sk7326

Francona and the org tend to believe that the way to move baserunners is to get hits. Yeah led to a lot of DPs at times - and the Red Sox were often among the league leaders in men left on base - although if you think about it in a backhanded way, both of those are good stats.

Agreed. There is a lot of the smarmy pseudo-intellectualizing which makes me dislike LaRussa. (and LaRussa was worse since he did not seem to understand what SSS is) He is good with young players and doesn't do many tactically stupid things. He is no super genius. He is a good manager - although I'd have a hard time putting him above Francona or Showalter among the active crop.

Yet he was better in TB than he has been anywhere else with different managers. Might be about the guy at that point.

If the Red Sox score 5.6 runs per 9 innings (56 runs in 9 games, but one of the games was 19 innings) ... they don't really have to even be good at run prevention to still be a .500 sort of team. We know Miley and Buchholz are better than this because no pessimistic prediction for them would have them putting up 8 ERAs. I do not deny that this team needs more to win in October - but if the team hits like this (and while you argue regression - Papi, Betts and Sandoval have not really gotten going yet) they will be okay.

Merrero if he hits could be a decent starter - and there is not much organizational depth there. Merrero imo has a high floor - he will play major league baseball for a living. The question is whether he'll be an extra guy or a true blue starter. I do think he's blocked here - and with Cecchini and Bradley far and away the most likely position players to get moved in a deal for major league help.

I don't think there is an urgent rush - but I think the industry realizes how little he has to provide offensively to be an above average starter. I think a team will offer a reasonable deal at some point (to me reasonable = at least a toolsy lottery ticket or two)

Actually I am not sure - if Craig gets dealt for instance ... if THAT is the spot that opens up, Bradley actually makes more sense than Castillo - since he can be a defensive replacement. Castillo could still get reps that he needs. Vis a vis the injury I am less worried - team is being very cautious and no reason for him to try to tough out AAA games. I suspect if he were in Boston and it was September and the Sox were in the hunt, Castillo would be active.

The manager does not have to be a PhD (in fact, not really desirable). The manager has that job of connecting the information to the stuff on field. Also, I think in a lot of front offices, managers are shifting the way of NFL head coaches - managing your staff of coaches is at least as big a gig as the stuff we see on TV. Francona has been really good at connecting all of those various views - relating to players, developing his coaches, working the media and implementing the front office's baseball philosophy. Actually typing this down, you notice that Bobby V did 0 of those things. Farrell so far has been solid at them.

He'll be somebody's CF - just not ours

Obviously season is early - but things are playing out as you'd expect. The rotation is not good, but the bullpen is. Ogando has looked outstanding in particular and it was nice to see Koji resemble his healthy self. Johnson, Wright and Barnes are probably your best candidates to start right now. Johnson is the probability guy. Given the nature of innings limits and how youngsters are handled, if Owens or Rodriguez is going to make a contribution it will probably be no earlier than mid-June. The rental market ain't going to start to sort itself out for another few weeks. That said, the offense, bullpen and defense should be sufficient to keep the Sox solvent until then.

Keith Law highlighted best teams for prospect watching in the bigs: http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/keith-law/insider/post?id=3857

Adopting Rafael Devers. Most ceiling in the system - if he gets a good significant run at high-A, we got something possibly very special.

Obviously 247 big league PAs are not a large sample - but he has beat every developmental milestone they have put in front of him. I will temper yesterday with noting a .533 OPS to date (tee hee). But no reason to not be very excited. Guys like him and Bogaerts are guys the team puts in and figures where everybody ELSE will play after that.

What I got from your original post (so if I'm wrong, I apologize and no offense was meant) is that by denying that clutch exists that you are denying that pressure exists. That seems like a strawman - I don't think the argument "stats guys" make is that clutch doesn't exist so much as that those who are good in big moments are also good in the not-so-big ones. Ortiz - for instance - has one of the best portfolio of clutch hits I can remember. But he is also one of the best pure hitters the Red Sox have ever had. That doesn't seem like a coincidence.

