sk7326

It is modestly improving the one part of their bullpen which was actually pretty good. Panda was an attempt to improve a position they got literally nothing out of. Year 1 was a failure - but the attempt actually made sense. Panda being an average regular would have been a significant (overpaid, but significant) improvement because their alternatives were piles of garbage. Ramirez (well, Ramirez and Panda together) was genuinely weird, and was stated at the time. The Red Sox are getting more than they did when they dealt for Andersen - they are also paying more. And even if the prospect is blocked, it doesn't make the "near big league premium position prospect is worth a 9th inning reliver" calculation any more sensible.

Kimbrel's FIP was 2.68 - which is fine, and a run over his career otherwise, and a shade worse than Uehara last year. The defense was atrocious.

Honestly converting Kelly made more sense than trading all that stuff for Kimbrel.

Of course. And making Bagwell for Andersen flavoured (obviously time will judge the results, but it's the valuation) moves never stop being bad ideas. It's not that they got a poor pitcher - they got a good pitcher coming off of his worst season (but still good). It is the price they paid, the opportunity cost and what is says about priorities and valuation. And Kimbrel helps settle the one inning where things were actually not too bad. You'd like a much more significant MARGINAL improvement when trading quality stuff.

Indeed - and for the price of one Craig Kimbrel, they'd sign 10 of them and keep the 5 that worked out. Note that Kimbrel came off of his worst season as a pro.

Oh I wouldn't want Papelbon either. You could probably get the job done necessary for an entire bullpen for that price. It's just classic glazed eyes at the 9th inning. Almost every team that has gotten to the finish line the last few years got this gig done for much cheaper - in terms of dollars and prospects. Padres get credit - turned a luxury item into four prospects, one who might do more for their team next season than Kimbrel does for Boston. (not likely, but not impossible)

Glad you mentioned Foulke. Foulke pitched 105, 89, 81, 77 and 86 innings in the years before he got to Boston. (and yes, this might have been causal to his arm troubles, but flags fly forever). He pitched 83 innings for Boston. All of those numbers are more than any season Kimbrel has pitched. Foulke was used to get 8th inning saves, and the reason he was the choice was because he could pitch (and was called on, all the time) in very high leverage spots. Kimbrel has been dynamite in the 9th inning, 0 runners inherited spot that is 2015 closing. He has excelled at a far easier gig than Foulke had. And indeed, Foulke excelled in multiple obscenely difficult spots.

The guess is Price. Now that the industry knows what the Sox will pay for a solid closer, they might not be able to trade for a guy without giving up Betts. That said, they might have already decided it's worthwhile

Papelbon is fully capable of being a "proven closer" - which is not a particularly taxing gig. O'Day is basically the best reliever in the league at his specific job - getting righties out. This move limits the Sox options in other deals (without being similar overpays) and is just a fairly myopic view of bullpen construction.

Not much less than Kimbrel. Uehara was the better pitcher last season, even when you account for bulk. It's a lot easier to regulate a dude's workload as a Mr 9th inning. Uehara has experience with coming into tougher spots than Kimbrel, but clearly he has to be managed like a faberge egg now. That also happens to be how Kimbrel has been managed his whole career. Now I see a lot of "Dombrowski did what he had to do" and excitement the Red Sox traded for a reliever they had heard of. Some fairly classic Mel Hall-era Yankees thinking there. This was a bizarre use of prospect heft, and a fairly risky pickup.

no silly. i am saying we built an elite bullpen for peanuts. so did the royals. wade davis was a failed starter. so was uehara. all relievers were at some point.

It's why the Padres get a lot of credit - they got four guys with major league projection for 60 innings.

Well you hoard them to get a starter, not a "proven closer" ... runs counter to how teams have been sourcing that position i.e. their own pitchers, sifting through other team's garbage, converting failed starters

Tyson Ross was not good last season. Carrasco is interesting. But the Sox used a couple of their best bullets for a 60 inning pitcher.

I enjoy that Dombrowski's first trade was to move four prospects (two top 100 ones) for a closer who was WAR neutral over the closer they had last year (and did it in 20 less innings). It moves the previous closer into the sort of role he probably is not built for anymore.

Given what we traded to get Kimbrel, free agency might be the only choice ...

