moonslav59

He had one awful performance that has skewed his numbers. Can't really say it's a "rough patch." He hasn't given up any runs in all 5 of his appearances since getting lit up on 7/2.

I mentioned that one bad outing.

 

If you exclude their rookie seasons because they were both 22 year olds who spent time in the minors then Santana has average about 60 IP more than Clay per year. That is about 1/3 a season, and is significant.

 

Agreed.

 

I think the sample sizes I used were the most recent 4 and most recent 7 seasons.

 

Santana's overall history and his 2016 season clearly makes him the much better pitcher.

 

Imagine our top prospect list had we kept Margot, Guerra, Allen, Basabe, Espi and others!

Imagine if Swihart wasn't forced into losing his prospect status!

Maybe....

1. Moncada

2. Swihart

3. Benintendi

4. Espinoza

5. Margot

6. Devers

7. Groome

8. Kopech

9. Guerra

10. Travis

11. Basabe

12. Hernandez

13. Basabe

14. Dubon

15. Ockimey

(Edited)

I know. I know. I'm a Robbie Ross superfan or something... But that guy is a solid reliever who gets little to no credit on here.

I like Ross too, but he's going through a rough patch, and now might not be the time to thrust him into pressure situations.

Last 28 days:

9 IP

11 H

3 BB

1.56 WHIP (not counting 1 HBP)

8 ER

8.00 ERA

4.07 BAbip might explain some of it.

He also let up 6 of those 8 ERs in one game (0.1 IP)

Since June 1st, he's let up 10 ERs, 13 Hits and 4 BBs in 12 IP.

Prospects tend to flame out, especially pitchers. If Pomeranz is solid for the next 2.5 years, it's a great deal.

Even if Espi goes on to have 5-7 great seasons with the Padres, it doesn't matter to you?

I get the reasoning in saying the Beckett/Lowell for HanRam/Sanchez trade worked for us (and FLA), but I'm not sure if Pomeranz is going to be a significant part of us winning a ring like Beckett and Lowell were.

With only 71 games to go, it still amazes me that Papi is on pace for his best OPS year of his career.

1.091 2016

1.066 2007

1.049 2006

1.026 2012

1.001 2005

.983 2004

.961 2003

.959 2013

.953 2011

.913 2015

2003-2007 1.014 (3rd behind Bonds & Pujols)

2008-2011 .880 (22nd behind Youkilis & others)

2012-2016 .956 (3rd behind Trout & Miggy)

His last 5 years are closer to his first 5 years with Boston than his middle 4 years in Boston.

Some other Sox players having their best career years:

JBJ .909 (.832 in a third of a season last year)

Young .846 (.793 2nd best)

Bogey .841 (.776 2nd best)

Betts .849 (.820 2nd best)

Holt .762 (.727 2nd best)

Swihart .720 (.712 last year)

Leon 1.133 (Blowing away his small sample size past)

Pedey's having his best OPS year since 2011.

Porcello is on his way to his best season ever. His ERA- is 78. His previous best seasons were 87 (2009), 89 (2014) and 107 (2013). His K-BB% is 15.6% which is over 5.6% better than his career number.

Steven Wright is breaking out.

I want to see what Brian Johnson has before all is said and done.

He's going to have to put up some pro-longed good numbers in AAA before that happens.

 

And only being able to pitch a partial season drastically reduces his value as a starter.

 

I totally get that, but unless my numbers were wrong, I had Santana pitching 37 or 47 more IP per season than Buch. That's not comparing a half season pitcher to a full season pitcher as many seem to be portraying the comparison. That's the point I was trying to make. Buch's 91 ERA- compared to Santana's 100 ERA- makes up some of the disparity in IP.

 

Maybe it doesn't bring it as close as I made it out to be by saying it "nearly" evens them out. In hindsight, I wish I worded that differently.

Dog Ziegler is the closer for now. I don't like Taz in the closer role. I'd rather Ross come in as the closer than Taz.

I'd rather try Hembree or maybe even Barnes before Ross.

Remember in 2013, Koji was our 3rd or 4th choice as a closer.

Let's hope the ending is the same as '13.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/did-the-red-sox-really-overpay-for-drew-pomeranz/

 

Best piece I've seen on Sox flipping Espinoza for Pomeranz

It does make me feel a little better about the trade, but I already viewed the trade as balancing one type of risk/reward vs another type of risk/reward.

Maybe I believe in Espi more than I should. I see his upside as higher than what this analysis shows.

I like Pomeranz and hope he works out. He's totally changing his environment going from a division of big/huge parks and no DH to the AL East under an immense spotlight.

soxprospects.com placed Groome in front of Kopech at #4.

