Kimmi

Very sad news. You will be missed Zac. RIP, my friend.

Which makes it even more shocking to me that Dave did not go big on the BP.

No excuses are necessary. If our team fails to make the playoffs due to our bullpen, then I will have to admit that the 'throw crap against the wall' method did not work this year. FTR, I am extremely surprised that Dombrowski had not signed closer to your liking. I was 100% sure that he would. Color me shocked.

Not necessarily. It depends on what you want to learn about the game.

Thanks Dave!

!!! To quote Sale, "I dare you to count Pedroia out!"

You know as well as I do that it would be unwise to let a player win a starting job over the current starter based on spring training results. This is especially true if the 'losing' player is going to be traded. By the sounds of it, Dombrowski's interpretation of who wins the job is the guy is gets the worst trade offers and doesn't get traded.

Personally, I'm a fan of most things Fangraphs, including their WAR to dollars conversion.

Speier did point out the remarkableness of Rivera and Kimbrel, given the volatile nature of relievers. Yes, relievers are volatile creatures. There are exceptions to every rule, but relievers are most definitely volatile, on the whole.

The bullpen is a vital part of today's game. I don't think anyone is suggesting otherwise. As for Alex Speier, I am a big fan of baseball nerds, and nerds in general.

I am guessing that the correlation coefficient between AAV and WARs for relief pitchers is pretty low, regardless of the year. Yes, you may have a high priced reliever who performs really well, but at the same time you'd have a very inexpensive reliever performing just as well. At any rate, I am not concerned with the Sox bullpen.

LOL Don't knock my man Speier. But yes, relievers are a crapshoot and they are the most easily replaced players on the team.

Yes, very much so.

'Wins' based on what? Spring training results? I am not down with that.

I know I will.

Steven Wright will be wearing a knee brace when pitching this season. He says that he will never e 100% again. That doesn't sound very encouraging.

I'm in. This is ERod's year.

Alex Speier had a really nice article in the Globe today regarding bullpens. If you haven't read it yet dgalehouse, I highly recommend it. Here are some of the highlights: "Of the 15 free-agent relievers who signed deals of at least $5 million per year, none was worth a single Win Above Replacement. Davis, Holland, Brandon Morrow, Jake McGee, Bryan Shaw, Tommy Hunter, Juan Nicasio, Addison Reed, Pat Neshek, Joe Smith, Anthony Swarzak, Steve Cishek, Luke Gregerson, Yusmeiro Petit, and Brandon Kintzler averaged 0.3 Wins Above Replacement." AVERAGE ANNUAL VALUE (AAV) NUMBER AVERAGE WAR WIN PROBABILITY ADDED $5M plus 15 0.3 -0.10 Minor league deal* 17 0.1 -0.03 "There were eight relievers who, after signing as free agents, were worth at least 1.0 WAR out of the bullpen, but none received one of the biggest contracts. The group was topped by Craig Stammen of the Padres (2.3 WAR, two-year, $4.5 million deal)" And my personal favorite: "Here’s a sobering thought for teams as they invest in relievers: The correlation coefficient between the average annual values of last year’s free agent relief class and those pitchers’ WARs was 0.002 — which is to say, there was no relationship at all between the money spent on big reliever deals and the performance of those relievers." https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2019/02/11/looking-for-good-bullpen-investment-strategy-there-isn-one/sosV7rupp8ikAI5OuB0KOL/story.html

Also, Cora is extremely impressed with the condition that ERod is in.

And has supposedly put on some weight.

Though they should be taken with a grain of salt, I love to look at the computerized projections every year. For me, it's a good gauge of the job the GM has done.

Every team now employs analysts who take all of this into account and advise the owners and the GMs on the projected aging curve of any player the team is interested in signing. Hopefully, the GMs are listening.

The merits would be something that the player and GM both agree on. The GM is assuming risk by guaranteeing the first 5-6 years.

Sure, and he realized first and foremost the importance of a strong farm system.

I once read that a runner's speed decreases by one inch per second, pretty much from age 22 or 23. So do a couple of other traits which I can't recall off the top of my head. The reason why we don't notice this immediate decline is because those young players are gaining experience, so what they lose in physical ability, they gain in baseball smarts from experience.