moonslav59

Isn't Drew playing 2B now?

Not true. Shaw was our back-up 3Bman, Vazquez and Leon were our back-up catchers and LF has been manned by back-ups more often than not. They've all played plenty. Our 4-5 SP'ers are all back-ups. Hell, our 3rd SP'er (Wright) was probably our 7th or 8th starter on the winter depth chart. We're also missing our top 4 RP'ers.

Agreed. Bryce is known to be nothing more than a AAAA player. Beni has much more upside. Again, I'm not saying he should be called up.

I think, in general, only top 10 or 20 prospects, depending on the strength of each class, are called "can't miss". Am I forgetting someone, or have we had a "can't miss prospect" fail under Henry's watch?

Not all Sox number one prospects were considered "can't miss". Look at how many Sox prospects were ranked very highly by national services that failed. I'm having a hard time thinking of any in the Henry era. Lars Anderson, Casey Kelly, Kalish, Middy & Michael Bowden were never called "can't miss".

It's "lunacy" to "love it". I'd rather have Iggy as our back-up SS than have had Peavy for a short time. Maybe having Iggy would have prevented Sandy's signing...maybe not. You can't know Iggy would have been injured had he not been traded. A .690 OPS is not that bad for a SS. I'm not sure what metrics you are looking at, but out of 36 SS with 2,000+ innings at the SS position, Iggy places 5th in UZR/150 at +9.6. He's 10th in DRS, but if you pro-rate the innings, he'd be 9th out of 36. (Note: Bogey is 27th in DRS out of 36 and he places 22nd in UZR/150 at -0.5 over the same period.) I'm happy with Bogey at SS. He's improved way beyond my expectations. I have admitted I was wrong about moving him to 3B, but it's not a horrible thought to have wanted Iggys at SS and Bogey at 3B over Bogey-Sandy. [/b.]

My philosophy is that some K pitchers seem to care more about getting more Ks than not allowing a hit. Then, there's guys like Buch who try so hard not to allow a hit by picking corners that they walk guys too much. There are many examples of very successful low K pitchers who do not allow a lot of hits or walks, and when they do get hit, the hits are often weak or on the ground. Mark Buehrle had a 13.6% K%, and yet he wasa very good pitcher for many teams- good fielding/bad fielding, big park/small park, no matter what. Only 25% of the balls hit off Buehrle were "hard hit". That places him at 20th out of 25 pitchers with 2,000+ IP since 1992. Let's say you compare him to a SP'er with a 23.6 K% (10% more than Buehrle), that means that over 800 batters, Buehrle Ks about 80 less than player X. If he allows 25% hard hits, that would mean that's an added 20 hard hits vs the higher K pitcher. 20 out of 800 is only a 2.5% overall increase in hard hit balls in total. If you add 2.5% to Buehrle's 25.4% hard hit rate, he'd be at 27.9% which would place him tied with Greinke at #11th--about middle of the road. I get the argument that K pitchers have less balls put in play, so that may make up for a higher BAbip, but it is not always a clear advantage.

When you look at the list above, and then the list of young players non prospects, the list is eye-popping! 23: Betts, Bogey, ERod, Hernandez (Owens) 25: Vazquez (Marrero) 26: JBJ, Shaw, Smith, Barnes (N Ramirez) 27: Porcello, Pomeranz, Hembree, Leon, R Ross, Rutledge (Elias) Once Papi retires, Uehara and Ziegler move on and Hanigan gets squeezed out, assuming no old vet signings, HanRam will be our oldest player next year at age 33!

Agreed. One WS ring is not worth giving up Moncada and Beni's combined 10+ seasons of team control. Plus, one pitcher rarely is the only (or even main) reason anyone wins a ring. Beckett came close in 2007, Schill in 2004, but I plan on being a Sox fan for many more years.

I was against the trade at the time, but as you pointed out, I knew Iggy was never going to be given the FT SS job, so I understood why the deal was made. BTW, his OPS with Detroit has been .686 not .600 as someone stated.

