moonslav59

Too bad Shaw, Holt and Hernandez all bat lefty. Marrero and Rutledge are our RHBs, but Josh is on the DL.

Well, the way Leon is hitting, I suppose Lucroy will do better going forward, but who knows? Swihart is pretty darn good offensively when healthy too.

I would, and I'd pay the salary difference.

Stop presenting only part of my argument, and then incorrectly. 1) I never said the package we sent for Kimbrel would have gotten us a top quality starter. Those prospects sent for Kimbrel would have been the "rest of the package" attached to Swihart and/or Devers. 2) The idea was to avoid parting with 1 of our top 3 prospects (Moncada, Benintendi & Espinoza) by giving up just about all of the rest of our quality prospects. 3) Another major factor was that Kimbrel is a closer. I know closers are important, but they are so fickle from year to yea,r AND they only pitch 55-65 IP a season. That's about 1/3 the IP of a solid SP'er. 4) Kimbrel's contract was near FA market value. I'm never onboard with paying top prospects to basically sign a FA. Look, I'm done with this argument. We have Kimbrel now. I'm over it, but if you want to keep bringing up my past rants, at least get them correct. BTW, how's Kimbrel doing for us so far? I'd say good but not great.

I'm all about building from the top (1-2 slots) not the bottom (4-5 slots), but we may need 2 SP'ers. I'd love to get one top pitcher under team control for 3.3+ years (2.3 at least), but then adding some one like de la Rosa for our 5 slot might not be a bad idea, if the cost is low (Owens or Johnson maybe?)

I don't think Swihart's value has declined, except to teams than need him healthy right now. I think Swihart will be traded, if not at the deadline, then next winter as part of a package to land us a solid SP'er. The state of catching at the big league level is so poor right now-offensively and defensively that many teams will pay through the nose for his services. We should not hand him away. He has great value today. The median team catcher OPS is .687, but 7 teams are below .611, including several contenders like LAD, NYM, TOR & CLE.

We already have 4 decent to good and/or promising catchers. It will cost too much to get Lucroy for just an immediate supposed upgrade on offense from the catcher position.

Thanks. Just looking for pitchers who won't require top prospects in return.

But if you added international players into the draft, that's a lot of talent entering the pool. A few more rounds might be needed.

...wouldn't you think if the moves was what f***ed him up, we'd have seen the worst of it after he was thrust into action at 3B in crunch time after just 10 games in the minors at 3B. I thought he did very well at 3B at the end of 2013, so much so that I thought it was going to be his final landing spot.

They must have felt he was ready.

BR has Buchholz's WAR at -0.9 in 2016 THat's the reason I wanted to trade him. Let others take the gamble. I'll take the prospect and use the savings for new fresh gamble. Even when Buch appears to be healthy, there's still the downside chance he'll repeat 2012 or 2014.

I'm positive he could have been traded for at least a decent single-A prospect. The money "saved" could have or could not have been spent more wisely, but anyone you get for under $13M is a gamble. In hindsight, trading Buch and signing Fister and Hill looks to be much better right now, but I was sick and tired of praying for Buch to finally put some quantity (IP) with quality in the same year. It was not a no-brainer to pass on his option. As you pointed out, had we kept him there was still a chance...(yeah right)... but I think it was a bad choice to keep him around- not to take the option.

I'm positive he could have been traded for at least a decent single-A prospect. The money "saved" could have or could not have been spent more wisely, but anyone you get for under $13M is a gamble. In hindsight, trading Buch and signing Fister and Hill looks to be much better right now, but I was sick and tired of praying for Buch to finally put some quantity (IP) with quality in the same year. It was not a no-brainer to pass on his option. As you pointed out, had we kept him there was still a chance...(yeah right)... but I think it was a bad choice to keep him around- not to take the option.

Buch's top quality has been near off-the-charts good. That was the gamble that (so far) has been lost. I've mentioned this before, and maybe this isn't the best stat or sample size IP to demonstrate greatness. It's cherry-picked, but still real. Since 1971 (45 years), 6,127 times a SP'er has reached 80 or more IP in a given season. Here's where Buch's best seasons rank out of 6,127: ERA- 3) Pedro 35 (2000) 7) Buchholz 42 (2013) 8) Pedro 42 (1999) 40) Buchholz 54 (2010) 699) Buchholz 77 (2015) 1090) Buchholz 82 (2011) So, in summary, using this cherry-picked group of 6127 instances of great pitching stretches, Buch has 2 in the top 40 That's like top 1/2 percent! He's also had 3 top performances out of 699 (top 11%) and 4 out of the top 1090 (top 18%)--all since 2010. That's 4 awesome stretches in the 6 years (2010-2015) prior to the extension being offered. That's about as top quality as you can get. With Buch, it's almost always been about quantity. Now, one can argue quantity AND quality, because theo nly two seasons Buch pitched over 28 startsand 170 IP were 2012 and 2014--the only two years not listed on my chart. So, last 6 years... Basically 4 of the best half seasons of pitching since 1971 (top 18%) and the only two full seasons were blah (107 and 133 ERA-).

