moonslav59

Yes, when he leaves baseball to be a bilingual teacher.

The Rays are so tough. They are no fluke. To those who thought last year’s short season success was not sustainable, think again.

28 hits and walks, yesterday. 4 today. Reminds me of the pre-Theo Sox.

Marwin's Theory of De-Evolution: Survival of the manager's favorites.

Woulda been a 2B anywhere else.

I would start anyone over over Marwin, with consideration even given to pitchers. That's how little faith I have in his bat.

I'm talking about you judging players based on 20 games, not when a team can't or can extend the leash. That is an interesting issue to discuss, and we have had some of those talsk about Dalbec, Cordero and others.

Um, we were in a pennant race when Pedey (2006- 1 GB on AUG 13) and the start of 2007 and JBJ (2013) were brought up.

Maybe Vaz just needed a rest, and Cora goes back to him hard, despite Plawecki's recent success.

Nobody can ever convince me to start Marwin, even in a triple header.

Dalbec is starting vs LHPs over Marwin.

This is not the correct way to use CERA, either, but for those who think overall CERA tells a better story, consider these numbers over multiple seasons. 2014-2021 Red Sox pitchers with Vaz and back ups sorted by most IP with Sox since 2014 (all Sox pitchers with 280+ IP since 2014 w Sox): CERA/OPS Against (IP) Sale 2.51/.622 AJ P (226) 2.79/.578 Leon (436) 4.61/.762 Vaz (84) (No catcher on the CWS had a CERA worse than 3.53) ERod 3.78/.778 Hanigan (50) 4.05/.700 Leon (118) 4.23/.723 Vaz (566) 4.44/.692 Swihart (75) Porcello 4.19/.728 Leon (576) 4.93/.800 Swihart (122) 4.96/.794 Vaz (211) 5.38/.831 Holaday (55) (Nobody on Detroit with over 30 IP w Porcello had a worse CERA than 4.43) Price 2.96/.647 Leon (204) 4.27/.738 Vaz (360) (All other catchers with 30+ IP with Price had a CERA better than Vaz's. One guy, Gregg Zaun with only 43 IP had one close at 4.19. Everyone with more than 100 IP had a CERA or 3.61 or better.) Eovaldi 2.66/.419 Wong (20) 3.54/.657 Plawecki (69) 4.30/.765 Vaz (147) 4.53/.735 Leon (44) 4.85/.421 Salty (124) Buccholz 2.83/.642 VMart (241) 3.01/.646 Leon (155) 3.79/.629 Lava (36) 3.95/.737 Salty (207) 4.44/.705 Vaz (130) 4.68/.683 D Ross (73) 5.12/.801 VTek (118) 5.63/.836 AJ P (62) Others: Alex Avila 1.55/.587 in 52 IP Barnes 3.69/.624 Vaz (197) 3.83/.697 Leon (99) 4.50/.803 Swihart (42) Pomeranz 3.32/.721 Holaday (41) 3.92/.745 Vaz (198) 6.02/.934 Leon (46) Kelly (Y Molina 2.81/.721 in 176 IP) 3.23/.619 Vaz (98) 3.94/.580 D Ross (32) 4.48/.698 Swihart (74) 4.63/.785 Leon (56) 4.83/.761 Hanigan (91) Wright 2.94/.611 Hanigan (95) 3.49/.700 Vaz (101) 4.06/.716 Swihart (71) 5.83/.935 Leon (59) Some sample sizes are rather small with some catchers and some are highly unbalanced. Some are during different parts of a pitcher's career, but the numbers astound me every time I look them up. The totals: 10 top pitchers by IP Leading in CERA: 2 Leon 2 Han 2 Vaz (Barnes & Joe Kelly- not the biggest sample size pitchers) 1 by AJP, Holaday, VMart, Plawecki OPS Against: 4 Leon 1 Hanigan, Holaday Lava, Salty, Ross & Vaz Last place with 100+ IP by 2+ pitchers: CERA 5 Vaz 1 VTEk (w Buch) 1 Leon (w Barnes) OPS 4 Vaz 1 Swihart (Porcello) 1 VTek (Buch) 1 Leon (Barnes) Out of the 9 pitchers who had 80+ IP with 2 or more catchers, Vaz finished last or second to last in 7 out of the 9 cases in CERA and 6 of 9 in OPS Against. Only Buch and Barnes were in Vaz's favor.

Here's another case that may support my claims on catchers getting the most out of pitchers: Josh Beckett, 2009: VTek was his personal caddy all year. 3.17 CERA w VTek (185 IP) 7.16 CERA w VMart (16 IP) 10.32 CERA w Kottaras (11 IP) Yes, unbalanced and small sample sizes, so what does Tito do? He starts VMart with Beckett in the playoffs to "improve the offense," and this happenes: You want small sample sizes? 6.2 IP 4 ER and a loss and early exit for the Sox that playoff season.

