sk7326

Maybe. I'd be really curious about Strasburg though. There have been injury issues - and perhaps the Nationals might be ready to listen on him. It would be a massive overreaction, but would not be a stunning one. I mean their season was basically a mix of shaky back of the rotation starting, a bad bullpen and a horrific manager.

I like him, but had filtered him out of the thought process

I did not include Greinke since I think there is a .000000000001% chance he is not back in LA next season.

Price is probably the first option in that he is good and has been good in the AL East. If you give him 7 years, he should be excellent for at least 3 of them and good for a couple more. A trade makes more sense just because there are more targets and more control. Chris Sale is an obvious one ... Matt Harvey might be another, although I'd be surprised if the Mets were that obtuse ... Felix Hernandez would be another interesting one (shorter hitch, but still 3-4 years of control) if you think that his dropoff this year is curable - and DiPoto knowing the Sox brain trust might help there. There might even be a legitimate conversation to be had surrounding Strasburg (given the bloodletting in Nats-land). As cp noted, Sox have so many guys who should (and need to honestly) be moved for career development that they can stock many trades. Of the above, Sale clearly is the only one I'd want to trade one of the "untouchables" for.

Fielder in 2013 was a pretty good comp for Hanley - atrocious defensively (at a much easier position!) but hit well enough to be a solid (if overpaid) player. Hanley of course did not hit after his left shoulder got hurt and that made his total package ho-ho-horrendous. Really if Hanley gets his stroke back, he can probably exceed Prince's total package as a 1B. Dombrowski managed to trade one bloated contract for another - although in both Kinsler and Fielder's cases the players with the bloated contracts were actually decent. Fielder has had a nice bounceback this year ... which is not that surprising (a lot of his bad 2013 was just sheer bad luck on batted balls).

Good athletes who have shown the ability to learn and grow are always good bets at his age.

Really, Miley is going to be part of the rotation solution, and that is fine. Free agency will be a tricky place to find difference making starting pitching. Price is the one guy, and he's 29 but will force you to buy a number of decline years (and surrender a pick). Is that worth it? You can go either way there. The other sexy names on the starter list have major question marks - is Jordan Zimmermann any good really, and is Cueto's arm going to remain attached to his body. I actually like the idea of signing Lackey. Durable, knows Boston. Similary Mark Buehrle is useful on a short deal (Dan Haren less so, but still). If you want to take a short money flyer (with the modest expectations that come with it), could do a lot worse than Cliff Lee.

Throwing for the catcher is a complicated business since the base-stealing apparatus is a team effort. Historically the Red Sox had not made it much of a priority - which is not crazy, since getting the batter out solves most problems. That dampened Varitek's stats on that area. Clearly this year the pitch framing loss of Vasquez was significant ... He and Ross were excellent pitch framers who saved runs, while this year Swihart was a slight minus there (Hanigan was a plus, Leon was worse). At the same time, Swihart's growth curve this year was striking. If he makes the sort of improvement you expect from young players who have shown the ability to improve already - he's the clear starter entering next season and a solid likelihood of being a Top 10 catcher.

Defense is lousy - and the management does not want to play more "trap" even though that's probably the only way the team can compete ... Julien should be axed out of mercy Saddest thing of them all is the realization that the B's essentially traded Phil Kessel for Loui Eriksson when all the carnage is added up.

LOL - honestly Yankees don't bother me anymore. Just one of 29 other ones we are trying to beat.

They are interesting cases - both places where fWAR and bWAR disagree violently ... neither Chen nor Gallardo were especially good in fielding independent dimensions. Gallardo's strikeout rate has been plummeting in particular. Chen's strikeout rate is more in Miley's area - okay but nothing special, with a much more pronounced flyball tendency. Of the two Gallardo is a more sensible choice just because he has been a very good starter before some real swing and miss in him.

Neither Chen nor Gallardo based on this past year's form, are any better than Miley. Better off giving Owens a regular gig than that.

Pitching is key. But given the Yankees scored the 2nd most runs in the AL, and 8th in team ERA it is less convincing. (3rd in offensive WAR). Indeed this year 5 of the Top 7 offensive teams made the playoffs while two below median pitching staffs (Yankees and Rangers) got in. Yankees pitching though was pretty good - and hurt by a pretty lousy defense. Teams have won by slugging around "enough" pitching - happens all the time. Truly one dimensional teams are rare, whatever the shape.

What's the stress? The good stuff is not going anywhere and the bad stuff can only get better really ...

Oh I am not betting anything super important on Espinoza - but it is not the sort of ceiling you just give away either. Youngest player in Greenville by 13 months, and that is only because he is too young for the AFL

The stats are good for looking at the bigs - without a doubt, both the Sox and elsewhere. Using them on minor leagues is much dicier - since not every player or team has the same goals. And that does not even account for more basic things (like the prevalence of launching pads in the PCL - for instance Syndegaard's superficial numbers were lousy last year, but his quality was taken as a given).