Given that 2 seasons ago we got two dominant bullpen arms for a sack of magic beans - this is a wild overpay. Two top 30 prospects and a couple of other guys with big prospects for 160 innings which you could have found elsewhere.

two top 20 prospects for 160 innings or so of a guy coming off his worst season ... awesome Kimbrel will be fine - but this is a shockingly poor use of assets, and loses some of the real currency they had to get a starter - unless ... (hides)

They have a lot of arms and have to decide their budget. That said, selling Harvey without some major league improvement seems unlikely - you don't do any sort of teardown on a young pennant winner.

$13M is a solid price for mediocre - and a pretty good value for better than that. It does not exempt looking for better pitching - but it helps.

Travis is possible, Shaw is possible. 1B is one of the easier positions to source anyway - even not considering Ramirez. Swihart was not very good defensively in year 1 - and the question becomes, how much of it was the other stuff - the promotion by necessity. We know Bogaerts had a shaky defensive first year with all that stuff thrown at him. Coming into next year, it seems like Swihart will probably be the 100 game catcher and Vasquez the 60 game one - and the injury to Vasquez provides more than sufficient merit to this idea. I think we should be used to the idea that sweeping pronouncements about 23 year olds - especially athletic ones - is a bit presumptuous.

For me, baseball is one of those sports where the individual contribution is easy enough to glean - the reason statistical analysis works in baseball is that at its heart, it is a series of one-on-one interactions, compared to 5-on-5 NBA or 11-on-11 NFL. Now I would never just run down the list of bWAR, fWAR leaders and stop there, but it is a fair starting point to identify player value. But the direction and magnitude can tell you whether the player created reasonably close value. Obviously a good team gets more mileage out of value than a bad one (the marginal value of wins). And yes, the MVP can be a pitcher (the real reason the Pedro year was so scandalous) and it can be from a bad team. (using team results too heavily in MVP voting means you are voting on crappy teammates, not MVP)

Also the pitch count here did not matter as much as the 4th time through the order. You see evidence that the 4th (and sometimes 3rd) look at a pitcher makes a significant difference (the familiarity and fatigue intersect).

Familia was also lights out the entire rest of the postseason. Just giving the Royals a 4th look at a pitcher with the season on the line was dicey. It wasn't as bad as Grady in 2003, or Bob Melvin (a good manager too!) not moving a muscle as Jon Lester imploded in the WC game last year, but it was bad. Collins was suboptimal all series.

Gold Gloves are largely reputation based - and usually a player has to become good offensively to get on people's radars. It's silly of course. Cy Young tends to be solid largely - there are some shaky years (Welch over Clemens in 1990) but largely the voters seem to do fine. MVP you get a lot of doozies because of how open ended the criteria is and writers projecting the value of contention (which means it's a referendum on a player's teammates). In my lifetime as a fan, just looking at the AL there have been howlers. For a quick version, I used baseball reference, and said it was a good vote if the MVP was within 1.5 WAR of the lead. This means that a bad choice is one where there were obviously better candidates. I noted a couple of borderline years where voters chose the 2nd best player by WAR in a year where the leader was a pitcher who lapped the field. 1987: George Bell over Boggs, Alan Trammell, Clemens, Viola 1989: Yount over Henderson, Boggs, Saberhagen 1992: Eckersley over Clemens, Mussina, Appier, Puckett 1993: Thomas over Appier, Griffey, Olerud, Langston, Lofton 1995: Vaughn over Randy Johnson, Valentin (and yes, Belle) 1996: JuanGone over Griffey, ARod, Knoblauch, Hentgen 1997: Griffey over Clemens (Griffey was actually a good choice 2nd in the AL in WAR but Clemens was such a monster that year) 1998: JuanGone over ARod, Clemens, Jeter, Kenny Rogers, Chuck Finley, Pedro, Belle, Nomar 1999: Pudge over Pedro, Alomar, Manny, Jeter 2000: Giambi over Pedro, ARod 2002: Tejada over ARod, Thome, Halladay, Derek Lowe 2004: Vlad over Ichiro, Johan Santana, Schilling, ARod, Tejada 2006: Morneau over Santana, Sizemore, Vernon Wells, Chien Ming Wang, Carlos Guillen 2009: Mauer over Greinke (Greinke was really good for KC that year, but Mauer was excellent choice among "everybody else") 2012: Cabrera over Trout What is encouraging though about all the awards is that as the writers have turned over, the voting has gotten better informed. There are notably "finer" choices in the 2000s.