moonslav59

Cool! I've never seen a Sox game on the left coast.

Vs the lefthander... 1. Verdugo RF 2. Turner 1B 3. Refsnyder LF 4. Devers 3B 5. Yoshida DH 6. Kike SS 7. Reyes 2B 8. Duran CF 9. Wong C

We have a few days off, here and there, so we may not need a pen game, for a while. If we do, someday, we might just go with one guy for 5 or 6, if he can make it that long.

The Red Sox have signed outfielder Bradley Zimmer to a minor league deal.

I think the main replacement for Bogey was more Yoshida than Duvall (Duran.) I think Bloom counted on upticks in LF, CF, RF and 1B that would more than offset the loss of Bogey's offense. Break even at DH (Turner/JD) and Catcher (McGWong/ Vazwecki)

His .768 OPS prior to this season was a disappointment but not terrible. I doubt we trade him. I'm not sure we extend him, either, so who knows? We do not have OF depth, and won't next year, either. Blies and Anthony are too far away, and Abreu is unknown.

Agreed. I do think watching Story hit and field will be better than watching Arroyo, Chang, Kike and Valdez in the middle IF.

Bloom had help developing in TB, too. I'm not sure he has brought in any fresh faces in the scouting & development areas, and just how much does he do in this area, other than hire and direct those that do the legwork? I'm not saying changes are not being made. I'm hopeful on some of our younger pitchers- more so than I have been in a while. Plus, it's not just about developing: it's about spotting young pitchers to be drafted, signed as IFAs or in other ways. Bloom has not draft pitchers, highly, but Drohan just passed all the DD pitchers still in the farm. Bloom has signed some promising IFA pitchers, but none have yet to rise to the top of the rankings. He did spot Whitlock on the Rule 5 list. He did trade for Wink. He did not trade away Houck, Crawford or Bello. (I'm not sure how much, if any, he had to do with their development.) There are some long shots like de la Rosa and Gambrell. Maybe E R-C or Guerrero come through. (They are moving up the rankings.)

It's nearly impossible to win a ring with a weak 25-40 on the 40. We had a weak 18-40 in 2020. Plus, beyond the 40 showed very little promise, although some of DD's kids have come through, perhaps with some help from the system headed by Bloom after 2019. It took a while to build it up, and there were plenty of failures and missed boats- some just seemed to be a timing issue (Springs and Perez.) Now, many of our 25-40 guys are coming through with flying colors (Duran, Vadlez, Reyes, Wong/McGuire, Wink, Crawford, Bello and others. We still have some gaping holes, as do all other teams, except maybe TBR, and that's on Bloom. He had the money, last winter, and he made this bed.

That part has surprised me about not bringing in Rays guys. I'm not so sure it is "clear" he hasn't put some things into practice. How well would most GMs have done given the budget constraints placed on Bloom until March 2022? Did we really expect much better for the money than Wacha, Hill, Strahm, Kike I, Renfroe, Whitlock, Schreiber, Refsnyder, Arroyo, Wink, Dugo, Wong and others? I might have expected a few more Whitlocks and few less Marwins and Diekmans, but he has not been way off on signings. (BTW, the rays Way is not really based on nailing FA signings, anyway.) It's about building a deep 40 man roster and farm. In that area, the jury is still out, IMO, especially since most of his draft picks have been high school players. Did he and "his guys" have an impact on Bello, Wink, Crawford and maybe Drohan? We don't know and can't know, yet on many.

I think he will end up doing well on the season, but signing 30+ year olds always begs the question: at what point do they begin to drop off, and the follow-up: and how much of a drop off will it be?

