Jump to content
Talk Sox
  • Create Account

sk7326

Verified Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    7,647

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Profiles

Boston Red Sox Videos

2026 Boston Red Sox Top Prospects Ranking

Boston Red Sox Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

Guides & Resources

2025 Boston Red Sox Draft Pick Tracker

News

2026 Boston Red Sox Draft Pick Tracker

Forums

Blogs

Events

Store

Downloads

Gallery

Everything posted by sk7326

  1. sk7326
    Two years younger, two levels of baseball ahead ...
  2. sk7326
    Not sure - I tend to prefer fWAR for pitchers. Based on FIP, not runs allowed. Focuses more on what the pitcher controls.
  3. sk7326
    The .210/.260/.285 in his Pawtucket ABs much closer to his career than the 58 ABs against pitchers who generally are dead tired from a season of work. Interesting on base skills but a LOT of empty calories at the plate. I think the industry view of the pitchers is not as rosy as ours. Opposite is true of Bogaerts in particular. I think WMB was much much more highly rated by Sox nation than the industry. (not that young anymore, legit questions about his actual baseball skills)
  4. sk7326
    You do not have to sell me on Nava - I was thinking about the contract relative to others. If you just grade the outfielders (not Betts or Ramirez) on the market value of the contracts, you'd get: 1. Cespedes 2. Nava 3. Castillo 4. Bradley 5. Victorino 6. Craig I am not choosing Victorino and Craig over Nava, but I am trying to be realistic about how things will probably shake out if the Sox are going to deal from their surplus. Craig and Victorino have the hardest contracts to move (without giving them away) and both have some upside.
  5. sk7326
    I'll do one better - the 13 position players (14 if you carry 11 pitchers, Sox probably will carry 12 at least early) C: Vasquez 1B: Napoli 2B: Pedroia SS: Bogaerts 3B: Sandoval LF: Ramirez CF: Betts RF: Castillo DH: Ortiz C: Somebody IF: Holt OF1: Victorino OF2: Craig I just figure Cespedes and Nava have the right contracts to move. Middlebrooks will be sold for a bag of baseballs. Cecchini is a prime candidate for trade filler, I do think last year he moved from "prospects for us" to "currency" anyway. Also figure Vasquez and Castillo could be had in a more "premium level" deal.
  6. sk7326
    Nationals were the best team in the NL this past year. Cards were quite good last year. Kershaw's postseason issues (and Mattingly's poor tactical managing and the Dodgers forgetting to staff a bullpen) were bigger issues. I have issues with the Red Sox postseason thus far - signing two premium free agents, one the best position player, one the safest future investment ... is not one of them
  7. sk7326
    This makes sense in theory - if we were the only franchise out there. After all, there is only a finite amount of time with a finite amount of resources. This is not college where you redshirt Bradley, especially when there are other teams which would give him a starting gig. That is a poor use of resources. I think we had a version of this discussion with the catcher business. It is nice to want to have double redundancy depth at every position and big league ready prospects waiting for a job position which may or may not actually be opened. Prospects are future regulars - but they are also currency. If you don't see Bradley cracking the rotation in the next year and change (and I don't) ... then his value shifts to currency. Can he be part of a trade to get a regular we do need? Absolutely - although he will not fetch the same fortune he did before (hitting like a pitcher will do that).
  8. sk7326
    Maybe - at the same time the Sox probably could have assembled something similarly worthwhile. Maybe not quite the ceiling of Lawrie but at least as much probability.
  9. sk7326
    I have absolutely no doubt the Dodgers thought their best position player of the last 2 years was a loser. This is not quite the same as a bloated FA shopping spree while letting your best player leave for nothing.
  10. sk7326
    Josh Donaldson apparently
  11. sk7326
    OF course, if we knew Josh Donaldson could be had for such little prospect heft ... sigh
  12. sk7326
    Kyle Weiland principally The Red Sox absolutely should field a contender every year - that is absolutely true. Now, I'd submit that between 2013 and 2014 they made moves which would have led to being a likely contender. It did not happen, but I cannot point to anything that took place during that time which would have been foreseen as an absolute recipe for a 30 game dropoff. Between 2011 and 2012 they did some things which actively hurt the team (and you could see it at the time - the manager change in particular). But still a lot of crap just went wrong to get to the 2012 result. That could be seen by how much changed in 2013 just by the virtue of the s***** luck factors being reversed. Right now the 2015 team is a solid bounceback candidate. Unlike 2013, there is more work to do from the GM seat and a wider range of outcomes. I am curious as to how it will turn out.
  13. sk7326
    (it was tied for the worst collapse of that season if you want to get technical) Listen, you can have good moves with bad results, bad moves with good results, good moves with good results and bad moves with bad results. The latter earns firings. Now from your original phrasing - there are no good moves that for one reason or another just don't work. I guess that is an impasse.
  14. sk7326
