evilhand

What's interesting about your list above is that of the aces, Beckett is tied with or having a better season than Felix Hernandez and Tim Lincecum in WAR, and is ahead of Peavy in xFIP. Your "near aces" list includes Greinke who is better than most of guys you list as aces ranking 2nd in WAR and 1st in xFIP, plus he has the history to support a claim as an ace, including his Cy Young year which was the best season pitched since Pedro in 2000. People ding him because he's diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and is medicated, despite the fact that he's one of the most talented pitchers in the game. Sale, Morrow, Gio and Hellickson don't have the track record to support a claim of anything more than "they are young and look really good so far." In other words, your list is a great example of perception influencing opinions, and how recent success can trump long runs of success. I could make a reasonable argument for Beckett over at least 40% of the guys you listed above. And coincidentally, Brandon Morrow just hurt himself while I was typing this and was pulled off the mound in the middle of an at bat.

I figured he was referring to a specific place he thought he knew me from, lol. Oh well.

Actually, since returning Youk has a .338 OBP. Middlebrooks is at .341 since being called up. So about equal. And this is with Youk struggling a little in the last 10 or so days. I'll grant you that Youk was far worse against sliders last year than he's shown this year, but again we have to wonder how much his injury impacted that. In 2010 he was at 5.3 (pitchfx version of the stat... 4.5 under the flat value stat). Middlebrooks has yet to show he can hit a major league slider. So it all comes down to how much you think Youk struggling has been injuries and how much is him declining. And look, I'm not saying Middlebrooks hasn't been good. I can see as well as everyone else that he's been good. He warmed up again in the middle of May and has hit .323/.364/.452 since the 17th. I'm sold on him as the 3rd baseman of the future and I've even changed my mind about holding onto Youk for the stretch and now think trading him could absolutely be the right thing to do. But accepting that means accepting that he has to play since the team is not going to give him away for nothing and his value is only going to go up if he plays enough to show he's healthy and effective. I think that presents more than enough reasoning for him to be in the lineup tonight... or maybe Bobby V has a feeling (wouldn't shock me if it was that simple with him).

Not sure who you're referring to or what STFU is, but whatever. I doubt I'll convince you I'm not who you think I am. I certainly wouldn't consider myself a pollyanna, though. I see plenty wrong with this team and can absolutely conceive of a scenario where they don't make the playoffs this year. I'm also a pretty big detractor of Bobby V, can't stand Larry L, am concerned that Henry seems less and less involved in the day to day operations of the team, think that Aceves is a poor option for a closer and is bound to lose the job, hate the Lackey contract and don't think he can every pitch well enough to be worth it, even when he gets healthy... I could go on, but suffice it to say, the Sox aren't perfect. Hell, I just made a post arguing that the Nationals might be a better team right now in yesterday's game thread. Anyway, glad you're accepting. Which wager do you want to go with? $20 to the Jimmy Fund? or a sig bet? I'm good with either, or both if you're feeling rambunctious.

Youk's wSL is -0.8 while Middlebrooks is at -1.2. Neither guy hits them well, but Youk is less of a liability versus them by about 50%.

And I'm saying you can make a reasonable argument that we're not.

I don't think anyone was expecting a sweep, but you could make an argument for the Nats being better than the Red Sox right now. Especially taking injuries into account. With Harper living up to the hype, an excellent young starting rotation and a solid bullpen, they could be one of the best teams in the majors. Tip your cap to good team that played well against us. It happens.

Middlebrooks has trouble with sliders and Johnson's best pitch is his slider.

But no one controls the inside portion of the plate like Pedro did. That's why he's Pedro. Complaining that they don't have anyone like Pedro is like complaining that we don't have anyone like Verlander. These guys come along once in a blue moon. They're generational talents. The idea of an "ace" is fluid and it's fluid for a reason. There are no specific criteria and it will change from person to person when you ask the question. What matters is performance, not arm chair psychology, not a willingness to throw at guys to back them off the plate. Josh Beckett had, arguably, his best season in Boston in 2011. At worst, it was a close second to 2007. His peripherals have been consistent from year to year and most years his more basic stats look like those of a front of the rotation starter. He's not Verlander. He's not Pedro. But that doesn't mean he's not a number 1. Right now, he's the number 1 for the Sox. Performance from year to year varies, even among guys we all consider aces from other clubs. Look at Lincecum this year. By a quick glance it looks like he's having an awful year. Some people are even questioning if he's hurt, or even if he's starting to decline. But his peripherals are steady and his FIP and xFIP indicate that he's having some poor luck and/or defense impact him, and a .335 BABIP against versus a career .296 back that up. Will he no longer be an ace next year because he had a year that looked worse than it was this year? No, he's still likely to be their best starter and one of the best in the game in 2013 unless there's an elbow or shoulder injury there that hasn't surfaced yet. So when you say he's not an ace, what you're really saying is he's not as good as you want him to be. And that's common among the fanbase right now. I think we were spoiled by having Pedro around here, and then Curt Schilling and his post season dominance which carried over into 2004 and couldn't even be stopped by a torn ligament in his ankle. It was an incredible run of great pitching, but that's not typical and we need to get it out of our heads that a guy like Beckett isn't an ace. Let me ask you a question... if you had to list every ace pitcher in the majors right now, who would they be?

