moonslav59

Our pen is too weak to talk about sending someone like ERod down to AAA.

Yes, and not only can we reset the luxury tax for next year's prime class of FAs, we have a lot of room to add someone mid season, if needed.

It's all cool. Yes, I think DD & John are more than happy with out 3 OF'er and our number 4. Once it gets past them, the defense & offense drops off quite a bit.

Who said he was a good defensive OF'er? Certainly, not me.

Agreed. I'm not sure I feel a whole lot better about ERod as I did last year at this time. (I liked him a lot last winter.) I do think we might have been overly high on Kelly based on his last 8 starts from 2015, but I do think feeling better about Pom & Sale than we did about Buch & Kelly is justified. Feeling better about 2017 Wright than we did before 2016 is also justified.

I still have not heard the specifics on revenue sharing and how teams can lose it by spending too much. Anyone have the scoop there?

Yes, and next year's FA class is loaded with helpful players. We'll know a lot more about our true needs then. Some unknowns need to be answered in 2017 before we sign big money players to 3 year contracts.

d) he will platoon as HanRam plays 1B vs LHPs and Young DHs. He is better vs RHPs than Young.

I'm not so sure. An injury to HanRam or Moreland would force us to use Young vs RHPs? I'd rather have Swihart DH vs RHPs and be available to PH (probably for Vaz or Leon) when he's not starting. Or, he could even start a game here and there at catchers vs a LHPs. It's not ideal for his development, but we don't have much depth when it comes to hitting. Our bench consists of whoever is not starting out of Young-Moreland plus Holt, Rutledge & Vaz.

With a young team like we have, someone is bound to disappoint us, but overall, I think "the rest" should do better. The big "if" will be at 3B, but it doesn't take much to improve on the worst in baseball in 2016. A whole year of Beni, Pom, and hopefully Wright, ERod, Kelly, Young, Leon and others should give us an uptick. Plus, I'm hoping Moreland gives us more than replacement level performance. His 1B defense alone should maybe give back one win we lose from Papi's retirement. I could see us end up with pretty close to the same run total as 2016, but with improved defense and wire-to-wire better SP'ing. Our second half starter numbers were the best in the AL, and that was without Sale and Wright! Not m uch talk has been dedicated to our improved defense, so here's how I see it: C: I'll call it even. Replace 264 innings from Hanigan and 85 from Holaday with Leon & Vaz getting more. (Swihart's 52 innings could be replaced or added to.) 1B: Big improvement. 1145 innings by HanRam , 290 by Shaw & 5 by Papi replaced by maybe 1,000 by Moreland (GG quality) and 440 by Hanram down over 700 innings. 2B: Call it even 3B: Tough call, but I'll say we get worse by a little. We used 9 players at 3B this year, including 4 over 90 innings: Shaw 851, Hill 275, Rutledge 97 and Holt 93. SS: I'm hopeful for a slight bump up here, but Bogey took a step back this year. I'm not happy with Holt as his primary back-up (Hernandez is better), but there's not a big difference there. LF: Big gain here: Beni should be a huge improvement over this: 479 Holt 446 Young 232 Beni 143 Brentz 114 Swihart 13 LaMarre 10 Castillo 3 T Shaw CF & RF should be the same but with Beni as the CF back-up not Holt, maybe a very slight uptick. In summary, big plus at 1B and LF and little minus (maybe) at 3B. Some swing could occur at C and SS.

I've been saying Brentz should be the next to go for the last 3-5 DFA's. Losing Basabe and Castillo from the 40 man roster has greatly limited out OF depth beyond what we have on the 25 man roster. Swihart and Brentz are the only two goes not projected to be on the 25 man roster that can play OF without needing to be added to the 40 man roster. We may not need to go beyond the 25 man roster as we have these guys that can our can pretend to play the OF: Young Holt Moreland HanRam (Yikes!)

If Moreland sucks or HanRam struggles or gets hurt, I still think we may see Swihart at DH. I know that slows his growth as a catcher, but if we need his bat to win, that should trump development protocol.

I like everything you had to say, until the last paragraph. I've never bought into the 6 man rotation idea, and although I like our 4-6 starters, there's no way I want to lessen how many starts our top 3 get. The other reason is this: our pen is not that deep. Going with 6 starters takes away a good arm from the pen...one that can eat a lot of innings from the middle to long relief role.

Merry Christmas to you too! Personally, I'd put Pom in the pen as I see things right now, but things can and might change by April. I agree that I think Sox management sees Wright as the odd man out. I'm fine with whatever choice they make.

Agreed, and while I suggested trading Swihart and in many many trade proposals, with our farm now greatly depleted, keeping Swihart is as much a lock as I can imagine... same with Devers and Groome.

Maybe for 1 or 2 starts. With Buch, nothing is "bound to happen". The best bet on what is "bound to happen" would be an injury. 3:1 Injury and poorly any part of the season he does pitch 5:2 pitches well for most of the season or most of the time he is healthy 5:2 pitches poorly for of most of the season or most of the time he is healthy 7:2 Pitches well for about half the season and poorly the rest 10:1 pitches poorly all season 10:1 Pitches well all season

Looks like DD agrees. It might just be because his stock is low right now, but I hope DD is done for a while trading away top prospects or top young players (like Swihart). I could see Swihart doing well in AAA, and us needing a bullpen arm or 3Bman, and we could trade Vaz or Leon plus someone else for what we need.

