jung

Where we seem to be differing here is that you want to discuss league averages and my point all along has been that your #1 and #2 pitchers have to exceed league averages and that they particularly have to exceed them for innings per start. As for wins and losses, wins and losses are the least accurate means to measure a pitcher. However when it comes to your #1 and #2 pitchers, they are supposed to be good enough to out-dual the competition. If your team has a weak offense the guys at the top of your rotation have to overcome that deficit. That is why they are there. They are not there to build up stats! The whole thing of stats has gotten completely out of control. Nobody goes to the WS because their pitcher has the best ERA and their clean up hitter has the best OPS. The expectation for the guys at the top of your rotation is that they will do what it takes to gain a win. A #1 or #2 pitcher can overcome that if his ERA and SO/BB and other orders of measure are extraordinarily good but I mean off the charts good. However if those stats are not truly extraordinary, then losses will matter. That is why ultimately wins and losses still matter in Cy Young voting. May not be fair but it is an issue. The reason is simple. Cy Young voting exclusively involves top pitchers and like it or not the expectation is that they measure themselves by being able to overcome the other team's strengths AND their own team's weaknesses. That is clearly not something you expect of your 4 and your 5, nor your 3 for that matter. However it is still the expectation for your 1 and 2 and if you asked them, that is exactly what they would tell you.

Actually 3 runs over 7 innings is a 3.875 ERA. I should not have tried to do that short hand. However, if you are not going to consider the Twins ineptitude as relevant then you can't consider the Rangers and their aptitude as relevant either.

Before I forget it, the real flaw in a logic path that says 6 inning performances by your #2 starter can be characterized as either good or great is that it suggests that your #4 starter can just slot right into the #2 spot. Who cares...Hell Felix will give you 6 innings day in and day out...must be a #2 starter. Certainly neither your 1 or your 2 can be satisfied by 6 inning starts. The very notion that either your 1 or your 2 will give you the same number of innings per start as your 4 or your 5 taxes the pen to a point beyond realistic expectation. Calling any start of any magnitude by your #1 or 2 "good" when they can only stay out there for 6 innings is ridiculous as that sort of logic path would doom your pen. The very best you could possibly characterize any start by your 1 or your 2 where he was only able to go 6 innings would be mediocre at best. If you start at mediocre and the number of innings pitched also correlates to an ERA around 3.5 then now you are bordering on the margin between mediocre and bad. If your team eventually lost the game in question, then you are no longer on the border of mediocre and bad, you have had a bad start. Now if in fact we want to consider, Beckett our #1 starter, then you have burdened Beckett with an even greater hurdle from the perspective of expectations for innings pitched, ERA and eventual wins cause your#1 cannot under any circumstances tax the pen. At the end of the day that is why #1 pitchers who are really #1 pitchers stay out on the mound even when they are going badly because the very first order of consideration for a #1 is innings pitched and therefore innings saved from the pen. Frankly expectations for your #2 can be a bit less but not by much and certainly nowhere near what you will accept from a #4. Which brings me back to the top of this post. Under NO circumstances can a start by your #2 starter or your #1 starter ever be categorized as good or great if you they are off the mound after 6 innings. And as for using the easy rationalization that pitch count might drive a starter off the mound early in a start we rightfully blame the pitcher himself if his pitch count is up early in the game. He has failed to either find the strike zone enough or control the opposing hitters enough or both. So you can't use the pitch count as a rationalization for the pitcher leaving early. He is himself responsible for his pitch count!

No I am measuring him based on what my expectations would be for a #2 starter on a contending team which is what we continue to suggest here. Although as I had indicated earlier, now I don't know what to call Beckett since Lester has pitched so poorly that some now want to anoint Beckett the #1 pitcher on the staff. The Texas start yielded 3 ER over a 7 inning stretch which is a 4.28 ERA for a game that the Sox eventually lost. Sorry, not a good start. 3 earned runs over a 7 inning stretch in a game they lost???? Calling that a good start is a joke. Minn, a whopping 6 innings pitched...boy that saved the pen now didn't it. 2 ER and 3 BB for 6 innings against Minn. Lucky to call that mediocre. CWS, Again a real pen saver there. 2 ER, 6 innings pitched, 3 walks given up in an eventual losing effort. As for some of my good starts you call great, how can you possibly call a 7 inning performance by the team's #2 starter a great start...good yes, great...no if you can get through 7 innings with no earned runs I will call that a great start by your #2 pitcher. What the hell is a great start anymore? Handing over the game with a "chance" to win...is that now the measure of a great start? Jesus....Gibson must be laughing his ass off. And by my count you totaled 7 good or great starts, not eight. You count 1 mediocre and 2 horrible starts even in your extremely forgiving characterizations.