Ockimey jumped from #37 to #8.

Check out the rest...

http://soxprospects.com/index.html

We would be giving him money in 2016 ($13M) and 2017 ($13M), and we could be very tight on the luxury tax next winter.

I like having nice SP'er depth, but I'd rather have higher quality in our 1 to 5 slots. Next year's rotation and starter depth looks like this right now:

1) Price

2) Porcello

3) Wright

4) Pomeranz

5) Recovering from injury

6) Trash

7) Trash

8) Crapshoot

9) Crapshoot

10) Trash (or needlessly rush a prospect by September?)

Fixed that for you.

I meant Kopech may be ready by September 2017.

No no no, no more dabbling around with the Bastard Batallion and no more starting the clock on prospects better served by developing with time and patience. I've had enough of the illusion of depth. Bring in a 5th strong professional starter and I will be quite happy thank you.

I want to acquire a 5th starter, but not a 4/5 slot type pitcher. We have seen enough of them let us down.

I prefer a solid #2/3 slot starter instead.

Get better and put it where? All of Price Wright, Porcello, and Pomeranz are under contradct through at least 2018. Adding Santana would lock the rotation down with 5 pitchers for the next 2 seasons after this one and relegate the rookie starters to the role they're supposed to be used for -- injury relief.

 

besides, Santana has every ability to pitch up from time to time, he's been as good as a solid 2-3 starter, how much "better" are you going to get for the flipping 5 spot in the rotation?

I see Santana as a good 4 starter. He is better than anything we have below ERod, and he might end up being better than ERod over the next 2 years. Yes, he can pitch like a #3, but he may also pitch like a #5 or 6.

I prefer acquiring a solid 2 or 3 in replacing our #5 starter. I'm willing to spend more than $13M a year or give up prospects/players like Swihart, Devers, Holt and maybe a mid-level prospect or two.

4 of the 5 best ERA seasons? Yes if you include Clays first season when he started 3 games, and the other 3 seasons where he started 14, 16, and 18 games. Out of those seasons where he had a good ERA in only one of them he started a substantial amount of games when he threw 28.

 

I use ERA- not ERA. I used only seasons starting in 2010. Buch had 4 of the 5 best ERA- seasons. I should have added " or partial seasons".

I was on board with this until i learned that Santana served an 80 game suspension for PED usage. Now, not so much. I think my position on signing suspended PED users is pretty well known.

Maybe if Buch had taken roids, he'd have been stronger and more durable.

The Sox wouldn't be giving him any more money.

 

If they can get him without giving up significant talent, it seems like a solid move. Santana gives has averaged 200 IP/4.00 ERA over his career. You stash E-rod, let him develop a bit more. You build significant rotation depth before an offseason with very few starters. Take the pressure off Johnson/Owens and maybe use them as trade chips for a key upgrade.

We would be giving him money in 2016 ($13M) and 2017 ($13M), and we could be very tight on the luxury tax next winter.

I like having nice SP'er depth, but I'd rather have higher quality in our 1 to 5 slots. Next year's rotation and starter depth looks like this right now:

1) Price

2) Porcello

3) Wright

4) Pomeranz

5) ERod

6) Kelly

7) Elias

8) Owens

9) Johnson

10) Cuevas (Kopech by September?)

I'd rather see us get a solid #2 or top #3 starter, which would make us look like this:

1) Price

2) ________

3) Porcello

4) Wright

5) Pomeranz

6) ERod

7) Kelly

8) Elias

9) Owens

10) Johnson/Cuevas (Kopech by September?)

Maybe if we pinch our pennies we can get a decent SP'er (via trade?), a couple RP'ers AND someone like Encarnacion.

Getting Santana would be a side way move I'm opposed to. I'm with Moon on this. Locking into a two year contract for $26M plus giving away additional prospects would be the dumbest thing to do at this point.

 

Now that we have Pomeranz, just play it out and see what's in store.

Santana for Buch would be a plus for this year, assuming he does better than ERod or someone else gets hurt, but I'm looking for better than Santana for 2016 and 2017. The $13M to Santana might prohibit us from getting better.

Now that Espinoza has been dealth and Jason Groome signed, here's how soxprospects.com ranks our top prospects:

http://www.soxprospects.com/index.html

1) Moncada

2) Benintendi

3) Devers

4) Groome

5) Kopech

6) Travis

7) Johnson

8) Ockimey (up from #37)

9) Basabe

10) Hernandez

11) Dubon

12) Chatham

....

20) Shaun Anderson

...