I'm not arguing that they don't, but you took the position that your measure of ace make up is being able to decide to carry the team on his back and throw a complete game because the team needs it. That's a ridiculous statement to make. I don't think make up should be ignored, and neither do the Red Sox. But there's a difference between considering mental make up, and simply making up unmeasurable and, frankly, impossible criteria as the measure of an ace.

This presumes that it's possible for a pitcher, any pitcher to simply decide to pitch a complete game on any given night. That's just not how it works. If it was, the best in the game would always throw a complete game. The mental toughness argument is nothing more than armchair psychology. If there was any truth to what you suggest above, why didn't Verlander go 9 in his last start? The team had lost 5 of their last 7 and they had an even worse record than the Red Sox (still do). He only went 6 innings that night, so he must lack the mental fortitude to simply decide that the team needs a complete game so it's time for him to go 9. Right? Do you see why this line of reasoning is so weak?

So the fact that they haven't traded Youk is evidence that the front office is a mess and can't get on the same page? That's beyond a logical leap. It's pure fantasy. As for Youk's return, the only way they're going to get a maximized return (what ever that is), is to leverage him to the best of their ability. The best way to do that is to wait out teams that are hoping Ben will blink first, and to play him to demonstrate that he is healthy and can still hit. Your desire to move him is in direct conflict with your desire to sit him. I don't understand how you can keep ignoring that. Ben will get more for him closer to the deadline for no reason other than the deadline is approaching and teams that need to make moves will have to give in somewhat or decide to move on without picking up an impact player.

The mental toughness arguments always ring hollow with me. It takes a ton of mental toughness to make the majors in the first place. And then guys go on runs where they are really good or dominant and no one says anything about them being mentally weak, but as soon as they struggle or show the slightest loss of composure, the armchair psychologists come out and claim he's a mental midget. Everyone struggles... especially young pitchers (he's 27 this year, so his 2008 was his 23). The whole thing gets overblown and isn't based on anything more tangible that people trying to diagnose him through a television screen. /shrug

I'm honestly growing worried that he may have re-injured his shoulder last year. Or, perhaps his injury has simply left him more prone to inflammation in the shoulder which will crop up from time to time going forward, which would really suck. But ever since the home run derby, he's just been a little off. He can still be an extremely valuable hitter, even if his home run power is sapped by his shoulder acting up, but it's definitely frustrating to watch him struggle to get into a groove this year. Of course, there have been no reports of him having a cortisone shot, so I realize my suggestion that he may have inflammation isn't supported by any reports. I just don't know what else might be going on. I mean, he's not striking out any more often than he has throughout his career. His career AB/SO is 4.9 and this season he's at 5.0. His career strikeout % is 18.0 and his season rate is 18.2. He's also seeing a similar amount of pitches per plate appearance to his career rate 3.83 vs 3.63. That's down a touch, and coupled with his drop in walk rate (career 11% down to 6.1% this year) it suggests he's being a bit more aggressive at the plate. Combined with the fact that his 48.2 AB/HR dwarfs his career mark of 20.2, I'm wondering if he's trying to slug his way out of the funk by getting away from his normal approach, which is just making the slump worse? His AB/RBI hasn't really suffered. 6.0 career, 7.5 in 2012, so even if you like RBI as a way to measure success for a slugger (I don't), he's still producing. He's just doing it in a way that looks bad. The whole thing is really weird.

Based on what? The playoffs are a crapshoot. Last year's Cardinals and the 2006 Cardinals are both great examples of how teams can stumble into the playoffs, get hot at the right time and win a title. If the Sox get to the playoffs, they have as good a shot as any other wild card, and almost as good a shot as the division winners (the new format does have an impact). If they can make the playoffs, they can win it all.

