moonslav59

Highest career OPS+ 158 2024 141 2022 134 2021 132 2019 127 2023 Only his RBIs are down. 34 in 255 PAs

Woo North is better than the 2022-2023 Sox! (Maybe a lil bit.)

Agreed, and maybe the talent being more spread out gives the impression that overall quality is down. I doubt it is, but it can not be easily proven.

Every year, somehow, someway, MLB always ends up at .500. There is absolutely no way anyone can prove the league and players have gotten worse. It might be hard to prove talent levels have gotten better, but I think the last 2 decades look better than the previous 3 decades, since I've been following MLB. The pitchers throw incredible breaking stuff. Pens have become specialized and no longer is the dumping ground for failed starters. I think the tendency is to overinflate the way things were when we were young, and some of those Sox teams from the 70's looked awesome, but I think the pitching has come a long way since then, and probably the hitting, too. Is 2024 worse than 2018, or 2013 or 2007? It's hard to say. It makes sense there might be some ebbs and flows, but how can anyone prove it?

You are getting the hang of it! His numbers are really padded by his .911. Amazingly, he was still at .803 after 148 PAs, which is almost half his career PAs, but that just further highlights just how bad he has been from 2023-2024.

The "trend" is a flatline of sucktitude. I know you love my cherry-picking, so... .297 first 9 games .419 last 14 games But also.... .360 first 11 games .373 last 12 games Looks flatlined and headed to the morgue.

Check our some of these June numbers: 1.251 Valdez 1.101 Duran 1.063 Devers .879 O'Neill .836 Smith .810 Wong .804 Abreu .798 DHam .749 Westbrook .700 Refsnyder .667 Rafaela .542 Dalbec .464 Yoshida .319 McGuire OPS Against .136 Kelly .478 Jansen .519 Keller (7th in PAs Against) .558 Pivetta (5th in PAs Against) .570 Houck (3rd in PAs Against) .657 Criswell (2nd in PAs Against) .668 Booser .754 Crawford (4th in PAs Against) .757 Slaten (8th) .812 Weissert .813 Anderson (5th) .908 Bello (1st in PAs Against) .929 Bernardino

I totally agree, and those 87 PAs cam after no ST'ing and some while he was battling or feeling the effects of a bad flu. That is not to say, I'm sure he will improve. He has a lot to prove and more to "make up for" what he already has given us: a negative value. That being said, DHam has already atoned for his bad start to MLB, and then some, Maybe Grissom will. Maybe with the way DHam and EValdez are doing, he may not even have to comeback.

I'm not sure money will be an issue with JH on Cora. They offered him a promotion, already. I think the ball will be in Cora's court, and I'm not sure he is all that pleased with the direction JH has taken the team since the Betts trade. He's vocalized that discontent several times to varying degrees.

My main point was there were reasons to make the trade, at the time. The other main reason was this: Sox 2B fWAR 2.6 from 2022-2023 (ranked 26th in MLB) 2.1 from 2019-2021 (ranked 25nd) From 2019-2023, we were ranked 27th. That's 5 seasons of horrific 2B play. Bottom third tier on O and D. Grissom looked very promising- more so than someone like Jeter Downs, because he already had over 230 PAs in the bigs. He had not shown he was a plus defensive SS, but the expectation was he could become a decent or average 2Bman on D after a short time. A .750 OPS or so, would have blown away the .697 OPS we got from 2B in the previous 5 seasons combined. The deal has been a disaster, out of the gate, but Grissom has many years to right the ship, assuming he doesn't bomb out and lasts as long as Downs did.

For the most part, he did do well, in the very few IP he had after 2019, but he was not really all that close to vintage Sale. 2017-2018 2.56 ERA/2.25 FIP/0.92 WHIP/7.1 K/BB 2014-2018, including time w CWS 2.85/2.69/0.99/11.6 2019 (147 IP) 4.40/3.39/1.09/5.9 2020-2023 (151 IP over 4 seasons: 38 per season AVG) 3.93/3.72/1.19/4.3 (2.6 bWAR/3.1 fWAR) All these numbers are significantly lower than pre-2019, and all but the ERA is worse than 2019. 38 IP per season over 4 seasons (less than 60 over the last 5 seasons.) Nobody expected close to this: 2.98/2.33/0.94/7.6 At best we might have hoped he could give us the 3.39 FIP from 2023 over more innings, which of course, would have been a big help, especially in light or what happened to Gio & Whitlock. Of course we all wish we had the 2024 Sale on our staff, right now, but nobody expected this Sale. I'm not sure many expected the 2013 Sale over 170+ IP, either. Many of us did not expect great or even good things from Gio, but we did reasonably expect 160+ IP. Grissom's future was mostly speculative, but he did have a decent OPS after 230+ PAs. No doubt, the trade looks about as bad as anyone could have ever imagined, so far.

