moonslav59

Although Dalbec is 21, I still think he can grow more. If you count his last two years at the U. of Arizona and his time with Lowell, he has 44 doubles + triple and 28 HRs in 552 ABs (about 630 PAs). I'll take the K's too, if he can give us that kind of power.

It's so hard to project our catcher situation on opening day. Even with the problems with Leon and Vaz being out of options, I still think, if they are cold in ST'ing and Swihart is tearing up the place, Swi could be our opening day catcher- not likely, but possible. As it stand right now, I see it like this: 1) Leon (60% starts) 2) Vaz (40% starts) 3) Swi (AAA) I do think Vaz could pass Leon and win the 60% job. I wonder, if we will go with the personal caddy way of deciding how often a catcher catches. Whoever gets to catch Chris sale could get the 60%, instead of 40% starts role.... with Leon-- Porcello: Leon 2.52 in 107 IP Vaz 3.64 in 94 IP Price Leon 3.23 in 109 IP Vaz 4.62 in 97 IP with Vaz-- ERod Vaz 4.50 in 22 IP Leon 4.90 in 79 IP Wright Vaz 2.72 in 36 IP Leon 6.46 in 24 IP Pomeranz Vaz n/a Leon 5.85 in 20 IP Holaday 3.32 in 41 IP

This enables them to say, "Ya, we fell behind by two runs in the 7th but I wanted to hold off my closer to the 9th in case we came back". Wouldn't it make at least as much sense to keep the team from falling behind in the 7th? I get your point, and I do think they should bring in the closer in the 7th or 8th, if a couple or more runners get on base, but not to lead off the 7th. I think hitters might tee off on the guy who replaces your closer, as the pitches will look "slower" or "break less" with inferior pitchers coming in after the closer to finish out the game.

To think he still put up decent numbers despite that issue (or lapse). Fix that, and you got yourself a winner.

Other than Kershaw, I don't think there's any better pitcher in MLB than Chris FREAKIN' Sale! Plus, his luxury tax contract cost is a small fraction of what pitchers of his quality are making on the open market. I am so pumped up about this year!

Aren't we tacitly acknowledging that "clutch" exists when we insist on having a lights-out closer for the 9th inning? Doesn't that imply that there's a real possibility that the hitters in the 9th inning can "turn it up a notch" when necessary? Maybe they are just important outs to get.

Sale turns 28 this March. He's easily one of baseball's best 5 pitchers in the past 5 years combined. Here's a look at some 5 year category rankings. WAR 35.7 Kershaw 27.7 Scherzer 26.4 Price 26.2 C Sale 22.7 Verlander 21.9 Felix 21.4 Kluber 21.0 Bumgarner 20.8 Lester 20.6 Greinke 20.5 Hamels 19.6 Cueto 19.6 Quintana ERA- 55 Kershaw 67 Jose Fernandez 71 Cueto 73 deGrom 74 C Sale 75 Hendricks 75 Greinke 75 Syndergaard 76 Scherzer 77 Tanaka 78 Darvish, Roark, Price & Harvey 79 Arrieta & Felix WHIP 0.89 Kershaw 1.04 Tanaka 1.05 Bumgarner, Scherzer & Jose F 1.06 C Sale 1.07 Arrieta & Hendricks 1.08 Cueto & Harvey 1.10 deGrom & Harvey xFIP- 66 Kershaw 70 Syndergaard & Jose F. 73 Carrasco 74 Strasburg 75 C Sale 77 C Lee & Kluber 78 Price, Darvish, Felix & Pineda Only 2 pitchers are in the top 6 in all these categories, so one could argue Chris Freekin' Sale has been the second best starter in MLB.

I've heard the same. I'm not going to make assumptions based on the uniform tantrum. I'm just glad as hell we have... Chris Freakin' Sale!

When you said, "If you value consistency, you might not want to be signing the knuckleballer," I took that to mean you feel Wake and knucklers in general are more inconsistent than other pitchers. If I misinterpreted what you said or meant, I'm sorry. I think Wake was remarkably consistent over his slightly better than mediocre career. He played for peanuts compared to what other pitchers doing less than he did made. He was team guy, and know that just about all of us really liked him, even if he made it difficult for some to watch.