At least he's respectable vs LHPs (.754), but no- not ideal. Over his career, he's been pretty evenly bad.

I'm arguing about judging players over such tiny sample sizes. 20 games is tiny. The fact that Pedey had an off season to work things out and it still took him way longer than Duran has had helps my case not yours. Pedey's sample size was... Year 1 31 games: .561 OPS in 98 PAs Year 2 (2007) First 21 games: .518 OPS in 68 PAs Duran: 20 games: .580 OPS in 69 PAs. Again, I'm glad nobody made definitive judgments on Pedey after his first176 PAs and 52 games, which was a worse OPS than Duran. JBJ had a bigger sample size than Duran, too, even just year 1. .617 OPS in 107 PAs (37 games) Year 2 .531 in 423 PAs (127 games) Year 3 .426 in first 71 PAs (24 games) Wow! What patience Theo & Tito showed this guy!

There is a ton of anecdotal evidence that points to many pitchers preferring one catcher over another.

OMG! Marwin starts again. Bloom has to remove Cora's binky.

We paid $2.8M towards Beni and did not pay the $6.6M he was owed in 2021 or the full $5M towards the tax line did not count against us. Henry saved $3.8M by trading him, and we saved about $2.2M on the tax line, which would have put us over, this year and set the clock to year 2 in 2022 and year 3 in 2023, assuming we go over those years, too.

My guess is Franco and Duran both keep getting better than their early numbers. Of course, I could be wrong. Many promising prospects flop and are out of baseball pretty quickly. I'm sure glad we did not give up on Pedey and JBJ over much larger sample sizes than these.

All stats are flawed. CERA and OPS against by catcher is much more flawed when used wrongly. When the numbers continually show the same thing every year, except with Swihart, that the vast majority of pitchers with significant sample sizes with both catchers do better with the catcher not named Vazquez, that should not mean anything? Yet, a 20 games sample size by Duran is so telling?

I realize it's a sticky argument. If catcher determine so much how pitchers do, then maybe good pitchers are only good, because they had the better catcher, and the whole argument spirals out of control. That being said, look at the PA differentials between Vaz and Plawecki: Red= better differential by more than .010. With Vaz (OPS Against) 475 ERod (.771) 441 Richards (.895) 387 Perez (.784) 381 Pivetta (.717) 243 Eovaldi (.723) 208 Whitlock (.589) 164 Sawamura (.757) 142 Barnes (.474) 141 Andriese (1.002) 136 Ottavino (.520) 111 Taylor (.669) 106 D Hern (.762) 96 Valdez (.702) 77 Workman (.828) 75 Rios (.599) 49 Houck (.459) 40 Brice (1.056) Under 12 PAs: Bazardo .450, Davis .697, Robles 1.045, Brennan .788, Brewer 1.444, Arauz 1.150 with Plawecki 233 Eovaldi .668 118 Pivetta .718 66 Perez 1.248 56 Richards .682 56 Taylor .673 56 Houck .692 56 Ottavino .855 44 DHern .540 43 Valdez .418 33 Barnes .897 30 Weber 1.500 27 Andriese .675 24 Brice .492 19 Whitlock 1.158 12 Sawamura .444 Under 12 PAs: Davis 1.000, Rios .722,Workman 1.167, Arroyo 1.400, Marwin .000 The biggest swings in ratio of pitchers with specific catchers are these: Only Vaz has caught ERod Only Plawecki has caught Weber Plawecki has higher %'s per PAs with Eovaldi & Pivetta than Vaz Vaz has higher %'s with Whitlock, Barnes & Taylor (I might have missed other wide disparities.)

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it is possible total CERA numbers are misleading due to one pitcher catching much better pitchers much more often than the other and vice versa with bad pitchers. This is not the case with Plawecki and Vaz, as far as I can see. I did not look at RP'er comps, because all their sample sizes are super small, but I'm sure Vaz must do better with more, because his overall CERA is better than Plawecki's. Again, I was only trying to point out the flaws of using overall CERA and OPS against numbers to compare catchers from the same team. Our team often incorporates a type of loose pitchers with caddies system. We've had years where some starters were never caught by one of our catchers. Can you see how this would greatly skew the overall CERA numbers? Yes or no?

I get that, and that's one reason I am not for making Plawecki the starting catcher over Vaz. I wanted an answer to the hypothetical question that highlights why overall CERA does not tell the true story, when catchers catch one or two pitchers way more than the others.

Yes, it says he got off to a bad start, as many rookies do. Some get better: some don't. BTW, we already knew he K'd alot. The hope was, and still is, he can produce enough when he doesn't K and or can improve on his K rate and BB rate as he matures.

Had we signed Max instead of HRam and Pablito, things would have been way different.