. The fact of the matter is that no matter where bogaerts put up his current numbers he'd be a regular All-Star candidate at the very least. Shortstop just makes all this extra super ultra exciting (and expensive when contract time rolls around). If Benintendi comes close to delivering the same performance in the outfield he'll be quite welcome here regardless of meaningless questions about which of two different players at different positions had the higher ceiling.

Lineup position doesn't matter. If he's comfortable and producing like a champ in the bottom of the order that's a good thing, it means we have threats up and down the lineup.

Mookie Betts is a pretty good ballplayer.

How badly did we need that start from Joe Kelly?

Let's hope it was a mild one. concussions are bad news that can have FAR ranging consequences. Anyone remember Marc Savard of the Bruins?

Benintendi was just promoted to Portland and is still adjusting to AA pitching. The idea that he's ready in any way to play the game at the big league level now is incredibly ludicrous. If he plays this year it will be in September.

Tito wasn't the best tactician. His "francoma" nickname came from a long established tendency to prefer to stay the course and have faith in his players, which meant he was sometimes slow with the hook. but his handling of the media and the clubhouse (until his health failed in 2011) was masterful. Even in the worst year the team had under his tenure (2006) he found ways to keep the team loose and playing with confidence. The team always seemed to bounce back better after the touch stretches teams always have, under Tito, than under any other manager we've had recently.

He was a shortstop in high school.