moonslav59

I'm not sure if he'll be injured going forward, but it has to be a concern. It's not just the wrist injury that has forced missed time.

2B has been a terrible position for the Sox since Pedey, and even during his last years, we kept waiting for his return from the IL. Now, our best hope is a guy who is on the IL half the time- Mayer. Geeesh!

That's the spirit!

A stab in the dark. He's not yet the worst we tried: 8.04 Houck 9 GS (1.695 WHIP) 5.40 Buehler 22 (1.564) 5.01 May 5 (1.550 before today- other numbers count today) 4.83 Fitts 10 (1.317) 4.43 Newcomb 5 (1.925 WHIP) That's 51 GS, and some say our bats are our weakest area.

We do have a few names on our roster that are such glaring holes that it's easy to wonder why they are here, and even more so, why are they playing so much,

They dumped a huge Devers contract and took back a tiny fraction of his cost in Hicks. I'm fine with that being all on Brez. Thanks Brez! They coulda cut Hicks, day one, and it was still worth it.

May Day, MAY DAY!

No doubt the pitching was the major part of this stretch, but come on. There were plenty of key hits, including Rafaela's homer. How about Romy's 8th inning RBI to win the BAL game 3-2? I guess the 5 runs scored in the 5-0 win don't count, because it was a shutout, despite there never being a 0-0 win in MLB history. The 12-1 win, the same. s***** offense due to no key hits. Let's not count Duran's 3 run homer in a 3-1 games. We shoulda scored 8 in the game our staff let up 7 vs the Yanks. The 1-0 win vs the Yanks certainly had very few big hits, but Wong's still counts. Down 3-2 to the Yanks in game one and a 6-3 win involved zero key hits. These were team wins during a time when the pitching was doing very well. Most of the best stretches involve good pitching. I've always believed that, but our bats have been good enough.

Too bad that's not a clutch hit by Romy, because there were not 2 outs. (LOL)

While true, you don't win 7 out of 8 with no key hits.

Recently, yes, but every area has had ebbs and flows. The defense and baserunning has had stretches of bone head plays. The pen had a mid season meltdown. The back end starters have been awful, pretty much all year, except for a few starts by Dobbins, Fitts and now one by Tolle. The bats have been a rollercoatser.

I'm hopeful we filled some high need areas over the season: Anthony add to the offense ahet the Devers trade took away. Tolle provides hope for a SP'er beyond our top 3 studs. (May looks better than Buehler, newcob, Houck and some others) Slaten provides hope for the pen depth we need. Lowe looks like a viable 1B solution (w Romy as the platoon) DHam is playing well, again, and offers some hope at making 2B passable. Wong is hitting better. There are still some concerns, like 5th starter, pen depth & 2B.

I'm fine with his defense and effort. I agree on him needing to not get hurt. I wish Mayer had avoided injury, although DHam is carrying the load at 2B, like nobody else has, all year. (Small sample size, yes.) Have we found temporary fixes for 2B and 1B?

Doesn't jump out as a big weak area, and this is a team that is "slumping" on offense. 6 over .800 7 over .760

I've mentioned that maybe they are trying to "hide" Mullins from other teams, so as to avoid a Rule 5 selection, this winter, but that seems like an absurd idea. I can't think of any other reason for the 24 year old to not be at WOO. It's not like Drohan and De Leon, two current rotation pieces at Woo, are promising MLB depth needed to stay sharp in a AAA setting in case of emergency. Sandlin was moved to the pen. Tolle was promoted. Fitts, Criswell & others are on the IL. I see no viable reason. Maybe MVP can enlighten us. Soxprospects,com has Mullins projected as the 5th pen arm on WOO for 2026. (They do have Tolle listed for Woo, as well as other starters: Fitts, Early, Uberstine, Drohan & Wehunt with Perales, Coffey and Anderson as "PB Starters.") The pen is ranked as such: Sandlin, Murphy, Guerrero, Moran & Mullins. I hope he is not selected on Rule 5 Day. Maybe we protect him.

