moonslav59

Helped us get farther than where we are now? Are we sure that Bloom's "extra" pen signings would have done well? Better than Robles, Davis, Brasier... Look at Ottavino & Andriese. Any other signings might have messed with the clubhouse gel, too. ' We'll never know.

Of course not, and Price didn't do all that great on the front end, either, but I still think there are times a team just need to take the plunge. It's not something you plan overnight. It's not just about thinking a certain point in time marks the spot for a big deal. There has to be the right player available. I thought Price was the type of guy you wait for- you plan for. Some might say, this winter is "THE time," but to me, Stroman is not "THE guy" you wait several years for. I do see some SSs that might fit that bill, but then we'd have to move Bogey or trade him for pitching.

Indeed. Only 2 guys were signed for more than 1 year, and they were... Kike- 2 yrs Sawamura- 2 yrs

Heard on the HOU radio, this morning... 538 has HOU at 61% winners Fangraphs has BOS 50.1%

I don't see a Price type deal, this winter, because nobody jumps out like Price did, but someday, I think we might do one. We may see Devers and or Bogey get the large and long deal. I do think we go higher than the $10M for Richards deal, this winter.

I have to think, if they thought we had an excellent chance to win it all this year, Henry would have allowed Bloom to spend more. Who knows? Maybe it wouldn't have helped! Gotta like the character of this club.

I'm liking our chances more and more as time goes by. Some complained this team wasn't as good as the team from the first half. I said it then and will say it again: this team is better than that team and better- right now- than we've ever been in 2021. Yes, just win, baby. One game at a time. Keep the mojo risin'. And all the other appropriate cliches.

A couple interesting moves by Cora got some talk, but not as much as I expected. He put Schwarber up first and Kike second, and bam! He moved Verdugo to the 5 slot and JD to 6th, and bam! He's used a pen that looked like they were in shambles a few weeks and all the way back a couple months, and somehow made every call to the pen work out masterfully. (In hindsight, of course. We all know some of the posters here were actually right, and Cora just got lucky.) Another tip of the cap to Cora for not being afraid to step out of the box and shake things up.

Weird thing to say. Rumor was the Astros were the other team trying to sign Eovaldi after 2018. (He was born in Houston.) He's a FA after 2022. Did he just take away a possible bidder?

I've been saying I think we will go large, this winter or next, but maybe it will not be like the Price deal. I see a few other scenarios: 1) A deal like Scherzer, Greinke or Verlander for large and short. 2) Two $15-20M deals for 3-5 years. 3) Four $10M deals- hopefully better than the Richards' deal. 4) Some sort of mix and match. I can't see him continually signing 10 guys to between $3 and $10M, every year. For one, we don't have enough roster slots for him to do that even one more year (this winter). With a bigger budget, he's almost forced to step out of his previous philosophy. One can look at his 3 biggest deals, last winter, he swung and missed twice (Richards & Perez). He hit big with Kike. If you count Ottavino's trade as a big deal, he was 1 for 4. Out of his next biggest deals, he went 1 for 3, again. Renfroe- hit, Andriese- miss, Marwin The next 2? Sawamura- OK and Santana- miss. One could argue, he shouldn't focus on FA signings, but I guess the Beni trade is not viewed as a winner, yet. Getting Pivetta, last summer, Whitlock with Rule 5, Schwarber and others mid season and the Kike-Renfroe signings were big keys, but there were a lot of misses alog the way, too.

I think he meant the brain trust was thinking the WS was a year or more away. That is likely why he limited the spending.

Bloom is not about glitzy headlines that placate the casual fans. There were reasons, beyond finances and wanting to save the farm as much as possible, for not getting Rizzo, Kimbrel and other headline names. There were reasons for taking a chance on Schwarber, Robles, Davis, Iggy and Shaw. The guy basically went 5 for 5 in the clutch, and in this case, this might be a repeatable skill. (I thought you'd like that, Kimmi.)

