jd98

If you're only talking about winning the world series, then no it doesn't really matter. If you're talking about how good the team is (i.e. how good of a job the GM is doing), then yes it absolutely matters. A 90 win team that misses playoffs by 1 game is a helluva lot better than a 69 win team. It also matters to fans who want to watch meaningful Sox games as far into the season as possible. Edit: maybe I misunderstood you a bit. I agree finishing last doesn't really matter. The team sucking is what matters. 70 wins and finishing last is the same as 70 wins and finishing 4th in my mind.

Before Cherington, the last time the Sox lost 90 games was in 1966. They're probably about to do it for the 3rd time in 4 years. That's completely unacceptable. 2013 was great, that team did great for whatever reason. Winning the world series once you make the playoffs is pretty much a complete crapshoot however. 162 game regular season is a way better indicator of a team's success than whether they win a few 5 and 7 game series against other good teams. So Ben has presided over 1 great team and 3 horrible teams, with one of the highest payrolls in baseball. That's really bad no matter how you try to spin it.

I predicted 81-81. Did nobody predict worse than that? Like with the pitching, that was the optimistic end of my projections. No AL team in the last 10 years has finished bottom 3 in ERA and won more than 81 games. Only 2 teams in the last 15 years have, both with 83 wins and 12th in ERA. I thought they would be bottom 3 in ERA, so 81 wins was on the high end for wins. I thought the offense would be good enough to hover around .500, but I guess I was too optimistic there too.

Hmm, you may be right, I'm not sure. I was thinking since he signed it before end of season, it did count. The team's luxury tax salary isn't calculated until after the season. If you're right, that's $8M less available next year. Edit: After digging around a bit, I think you are right. I found a similar conversation on another forum. One person had broken down the entire 2016 payroll and it looked to be accurate (edit again: he's got Ortiz for 15M, why is that?), and he had Porcello listed at 20.63M AAV. He ended up with 22.7M available to spend. Another guy said he got $23M. Those are right in the middle of the range I got after subtracting another $8M for Porcello.

I think for luxury tax purposes, they will be the same in 2016 as in 2015. I did originally do the increase for Porcello, but based on the article UN quoted earlier, his extension is included in calculating 2015 luxury tax AAV.

I think I understand it now, but there's still some things I'm not sure about. It seems very complicated to accurately determine everybody's luxury tax AAV, but it's not too bad to just figure out the differences from year to year. Since I have nothing better to do today, this is what I come up with -- subtractions -- Nap 16, Vic 13, Masterson 9.5, Ortiz 6, Breslow 2, DeAza ~3, AGone 3.9 = ~53.4 additions -- Buchholz 5.25, arbitration guys ~5 = ~10.25 So that's about $43M in savings. I'm guessing they are over cap this year by 10-15M, so subtract that to get back under and that leaves a rough estimate of 28-33M to spend for next year as a starting point.

Thanks guys. Very helpful. And a lot more complicated than I thought. What UN quoted brings up a whole new set of questions. I think I'll just wait for the offseason thread to try and figure anything out.

Not sure if it was clear what I meant, or I may not be understanding you. I was asking about next year once Buchholz option is picked up. Would he count $13 mil against cap, or $7.25 against the cap (5/$30.5 + 1/$13 = 6/$43.5 = $7.25 AAV). For luxury tax, is the option year added to his current contract, or considered a standalone 1 year contract.

but they're also probably 10-15 mil over cap already. I tried to add it up just now, but I don't know how the option years work. Would Buchholz count for $13 mil, or would the option be considered part of his current 5/$30.5M contract, making it 6/$43.5M? It looks the like money available is in the lower 30's at most before trades and with options picked up.

Any ideas on what the Sox payroll will be like next year? When they went over the luxury tax limit this year, everyone was saying they'll get back under for next year. If they plan on getting back under, and pick up options on Buchholz and Ortiz, there's not much money for next year. In the 20-30 mil range I think. They might could trade one of the big contracts though.

I was only referring to the supposedly mediocre (actually bad) rotation when I said that.

I was just referring to the pitching in general (and I don't think it was their original strategy, it just ended up that way). You're just referring to the specific type of pitching. I was plenty aware of that strategy and commented on it while it was happening. You need a decent pitching rotation. Doesn't really matter by what method that they're good. They put together a bad rotation that fit the profile that you're describing. Did they just now lower the strike zone before this season? Why were 4 out of 5 of these pitchers bad last year if that's such a good strategy and the specific pitchers don't matter? As a matter of fact, there was an umpire exec on MLB Network before the season saying they were discussing raising the strike zone from the bottom of the knee to the middle of the knee, starting in 2016. Don't know if it will actually happen, but even the strategy you describe may not be so good.

I agree with this statement, but not the way you mean. The strategy of a mediocre rotation and good offense is ok and can easily be successful. Like Kimmi, it's not my preferred strategy, but on paper it's fine. When you say execution is the problem, you're referring to players underperforming. For me the failed execution was the FO in acquiring the players to fit the strategy. This rotation was not mediocre. A mediocre rotation doesn't even have the possibility to be last in ERA. Yes, they are worse than I expected, but not by much.