    2012 was a failure of the baseball operations people. 2014 was much more a failing of the players and manager themselves. Two very different diagnoses. And a 90-72 season (2011) is many things, but a "miserable failure" is not one of them. It's almost as absurd as saying Terry Francona became a stupid person in 2011 after getting 89 wins with smoke and mirrors and Darnell McDonald starting games for a major league baseball team the very season before (and magically becoming smart again in 2013 and 2014) ... oh wait
  15. sk7326
    Well ... If we assume Vasquez, Napoli, Pedroia, Bogaerts, Sandoval, Ramirez, Betts, Castillo get your 8 starting positions. (and yes, I work off the assumption Ramirez is cool with this, just because enough reports seem to indicate this was his idea) That leaves either 5 or 6 positions depending on whether they carry 11 or 12 pitchers. I'll say 12 pitchers - however insane I think that is in 2015, it is the likely composition. So, who are the 5. Well, one of them will be a catcher of some stripe. So, that takes us down to four. Now who? Well, Holt gets a spot ... since that allows us to only carry one additional infielder. I think Victorino, Nava and Craig are the remaining three. How the PAs split - some sort of combination of competition and matchup. Now what is fascinating is that I absolutely could see any of these three or even Bradley (as unlikely as that seems) screwing the order up. I am only dismissing Cespedes because everything about him screams trade bait.
  16. sk7326
    I think CF and RF get flip flopped, only because of throwing arm considerations. (neither are great, Castillo's is probably better) I do agree there are 300-400 PAs for Nava in this alignment.
  17. sk7326
    Well 2012 and 2014 were last place finishes that were shaped very differently. 2012 was a ton of injuries combined with a trade which stripped the team to its studs. They fielded a AAA team the last two months of that season. You look at how little their best players actually played in 2012. You could see - well, not a wire to wire best team in baseball in 2013 - but it was not difficult to see the Red Sox bouncing back into playoff contention in 2013. The Sox got an unforeseen season from Victorino and Uehara, but the other guys were a matter of being healthy. 2014 was a dusting of injury and heaping spoonfuls of underperformance up and down the roster, and the moves the Red Sox made left their rotation in tatters. The underperformance to me is largely self-correcting (I don't think any of the cases are permanent outside of Middlebrooks, which the Sandoval signing addresses) but there are serious holes in the rotation as of now which there weren't really entering 2013.
  18. sk7326
    That's my guess. Betts is one of the team's 3 best OFs and despite the fanfare surrounding Castillo - Betts was ahead of him as of the end of 2014 (understandably given how little baseball Castillo has played recently) and has a 5 year age advantage (and the projection that comes with it). Castillo's arm is not great but better than Betts' too, and it's not like Fenway RF does not require range.
  19. sk7326
    Oh, industrywide I am not sure it is quite that low. After all, the man has a major league skill, and one he does better than just about any person alive. That alone along with his age (not as young as you'd like but still not peak) should have him on many big league radars.
  20. sk7326
    Nava has gotten better but what I will note is that UZR has tended to be fooled by playing LF at Fenway (at least in what I've seen in the past). (or other odd shaped zones)
  21. sk7326
    I do agree there, ownership wanted to move him. I do wonder what is going on in TB. Their brain trust left, they moved their best starter. I am not sure if their window of opportunity has passed, but I do get a sense that internally that sentiment might be there.
  22. sk7326
    Certainly the Red Sox signed him to be a pillar of the OF, whether it be in CF or RF. What is also true is that Bradley as a C/C- hitter combined with his glove is a legitimate starter for somebody. A B/B- hitter with his glove is a fringy All-Star. He was an F last season - and the question is how much of that is legitimately fixable. Given how much of his failings were driven by trying to impersonate Mike Napoli instead of just focusing on singles, adequate offensive production is not that far away. If I were a team with an opening at CF, I would absolutely throw a handful of magic beans at the Red Sox and see if I could land Bradley.
  23. sk7326
    Smyly had a league average FIP last season (maybe a shade better) - he is a solid guy although hard to say how projectable (compared to say, Archer). Austin Jackson is a bit of a reclamation project. I have a hard time thinking they got the upside you'd want to get from dealing a guy of Price's level.
  24. sk7326
    In the Cards case with Heyward - I see things the Cards way. Heyward is both a sensible rental and a huge upside play. (a few doable offensive adjustments from being a legitimate MVP candidate) In the case of a rental the Sox can get, it'd be much much harder to justify.
  25. sk7326
    I tend to agree with you ... BUT ... if after the dust settles Ramirez and Betts are entrenched in two outfield spots ... a two headed RF with Nava and Castillo or Victorino would be an effective outcome. As an aside, I also think Castillo is very much trade bait because if a team believes he can be a starting CF this season - that contract is quite favorable.
×
×
  • Create New...