Maxbialystock

Defense still looks excellent. Except for Abreu, the hitting stinks.

Not much doubt in my mind that Devers wants to get traded. Mistake by Cora and his pitching coach to send Houck out for the 6th.

Are you kidding? It was an NESN box? Foul! Good comments.

Well, I have lived a very virtuous life and therefore had no problems with the mlb.tv broadcast today. Actually, I despise MLB.TV because they rob us blind by farming games out so you have to pay again, to say nothing of their insane blackout rules. I'm lucky I came to this game discussion late because I was very unhappy with the top of the order and would have said so endlessly. Defense definitely looked improved and Abreu had a game he is not likely to forget. Our pricey starter barely made it through 5 innings, but I give him credit for giving up just 2 runs. The bullpen was a revelation. Great start to the season!

Seriously? Those were the exact three seasons when John Henry kept cutting payroll, which actually went back to 2019 when he decided Mookie was unaffordable. I had a great time last year posting how well the teams with low team salaries were winning, but it was the big salary teams who played in the WS. I hate paying Bregman $40M x 3, but apparently that's what it takes even with those talented guys on the farm. Heck, the farm also gave us Duran, Rafaela, Devers, Wong, Abreu, Casas, Bello, et al. I don't see the Yanks finishing below .500, but I like moonslav's point about age. Plus the losses of Cole and Soto have to hurt.

Early on Devers made it quite clear he wanted to play 3b. He changed his tune when he realized his expectations were unrealistic. I personally was OK with Devers at 3b, errors and all, but that makes no sense with Bregman on the team. Devers gets the same salary at DH he was getting at 3b.

Dodgers take the WS, 4 games to 1, beating the Yankees at Yankee Stadium in a 7-6 game that defies description. The Yankees had a big lead, but gave away 5 unearned runs on 3 errors. Plus on one play the Yankees high-priced starter, Cole, simply failed to cover 1b on a grounder to the firstbaseman. In short, the Yankees lost out of sheer unprofessionalism.

Excellent stuff. Thanks. Brooklyn freaking robins???!!!!!

Meh. I would have been fine with trading/dumping Yoshida, but I also don't think keeping him is the end of Red Sox baseball as we know it.

I like the Dodgers because of Branch Rickey, Johnny Podres in the 1955 WS (when the beat the Yankees and Podres won 3 games), and the fact that the Dodgers played in the 19th century and their name comes from "trolley-dodgers," which is pretty cool. Shame on me, but I also think Yankees is a great baseball name. Red Sox--meh. Plus I thought the move to the West Coast, especially when they persuaded the Giants to move at the same time, was the right move, the smart move, and good for MLB. I'm fine with you hating them because we all have our reasons for likes and dislikes. I certainly don't like the Yankees, but on the other hand I do like another Dodgers-Yankees World Series, which to me is traditional and good for baseball. In the John Henry era, which Sox fans are now unwisely inclined to disparage, the Sox have won 4 WS to the Yankees 1 and the Dodgers 1.

TANSTAAFL. There are exactly zero teams out there who will give us what we want and take what we want to unload. The norm, in fact, is what happened with Sale and Giolito. Even DD brought in Price and Sale, both of whom were pretty darn good in 2018, but afterward were very expensive nonperformers. Except for Sale, who was terrific this year--for the Braves, who also received $17M from the Sox to pay his salary. OTOH, I also said that big payrolls are dumb; and Friday the Yankees and Dodgers, whose payrolls are 2d and 5th largest in MLB this year, will be playing in the 2024 World Series. The other three teams in the top 5--Mets, Phillies, and Astros-- also made it to the postseason. Also, the Yankees had the most wins, 94, in the AL and the Dodgers the most in the NL, 98.

Heartbreaking.

I think so. I live what I think is an ordinary life of retirement with plenty to do each day. But I do like to read and write about the Boston Red Sox. From 2000 to 2019 I had a full-time job as an executive director, but still had to have my daily ration--after I discovered blogging, of course.

If so, I apologize--and I mean it. Back to DD. I agree that overall he has been remarkably good for at least four MLB teams--Miami, Detroit, Boston, Detroit, and Philly. Plus he wasn't awful in Montreal. I think he inherited a pretty good Sox team, plus an owner willing to spend even more. I do not think the 2016 and 2017 AL East titles were that big a deal because the Sox only won 93 games and got blown away in the ALDS both seasons. 2018, on the other hand, was special and demonstrated DD's genius, especially going out and getting Eovaldi in July. That was the best Sox season ever, and no other Sox team comes close. 2019 demonstrated that he was not perfect because the Sox had the biggest payroll in MLB, finished out of the playoffs, and needed a ton more money just to stay even with their 2019 subpar performance. The 2019 situation is what convinced JH to hire Chaim Bloom and begin the process of spending less.

