sk7326

Not many though LeBron James is one.

It's baseball in October. There are no walkovers. Still, there are more reasons to believe in the Red Sox than the Dodgers. - Strikeouts. The Red Sox don't strike out much at all. The Dodgers strike out quite a bit. The Red Sox strike out a lot of people. The Red Sox are just better at putting the ball in play. The Red Sox infield defense is shaky, but the Dodgers might not put it in play enough for it to be decisive. - Offense. The Red Sox put up almost 6 runs a game against a good Astros team, without their two headline stars being at the center of it. With Devers' emergence, the lineup has only a couple of dead spots. There is a ton of versatility. The Dodgers offense is more evocative of an early 2000s super beer-league team: Lots of walks, lots of strikeouts, lots of homeruns. The Red Sox consistency is helpful here. ON THE OTHER HAND - Walks. The Dodgers are good at not walking hitters. The Red Sox not so much. The Sox averaged 6 walk/hbp a game in the ALCS. The number shrinks to a "still-not good" 4.8 walks/hbp per game once you remove that 13 walk/hbp atrocity that was the ALCS Game 1. Alas, the Dodgers are very good at taking pitches. The Dodgers best path to winning is via the 3-run homer, and the Red Sox free passes is an open sore on that front. - Pitching. The Dodgers rotation is a little bit better - with Kershaw being able to just give more innings. Both bullpens are fine, although Jansen is much more reliable than this version of Kimbrel. The Red Sox can hit anybody - but this is a firm test. If the Red Sox can avoid the self inflicted drama and keep the ball in the ballpark, they should have enough to get by. Boston in 6.

Betts at 2B is a perfectly defensible idea. I'm just curious whether Martinez has done any work at all at 1B, and whether Cora would be okay trying it now. I do think some of the logic might change is the Red Sox are up 2-0.

Realistically LeBron, Jordan, Russell and Kareem are the clear 4 best choices here ... order is up to personal taste

He is certainly one of 3 or 4 reasonable answers

I remember it being used a lot in 2013, although definitions matter - and "shifts" as counted by STATS is rather extreme https://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/boston-red-sox-infield-shift-changing-perspectives-042516

Theo, Cherington and Hoyer would have been genuinely shocked to realize this. There was the brain drain you'd expect to a degree when Dombrowski took over. But a lot of the folks stayed - and (at least Gammons wrote about this) Dombrowski was not going to tear down the good work which was already done.

Oh dear 75 games of Dustin Pedroia 102 games of Kevin Youkilis 48 games of Mike Cameron Cora took over a team which had won 90+ games the previous 2 seasons. The Red Sox were leading edge analytics the entire time except for whatever the hell Valentine was doing. I mean the GMs would have canned a manager who didn't. I was extremely bullish on Cora - and he has been terrific. At the same time, when a 90-win team led by dudes entering their prime adds one of the league's best power hitters - that they improved is not that revelatory. And when that sort of improved team gets to play Baltimore 19 times a year - the win total can be even better than that. Now I think Cora has done a great job - I think his style is a better fit with young players than Farrell, but on the field I don't see it. (the Red Sox actually are lower ranked in baserunning value than last year)

He is very good at baseball and less good at football. Given his background, it is a safe bet that he likes baseball more - and it shows. His partners on FOX have consistently been not very good ... though Smoltz is the best one he has had.

He has done a terrific job managing the team. Tactically he is pretty good. What is weird is comparing him tactically to Francona when there isn't a ton of evidence of anything different. Neither guy sacrificed much. Francona ran when he had players who could run. Both guys handle pitching staffs well. The differences in defensive positioning are typical for the two different time frames in which they managed. Cora has shown certain strengths in a year. Francona did that and then kept the team in good shape while the key players changed. Francona was outstanding with young players, and Cora has certainly shown some goods there. (though his young players had more certainty - 2006 Dustin Pedroia sure did not look like a big league player) Francona will always have 2011 held over him - and he deserves some of the blame sure. But 2010 was one of his best managing jobs. And of course Cleveland has been excellent throughout.

The Sox haven't needed them.

in his position you have the luxury to make a decision for a good situation. Maybe that just wasn't there. There's not a ton of job openings for a DH with declining bat speed.

