sk7326

Scouting and Analytics represent a stupid (and false dichotomy). You don't assemble a premium farm system using analytics - that's just finding great athletes and baseball skills and bringing in talent. (between the uselessness and unreliability of high school statistics, and the simple matter that you are only getting wood bat looks at a small number of American kids) Nobody has ever used just SPSS and spreadsheets to make all of their player decisions. The analytics complement the scouting (when done right of course). Spreadsheets don't see makeup or physical projection ... scouts don't always know which areas of emphasis really matter to producing good baseball players. The best example (from early on) was the idea of approach. Old timey baseball might have seen it as something coachable - but analytics demonstrated that it is really a "trait" which is very hard to improve. So that goes into what scouts have to think about. I hope these silly Henry comments was just somebody on the NESN side telling him he should probably shed some tears for ratings.

I hope so. Really the .291 OBP was the hard part - the walk rate plummeted by over 50%. Now it could be explained physically - pitchers had no incentive to nibble. But that tendency is the one which seems like it should turn around - Ramirez has been better than that. He clearly pressed a lot.

What is interesting is that his approach has always been really good until last year - it is hard to think that he has forgotten how to take at-bats.

Pablo has gotten by because he is a very gifted athlete that could transcend the conditioning (see Tony Gwynn, Dave Parker at various points, Roy Nelson in the Octagon) - there is a flashpoint now I think - where the gifts can't compensate for the lack of work.

Oh dear - numbering this: 1. This analysis totally whiffs on how trades work. Go back to 2006 and the Red Sox internally developed the stuff which got cashed into Josh Beckett, a 25 year old ace coming off of a rookie deal. The Red Sox farm system provided stuff to deal for Victor Martinez as a deadline bat, and the stuff to get Adrian Gonzalez - who was the premier catch of that offseason. Now, shoulder problems ended up turning him from the sort of player you write songs about into a good 1B. His tour here was a disappointment - and obviously he was dealt in the Dodgers pitchfork and torches trade. You have to consider the prospects used in trade as part of the farm bounty - because the front office certainly does. This team produced the greatest decade in its post-integration history, and it was done via farm and trades. Your analysis considers the former without the latter. 2. Where the team has made mistakes is almost entirely on the free agent front. That - from all evidence - looks a lot less like "overreliance on numbers" and much more like wantonly choosing the top name on the free agent heap. Pablo Sandoval was one of the two or three top free agents in the 2015 class. You could squint really hard and see a decent signing - good athlete, youngest of the premium FAs - but there was a lot of evidence against it, and signing him and Ramirez together smacked of "winning the press conference" more than any serious analysis. 3. It is hard to cite decline in 2008 - where we were 6 innings away from winning consecutive pennants. Also hard in 2009 where they just lost to an Anaheim team who also had a very successful decade. It is hard to cite in 2010 where they won 89 games despite having their two best position players injured for large chunks of the season. It is even hard to cite it in 2012 where a poor manager and crazy injury luck caused a spiral which they could not steer out of. 4. This team since this ownership took over managed to win 3 titles while successfully re-building the roster at least once ... this second rebuild has been trickier and less successful because of (I think) a lack of many of the stabilizing forces which helped the rebuild the first time around.

The horsepucky is strong here since the numbers were not in favor of the Sandoval signing.

He never had to evaluate players professionally

I think there is some - all of the above to a degree. But the CBA (justly) does I think mandate that these guys get time away, and that their offseason work is theirs. Otherwise you run into the NFL situation where Organized Team Activities are only statutorily optional but are essentially mandatory. And even if they did - the monitor has to go home. And it's not like they can cut a guy for what he does in the offseason (especially if it doesn't involve the sort of thing Aaron Hernandez got into).

One thing that is obvious is that fans are (somewhat) more savvy about defense than even in 2007. The measurement is better and while I don't think the average fan really understands UZR or DRS, it is clear that errors and fielding percentage are not nearly sufficient. It is always striking how a player's hitting colours the assessment of defense. Unless a guy is a known defensive substitute - poor hitting I think does impact perception of defense. Crisp was a good CF. Damon was below average although CF in Boston those years were tough jobs given they kinda sorta had to play LF too.

Horrible defense feels less horrible in your mind when there is a .321/.439/.619 as a chaser.

Here is the key to Hanley. I remember years ago I'd shake my head watching the dumpster fire that was Manny being Manny in LF and sigh, "Well, at least he can hit." Hanley was a disaster in LF, and more than that - between any effects to confidence and any shoulder issues - he stopped hitting, and stopped seeming to know how to construct an at-bat. I don't expect him to be a good 1B - but I do expect him to be good enough for it to be comfortable for him so he can hit again and be a positive force overall.

I don't either - but as an actual long man/mop up guy he can help keep a staff upright. There is value to that over the marathon.

Oh I think all of that is true ... but what if you did something like 5 starters Have Kelly and Owens there to provide 4-5 innings a week of backup. More than "long men" but not starting. Then you have the back of the pen. Keep a guy like Wright around as an actual long man.

