sk7326

Funniest thing - is he was ordinary in the past to a little better than that. He is not old and he was extended for a reasonable haul for an innings eater. Oh how I WISH he was ordinary!

9.5M is essentially nothing to the Red Sox Ranaudo is a AAAA pitcher. Neither move has had many desirable results - neither move was scandalous. Any reasonable model would have had the starting pitching be average - not bad, but average. (in fact ZIPS and Steamer projections had the rotation collectively as good as last year - dropoff from Lester, improvement from Peavy and the De La Rosa-Webster-Ranaudo pu pu platter) They have underachieved - because they have been below "ordinary". You can win a lot of games with offense and #3 pitchers - they are getting neither of those, though both were reasonable projections.

$25M, 3 fWAR, injured halfway through the contract Daisuke Matsuzaka $52M, 7.8 fWAR, injuries abound ... Two pitchers I hated watching. Hard to do the "success/failure" game due to injuries, but clearly did not get maximum value out of either.

The Donaldson thing can't really be held against Ben specifically - the industry seemed caught off guard. It is rare that something like this NEVER got leaked in any form. My guess it is one of those things where the Jays casually asked Oakland, "we'd give you Brett Lawrie for him" and Oakland suddenly thought "Lawrie, really?" (ignore whether this is a smart valuation - just that it could be a plausible one). It's like a family that was not intending to sell the house when suddenly somebody offered $200K more than what Zillow said. The priorities can shift suddenly. Beane and Cherington have dealt before amicably - so I doubt the Red Sox would have been shut out of a true open auction.

Both Jon Lester and David Price moved last year in deals with a grand total of two players with any sort of potential big league impact. (Smyly and Cespedes) If Cueto could secure two Top 100 prospects, that would be a massive haul. Note I wouldn't do it - but what it would take for the Reds to budge when you look at how much of a buyers market it is, it not a heck of a lot.

No. 1. They signed Panda because he had high contact rates (which is more important in a run-poor era), he was a good athlete (a fat one, but a good one) and the youngest premium free agent. They were buying more prime, less downside and if you squint hard enough, perhaps even a drop of improvement (granted, a little more dreaming needed to make that happen). 2. Hanley was a disasterously bad infielder whose body was falling off limb by limb. At best he was going be a 3B. Xander has been fine at SS this year - no Ozzie Smith, but a distinct improvement on last year. 3. Left Field is the easiest position on the field. The calculated bet was that Hanley could be kept in one piece and that he'd be decent at the easiest position on the field. Alas.

Yes. I wouldn't do it - but the Red Sox have a stacked system (especially if the Reds don't mind Greenville) and can do an overpay. But yes, the Red Sox could make an overpay to get Cueto now. Yes, the Reds say they are holding him til the break - but that is only because they want a bidding war which the Red Sox could pre-empt. Note that I would not do it - both on principle and because the Sox are not good enough right now to deserve that sort of plunge. For instance, the Orioles made a crappy baseball trade last year with the Red Sox to get a key bullpen cog. It was a poor baseball valuation, but an overpay driven by a team need and a club that could win it all with a key move here. They went all in. The Red Sox have the tools to make that sort of all-in trade but this team is not worth going all-in for. Not yet anyway.

He'd have to be really good - Papi 2013, V-Mart last year. It's a pretty high bar to clear.

Well, I think Victorino was the least important of the outfield assets ... he is on an expiring deal, you figure he could be dealt for a rock bottom price without anybody being bothered too much. Craig was risky, but he had hit as recently as 2013 and he is on what would normally be a very reasonable contract. There has been some bad luck - the odds seemed to be in favor of finding 3 good guys from this pile ... and so far it has not quite worked that way yet. That said, a Ramirez-Betts-Castillo outfield looks like the right move to play and I think that has become pretty clear. Whatever it is, the offense's failings have been crippling.

They signed him for his bat - he is a horrific FIELDER ... left field is the easiest position on the field, it was the best choice to keep him healthy. Now, 3B would have made more sense longer term - and I do think there is a reasonable case for trying to deal Sandoval now for that reason. (that and ALL of the Red Sox uber-prospect muscle is at 3B potentially) I think the outfield plan was pretty straightforward - try to consolidate a strength and use it to deal. Victorino's body and Craig's bat screwed that up. Betts is fine, although one suspects his slow start now has teams hoping they can buy low on him.

