Kimmi

Of course the justice system should deal with those issues. I'm just saying I would not want a known wife beater or child molester playing on my team. Much the same way that I do not want ARod playing on my team.

Fair point. I think we just have to hope that the starters and the offense are not good enough to give the Yankees the lead after 5-6 innings. I am not going to have much confidence in any team coming back from a deficit once those three enter the game.

Boggs was HOF worthy, without a doubt. I don't think anyone can argue that.

As I said, he might not be HOF worthy anyway (probably not), but for one, HOF voters do not give enough credit for defense. Pitch framing or calling a good game? It seems that offensively, the big things that the voters look at are batting average, hits, HRs, and RBIs. There is value to all of those stats, but there are better ways to assess offensive value, or at least other things that should be looked at in addition to those. My understanding is that voters also give weight to how many Gold Glove awards a player has won or how many times a player has been voted into the All Star Game. In many cases, those are not valid ways to judge a player.

Nice post. I always enjoy reading things like this. RIP Malzone.

Absolutely, Henry gets credit for his willingness to spend. It is a fair enough point that if Henry wanted to stay under the luxury tax this year, the Sox would not be able to sign Price.

I disagree. I think human factors are way more difficult to assess than physical talent. As long as people continue to unfairly criticize and blame Ben or Theo, I will continue to defend them. It's not a need, it's a pastime.

I happen to agree that human factors and team chemistry can affect the way a team performs. I have stated so many times on this forum. However, if you make a statement that is misleading or simply not true, I'm going to call you on it. This is not the first time that you have done this. As for you not resorting to ad hominem attacks, spare me. For one, I am attacking your misleading statement, ie the topic. For two, might I remind you of your use of the term 'sychophant' just last week? And that is not the first time you've done that either.

No one has ever suggested that putting together a good team is purely stat and paper driven. Once again, when I say a team looks good on paper, I'm not talking about just in terms of stats. Of course good teams almost always look good on paper, and bad teams almost always look bad on paper. Sometimes things pan out like you expect, sometimes they don't. A GM cannot control what happens on the field. He cannot control how a team or players actually perform. His job is to assemble a team that looks good "on paper". That's what gives the team the best chance to perform well on the field.

This is a very fair statement. If one of Rogriguez, Porcello, or Buchholz doesn't step up as a good #2, then it might be a long season. That said, Buchholz was a #1 last year until the injury, Porcello pitched very well after his DL stint, and Rodriguez should only improve. Also, I believe having Vazquez behind the plate and Price's leadership in the rotation will help. There are reasons to be optimistic.

For free agents, it is pretty much the market rate. That said, Smith is still a pre-arb player and was not acquired through free agency. And Kimbrel cost us a very good prospect package on top of his $12 mil AAV. If you take the team as a whole, which includes all of the cost-controlled players, the most expensive cost per win last year was with the Dodgers, at approximately $3.5 mil per win. The Sox were 3rd, with something like $2.2 mil per win, if I recall correctly. The Yankees were second.

The thing is, they can probably shorten most games to 5 innings now. That's where the improvement comes in.

As far as not caring about players' personal lives, I can understand that to an extent. However, if a player is a known wife beater (which has not been proven here) or a child molester, for instance, then I care. At any rate, I agree with you about hating this move. They Yankees pen is going to be lights out.

Perhaps they didn't give enough consideration to the human factor, perhaps they did. It is a false believe that people who are strong believers in analytics pay little attention to the human factors. In fact, they may even put more consideration into the human elements, as they are always trying to find ways to quantify it. The problem, when it comes to these human factors, is that it is very difficult to predict how they might affect a player. What was it about Renteria's make up that would have suggested, before the fact, that he was not fit for Boston?

