sk7326

Those are all Bobby V faults - not making the best of a situation where he disagreed with his bosses. He feuded with his own assistant coaches - and the idea that he didn't hire them clearly does not fly - most people don't get to choose their co-workers. I am as sympathetic to the horrible hand Bobby got dealt as anybody - no coach could have won with the injury problems the 2012 Sox had. He did a horrendous job anyway.

Oh I think luck has a lot to do with it - but I do think bullpen quality helps if you are playing a lot of close games. It's not a magic bullet, but could contribute to more positive results than just coin flips.

Spring Training - at least the stuff we see - proves zero. The decisions about who plays in the outfield the last two seasons were pretty strong reflections of that. As far as I can tell, Farrell and Francona did not run spring training like a kiddie camp - they treated the players like bosses treat employees in lots of actual real jobs. What Bobby did was just weird.

To be fair, that we don't know anything is always true - and without idle speculation there'd be no two-bit internet Red Sox forum. You are right of course - there is considerable projection involved in rosy predictions for 2015. Given you are betting on young guys getting better, the projections are a wee bit more likely than betting on old guys getting better. But it's not like 2013 - where you were just hoping nobody got hurt again. This will be a fun season - should reveal more about what sort of boss Farrell really is.

I was spitballing some - frankly if either of them move, it will probably be in the spring. As currently built they have 6 legit starters - and could upgrade the infield potentially a little bit. The 2 wildcards and economic health of baseball don't mean that there won't be sellers - it just means that we can't sit there and pick them out right now (unlike say the NFL or NBA). I've previously noted in my mind there are only 6 teams that can't at least squint hard at their roster and see a playoff team: Minnesota, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Colorado and Arizona. I'd add Milwaukee too but they probably wouldn't. But we also that 24 teams ain't makin the field. Give some padding for teams who will die trying - and it means there will be another half dozen teams or so who will be selling too (or who will at least pick up the phone if you are buying).

Tigers and Rangers are the best candidates - Tigers specifically, barren system and an old team that could get old fast

Oh I agree to a certain degree- the 2 wild cards makes it harder to cut bait, but not impossible. There are more creative options too maybe - could a package around Cecchini and some additional prospect stuff be able to get Fister or Zimmermann given the Nationals glut of starting pitching ... who knows

Along with the apparently reduced price for pitching. Think about it - when we were wee lads, the Red Sox got two cornerstones for the next decade for a mediocre closer at the deadline. The Rays moved a defending Cy Young Winner WITH A FULL SEASON OF CONTROL for a package which was not all that much better. (and yes, I like Smyly too, but you get the idea) I am sure many wonder what a bunch of good but not great controllable outfielders and a bunch of decent but not superstud prospects could fetch - the answer based on last year's trade deadline could very well be more than you think.

Victorino starts in right. His body can barely handle RF, so CF is a non-starter. Craig toggles between LF, RF and 1B - and the Sox use certain lefty matchups to sit Papi and give Hanley a working rest day at DH.

Rodriguez would hurt me too - but he is decidedly further away from the bigs than Owens or Barnes or Johnson. He showed some real improvement and serious skills - hence his high ranking. But you can make a case for Lee that the O's made for getting Miller (and Lee is obviously a better pitcher) ... if the kid is 2 years away in your heart (along with the added risk of pitchers generally healthwise), and you can help the team now, you have to consider it. While I am more amenable to Rodriguez moving than Margot and Devers, the conundrum is the similar - a guy whose potential you love but don't see making a contribution in the near term.

Scioscia is an ex-catcher who probably was personally offended at the idea of playing a somewhere between "horrendous" and "barely adequate" catcher to keep his bat in the lineup. If you view catcher as a defensive position, that is how you are wired. He is the sort of guy who would have made a similar call with Mike Piazza probably. His affection for Mathis was short sighted as he was not an acceptable offensive player, even with the rock bottom replacement threshhold for catchers. Napoli's hip condition was caught with the Sox' medicals on him - that's why it took so long for the deal to settle, remember? Now, Ron Washington was willing to live with him behind the plate in the World Series to keep his bat in the lineup, and since Napoli would have won the World Series MVP if it wasn't for the miracle in Game 6, that makes sense. BTW: I do share that opinion that a bat can be worth it - it was why Lavarnway as a catcher was exciting. Alas, his hit tool did not justify the poor glove, and when he tried to catch, the hitting suffered.

