sk7326

I don't want X up here if he is not going to start - he is young enough that the AAA reps do not hurt at all. If you want Drew and Middlebrooks to man the fort next season, by all means but let it be them. Drew I think has had a good season and is clearly a Top 10ish shortstop. But I suspect somebody will offer him a multiyear deal - and he has, like Beltre did with us, rebuilt his value - and I don't think I'd want to do that.

I wonder how much of it is just developing his ability to just get up on short notice - they seem to be grooming him to be Tazawa insurance here (given Tazawa's occasional cold streak and homerun bug). He has been starting and been stretched out so much, he might just need some work at just being ready for more condensed work. Only thing I can think of.

Holy crap - I remember when Jeremy Bonderman was the Tigers #1! (like 2006 ...) now mopping up a September game.

They are leaning hard on Verlander and Scherzer clearly ... Verlander has been way inferior to Scherzer this season, but he probably gets the call for Game 1

There we go - if they can't land a guy like a Choo or something ... seriously, Nava/Gomes as a 2-headed left fielder is plenty effective.

I think I'd settle for him being to spoil sliders low and away. We know "approach" is born and not made. He's never going to walk a ton and he's never going to see a ton of pitchers. That's fine - Nomar and Vlad Guerrero made fine livings being up there to hack. He just needs to square up the pitches he wants and being able to at least get a bat on the stuff that bothers him.

2 years for a durable starter - you look at what the market pays for guys like Edwin Jackson for instance ... guys whose central virtue is that they never get hurt ... and that everybody is drowning in money (you know it's a buyers market when BJ Upton got what he got from the Braves - and it was "reasonable" for the free agent class). Dempster at 2/26 is a very fair price. I've been annoyed with the inconsistency, but he has been there every fifth day - and in a sport where you want your Kyle Weilands as far the hell away from any start that matters as possible, that is a talent in itself. We do not get to the playoffs without his contribution.

It is - it also helps give you an idea at the sort of reliever you give real money to ... Rivera, your 2006-2008 Papelbon, prime Joe Nathan, Koji if he had more of a long run track record of 2013

Oops - what I get for typing while you sent this

Dempster has been able to turn over a lineup once reasonably well ... that second time is where things have been touch and go.

Schedule is here: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130903&content_id=59414608&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb TBS covers Wild Card and Division Series - NLCS. FOX does ALCS. NL Wild Card is October 1 - those division series start October 3 ... so 2 day turnaround AL Wild Card is October 2, ALDS start October 4 ... 2 day turnaround. It's still a pretty tight turn. NLDS A and B: October 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 ... the travel day between Games 4 and 5 is new ALDS A and B: October 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 NLCS: October 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19 ... remember in 2004 we had the rainout before Game 3 which eliminated that Game 5/6 travel day ALCS: October 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20 WORLD SERIES: October 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31 The 3-day break minimum before the World Series is a bit long. But at the same time, baseball did not alter its schedule to avoid Sunday Night Football so go figure.

What is interesting about it is that Koji's history has been very much a fly ball pitcher ... and he has had a homerun problem as a reliever holding him back from amazingness ... he is still more flyball pitcher than a groundball one, but the solid contact has been far far less. http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=9227&position=P

What is interesting about it is that Koji's history has been very much a fly ball pitcher ... and he has had a homerun problem as a reliever holding him back from amazingness ... he is still more flyball pitcher than a groundball one, but the solid contact has been far far less.

Foulke's had a bit more movement ... but yes it sets up the other stuff and Foulke's changeup was ++, and his durability was crazy. The big revelation with Uehara has been usage - nobody was sure he could actually answer the bell this regularly.

What is fascinating about Uehara is that his fastball is very ordinary - decent velocity, arrow straight. But he locates it very well - he gets ahead by hitting the black with the fastball. The other thing is that his splitter is very very odd among the world of splitters in that it doesn't have a ton of movement. It moves, but more subtly and often stays in the zone (Rod Beck's splitter for instance - was much more the norm). He is pounding the strike zone to such a degree that grinding the at-bats out is very hard. He is getting a lot of swing and miss for sure - but he is around the strike zone with all his pitches, I am not sure the hitters can take a chance on taking some of those pitches. The game plan to get him might actually be counter to your suggestion - sit dead red and go for the first good fastball you see. It's almost always going to be a strike, and it's almost always a hittable speed. Basically Uehara is dominating closing as a sort of lower middle class version of mid 90s Greg Maddux - it's fun to watch.

