mvp 78

Winckowski is ahead of Bello IMO. Bello didn't light the world on fire in AA this year. He has a ways to go. Wong OPS by month: May 572 June 666 July 727 Aug 1037 Sept 841 Maybe he was a guy who started off slow because of missing 2020. If he can OPS > 800 in AAA, they'll keep him around. I wouldn't be shocked if they brought in a glove first backup who was a placeholder for Wong or Hernandez.

If the Sox can sweep the Yanks, it should really end their season.

Sea Dogs season is over, not surprising these guys are being given a little more run. Casas will be up next season at some point. Depending on what they do with C depth, Hernandez could be #3 which would give him the leg up on reaching BOS first.

The Monster

A month later: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/09/red-sox-garrett-richards-bullpen-reliever-club-option.html Since moving into a short-relief role, Richards has dominated. He’s tossed 20 2/3 innings of relief, pitching to a 0.87 ERA with a 29.4 percent strikeout rate, a 9.4 percent walk rate and a 48.1 percent ground-ball rate. Richards’ fastball averaged 94.2 mph out of the rotation, and that’s jumped to 95.0 mph in the ’pen — 95.3 mph since Sept. 1. Richards has also seen gains in swinging-strike rate (from 9.4 percent to 10.8 percent), opponents’ chase rate (27.9 percent to 34.5 percent), opponents’ average exit velocity (91.6 mph to 89.4 mph) and an overwhelming drop in his opponents’ barrel rate — from 9.3 percent all the way down to 1.9 percent. Since moving to a relief role, he’s allowed just one “barreled” ball, as measured by Statcast, and he has yet to surrender a home run.

Yankees players are supposed to either get better or maintain an elite level, otherwise it's underperforming!

"Supposed to." LOL

Sale has a 120 OPS against LHB this year.

They are going to try to lean heavily on Sale and Eovaldi down the stretch rather than give them extra games off. That's what I've heard anyway.

Yes, I think a great bullpen has the "closer" and the "fireman." You need a guy that can just go out there and close out games (Urbina, Kimbrel, Paplebon), but you also need that relief ace that can come in and just shut down a dangerous situation at any point in the game.

I couldn't find the origins of "closer" as a baseball term. I think the first guy to exclusively be used as a one inning reliever was Bruce Sutter. Tony gets a lot of credit for making baseball games infernally long, but Cubs manager Herman Franks really started the damn thing with Sutter. Even John Franco was a "closer" before Eck was put into that role in 1988.

OTM's look at the FCL season: https://www.overthemonster.com/2021/9/20/22683326/boston-red-sox-top-prospects-marcelo-mayer-blaze-jordan-wilkelman-gonzalez-paulino-encarnacion Eddinson Paulino, INF Paulino is not a big name in this system, though he did get a six-figure bonus out of the Dominican Republic as part of the 2018 signing class. Spending most of his time at third base this year, while also getting time at second and a little at shortstop, he was a monster at the plate. Paulino finished his season hitting .336/.436/.549, showing total control of the strike zone while also making consistently hard contact. Juan Daniel Encarnacion, RHP Encarnacion had a solid enough pro debut in the DSL, but he took things to another level at the complex this year. He finished his season with a 2.96 ERA with a 30 percent strikeout rate and a six percent walk rate. The long ball proved to be a bit of an issue, but his ability to miss bats was surprising and catapulted him to an impressive run. Phillip Sikes, OF The team’s 18th round pick out of TCU, it was clear he was just far too advanced for FCL competition, but there just wasn’t room for him to play at Salem. And so he was left on the complex, and he just destroyed the league. He finished his season hitting .293/.462/.622.

Roenicke should have just told ERod to get better and figured out how to make Mazza and Weber into MLB pitchers!

https://community.fangraphs.com/solving-adam-ottavino/ When Ottavino’s sliders miss glove-side to lefties, they hang up, right in the middle of a lefty’s bat path. Ottavino’s other big miss is a yanked slider, which has become the root cause of his walk rate. It is a different story for righties; when Ottavino misses the initial glove-side target, the slider is still far enough away from a righty batter (in most cases) in which they would either swing right over it, make weak contact to the right side, or take it for a ball. Despite having 8.1 inches above average of horizontal break, Ottavino has had a -6 run value from his slider in 2021. If you look at Ottavino’s best years from an ERA standpoint, you notice that his two seasons with the Yankees in 2018 and 2019 were elite. A critical difference between those campaigns and the current one is his pitch repertoire. Although most of it has stayed the same, he has almost stopped throwing his cutter entirely. In 2018 and 2019, he threw his cutter 9.8% and 13.8%, respectively. In 2021 he has thrown it just 1.9% of the time. This is notable because his cutter is essentially a shorter, tighter version of his slider that would seemingly be easier to control. On top of that, in 2018 and 2019, his cutter produced a whiff percentage of almost 50% and nearly 40%, respectively. Also, in 2018 his cutter had 6.1 horizontal inches of break, or 3.6 inches above average (143% break above average). It wasn’t nearly as good in 2019 but was still respectable at 3.2 inches of horizontal break, 1.2 inches above average. Ottavino has thrown his cutter 20 times in 2021 and it has had a similar break to 2019. If Ottavino were to increase his cutter usage, he could have a complementary put-away pitch that could be an excellent 1-2 punch when combined with a slider that fools batters. Given that they move in the same direction, hitters would have to make an early decision whether to swing based on whether they think the ball will stay in the zone or not.

Yorke will also most likely be moved off position to LF. If Downs repeats his 2021 performance, he's not a road block to anyone. Cannon is not very good. Koss is a low tier prospect. McDonough is probably a UTIL guy. He's not a 2B only profile.

Yes, if you replace your worst players with good players, you'll win more games. However, it's hard to say which players will see a downturn next season.

Madness and I like Richards as the closer down the stretch.

I thought it was the Red Sox doggie that didn't hunt?

3 of those guys will never make the bigs.

Good luck iortiz!

@SmittyOnMLB Boston Red Sox to use Tanner Houck out of bullpen during final postseason push; ‘Everything will be on the table’

@IanMBrowne Red Sox wearing their yellow City Connect jerseys all weekend that they wore Patriots Day weekend. Players wanted to wear them again. Why?

I thought it was dumb that Megatron turned into a gun. Made no damn sense.

The Eddie Gaedel hater has logged on.

These cares aren't THAT smart. Just smart enough to run over some meatbags. Just wait until the update that allows for cars to charge themselves. They'll no longer need humans. The future is the Cars universe. Ka-chow!