moonslav59

My position is to keep Devers at DH and play Campbell at 1B. That does not change my opinion that Cora should not have told Devers he was the DH for 8 years and to "retire his glove." No manager should ever say that to a player, even if we had 1B depth.

It seems wrong to not foresee an injury to your only 1Bman and think you might need Devers to play there, someday. We just saw the "promise" Bloom made to devers about 3B overturned, and Cora/Brez learned nothing from it.

A decision need to be made on who plays 1B. There is not much we can do, in May, to fix the pitching, except give our starters a start or two more, then try someone else, already in the system. No ace will be traded in May. We've already tried 8 SP'ers and have yet to get a start from Crawford, Criswell or Sandoval. We have a few on the shorter ILs, now: Buehler, Fitts and Houck. I think our only options until June or July are to roll the dice with what we have.

I'm not sure Cora told him he'd be the DH for 8 years, and if he did, it was his mistake, unless Breslow told him that's what he should say.

The idea that casas was going to hit .580 all season is flawed, so thinking that's all we needed to replace to improve is not really the issue. I'd rather have Casas for the next few months than any other option we have, right now, or to trade for one. I could be wrong about casas getting better, but hey...

The Red Sox have played poorly and lost too many games they shoulda/coulda won. Game aren't won "on paper," and we are watching that, first hand. Our rotation finally got the depth we wanted, but we've already reached #10 and #11 on the winter depth chart. The pen was expected to have major issues, and they have not let us down on that projection. The offense has been too sporadic and has lacked timely hitting. The defense should have improved by more than it has shown. It remains to be seen, if we can or will turn things around. Maybe some returning SP'ers will give is a boost. They can't be much worse than Gio & Houck. Maybe moving a SP to the pen will bolster it, but I'm not sure Gio will do any better as a RP'er. We still have over two-thirds of a season left. We've seen very little to be encouraged about, but in baseball, things often change on a dime. I'm hopeful but not very optimistic, as of now.

We all know what Fldg % is. It's as simple an incomplete as BA.

Players do have fielding slumps, but Duran has been all over the map on D... kinda like his offense. Maybe, he'll come around. I'm wondering if he's been distracted, which affects focus.

Thanks for answering the sixth time. 😜

If a tree fell on the range, would fielding percent hear it?

Campbell has been playing some CF, too.

Mayer went 0-5, today. Anthony 2-4 w BB. Early went 5.1 of shutout pitching: 2H, 0BB, 8K. Jordan homered and Romero went 1-3 w 2B & SF. Clarke walked 5 in 3 IP. Arias went 1-4 w BB. K Diaz homered twice for SAL. Encarnacion 2-5 w 2B. J Gonzalez 3-5

He really has had that issue. Before today: 1.110 OPS in first (BR says 2 runs scored)

Correct. Darren Lewis ran for DH Manny Ramirez with 2 outs in the 8th. He scored as the team had 9 straight hits, including his HR! 1 PA, 2 Runs scores, 1 HR- no time in the field, as he was the DH on the bench for the 9th inning. April 18, 2001 vs the Rays

Here is a 2 part trivia question: 1. How can a player get up to bat for the first time in the 8th inning without being a pinch hitter or defensive substitute? 2. Who was the Sox player who did this, while scoring 2 runs in that inning with just 1 PA (a HR?) That is a hint for Q #1. (This player was not removed for the 9th inning, yet never took the field on defense. He was not a pitcher.)

They were good enough for me, too. Rico was a very good hitter. Burleson was my favorite player after Tommy Harper's days with the Sox ended. Burleson was a good defender, IMO. Rico was good at 3B.

Kind of a weird obsession with my types of postings.

We have Abreu back in the 4 slot, today. Toro is at 1B and batting 6th (YUCK!) Wong 7th DHam 8th at 2B Gotta hope Bello has his stuff or the great run support he's been getting, so far.

Jeter is the poster boy for a s***** SS with a great FLG%. I thought the choice was obvious, and SS is the position where range and error rates probably matter more than any other measurable position. (The catcher position is harder to measure and involves other aspects that no other position has.) I could have used Bogey, who did not have real bad range, especially earlier in his career, but had pretty good FLG%s over the years. He was poorly rated by DRS and OAA due to less than average range. My point was that either by just using the eye test or metrics (or both,) it is clear some SSs make at least 81 more plays a year than others, based on similarly hit balls in their direction. Does your eye test results agree with this? Other positions, especially OF have much lore differentials on range influence.