I have never suggested trading Betts, Bogey, Pedey, Porcello or Price. I think I might have suggested one trade involving JBJ. My suggested trades for Sale or Quintana were all limited to just a few players in various combinations.

Jeff Todd reports: Red Sox lefty Eduardo Rodriguez was cleared for his first pen session of the spring after suffering a minor knee injury in winter ball action, as Jen McCaffrey of MassLive.com reports. There was added concern given the trouble Rodriguez experienced with the same joint last year, but he was able to throw 40 pitches without incident today. Boston has some depth in the staff, with Rodriguez slated to compete with Drew Pomeranz and Steven Wright for the final two rotation jobs, though maintaining that depth will hinge in no small part upon the ability of the 24-year-old to stay healthy throughout the coming season. In ERod's 41 starts with the Sox, he has allowed 0-1 ERs in 18 of them! Also, 0-2 ERs in 25 of 41 games. Weird that he only has 2 games allowing exactly 4 ERs. He has 8 games where he allowed 5 or more runs.

Hard to see how trim he looks in the videos. He didn't look fat, but he didn't look that thin either.

Not trying to convince you of anything. I certainly cannot change how you felt in the past, and I'm not sure I'd want to, even if I could. I guess I'm trying to counter the feeling that he was very inconsistent or more so than other pitchers with similar overall numbers ("accumulated stats"). To me, it's hard watching any style of Sox pitcher when they "don't have it". I'll certainly agree that when he was on, it was much better watching him than when he wasn't. It wasn't fun watching Price in his first 7 or 8 games last year. It was painful watching Buch the many times he was "off". ERod has been up and down in extremes over his short career with us. I could go on and on with histories of inconsistent Sox pitchers. I just don't think Wake was any different and he may have been even been more consistent than most with his type numbers.

More on Pablo, including a video... http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/one-red-sox-teammate-says-pablo-sandoval-worked-his-tail-off-this-winter/

I was and am still very high on Moncada and Kopech, but we got Chris FREEKIN Sale!

That's the truth. There many of us. I remember when the argument turned to "should he still start, if he's hitting .220?" I always said, I never felt he'd hit .220, but if he didn't, I'd still want him starting CF everyday.

My point? IMHO there's more to it than just PA's. It's whether the player has the innate talent, is coachable and is willing to put in the work, all things we as fans have no way of knowing. Maybe merely trying to assign a certain number of PA's to determine whether a player is 'for real' may be a mistake. Makes me wonder how many JBJ's were out there that never got that second long look chance. His great defense was what made that choice easier, but what if...?

I actually do not think even 500 or 600 is NOT a large enough sample size, particularly if it is a player's first 500-600 PAs. Other factors to consider is were those PAs spread out over several seasons, and did the player get sent down and up several times within a season. I never believed JBJ was that bad on offense, and while many players did good to great in the minors and never did well in the majors, I just never thought that would happen to JBJ. I'm not making excuses for JBJ, but he sucked his first 500-550 PAs in MLB. However, he did so well in the minors and ST'ing that I thought he needed a longer look. Thank God, they gave it to him. His OPS was over .850 in over 1,000 minor league PAs, but he had only been on farm for 2 years before being given the starting job to start the 2013 season. He played 12 games and was sent down, later he was called up for 3 games, then back down, then up for 4 games, then back down again. He came up for another 4 games before going back down until his call-up in early September where he played in 14 games (11 for more than half the game). Counting those 107 PAs from 2013 against JBJ was probably not too fair. They did give him a fair shot in 2014 with 423 PAs, but I still didn't think the sample size was large enough to know much about his offense. I was one who argued that his defense was enough to make up for a very poor OPS, and I never was on board with them sticking him in LF and RF so much. From 2013-2015, he started these amounts of games at OF positions: LF: 23 CF: 146 RF: 34 I doubt this messed with his hitting, but it did not allow him to show his maximum potential input to the club. He's been between .832 and .835 the last two years. He dropped off the last two months of last year, but his August 2015 to July 2016 was a 617 PA sample size of an .850+ OPS.

