sk7326

Yeah. The man has been in baseball forever. The idea he couldn't helm a reload was daft. Yes he traded his entire farm in Detroit - but his owner wanted that and the approach got results. I am an NBA fan and I look at how the Celtics have reacted to having a young core that is so close to the top of the mountain - they have decided to damn the torpedos and push as many chips into taking advantage of a championship window. It makes the aftermath of the 2018 Red Sox monster even more disheartening.

They won immediately once he took over and fell off when the pitching fell apart. His first year back in his second term the team was 6 wins away from another banner. The last two years have been tough but there has also been a paucity in talent, particularly on the mound.

Per McAdam, Paul Toboni, the team's VP for Amateur and player development has also been interviewed.

Looking at who HAS interviewed, both internal and external - it definitely looks like Boston is using this as a chance to take some 30,000 foot view of how the org is running ... - Pitching development - The scouting vs analytics components for the winning recipe Huntington is particularly interesting, with some real GM experience as well as experience developing pitching.

Per Speier at the Globe, the names who HAVE interviewed that we know Eddie Romero Jr Craig Breslow, Cubs assistant GM/director of pitching ... lives in Newton Neal Huntington, Cleveland special assistant to the GM ... Pirates GM 2007-2019 which included 3 straight playoff appearances Thad Levine, Twins GM ... Rangers assistant GM 2005-2016 ... Rangers won the pennant 2010 and 2011

A replacement for Bloom's duties - whatever you want to call it.

I think Bloom can be successful - but it might have to be in an org that gives him the backing to tear it to the studs. Ng might be a better fit here where you are trying to turn an aircraft carrier.

Yeah. Really, Epstein and Cherington were part of the original mangement team (or at least the one the team settled on after the ownership took over). They didn't have their own people. I think there are a lot of industry respected baseball folks here that a CBO would be happy to inherit. I think some of the apprehension might very well be dealing with Sam Kennedy.

One of the tricky things here - besides ownership's itchy trigger finger - is that you are inheriting a baseball operation with a lot of people in place (and many of them good). Ng clearly has a lot of corporate experience i.e. being in front offices and should be able to navigate that.

McAdam reported Mike Hill ... https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2023/10/mlb-notebook-red-sox-encounter-resistance-in-front-office-search-but-one-target-surfaces.html

There is a pretty good case for Ohtani being MVP this year on his bat alone, despite missing the final month.

If it is a signal they will like, pay for top end talent and stuff, it's one thing. It can be a both/and thing, not an either/or. There is some cynical reasoning at work here as well. The team is nearly bereft of star power - and so the team might want to import some.

Ohtani's relationship with New Balance could be a big factor here.

They didn't have a Top 10 payroll!! That was a choice. The money was there. The money is always there.

For free agents, the list is two items long: 1. Money 2. What can you do for my career? And - think of it in terms of your real life job - all things being equal, would you rather join a well run company or a shoddily run one? Now baseball is different in that no team is in danger of missing payroll, but those considerations are still there.

Right. Last year the team had the 12th highest payroll in the league. There was definitely room to add outside pitching. While I don't want the team to be stupid about spending ... as Law put succinctly they're the Boston bleeping Red Sox and need to start acting like it again.

Every team in the majors has had a 2-game losing streak this season. Compared to the NBA (for instance), there is no real way to create a team that is immune to that. I've seen 83 and 85 win world champions. There is clutch play, but a lot of it is just the goofiness of baseball that we love. I mean Toronto allowed 5 runs in 2 games ... they did just about everything right, but the Twins pitchers were just a little better. There isn't much Toronto could do. The Brewers were the best pitching staff in baseball and they are going home.

The baseball playoffs make no sense - and that's why it's awesome.

Overall the contract was frustrating though given the market for starters, that you got 1.5 very good seasons out of it made it more "meh" than a tire fire of a deal. I would have preferred to roll the dice with him than the Kluber-sort of flotsam. We knew that whatever innings Nate gave were probably going to be good.

Whatever bump he got this year from last year WAR wise was entirely due to defense. Now, I do think a useful rule of thumb is that an X win player whose wins were built on offense is .. well, a more reliable measurement than an X win player whose wins were built on defense. While there has been tons of work done on measuring defensive value, it will always have larger error bars than offense.

Yes. A good way to think about replacement level would be ... oh I don't know .. Bobby Dalbec. He's not really good enough to be a real big leaguer, but he can play in a pinch. I believe based both fangraphs and bbref reached an agreement on how to interpret replacement level that way. Now, I am not sure of the details - but a good rule of thumby way to look at it is that a team made up entirely of replacement players would be expected to be a real major league team, but the worst one in the league. Let's say 50 wins. So the Orioles ended up with (as a team) 16 combined WAR from pitching and 28 WAR from the position hitting/defense. That 44 WAR if you add to 50 gets you 94 wins, and their pythagorean record was 94-68 Atlanta 39.2 WAR from hitting/defense, 16.2 WAR from pitching = 55.4 combined WAR ... 105 wins ... their run differential speaks to 101 pythagorean wins Red Sox 17.2 pitching WAR, 19.1 batting/def WAR ... 86 wins ... pythagorean 81 wins. Oakland 0.0 pitching WAR, 11.2 batting WAR ... 61 wins ... 49 pythagorean wins So this is not exact, but you get the rough idea. So, looking at bbref. The median team in 2023 was about 18 WAR from batting/fielding. That ends up to about 2 WAR per player/season. If you back out 10% for what seems to me to be a fair number of rest days or whatever (so 146 starts) that gets you to about 1.8 WAR for a full season starter as an average position player/DH. 0.5 WAR (whatever flavor) sucks - assuming we are talking about a large number of plate appearances. Basically it means that means you are only slightly better than any ole Rick Lancelotti/Crash Davis type of up-and-down guy.

The lesson of the Rays-Rangers series is ... 0.5 a run a game simply ain't enough. Tip your hat to Eovaldi. We all know the deal with Nate - if his arm stays attached to his body, he's one of the better pitchers out there.

the other thing was that it was not the first time Grady left him in too long in a deciding game THAT POSTSEASON. It happened against the A's in the ALDS.

George Kirby in Seattle said postgame this was a salute to Wake

I can see that - but Scott Williamson was very good in the postseason up to that point. And Grady had a lot of wiggle room with a 3 run lead.