moonslav59

You make a good point, but 102 pitches is what some give us in 5 IP.

Man! Are we ever going to have everyone in the line-up healthy for one day? I'm not even talking about the 4 pitchers on the DL.

Agreed, but he still sucks vs LHPs. He's been horrible for the last 4-5 years vs lefties. There's no reason to think he'll get better.

I'm saying "bench him" vs LHPs. I'm saying he better start fielding better, or he may subbed for late in games and moved to DH or 1B next year. I'm not happy with his defense since he came here in 2015. His bat has done nothing to mitigate his glove, but I'm happy he's been getting timely hits in big situations. I hope he keeps that up, but I'm not sure that will be enough. He should not be benched vs RHPs, as of now.

I'm not. To me, Pablo getting the FT job at 3B to start the season was "not clear", and I was responding to the "clear" adjective. Since we obtained this guy, I said he was a platoon player, and nothing he has done since his signing has changed my mind- small sample size or large. My main concern is with his defense, as it was back in 2015, but to keep playing while fielding poorly, you have to hit better than the norm. The guy said, "if he keeps hitting..." and I responded to that with basically with this, "keeps hitting like what? Crapola?"

I wouldn't yank him. His 10 RBIs have been big. I wouldn't say it's "clear" though with 3 errors and a .224 BA.

I think he meant he batted .245 in his last full season, so to say "keeps hitting like this" would mean keeps hitting poorly.

He has 11 hits and 10 RBIs. I doubt he continues to get an RBI for every hit he gets, but I suppose it could happen.

Probably not, but he probably will stop getting as many RBIs as hits as well.

Keeps hitting .224?

Sale is good enough to overcome the whole "4th time" aspect, but I had no issue bringiung in Kimbrel.

Ben started slow in the draft and then had the TBall pick, but overall he did well: 2012: Marrero, Johnson, Light, Callahan... 2013: TBall, Stanki, Denny... 2014: Chavis, Kopech (CSale), Travis, Ockimey... 2015: Beni, Rei, Matheny, Lakins, Taylor International signings (most traded away): 2012: Margot (Kimbrel) 2013: Basabe (Sale), Basabe (Ziegler), Guerra (Kimbrel), Rijo (A HIll), Almonte (Ziegler), V Acosta 2015: Devers, J Diaz, Y aybar 2016: Moncada (Sale), Espinoza (Pomeranz), R Castillo, R Raudes, C Acosta

Sad thing is no one paying $10M for Pablo. Just a bad signing by Cherington. If Pablo has a decent year, we might get someone to pay $7-9M a year for him. He'll just have 2 years left, which is a much lower risk. Look, we got the Phillies to pay Buch $13.5M/1! My guess is, we try to find a spot for Panda on our 25 man roster than minimizes his faults (defense and batting vs LHPs). With Moreland and Young's time up after this season, moving Panda to 1B/DH vs only RHPs would "get the most" out of a rotten situation. It's absurd to pay someone $19M a year to be a platoon DH, but if that's the best way to make it work, so be it. Hopefully, Devers and/or Hernandez can play plus ball at 3B by next year. We'll also have Travis in the mix at 1B. vs RHPs: 1B: Pablo (Travis) DH: HRam (Pablo) vs LHPs: 1B: Travis DH: HRam

That 2014 draft class has looked better and better as time has gone by. 26th pick Chavis has exploded this year. 33rd pick Kopech had issues early, but bounced back and helped us land Sale. 67th pick Travis battled injuries, but is now a highly ranked Sox prospect. 164th pick Ockimey is still a raw talent, but he has big upside. Ben caught some flack for this draft, but now...