The bolded part is the main problem. Assembling a rotation that nobody expected to be any good. You can't put together a s*** rotation then put the blame on the offense for a bad month, just because the pitching has sucked as expected. How about putting together a rotation that isn't gonna suck.

To look at it another way, if the offense had scored 4-5 runs per game in May, and ended up with a good record, then you could just as fairly say they won because the starting pitching overperformed, and had the SP pitched to expectations then they would have been .500 or worse. So I guess what I'm really saying is that the team is where it is because the pitching is bad, not because of a bad May for the offense. Yes it is technically true that the team would be in good shape had the offense been better in May, but that's not really a fair way to look at it. Edit: Just to clarify, I think it's perfectly fine to say the Sox would be in great shape had the offense not underperformed in May. It is true. It's an 'if only' wishful thinking that everybody does. Like if you get 4 of 5 lottery numbers correct. If only you had got that 5th number. But when you start to assign blame for where the Sox are in the standings, it's not fair to put most of the blame on the offense because they underperformed in May. There's a whole lot more going on than that. That's just a small part of the reason.

You're saying the Sox beat some good pitchers because the offense stepped up. A Seattle fan would just say 'Felix sucked tonight' and not give credit to Sox hitters. That's what I was getting at. It's a delicate balance. A team's fans tend to just look at their players in a vacuum. I agree that if the Sox had scored more in May, they would be in pretty good shape, and the hitters underperforming is partly to blame for that, but not as much blame as they are getting because the other teams have players too that are partly responsible for that underperformance.

The low scoring losses in May also show how very important pitching is. We pitched a good game and still lost because, and this is the important part, the other team pitched a great game. I have yet to see anybody give the opponents any credit. They are equally responsible for the outcome of the game as the Sox players. Sure many of those games were by unexpected pitchers, but the same can be said about the good games pitched by the Sox. So you can say Sox lost because they couldn't hit, but the opponents fans aren't saying that. They're saying they won because so-and-so pitched great. Both are equally valid.

Maybe terrible is too harsh, but I was just applying that to the rotation as a whole. For example, I would consider an individual SP with an ERA of 4.50 as bad but not terrible, but an entire staff with an ERA of 4.50 I would consider terrible. Need some good to counter the bad. There was nobody who could be counted on to be the good. Porcello seemed most likely, but he had only done it for 1 year and it still wasn't anything great. Miley/Buchholz/Kelly combined for a 4.67 ERA, 1.385 WHIP last year in 468 IP, and about half those innings were in NL. Plenty of reason to be pessimistic about the others besides Masterson.

I was just referring to the SP when I said I thought they would be terrible. I think you knew that and are just messing with me, but it's hard to tell on the internet. I thought the bullpen was fine, but didn't seem like an asset compared to the rest of the league to affect overall ERA ranking. Like most teams, the back end looked solid, with questions in the middle. I thought they would be about average.

The problem with the FO strategy was assuming that the pitching would even be mediocre. Many of us thought it would be terrible. I predicted 13th in ERA, and that was my optimistic prediction. I'm no guru of predictions, just trying to show why the FO strategy may not have been so sound. Porcello is the only one I'm surprised by at all, and that's partly countered by having a mostly good Buchholz. It's probably even a bit fortunate that Masterson was as bad as he was. That forced ERod to be called up sooner, and he has been very good. I was dumbfounded at how bad the rotation looked given the payroll of the team.

That he focused too much on FIP in acquiring pitchers rather than stuff that mattered? I'm mostly kidding. You're obviously referring to the Sox poor defense. I'm just not a believer in FIP at all except for what it is, a conglomerate of BB, K, and HR. Anyway, good stuff, thanks for posting this. It's the kind of stuff I was looking for. I was curious if 'poor defense' actually lowers ERA instead of the normal perception that it raises ERA. I don't trust FIP as the indicator of defense to attempt to draw any conclusions for myself.

I don't agree with everything here, but it's fair enough and I'm not gonna try to nitpick everything. I do want to to talk about the idea that Porcello was a victim of bad defense in Detroit. More generally, the thought that a pitcher's ERA will suffer because of poor defense. I'm not sure that's the case. Poor range, not turning double plays, stuff like that hurts for sure. But actual errors can only help a pitcher's ERA. Anything a direct result of the error isn't counting anyway, and now anything after 2 outs is not counting either. A 2-out error, followed by 2 hits, 3 walks and a HR is a 0.00 ERA. If the error was an out, and the next 6 batters did the same thing the next inning, it's 6 ER. That's on the extreme side, but illustrates the point. I don't know which of the bad defense factors has more influence on ERA, but it's food for thought anyway. It's interesting that Oakland is 1st in AL ERA, and have by far the most errors. Not suggesting it's a direct relation because obviously there are much more important factors in the ERA than what I was suggesting. But it shows very clearly how errors, which are a big part of poor defense, is only helping ERA.

4 of the 5 SP had career worst seasons last season, so it's not like these current career worst seasons are coming out of nowhere, except for Porcello. Buchholz and Porcello have flip-flopped, the other 3 are just continuing the direction they were already heading. It's reasonable to expect they would do better, but it's not surprising in the least that they haven't.

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