They did - but I forgot to notice. Craig's emergence if anything will allow them to talk Napoli too - and I am sure they will.

If I were them, I'd be targeting Devers or Margot. If I were us, I'd give them any choice or three from the Barnes, Ball, Rodriguez (yes, I know), Johnson, Cecchini menu ... Devers and Margot are not untouchable. And Lee could be a guy good enough to push me in to the "ok, fine" with one of them. But the way those guys have started, there is a real chance one of them (Devers in particular) will have an explosion, rocket into the industry Top 10 prospect lists and give me an ulcer, which the World Series might only partially address.

Probably - often in these cases, ties get broken by who has options remaining. Betts has options too, but I think he'd have to really spit the bit to not be starting ... unless the Red Sox are going to sign a guy who was good 9 years ago to start the season in CF again (cough cough)

Some random predictions: 1. Allen Craig becomes a good contract again: .280/.360/.440 sort. There will not be enough at-bats here, but he will shake off the stink of the last season plus 2. We will land a starter. He might not be the sexiest name on the market, but he will be a legitimate upgrade. 2a. I'd put a small but not crazy chance on that starter being David Price. The Tigers are dancing on that's knife's edge. Of the contenders they are the team most likely to have the bottom fall out in a sudden, ugly way. And their system is bone dry. 3. Victorino will bounce back - not to the MVP level of 2013, but to playable. It won't be enough to take ABs from Betts. 4. Bradley will have a spring which will at least give some fodder to the talk show callers. It might be enough to spin him to a team before they break camp. 5. Castillo starts the season in AAA. When he comes up, it will be to play RF. 6. When Buchholz suffers his annual injury in June - Owens will come up. Over under on big league starts = 10

Mo was phenomenal. That said, last year was not shabby - and the bullpen hammer is a big contributing factor to the Yankees somehow getting 170 wins the last 2 seasons while being outscored.

I sympathize with them on Hamels ... a little. That's a lot of control at a good price for a good pitcher - he should be asking for a lot. Lee is a different animal. That they agreed to trade Rollins this year does speak to some level of reality on their behalf.

Considering you did not list either of last year's finalists, that sort of makes the point. Non-great teams win the baseball title all the time (considering the different between a good team and a dark horse is the equivalent of the difference between a 10-6 and 9-7 team in NFL parlance, no wonder).

Right now, lot easier to list the teams that DON'T have a legitimate shot at the World Series ... this is baseball, you get in the tournament you have a legit shot. Just nature of the beast. (Colorado, Arizona, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Houston, Minnesota) and one of those will probably be able to lie to themselves for a little while. 2013 had a few extraordinary years and a lack of injury luck, luck they basically hadn't had in earnest since 2009. Last year was just a long series of underperformance. 2015's fortune requires development of folks who have shown considerable promise (Betts, Bogaerts, Castillo, Porcello) which is not unreasonable, but requires a bit more uncertainty than 2013 where you were just hoping guys could take the field.

I dispute that there are kool-aid drinkers out there in that way. Or at least I would hope not. The biggest pitcher the Sox have landed at the deadline in my memory is Mike Boddicker (and he cost quite a bit clearly - Brady Anderson and Curt Schilling although Schilling would have to go through 2 more orgs to blossom). I don't think it is a given a move will be made, but it's on the team and staff to create the impetus.

Right, the opt-out which set up a real albatross scenario. Sabbathia was arguable the AL's best pitcher before then - but definitely wandering into the deep water performance wise for a guy who had as many miles as he had.