I don't disagree with any of this, but one would think he'd have picked up some knowledge on identifying and acquiring players and prospects. He also, literally "wrote the book" on the "Ray's Way." https://vault.si.com/vault/2013/04/01/the-rays-way I, for one, do not think he has done a bad a job as many seem to think he has at acquiring low cost players. After the massive and mandated budget cuts after 2019- a year that had already exposed the holes on the roster, he had a lot of work to do, and precious few dollars to do it. Getting guys like Renfroe (that the Rays had non-tendered), Kike I, Arroyo, Schreiber, Refsnyder, Whitlock, Wink and later Wacha, Hill, Strahm and others is not bad. Sure, he flopped on Richards, Perez, Marwin, Diekman and others, but you get what you pay for, and he had to pay squat and often got squat. Did he build the farm and improve player development, especially pitching? It's too early to know. We do know he did not trade away 20 prospects that were or once were top 20 prospects like DD did, and soon he may need to trade some, but his 4-5 year plan is almost up.

I've never been too concerned about high K's unless the guy sucks. Bogey has really dropped off, after his hot start. 1.093 after 54 PAs .993 after 94 PAs .606 in his last 93 PAs

I don't read game threads, which is worse than what people say on air. The show hosts seem to defend keeping him in the line-up, but just moving him down. Abreu has zero HRs. He's hitting .220 and his SLG is .262. WOW!

I hope Yoshida can keep this up. His approach hints at a yes, but in baseball, one never knows.

The smaller sample sizes sure help skew this list, but you'd expect more 2023's at the bottom of the list, too. It is kind of surprising to see that 5 of the top 6 OPS are not from Devers, Bogey or JD: Duran Yoshida Ref '22 Devers '22 McGuire '22 Verdugo

Right. You can't do this for 5 starts. You'd use 10 pitchers and still need 3-4 innings of relief every day from the other 3 pitchers, but maybe we can support it for one game out of the 5, but we will need the others to go 6. I'm not sure we can count on that. Ideally, Whitlock could go more than 9 batters. Houck is sometimes not so bad the second time through. it's the third that kills him. Also, if we could use these guys in short situations between their scheduled piggyback games, that could make it work. I'm not saying I'm for the idea, but certainly using a long guy in their starts will likely happen, anyway- scheduled or not..

This site is so good at re-enacting it!

The Houston area talkshows are going nutty over that signing.

2022 and 2023 OPS Leaders (split seasons) 50+ PAs Red= 2023 1.006 Duran .881 Yoshida .881 Refsnyder .879 Devers .877 Verdugo .877 McGuire .833 Bogey .828 Devers .795 Turner .790 JD .783 EValdez .766 Casas .759 Vaz .748 Refsnyder .737 Story .736 Arroyo .732 Verdugo .705 Casas .701 Wong .697 Cordero .672 Pham .668 Tapia .667 McGuire .660 Arroyo .652 Dalbec .647 Kike .645 Duran .631 Hosmer .629 Kike .585 Wong .578 JBJ .574 Plawecki

As well as our team has hit, we've spread it out pretty well. We have no batters in the top 30 in OPS with over 110 PAs. If we set the bar at 110 PAs, who would have expected this Sox leader board? 5. Duran 1.006 36. Yoshida .881 37. Verdugo .877 (42. Betts .869) 64. Devers .828 (77. Bogey .806) 87. Turner .795 (89. Renfroe .790) (91. JD .786) 148. Casas .705 (.696 Beni) 194. Kike .647 (220. Abreu .531)

Maybe they try a Houck-Whitlock piggyback with each going through 9 batters.

It seems like a lot of his "near misses" have gone on to do well. Also, some of the guys he liked and acquired, but then did not keep have gone on to do better, elsewhere- like Springs and Perez. I'm not sure we can read into this all that much, and we probably don't know all the players he was "seriously" pursuing. Also, there are apparent flops like Abreu that could be added to a list that counters my claim.

What is kind of strange about this year's offense, is that as strong as we look with LHBs, and I think we can field a 9 lefties line-up, is that we actually hit better in games where a LHP starts: .805 in games a lefty starts .786 in games a RHP starts The overall splits tell the opposite story: .774 v LHPs .802 v RHPs

That's what I think it came down to. Not so much the money, but the belief that last winter did not have "the right guy." Does Bloom like Giolito? Who knows? Maybe someone else. Nobody mentioned Eflin, before the reports came out on the near miss. Maybe we trade for someone at the deadline or next winter.