As much as it saddens me to see Bobby Dee at oh for 10 in the post season, my jaw drops when I look over the OPS numbers: 1.266 Kike (What a great signing- one of only two multiyear deals, last winter) 1.200 JD (Rumors of his loss of bat speed were just that- rumors.) 1.085 Bogey (Gotta wonder if that IL stint helped heal his wrist.) 1.041 Schwarber (Everything we'd hoped he'd be- ok, except on D.) 1.017 Devers (If he can do this one-handed & blind-folded...) 1.000 Shaw (He's done a lot in such few PAs for us.) .913 Verdugo (I was beginning to wonder if '19-'20 was a dream.) .882 Vaz (Saving all this for the playoffs- GENIUS!) .750 Plawecki (Eovaldi's private caddy keeping the CERA talk relevant.) .741 Renfroe (This wouldn't look so bad, if it wasn't for the GIDPs!) .579 Arroyo (Keeping the defense real at 2B after Iggy's departure.) .000 Dalbec (He's working on losing even a platoon.) The pitching is not too bad, either: 4.2 IP of scoreless pitching by Taylor, Barnes, Ottavino, Davis & Richards 2.08 Whitlock in 4.1 IP (All year, this guy has carried us.) 2.57 Houck in 7.0 (The 2 kids giving us 11.1 IP of 2.38 combined!) 2.61 Big Nate in 10.1 (Talk about carrying us...) 3.12 Pivetta in 8.2 (Seemingly out of nowhere, but has shown this B4.) 5.40 ERod in 6.2 (His bounce back start was the best of our playoffs.) 6.75 Brasier in 2.2 (Faith has been tested but is not gone.) 6.75 Robles in 2.2 (Same as Brasier) 45.00 Sale in 1 IP (Gotta think he can improve on this. LOL)

No wonder I can never get past step one!

I've done that several times. What's the second step in the 12?

Casas? BTW, Dalbec ended up at .730 v RHPs, and while that is pretty bad for a 1Bman, his .763 career number over his first 327 PAs vs righties is not bad for anyone's start to a ML career. I do think insurance is wise, but we might not have enough money or a roster spot for someone like Shaw. If we swap out Schwarber for JD, and try to get KS to workout hard at 1B over the winter, maybe he would hold us over if and until Casas is ready.

I'm thinking Schwarber might get $60M/4 or $70M/5. If the NL gets a DH, it might be more. BTW, I'm not good at projecting contracts or arb numbers.

I hope we can bury the hatchet and move on. I was out of line, a few times. I do think the analytics are going overboard, too, but I can't blame teams for using them to improve outcomes (like defensive shifts, knowing who can't handle 3rd time through line-ups, looking at one-to-one match ups between a pitcher and a batter, etc... To me, the old traditional style of the game seemed more pure and enjoyable to watch, but even back then, changes were always occurring. Hell, they even changed the mound height after 1968. The role of the pen and then the closer has been changing for 5 decades. Line-up strategies, bunting, stealing bases, ...

Yankees in the playoffs over the last decade: No World Series Entries 2 ALCS entries- lost both to HOU in '17 and '19 W-L records: 0-4 DET 1-4 BOS 5-9 HOU 2-3 TBR 4-0 MN 1-0 OAK 5-2 CLE 3-2 BAL

Forget about records and 9 game winning streaks. Think about the team we had in April, May and June (plus maybe the team that won 4 of the first 5 of July). Are we better now, of was that a better team? A lot of players have been added and taken away. Some roles have changed for the ones who stayed. Some stats looked great in April and May, but what team is better? I'd prefer you go with your gut feeling, but here are some stats to remind you who we were back then... OPS by order of most PAs before the All Star Break: .913 Devers (369 PAs) .926 JD (367) .930 Bogey (361) .771 Verdugo (356) .780 Renfroe (312) .747 Kike (316) .659 Vaz (299) .673 Dalbec (258) .583 Marwin (246) .762 Arroyo (163) .522 Santana (104) .501 Cordero (102) .658 Plawecki (71) Pitchers by IP 3.66 Eovaldi 103 4.30 Pivetta 96 4.91 Richards 92 5.52 ERod 90 4.04 Perez 85 1.44 Whitlock 43 2.61 Barnes 38 6.03 Andriese 37 2.68 Ottavino 37 2.45 Sawamura 37 3.86 Taylor 30 2.70 DHern 30 4.24 Valdez 23 3.21 Workman 14 6.59 Brice 14 3.38 Rios 11 4.35 Houck 10 After the break... .862 Devers 295 .832 Kike 269 .787 JD 267 .858 Renfroe 260 .787 Verdugo 248 .761 Bogey 242 .660 Vaz 199 .955 Dalbec .955 .957 Schwarber 168 .576 Duran 112 .792 Plawecki 102 .622 Arauz 65 .915 Iggy 64 .843 Shaw 48 Pitchers.... 3.87 Eovaldi 79 3.71 ERod 68 3.38 Houck 59 4.91 Pivetta 59 4.80 Richards 45 3.16 Sale 43 2.73 Whitlock 30 3.60 Robles 25 6.48 Ottavino 25 2.60 Taylor 17 4.86 Davis 17 6.48 Barnes 17 8.10 Valdez 17 4.41 Sawamura 16 3.95 Rios 14 1.50 Brasier 12 5.40 DHern 10

That should be put on billboards all over NYC!