Everything you say is true and pretty convincing. However, I cannot resist reminding you that the teams in the postseason are all members of the 53% to 61% winning percentage club. That is an incredibly tight shot group and means that any team has about the same chance as any other team in the playoffs. Indeed, the great DD is griping that the Phillies got screwed because they didn't get to play in the first freaking round and instead were tragically unable to maintain their baseball skills during 5 days of inactivity. Whether DD has a point or not, the bigger issue is that any WS winner these days must in fact win three straight series of 5 or 7 games. And no team, absolutely no team at all, has a decisive edge in winning percentage.

You have made the case that the Sox need both a good starter (or two) and good relievers. And I think they also need good righty bats. What I liked about that recent article on talksox is the notion that, despite the Sox needs, which are real, they were 81-81 this year and do not need a complete overhaul to make the postseason next year. If anything, with all that talent in the minors, I think the Sox are in a good position. Unfortunately, there is still the matter of grey matter which seems to be lacking in the front office.

Agree. I too don't see Duran slowing down quickly. And forget Ellsbury, possibly the most injury-prone player in the history of sports (an exaggeration). But I also would not hesitate to trade Duran for a good starter, one who is not about to go on the IL for elbow repairs.

Completely coincidental. We throw out all data that doesn't confirm that spending like a drunken sailor is the only route to success.

Everybody said I was wrong about payrolls, just as everyone, including you, insisted the payrolls were going in the wrong direction. In fact, you have provided detailed instructions on how the additional funds should be spent. On the other side, I admit I would be fine with a bigger payroll provided it was intelligently spent, and I further admit you and others would spend it more wisely than I ever could. As for DD, I'm pretty sure I wrote on one of the threads that the guy has been too good too many times--Miami, Boston, Detroit, and now Philly--to be dismissed out of hand. I have made maybe too big a deal of the 2019 mess, but I did so because most talksoxers insisted that, when JH fired him, he was just being cheap. I would go one step further and agree that DD has been a great tonic for the Phillies fan base because under him attendance has increased. One more time, my major objection to spending big is that too much money goes to too few superstars whose best years are usually before they start getting the big bucks. And that egregious situation is even worse with respect to starting pitchers, who all seem to be waiting for their next elbow surgery and at least one season to recover.

Amazing article in the OP that confirms my criticism of DD over the last several years of postings on talksox. The article is far more insightful than I've been, but it brings out two themes of mine which absolutely no one else on talksox ever agreed with. The first was that the Sox were an irreparable disaster in 2019, which is why DD got fired. I hasten to add they were brilliant in 2018, for which DD should definitely receive credit. But after the 2019 season--when the Sox already had the biggest payroll in MLB--it was going to be impossible to keep Mookie Betts away from the far wealthier and healthier (as a franchise) Dodgers, to keep paying the huge salaries of Price and Sale, both of whom were IL candidates, and to replace them with two more pricey starters. Thus did JH decide to go in a completely different direction with Chaim Bloom of the Tampa Bay Rays. The second theme was this year's Sox who finished at 81-81, which was just 5 games back of two teams, the Royals and Tigers, who made the postseason with 86-76 records. I dubbed this year's Sox the "no-names," by which I meant exactly what the article refers to near the end as homegrown and therefore low-salaried players. How many times, for example, did I point out that the entire Sox rotation in 2024 were paid less than the Sox closer Jansen? Plus by far the best position player--highest WAR of 8.7--was $750K/year 4th year player Jarren Duran. $30M/year Devers was 2d with an OPS of 3.7, less than half of Duran's. Then came Abreu (OPS 3.5), Rafaela (OPS 2.8), Hamilton (2.6), Wong (1.6), and Gonzalez (1.0). Plus let's not forget that a freak injury kept bargain basement excellent hitter Casas off the roster for about 100 games. Reinforcing my 2d point, I also reminded everyone--and was repudiated endlessly--that no less than 8 freaking MLB teams with lower payrolls than the Sox made it to the postseason: Arizona, San Diego, KC, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Detroit. I could have thrown in Seattle, 85-77, whose payroll was 15th to the Sox 11th, and Tampa Bay, 80-82 (just one game back of the Sox), whose payroll was 28th. I was in fact the only contributor to talksox who said that spending lots and lots of money wasn't necessarily the best solution, and I said that because I thought DD had inadvertently made that point for me in 2019.