Again, small sample sizes and apples to oranges on ages: Brentz .819 OPS at AA in 552 PAs (ages 23 & 27) A Beni .815 OPS at AA in 241 PAs (age 21)

It's just not true. Many high K pitchers allow way more hits than low K pitchers. Here's the list from Fangraphs of pitchers who allowed the highest hits determined to be "soft": with LD% (K% rank out of 60 pitchers with 2000+ IP) 1) Hamels 19.8% (4th) 2) Halladay 19.3 (24th) 3) Zito 20.3 (36th) 4) Verlander 20.1 (7th) 5) Sabathia 20.5 (16th) 6) J Vazquez 20.6 (13th) 7) Buehrle 20.3 (56th) 8) Peavy 19.6 (9th) 9) Greinke 20.9 (11th) 10) Arroyo 19.9 (43rd) 11) Oswalt 20.6 (21th) 12) Hudson 18.5 (40th) So, out of the top 12 "soft hit" pitchers, 5 are in the top 4th in K%, 6 are in the top 3rd. Certainly having a high K rate seems to help induce softer hit balls, but then there are guys like Buehrel, Maddux, Hudson and Glavine. Buehrle was nearly last in K%. 4 pitchers were ranked 34th or lower out of 60 in K%. Hudson and Beuhrle are both in the top 10 for lowest FB%: 2) Hudson 23.4% 8) Buehrle 34.3% Here is the list of lowest BAbip since 1992 (2000+ IP), how many of these guys were high K% guys? (K%) .273 Zito (17.2%) .275 Wakefield (15.0) .276 W Williams (15.4) .279 Moyer (14.0) .279 Maddux (17.1) Isn't this proof enough the opposite may be more like the truth? .280 Pedro Martinez (27.2 finally a high K pitcher) .281 Hudson 16.0 .282 Appier 18.5 .282 Glavine 14.1 .282 Leiter 19.1 .282 Arroyo 15.2 .284 Peavy 22.4 (the second high K% pitcher on this list) .284 F Garcia 16.9 .285 Trachel 14.8 Out of the best 14 BAbip pitchers, only 2 are high K% guys. Of the lowest 15 K% pitchers only 10 had a BAbip over .290 (two under .280) Of the highest 15 K% pitchers 9 had a BAbip over .290 (none under .280) Sorry, I'm just not seeing a clear correlation between Ks and inducing weaker hits or rather many low K pitchers do better inducing weak hits than high K pitchers.

soxprospects.com ( http://www.soxprospects.com/future.htm )has this for the 2019 projected roster: Rotation: Price, Porcello, ERod, Kopech & Wright Relief: C Smith, Barnes, Owens, Johnson, T Ball, Workman, Light C: Vazquez, Swihart 1B: Ramirez, S Travis 2B: Pedroia, Holt 3B: Moncada, Devers SS: Bogaerts, Hernandez LF: Benintendi CF: JBJ RF: Betts DH: Shaw (Sandoval?)

Losing Ortiz is going to be very tough. Losing Ziegler, Uehara and Tazawa all at once won't be easy to replace either. Losing Young, Hanigan and Buch this year or next should not be a major issue. Our core players of Betts, Bogey, JBJ, Price, Pedey, ERod, Swihart and others are all under team control for 3 or more years, as are HanRam, Sandy and others.

team control numbers (not counting this year): Years 6 (or 2 with opt out) Price 5 Pedroia 4 Betts, JBJ, Vazquez, Wright, Smith, Sandoval & Layne, Elias 3 Bogey, Porcello, HanRam (or 2), Leon, Holt, Rutledge, O'Sullivan, Workman, M Martinez 2 Kimbrel (or 1), Pomeranz, Kelly, Ross 1 Young, Ortiz (option/retire?) Buch (option), Hanigan (option) 0 Ziegler, Uehara, Tazawa Unknown/TBD: ERod, Swihart, Shaw, Barnes, Hernandez, Hembree, N Ramirez, B Brentz, Johnson, Owens, Marrero, Light, LaMarreCuevas, Jerez

