moonslav59

Good points. Flip them.

I'm fully prepared to admit I was wrong about the Yankees not being much better than the rest of the AL, but I agree. They look very unbalanced. Hell, they looked unbalanced, to me last year, even with Sosa. I felt losing Sosa and Cole would be too much to overcome. Let's see how the dog days of summer affects this Yankee team.

I'm done counting on returning pitchers from injury. If they do, so be it. We need to plan on zero IP from Houck, Crawford & Sandoval and go from there. I do expect Bregman back, but I'd add 2-4 weeks to whatever time table we have.

Maybe he felt he was pushing his luck. Wilson was very successful for 1 or 2 batters. BTW, Wilson has pitched 1 or more innings in 17 of 29 appearnces.and 5 of his last 7, so the "finally" word doesn't really fit. He's gone over 1 IP in 3 of his last 15 games.

It's nice to see us help DET pass NYY for the best AL record.

A longer struggle than I had in mind! LOL! Hey, we made it! We are down 1 in the WC race to two teams at 35-33 for that 6th slot. TOR & TBR are 3 up on us.

Not much to watch at Woo, these days, except Jh Garcia and some pitchers. Jordan went 2-4 w BB and JhG went 1-4 w BB. Uberstine pitched another good game (2.67 ERA.) Murphy got lit up, but Mata did okay in relief. Wehunt pitched a gem for POR: 7IP 4H, 1 ER 13K 1BB. Castro homered and is showing signs of life. Alcantara 3-4 w BB. GRE lost 1-0, as Ed Rivera pitched very well: 6.2 1H, 0ER 2BB & 7K. Jo Garcia went 2-4 as did Brannon. SAL lost 9-6. Our A-, FCL and DSL teams are not doing well.

That was a long struggle to get back to .500.

Yup: Dobbins Wilson Chapman Narvaez Toro-Romy

Wilson has sure proved me wrong. (Chapman, too.)

Painter is the top 1-3 nationally ranked pitcher on some lists, but they probably would want Abreu, Campbell & Painter. Giving up Duran for Painters would leave two slots in the OF, and then 2B would be open, again (Story?) 2026 C Narvaez 1B/DH Casas/Devers/Yoshida (all lefties) 2B Story SS Mayer 3B Bregman LF Jh Garcia/Refsnyder CF Rafaela RF Anthony

Larry, is something like this what you had in mind? To PIT: Andrew Painter (from PHI) Richard Fitts, David Sandlin, Miguel Bleis & Mikey Romero (from BOS) To PHI: Jarren Duran, David Hamilton & Hayden Mullins (from BOS) To BOS: Paul Skenes (pre-Arb) & David Bednar ($5.9M + 1 Arb) from PIT

That would be buying.

If we want to use fWAR to identify our best and worst positions, here is a look... MLB Rank 1st 3B (Getting close to 2nd w Bregman out.) T3 Pen (boosted by so many IP) 4th DH (Devers forevers.) T6 RF (proving platoons can and do work) T6 LF (not bad for an "off year" by Duran.) T7 Catcher (Thank you, Narvaez.) T9 CF (Rafaela doing it all.) 19th SP (Not going to get us to the dance.) T24 SS (Story is the story, here.) T25 1B (Toro & Romy helping, recently.) 28th 2B (We can't seem to ever get this position right.) I gotta think a SP'er and solid RP'er are 1-2 on our list of needs, despite this rankings list. We aren't spending on 2B or SS. Perhaps, we make an addition at 1B, but only if the Toro-Romy experiment is going south at the end of July.

Tonight looked like it might be yet one more hard luck late loss. We've been here, before. Maybe this time, we can get on a roll- for real. YES!!! One at a time!

As Frank Zappa said, "I figure the odds be 50-50."

Bleis has been dealing with injury, so his sample size has not had long enough stretches to make any real determinations on "stagnation," progress or decline. Arias has always been a great defensive player. He's not "breaking out" on D. People are just watching him more closely, now. Aso, while Greenville might be the "low minors," it's not the "very low" minors, and for a 19 year old, it's actually "very" high. Cespedes has had injury issues, as well, else he might be at GRE with Arias. All 3 of these guys have more to prove to make a jump into where our big 3 have been, but IMO, all 3 are young enough and have shown glimpses of top skills to be on the radar of national rankings. Jh Garcia might pass 'em all, and don't count out his brother, either. Justin Gonzalez looks intriguing. The pitching is much harder and fluid to have any idea of how high any of our pitching prospects might rise. Even if Perales never got hurt, it's hard to know how high he'd be at, right now. To me, Tolle, Clarke and Valera have some very high upside potential, but I'm not sure how high their floors are. Dobbins and Fitts have more identifiable floors, but their ceiling look limited. Early & Sandlin may be the wild cards.