As I noted - fair, but since this is baseball any version of favorite really doesn't amount to much.

I think it was reasonable. Going to 2013 the Tigers were also slight favorites iirc for the same reasons. (great starting pitching, won the pennant the year previous)

(a 3-win player is a good major league starter)

Who said they were favorites? I mean - realistically the postseason and perception of the team is not different from 2013. People thought the Rays were dangerous. And then they thought the Tigers had that sort of starting pitching which was impossible to upend.

Devers has had a terrific postseason and has earned the chance to start. There is not much defensively separating him and Nunez and Devers' bat is much better. Devers' performance against the best competition has been very enouraging.

It's a bit reductive. And it is hard to tell where managers end and players begin in terms of credit/blame pie. A bad manager can only screw things up so much. I mean the Royals won two pennants with a bad tactical manager. The Rangers did too. (both are probably very good at the stuff we don't see) But either way you want sustained excellence - building a successful culture that can optimize players. Cora has shown a ton in year 1 - but hell, he still has to demonstrate more over time ... I mean Kevin Cash has a strong track record for what you want from a manager without the hardware.

The Red Sox bullpen has been unfairly maligned because of a stretch late in the year where Sale's absence created a serious lack of reliable innings from the starting rotation. But the bullpen in reality has largely been pretty good all season, and Brasier's emergence late was huge. The team's depth has been a tremendous strength - which allowed them to absorb Devers' struggles, and then allow for Devers to re-emerge in October. The Red Sox have been the league's best team from wire to wire without a real weakness (shaky infield defense and an offensive black hole at catcher). They are the best team in the league. They might not win the World Series - because that's baseball. But we should not be afraid of the reality.

The thing with the shift is that it should have caused an inordinately large LH/RH split leaguewide - since lefthanders are subject to the most extreme shifting. But as far as I can tell, there is not much actual evidence therein. The emphasis on defensive positioning has been a long time coming - the Royals won two pennants on it. Like any sport the league became copycats there. Eventually there will be a team which will just feast on slap hitting and maybe the curve bends back. The move to cable is less than it seems too. I mean outside of the NFL, the other major sports all run their playoffs predominantly on cable prior to the Finals - and they are all still paying through the nose for the rights to do so. FOX put the LCS on FS1 because the channel needed some sort of ratings boost. Pace of play does have some merit - although stuff like a pitch clock is a bad idea. I think a better idea is saying that a pitcher who enters the game has to face at least three hitters. The comical level of pitching changes in close games and hyper matching up is bad. Also - while the emphasis on bullpens is sensible (third time through the order penalties and so forth) - a world where we are no longer expecting high paid starting pitchers to be Jack Morris in 1991-style heroes I think is less entertaining. (and entertainment of course is why all of this exists in the first place) The league could also benefit from people at the league office level who actually celebrated the players and stars the game is generating now. (MLB network's flagship broadcast was 20+ weeks of Grandpa Simpson "Old Men Yell At Cloud" level get off my lawn bellyaching) There are no shortage of young stars in this World Series - let's see the league embrace it.

The checks were still clearing. I'd take a vacation too.

The Red Sox were overloading in 2013 - they talked about their shifting then. The Pirates had a dedicated analytics assistant for defensive positioning at least that long. It is hard to argue that shifts are okay, while shifts that are better thought out are bad. I mean there are definitely aspects of analytically driven baseball which are antithetical to fun - bullpen games being the most egregious. Shifts are just the usual cat and mouse game between defense and offense. The pace of play stuff is silly - and it is one of the areas where the shifting HAS hurt. There is evidence that walks are up - possibly because pitchers are trying to be too fine to pitch to the defensive alignment. I mean, the biggest atrocity of the LCS series entertainment-wise was Game 1 of the LCS ... and that's because allegedly the two best teams in baseball could not stop walking people.

Tito, Dick Williams ... everybody else Cora is off to a terrific start ... at the same time Farrell's start is not all that dissimilar. (Cora obviously started with a better situation) Moreover - Tito and Williams' results in other places reinforced their quality.

Because it costs less money

why? there are holes in the infield - just in different places. I mean back in the 90s I remember teams shifting for lefthanders - they are just better positioned now. The actual bad part of the shifting is increasing the amount of walks.