Maxbialystock

You are far and away the most astute commentator on talksox. Our Sox are up 6-1 in the 9th, and you are griping about the lousy pitching.

But he had a very different from swing from Devers swing. Plus Pujols hit righty and Devers hits lefty. Ted Williams hit lefty and was a relentless student of hitting. And I don't want Devers to try to be Ted Williams either.

I don't want Devers to be Pujols or Ted Williams (a much better hitter than Pujols) or any of those guys. I want him to be what he is, a guy who hits balls outside the strike zone as well or better than balls inside it. When he gets in a slump, I'm fine with whatever adjustments he might make, but right now I do not understand your insistence he be perfect when he's already hugely effective. Don't mess with success.

You make it sound oh so simple. And that word discipline encourages us to believe that Devers is actually out of control and needs to be reined in. And I disagree. I do agree Devers is unorthodox and swings at pitches outside of the zone, but I also think that really works for him.

But we all knew that, didn't we? I really, really like Bogaerts, who was in on two of the Sox World Series wins. But the money was too much for a guy his age.

Good golly, miss molly!!! Two dingers by Devers, who very possibly came to play tonight. Check back to the first post, mine, in which I said the Padres will have a big edge in pitching tonight.

Great at bat by Refsnyder, including that double off a pretty good changeup on the outside of the plate.

Dumb Padres. All they needed to do was throw fastballs down the middle to Dugo, who wisely let them walk him. Wong got that double off a first pitch fastball down the middle--also smart.

Hah! All good points.

Devers--just unreal. That was an excellent pitch, especially lefty on lefty--and out it went. Now Yoshida singles to the opposite field. Then Kike comes to the plate and acts like he's blindfolded, righty vs lefty yet.

OK, out of the 1st, but needed 22 pitches.

Paxton throwing a whole lot of fastballs. 90%? Finally, against the 5th Padres batter, we see the knuckle curve.

Two batters, two hard hit balls by the Padres.

That was not a tough play for Refsnyder and therefore a dumb play by Tatis of the Padres.

Sox in the 1st looked awful, especially Dugo.

The "geeks in the nerd room" are the ones who built a system that currently enables the Rays to have the best record in MLB--granted, less than 1/3 into this season--and the 3d lowest payroll. Last year they were 86-76, in 2021 100-62, in 2019 96-66, in 2018 90-72. And so on. I do not disagree that the "man out in front" is the one making the big deals (and small ones). I have already said Bloom hadn't done that in Tampa and needs to be able to for the Red Sox, who do have the wherewithal to acquire talent as well as develop it. So Bloom might not be a good fit because the David Dombrowski Way sure worked for the 2018 team, maybe the best Sox team ever. However, as moonslav has pointed out (and I have repeated), the Sox have been lousy at developing pitching talent going back to at least 1999 and probably much further back. That's what Bloom was good at when he was with the Rays.

You keep talking about that 40 man roster, and I think you're right.

Go read the article in wikipedia, which is by no means the gospel on anything. But they do give Bloom credit as a lot more than a note taker. I'm defending him, yes, because I think JH likes what he did at Tampa. However, I also recognize that in his current position he also needs to be good at trades, making deals, and signing good talent, some of it expensive. He definitely did that with Story and Yoshida. And the $16M for Jansen ain't chump change. You cannot be the VP/honcho of baseball operations for the Sox and not be involved in and capable of making big deals. On the other hand, the Sox track record on developing pitchers, who are half of the freaking roster, is abysmal. The wikipedia article says Bloom was especially good at finding and developing pitching talent. My guess is that the Sox stopped doing that after Babe Ruth went to the Yankees.

Since the title of this thread is "A Realistic View of the 2023, Part II," I thought I would offer the following insight (if indeed it is one) into Chaim Bloom, the object of the ongoing Spanish Inquisition. This comes from wikipedia, whose writers (always unknown) give him tons of credit for making the Rays very successful at fielding good teams on low budgets. However, nowhere in there does it say Chaim Bloom was responsible for or good at "buying" players or making big/good trades. Nope. It says his forte was developing players once they came into the Rays system, and apparently he was pretty good at it, as are those who followed him. The current Rays team has the 3d lowest payroll in MLB and fields a teams with a .750 winning percentage. When the Sox played the Rays four times at the Trop, I thought the difference in skill levels--in all phases of the game (hitting, pitching, fielding, baserunning)--between the Rays and the Sox was significant. The Rays were also pretty good when CB was there, 2005-2019. The Rays hired him in 2005, and he became Director of Minor League Operations in 2008, Director of Baseball Operations in 2011, and Vice President of Baseball Operations in 2014 until coming to the Sox in 2019. 14 years. From the above, I suppose all the criticism of Bloom is merited because it's based almost entirely on his acquisitions, which he has apparently never done before. Indeed, if his 14 years with the Rays convinced him of nothing else, it convinced him that buying pitching--and paying big bucks--is money ill spent. The perfect example of that is David Price, who came up through the Rays system--the one Chaim Bloom developed--and was hugely successful, including the Cy Young in 2012 while still pitching with the Rays. Then he got the big bucks as a free agent and pitched for the Tigers and especially the Sox, where DD gave him that long term $30M/year contract. His best years were with the Rays, where his total salary from 2008 thru 2014 was just a tad over $30M. I think most everyone has read moonslav's prescient compilation of how the Boston Red Sox have been almost complete failures at developing good pitchers since 1999 and that their solution--which has worked well--was simply to buy good pitching, almost regardless of price/Price. And that, by golly, is what everyone, including moonslav, expects Bloom to do now--spend big for pitching and screw the development stuff. DD was great at that and did it without any hesitation--and produced maybe the best Sox team ever in 2018. Of course, that same team completely collapsed in 2019, but what the heck. Development takes much too long, plus it's not our money being spent on good arms.

Good catch.

Paxton vs Snell, both lefties. Paxton was solid (5 IP, 2 ER, 1 BB, 9 K) in his first start in years, but Snell's ERA for May is 3.45 and he pitched 6 innings in each of those starts. The Sox hit better than the Padres, and the Padres pitch better than the Sox. However, the Padres hit lefties well, and the Sox don't. Over the last 11 games the Padres are 2-9 and the Sox are 5-6. Two games ago I assured one and all that Pivetta would lose to the Mariners at Fenway. He and the Sox won, 9-4. So you tell me what you think might happen tonight. I like where the Sox are right now, but don't like the pitching matchup.

Meh.

Completely agree genes are part of it, even a big part. But we are talking about Duran's defense, not a lifetime batting average of .344 and an unreal OPS of 1.116. And we're not even talking about Duran being as good as, say, JBJ. We just need him to be average. He's already got speed and a work ethic. Apparently--and this comes as a huge surprise to me--he even has some coaching.

Good call on fewer ALE games--the "fewer" amounts to 24 games.

My "Realistic View of 2023" is that the Sox are, very surprisingly, definitely in the hunt. And it's not luck--it's the hitting combined with now and then decent pitching which I think is about to get better. Sale, Paxton, and Bello are a good start on a rotation, and backing them up Cora can choose among Kluber, Houck, Pivetta, Whitlock (soon to come off the IL), and Crawford (also soon to come off the IL). Jansen's 2 recent blown saves notwithstanding, I think the bullpen will continue to be good, especially with Whitlock and Crawford coming off the IL. Lurking in the distance are Duvall, Story, and Mondesi, who may or may not contribute down the road. Also further injuries, heaven forbid.