SoxFanForsyth

Melancon certainly could put up better numbers, but he wouldn't have put up those numbers at Fenway. A lot of people won't realize that, though, and Ben the Boob comments will be flying

Why would Salty be involved? The Pirates just signed Russell Martin

Garrett Jones hit .289/.332/.556 vs RHP last year. In his career, he's a .279/.348/.504 hitter vs RHP. He'd be a fantastic addition, exactly what the Sox are looking for, a versatile LH hitting 1B.

Looks like its Pimental and Sands for Hanrahan. You can't possibly be upset with this move from a Red Sox perspective.

Looking at his game logs, he walked 2 guys in 8 of his 63 appearances, and 3 guys in 1 of his 63 appearances. So, in 54 of his 63 appearances, he walked 1 or 0 batters. He threw 59.2 IP and walked a total of 36 batters. The funny thing with relievers is that they throw so few innings that sometimes peripherals don't have time to normalize. For example if he had missed/bad calls on even 5 of those walks, his BB/9 drops by 0.7 to 4.7/9. I'm not justifying it at all, because it was horrid. I'm just saying that the amount of games that are actually impacted by his walks were not nearly as bad as his BB/9 would make you think.

“@JimBowdenESPNxm: Pirates source confirms Joel Hanrahan will be dealt to Red Sox and in fact Jerry Sands is part of the deal as speculated by @JonHeymanCBS” Looks like he's coming to Boston. If Sands is the centerpiece, it's a steal for the Sox. Well see if his control issues persist or if they were an aberration. Either way, certainly a gamble worth taking if you just have to give up a fringe guy. Hanrahans upside is tremendously greater than Sands.

Eh results??? He's got a 2.24 ERA over 133 games over the past 2 seasons. That's durable and extremely effective. Heyman reporting that one of the names could be Sands. I wonder if they would be interested in Melancon, who had terrific success in Houston (ie in the NL) and isn't a FA until 2017? Jerry Sands + Mark Melancon?

I think you may be overvaluing our guys and undervaluing Hanrahan. I think whoever gets dealt will be on the 40 man roster. The roster is full with Uehara, Napoli, and Drew already waiting to be added. Plus Hanrahan.

“@JimBowdenESPNxm: What would be fair return for Hanrahan? I think Iglesias straight up would make sense....possibly Bryce Brentz & Henry Owens?” Count Bowden in on that thought. And Heyman has already reported that Iggy is not in the deal. Kalish + Cecchini perhaps? Or Morales + Alex Wilson?

Bazinga.

Actually Cano had a decent year but is an average to below average defender for his career: -30.8 career UZR -3.8 career UZR/150 rTOT/yr (Baseball Refs UZR) - 5 2012: 9.7 UZR 9.2 UZR/150 10 rTOT 9 rTOT/ year Pedroia 2012 10.0 UZR 10.8 UZR/150 11 rTOT 11 rTOT/year Pedroia was better in every aspect of defense by both metrics. He should have won the GG, but like I said, its a BS award, which is why Jeter had any at all.

To be fair, if Lester goes back to an 18 win, 3.50 era pitcher and Buch goes back to a 15-17 win, 3.70 era pitcher, which is what 'bouncing back' would be to me, then this team is an absolute contender. Toss in a stupid good bullpen, assuming they add Hanrahan, very good SP depth via prospects, not retreads in AAA (Webster, Workman, De La Rosa), and you've got a contender. Regardless of what the Sox did this offseason, this team goes no where without Lester and Buch being the pitchers they can be. They don't need career years. Just a solid year, back of the baseball card.

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/mlb-rumors/21435848/report-pirates-targeting-dee-gordon-and-jose-iglesias-in-talks-for-joel-hanrahan There's the report that everyone is looking at. From what I recall, the Dodgers say that they have to get a monster return for Dee Gordon to trade him. My guess is that the Sox get Hanrahan, and the Dodgers sign Soriano.

Yeah I think a deal will get done with this. Sounds like an offer that the Sox would strike on quickly.

110% agree. I just don't see any options worth pursuing this year, so I think they had to kind of alter their plans, think outside of the box, and create less exposure to the SP and more exposure to a very strongly built bullpen. That's what it looks like so far at least. Bank on a couple of very high caliber arms that have proven to be effective in the majority of their careers in Lester and Buch, bank on them bouncing back. I also think that Farrell has some say in this, I.e. Cherrington may ask if he thinks Lester's or Buchs stuff has diminished enough that they can't count on them to lead the staff, or if he feels like they are just a couple tweaks away from being Cy Young contenders again.

