sk7326

It's May 5 - plus scouting the stat line always a bad idea Devers is 19 - among the youngest regulars in High A. Benintendi is crushing a level which is about on par with the best college baseball league in the country - the one he was player of the year in. This is not to abate the excitement on Benintendi - he is on a fast track for a reason ... but like with all prospects, the verdict comes at AA.

Depends on the definition of "recent" ... I'd have a hard time putting Lester and Papelbon above Pedroia, Nomar, Varitek or Yook ... and you could actually make solid case for Derek Lowe > Papelbon too.

Well that was obvious - the team held options on Manny

ay-bay uth-ray

Oh, the appeal to authority ... Playing Young last night was absolutely the right decision - now Young did not get a hit, but Farrell made the optimal choice among LFs. Rest of your post I am not sure what we are arguing about. Good decisions and bad decisions are not necessarily outcome based. Now if the decisions seem good but keep failing - then you have to review the thought process.

He has played well. GG is a bit much - really folks are just so happy he can walk and chew gum at the same time compared to last year that is makes him seem like 1982 Keith Hernandez out there.

You need all three phases ...

Swihart's defensive issues are overblown - it looks bad compared to Vasquez, but so does everybody else. Swihart needs to catch and it makes more sense to do it often at AAA than rarely in the bigs. His pawtucket BA means nothing - we know he can hit in the bigs, no proof needed there.

Sunk cost - that money is gone. Has ZERO impact on the decision now - just do what is right for the team.

Kimbrel has not been great so far. But the strikeout rate is outstanding and the homerun/FB rate is unsustainably high. Papelbon is the opposite. And moreover, really the question is whether Papelbon is an improvement over a name drawn from a hat - and there is not a ton of evidence in his corner.

Too early to conclusively say anything ... he has not been good yet

Here is the thing - the right thing and the wrong thing (mostly) are right and wrong regardless of result. All you can grade is process, because process involves playing percentages. By definition playing percentages means there is something left to chance. Not swapping a lefty on lefty for a lefty killer - absolutely reduces the probability of a successful outcome. Now, games aren't played on paper - they're played in TV sets - so you can't control the outcome. But you can increase or decrease probability - and from an in-game tactics perspective, that is totally fair game.

Swihart should keep playing at AAA in the current alignment - he needs reps behind the plate. He has shown signs of being a good defender, but he needs time - catcher is the slowest developing position of them all. It's a good path to the bigs due to low supply, but it has the oldest average rookie age. Young is what he is - he is not hitting, but he is not hurting anybody either. The kids will be in Portland soon enough. They are not old for the level - so relax.

Price's fundamentals are still quite good. Strikeout rate is fine. His BABIP is really high - and that is driving the ERA/FIP spread. Now some of that is tied into a high line drive rate. How much of all of these things are self correcting is the key. But the strikeout rate has been top notch, and that is a good place to start. Plus he has basically been either outstanding or not good - so it's not like he hasn't been able to find the form. Just not consistently yet.

Even the opener - if you want a less obvious decision was not lifting Holt for Young with the bases juiced and the Sox having a chance to blow the game open.

One month of SOX fWAR Bogaerts 1.2 Ortiz, Shaw, Pedroia 1.0 Bradley, Betts 0.5 Holt 0.3 Vasquez 0.2 Ramirez -0.2 PITCHERS Price 0.9 Wright, Porcello, Hembree 0.4 Uehara 0.3 Tazawa 0.2 For me, pitching nominees are Porcello and Wright. Price's FIP is very favorable because of crazy high BABIP - but if there is a drop in velocity that persists, then the BABIP might be for real. Either way, I am more comfortable with the other two guys. I have to go with Wright, who has been a shade more consistent than Porcello. Position player wise really a lot to choose from. You pick any of Bogaerts, Ortiz, Pedroia or Shaw and it is hard to disagree. But I'd go with Bogaerts. Defense continues to improve, and he has upped the walk rate. There is some untapped power there - but even without it, he has been really really solid. It is easy to forget that he won't be 24 until October.

Young has always had a massive split - and while I can defend him for starting Young to get him PAs given how few lefties we have faced ... the usage of Young as a pinch hitter has been peculiar. Farrell's strengths as a manager have been in the stuff "we don't see". He is getting good effort from his guys and he understands the culture here very well. And really that might be enough for me to offset the on the field stuff (the Young thing, or somehow needing 13 active pitchers)

His main issue was durability - and fans could get upset at him because of his demeanor (as noted above, I'm not sure he actually would play baseball if he wasn't so good at it). But he was largely very much worth his salary - friends don't let friends use RBIs to determine anything one way or the other. In general you sign a 30+ year old, it's going to be a loser at the end - it's the lot you live with in UFA. It's also why Mike Trout was able to get the sun, moon and stars in a pre-FA extension, and why Bryce Harper will be the most coveted and lavishly compensated UFA in history.

I think weed is on the list for minor league testing.

What is funny is that Sandoval HAS had a pretty high threshhold. As noted before, remarkably gifted athletically - which has allowed him to be, frankly, more nimble than a guy as tubby as he is ought to be. But clearly it looks like he has passed some sort of threshhold.

Drew was largely solid and productive. In a way he was hampered by his brush with MVP-ness when he was in Atlanta (and probably should have won it). That he never touched it hurt his narrative though he was productive. Also - and this is just me spitballing - he always gave me the sense of a guy who played baseball because it was a family business. The game was so easy for him, but somewhere in his heart, he might have wished he was a painter or something.

The Red Sox All-Time list by bWAR ... obviously all-in-one stats are not infallible, but curious to see where it ends up. I combine batters and pitchers 1. Ted Williams 126.1 2. Carl Yastrzemski 96.1 3. Roger Clemens 81.3 4. Wade Boggs 71.6 5. Cy Young 66.2 6. Dwight Evans 66.2 7. Tris Speaker 55.4 8. Pedro Martinez 53.8 9. Bobby Doerr 51.2 10. David Ortiz 49.0 11. Jim Rice 47.4 12. Dustin Pedroia 46.3 13. Lefty Grove 44.7 14. Nomar Garciaparra 41.1 15. Carlton Fisk 39.5 16. Rico Petrocelli 39.1 17. Harry Hooper 38.4 18. Luis Tiant 36.4 19. Jimmie Foxx 34.6 20. Reggie Smith 34.2 21. Manny Ramirez 33.2 22. Tim Wakefield 32.6 23. John Valentin 32.1 24. Dom Dimaggio 32.0 25. Fred Lynn 31.9 26. Kevin Youkilis 31.4 27. Jon Lester 30.7 28. Larry Gardner 30.5 29. Johnny Pesky 30.5 30. Smoky Joe Wood 29.9 Even if you take some away from Williams (and it is all because of his bat, he was below replacement level on defense) due to 1/3 of his career predating integration he laps the field.

Ortiz was never the best hitter of his era. He will end up as one of my two favorite all time Red Sox, and for me that is enough. Ortiz' great moments (which I will never forget) are at least as much a symptom of the Red Sox largely being really good for most of his time here.

A reduction in fastball speed is not a red flag in itself if he can pitch without it - was something that was bound to happen. That said, yeah the hard contact is striking - and leads to a career worst BABIP by a mile - .362 - so high that you expect some regression. The homerun rate is crazy high as well right now. I am optimistic this will settle down a little, simply because he has still been outstanding in spots. The shaky home starts to me can be explained by weather - but definitely watching.

Sox got it wrong. As has been noted, the Cuban free agent market creates this massive incentive to spend tons of money. Alas, the mistakes are expensive ones.