That is true - but there was also the case of just getting good movement on it, and that has been inconsistent. Lot of bite last night - with all of his pitches. Of course the location was very sharp. Yes, the pitch mix was important to keep guys off balance, but the cutter had a ton of late movement that had been missing most of the season. Last few starts he has been very good, but last night we saw more uncomfortable looking at bats/swings than he has shown all year. A lot of good hitters looked very uncertain.

If the Red Sox can manage to win 1 game in the final head to head series with Tampa, they will be out of our hair for the division. Frankly Tampa is closer to being knocked out at this point.

Fangraphs mused about this http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/play-in-game-strategy-skip-the-starter/

Well, if you go to Fangraphs, it is more like Pettitte by 1.5 wins. It is a vestige of how the numbers are calculated (Fangraphs uses FIP, Baseball reference adjusts actual runs allowed) ... but your conclusion - that a reliever has to be like twice as good as league average to make up a 3x IP difference is not unreasonable. But the guy has to be lights out in the short role - or else 180 innings of decent starting (which is better than 2013 Pettitte) is still more valuable, both for the value the pitcher creates as well as for the innings he takes from inferior pitchers.

Last night was Lester's best start of the year - he has given up fewer hits and gone the distance ... but that was easily the best stuff he has had all season. The cutter's effectiveness and his feel for the pitch is the stuff that made him a Top 12 or so pitcher in his best years ... last night was the first time it REALLY looked good. The K-rate, even in the starts before tonight, is not what you want to see from him - but last night was definitely progress. Struck out 9 of the 30 batters he faced (30%) ... he was over 25% in his two best seasons, and had gone below 20% since 2012. (K-% is a little more useful here than K/9, just because it accounts for the guys who get hits or walks who should count against your K-total).

when Lester was one of the dozen or so best pitchers in baseball, last night's performance was the rule ... cutter was best it was all year, his location was excellent. Scattered some hits, but not a ton of solid contact. Last night, THAT was #1 level stuff ... if he found something with that cutter again, he becomes a really dangerous pitcher again - more than just a reliable innings guy.

Well the latter yes (actually amazing considering he wasn't hitting at all) ... Bradley has the approach, just needs to see upper level pitching more

The Orioles bullpen did very well last season - and a lot less well this season with a lot of the same characters. I am not going to pooh pooh relief ERA, but there is a lot of small sample size at work there. (as there is in relief ERA generally) Since we are diving into the xFIP numbers for the 2012 Orioles. At least among their middle relief guys: Troy Patton had a large xFIP platoon split (2.96/3.90) Luis Ayala did too (3.62/4.45) O'Day's are not small either (3.19/4.09) - although his career BABIPs are such that it seems like he has enough of a skill that xFIP undervalues him Strop was a reverse one with righties 3.88 vs 2.92 They were excellent last season - but there was a good amount of luck involved (the xFIP gap vs the ERAs). The relievers often had significant splits too - which makes it hard for Showalter to deploy them in the sort of specific way that good managers can use relievers late in games. Assuming you carry 10-12 relievers (sort of the minimum here - considering their top bullpen guys all were in the ballpark of 1 inning per outing or less - that is not a lot of room to operate if something goes wrong, without some of the factors relievers have working in their favor.

I don't know many (if any) teams where the bullpen contains better pitchers than the rotation. The bullpen can have better results than the rotation based on how a manger deploys them and not having their (lack of) third pitch exposed. But making a 1-for-1 swap of pitchers, aside from the odd Craig Kimbrel or Aroldys Chapman, I am not sure there are any short guys who actually ARE better than a comparable starter. After all, I remember Tom Gordon one year being a very average starter for Boston and then turning into a knockout reliever - same guy, just meant he could throw harder and his third pitch did not matter. The bullpen-primary plan I think also gives teams (even Baltimore 2012 - and a lot of those guys are still the same) too much credit for having enough MLB playoff-roster level arms to actually do this in a way that does not have fans trembling in fear. BTW: This does not mean that "starter -> quick hook and throw pitchers at the rest of the game" is not a valid way to do things - heck, that's what all these teams will do, regardless of how good the starter is"

I do think most of these teams are in rough shape if you can get the starter out in 5 innings or less ... that said the postseason you'd expect Dempster to be a swing guy, and from his last outings - while he has struggled turning a lineup over two or three times, often he has been pretty good the first time around. And he misses bats regularly and will be throwing more like 93 than 90 in a bullpen gig. The bridge to Koji is pretty strong - although Breslow is the weakest link there. But Workman as a multi inning guy is not bad at all, and Thornton has been solid as a matchup guy.