moonslav59

. I totally agree. What about this though: Let's assume, for argument's sake that Swihart is a 3 on a scale of 1-10, and Vaz and Leon are both 7's. Can't we assume that as Swihart catches full time somewhere and improves from a 3 to a 5, that it is also likely that Vaz or Leon playing FT somewhere are still young enough to improve from a 7 to an 8 or 9? Swihart could improve his defense and still never gain ground on Vaz/Leon, if they improve at the same rate. While Swihart has a much better MLB OPS (small and scattered sample sizes for all three), he didn't hit better than either of them in AAA. What I'm saying is that we all seem to assume that all Swihart has to do is close the gap on defense to win the job, because he is clearly a much better hitter, and I'm not so sure that is a proven point just yet. If you asked me to project career OPs for these three, I'm all on board with the rest of you guys in that Swihart should be a better hitter, but there really is not much evidence to support this, except tiny MLB and AA sample sizes. The AAA small sample sizes support Vaz & Leon.

That is the scenario that would open up a can of worms. If Swihart is tearing up ST'ing and/or AAA, but has shown little progress on defense, how do we justify keeping him at catcher in AAA for too much longer? There's LF vs LHPs (assuming we might think of platooning Beni/JBJ). There's 1B, if they want to teach him yet another position before exhausting the catcher chance. There's DH, which is not ideal for an athlete like Swihart, but for one season or part of a season, sometime you have to do what is best for the line-up, and to hell with the growth model set up for Swi to become a capable catcher. If Leon or Vaz are struggling, calling him up would be easier, but both Vaz and Leon are out of options. We'd have to be pretty sure Swi "is the man" to trade away Leon or Vaz. I guess we could invent a DL excuse, but how long can that last? I know Sox management is committed to giving him every chance at catcher, but thinks happen that change plans.

Your point is well taken, but I don't think ERod will be on an innings limit this year, so the only purpose for starting ERod in AA, apart from him sucking in ST'ing, would be to allow us to keep out-of-options pitchers like ABad or Hembree. Sending Barnes or Ross down could accomplish the same goal. ERod> Barnes ERod> Ross In my opinion: ERod> Wright & Pom

True, and neither have Wright and Pom.

I like Wright as the starter over Pom, but it is very close. I like how a knuckler messes with the opponent's hitters- sometimes for more than 1 game afterwards.

Yes, I agree, but I think ERod is better than Ross, and that was the point I was making. Rather than send ERod down to AAA, because he has an option and we could keep more players around, I'd prefer to send down Barnes or Ross, if keeping Abad and Hembree around is the goal.

I think for luxury tax purposes, the season starts on opening day and ends on the last day of the regular season. I think the reason we chose to trade Buch now, was that we found someone willing to pay his whole contract, and waiting might have risked seeing him get hurt and us losing any chance to trade him later. I think the roster flex space gained was a huge value gain for our team. Enormous!

That's why I have Wright as the 5th starter and Pom in the pen, but we could use Wright mostly to start innings in relief. As for the fear of Wright walking too many guys, ERod walked more last year per inning and Pom was pretty close. Pom 3.1 Wright 3.3 ERod 3.4 Buch 3.6 While I agree a WP, PB or SB might be more common with Wright, opponents getting a hit is less common (H/9): 7.8 Porcello 7.9 Wright 8.3 ERod 8.4 Buch 8.9 Price 9.2 Pom w BOS (7.2 overall) BTW, on SBs: vs Wright 8 (4 CS) in 656 PAs by opponents. vs ERod 2 (2 CS) in 458 PAs vs POM 3 (3 CS) in 292 PAs Wright's 67% SB rate is not much higher than the team's 64%. Porcello was worse with 7 SB and 3 CS (70%)

Pretty close, in my mind, because of the pen. Wright or Pom in the pen greatly improves it. ERod in AAA does nothing for our pen, except to maybe allow us to hold onto Abad or Hembree, which is nothing a creative DL can't handle. Pom & Wright both have pen experience and could provide long and middle relief like nobody else in our pen, except maybe Kelly, but I think grooming him for the 7th or 8th inning set-up man makes more sense. However, if we are going to view Kelly as a possible spot starter and use him as the long man to start the year, I guess starting ERod in AAA could happen. I still think he'd have to be struggling in ST'ing for that to even be a consideration. Just my opinion.