Post of the week.

I’m Yes, better than okay.

Brez certainly deserves more time to get a feel for his total body of work. I have a good gut feeling, out of the gate, based on what he has done, so far. While his most noteworthy deal has looked awful, I do think it made sense, at the time, and if Grissom ends up winning the second base job, it may end up being an okay or even good trade for us. Yes, I did not mention the Hendriks and Fulmer deals, which could end up being very helpful. The Booser deal was minor, but has worked out okay. Chase Anderson has not been all that awful. A lot of his final grade might end up on Fitts, Grissom I Campbell and Weissert's next few years.

As bad as our middle infield has been, this year, we seem to have finally hit on some combos that have been doing okay, of late. We cycled through ... .617 Story (season-ending injury) .452 Valdez I (demoted May 2nd) .451 Reyes (DFA'd) .000 Short (traded back) Romy Gonzalez (.651) and playing Rafaela (.634) at SS started the improvement, but these two guys have really stepped it up a hefty notch: .775 DHam (.898 since May 17th- a pretty significant sample size of 91 PAs) 1.251 EValdez II (June numbers) A word to those who think DHam is a fluke and Grissom a bust. DHam's sample size of .898 in his last 91 PAs is larger than Grissom's SSS. His 135 PA sample size for 2024 (at .775) is about twice the size of Grissom's. I hope we can keep this up. We will need good play from our middle IF to have any chance at making the playoffs.

We are currently 36-35 with a "Pythagorean" W-L at 39-32. It looks, so far, like progress has been slow, especially after the hopes 2021 brought us. Nobody expected everything to go right, this year, and we've certainly had our fair share of key players being on the IL, but a lot has gone right and bodes well for our future success. We still have some gaps, and losing Pivetta (assuming no extension or re-signing,) Jansen, O'Neill and Martin will hurt, but I think we have found out a few things that are on the bright side. Our rotation looks better than anyone expected, and that was considered our weakest link. Our OF looks solid on O and D and depth. Devers is having his best OPS year and seems to be making less mistakes on D. Our catching tandem in in the top tier. Our pen has been a top 5-10 pen, so far. We really have 3-4 major need areas, besides Casas staying healthy for next year: SP SS/2B RHB Closer We can't count on Gio (SP2,) Story (SS) & DHam/Grissom (2B), Hendriks (closer) and Ref (as our top RHB.) The rest seems pretty solid and pretty deep.

I know the success rate of many of the biggest signings, every year, is not that great, but we have been over the top atrocious. Back when we were signing just $5-10M/ 1 year SP'ers, I argued we were "getting what we paid for" to some extent, but even then, the two $10M guys really bombed, and we did better with $5M Hill and $7M Wacha. Then, we finally "splurge" (yea, right) on Gio and immediately get bonked on the head. Anyway you slice it, if we can't start hitting on some signings, we'll never pick up the pace on the already expected improvement plan. The Grissom trade sure looks like a bust, but he has years to prove us wrong. The Dugo trade looks better to the Yanks, right now, but I like having Weissert and Fitts for 10+ yrs vs 1 of Dugo in a crowded OF while in Cora's doghouse. The ICampbell trade might end up being a steal. The best moves by Brez, so far, looks like the Slaten & O'Neill trades and Criswell signing.

I don't have to. I did not like signing him, but understood the supposed durability aspect of it.

We all know Youk was the Greek God of Walks, but does everyone know who the German God of Walks is? His name starts with an "M" and ends in "roth." Meidroth with 3BBs, tonight in the Woo win. Kavadas went 2-4 w 4 rbi (2 x 2B) Yorke 1-2 w 2 BB POR lost. Mayer 1-4 w BB Teel 2-3 w 2BB Campbell 1-5 How about Coffey? He hit another dinger! JH Garcia did too while going 2-4. Romero 2-5 SAL won 2-1 as Dean pitched well and Anderson homered.

Always nice to beat the Yanks. Let's keep it rolling!

Agreed, and 2 of 3 from PHI!

Good one, LOL!

Dalbec does bat righty, so there is that.

It might help, if he knew what "giddy" means, and it looks like O'Neill has done just fine after I made a semi-flattering statement about him. For someone who continuously says, "Pay not attention to the man behind the curtain," he stalks me day in and day out. Kinda sad, but also quite funny.

He sucked on D, before this season, at 1B. Smith has hit well, recently. I'm not so sure Bobby Dee uses his 19th life. .920 in his last 43 PAs! (.801 in his last 71 PAs)