I don't see that. What I see are some guys (count me here for what its worth) who see this rotation as something that can be good enough to not kill this team while the starting pitching trade market opens itself up. Now, I wish we had kept Lester. His contract demands were fair, and the probability of the contract being a net plus was solid to me. But he is gone. So you move to the next thing - would signing Max Scherzer and James Shields for $45-$50M be able to be a net improvement on last year's rotation. Personally, I think the answer was yes - but not by THAT much, and certainly not commesurate with the AAV difference. Scherzer probably offset Lester, but Shields big trait given the change of environment was going to be durability. So once you decide Scherzer and Shields were not worth the price and years - what is next? Where is that crackerjack Top 2 guy to land? The guys they DID land were about as good as you were going to get from the "everybody else" pile when you consider that A) most teams are doing well financially and most teams cannot credibly wave the white flag on the 2015 season in December. The only way that trading partners will show up is when teams start to fall out of the chase. Past history is no real guidepost here because the Red Sox did not have A) the job opening and the varied portfolio of tradeable stuff. I don't love this course of action - but I am not sure there was any alternative one given the scene after Lester went west.

The industry whiffs a lot on kids because they are kids. Full stop. The Beane story is funny. In Moneyball you see the emphasis on stats and the eschewing of high school kids because performance was harder to measure. But the weird result of going in on that thinking is that Oakland (and Toronto under Ricciardi)'s system started to sag because there were no stars. And so Oakland is back going to high schools and looking at kids with superior tools and whatnot. After all if a franchise has a high percentage hit rate for its prospects, but those prospects are Deven Merrero and Dan Butler, that is still a 60ish win team.

Sabbathia is key. He is not going to be the league's best pitcher again (which he has been before, and the Yankees got a taste of it before the baffling extension). But if he can give them 180+ competitive innings, that will help. The last 3 seasons the AL East was 100% unpredictable, and it still remains. If you say you know who will finish 1st and 5th, you are deluding yourself. After all, Boston had the most theoretical improvement (headlines), Yankees helped the pitching staff, Toronto got the best player moved this offseason (Donaldson), Tampa still has a lot of talent and Baltimore lapped the division last year so have they really lost all that much to the rest?

Who doesn't like overachievers? After all, that's what Bogaerts and Betts are - or at least what you call guys who crush levels they shouldn't be able to compete at normally. Coyle is an interesting guy - 30 homeruns in the last 140+ games is nothing to sneeze at. At the same time, the frame is tiny, and looking at the scouting reports there is a guy who tries to hit like Dustin Pedroia without that freakish ability to get on top of high cheese. He is an interesting guy - both to watch and as potential trade part. There are probably a few places where he could play an acceptable major league 2B right now. Since I was not on the board pre-2013, I don't know how smitten the community was with Middlebrooks. At the time, I was skeptical because he was chasing everything and getting results. Without being a Nomar or Vlad sort of gift for squaring up pitches, that is a hard way to be. But he was such a good athlete that some late blooming made sense. I certainly thought the org and fans were hasty anointing Will as the solution - and his inability to improve himself has been fatal combined with the injuries. Reddick is an interesting case too - unlike Will he does lots of things at a legitimately good major league level. He just has poor plate discipline - although in Oakland a couple of years ago he improved things enough to allow the total package to shine through. Frankly, that was my wish for Middlebrooks. He was never going to be a Mike Napoli at the plate - but if he could have worked on his defense and been able to produce a .310 sort of OBP with a lot of power behind it - that is a solid starter. But alas. Once he declined to take some AFL reps I was done. That said, if he figured some things out in SD, I would not be stunned - good athletes are still worth betting on. Guys don't get promoted without some performance under the tools - that's why my crush now is Rafael Devers. Clearly, there is still a ton to be written about his future - he could flame out. But you talk about a guy who put up a .900 OPS in his first taste of pro ball as the third youngest kid there, who is already 6 feet, 200 lbs and will be 18 the entirety of next season, and whose power and athleticism have left scouts shaking their head. He's the guy in the system who could be a future MVP. (Margot's upside is MVP production but voters like chicks dig the long ball) BTW: It's the funny part of the Sandoval signing. By no means should a big league club not fill a vacancy at 3B because of some 17 year old who just finished short season ball. HOWEVER, there is a small but legitimate possibility that Devers could be the sort of freight train which will force the org to rethink the 3B situation much sooner than anybody is thinking. I am excited.