Our pen is not so full of great pitchers that it wouldn't be significantly improved by adding Wright or Pomeranz. There is zero chance ERod starts the year in AAA, unless he's in a horrible funk or recovering from an injury sustained in ST'ing. Wright or Pom are better than anyone in our pen, except for Kimbrel and Thornburg. We're not sending ERod to AAA not only because he's too valuable, but because keeping Abad or Hembree on the roster is not that important.

I think they're just making the pieces fit. And they did have 0 options for Elias. They must have learned something and updated. It happens. I noticed another source still has Elias with 0 options: http://www.rosterresource.com/mlb-boston-red-sox/ I do think that - even with salary as a concern - it makes zero sense to run Buchholz out of town to accomodate Abad. But that alignment does take some urgency out of the bullpen roster crunch... I think the Sale trade made keeping Buch a too expensive luxury. I too doubt keeping Abad was a significant factor if pulling the trigger on Buch. Personally, keeping Hembree is of more importance. He's better than Abad and has 3 years of team control.

I could have sworn soxprospect.com had Elias with 0 options a while back, when I checked. That helps with the roster crunch and allows us to have some veteran starter depth on the farm. I like Kelly in the pen as well, and I think he'll have to have a bad spring to start the year in AAA.

I've always wondered how different teams value the same players. I'm sure they get more involved than WAR does.

I like him too, but at what cost?

The Sox showed interest in him earlier, but I haven't heard much after that. If we could trade Abad and save his estimated $2M arb, maybe Holland would be a nice addition. I kind of like our pen depth better than SP'er depth, so maybe finding a decent swingman on the cheap might work better.

The guys we risk losing are 1 or possibly two from these out of options pitchers: Abad, Hembree & Elias. I'd rather put Barnes or Ross in AAA, if we really felt we needed to keep all three of them. Even Kelly has an option left and might be a better choice than ERod. Kimbrel & Thornburg are locks, if healthy. Kelly & Ross are probably the next tier with Barnes close behind. Even assuming those 5 are in, we could probably have Pom in the pen, pick one of those three for the 7th slot and then get creative with the DL on the others. This is assuming everyone is healthy, which is not likely. If we have to trade Abad and/or Elias, I'm not going to lose any sleep.

I've always been high on Hernandez. I even went so far as to suggest trading Holt, so Hernandez could play more. Maybe Swihart would be the 5th OF'er, but there's a lot of push back on that idea, understandably so.

Agreed. I do think WAR does try to quantify how each hit or play made on defense either helps the odds of scoring or preventing scoring on average. Of course, there's no way of knowing if that play JBJ made that nobody else makes saves 0 runs or 10 runs. Note: in my previous post, I had intended to bring in ML numbers which do show Swihart as a better hitter than Vaz and maybe Leon too. My point was that people seem to think it's a given Swihart will hit and may improve on defense, and Vaz can field and may improve on offense, but nothing is really certain yet, and hat's why I think we still have all 3 catchers right now.

True, but his minor league numbers are way ahead of Pablo's 3 year numbers. I'd let Pablo start off full time, but if he struggles vs LHPs, like I think he will, I'd use Holt as a platoon pretty quickly. The only way Hernandez or Dominguez get involved is if there is an injury or Holt sucks.