Thank you for a thoughtful reply. I'm curious about why you seemed to change your mind on bringing Cora back, next season. You seemed to hint you "were not alone" in not wanting him to return. Was it the playoff run? So, I wasn't all that wrong about you thinking starters are "babied"- not just Sale. Maybe "babied" is too strong a word, but I think you said something like "take the kid gloves off" with Sale, which is sort of a separate issue than pulling most starters way earlier than the old days. It seemed, to me, like you often took the position to leave starters in longer, and I did find one quote from you on Houck, so I don't tink my jumping to the conclusion that you think starters are coddled, babied or some other lesser harsh word was all that far off from your stated position above. I do make inferences about posters positions that are not always correct. I shouldn't do that, and I get upset, sometimes, when people do it to me, so I should be more understanding and attentive to myself doing that. It took me a long time to even start paying attention to who said what on this site. I used to just respond to posts and not really pay much attention to the poster and what his positions had been up to that post. I came from another site many years ago, and kinda ignored the personalities for a long time. I know I come off sounding authoritative and righteous, but I don't mean to be that way. I often don't take the time to say, "In my opinion..." or "I think..." but I guess I assume everybody know what anybody says is just their opinion. I also use stats and data to support my positions, knowing full well other stats and data are out there that refute my claims, but somehow, I think people think that my attaching stats makes it sound like I am stating a fact that cannot be debated. For example, I did not intend my statement about Houck having some of the best starter stats on the Sox to mean I felt he was the best starter we had, or that he never had a bad start. I know you weren't implying he was bad, and to some extent almost all pitchers are "inconsistent," at times, but I almost always view players in comparative terms. Maybe I'm wrong for that, and I expect others to see that "my way." I just think singling out Houck as being inconsistent was saying something bad about him, hence my use of the term "bad-mouthing." To me, he's been one of our most consistent starters, although his sample size is smaller than most. He's never had a game where he let up more than 3 runs. Granted, he's let up 3 in 3.2 IP, once, so I'm not saying he's had 13 good starts, but he's been pretty consistent- compared to others. I got into a similar argument with iortiz about Barnes being a better than average RP'er before 2021. He showed his WAR numbers and called him something I disagreed with, and he did not agree with my position that when you compared his numbers from 2017-2020 to other RP'ers in that time frame he was a top 25% reliever in many categories and top 50% in just about every category- so to me, that showed he was "clearly" above average. I went on and on- as did he, when it was clear we just saw things differently. I should have just let it go, as I should with some of the crap we beef about.

Back to 2022... Answer these questions, if you dare: 1) If you could trade JD and pay $3M and then sign Schwarber for $16M (basically breaking even with JD's contract), would you do it? 2) Would you offer ERod an $18.6M QO? 3) If you offered Bogey a fair extension, and he said no, do you look into trading him? 4) Do you bring back Iggy at $6M/2? 5) Do you bring back Robles at $5M/2? 6) Do you try to sign a top starter or RP'er, assuming you can only get one? 7) Do you trust Dalbec to be our FT 1Bman, at least until Casas is ready? 8) Do you think about moving Bogey (3B/2B) or Devers(1B/OF/DH) to another position? My answers: 1) yes 2) yes 3) yes 4) yes 5) yes 6) SP 7) yes (fingers crossed- knowing picking up a cheap 1B is usually easy)) 8) no, not this winter

Okay, I went and looked... It didn't take me long to find one exaample. You didn't say "babied," but you made it clear you thought Cora yanked him too early more than once... No lies. Just maybe a little inference, which looks correct, even now. I take back that apology. 09-27-2021, 03:01 PM#300 Old Red Old Red is online now Major Leaguer Join Date Aug 2021 Posts 368 Quote Originally Posted by moonslav59 View Post If the numbers show a pitcher gets crushed the third time through a line-up are you guys saying keep the guy in out of some sort of macho act or tradition- keeping philosophy? I can just imagine the game threads after Cora leaves a starter in to get drilled. (You replied) I wouldn’t take a pitcher out like Cora has with Houck more than once even though he was pitching good just, because I’m afraid of what might happen. Nonsense to me.

I admit I have said things like you hate Cora, but that's not "putting words in your mouth." I never said you made that statement. I made an inference off your constant bashing and saying things like we should never have hired him back and you weren't the "only one" who would not bring him back next year. "Hate" is a harsh word, and I should not have said that. I have admitted I was wrong in saying that, but I do still think you don't like him. Do you want him back, next year? Do you like him as a manager? Next issue, "babying starters." Again, I could be wrong, but it seems like you have been saying you don't like the direction baseball is going when yanking starters so early. I thought you made some statement like that, at some point. Maybe I'm wrong. maybe I confused you with someone else. If I'm wrong about that, I'm sorry, but can you clear something up? Do you think starters being pulled after 2 times through the line-up is a good direction for baseball? Is it really a crazy thing to equate pulling starters early with "babying," a term you used for Sale? Do you think too many starters in MLB are babied?