Good post, Hitch. I'm pretty sure Sox management would be thrilled to see Narvaez, Campbell, Mayer and Anthony finish 1-2-3-4 in ROY voting, because it would mean they all did very well, and we'd probably be in the playoffs. No, they would not like losing the year of control, but to me, that is secondary.

I like that Cora has moved Duran out of the 1 slot vs LHPs. He did again, today. Romy batting 3rd is an interesting move, that was done yesterday, too. 1. R Refsnyder RF 2. L Devers DH 3. R Romy 1B 4. R Narvaez C 5. L Duran LF 6. R Story SS 7. R Rafaela CF 8. L Mayer 3B 9. R Campbell 2B

That is a major reason for many losses, especially the close ones, and I don't mean to minimize the influence our pen has had on too many losses, but the defense has kept games close than they should have been, and forced more save opportunities than there otherwise might have been. Poor defense has also played a role in several actual blown saves, too. Poor timely hitting has been a factor in there being too many close games and losses. We all felt our pen was the weakest area. Several of us felt the defense had improved, but realized improving from a bottom 3 team on D to maybe bottom 10-15 might not be enough. Instead, we still seem like a bottom 5 to 9 club- not middle 10, as some hoped we could get to. Maybe that's why it sticks out to me, more. Plus, I know I have a bias against poor or even mediocre defense, as I've admitted before. The whole "save" stat bothers me, but it is an indicator for what is working and what isn't, and our pen has not been a plus. The league average is a 64% save rate, and only Chapman beats that at 92% (12 Sv and 1 BS.) Chapman has also inherited 5 runners and none scored. Weissert has blown 2 of 3. (12 holds and just 1 of 14 IF have scored.) Slaten has 2 of 3 BS, as well. (4 holds and 1 of 10 IR scored.) Whitlock is 0-4, Wilson 0-3 and Kelly 0-1. Whitlock has 5 holds and 5W-0L. He's allowed 2 of 4 IR to score. Wilson has 8 holds and has allowed 5 of 15 IR to score. Bernardino has allowed 7 of 19 IR to score. The league avg for IRS is 30%. Only Chapman (0%), Slaten (10%) and Weistter (7%) are below that number. All in all, here are the numbers: Sv Sit/ Svs +Holds/BS (SV+Hold %) 14/13/1 Chapman (93%) 15/13/2 Weissert (87%) 11/8/2 Wilson (73%) 1 no SV, Hold or BS 10/5/4 Whitlock (50%) 1 no SV, Hold or BS 9/7/2 Slaten (78%) 3/1/1 Kelly (33%) 1 no SV, Hold or BS 1/1/0 Bernardino (100%)

There are many games to be played between now and the deadline. I hope we are buyers, but we'll see.

Great article and follow-ups, except one. I have a much better understanding, now and more faith in how close WAR comes to measuring how good pitchers are than I had before. Thanks.

You should consider park influences when you look at runs scored and allowed, but we are 5th in runs (347) scored (4 behind AZ, but 20 behind NYY.) We have allowed 328 runs (23rd) and have a +19 run differential, which would normally lead to a comfortable winning record. We are 14th in run differential but 19th in winning %. We've allowed 41 unearned runs to score, but this does not capture all the runs allowed by poor defense not called errors. I would not be a bit surprised, if our defense has allowed a run a game to score vs what the best defensive team might have allowed. Just unearned alone has allowed .58 runs/game. OPS is also park influenced, but we are 6th in OPS at .750 (.005 behind NYM.) We are tied for 9th in wRC+ (105,) so we seem to be a top 10 team on offense. We are 20th in ERA (4.03) but ar at 95 in ERA- (15th) We are 14th in FIP (3.91) but 12th in xFIP (3.92.) I think it's safe to say we are about dead in the middle with our pitching, but again, the defense helped get us that low.

You gotta have some skills to beat the better teams, but also some sort of lack of focus or something else that causes let-downs vs the worse teams. It's a long season, so many we can fix the letdowns. We've also lost a ton of close games. Perhaps it's just been more bad luck than good, and maybe it evens out, as we go forward.

I've not been a believer in the Yanks from December, and I never thought one guy could carry a team like Judge has. I never expected Goldy to be a locks, nor Grisham and Rice to be A-Roni. No Cole, but they have 3 SP'ers leading the AL in GS w 14, although one, Warren has a 4.86 ERA. All this, with their closer having a 5.68 ERA. They are showing there are some different ways to get to a 42-26 record. Maybe this series will tell us more about who the Yanks are than the Sox.