This from MLBTR... Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski suggested today that the action is heating up, but that his team isn’t close to striking any major new deals, as Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe reports (Twitter links.) Boston’s chief baseball decisionmaker said that he has fielded five new trade proposals today alone, with other organizations seemingly looking to make off with some of the team’s prime prospect assets. But while ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark cited rivals as suggesting that the Sox were aiming to do “something big,” via Twitter, Dombrowski said that the team doesn’t feel pressure to pull off another move. Meanwhile, though Red Sox righty Clay Buchholz isn’t filling much of a present role, Dombrowski says that he’s still an important part of the team’s rotation depth, as Jen McCaffrey of MassLive.com reports. With Dombrowski also saying he is impressed with the way Buchholz is throwing the ball, it doesn’t seem as if there’s any momentum towards a deal involving the veteran.

There's a long list of great pitchers who do not rely on high K rates. While I get the idea that a pitcher's ability to get outs without them hitting it is a huge asset, but sometimes big K pitchers let up big hits as well trying too hard for the K. Over the past 25 years, some of the best pitchers had K rates below 6.7: Greg Maddux 6.18 (4th best ERA- at 71) Andy Pettitte 6.65 (34th best ERA- at 86.) Tom Glavine 5.35 (22nd best ERA- at 82 with a 14% K rate) Mark Buehrle 5.11 (39th best ERA- at 87 with a 13.6% K%) Tim Hudson 5.99 (29th best ERA-) Bartolo Colon 6.69 Jamie Moyer 5.33 Jimmy Key had an 82 ERA- after 1992 with just a 15.3% K rate. Dennis Martinez had a 13.2 K% and an 84 ERA- after 1992. Ken Hill had a 90 ERA- and 13.7% K%. Certainly high K rate pitchers populate the top pitcher lists, but there are times when high K% pitchers aren't top ERA- pitchers. From 1992-2016, there are 236 pitchers with over 1,000 IP, and this is what I found: Liriano had a 100 ERA- but the 9th best K% at 23%. O Perez 110 ERA- and 16th best K% at 22.9% H Nomo 101 ERA- and 17th best K%. I Kennedy 102 ERA- and 25th best K%. B Norris 112 ERA- and 33rd best K%. Dempster 104 ERA- and 45th best K%. Volquez 109 ERA- and 49th best K%. Ricky Nolasco and Jason Bere both had K rates 4-5 % better than Buehrle and others, but had ERA-'s of 114! Ks do not always equate to greatness, just as low K rates don't always equate to poor pitching.

ERA- takes a little bit of the luck out of the ERA, but surely it is flawed as well. WHIP is also fielder dependent and so is flawed as well. However, metrics that rely too heavily on K rates do not give enough credit to pitchers who are consistently getting batters out in other ways, no matter how well the team behind them is defensively or how the park fits their skillset. Wright and Porcello have both clearly been better than Price this year, but Price's K rate jumps him over both of them in WAR. To me, that is a major flaw in WAR--too much dependence on FIP and xFIP.

I call it a glimpse of a portion of a small part of a viable sample size.

Word is the Dodgers are now offering Urias (and others?) for Sale.

But the pitcher has over 4 or 5 times the affect in that one game than what a batter has, so it just about evens out.

I'm not sure any stat is better that another at predicting future performance. I'd like to see your evidence on that one. SIERA and xFIP are heavily dependent on K rates, and I think that makes Price's 2016 season look better than it is and Wright's worse than it is. Who knows what comes next?

I'm not for rushing Beni. I just said, I think he's better than Brentz right now. That's more a statement about Brentz than Beni.

He still has a pretty good OPS of .808 for a first 214 ABs at the AA level. Moncada is at .921 after just 102 ABs.

Maybe some people were, but I never drool or get critical over small sample sizes. I rarely make definitive judgments based on even a half season or full season (like with JBJ, Napoli and my failure to drool over T Shaw yet.)