Largest slice of blame pie - the coaching staff Ben went out and signed the top 2 position players in the free agent crop. You would have been a fool to expect sunshine and rainbows from them, but they were expected to be helpful, and Ben got them both on pretty reasonable deals by 2015 standards. (ignore the money - functionally doesn't matter, but the years were totally acceptable) Dustin Pedroia is healthy. We are not relying excessively on old farts - this has been a large, systemic level of offensive underachievement (Bogaerts and Pedroia aside). He let Lester go and peopled the rotation with a bunch of mid-rotation sort of guys. Aside from Buchholz they have not pitched like mid-rotation pitchers. Porcello has pitched more like back end, and Miley and Kelly have pitched like guys who might not be actual big league starters. For a bunch of guys in their 20s with either stuff or track record to be *decent*, this is serious underachievement. When the team - with talented players, who have actually not shown that much evidence of non-talent, all fail together, that points to a systemic flaw. I would be all for a managerial change here - something needs to be shaken up.

1. It might be 2. The Red Sox have the prospect muscle to shock the Reds now with an offer and drive Cueto off the lot. Question is whether you do that. Right now this team has not shown enough to earn that sort of outlay.

JD Drew: $70 million, 12.7 fWAR ... worked, although not a steal John Lackey: $68 million, 9.2 fWAR ... did not work, although injury in middle impacts this (did not bother splitting WAR in 2014) Julio Lugo: $36 million, 0.5 fWAR ... oops Carl Crawford: $42 million, 0.3 fWAR ... oops squared Josh Beckett I: $40 million, 15.1 fWAR ... worked very well Josh Beckett II: $34 million ... 5.4 fWAR ... borderline, but better than you think Edgar Renteria: $25 million ... 1.8 fWAR ... did not work, although he did produce 10+ fWAR over the terms of the contract. The player was appropriately valued/compensated - he just stunk the one year he was in Boston Free agency was not Epstein's shining virtue - but it also was not nearly as bad as remembered

The pitching "upgrade" was in the plan ... and to be fair, it has gotten better (replacing Masterson's entrails with what Eduardo has given them so far clearly does that - even Eduardo regressing to "promising rookie" would do that). But i think the pitching upgrade was dependent on the other stuff working. Let's put it another way - I thought there was a very low chance that the Sox would not be buyers given the team on paper. Management has to ask that question before the "who" part of it.

I agree - but I think it is a tricky question too. How much of the offensive "salvation lies within"? That is a genuinely tricky question. Fixing the pitching is a lot more straightforward.

Yes - although the team on the field has made it complicated. I think the idea was that the issues entering the season were known and finite (in other words, the rotation). The OTHER problems have been genuine surprises - which leads to a more complicated question as to whether this roster can be saved. That's why management gets the big bucks. It's not like trading for Johnny Cueto is going to make the bats perk up.

23rd out of 30 in fWAR for the season for pitching ... on the bright side, 5th of 30 teams in June and 15th of 30 teams in the last month. Even the fielding has perked up a little. It has been the mystifying inability to score which has been the real bane here. I will not let management off the hook (buck stops there of course) but there was little of the hitting which a sane person could have predicted in February.

That's because it's true. If you look at the 5 seasons: 2010: One of their proudest non-title seasons. Playoff spot alive with last weekend despite serious horrendous injury problems. 2011: A heartbreaking collapse, which missed the playoffs by one game. It was a 90 win season. Most teams that year did not win 90 games. 2012: This sucked a lot 2013: This was pretty good 2014: This sucked a lot when Lester wasn't pitching 2015: This has been annoying so far, no doubt, but nothing has really been decided one way or the other This was not perfect, but I suspect a lot of teams would take it.

Fun stat: Rodriguez has now pitched more innings than Andrew Miller did last year

Keith LAw recap of Sox draft http://espn.go.com/blog/mlb-draft/insider/post?id=2362

He is a solid choice for sure. Very college heavy top of the draft this year - which to me reflects a general lack of star power in this group. Doesn't mean there aren't good players here - but not sure they can plop Benintendi in Portland right away for instance. My guess is he starts in Salem next year at worst - low-A or Instructs are lower level than he saw in the SEC.

Oh you are right - the "top prospect" level is Portland. That is, guys who aren't that far away from Boston. But a lot of the Sox prospect muscle right now is at Greenville, and Margot is in Salem. The top 5 ranking for the farm system is not unreasonable, but the prospects are not at Portland ... yet.

I think there are teams who are not convinced he can start.

Yeah I think Keith Law's reporting had Benitendi as the Sox top target. Overall not a good draft class. I mean there COULD be some stars, but judging from the draft results it was a pretty poor year for high school position players and pitchers, and that is normally where your star upside comes from. Benintendi probably won't come under slot- he is a college sophomore, so he has more leverage than the average college draftee. The way the Sox work especially with the new CBA ... expect them to start piling up some guys they can get below slot ... and then chase down some tough signs later.

Portland is not great - the system's power right now seems to be Pawtucket and Greenville ... that said Margot could be in Portland by the end of the year, as could Moncada and (perhaps) Devers