How the bullpen looks vis a vis game management is going to be a big deal. How much are the Red Sox going to lean on their starters generally. The first tough thing is that Kimbrel and Uehara are basically locked in ... you probably don't even want to warm them up without using them. So then you have Tazawa and Smith to work around that. What would be nice is if Owens or Wright could be used (or Farrell sees them) as regular "once through the order" sorts.

How he looks at the plate will matter a lot. If he seems a step slow or overwhelmed, that might be enough to slow roll him.

I think the injury gives them a lot of cover for playing both guys - and Swihart towards the end of the year (as you'd expect) started to look quite good.

I don't think the power for JBJ is real. At the same time, his numbers reflected a return to the approach which made him rise up through the minors. A .330 OBP with at least some of the power he showed last season will be plenty for a starter with that glove. Right now offensively he shapes up to be a Mike Napoli sort - where the hot stretches are on fire and the slumps look bad, but there is enough batting eye to not be totally useless.

In 2016 baseball, it is hard to put out a lead pipe cinch team. That said, I think this team has a ton of potential, with a bit less variability than last year. Ceiling is about the same as last year, but the floor is much higher. The rotation? Well, Price is obviously going to provide some stability at the top ... Buchholz will be good, but obviously there is a question about whether he can be good for 150 innings. Rodriguez had issues turning over the lineup - but clearly the stuff is there. This applies double to Owens, who I think has gone from overrated to underrated as a pitching prospect. Porcello I think started to figure things out by end of last season. I am not expecting miracles, but I am expecting steady competence. One thing that I will be curious about (and we won't learn this until the regular season) is whether the Red Sox start shifting their pitching staff management towards limiting "looks" the way that a lot of good teams were doing. That is, instead of just using pitch counts or what have you, start monitoring the pitchers the third time through the lineup and possibly pulling them prior to rotation #4 regardless. Lineupwise? I am bullish on Ramirez at 1B. Getting healthy and back to an infield corner should help him defensively, and give him some comfort with the rest of his game. Hopefully whatever healing took place can restore his approach, which fell to pieces last season. There is a lot of awful defense you can put up with if it comes with a .900+ OPS. Ramirez' .300 OBP was a really big problem, but he clearly is a good enough hitter to get back to working counts again. I am also bullish on Bogaerts who figured out how to deal with major league pitching. This season's challenge is to take the pitchers' pitches he sprayed to right field, and lay off of more of them - so he can get pitches to drive. He has conquered everything life has thrown at him, so I am optimistic - but refining his approach to get to his power is an important mission. I am not bullish on Sandoval - but between Holt, and moving Ramirez to 3B, there are credible options to work around it. Sandoval's ability to make contact would be valuable - but clearly the onus is on him. We'll have three quality outfielders - I wish I could tell you exactly who'll they be besides Betts.

LOL (looking) - I am definitely fat and brown

Many prospect for veteran trades. Signing Prince Fielder. A lot of the sort of "buying a pennant" type moves. All because the Little Caesar's guy is getting old. Most of his trades were plusses - he is a good baseball man. But I was taking issue with how Doj characterized Dombrowski vs how he actually rolled.

Zobrist came with risk - and he had a major drop off defensively last season, which was a very significant part of his value.

Dombrowski literally did everything his owner asked him in Detroit including the exact sorts of moves and trades you whine about here. The Red Sox decade was largely not built on the free agent market ... it was farm and trades. There were targeted FAs to fill gaps, which worked with varying degrees of success - but this was not the 2009 Yankees. To me, the simplest explanation of 2014 and 2015 was a franchise in transition but a bit afraid of being in transition. What you get are half measures and band aids, instead of just getting on with business.

From what I've seen, org PoTY are performance awards (as they should be) less than scouting related. That a guy who throws 100 can get single-A hitters out is not proof of that much. The Red Sox minor league players of the year (Sam Travis, Williams Jerez) are not in top half of Red Sox prospects either.

The Red Sox Report: http://espn.go.com/blog/keith-law/insider/post?id=4792 2016 Impact Fallen Rising

2008? When they were 7 innings from the AL pennant? Here's what happened. From 2002 to 2013 this team had an amazing successful run. Only the Yankees and Cardinals can lay any sort of claim to that title. The Red Sox managed to turn the roster over so that multiple "generations" were involved with the titles. 2012 is easy to dismiss since literally everything that could have gone wrong did (some of it self inflicted, such as hiring a boor to manage them). 2014 and 2015 deserve answers - mostly because (I think) the team has not nurtured the young talent with the same solidarity. There have been other forces, but that held back the process. The team that came out after the All Star Break 2015 showed (in some ways) that perhaps if the team did not dither with a rusty Stephen Drew or Grady Sizemore's entrails that some of the comfort for the kiddos would have arrived faster. That is hard to prove though. Teams that are atrophying talent do not keep getting picked for good results, but I do think the management has earned the skepticism.