moonslav59

I expected 2-3 Cashner type deals that would keep us under the max line, and hoped 1-2 would worked out well enough to put us over the hump. It is a mystery that $2-3M was too much to spend. At this point, I doubt it would have mattered, but it just seems strange we didn't try. It also makes me wonder about our spending priorities going forward. I'm hoping we look to reset next year in hopes that we can make a strong bid for Betts after 2020. (Maybe we even trade him and sign him back.) I'm afraid, if we spend big next winter, the hole will just get deeper, and the timeline to our return to glory stretched out by more than just the one year wasted on one last gasp effort with this broken team.

HRs Allowed 25 Porcello (27 last year) 24 Sale (11) 22 ERod (16) 15 Price (25)

You must feel so proud!

MN has none of its top 5 IP pitchers below 3.29 and 3 are over 4.15. While that's not horrible, it looks like they have two number 2's and 3 number 4's. HOU has 4 of its top 8 pitchers by IP worse than 4.13 with 3 over 4.73. Wade Miley is their 3rd best pitcher (3.11). ATL has the second best NL record and has 2 of its top 5 IP pitchers over 6.19! The next 2 are over 4.05.

Look at the Yankee ERAs of their top IP pitchers (listed in order of IP): Even some winning teams have serious issues with their pitching staff. All Yankee pitchers with 48+ IP are listed 4.64 Tanaka 5.40 Happ 3.96 German 4.40 Paxton 4.78 Sabathia 4.33 Cessa 1.70 Ottavino 2.17 Britton 2.92 Kahnle 4.41 Cortes 5.59 Green

The theory is sound- just not for Yankee & Fenway Parks.

When you have one side of your park with short fences and the other with long ones, the pitchers can pitch in ways that make it difficult to hit HRs. They force hitter to hit where the park is long.

That has nothing to do with your point made. You claimed we are where we are because our 4 & 5 starters pitched like garbage, and we could have won enough to compete had we had other starters. To improve on 28-25, we'd have had to win at a much higher rate than 28-25, which would have meant acquiring way better than just decent 4-5 slot pitchers. We could not have afford 2 pitchers that much better, but that was not even what the debate was about. It was about why we are where we are in the standings. On that, it seems to me, is simple: Our starters sucked, except for ERod, and our pen sucked. If blame is to be placed on the 1-2 starters vs the 4-5 starters, clearly the 1-2 starters pitched better than the 4-5, but we lost way more than with the 4-5 starters. This isn't about contracts or expectations or who we had to ride with or not. It's about Sale & Price not doing what they needed to do. Had they just gone 50-50, we'd be 6 games better and just 1.5 games behind the WC slot. Had they gone 27-19, we'd have the second best record in the AL and be ahead in the WC with home field in our favor. I doubt we'd have done much better than 28-25 from our 4-5 slots. After all, we tried with Cashner and ended up doing much worse.

Down 12 from our 1&2 slot starters is about the same as the amount of more blown saves we have as compared to 2018.

I have to disagree. While our 4 and 5 slot have been garbage, our 4 and 5 slots don't have a horrible W-L record. Had they pitched better, we'd likely not have gained as many wins as the 1+2 slot differentials. The 1 (Sale) and 2 (Price starters have killed us more than 4+5, despite having better ERAs. Record in Starts: 1) 10-15 Sale 2) 9-12 Price 19-27 Total 1 & 2 slots 3) 17-7 ERod 4) 14-10 Porcello 5) We got Cashner to solve the 5 slot issues. He tilted the W-L record from plus to minus. 5-3 Velazquez 1-5 Cashner 3-2 Johnson 3-1 Eovaldi 2-1 Weber 0-2 Josh Smith 0-1 DHernandez 13-10 before Cashner 14-15 after Casher 28-25 Total 4 & 5 Slots

The first Stephen Drew one, yes. The second one, no.

Well, not quite everything. Imagine if Devers, Workman and Vaz played like this, last year.

Porcello is facing the same fate as JD Drew. As for Lugo, remember softlaw (the clown from that other site). He used to argue Lugo was the "wire to wire SS on a championship team" and was a good signing.

Some poster suggested we trade Beni. Nobody said for "peanuts" or suggested a trade that looked like peanuts.

You guys don't have a high wall in your short RF. Park dimensions don't take into account the height of walls. The Left-Center Field wall is high, too, and the CF wall is higher than probably everyone else's, too.

Great story. Devers is the real deal.

Why would we?

Or dominant in a game, then one inning- poof! (Like last game.)

When we signed Dan Duquette, I thought the same thing. If this guy was able to build winners with the Expos, despite having a small budget, what would he do with the Sox? He did end up building the foundation for Theo, but I expected better.

Would be massive.

Yes, and the question might be, why did the changed ball hurt our staff more than others? We have a high K rate. I can understand Porcello, since he always let up a lot of HRs and fly balls, but why the whole staff? The whole league has seen a higher ERA, but we've jumped way more than the norm. There has to be other factors.

Very true, but had the top 3 starters, who had just 9 starts with 4 or more runs allowed last year and 31 this year in way less games, had, instead, 20 of those bad starts, we'd still be in the division race and leading the WC race.

I think so, too, but the lack of options is a drag.

You don't trade 4 years of a 22 y/o to rebuild. You trade for guys like that. Only teams looking to be bad for 2-3 years and then good 3-4 years later think like that, and even that is a rare trade by them.

They have not been "lead your team to the playoffs" good. You are right, none have been bad enough to ever say, "drop them fro the starting 5," but your point I responded to implied that the 4-5 slots and pen were the main reasons we dropped so far in the standings and with our record. To me, all but ERod (and Workman in the pen) are responsible for what happened.