It's possible that something has been said or written that I was just unaware of. That said, I read and research a lot in terms of baseball. I took the time last night to search for anything written about bad team chemistry or poor management leading to failure to perform on the field for the Nats. There were plenty of things written in hindsight, but in terms of preseason predictions, I came up with zilch. You would think that if this were the opinion of many analysts, I would be able to find something. What I found was that, not only were the Nationals heavily favored to win their division, but of all the sites I looked at, and it was quite numerous, the vote was unanimous. Not only that, but in most cases, the Nats were predicted to win their division by a fair amount. There were some concerns about injuries, but not enough to dampen anyone's predictions. And not one word about bad chemistry. I can provide links if you'd like. As far as the quotes from your post, do you realize that your "analyst" is a 14 year old boy who wrote those things in his blog? Is that the best you could do? It's quite possible that someone on the radio discussed it last year. But here is what you wrote: Their failure to perform on the field has been predicted by many analysts who recognized the poor team chemistry and bad management. That is a very misleading statement, at best.

Does it matter where or how Dombrowski got the pieces, or what the state of the division is? The fact remains that Dombrowski only had to add 3 key pieces to put this team in contention. And adding those 3 key pieces was possible because of the state of the team and the farm system. Ben left this team in pretty darn good shape.

I agree that adding a good #2/3 pitcher would be ideal, but I don't think the Sox need to add one, at least not right now. I think we are contenders as the team stands. Our Pythagorean W-L record last year was 81-81. That's what you should be basing any additions on. So, approximately 10 wins added to 81 puts us at 91 wins. Is that not what would be considered a contender? Even at 88 wins, I think that would be considered a contender. I would also guess that neither Hanley nor Pablo will be in the negative WAR range again. If they are just league average this year, that's 3-4 more wins. No one is arguing that we didn't need pitching upgrades. No one is arguing that our BP needed a major overhaul. But if you think about it, the entire offense was set except for the 4th OF. Dombrowski only had to add one piece to the rotation, albeit a major piece. He added 2 pieces to the pen, again, very significant pieces, but it is now considered one of the best in the league. To me, that says the team was in pretty good shape to begin with.

I agree. It's a great baseball move, but a terrible PR move. The Yankees took advantage of a domestic violence issue, which somehow doesn't sit right. That said, as far as I know, Chapman has never had any clubhouse or on field issues. So, whatever he may lack in character, it does not show up in his baseball play. Does that make it okay for the Yankees to sign him from a 'moral' standpoint? I don't know, but I'm sure that there were several other teams who were still interested in signing him.

OK, thanks. I'll look into it.

YOTN, the last 3-4 times I have come to this site, at some point while I'm reading/posting, I've gotten a Norton antivirus alert that Norton has blocked a web attack - Angler Exploit Kit. It only happens on this site. What's that all about?

I understand that. I don't take domestic abuse lightly. Watching Chapman shut down games for the Yankees is going to tick me off as much as watching Arod hit game winning HRs for them ticks me off. It doesn't change the fact that in a complete baseball sense, the Yankees got one of the best closers in baseball for peanuts.

It's not a big deal. Just another topic to discuss. I don't like Boggs, and, therefore, would rather not see him have the honor of having his number retired. Pure personal bias on my part.

He may not be HOF worthy anyway, but part of the reason why he's not HOF worthy right now is because of the old school criteria that most voters use.

Varitek is the man, and largely underappreciated, especially in his later years when his offense had declined. I would much rather see his number retired than Boggs'.

A couple more points about team chemistry: 1. While I do agree that it exists and can help a team perform better, it still does not trump talent, nor come close to it. In other words, a player's stats are still more important to look at than his human characteristics. 2. One thing that makes chemistry difficult to quantify is that, like clutch, there are so many ways to define 'chemistry'. 3. Since chemistry can't be quantified, then the beat writers who cover the teams would probably have the best feel for how good a team's chemistry is. Most beat writers had the Sox winning the division as well, so the human aspect side of the team couldn't have been that bad. 4. It's often debated whether chemistry creates winning or winning creates chemistry. Almost every team talks about great chemistry going into the season. Bad team chemistry is almost never mentioned until after a team underperforms. So maybe it's the latter that is true, not the former.