sk7326

One thing is that the trade market for pitching was going to be tough - there are two big reasons: 1. Revenue sharing - nobody is in the poorhouse anymore (it won't stop owners from whining). Certainly incumbent Cy Young winners won't be on the auction block in December. 2. The Kansas City Royals - because of the 2nd wild card spot - almost every team HAS to at least act like they can make the playoffs during the time they have to sell season tickets and TV ads. Now what I am curious about is whether a team will pony up the extra prospect it will take to get the Reds to rent out Cueto early. I'd be tempted.

Updated Top 25 with the graduations here: http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/keith-law/insider/post?id=3965

Top 20 fWAR pitchers 2012-2015 1. Clayton Kershaw - 1st Round (#7) 2. King Felix - FA 3. Max Scherzer - 1st Round (#11) 4. David Price - 1st Round (#1) 5. Adam Wainwright - 1st Round (#29) 6. Chris Sale - 1st Round (#13) 7. Cole Hamels - 1st Round (#17) 8. Justin Verlander - 1st Round (#2) 9. Zach Grienke - 1st Round (#6) 10. Jordan Zimmermann - 2nd Round 11. Corey Kluber - 4th Round 12. Anibal Sanchez - FA 13. Yu Darvish - FA 14. Gio Gonzalez - Sammich Round 15. Jon Lester - 2nd Round 16. Stephen Strasburg - 1st Round (#1) 17. Cliff Lee - 4th Round 18. Madison Bumgarner - 1st Round (#10) 19. James Shields - 16th Round 20. Johnny Cueto - FA 21. Lance Lynn - Sammich Round 22. Jeff Samardzija - 5th Round (clear signability issue - you might have seen it on TV) 23. Jose Quintana - FA 24. Hiroki Kuroda - FA 25. AJ Burnett - 8th Round 26. Mat Latos - 11th Round Some interesting notes here: 1. You'd think there'd be a monopoly of some sort on this list from teams that "do it better" - but that's largely not the case. The Cards, Dodgers (folks the eye test seems to favour here) and Tigers have some names at the top ... but it is a fairly random distribution. Getting crackerjack pitching is hard. 2. The baseball draft is more of a crapshoot than others (duh!). But it is not at all random. You can quibble some with the Red Sox stuff - particularly on the amateur FA front possibly - but without the top draft picks available, getting that sort of talent into the system is not easy.

They took a calculated risk which didn't work on a guy who has set the franchise back exactly 7 starts. So now move on to something else. 21-24 is not where anyone'd like to be.

Yeah. Pretty much. Lester's Year 1 performance in that deal was bound to be good. So that is not a fair comparison point (they surely did not let him go thinking he'd stink in 2015). The relatively smaller number of star pitchers the Red Sox have produced speaks less to an internal flaw than the reality of a team who has not had many top draft picks in the last decade.

Some externalities there. Burnett was only giving that deal to Pittsburgh. Hammel was awful when he left the friendly confines of Oakland. Volquez went to a good pitching environment, and has been bad when he has not been in one. Masterson was a risk - but a pretty small one. Re-signing Lester - different kettle of fish. Shields has been a beneficiary of extremely good pitching environments his whole career.

Years is more important than money (and position players get more consideration here). The Sox should be big spenders - they charge the most of any team, and you want to see it in the organization. Smart vs $$$ is a false choice.

ERA of 4 is about league median. Obviously a better ERA than that helps, but it's not a disqualifier (the Tigers for one last year qualified with a 4.01 ERA).

I am certainly in favor of switch hitting if possible on principle. But I do wonder if players (and teams) were more sophisticated with when to choose which batting stance. Like if you faced Justin Masterson the decision to bat left handed is easy. But if you have 1999 Pedro Martinez in front of you (not that you have a hell of a lot of chance of hitting him anyway) with that wipeout change up, it might make sense to stay right handed to take that weapon away (or at least a heartfelt attempt). Similarly, maybe it is worth staying lefty on lefty if that is your stronger side and the lefty doesn't actually provide that classic deception or that sweeping breaking pitch.

It may or may not be - of course Davis is learning the guys individual styles. But I am also not sure how much Pedroia's advice was that profound. It could be a placebo effect too - frankly what happened to Napoli this week to me is right there with what I think about the offense generally. Napoli just needed something good to happen - and this week sure qualified. I just get this feeling that the Red Sox just need to find one of those weeks (and the Sox have scored 19 runs over the weekend - which is a start) where they just get off the schneid and then it's off to the races. There is not enough systemically wrong (from eye test of hitters and the numbers) to think that the lineup can't be fixed by just having a few balls not find fielders.

