sk7326

Depends on what you call mediocre and if you are considering position. Ells was excellent this season ... ultimately if he could guarantee us 6 of THESE seasons, I'd pay his asking price. The odds of that are pretty low.

You can never have enough quality starting pitching. You don't just hand the keys to guys like Ranaudo, Barnes, whomever - especially when these are not ace ceiling sorts. The fact is that quality pitching will either be pressed into duty or valuable in trade. I think there is a chance all of these guys get a cup of coffee in the show next season - and if I were GM, I would look at all of them as prime candidates for middle relief (I like Weaver's idea of middle relief as a good apprenticeship for these guys). I am not comfortable that our top 5 guys will make it through the season, but that is why you still keep looking at solid buy low guys like we did Dempster last season. (and yes, Dempster for his skill set was a very reasonable purchase)

You are not wrong - although he is young in terms of reps - when he was drafted, he was something of a project. This was well known at the time. Considering you expect a physical peak for dudes in the 27-30 sort of range, Middlebrooks still has some development you can plan on. And generally, betting on excellent athletes (who do have baseball skill) "figuring it out" is a sound wager. Jung is right that the hype on Middlebrooks preceded the performance - he came up because our 3B fell to pieces, that's it. He came up, had a good month, exhibited serious upside. The Boston hype machine anointed him and kicked Youkilis out the door. Somebody had to play 3B. I do think his injury in 2012 was a huge hit - that was another 150 PAs or so of development he missed. What I look at is that he is one of the best athletes in the system - he has serious raw power, and not just raw power, but power which has translated into games. He has the tools to be good defensively, although he is raw there. He is just relatively raw generally - and given his background, it is not a surprise. He's not as raw as Wily Mo Pena certainly, but in the same way that Wily Mo was a toolsy phenom who was not raw, raw, raw ... Middlebrooks is similar. I think Middlebrooks is a much better candidate to "get it", as he has shown steady improvement. Even after his callup in August, he was better. His mechanics were simpler, his plate discipline was better. You have to be careful with changing him too much - while yes you want to hone his approach and improve his plate discipline and whatever ... the urge to swing the bat is born, not made. The preternatural ability of the Yooks, Napolis or Adam Dunn to take and rake is not something you can teach. What Middlebrooks CAN work on is swinging at more of "his" pitches (I can't count the number of times I saw him take perfectly hittable 3rd strikes), and spoiling other ones, and laying off the outsided junk as much as possible. He is never going to be more than a .320-.330 OBP guy ... but he has a package of skills and athletic talent, where a "good enough" OBP results in a damn good baseball player.

The distance between Lester and a true ace (and there are only a handful of them) is probably a matter of talent more than anything Lester can do on his own. But that's OK - he seems a lock to be a quality #2 sort of starter for the next couple of years and his durability allows him to remain useful for 4-5 more. I don't want to give a big extension to a pitcher in his 30s, but he is one of the guys i don't worry about being able to create value over the life of the deal.

It is not likely - although you have the causation backwards. Boras works for him.

[i don't weep for the Cards - they are going to be factors for a long time - granted maybe without their current manager. Wacha, Martinez, Kelly, Rosenthal - a lot of amazing arms. I think you might have thought the Sox had the pieces of a playoff contender entering the season considering the rotten breaks of the recent past - but the best team in baseball wire to wire, that never had a losing streak of more than what 3 or 4 games? A true 3-dimensional outfit that were able to turn to their run prevention when the offense started to dry up? It is rare that the best team win the World Series - baseball is funny like that. We were, and we did.

Well historically 1967 ... at least in 2013 the players had a history of being good when they were healthy

WMB is better defensively than Bogaerts. Indeed, Bogaerts has an amazing projections, but it is not for his offense. He'd be a better 3B than SS, but he has more value as a SS, and he should be adequate there. It's not a slam on Bogaerts ability - after all the Yankees have won 5-titles with only "adequate" defense from the SS position. I think what it comes down to is that Middlebrooks-Boegarts is a cheaper left side of the infield with a much higher ceiling than Bogaerts-Drew. We went with the latter in October because ceiling doesn't matter when you are trying to win a 3-week tournament.

