Emp9

I really find it frustrating to watch Kelly's weird stutter-step wind-up/fidgety mound presence, but the numbers don't lie. RP Kelly > SP Kelly and I have high hopes for him continuing his BP role success. Some of us have long advocated he make that career change and it's been a nice pay-off so far. It's also nice to be right about things once and a while.

It's a race of 3 for the final 2 rotation spots. I know they'd like to get the max value out of the Pom/Espi trade, but given the premium of RP as of late, it wouldn't surprise me if we saw Pomeranz in the BP (if ERod & Wright look like better options to start). If ERod ever tweaked his knee, December wasn't the worst time to do it imo. There's still a lot of time before the season. His knee is cause for some concern though. Are off-season stem cell injections legal in MLB?

Was that new CBA effective this offseason?

If you can pack a toothbrush you can pack an aeropress. Although it does look like a sex toy or maybe a some drug paraphernalia. "No, Wait!... It's for my coffee addiction, I swear!" lol

Is everyone grinding their coffee beans? I never buy ground coffee, only the whole beans. A small grinder is around $20 and well worth having ( I have one dedicated for spices as well ). The grind is important, whether it's coarse or fine. I like the fine as I can get it unless the filter I'm using calls for a more coarse grind. A dark roast is my preference, French roast to Espresso, they're less acidic too than the lighter roasts. Unlike many affection ado's and coffee professionals, I've never liked drip coffee that much. Perks are better. Keurigs are good in a pinch (good for gatherings), especially since you can use your own coffee with them, but still not my fav. I have two different presses. An AeroPress is great for everyday use and travel (Hotels & camping), and a French Press. In a word?: Smooth! Two words?: Smooth baby! Temperature is very important. Some coffees vary but 195 degrees is pretty standard for releasing the full flavor and caffeine. Don't forget about the caffeine. When someone says they don't like coffee, I always question whether they've actually had good coffee or just a few bad experiences they can't really quantify and decide they just don't like it. One should really visit a local roaster and experiment on their own rather than just accept the slop some of these stores are spewing out.

We can relate on this. Sox have brought up so many in recent years. As long as you keep your expectations of winning games in check, or forget about winning at all and just enjoy individual performances however inconsistent they may be. Keep the big picture in mind while identifying their progress and it doesn't matter how the team ends up finishing.

oh I didn't mean Storen specifically, just the idea of a late inning guy. If we can sign one decent mid-relief guy without being handcuffed at the deadline I'd be all for it. Who knows, we might need a bat by then and not a RP.

I don't think we need a guy with Closer experience necessarily. Another decent 6th-7th-8th Inning RP should suffice... and would be undoubtedly less expensive.

I know there's a chance waiting may cost more as far as what we give to make a trade happen at the deadline. But it might be smart to consider one of these guys. Blanton might be good 5th SP insurance and he's a RHP. Holland might be worth a look. Most of these guys splits vs the ALE (or the Guardians or the Rangers) are very SSS it's hard to get a good read on them. If it doesn't stop us from a trade deadline acquisition I might be up for it. Still think waiting until mid-season when we can more accurately identify a need would be the best route to take.

Yeah, I guess that's the only way it could make sense. Less opportunities. I happen to think Wright will win the 5th spot in the rotation when ST is over. They listed him as 6th... we'll see about that.

Thus far, not good. I wanted to see Papi and Panda together in the Post-Season, but it didn't work out that way. Panda's story isn't over yet though. I'm hoping he can redeem himself this year.

I'm a skeptical snake right now. FanGraphs has Buchholz projected WAR at 1.6 and Steven Wright's at 0.9. The article below is from July 28 about Wright's performance, particularly his main pitch (the knuckle) vs other pitcher's non-FB secondary pitch. I thought it was interesting, just ignore the last part about fantasy baseball because that's not why I'm posting it. http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/steven-wright-should-float-on-ok/ My previous post (two posts above) was filling out the rest of our rotation piggybacking Moon's Team's top 3 SP post. I was curious to see what it looked like in print. It's pretty obvious Sale replacing Buch (or most pitchers for that matter) gives us a slight edge (+3.2). By itself thats substantial, but I happen to believe Wright (or Pom, or ERod) could have a better 2017 than Buch and lead to even bigger gains. What does everyone else think?

Wood,Urias,McCarthy 5.6 Roark,Ross,Cole 4.9 Harvey,Lugo,Gsellman 4.3 ERod,Pom,Wright 4.6 Tomlin,Bauer,Clevinger 3.7 Moore,Blach,Cain 4 Lackey,Montgomery,Brooks 5.3 LA 19.2 WSH 18.2 BOS 17.5 NYM 17.4 CHC 17.2 CLE 16.4 SFG 16

Uh Oh... does this mean the CERA Cold War is officially over and we've just been thrust into another CERA Nuclear Arms Race? I'm gonna make some coffee.....