I think there's a chance Clay Buchholz might be in the process of becoming that dominant guy who gives you a chance against any lineup. His 2010 season was an interesting shift in his approach where he finally appeared to figure out how to go deep into games. He pitched to contact more and induced a lot of poor contact. Then 2011 continued along the same path until he got hurt. After a long period of inactivity due to the injury, he came back this year and was really rusty and had trouble repeating his mechanics. Starting about three starts ago, he appears to have gotten back into a rhythm, his mechanics have been sound, and he's found his change up again. The results have been a dominant starter going deep into games and striking out a ton of hitters. Might be a small sample where he just happened to pitch well a few times, but the pitchfx data suggests something might have clicked with him. I'm hoping his start tomorrow will be more of the same and we can start growing more confident about his recent success. Edit: And he's 27 this year, which is about when you expect players to break out.

Josh Beckett vs Josh Johnson. Old Marlins Ace vs New Marlins Ace. http://theghostofmoonlightgraham.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/josh-johnson.jpg vs http://toosoxy.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/beck.jpg Kick some arse tonight.

Double Post: Please delete.

Another thing people aren't considering when arguing that Youk should have been traded in the off season is that Middlebrooks hadn't yet shown he was ready to hit AAA pitching, never mind MLB pitching. What reason did the Sox front office have to assume he was ready to be handed the starting job? After crushing AA pitching, Middlebrooks looked lost at the plate in Pawtucket in 16 games posting a .468 OPS. All indications were that he needed more time. So if you think not trading Youk was a huge mistake during the off season, you probably wanted to rely on Lowrie (as I can't imagine anyone would think starting Punto every day is an option) to start every day. The problem there is that he's played far less games than the oft injured Youk over the last two years. 143 (+15 minor league) games versus Youk's 222 (+2 minor league). Every argument being made that keeping Youk and playing him now are mistakes is illogical. They contradict themselves and lack any real evidence, but the people making them want to have their opinions acknowledged as being as viable or more so than those who are making logical arguments. If you are arguing for a change in his baseline ability... his ability to hit well while healthy, you must show evidence of such. Pointing to how he's played while hurt is not evidence of how he plays while healthy. It's evidence that he plays poorly when hurt. That's it. Saying no one has any idea how well he can play when healthy because he got hurt last year and it lingered into this season is also faulty logic. At age 33 he is not old enough that we should expect his skills to fall off the table. Add to that a 9 game stretch after the injury where he looked great at the plate and we have a flash of the old Youk there to suggest that ability is still there. Looking at his peripherals, even while hurt, we see no evidence that his skills are declining. In fact, we see evidence that his eye is just as good as it was before getting hurt and that his approach has remained steady. Unlike J.D. Drew, who clearly had his skills diminish and started chasing bad pitches. These numbers are posted above. There is real, tangible evidence that Youk is a great hitter. There is zero evidence that his skills have suddenly fallen off a cliff. Shouting the latter opinion over and over does not make it any more tenable a position.

The problem is that you're arguing for a change from his baseline performance and are expecting me to accept it when there is no evidence to support that claim. I'm arguing that he's been injured rather than lost a step (or more) and that if healthy, will continue to perform like the guy he proved he was over the previous 3.5 years before getting hurt last year. I'm arguing that until there is evidence that his baseline has dropped, assuming it has is jumping the gun. You're arguing that because he's played poorly while hurt, he must have lost the ability to play well, even when healthy. That simply doesn't track, and it's not how analysis of any kind is done. In fact, applying the scientific method to this, we are left to conclude that at worst, we need to wait and see how he responds to being healthy again over a large enough sample size to provide a meaningful data set, which... again... means he needs to play. In short, you're making the claim that he's changed as a player for the worse, even when healthy. Then you're telling me to prove that's not true rather than doing something to prove it is true. The problem is that you can't prove it's true because there is no data to draw from. Going back to before he was hurt we have data that shows him being an elite bat. Since then, there simply isn't a large enough sample size of healthy play to say anything at all. So I'm going to continue operating under the assumption that he's an elite bat when healthy until he proves otherwise. You may be comfortable jumping ship without any evidence... but I'm going to point out that you have no evidence if you do. When claims like he will only hurt the team and his value by playing get tossed out there, they need to be confronted and debunked. They're not based on anything but a dislike for the player and do nothing to further our understanding of the team or this season.