I should not have said "all you judge GMs by," I was wrong. On the trade deadline moves, last year. I think we all thought they were half-hearted moves (or worse,) but I will say that Luis Garcia and Lucas Sims were not bad RP'ers, but they both sucked worse than what we had before. This is an example where the GM gets blamed for the players doing way worse than what just about anyone would have expected. There were better pitchers traded at the deadline, and all Brez gave up were players that either looked destines to be AAAA types or who were Rule 5 eligible and were borderline on wanting to protect or lose. Lucas Sims had a very decent 2023 season with Cincy (3.107 ERA in 61 IP, but a very nice ,622 OPS Against and 1.18 WHIP) He had a 3.57 ERA to start 2024, but with BOS jumped to 6.43. Is that really Brez's fault? Yes, he could have given up more prospect capital for a better RP'er, but if Sims gave us 3.10 to 3.57, it would have been helpful. Luis Garcia was an aging RP'er who had shown signs of decline in 2023, but still had a 4.07 ERA and a 3.71 ERA to start 2024 (1.17 WHIP.) From '21 to '22, he had a 3.34 ERA and 1.13 WHIP) Nobody expected an 8.22 ERA with BOS. Like Sims, we could have/should have gotten better, but both underperformed, greatly. Brez deserves some blame, for sure, but these two imploded. The Paxton deal was bad. He did not do real badly in his 3 GS, but we all knew he'd never last the season. Gotta give Brez props for the winter moves that brought us Slaten (2.93 in 55 IP) and Weissert (3.13 in 63 IP.) The Criswell addition was the type of move I expected Bloom to make, every winter. Not all of Brez's moves worked, like Chase Anderson, Bailey Horn, Joely, Rich Hill and few others who did not last long. On O, the O'Neill trade was a big plus, but of course, the Grissom for Sale trade overshadowed everything else, combined. Bad GM'ing? Maybe. Bad luck? Maybe.

He did say that a couple years back. I guess trusting the "eyes" of someone watching all of Jeter's games are more reliable than those trained people entering their eyes test information into the database used to determine UZR/150.

It's still early, but that Narvaez trade looks like a steal. There were big worries about his offense, despite showing some power and OBP skills in the minors, but so far is offense has been pretty decent, especially for a catcher. His defense looks A1 (not AI, LOL.) He could probably hit .675 and still be a plus over Wong. I could see Wong being traded, this winter.

Agreed. Like the Bogey-Story situations, both Story and Bregman were quick to say they'd play where told to play, so that aspect made it easier. Then, Bregman was slotted at 3B, and the situation changed. I also remember ARod differing to the far inferior defensive SS (Jeter) by saying he'd play 3B. These decisions are not always based on what is best for the team, on paper. (In all fairness, ARod's D was starting to decline by then.)

So, the "good ole eye test" is actually someone else's eyes?

We know you think this, and that may be why he might be on a path to being our GM or whatever they call them, these days. There might be an alignment where Brez and Cora share key duties, but it will be interesting to see what happens and who does what, if and when Cora is promoted. IMO, Brez has seemingly improved the Sox in several areas. It remains to be seen, and I know wins is all you judge a GM by, so we may disagree on the term "improvements," but the efforts made to improve the pitching from top to bottom are noticeable, but again, we have to wait out the results to say if it worked or not. It was Brez, not Cora that changed the roster construction to pretty much force Cora to move Devers off 3B. Some might say it was not a clear and good idea, but the attempt was made to improve a defense that was horrifical for the last 2 or more years. The offense may have some serious question, and some bloated contracts (inherited by Brez,) but when you look at the team control, and low cost for many of our key players over the next 2-6 years, I'd say the starting 9 and bench look pretty solid, now and for the next few years. We've seen a noticeable increase in pitchers drafted and draft bonuses given to pitchers over everyday players. We even saw more IFA money going to pitchers than in our recent past. Delzine & Cordero got $850K in bonuses. I think that's more than all the IFA pitching bonuses paid the previous year, combined. In 2023, the top 7-8 pitchers signed made that much , combined. In 2022, the most we paid was $125K and the total was about $200K on all signed pitchers. The 2021 signing period, we spent close to $850K on the top 3 pitchers signed, which was close. I like what Brez is doing. I'm not sure Cora would do better. I'm no where near as high on Cora as I was after 2018, but I still like him as our manager, and I blame JH and the GMs for our failures after 2018 way, way, way more than I blame Cora. (That's not to say Cora is blameless.)