27) Bobby Dalbec

28) Mike Shawaryn

But Santana has been pitching decently lately and is not unreasonably priced. I can't see why they would trade him now except for a good prospect.

Exactly. They should be able to get a decent prospect and total salary relief.

Maybe it's Buch and someone like Owens or Johnson.

maybe his postseason suck won't even matter. You really only need 3 starters.

Wright

porcello

buch (pomeranz) (erod)

 

wonder how price is out of the pen????

lol

A+ post. IMO, Henry panicked after the 2 last place finishes and didn't give Ben a chance to see his plan through. I agree with you that Ben would have been more aggressive this year in terms of acquiring starting pitching and trading some prospects.

I think keeping all of our top prospects would have created such a bottleneck that some sort of trade would have had to be made, even if only to create roster space.

I know many here must feel like I'm against trading prospects, because I was against the Kimbrel trade and the Pomeranz trade. It's funny, because I agreed with the prospects DD chose to trade for Kimbrel. Margot and Guerra were in a vast majority of my suggested prospect trades. My position was actually more radical than DD's, since I had suggested trading Margot, Guerra, Swihart and Devers (plus guys like Owens, Johnson, Marrero and others before their stock fell this year) over Margot, Guerra and Espinoza. I also was open to adding Holt or Kelly. I was looking for a huge mega deal, but I admit my suggestion might have been a pipe dream as I wanted someone like Sale, Gray, Kluber, Quintana or Salazar

Thank you for deferring to me.

 

Perhaps the bats went silent against other aces because those guys actually pitched like aces? That's what aces do. They shut down the other team's offense.

 

I'm actually not upset about the way Price pitched against Bumgarner or Tillman. However, his body of work this season on the whole has not been ace like. He has been okay to good for the most part, but that's not what we got him for.

The xFIP crowd thinks Price is doing just fine and has had some bad luck on the timing of his run support.

The ERA- crowd (me included) feel he has not met expectations so far.

Let's hope he sheds the whole poor playoff record mantra to even out this year's regular season blues.

I think it's pretty cool that Epstein gave Manny a job in the Cubs organization.

Makes you wonder just how despicably Theo viewed Manny.

The one thing you can't accuse Ervin Sanatna of is lack of durability. A normal year for him is somewhere between 175 and 200 innings.

 

In the last 5 years Santana has pitched 228 2/3, 178 in a down year, 211, 196, and 108 in an injury shortened season, and is on pace for over 180 innings this year. The trend is durability, last year is the exception that proves the rules.

 

I've been calling for adding more more guy in the Jeremy Guthrie/Paul Byrd/Ryan Dempster mold. Santana is at the high end of that group of pitchers at this point in his career. he is a very good bet to improve the rotation if we bring him in.

Santana has been way more reliable and consistent than Buch. I never even implied a otherwise. I never meant to imply IP and consistency is not important, but only that performance level has importance as well.

Santana's ERA- and IP have been much more steady than Buch's...

...........IP/ERA-

Year... SANT....... BUCH

2010 223/98 174/ 54

2011 229/86 83/ 82

2012 178/133 189/ 107

2013 211/80 108/ 42

2014 196/109 170/ 133

2015 108/99 113/ 77

2016 98/96 81/ 132

Clearly Buch has been all over the map with his ups and downs and missing time. I'd rather have Santana's record since 2010 than Buch's, but Buch does have 4 of the best 5 ERA- seasons. Buch has also had 2 of the worst three, and those two have been in the past 3 years.

On IP, Santana blows Buch away. I realize that has a lot of value. He's been over 170 IP 5 out of the previous 6 seasons, while Buch has just three times. Buch's highest IP (189) was bested by Santana in 4 of the last 6 seasons, including 3 times by more than 20 IP.

My point was meant to show that posters here seem to despise Buch, who makes $13M a year. Santana makes $13M a year as well, but is signed for that amount for 2 more years.

Clearly, nobody here wants Buch for the next 2 years at $26M. How many here would sign Santana for $26M/2 this coming winter (assuming he doesn't get hurt or flop the second half?)

If your answer is no, then the trade may not make sense, even with the gain we might get by replacing ERod with Santana to finish out the year.

If your answer is yes, then the deal is a resounding no-brainer. I will add that the $13M luxury tax hit will lessen what we can spend elsewhere.

I see Santana as a 4th starter or solid 5 slot starter...kinda like Dempster. I prefer to rebuild a staff from the top or near the top rather trying to rebuild from the bottom of near the bottom. Perhaps the added value of having Santana for the remainder of 2016 tilts the balance in favor of "yes".

(That's assuming the trade rumor is valid.)