I guess, but it was his only full season since 2009. BR has Buch's 2016 WAR at 2.7 and Anderson's at 1.5. The park factor, DH-no DH, strength of offenses faced plays a role in comparing numbers. Fangraphs has... .... Buch Andrsn WAR 3.2 1.7 xFIP 3.30 3.51 ERA- 77 99 xFIP- 82 91 Yes, Anderson beat Buch in GS (+13) and IP (+100) soundly, but I sure wish we had Buch's 2015 eighteen starts to close out 2016.

Don't know, but they obviously felt okay with paying him $15M with a worse injury history than Buch and less upside past performance record. My point is only to say, that some one like the Dodgers would have gladly traded a decent prospect for Buch at $13M last winter. The giving of the option was a "No Brainer". The not trading him was the ONLY mistake made--both in foresight and in hindsight.

It wasn't over 6 games. It was what they've seen over years of watching Swihart through the system, including his time with the big club last year, in ST'ing and those 6 games. If this is the case, and they've felt for a while that Swihart wouldn't/shouldn't be catching long-term (if that's what you're saying), then it would have been wise to trade him when his value was stratospheric. He could have been a primary piece in a trade for a starting pitcher last winter, and Hanigan/Leon could have managed behind the plate for a month or two until Vazquez was ready...but instead they put Swihart out there for a handful of games, demoted him, and converted him into a left fielder of questionable offensive value, where he promptly got hurt running into a wall. Maybe the team's opinion of Swihart wasn't changed by 6 games, but this smacks of poor planning nonetheless. Preaching to the choir. I've been suggesting trade packages led by Swihart, not because I don't value him, but because his value to us as a LF'er (3B/1b whatever) and eventual part-time/back-up catcher is less than his value to another team willing to look beyond his current defensive shortcomings as a catcher and plug him right in there (once he's off the DL). If you look aat the state of catching in MLB today, not only do some good teams have weak defensive catchers, they also lack in ofense. At least Swihart should give them one part now with hopes the defensive part comes along quickly. Almsot all my winter trade suggestions involved some combination of Swihart, Devers, Margot, Guerra, Owens and Johnson for an ace or possible soon to be ace. (Note: that was before some of these guys saw their stock decline a bit.)

It wasn't over 6 games. It was what they've seen over years of watching Swihart through the system, including his time with the big club last year, in ST'ing and those 6 games.

I didn't mean to imply you didn't understand what a hot streak looks like, and for all we know, that is probably what we're seeing with Leon right now- not some new-found skill set or approach. I'm all for riding the hot bat as long as it takes us. Remember, Middy took it for over a half season. I'm hoping Shaw isn't hitting a wall either. I tend to not get too hyped over streaks like Leon's, and Shaw's earlier, and Holt's last April, but I also don't get down on guys like JBJ- even with a much larger sample size than Shaw, Holt and Leon as much either

Buch "lost it" at age 23 (2008 69 ERA+). Buch "lost it" at age 27 (2012 92 ERA+) Buch "lost it" at 29 (2014 75 ERA+) I'm not surprised he "lost it" at age 32. I'm more surprised that people are surprised. That being said, Buch's career has been a yo-yo, if ever there was one, and those that are writing him off as toast are forgetting the he had two of the greatest ERA+ seasons (or half seasons) in the last 45 years (2010s' 187 ERA+ and 2013's 237 ERA+). He's also had some decent seasons and half seasons scattered in between the horrible and the great (2009"s 111 ERA+, 2011's 124 ERA+ and 2015's 130 ERA+). Teams take chances on injury prone pitchers who have never come close to what Buch has shown he can do time and time again. Take Brett Anderson as an example. He's started over 19 games just twice in 7 seasons. Before last year's 3.69 ERA, he's been a yo-yo similar to Buch. Every odd year he had an ERA over 4.00, and every even year, he had an ERA below 2.91. He's never had an ERA+ above 153 (see Buch's 187 and 237). Yeah, he's been a little more consistent with his ERA+ with 5 of 7 seasons above 100 to Buch's 5 out of 9, but change the number to 108 and Anderson has been over 108 just 3 of 7 seasons, while Buch has been 5 of 9. Games started: Anderson 112 in 7 seasons (16 per season) Buchholz 187 in 9 seasons (21 per season) IP Anderson 674 in 7 seasons (96 IP/season) Buchholz 1086 in 9 seasons (121 IP/season) The Dodgers are paying Anderson $15.8M this year, and he has yet to pitch an inning for them in 2016. He made $10M last year, but he did give them 31 starts- something Buch hasn't done in a while. Prior to 2015, however, Anderson had 19, 13, 6, 5 and 8 starts. Talk about unreliable pitchers getting big money for squat; it happens more often than you know.

They really need to just end all this and have a international draft already. What if they did the draft like the NBA? Mix both together in one mega draft. Maybe add 8-10 rounds to the current draft.

MLBTR is suggesting Aaron Wilkerson might get the next chance to crack the rotation.He has allowed just 69 hits with 25 walks and 102 strikeouts. He’s allowed two earned runs or less in 12 of his 16 starts. In 10 of those 12, he’s allowed one run or less.

I think several GMs would have started Pablo. Couldn't an argument be made that Vaz whiffed himself out of his 25 man roster spot? We have a lot of youth on this team. I don't recall seeing more youth on a winning Sox team since 1975.

I totally agree. Vaz will get to play more often at AAA. Vaz may find his groove at the plate. Hanigan should not be judged on such a small sample size that included trying to catch a freaky knuckler.