[/b] You make some good points, but I'd like to add this... Maybe if Swihart stayed catching last year, our staff suffers and we don't even make the playoffs. I didn't see a drop off of defense by Vaz, except for CS% (52>35%), which I feel is grossly overvalued. Leon has had a few hot stretches in his career, something Vaz has never done except if you count .863 in single A ball as one. Leon has had these selected numbers on the farm: .856 in 2012 (231 PAs mostly at AA & AAA) .938 in 2013 (142 PAs in the Venezuelan winter league) He's just been so God-awful in between those hot stretches. Still .720 in AAA beats Swihart--see below. Swihart's offense is often cited as his biggest tangible attribute, yet when has he actually had a big offensive season? His best season has been .840 in 92 games at AA back in 2014. His AAA OPS is .675. Vaz is at .715.

If we assume Pablo does well this year, I find it hard to believe he can or will ever be acceptable vs LHPs. Here are his numbers vs lefties: 2012: .745 (137 PAs) 2013: .686 (167) 2014: .563 (205) 2015: .465 (155) This is extremely disturbing. Out of 82 MLB players with over 600 PAs vs LHPs in this period, Pablo placed 82nd at .608. The next guy was about 40 points behind! It looks even worse from 2013-2015: out of 71 hitters with 450 PAs vs LHPs, Pablo placed 71st with a .572 OPS. The next worst hitter was 60 points higher (Mike Aviles at .632). Now, we might look at Holt and Hernandez and see that both are lefties, so no platoon would look practical, but if we look at Holt's career splits, we'd see he actually hits lefties slightly better than righties: Holt: v RHPs .272/.329/.375/.704 v LHPs .272/.342/.367/.709 (very close, but the OBP is significantly better (+13 pts) Hernandez: v RHPs: .668 (47 PAs) v LHPs: 1.056 (just 9 PAs) AAA v RHPs: 809 (2016)/.709 (2015) v LHPs .736 (2016)/.710 (2015) AA v RHPs: .877 v LHPs: .731 Matt Dominguez (RH'd hitter) v RHPs: .641 (981 PAs) v LHPs: .653 (388 PAs) All three of these guys look to be better 3B options vs LHPs than Pablo.

Throwing out runners (or not), as I'm sure you know, is just a small fraction of run prevention a catcher can influence in a positive or negative way. I'm not sure the claim that great all around defensive catchers only save 12-15 more runs over the league average. I'm not sure Vaz or Leon save that much over the average, but if they save 15 and Swihart loses 15 from the average, the gap could be 30 (or more). Swihart has a good arm and pop time, so I doubt he loses much there, but in terms of pitch framing, pitch blocking and handling the staff with pitch calling and affecting a pitcher's emotional and mental state of mind. These areas are very hard to quantify, but that doesn't mean they aren't real and highly influential.

He did start out slowly, but got over .900 bu June 1st. By the end of June he was near .850. He missed some time with an injury, and basically his about .850 from mid-August to the end of September. I've been tooting Young's horn vs lefties since we got him. The guy has been one of MLB's best hitters vs lefties over the last 3 years. Young's .875 OPS v LHPs since 2014 places him 24th among all MLB batters with 350+ PAs vs lefties. Only HanRam (.902) has a better OPS on the current Sox roster. Not playing Young vs all LH'd starters would be criminal.

Exactly. Imagine us holding onto Buch, him getting hurt or sucking (high probability) and us not resetting the tax. We basically trade Buch, Moncada, Kopech, Basabe and Diaz for Sale and $7M in luxury tax salary relief....enough to avoid the tax and leave us some flex space.

The biggest factor against signing EE is that if we reset the tax his year, we can afford to go over next year in a better market. We'll also have a better idea of where our biggest need is. We'll know more about 3B (Panda & Devers). We'll know more about 1B/DH (HanRam & Travis). We'll know more about Beni & JBJ and our 3 catchers. We'll know more about our starter depth and bullpen. We'll be looking at these avalaible free agents: 1B: Eric Hosmer & Carlos Santana 3B: Moustakas & Frazier C: Lucroy OF/DH: JD Martinez, J Bruce & C Young SP: Arrietta, Darvish, A Cobb, G Gonzalez, M Moore & others RP:Clippard, W Davis, B Shaw, KRod & others