The majority of his post ASB numbers include his time injured, so I don't really see your point. You're essentially arguing that he doesn't play as well while he's hurt. To that I say: "No s***." Look, the case for him falling off a cliff cannot be made right now. If he stays healthy the rest of the year and keeps up a .600 OPS, you'll have a case. For now, you have a year plagued with injuries. There is no evidence that he can't hit when healthy, and no, 16 games since he got back does not prove anything. He flashed a hot bat for a bit, then cooled off again. I'll be shocked if he doesn't return to hitting well. He's 33, not 37. This argument that he can do nothing but hurt the team and his value by playing is based on nothing substantial. As for Elktonnick, his response to being presented with statistical evidence was to dismiss it because... well, because it works against him. He's ignoring evidence to cling to a gut feeling. He literally said that statistical evidence is irrelevant in analyzing Youk. He's embracing ignorance. And the Drew comp is moronic. He actually played for a year at a significantly lower production level and saw his peripherals actually drop for a year before he collapsed into mediocrity. His walk rate dropped from 17.3 to 15.2 to 11.0% from 2008-2010. Youkilis, even in a down year last year (due to injury) still had a steady walk rate. This year we're looking at an injury early suppressing his production, so the 8% walk rate may very well be a small sample size issue compounded by an injury. Additionally, in Drew's last two years his O-Swing rate jumped up from 15.4 to 20.6 and then 25.9%. It was not accompanied by an increase in his O-Contact rate. In short, his ability to recognize pitch types and locations declined and he started chasing bad pitches. Youkilis, on the other hand, has not seen his O-Swing rate increase in a meaningful way. 22.3 to 19.2 to 21.4 to 23.6% last year, then 20.1 so far this year. His O-Contact rate has been down so far this year, which is (again) likely skewed by his injury. There is no evidence that Youk's ability to identify the type and location of a pitch has declined making the two cases nothing alike aside from both guys having trouble with injuries. So again, the only real knock on Youk is that he needs to prove he can be healthy, and the only way to do that is to play him. Arguing that the team is better off sitting him or dumping him for pennies on the dollar is uninformed and poorly reasoned.

If you honestly think he's dropping off a cliff like Drew did last year, you're an idiot. Your only defense of this stance is to dismiss any and all evidence since everything that exists works against you. In short, you're sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting at the world. If your goal is to get me to stop taking you seriously and start ignoring you, congratulations... you win.

Yeah, it would have been nice, but the 11 million is what kept that from happening. I wish they'd opened the purse strings a bit for him as well, but they set a budget and did not want to go above it. Can't really fault them for it considering the luxury tax implications. You can fault them for getting into this position in the first place, but not for choosing to not compound the problem further. Fair enough. I just don't see the discussion about Lackey's contract as being a mistake as all that relevant here. He's here and he's not going anywhere, so he needs to be taken into account when talking about roster construction.

Again, I challenge you to back that up. You are complaining about a small sample size skewed heavily by an injury. Insisting he's not the player he was over and over is not backing up your claim, it's ranting. You'll have to bring something more to the table if you want to convince anyone of anything. As for the Scutaro comment, a roster of Youkilis, Aviles, Pedroia, Gonzalez, Salty, Shoppach, Crawford (Nava for now), Ellsbury, Ross/Sweeney, Middlebrooks, Ortiz and Punto is stronger than Middlebrooks, Aviles, Pedroia, Gonzalez, Salty, Shoppach, Crawford, Ellsbury, Ross/Sweeney, Ortiz, Scutaro and ????. Your point about the infield is voided by the fact that the team has been getting all of Middlebrooks, Youk and Gonzalez into the lineup at the same time without displacing Ortiz at DH. This team is stronger than the one where Scutaro was kept and Youk was shipped out. Besides, if he has no value now, after a good return in May (and yes, a weak 10 days in June), how could he have had any value after ending 2011 injured? You're making no sense. Youk has to play to show he can stay healthy enough to be worth an investment. And as I said above, he has an .833 OPS in the last 365 days so your claim that he is a no hit, good glove type player is horse crap.

The reason Lackey is relevant is that he'll be back in 2013 meaning there is no room in the rotation for a potential off season signee going into 2012 after year one. That means they needed to find someone willing to sign a 1 year deal for the budget they had allotted. Add to that your desire for that pitcher to be a quality pitcher and you have a catch 22 to some degree. Pitchers good enough to solidify a rotation for a contender aren't signing 1 year deals. They command multi-year investments. This is an issue they created themselves, but it does give you a reason for why they didn't sign anyone better than Aaron Cook to support the staff from AAA. If you have the name of an affordable pitcher good enough to solidify the staff who would have signed for one year, I'll adjust my stance accordingly. Otherwise, it's just wish-casting. As for the Lackey signing in the first place, that was Theo's move. Laying that on Cherrington is like... well, the best analogy I can think of is a political one, so I'll just skip it.