1) Yes 2) More like average than below average. The power makes up for the inability to get on-base, but just barely. Now he was good in 2012 - so either that was a fluke or that player can be coaxed out by the right situation.

I would put Rivera in ahead of Pettitte because of the role thing - not that closer is a more important job than starting (it isn't), but that Rivera was better at it than Pettitte and the thing which writers use to pimp Pettitte's cause (the playoff starts) is a function of being on a really good team for a very long time.

Oakland fell apart due to a team wide slump - some of it might have been regression. Cespedes was a .300 OBP guy, which while the power is nice, that's generally a guy not doing his job. Offensive value is pretty straightforward - outs are bad, everything else is better. Occasionally outs are ok, but those are cases where the second run doesn't matter. As far as Rivera goes - he is the greatest 1-inning closer of all time. The way the gig has evolved over time, he is the best at the current version of it. Now do I think the gig which Rich Gossage or Mike Marshall had in days of yore was fundamentally more challenging? Yes. But that is a non-issue here. Rivera's brilliance proves his brilliance, not the general level of the gig. Joel Hanrahan and Fernando Rodney explain more about modern closing as a gig than Rivera or 2013 Uehara do.

On the other hand ... what he is doing today is kind of an ace's job description ... rescue the bullpen after a very taxing weekend.

Durability has been key. His work today and Wright's Friday really big for keeping miles off the 'pen. This is the sort of stuff that adds up over the marathon.

From the "Things you need in a marathon" - forget the linescore which will end up being not-amazing, but Wright on Friday and Porcello today have been able to keep the pitching staff from accumulating too many miles - not a big deal now, but this is the stuff that adds up over a season.

BTW: I do find funny - that views generally espoused by Earl Weaver is somehow "other" than traditional.

I think you are confusing long term trends with individual moments. The moments matter - especially the playoffs which is a small size crapshoot - but that does not deny that the effect of stolen bases is small in general. Now baseball prospectus has done some studies - on run expectancy given a situation. A small extract is here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=1657937 So suppose Betts hits a leadoff single. The Red Sox go from a .4552 runs expected to .8182. So the offensive expectation nearly doubles just by a guy getting on base. This is not an amazing revalation. But now, the guy is at first, what if he swipes second. With 0 out. Runs go from .8182 to 1.0393 ... +0.2211 With 1 out. From .4782 to .6235 ... +.1453 With 2 out. From .1946 to .2901 ... +.0955 What if he gets caught? With 0 out. From .8182 to .2394 ... -.5788 With 1 out. From .4782 to .0864 ... -.3918 With 2 out. From .1946 to .0000 ... -.1946 Already you can see the penalties for getting caught way way way outweigh the benefits of the steal. (I'm focusing on the 1st to 2nd case since it is the most common. Steals of 3rd have increased upside and downside. Double steals have some risk reduction. So, with 0 outs, a good base stealer (let's say 17 steals out of 20) ... add 2.02 runs to the cause With 1 out ... add 1.29 runs With 2 out ... add 1.04 runs Average them out and you get 1.45 runs per season, and since steals are less likely with 0 out, that is lower than that. Now - the case of Roberts is one of the cases where little baseball matter - when you don't care about the second run.

This misstates the premise. There are definitely pressure packed situations. The trouble is that researchers have been unable to identify a consistent definition where players perform differently in meaningful ways - that stands apart from how the players perform in general. A lot of time the situations are marked as special because we feel it - which is great TV but kind of a post-hoc way to look at things. And would you want to pick your players based on something a TV announcer says? If a list of great "big moment" players turns out to be a subset (if that) of great players, then doesn't the "great player" part of it resonate quite a bit more? And then you look at extremely accomplished players like Todd Helton or Larry Walker, who had relatively few chances to have David Ortiz moments? Did that make them lesser big game players - or just great players whose 24 teammates prevented them from generating the sort of TV opportunities we ascribe to this sort of thing?

Nava is more valuable to the Sox than in trade. And you are right - guys who do not expect 400 PAs, have a legitimate big league skill (hitting righthanded pitching) and can play a couple of positions acceptably make any bench better.

The team is averaging almost 5 runs per 9 innings ... there is no problem.