sk7326

Pooh pooing? Who's doing that ... now his .832 OPS for the first half in Portland is almost 100 points higher than his OPS at any level of full season baseball to date, so the Fluke Rule is very much in play. But he deserves to be an Eastern League All-Star, without a doubt. It does not speak to his prospect value of course, as Rick Lancellotti would attest.

He has long been projected as a #2 or #3 sort (since he does not have the power of Rodriguez who has actual ace potential). But that's not nothing, as this season has proven. Even if his ceiling is Hiroki Kuroda - that is still immensely valuable for any rotation, especially as cheap as he'd be in his pre-arb years. If this team had a rotation of mid-rotation starters (guys pitching like mid-rotation starters), nobody would be sniffling about the quality of the pitchers.

It would be considerable - although I think it is a price that the Red Sox could pay. The prospect and young big leaguer heft is there.

Obviously the white whale is Chris Sale - and that would be worth a premium price. Chicago probably should cash it in too - but it would take guts on a lot of parties.

One of the funny ideas about the approach to the rotation was that there was a magic alternative strategy. If the team started 2015 with Owens and Rodriguez as two of the starters, the bleating would still have been there. The FA pitching market had two impactful starters - should Boston have signed either? It's easy to say now - and certainly it would have helped in 2015, but that clearly was only part of the ROI calculation. But then you have the trade market. The market for impactful starting pitching was going to very hard to come by in the offseason - because of the health of the baseball industry as well as the Kansas City Royals almost winning the World Series - the market was going to reveal itself during the season as teams got voted off the island. There is little chance a team with a premium starter was going to punt the season in December. (except for the Phillies which is another issue entirely) The question becomes - what to do until then - would they have been better off with James Shields than Porcello? This year, yes - even though Shields has not actually been especially good. (even the normal plain jane ERA in a very pitcher centric world) What you got was trading for guys who were young and had a track record of durability and decent stuff. Masterson was a flyer which didn't work but was a reasonable lottery ticket if you did not want to press a kiddo into duty.

I could see the Red Sox doing BOTH at the same time. Maybe move Koji. But still put themselves in the Cueto conversation - knowing they have the money and chance to resign him. As UN notes, there are so many players in the pipeline who look blocked ... Cecchini, Merrero, Guerra, Margot, Chavis ... that dealing some of the heft is inevitable. Given the relative buyer's market for pitching, Cueto should be gettable and the Red Sox have enough prospect currency to "overpay" a little bit. That is, something which might feel like an overpayment in absolute terms, but not really to the Sox because of blocked prospects. I could see the Sox dealing Ramirez - or looking into it - because he is on a very reasonable deal, and he would immediately be the best bat on the market.

Great, great everyday players who held up a largely disposable pitching staff (Gullett and Nolan were good, Darcy was OK ... so it's not a monolithic statement).

or be the 2nd best team in baseball in a division which happened to have the 1st

Certainly they did over those 4 to 7 games ...

6th, 3rd and 4th in offense in those title years 13th and 4th in the other ones 3rd, 10th and 12th in pitching respectively Power pitching helps in October - but you need a lot more for the other 6 months. Giants have been able to catch the ball consistently throughout - and that clearly has been a help.

Who didn't say Lynn wasn't extraordinary? I just giggled at the "sniff, sniff, it's not like they're producing Fred Lynn's" - almost nobody else is either.

Because it fits on a needlepoint throw pillow in your house doesn't make it correct.

With the rotation, aside from Masterson there was not really a reason to be truly pessimistic about the guys being terrible. And since 1/3 of the innings pitched would be with the bullpen, you'd expect a good bullpen would provide some help also. Also since pitching is not 100% of run prevention - there was not much evidence entering the season the Red Sox would be bad defensively. The run prevention has failed - but to think it was preordained doesn't make much sense either.

Pitching and defense are not remotely sufficient to make the playoffs - which is the one iron clad requirement for teams to win the championship.

Why yes, yes they did - the 15th most effective starter in the AL that season.

They didn't in 2013 - it worked out well.

You were that pessimistic about the bullpen? That seems mean.