In his 15 starts after July 2nd, Sale had 4 bad starts, including one with 8 ER in 5 IP. He also had these lines in the other 10 games... ND 8 IP 0 ER 1H 3BB Win 8IP 0ER 3H 3BB Win 9IP 2ER 7H 1BB ND 8IP 2ER 6H 0BB Loss 8IP 2 ER 6H 1BB Loss 8IP 2 ER 8H 1BB ND 8IP 2 ER 8H 4BB Loss 9IP 3 ER 5H 0BB Loss 6 IP 2 ER 6H 3BB Win 7IP 3ER 8H 0BB He was 4th in MLB in SP'er 2nd half WAR. 5th xFIP at 3.56 (among starters with 90+ IP in the second half) 7th in WHIP at 1.03 11th in ERA- at 77 (among starters with 90+ IP)

No, I was talking Pablo's next two years, but I suppose if Moreland slumps badly or gets hurt, or HanRam gets hurt, moving Pablo sooner than I meant might be an option. This is all based on the assumption that Pablo's bat is a plus if and when all this comes down. Lot's of "ifs" here. Finding a way to get something plus out of Pablo in 2018 and 2019 could help us avoid having to fill Moreland's shoes after 2017 and HRam's shoes after 2018. 2018: 3B: Devers/Hernandez (Rutledge/Holt/Pablo) 1B: Pablo/Travis/HRam DH: HRam (Pablo) 2019: 3B: Devers/Hernandez (Chavis/Dalbec) 1B: Travis/Dalbec (Pablo) DH: Pablo/Dalbec If can save money by not needing to replace Moreland, Young and HanRam with a FA, we might be able to keep one more of our studs. Now, if some team wants to pay half of Pablo's contract to take him off our hands, I'm listening.

Like my original line-up suggestion? 1) Beni 2) Bogey 3) Betts 4) HRam 5) Pedey 6) JBJ v R/ Young vs L 7) Moreland v R/ JBJ v L 8) Sandy v R/ Rutledge v L 9) Leon & Vaz

The team is 3-1 in his 4 starts. That's all that counts.

This sucks!

I think an improvement on OPS would be... (OBP x 3) + (SLG x 2) 5 This way, OBP counts as 60% of the number and SLG 40%.

Beni graduates from prospect status today. Read about our other OF prospects.... http://news.soxprospects.com/2017/04/system-restart-17-outfield.html

OPS+ does a little bit.

And that's a good thing. Remember all the clowns who used Fldg% and only Fldg% to rate a player's defense? BTW, I don't think RF is used. They are more advanced than that. UZR/150 is better than RF/9 by a long shot. It took a while for fldg% guys to even listen to the RF/9 argument.

Since WAR is a product of skill plus time, a player who is better but plays less might have a lower WAR, but I think we all agree, being on the field playing is a plus. Personally, I've never used WAR as a debate ender, and I don't see many others doing it. I'll say again, I think the onus is on the poster to try sand show why a lesser WAR player is better than another. I've attempted this myself a few times by using these arguments: 1) Player B was hurt, but he is clearly better "when healthy". (Maybe the player has no history of always being hurt.) 2) I think SS defense is under-scored by WAR, but I can't prove my theory is better than WAR's methodology for determining how SS defense compares in value to other positions. 3) Catcher "defense" cannot quantify how a catcher gets the best (or worst) out of the pitchers he catches. There's a big hole here, but that hole exists in traditional measurements as well. There's probably more that I can't think of. In general, I like the idea of trying to put one number to measure the totality of a player's value. WAR uses statistical data from many many years to determine the co-relation between a stat and a run scored or saved from being scored. They use that data to determine which stats are more important and weigh these factors into their formula. I don't have to understand every permutation to trust that they are pretty close to what really counts towards a player's value. The runs are converted to wins above replacement player value and there's the number. I kind of like it, but I realize it is not perfect, but because it factors in so many valuable things a player can do or not do, it's better than any other single stat. That's all it is to me. It doesn't mean I totally agree with every single number, but it always seems to be very close to what I think, so I think they've done a good job at trying to factor everything into one number.

I was going to say the same thing. I do think Beni seems to lack the instincts on defense and base running, but that can be improved upon. He reminds me of Ellsbury who started out his defensive career by making some mistakes, some of which he could overcome by having plus speed.