For some unknown reason, Fred has chosen to carry the Rafaela Sucks banner down Main Street USA. The early career 10;1 K/BB ratio was historically horrific and worthy of scrutiny and criticism, but the excessiveness of it, even as he has shown marked improvement is hard to understand or even tolerate. Ceddanne has played in 3 MLB seasons and had 80+ PAs in all of them. From that 2023 season to today, here is a list of the highest K% by season: note that Ceddanne places 6th (in '23) 18th (in'24) & 46th (in '25) out of 56 batters that met the 80 PA sample size criteria. His 2025 K rate of 19.4% is actually 11th best out of 56 samples!! He's actually turned that weakness into a strength, but all we hear about is how he K'd on a ball a foot outside the zone. The whole position is absurd. Now, the low BB% is a legit concern, as Rafaela holds 3 of the worst 5 sample seasons out of those 56 batters: 2.6 Rafaela in '24 2.7 Chang in '23 3.4 Arroyo in '23 4.5 Rafaela in '23 and '25 4.9 Toro in '25 11 samples fall between 5.0 and 5.9%, including Story and 2 showings by Yoshida, Wong and Romy. While Ceddanne holds 2 of the worst 3 BB/K rate seasons since 2023, his 0.23 rate in 2025 places him 15th out of 56 samples. That's a vast improvement. Still a weak area, but a 100% improvement over '23-'24's rate (0.10 and 0.14) One could easily say it is no longer a weakness, but just a concerning area of his batting. If you narrow the sample size to 300+ PAs, only 25 Sox players met the criteria. 0.10 Rafaela '24 0.16 Wong '23 0.18 Story '25 0.20 Duvall '23 0.23 Rafaela '25 0.25 Wong '24 0.27 Duran '23 0.28 DHam '24 Okay, he has 2 of the worst 5 slots in 25 who qualify. That's not good, but his '25 rate is not horrific and is better than Story's, who has a similar OPS in 2025. Where is the outrage against Story?

I've hesitated invoking Fred Lynn's name when talking about Anthony, but it's hard not to see the similarity in impacts both have made to the team, almost instantly. Lynn literally broke his back by playing all out to win. I'm not sure Anthony fits that mold, but he quietly does what it takes to get the Sox to a win, and then another and another...

How Soon Is Now?

Good stuff. Break the pitching down further... ERA- 79 RP'ers is 3rd 90 SP'ers is 7th One could argue our strength to weakness continuum is as such: Strongest to Weakest: Pen (2nd fWAR)> Defense (6th by DRS) & Base Running (6th)> Batting (9th OPS+)> SP'ers (11th fWAR) Being top 11 in all 5 areas does show that we are a pretty balanced team with no major weak areas, but I will add this: Our pen is highly influenced by 3 guy: Chapman has been legendary plus Whitlock & Slaten. Our SP'ers have been greatly influenced by 3 guys: Crochet, Bello & Giolito. Our bats have been only have 3 players with over 400 PAs, but there have been 3 clear leaders on offense (350+ PAs) until Anthony crashed the party: Bregman (.880,) Abreu (.811.) and Duran at .776 w 22 SBs. (I'd sub Anthony for Duran.) Our defense saw great improvement at 3 positions: Catcher (Narvaez and improvement by Wong,) SS (Story staying healthy) and 3B (Devers to Bregman has been a stunning flip from worst to near best) One amazing aspect of the big 3's I listed here is that many were not part of the 2024 team: Crochet, Giolito, Chapman, Bregman (O & D), Narvaez, Story (minor part) and now Anthony.

I'm not defending the choice, but the choice was between 2 sucky pitchers. It came down to Hicks having another year of control and being owed money for 2026.

I've never been Wow'd by these high velocity pitchers who have no or just a brief history of success. Guys like DHern come to mind. He has 16K/9 over his first 2 seasons but walked almost 8 per 9. He stuck around for 4 years, before we finally gave up on him.

To some extent, the Sox offense always has to be viewed with the Fenway Park influence factored in. It's not Colorado, but the Sox Home and Away splits are always wide apart. Context is always needed. MLB Avg .246, OBP .316 and SLG .405 Sox: .252, .323, .425 However: Sox on the road: .244, .315, .415 (pretty damn close to average) Home: .261/.332/.436 What's interesting is that the differential by the opponents is not as wide: Opponents vs Sox pitchers: Fenway: .246/.320/.365 Away: .240/.312/.384 (actually a higher away OPS)

I got that same sense.

I can see the reason for hoping he can put it all together, and we are just days away from a 14 man staff, so it will be easier to "hide" Hicks in low leverage situations, but I'm not optimistic. I think his 2026 leash will be short. If he and Buehler had swapped years of control, I think we'd have DFA Hicks, not Buehler.

He might have a late career resurgence, but we could not wait for that.