Bellhorn04

The loss of velocity was one thing. The frequent inability to get the ball over the plate was another.

Wishful thinking on Morse, I'd say. MLBTR says a bunch of other teams are interested in him. He'll be in another uniform by the time Napoli's deal is finalized next month.

I think, unfortunately, most people on here, including myself, are operating under the assumption that Bard is f***ed. If he's not it will be a bonus at this point.

That really is a talent.

Worth noting: Napoli was on the DL last year from approx mid-Aug to mid-Sept. When he returned, in his last 16 games he hit 7 dingers and had 16 RBI.

Same here.

Who's saying this? There's a new blurb in the Globe about the Sox being hopeful of finalizing the deal. I can't find any mention of arthritis anywhere.

I totally understand your position. I'm not trying to defend the front office. It may turn out that they completely f***ed up by passing on guys like Haren, McCarthy etc. I try to figure out why they did or didn't do things, for my own satisfaction I guess.

I think A. Sanchez was a better option, but many people including yourself feel he was prohibitively overpriced. We could go through every option there was, starting at Greinke, and in each case I believe we would find factors that would stop it from being a slam-dunk 'yes, do it'.

One problem that I see here is that you can't necessarily make a direct comparison between major league baseball and other businesses. Major league baseball is an economy unto itself. The human resources available are limited, their performance is uncertain and their price and risk level can be prohibitive. Anibal Sanchez was one almost certain way of upgrading our pitching. But I believe that you yourself said that passing on him was the correct move because he was so overpriced.

a) I said it looked like a bad deal. I was responding to Dojji's comments about the deal being 'stupid' because it 'created a need'.

I agree it looks like a bad deal, but at the time it was made Reddick seemed like the odd guy out in the outfield. They obviously preferred Kalish for RF and of course Crawford was LF.

I agree that the quality start is a somewhat crude stat, and it could stand to be refined a bit. I think it has some usefulness though. To me the quality start % is what matters. With regard to the 4.50 ERA, again I agree but I think you have to keep in mind that 3 in 6 is the bare minimum. If a pitcher throws 20 quality starts in a season, he'll usually have an ERA much less than 4.50 in those starts.

With golfers I think it's very much an individual thing and I'm guessing it's the same with pitchers. I think drawing comparisons between the two is fair because in both cases we're dealing with repeating mechanical motions. I have no doubt at all that certain golfers like Tiger are very much affected by their instructors. Tiger of course has changed instructors and changed swings several times. Many of these pro golfers are constantly making adjustments to their mechanics. Then there are other golfers like Lee Trevino and Bubba Watson who are totally self-taught and refuse instruction. I am guessing a lot of this also holds true for major league pitchers.

The value of a pitching coach, like the value of a catcher who is a 'good game-caller', or the manager himself, is difficult to measure so it invites skepticism. But I don't see how anybody can deny that it's possible for someone who is good at their trade to have a positive impact. I took a couple of golf lessons this year for the first time ever. I had always been skeptical about their value. But the instructor immediately noticed that I had the weight on my feet too far back on my heels. Changing this one little thing made a huge improvement for me.

You're right, you have to do this exercise with each pitcher and when you do you see a lot of variances. But as with many other baseball stats, at the end of the year you have averages which are the bottom line number. The difference between Salty's average and the Varitek/Shoppach average, plus the difference in W-L records, over 2 full seasons now, is so gigantic that can't be explained away.

I was thinking about this, and I started thinking about the pitching staff of the 2004 champs. I went through all the starters and relievers, and holy crap, not a single member of this great staff was a home-grown product. Well, no, that's not quite true, we drafted Schilling but he only actually pitched for us his final few years. Crazy.

So ridiculous how long this is dragging on. Must be in the hands of a committee of Cherington, Napoli's agent and a couple of lawyers.

What the board should never do is divide up into the Pollyanna party and the Pessimist party or whatever. Everybody should just have their say without being labelled.

We should have a moratorium on comments on Nava. For some reason this guy provokes some strong reactions for and against and some really pointless arguments.

Baseball-Reference pitcher splits, toward the end. You can get these for the pitcher's career as well. Here's the link to the 2012 splits for Buchholz. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=buchhcl01&year=2012&t=p Also noted that Buch had a solid 3.79 ERA with Lavarnway catching.

The best possible scenario is to have a lot of cheap young talent. If you keep treating your prospects as trade chips, like Anthony Rizzo, you will never have that scenario. The Red Sox are finally trying to show some patience here.

Sorry, I just don't have the time or energy right now to do that.

It's true that you shouldn't just use the conglomerated CERA numbers of Salty vs. Varitek or Shoppach, you have to break it down by each pitcher. But consider Lester and Buch for 2012: Lester with Shoppach 3.70 48.2 innings Lester with Salty 5.62 107.1 innings Buch with Shoppach 3.23 78 innings Buch with Salty 6.30 75.2 innings As to the whys and wherefores of the problems with Salty, there are a lot of varying opinions on this. There was a report last year that the Red Sox brass did a sort of survey of the players on why the team's W-L record was so bad with Salty catching, and nobody seemed to have any clear ideas. One thing to keep in mind is that all it takes is one or two pitches per game to have a huge effect on things. One pitch that goes the wrong way can result in multiple runs. Another consideration is that Salty's performance might vary from game to game, inning to inning. Maybe he just loses focus sometimes. Also, maybe the pitchers are aware of all these numbers and have less confidence when throwing to Salty. There are a lot of possibilities, but in my opinion, the numbers over two years add up to Salty being a significant problem.

I'm not kidding myself. I know you could be right, that the pitching could be a disaster again. I'm hoping it's not that way, as I know you are too.