What eight good starts are you talking about. Look the whole game log, game by game is posted at Baseball Reference. All you have to do is go look at it. I have, and I have posted my characterizations below. You find eight good starts out of that bunch. He has not had 8 great starts...he has not even had 8 good starts. I have no idea what you are looking at. I just don't. game by game: 4/7, Det, Horrible start 4/13, TBR, Great start 4/18, Tex, A bad start 4/24, Minn, A mediocre start (I am being kind here..Minn is terrible) 4/29, CWS, A bad start 5/10, Cleve, A horrible start 5/15, Seat, A great start 5/20, Phil, A good start 5/26, TBR, A good start 5/31, Det, A bad start I think I have been fair in judging these starts based on how Beckett pitched and if anything gave him credit for Minn when in fact they are barely a ML team. Every game is posted up at Baseball Reference. If you want to argue my characterizations, go ahead look at the data and see what you see. Is he trending in the right direction...appears to be. Is he out of the woods? Far from it. If he sticks another stinker on top of the Detroit start he will hardly be any better off today than he was a month ago?

Oh...OK so take a piece of time that suits you if you want....but in his last 5 starts he is 2-2 and 1 no decision with a 4.06 ERA over 31 innings pitched. That is more like an average of 6 innings per start. Sorry not what I expect from a 2 and way below expectation for a 1 if we are now going to demote Lester. Or we can go to Beckett's season totals which will make his ERA 4.26 and a 4-5 record over 10 starts but we don't want to do that do we cause we want to make believe the first start of the season did not happen. Regardless, Beckett so far of the three of them is a model of consistency which says more about the other two than it says about Beckett. The problem with all of this is that whenever even the best of the three of them gets close to getting over the hump, he tosses in a stinker and you are back to wondering how consistently the top three will pitch. Lester has not gotten even close yet, Beckett has been the closest and Buch has now gone past Lester and is closing in on Beckett as far as consistent performance is concerned but none of the three has really gotten there yet. They just haven't.

When you consider Buch's injury record, he not only has to pitch solidly, he has to stay off the DL, something he has not been able to accomplish very often in his career and it is the combination of inconsistent pitching performances and stints on the DL that have tarnished his career to date. He has had one good year, meaning a year that he pitched well and stayed off the DL. As such he is still more promise than he is proven performance. If you want to put it in perspective, this is why Buch is so close to the cliff edge even now. All he has to do to end up putting himself way back at square one is to end up with yet another stint on the DL this year....thats it...that is all it will take because now his track record IS to end up spending at least some part of each year on the DL and more often than not over the 15 day DL.

So sounds like you are ready to call that last start by Beckett a good start. If so your expectations for what you should get from a 2 on a contending team are far lower than mine. Not to mention that Lester has pitched so poorly that some folks on this board want to call Beckett our 1. Beckett did not control the other team at any time during the course of that game, a team that has been slumping and did not leave the game with his team leading a game that his team eventually lost. Sorry but that is not a good start...not terrible, maybe not even bad but certainly not good.

Please, two good starts even two great starts in a row do not an Ace make when those two starts are surrounded by such mediocrity. These guys at the top of our rotation have a long way to go to prove they can get it done. Not saying they can't prove it but they have not to date. 4 and 5 in this rotation has absolutely saved our bacon as between them they have not had more than one disappointing start...that by Bard. However, it is very very unusual to have your 4 and 5 be the models of consistency for your rotation. Hard to imagine they can keep that up. More power to them if they can but they are the stars of this rotation to date, while not being Aces. While this is a great start for Buch not more than two weeks ago this entire board was ready to send him down to work out his s***, rightfully so I might add. So it is a bit early to be calling anything Buch does Ace-like just yet.

