Bellhorn04

My #1 fantasy for this year is that JBJ can put up an OPS of .725 or more. That would be an enormous boost to the team.

Here's what you do with Buchholz and Kelly: 1) Put Buch in the rotation and Kelly on the phantom DL until the end of June. 2) At the end of June, trade Buch and bring Kelly off the phantom DL to replace him in the rotation.

I agree, that wouldn't be a very credible opinion at this point.

I'm just not sure what the projections tell us that we don't already know. Everyone knows the Sox have a lot of talent - on paper. Look at how far off the projections were on the Royals last year. They completely missed the boat.

Haha...or it could be 30!

Pablo is losing it! Some of it anyway... http://www.csnne.com/boston-red-sox/boston-red-sox-manager-john-farrell-says-pablo-sandoval-has-lost-20-pounds

Don't just buy into preseason Red Sox hype Michael Silverman January 20, 2016 Red Sox fans, there’s a lesson tucked away in this winter storm on the way for the weekend. Depending on which forecast you believe in for what will happen Saturday — it’s another snowmageddon or a dusting, take your pick — you’re either already at Market Basket staring at empty bread shelves or you’ve got your fingers crossed that as long as you have some chips and beer for Sunday’s Patriots game, you’re all set. The fact is, nobody knows nothing — yet. The storm’s still too far away, and meteorology still is not exact enough to pinpoint much. There are too many variables in play, too much data has yet to be collected and digested before the widely varying models converge and the storm’s course, size, strength and total dump can be determined before it comes and goes. So remember all that before placing too much stock into any and all baseball projections — especially those focused on teams rather than individual players — that are starting to pop up with more and more frequency this month. Many, if not all of them, are going to be quite bullish on the 2016 Red Sox. The first major projection came out last week from FanGraphs, which has the Red Sox with 92 wins, most in the American League and second in the majors behind the Chicago Cubs (95). Before we all swipe right on the Sox, let’s all take a moment to stand down. There are certainly many good reasons to be bullish on the Red Sox, and there’s fun to be had, especially while wearing sweaters in the house and staring at the snow outside, trying to understand why the projections on the team will be so rosy. Just don’t let yourself fall into the trap of believing that mid-January projections will bear a strong resemblance to what the standings will look like on the last day of the season. The storm’s not even on the near horizon. “When looking at pre-season team projections, it’s probably best to look at them as being something like +/- 10 wins,” David Cameron, managing editor of FanGraphs, wrote in an email yesterday. “An 85-win team should win somewhere between 75-95. That’s obviously a huge spread, but neither 75 nor 95 wins would be all that unusual historically for a team with an 85-win projection. The error bars on these things are very large.” Cameron and the crew at FanGraphs just report the numbers their formulae spit out. They don’t take them as gospel. As Cameron wrote when the projections were released, “It’s hard not to see (the Red Sox) as likely to be a bit better, though I’d take the under on the idea that they’re the second-best team in baseball at the moment.” Cameron expects skepticism about this year’s Red Sox outlook, considering how far off FanGraphs and others were with 2015 preseason projections. They had the Red Sox with 87 wins and a first-place finish in the AL East, with the Royals finishing third in the AL Central with 78 wins. The Red Sox finished in last place with 78 wins, within the 10-win margin of error, while the Royals won 95 games and the World Series. Baseball Prospectus, which has not yet published its highly anticipated 2016 team projections, also had the Red Sox in first place in the AL East with 88 wins last year and the Royals with 73 and fourth in the AL Central.

I think the only guy who went on record was former player Aubrey Huff. But he ripped Pablo pretty good. Pablo certainly didn't do himself any favors ripping his former team like that. He needs to get his act together, that's for sure.

But I can't see where anyone has been negative about us acquiring Price.

The Reds are inducting him into the team's Hall of Fame.

So: does it make any sense for the Sox to deploy Betts in center and JBJ in right at home, and JBJ in center and Betts in right on the road? And out of curiosity, have any other teams ever utilized home/road shifts like this?

This would be more of a contest - man against machine - like Kasparov playing chess against the computer.

Which brings me back to the question of how much better the projections can do than a decently-informed fan. It might be fun for some web site to try this - enlist a few fans to try their luck against the projections.

I am very skeptical of the value of preseason baseball projections. I don't think they have a great track record. Red Sox projections for the last 5 years have been wildly inaccurate. That has certainly been a factor in souring me on them.

He did pitch much better in his 8 games after returning to the rotation, for whatever reason.

Castillo did show potential, but at the end of the day he had an OPS of .647 and an fWAR of 0.4.

If Hanley can't play first, there's not much they can do with him, except maybe use him as an expensive 1B/DH platoon option, and wait until 2017 when he replaces Papi as full time DH.

Remains to be seen IMO.

For me a question that arises is: how much better are the projections than what a decently informed baseball could do, based on a review of last year's standings and the offseason transactions? You don't need any fancy projection systems to know that St. Louis and the Cubs are going to be at least 30 games better than Milwaukee and Cincy again this year.

Toss in Castillo and it was a $340 million Golden Sombrero. The 4 had a combined fWAR in 2015 of -1.8. We can only hope for much better results this year.

The 'enigma' factor is that some guys really do fall off a cliff when they come to Boston. Renteria and Crawford were prior examples.

Man, it really hurts that Rosenthal nailed it at the time.

He may not have blue eyes, but he has crazy eyes. Those are good too.

I don't dispute that he's in decline phase or that injuries are a concern. But let's not overstate things either. From 2011 to 2014 he played in 595 games, or 149 games a season. And he finished in the top 10 in MVP voting twice in those 4 years.