How many teams out there today are looking to demote a SP'er to the pen who has let up 0-2 ERs in 60% of his starts and 0-3 Ers in 80% of his starts? What a wonderful "problem" to have!

Good points. I will add this: no mention was made about who best fits the RP'er role, except to say Wright can be "easily" put into the swingman role. Pom has a lot of experience, much of it good, as a RP'er. Wright actually has shown he does much better as a starter vs a RP'er. Wright: as SP: 16-11 3.52 1.24 WHIP (.660 OPS against) as RP: 4-0 3.88 1.40 WHIP (.721 OPS against) Pomeranz: as SP: 21-32 4.07 1.33 (.710 OPS against) as RP: 4-4 2.10 0.99 (.543 OPS against) I also take issue to the "volatile" comments so many psoters attribute to knucklballers. While it's true, knuckleballers sometmes "lose it" quickly, so do fastball and curve ball pitchers. Wakefield and other knuckleballer have had very long and consistent careers. Wright has been a consistent starter. One could attribute his rough stretch this year as injury-related. Note: this is not a scientific study, as 1 ER in 2 IP counts the same as 1 ER in 8 IP. Out of all of Wright's career starts, he's had these amounts of starts with 4 or more ERs: 2013: 0 out of 1 2014: 0 out of 1 2015: 2 out of 9 2016: 5 out of 24 (including 3 of his last 5-- injured???) Total: 7 out of 35 (20%) 21 out of 35 starts were 0-2 ER starts (60%) Here's POM in the same light: 2011: 1 out of 4 with 4 or more runs allowed (2/4 0-2 ERs) 2012: 7 out of 22 (12/22) 2013: 2 out of 4 (0/4) 2014: 2 out of 10 (8/10 with even 0-1 ERS!) 2015: 4 out of 9 (3/9) 2016: 6 out of 30 (20/30) Total: 23 out of 79 (30%) 43 out of 79 starts with 0-2 ERs (54%) It seems to me, Wright has been more consistent. ERod: 2015: 4 out of 21 with 4 or more ERs allowed (actually all 4 were with 6 or more ERs allowed!) (11/22 with 0-2 Ers) 2016: 6 out of 20 (10/20 with 0-2 ERs) Total: 10 out of 41 (24%) 50% of his starts have been 0-2 ERs allowed starts (21 out of 42)

It's weird how they project the Guardians with a better overall WAR than us (45.5 to 45.1), they play in an easier division than us and yet they have us with more wins.

To me, it was never about ERod vs Buch on the roster, it was about ERod or Buch vs Abad or Hembree- something a creative DL can solve for a while. I just don't see us being in danger of losing pitching depth due to a roster crunch. The only two guys without options are Abad and Hembree. Those types of pitchers grow on trees. They're barely above replacement value pitchers, if that. Look at the Guardians 25 man "roster crunch"- now that is a real debate on which 12 to keep: (fangraphs projected WAR) 4.9 Kluber 4.5 Carrasco 3.3 Salazar 1.6 Bauer 1.4 Tomlin 0.7 Clevinger 0.3 Merritt 1.2 Cody Allen 2.7 A Miller 0.5 D Otero 0.4 B Shaw 0.4 McAllister 0.5 Tim Cooney 0.2 Cody Anderson They don't have issues with options, but they don't have guys like Abad or Hembree in their top 12 or top 14 pitchers. Don't get me wrong, I have high hopes for Hembree, probably higher than most here, but Abad and Hembree are perhaps our weakest link of the 25 man roster next to maybe Pablo at 3B...maybe. I wouldn't mind us signing a RP'er right now and trading Abad and Hembree. Neither of those two are worth debating about sending down ERod or the trading away of Buch. They are replacement level players.

On paper, our pen is much worse than the Guardians as of now. I think we have them beat everywhere else, except for base running.

I think you put too much stock into a player's most recent month or two performance level. Players are up and down over much of their career. Let's look at some recent Sox numbers at the end of the previous season: 2nd half 2014: .928 Castillo .851 Victorino .815 Drew .765 Nava .719 Cespedes .674 Pedey .661 Bogey .548 Holt .316 JBJ If anything, this chart shows that the worse you did to end the previous year, the better you do the next year and vice versa! Look at JBJ: he ended the season going 1 for 36 then went on to have an .832 year in 2015. 2nd half of 2015: .896 Napoli .891 JBJ .859 Betts .839 Shaw .805 Swihart .803 Bogey .734 Pedey .686 Castillo .653 Holt .602 Pablo .449 HanRam At the end of last year, everyone wished we could trade HanRam away, but knew nobody wanted him. The changes from the 2nd half of 2015 to the 2016 season weren't as pronounced as the previous 2 seasons, but again, I see little correlation between 2nd half numbers and the following year, in fact it seems like a stronger correlation was made between the 1st half of 2015 and the full 2016 season. 1st half 2015; .819 Pedey .816 HanRam .792 Betts .791 Holt .750 Bogey .691 Pablo

Good points, but in my mind, assuming all are 100% healthy, we know more about Wright than ERod and Pom. I still like ERod as the number 4 and Wright as the #5 with Pom starting off the season in the pen, but it's so close, I see no compelling argument that makes any one of the three a sure bet starter at season start.

Yes, we'd get more for JBJ because he's better- not just right now, but also projected going forward.