I lucked-out with the 2nd pick in my fantasy draft and took him. For some reason, walks don't count for points w/ a batter, but of course they count against pitchers (WHIP). I didn't foresee this problem. 6 BB's in a game and I got nothing for it. I think some rule changes are needed for next season. lol I agree, I think opposing pitchers pitched very smart against him. But if he had more protection maybe his slump wouldn't have lasted as long as it did. Was it Barry Bonds (?) who publicly said Harper should steal more bases whenever they walked him, so opposing teams would think twice. He didn't try steal enough bases for that strategy to work in my opinion. Of course maybe teams were looking for that after he said it.

The beginning of Harper's slump started when he faced the Cubs in May. They walked him 13 times that series (even one game 6 times). Harper had very little protection in the batting order. Cubbies swept them. Other teams followed suite. He could barely get a pitch to hit, and if he did I think he was just pressing to make something happen.

I meant on principle I think it's a tad silly. It's not the first time it's come up either. Yeah you're right though, the draft pick is important and because of that I'm still not sure I'd actually want to, but it's close. S5's got a point I tend to agree with, that you gotta start somewhere and sooner is better than later. There should also be bats available at this years deadline, in case we're set with our BP that is.

It's not "base salary" that is used for luxury tax purposes. The average yearly salary of the contract is the number used. I mess this up too.. like every year. So much so, that I really wished they changed it to what teams actually spend on the season at hand. To have two players, Bautista and Encarnacion both willing to work something out and not get either of them because "We can't afford you". The players got the union to worry about, the owners have the Luxury Tax Limit, and both worry about the actual market and the flash in the pan market trends. We're under and yet still can't work something out IS kinda weak if you think about it.

Not sure I'd call it optimism exactly. It's just where I see this team. We don't hit 98 wins... I might be concerned.

I love having some wiggle room for when we're at the trade deadline. An injury cld happen. An upgrade cld be needed. Right now I cld foresee adding a RP. We'll see what shakes out and burn that bridge when we get to it.

Some notable former Golden Spikes Award Winners: Will Clark Jim Abbott Robin Ventura JD Drew Pat Burrell Mark Prior Alex Gordon Tim Lincecum David Price Buster Posey Steven Strasburg Bryce Harper Kris Bryant I say we give Benintendi, who has nothing left to prove in the minors, his chance. He's earned his way to starting. Now, of course, he needs to earn it to keep it that way. Simple as that.

To an extent, Run differential is exactly why I'm thinking Sox should be closer to 100 than 90. Runs Against in particular I expect improvement. Extent being that blow-out wins pad the overall offensive numbers that weren't necessary for the same result. Our offense doesn't need to score more on the year to be better. They just have to score more consistently from game to game. This could be the most balanced Red Sox team I've ever seen going in. I'm also not simply looking at our team, but the rest of the ALE. I'm going with a conservative 98 wins.

I don't know how they figured that out (93 wins). That doesn't quite compute with me. I see us not winning as many blow-out games as last year (30-11) even though let's say those wins could still be wins, but there's a better chance we won't lose as many blow-outs either. Sox were 20-24 in one-run games, I see that changing for the batter as well. How much? I don't know. Over-all we shouldn't have to score 5-6 runs a game, let's say 4-5 runs a game per average. I like our Ortiz-less offense if guys like XB, JBJ, Beni continue to make strides. I fully expected Betts to have the kind of season he did but not last year, more like two years later (2018). I felt he'd be this good someday, not this good this quickly. If he comes within a stones throw to the season he had that should be fine. Not having to face EE (& maybe even Bautista) 19 games should help because they were our stiffest competition out of any team we faced during the regular season. SOx were 9-10 vs Toronto (most losses vs any team) even though we out-scored them 97-85. There's other things like losing streaks. Our longest was a 4 game losing streak that happened once (not too shabby really), but we had a lot of 3 game losing streaks, 7 (I think). This coming season, I don't see us losing 4 games in a row ever on top of having less 3-game losing streaks. I have to cut this short 'cause it x-mas, but I don't think I'm having delusions of grandeur here when I think (on paper) 103 wins is closer to reality than 93.

Ain't that the truth. Last season vs the BoSox: 19 games, .282 BA/.967 OPS, 7 HR, 17 RBI, 9 BB. Boston gave up the most EE HRs out of any team Toronto played. So,him not returning to the AL East is obviously the good thing to take away from all this. He smacked around every team from the ALE except for the Rays. Perhaps we should target a Tampa RP that had success against EE at the deadline. However, I had a hunch Cleveland would make a move like this, 'cause they got their own window that's projected to close sooner than ours at this point. This probably puts them back as projected favorites. But in most cases, like they say, good pitching beats good hitting, and I really hate being the favorites.

probably a good guess