I will giggle uncontrollably as I note how utterly full of bunk that claim is. Going to offensive fWAR (or whatever ballpark normalized thing you like): 2014: LAA, Det led the league, Baltimore was 6th, Oakland 7th, Kansas City 10th 2013: Bos, Det, Oak, TB led, Cleveland 6th 2012: NY, Texas, Detroit, Oakland 2nd through 5th, Baltimore 11th 2011: Tex, NY, Det, TB 2 through 5th 2010: NY, TB, Min 3rd, Texas 7th 2009: NY 1st, LAA, Min, Bos 3rd through 5th 2008: Bos 2nd, NYY 6th, ChiSox 9th, LAA 10th 2007: NY 1st, Bos Cle 3th-4th, LAA 7th So - excluding "regular season tiebreaker games" since 2007: 35 AL playoff teams ... exactly 4 playoffs teams were below the median (8th place or worse) in offense 25 of the playoff teams were in the top 5 in offense

A little bit - although Ortiz in 2014 did not show the signs you'd expect of a guy who was on borrowed time (and in a lot of measurable ways still hasn't). Bat speed hadn't slowed - strikeouts didn't go up. He was doing a lot of the same things without getting the results. I think the projections were fairly in the middle of the bell curve as far as expected outcomes. The drop in Ortiz' hard contact is striking though.

Those are different points. The FO knew the pitching had to be upgraded in March to get the team to the level we want - you know, the one which wins titles. I don't think the FO expected the pitching to need to be upgraded to get to the level that they NEEDED - to be in a reasonable form of contention, due to the other two thirds of the game. So far the playoff berths in the AL are occupied by the (fWAR ranks): 1st (NYY) 4th (Hou) 6th (LAA) 9th (KC) 12th (Min) Really the major miscalculation Ben made was how much the defense would bring to the run prevention operation ... you look at how much Minnesota has been helped by a cavernous home park and good fielders. The leaking oil in the Red Sox defense (the left side primarily) has been the real disappointment.

FWIW, both Betts and Bogaerts were a full two years younger than Lynn when they hit the show and a year younger than Rice. As noted, Lynn and Rice were a once in a lifetime sort of class (and Rice in particular was the ultimate marriage of player and ballpark). The arms I share the frustration - although it seems that a lot of organizational priority has been on sourcing that via other means. It is also one of the places where the draft positions of the last decade really show.

Well ... Sandoval was an improvement over bubkus at 3B Ortiz's 2014 was not in line with his previous years and almost entirely due to a very low BABIP. He was an upside regression candidate. Bogaerts was going to improve Betts was going to be solid as a full time CF Ramirez was an improvement over bubkus in LF Napoli was expected to be roughly the player he was in 2013 and 2014 (i.e. quite good) There were a lot of options for RF if Victorino remained unhealthy, enough for at least one to click Pedroia would be healthier RF was the most speculative. But none of the above were huge leaps. Basically the idea was that Ramirez and Sandoval were going to make outsized impacts because the positions they were playing were staffed by giant sucking sounds the last season. Also Ortiz' 2014 looked like a legitimate fluke. What has happened is that Napoli and Ortiz' relative dropoffs have not been able to make up for the improvements offensively at 3B and LF. Plus RF and C have remained sore spots - although the latter was liveable.

That is a seductive narrative which actually flies in the face of what actually has happened.

When our offense has been productive, we have won ... when it hasn't we haven't. Now their poor record is the pitching's fault - in the way that the Patriots in 2011 had a s***** secondary. In NEITHER case was the "formula for team victory" built on those areas of the game being amazing ... they were built for an offense to do the lifting and the defense to be sufficient. So when the team fails (like the Patriots did in that Super Bowl) blaming the DEFENSE when the vaunted offense could not get to 28 points is somewhat misguided.

The number of earned and unearned runs across the game is small and fairly consistent. Also, what is an earned and unearned run is largely left to opinion. Obviously if a guy who reached on an error came around to score that is unambiguous, but other cases are more esoteric. A bad defense influences the number of actual runs of all flavours. After all, you replace human fielders with potted plants and suddenly many balls are getting through the infield. Oakland leads the league in ERA - but you almost expect that since their pitchers aren't terrible and they play in one of the best pitcher's parks in the whole league. Anyway, digging on this - the top AL teams in runs allowed and ERA and FIP Royals 3.61 - 3.51 - 3.83 Rays 3.76 - 3.57 - 3.81 Astros 3.79 - 3.58 - 3.62 Angels 3.82 - 3.65 - 3.88 A's 3.84 - 3.41 - 3.62 Orioles 3.97 - 3.76 - 4.07 Mariners 3.98 - 3.76 - 3.92 Twins 4.08 - 3.85 - 4.07 Guardians 4.18 - 3.80 - 3.35 White Sox 4.26 - 3.91 - 3.57 Yankees 4.33 - 3.96 - 3.64 Jays 4.37 - 4.13 - 4.11 Rangers 4.52 - 4.24 - 4.37 Tigers 4.67 - 4.27 - 4.17 Red Sox 4.67 - 4.40 - 3.98 If you take the numbers together ... he A's clearly allow the most unearned runs ... since they have committed the most errors, that is not a stunner. On the other hand, the A's get to so many balls that only 0.22 runs per game is explained by defense. In an aside, when you see the Red Sox' RA/FIP spread the REAL miscalculation Ben made is clear.