A few things. 1. The Red Sox played 8 of their 16 games on the road ... Detroit is a ballpark with large dimensions ... Tampa and Saint Louis are longtime proven pitcher's parks. The Red Sox scored 45 runs in 8 games at home, 5.6 runs a game (which is actually a higher run rate than their season rate, which led the league). So ballparks did contribute some to this. Remember the Red Sox went 5-3 on the road too, so neither team was hitting. 2. We have good hitters - yeah the averages were bad this postseason, but these were also tiny samples. (to give you an idea - if you see a guy get 3 hits in 10 at-bats ... on that basis alone, you can only really narrow down that he is really a .000 to .644 sort of hitter - it takes a couple of SEASONS to really hone in on true ability) The timing was luck, but when you have a lot of good hitters - at some point something was going to happen. It's like having 3 scoring lines in hockey - you can take guys away for a while, but at some point something good is likely to happen. 3. Just because we hit did not mean that we did not get on base. Consider the one-hitter. Yeah only one hit, but there were a parade of baserunners. We lost 1-0, but we had plenty of chances to take the lead. It's not luck, but it is not clutchness either. It is just piling up opportunities, and our ability to generate baserunners even without hitting allowed us to have chances. Yeah we stranded a lot of guys, but remember, during the season we and Detroit led the league in LOBs. LOBs are is a good "bad" statistic.

None of what you described are personnel decisions. Beckett has a long, rich injury history - so the struggles were typical. The ALCS, Tampa was better - they were the best team in the majors that season (Angels got off to a huge start but were flawed as we discovered). Frankly the comeback is one of the proudest moments of this entire decade, though it goes under the radar since a title (or a pennant) did not come with it. The players and manager left it all out there. The sacrifice thing - that is just philosophy, and hard to reconcile. Francona, Farrell, Weaver ... the school of not sacrificing has a lot of students. Certainly it has been proven that giving up outs assures that multi-run innings are few and far between.

Bradley had 61 at-bats above single-A when he crushed spring training ... his progress is fine. There is little reason to think Bradley won't be Ellsbury's equal (or close) in terms of getting on-base.

Errors seem like less of a big deal because it is not really the primary focus of defense. After all, you can't make an error on a ball you cannot reach. I think with Middlebrooks, you have to look at some decisions they did make after his callup. He played 2B in a pinch - and did not embarass himself small sample size noted. In the Detroit series, he was brought in to pinch run for Bogaerts. So the athletic tools are there and valued. He had a rough defensive start to the season, probably due to his entire form going to seed at the plate. But he was good defensively a year ago, and clearly he is a high caliber athlete - this is not a 1B in hiding. As for the idea of a team for October and a team for the regular season - I strongly disagree. Baseball has not yet gone the way of hockey. 5 of 15 teams is a pretty elite group, especially in a division like the AL East where you don't get to coast. You have to build the team to qualify for the tournament - and then figure out the rest later, maybe the trade deadline, maybe later than that.

There are exceptions ... but the larger case is generally fairly true. This doesn't mean that free agency is a bad idea and we all have to turn into Tampa Bay ... clearly nobody is starving here. But you want a deal to encompass a good amount of "peak" ... since you are paying a premium to outbid somebody and the contract will have negative future value at some point most likely.

The free market sets value sort of ... but that neglects the winner's curse of the auction, which Bell described. The team that wins the auction by definition overpays compared to the market. Now, it's not my money - and if the owners want to pocket the money saved from not signing Ellsbury then bleep them, obviously. But this team's history financially has not been anything to worry about on that front. If you let Ells and Drew walk, you can source 3 of the 8 positions for less than $2M TOTAL. For that money, what can the team do? That is the key.

For me, the problem has always been approach. In the NPB, you have the 5 days of rest instead of 4, and the much higher pitch counts. It encourages the "away from contact" sort of approach Daisuke had. Now granted, Matsuzaka is an extreme example. But even Nomo was not pitch efficient, and tried to get hitters to chase stuff (hence the popularity of the splitter, a pitch which has really disappeared from view among the US). Darvish is the only example of a guy who has a true American approach - who works inside the strike zone and counts on his stuff for swing and miss. Yes, he throws a lot of pitches too and had walk issues last year - but you know what I mean.

There is also future durability and what not ... Pedroia will stay on 2nd much longer than Ellsbury can be expected to hold down CF at a very high level. I am not discounting that Ells could still be a good base stealer and evolve into a future roving leadoff hitter as he shifts to more of a LF sort for hire like Kenny Lofton's later years, but I wouldn't pay 20 million per for em.

It is ... BUT, the size of a QO has been known most of the season (just project up from the 2013 amount - we were even kicking around 14 million on this board as an estimate). If the Sox did not think they could sign him, they could source the catcher position for a LOT less money. Given the extremely inflated market, the draft pick probably would not dissuade somebody from taking him on - there is just a lot of money chasing a relatively small amount of quality.

Indeed - and he is making 2/3 of the likely contract and has had a far better track record of actually being able to play at a 5 win level ...

I am curious too - I have seen some of the fawning reports. At the same time I have seen skeptics who wonder if Tanaka is really more like a pitcher like Kuroda (darn good still) but riding the Darvish hype to end up overvalued.