Better said than my OP. I also like notin's point that MLB is indeed a 10% game, which is what Crash (Kevin Costner) means when he talks about the difference one hit a week can make. There are 26 weeks in a season, If we assume 550 at bats, 26 hits is the difference between batting .272 and .320, which is pretty big even though the differential is less than 10% (or 100 points in a batting average). OPS looks a tad more rational because MLB regulars OPS's normally range from .700 to 1.000, which is a 30% range. If we use ERA as the measure of a pitcher--and some don't like ERA's--the top 50 ERA's in the NL this season range from 2.38 to 4.38, a huge swing of 2 whole earned runs. If we use the midpoint, 3.38, as the baseline, from 2 to 3.38 is a swing of 59%. That's huge and argues that the best starting pitchers who can routinely start 30 or more games are more valuable than the best hitters. If a top ten ERA starting pitcher goes 6 (or more) innings and starts 30 or more games, that can be huge. Here, for example, are the won-lost records (a much-maligned stat) of the top ten starters--according to their ERA's--in MLB this season: 18-3, 18-4, 16-7, 13-6, 15-3, 15-7, 15-9, 12-8, 13-9, and 16-9. Fittingly, the 11th best starter was Tanner Houck with an ERA of 3.12. His W-L record was, and I would argue that's proof of just how bad the Sox bullpen was this season. Of the top 11 MLB starters by ERA, Tanner Houck 19 quality starts, which was as many as or more quality starts than all but 4 of the other 10 top ERA's.

MLB owners tends to be dilettantes, but I don't put JH or Ken Kendrick in that category. JH bought the Sox in 2002 when they were good, but just couldn't end what became the 86 year drought. He brought in a smart management team as well as Bill James, author of the book Sabermetrics. Plus he had previous experience owning a minor league team and later the Miami Marlins. And he was willing to underwrite a competitive payroll, usually among the top 3 or 5--and even now and then the biggest payroll (2018 and 2019) in MLB. Thus did John Henry end the drought in 2004 and win three more WS after that, including 2018, the best Boston Red Sox team ever. Under his ownership, the Sox have had at least five CBO's (Epstein, Cherington, Dombrowski, Bloom, and Breslow) and as many managers (Little, Francona, Valentine, Farrell, and Cora). John Henry bought the Sox for $660M, and they are now reportedly worth over $4B. He is the best Sox owner ever and very possibly the best owner in MLB since 2002. Kendrick is the 2d and by far the longest owner of an expansion team (first season 1998) in Arizona which has actually been reasonably competitive despite middling payrolls and middling attendance at games. They won the WS in 2001 by beating the Yankees--and thereby set the MLB record for fasted route to their first WS win. Last year they made it back to the WS and lost to the Rangers, and their payroll was ranked 21st in MLB and their average attendance at games, 24,212, was ranked 20th. You, sir, do not know squat about owners.

Simply stated, there ain't much correlation between spending big for players and winning lots of games. Oh, it's definitely true that this year the top 5 payrolls--Mets, $318M; Yankees $309M; Astros $255M; Phillies $247M; and Dodgers $241M--all have winning records. And in fact the Yankees have the most wins, 94, in the AL and the Dodgers the most in the NL (and MLB), 98. Meanwhile, however, the Diamondbacks spent $173M for 89 wins, the Padres $172M for 93 wins, the Mariners $148M for 85 wins, the Royals $123M for 86 wins, the Brewers $115M for 93 wins, the Orioles $110 M for 91 wins, the Guardians $107M for 92 wins, and the Tigers $99M for 86 wins. It gets better because to me there just ain't that much difference between the most wins--98 by the Dodgers--and the somewhat sparser wins, 85 by the Mariners. When you do the math--or just look at the end of season standings--you see that the Dodgers winning percentage is 60% and the Mariners 52%. That's nothing!! It means that in an 11 game series, the Dodgers would theoretically win 6 games and the Mariners 5. Heck, the no good, lowdown, rotten, stinking Boston Red Sox had a non-winning percentage of exactly 50%, which means they were just 10% worse than the mighty LA Dodgers, who, I hasten to add, could be about to lose their NLDS series against the 93 win Padres. Oh, and the 94 win Yankees are 1-1 against the 86 wins Royals. Does anyone on talksox doubt that John Henry, who ensured that the Sox had one of the top 5 payrolls in MLB from 2003 through 2021, is aware that the correlation between shelling out massive dollars for a top five payroll and having a dominant won-loss record is tenuous at best? Does anyone else remember that just 3 seasons ago, the Rays had 100 regular season wins with the 26th largest payroll of $71M? The Sox spent $187M that season and won 92 games. The Yankees spent $206M and won 92 games. The Mets spent $201M and won 77 games.

I missed that. Fascinating. Thanks.

Horrible call by the RF ump in today's Phillies-Mets game. He called the batter safe even though the ball was caught cleanly and then dropped when the RFer transferred the ball to his throwing hand/arm. The Phillies--whom I'm rooting against--challenged the call and the MLB replay guys agreed.