It is the starting pitching that fits the "mediocre" description so far. Simply not consistent enough 1 through 3 and that has been the most significant team dynamic to date. This will be the first time Buch has put together two "good" starts in a row (meaning good for a 3). Lester has not put even two in a row together yet. Beckett has put two in a row together but not three. Doubront and Bard have been far more consistent in that regard but consistency down at the 4 and 5 don't yield as much benefit as those guys are not going to be able to give you as many innings. Those three guys at the top of the rotation have got to pitch better on a more consistent basis for this team to really make ground in what is a very tough division. We have gone on an absolute rip the last couple of weeks and are still in the basement. Yes the division has tightened up and I expect it will be tight all year. However we are due to come off this peak period and some of the other guys are now due to go on a bit of a run themselves. That is going to force us to sustain it and the only way to do that will be if 1,2 and 3 in the rotation pitch with more consistency.

The truly woeful teams in the AL are in the Central and West, teams like Royals and Twins. It will be much easier to come out of the West or Central as a WC than it will be to come out of the East. I don't think there will be more than one WC team coming out of the East if that.

Wow there pumps...I don't think that is quite right. Since the Sox got over .500, the AL East is the only div in baseball with every team over .500. So I think it is both a good and a tough division. The problem for the AL East teams is that the good Central and West teams will have weaker teams to beat up on and will post records accordingly. That will make it tough to come out of the East as a WC team. Winning the division is going to be a tall order.

Alvarez has really not been able to get any of the LH hitters out tonight

That was a very good inning from Buch...he is not far from ending up with two good starts in a row....first time this year for him if he can pull it off.

Buch has had Batista all screwed up. That was not a great curve ball but Buch has got Batista twisted in knots.

Nava kind of amazing when you think about it...got onto a ten game white hot streak in Pawtucket and has basically not missed a beat since coming up.

Buch has always been kinda streaky. He can get into these groves where he can keep the ball down and his pitches are much more effective...and he can get ground ball outs....

Buch's change is an effective pitch when he keeps it down.

Buck just gives up the homer and is still up in the zone

Dinger....Would be nice if we could get one of these three guys in the rotation to keep the ball down now and again.

Oh Goody....another Red Sox starter trying to live up in the zone...just want I wanted.

I actually think baseball reference has more interesting splits that you can get to within a click or two. Fangraphs is very good though. Agons having trouble with the FB is not encouraging at all. The only thing worse than one CC is two CC's at a combined $40M per year.

Ortiz is positively carrying these guys right now.

We need to look at this the way other teams have looked at us when we wanted the middle aged star who has had some injury issues but who filled a hole in our championship plans. As fans we tend to look at this from the perspective of wins and that is not what any of this is about. This is about fanny's in seats. Put Youk on one of these teams living currently off the second WC and suddenly attendance likely gets real sporty. Whoever it is that trades for Youk needs to overpay for him. If not I would not do the deal. A solid front line starting pitcher straight up for Youk is not going to happen. But if we are going to get a starting pitcher out of a Youk+ deal, it better damn well be the right starting pitcher. If not then I would maybe take a front line player plus really solid, ready in 2013, 2014 pitching prospects....the other team pays all of Youk's salary. Something like that might work. I think the clock is ticking on Lester and Buch and even Beckett to some extent and the Sox are going to be needing to fill holes in 1,2 3 of the rotation before to long mainly because Lester and Buch are just not getting it done and I don't see any reason to suspect they are going to turn that around any time soon. My preference would be for the solid front line starting pitcher now in a Youk+ deal as long as it was the right pitcher.

I am not sure Garza blows my dress up either. I will repeat here what I said in the other thread...the Sox need to come out of whatever deal they do for Youk decidedly having gotten more back than they gave up....period. If they can't go there, then don't go anywhere. I don't see how the Sox should be paying Youk's salary at this point...he proved he can play...even nine games takes that off the table in my view unless there is so much coming back for Youk in cost controlled players/prospects that paying part of Youks salary makes sense. Garza might blow up in my face which is why I would be leery of that one. Again I want a decided win in value and I am not sure Garza gets me there.