For all the stats I will noodle over and for all the analysis of Napoli ... sometimes, you just need to see the ball go over the fence

The numbers have not been kind to the rotation - although all of them have pitched better than the results. Miley has not inspired confidence, I agree. Buchholz though, as maddening as he is given his stuff, has actually pitched largely decently. It is still reasonable to think the rotation can deliver something more like a 4.xx ERA than a 5.xx. If the offense does not perk up considerably though, it is a moot point. The offense - it is hard to watch without thinking that this is something that one good weekend could fix.

The prices are exorbitant - and certainly that is why I argue vehemently when someone says we should throw away a given season the way a team like the Marlins would. The fans are asked a lot - the team has to give the consumers something for that. At the same time, not every year without a title is a failure - and not every failure is a reason to rip it to the studs. And 2015 is not even a failure yet - it is a little below a reasonable expectation. Pink hats are great. The more the merrier - although it is hard not be jealous of someone whose disappointment in the franchise only goes back to 2011.

It is fun to see how quickly we turned to entitled.

Natural position? He's 19 - you do what anybody does. Start them at the premium position until they can't. He's a shortstop while his body lets him. He's a great athlete - things will be fine. Fact is, the farm is the place where all players get real defensive training - amateur clubs sure don't do it.

Oh I would too - the question asked what would I do if I made a deal. I just expect the offense to perk up because the results have been so bizarre so far.

More fun with the Fangraphs dashboard on our anemic attack: Sox are 29th in the league in Swing% at pitches outside the strike zone and 28th in swing% overall. So the team is not hacking and the batting eye is still pretty good. Sox are 5th in the league in Contact% and 2nd in Contact% on pitches in the strike zone The approach has been fine, they aren't being overwhelmed by stuff, they have not been indiscriminately hacking - yet the results have not been there. The Red Sox were middle in the pack in these areas a year ago - and struck out a lot more. The weakness of the offense has really been just batted balls finding fielders - it is rather amazing.

For a 3-5 year time horizon, the power hitter. For this year's team - the ace would make a larger marginal difference to a part of the team less likely to improve naturally.

We will win more games if we score more runs or if we prevent more opposing runs. The look at the statistics is not to generate hope - but to ask whether there is evidence from the mediocrity of the season to date that it will continue or get worse. For the most part - there isn't. Now is it possible for hitters to not be able to make solid contact anymore while still not striking out? Yes, but it doesn't make a ton of sense. The good news is that there is plenty of time to fix this and the standings have bounced our way largely.

For some reason - the lineup has had trouble squaring up pitches. The at-bats have been largely good - the patience has been good. The team has not struck out a lot - but somehow there has just been a general lack of hard contact. I think some regression is in order, it's just such a weird result so far.

You would EXPECT that those two factors ... "not making solid contact" AND "striking out" would be trending together - but for the Sox they are trending opposite. It's counterintuitive - which speaks to me as a bit of a flukish result that will get better.

Some context of the weirdness of the offensive struggles: The Sox are 29th in strikeout rate ... the 2nd best team in the majors at not striking out The Sox are 4th in walk rate ... the 4th best team in the bigs at drawing walks The Sox are 30th in BABIP at .259 ... to give you an idea of how weird it is, 29th place (Astros) is .269. The Astros are closer to 23rd place than they are to the Sox. The Sox are 25th in line drive rate - which can explain some of the poor BABIP. The Sox also lead the league in Infield PopUp Rate ... so the Sox have not been great in the "solid contact" area, but the results so far have been legitimately freakish.

Basically neutral - which is an improvement on last year

The more important question (and this is more for the scouts) is how much of the underperformance is sheer luck and how much of it is problematic. For instance, Buchholz had a .362 BABIP. He has had issues executing pitchers clearly but that does not feel entirely sustainable either. Ortiz, Betts both have subpar BABIPs - has typical non-homerun contact found fielders more frequently - or is it a bigger issue? My favorite stat so far is that the team is last in the AL in doubles - which is inconceivable for a team which plays half its games at Fenway.

We know what the bold move is - just a matter of when Castillo and the org are ready to pull the trigger.