Here's a comment from FanGraphs that everyone is going to love:
From the 'After Dark Chat' on Tuesday:
9:12 Barry from Boston: The SP rotation after Price, slobs Panda and Handley, unproven Castillo and catchers. How can they be so highly regarded with this many holes?
9:13 Paul Swydan: Because there are potential solutions there. The Sox have a very wide beta. They could easily be a 98-win or 72-win team. Which I think is about 8-10 wins wider than the gap is for most teams.
So there you have it folks - anywhere from 72 to 98, per FanGraphs!
(I think the guy who asked the question may have been Jacko posing as a Sox fan.)
I don't think it's a stretch to say that the Sox have about $78 million riding on Panda's 2016 season. Because if he isn't an appreciably better player this year than he was last year, he's a writeoff.
Well, he was awful, but he wasn't quite that awful. His actual UZR for the games he played in was -17.8. The -31.9 is the number extrapolated to 150 games.
The thing is, though, they basically swapped Lester for Porcello, who they're paying 95 million for 5 years.
If they could have signed Lester for Homer Bailey+ money of 6 years, 110 to 120 million, they didn't save very much money at all.
So their bungling led to the departure of 2 pitchers who put up a combined fWAR of 8.6 in 2015.
That only leaves the question of how much of the blame for the bungling belongs to Ben, which we'll never know.