As of right now, I think the strategy is to build the pen, and here's why. ERA in the 7th inning last year: Lester: 7.02 Buchholz: 6.23 Doubront: 11.57 They seem to be trying to bolster the bullpen so that these fires can be put out this year without allowing all of the inherited runners to score. So they are working on getting some arms who can put out fires and keep the team in games when the starters begin to falter. I'm not saying I agree with this strategy. But I can certainly see how this is the strategy they're taking. Also, they could move a combination of Ellsbury, Bailey, Salty, and some prospects and get a SP in return.

So did Cano, which completely negates any merit that the GG once had.

Well with Drew up this year, Ciriaco for depth, and Bogaerts looking more and more like he's going to stick at SS (Keith Law went from 0% chance before this season to 50/50 in a recent chat), if they can get Hanrahan, by all means, do it. And if he works, extend him. The Sox are going to have a disgusting good bullpen with Uehara, Hanrahan, Bailey, Tazawa, Breslow, Miller, and Bard/Aceves. Perhaps the best pen in the league.

Uh....not really. Considering he is a FA in 2014, walked 5.4/9 in 2012, and won't be offered a qualifying offer and thus won't net a pick after next year, Iglesias is about all they'd get.

Fangraphs splits

Now, a LD should result in a hit 71% of the time. In 347 balls in play, a bump of 2.9% in LD at home (22.9% in 2012) is 10 more LD's. 10 LD's times 71% = 7 more hits. Take out those 7 knocks, and his BABIP was still .323, a bump of 12 points from his career norm. Not to mention that its not just flat out 7 more hits, because the extra 2% of Ld replaced something else (GB or FB) which still resulted in hits, just not as often. The most likely scenario is that the increase resulted in 4-5 hits, and his BABIP would have still been .328-.330

In 2011, his LD% at home was 19.4%. In his career, it is 20%. In 2012, it was 22%. Look at his splits man. It's simple. He's got a career 20% LD% at home with a career .311 BABIP. His LD% going up to 22% does not translate into his BABIP increasing to .341. It doesn't add up.

Wow Jackso. Just unreal. I thought you understood sabermetrics. First off, his LD went up by a mere 2%. His career LD% at home was 20%. He posted a 22% this year. That's 2% in 347 total balls in play against him at home. Yes. 7 more line drives makes him a terrible pitcher all of a sudden. Argument nullified. You argue that his HR/FB should be affected by his FB%? Maybe look into this because you clearly don't understand that. The disparity between cutter and FB doesn't make it a less effective pitch. In fact, the decrease in disparity would make it appear more like a fastball than a cutter and would make it MORE effective. The reason his cutter sucked was because he lost horizontal movement. His cutter lost almost 3 inches of horizontal drop from 2011 to 2012. So please spare me with this 'schooling' because its ********. I've looked up a lot of information on him, much more than you have to create a thread blaming the Fenway Bugaboo. The reason his ERA blew up was because of a horrid strand rate. The reason his strand rate plummeted was because of an unsustainably high BABIP. BABIPs are completely out of the pitchers hands. His HR/FB and HR/9 were complete aberrations. Getting his stuff to play again, ie getting more swings and misses on out of the zone pitches, ie getting more downward action on his cutter, is just a case of getting his mechanics figured out, something that Farrell will be able to do. His results last year were partially based on having a decreased amount of control in the strike zone, but also a large part was due to ******** luck.

Per usual, Jackso refuses to dispute proper statistics that prove his home splits were a fluke.

The Yankees have an injury plagued team. Jeter coming off an ankle injury. Ask Stephen Drew how that goes. ARod out until July. Replaced by Youk, who is barely league average. Pettitte hasn't started more than 21 games since 2009. Hughes has a career 4.4 era and has been average or below average in each of the past 3 seasons. You've got a RF who hasn't posted a .700 OPS since 2010. And Phelps threw what, 100 innings last year? What are you expecting from him. The Yankees are a very old, injury prone team who counts on the long ball too much. The Orioles went 16-2 in extra inning games and went 29-9 in 1 run games. Complete and utter fluke season. Saying the Rays, who lost 230 innings of 3.52 era baseball, are going to be in it because they're scrappy is lazy and inaccurate. The Jays are very solid and are my pick right now. But that doesn't mean that the entire division is solid. Not by any means. This is by far and away the most open I've seen this division in a long time. A slew of 82-88 win teams. 90 could very well win the East.