I kind of view clutch as rising above your norm to do better when it counts, but since most super clutch situations usually involve facing better-than-norm pitching and defense, one might expect everyone's clutch "norm" to be lower than non-clutch "norm". If that's the case, then a player producing at his non-norm rate could be viewed as "clutch" by some, and I get it. Papi's playoff, high leverage and "late & close" numbers were all pretty close to his overall career numbers, so unless yo apply the "harder than normal" aspect to hitting in the clutch, it's hard to argue he was definitively clutch. The other important aspect of the Papi case is that if you had a random generator spit out results on the same amount of players and sample sizes "in the clutch", one would see some random samples with very high numbers, so was it all just luck or not? That's what's the hard thing to prove one way or the other. I've always said, if any one baseball player could ever be definitively called clutch, it would have to be Papi. I admit, I'm biased and have not experienced other players from other teams continuously coming through "when it counted".

Travis Wood signs for $12M/2 or $18.5M/3 (option) with the Royals with no guarantee to make the rotation. He'd have fit into our budget numbers, but I think saving luxury tax space for the deadline (or before) makes more sense than going after someone like Wood.

I think mental make-up is a big part of overall success and success "when it counts" (clutch). It's hard to prove that the reason player A does better than player B "in the clutch" is because of superior mental-make-up, or if it is just some confluence of random events. I'm fine with using the term "clutch" for describing events and happenings, or to say so and so "sure seems to come through in the clutch", but when it come to definitively labeling a player "clutch" (or "choke"), I don't think it is something I'd do. Sample sizes are often too small, and when larger sample sizes are used, the results often mimic the same results as a random generator would produce, so even then, it's hard to "prove" anything. Also, is "clutch" doing better or much better than you usually do or that you do in "Non-clutch" situations? If a great player does great in the clutch- but no better than non-clutch situations, is he still "clutch"? The argument or debate is often sidetracked by varying views on just what clutch is and which situations are actually clutch or not.

So can just about every other fair to mediocre pitcher in MLB.

Most good (not great) pitchers have good and bad streaks. The either "have it" or "they don't". I really never viewed Wake as being any more inconsistent than other 3-4-5 starters in MLB at that time. He was basically a one pitch pitcher, so maybe it's more noticeable when that pitch is not working. He had no other pitch to fall back on like others did which I think helped stoke the image of him being up and down more than others. If you actually look at his numbers and game logs, he was pretty consistent from year to year and withing each season- no more- no less than other back end starters in MLB. Remember, he also pitched in a hitter's park, in the steroid era and on teams that sometimes lacked in plus defense. At times, he had catchers who had no clue as to how to catch a knuckler. I guess one could blame the pitcher for that, but I never did. If a pitcher can throw a pitch that is hard to catch, imagine how hard it must have been to hit! Part of being consistent is being healthy and giving innings. He went 14 straight seasons and 16 out of his 17 seasons with Boston with 140+ IP! He had 13 seasons with 154+ IP and 9 with 180+ IP. His ERA was between 4.13 and 5.14 in 14 of 17 seasons with the Sox (1 at 2.95, 1 at 5.48 and 1 at 5.34). His ERA- was over 103 just once in his first 15 seasons with Boston! It was under 98 ten out of his first 15 seasons. His career WHIP was rather high (1.35), but he was pretty consistent there too by coming within 0.12 of his career norm in 12 of his 17 seasons with us. (3 of the other 5 seasons he was below by more than 0.12.) Except for his last season here, in sesasons with 19 or more starts, his QS% was always between 47% and 73%. All 17 Sox seasons: 3 seasons over 67% QS's 6 seasons from 52% to 60% 5 seasons from 47 to 48% 3 seasons from 29 to 35%% (all when split between starting and relieving) I think if we compare Wake to the top 3 & 4 starters in MLB at that time, he'll look just as consistent.

I know many think it's pointless to do these "what ifs", but it's winter, and there's nothing much to discuss. Had we not done the Kimbrel and Pom trades, could we have pulled off the Sale trade plus this one? Margot, Espinosa, Geurra, Allen, Asuaje for Quintana? We'd have Sale, Quintana, Price, Porcello, ERod & Wright (No Pom) We'd have someone like Clippard and another pen arm instead of Kimbrel (and with his money saved).

Me. Plus Basabe and Diaz. I think I suggested Moncada, Kopech, Hembree (out of options), Owens and Johnson