I suspect if Salty is getting a QO, that means he and the Sox are at least in the ballpark for a multi-year agreement.

He had a devastating shoulder injury ... and then hurt his chest this season. He made all his starts in 2012 and then missed a bunch for a non-recurring reason this year. That ain't Buchholz. Peavy has a track record as a hoss (the giant shoulder asterisk noted) ... Buchholz has never gotten that. Team could use some help in the rotation - spending 100 million on a #3 Japanese starter ain't it - but pitcher health is sort of the variable every team faces. And if one is afraid of missing starts - that's what Dempster is for.

Well Bobby V did have a good run with the Mets and has won a lot in a lot of places, usually with ragtag sort of outfits. Definitely played mindgames and such - like your Billy Martins or whatnot. I actually did not mind the hiring - certainly if you are going to run off Tito, bringing in an anti-Tito is the only sane thing to do. If you wanted to change the culture of a coaching staff built on making the clubhouse seem like a normal place to function, then bring in a guy who does the opposite and keeps people on high alert. I was expecting the players to be knocked off kilter - but I did not expect him to be so unprepared. I don't think he put that much effort into the gig this time around. I was not sure there was a master plan. Certainly his coaches did not understand it. At the same time, Bobby does have a right to note that his team was obliterated by injuries and "aging", especially Youk and Beckett. Basically, the team's best hitter and arguable best pitcher turned into replacement level chum overnight. He was dealt an awful hand, which he proceeded to play very very badly. I am not sure whether the leadership on a club (since this is a job like anybody else's) is as simple as Pedroia not having standing - a former MVP always has standing. And professionals have a knowledge of which guys are locker room lawyers and which actually deserve respect (often the guy playing through injuries for one), and adjust accordingly. It is hard to picture a pro like Adrian Gonzalez turning a bunch of championship tested pros into five year olds. The problems were probably much more mundane than that. The no-win dynamics seem more related to the guys who couldn't play more than anything that methaphysical. I tend to look at chemistry as a trailer, not a leader. It's like any workplace - getting along with your co-workers is important, but secondary to actually being good at the job. The chemistry comes with demonstrated success. If the Red Sox did not get early results with the 2013 changes (and results might be more than W/L), I suspect that the same rumblings you got in 2012 would have come. In a lot of ways the Farrell hiring and results mirror what happened when Boston hired Grady in 2002. In both of those cases, you had the franchise hiring former assistants to settle some disruptive circumstances. Farrell I think was able to foster credibility because the senior members of the team knew him already. Lester, Papi, Pedroia knew and respected him. Beyeler and Lovullo were both former PawSox managers. It was the opposite of an "adjustment" - it was just going back to a work environment they were already familiar with. And when the stalwarts have bought in, the new guys tend to fall into line.

I think they want to. But I would not deal him as a pure salary dump - the contract is not nearly enough of an albatross to tell a team "just take him please". I'd want some actual value coming back if a team wants us to eat some of his salary.

Boras is doing his job - he's the best agent around for a reason. The Red Sox are in a very easy position here. Make the QO, see what happens. Even if there is no amazing extension, they either have a sandwich pick or Ellsbury back for another season. And Bradley is a quality Plan B. I doubt the decision keeps Cherington up at night. I think there is a non-zero chance he will come back to Boston with an extension, but there is a lot of money chasing very few players. The CBA has taken a lot of the spending alternatives away from mid-level teams. There are large piles of money for teams and chasing veterans as the only real way to spend them. All it takes is a team to swoop in and offer Ellsbury 6 years or more and suddenly it is easier to shake his hand and wish him luck.

Ross is a career backup - that he had a good week does not change that. The Red Sox value him for being able to catch 50 games or so and provide some solid stability, but he is not somebody you want to give 110 starts to, never has been. Salty had a good season - and was a decent defensive catcher (poor at stopping the run game, pretty good at blocking). There is a lot of narrative associated with him that follows from since they dealt for him but does not really square with 2013 reality. If Swihart were a next year guy, that is blocking. Lavarnway has had a lot of chances to take the job and has not been able to - and he is legitimately bad defensively. Dempster I expect will be shopped. But that he is a healthy, durable starter who does miss bats gives him intrinsic value. He's not someone you want near a playoff game, but it is hard for championship teams to get through the marathon without guys like him. He doesn't have a knuckleball, but a lot of what folks like to laud Wakefield for applies here. His contract is also extremely movable now. 1 year, 12 million ... considering what Tim Lincecum makes now (yes, he has more "fan appeal"), Dempster's salary does not actually look crazy at all