I believe stockpiling is fine - but a team like Boston in particular (deep coffers, major league focus), only needs to worry about keeping the future super-mega-stars. I have no idea how the front office will work. But the way it is assembled, I am not sure whether Dombrowski will have THAT much direct influence on the scouting side. (and that has been the side of the operation which has clearly worked) I suspect Hazen will largely be in command there (And certainly in handling the analytics staff). I think it will largely be "play or trade" - although I think Hazen will help him with making the calls on the lower level guys. I mean - just by reading the same things everybody else does - Benintendi, Devers, Moncada, Espinoza - all look like guys the team will hold because of megastar potential (at least for now). Everybody else in the minors is probably some level of fair game - including Margot, just because of how stacked the system in CF.

I noted that the issues the team had early seemed to point to a coaching change - obviously that is still the case. However, managing is the one thing which is the biggest black box - where people flat out don't know what makes a manager good or bad. Teams have won with bad managers, teams have lost with good ones - it's not simply as reductive as wins. Farrell coming back is fine - there is a decent chance Lovullo will be gone ... he's clearly one of the most qualified managerial candidates out there (even before his acting stint with Boston), and could be on any number of shortlists. I'd also think Lovullo would not want the job in Boston anyway based on how the circumstance would have to play out. Tactically, Farrell is solid - he certainly has never had a greatest hits of howlers like Matt Williams did this past season, nor even what Ned Yost has done (and of course Kansas City is winning despite it). The guys clearly respect him. In a lot of ways the biggest mistakes the org made were setting the club up in 2014 for the title defense - too much wishing on stars (in the outfield) that had a lot of risk associated with it. (that Victorino could stay healthy or that a Nava/Carp platoon could still work, JBJ). 2015 clearly did not go well, but a lot of it was hasty makeup work for 2014's non-moves. Pitching's gotta be better - duh. How that manifests itself between rotation and bullpen, I honestly don't care. Just make it happen. The lineup is largely set - and looks to be quite good. Of course, if the Sox wanted to take their coffers out for a walk and look at a Jason Heyward (or a Justin Upton who fits the classic LF mold more cleanly), I would not have any real issue there.

No. Really it was mostly the offense getting on track. From a 30,000 foot level, the idea was the Red Sox would have the year the Jays had mostly. Lineup provides cover for middle of the road run prevention. The run prevention was worse than expected (in particular the ghastly defense on the left side) and the offense went in the tank for a solid 2 months (neither of the left side culprits hit enough). When the offense woke up, suddenly things have been entertaining. Really - the improvement lately can all be traced to tangible things at each position: 1B: Travis Shaw clearly improved on what Napoli gave OF: Hanley's replacements have not been that much better than 2015 Hanley offensively. But they can catch the ball, and that works wonders. Hanley's misadventures were particularly untenable once his offense went to seed. And of course, Bradley has been solid in a way which looks like it's for real (i.e. aligned with the guy he has been his entire professional baseball life). C: Swihart once he got his legs under him has been a monster improvement over the pu pu platter (Which included overpromoted Swihart) before And the rotation has been largely okay - the sort of thing which we could have hoped for entering the season (no real Arrieta sized hot streaks, aside from Kelly I guess). There are enough tangible reasons for the turnaround.

I think Workman as a starter should be dead - but he could be very helpful in the pen.

A side issue also is - you send somebody down who should be starting ... the kid knows it too. It is easy to tell someone to eat your vegetables, keep your head up etc ... but when somebody is blocked, and not on merit - it will show in his performance and development. If you believe players are human beings (and use that as a reason to p'shaw analytics or arguments against clutchy mcclutchersons) then this is an obvious sentiment.

The implication would be that the team was half-assing it when the season was on the table, which seems awfully, awfully unlikely given the championship timber who was already on the team. They've played better - and it shows ... and if you look at the entire body of work, they've been roughly (perhaps a bit less) what we thought they were in April.

There are park adjustments, and certainly trajectory is accounted for somewhat ... and over the number of trials (just estimating 25 balls in play per game x 2430 games) a lot of the noise can be sampled away. Personally it is an improvement over what was previously done (largely, guess - you look at the ghastly gold glove voting) ... but like anything, it's not perfect on its own. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-fangraphs-uzr-primer/

Also, UZR's (or whatever) contribution is less about identifying good v bad defenders so much as being able to actually turn that into some assessment of value. While one did not need metrics to identify that Victorino was a spectacular RF in 2013 - it was a crucial part of a very reasonable (albeit downballot) MVP candidacy that he had. The combination of measuring what a fielder did, as well as how much did it actually matter. One of my favourite examples was Pedroia winning the MVP in 2008 - now voters picked him for silly reasons (Scrappy McTougherson, Red Sox brand etc) - but he really actually was among the very best players in the league that season. The UZR stuff's value I think is being able to put something in the soup which is an improvement from just checking the triple slash (or, yuck, RBIs).

There is truth here - and I do wonder if UZR is confounded by weird looking OFs, which happen regularly (cough, cough). I mean you look at how consistently Red Sox LFs have been measured poorly over time (whether it be Greenwell, Rice, Nava, Crawford, Manny, Hanley) - I have not checked Yankee RFs though Paul O'Neill graded badly - is it possible that those sorts of OFs fool the measurement system?