moonslav59

I'm still optimistic about Grissom being our fine 2Bman for 5 years.

Speaking of ex-Sox players... Some 2024 Numbers: OPS .978 Betts .821 JD M (83 PAs) .812 T Pham (92) .774 Moncada (44) .748 Dubon .734 Verdugo .727 Schwarber .662 Turner .627 Duvall (79) .602 Urias (88) .581 Bogey (not hearing any crying over Bogey, these days) .540 Espinal .513 Margot .494 Beni (should we trade Wink & Gambrell for Beni?) .486 Renfroe (How about DHam for Renfroe?) .368 Vazquez (Abreu & Valdez?) ERA (If under 40 IP, noted) 0.95 Strahm (19 IP) 2.11 Beeks (21) 2.22 Sale 2.61 Nate 2.84 Paxton 2.95 Ottavino (18) 3.20 R Fernandez (20) 3.32 Kopech (22) 3.45 Diekman (16) 3.63 Kimbrel (17) 4.37 Montas (35) 4.45 Wacha 4.63 Brasier 912) 4.70 Payamps (15) 6.75 Barnes (13) I might have missed a few.

His only homer came when we were down 3-0 vs the yanks. He made it 3-2 in the 3rd. He did score a game winning run vs the Yanks as a PR'er. Dugo knocked him in.

Metrics can help determine if a player has inflated stats due to luck, but I'm not sure that is something that speaks to future results. My guess is Wong's wOBA and xwOBA have improved over past seasons, so maybe that continues to improve, and his other numbers stay the same or don't drop as much as one might expect.

Then he lost the GM's phone number and the deadline expired.

cots says they were about $18M over, last year and projected at $28.4M over, this year (a $9.5M tax)

His D should be okay at 2B as the floor. It's not like he has never hit the ball hard, but clearly he has been struggling in his first 13 games. Had sale gotten hurt or sucked, I doubt this would be such a hot topic.

How could I have forgotten? He even had a better OPS with BOS than Grissom has, and less PAs.

Correct. It MAY end up being less or way less than 5 more years, but that is really a pessimist view (kinda like the view most of had on Sale ever doing anything for us, again.)

The other part of any Duran trade is what we get back and at what position. Even if Duran does not decline or even gets better, the return guy could still end up with more value. Most posters who talked about possibly trading Duran were thinking we'd package him for a very good SP'er. I'm glad we didn't trade him, but I don't know what the return would have been. I expect a return would look better, on paper, now, but who knows. I'd keep him.

We all do. He might end up being the next Jeter Downs, although he never made the bigs. He seemed to have a decent bat with ATL over 64 games and 236 PAs (.746 OPS,) but maybe that was just fluff. His D at SS was lacking, but many felt he'd be okay to decent at 2B. He got hurt, got sick, lost a ton of weight, and missed some ST'ing. He has played in 13 games with 53 PAs. I'd say he has given us nothing to a negative value, so far, but it's just 13 games. He has something like 5 more years to prove himself.

True. With the team 3-7 in Crawford starts, you never know. Certainly, up to now, having Sale over Grissom would have given us a much better chance at winning 1-4 more games. Going forward is the great unknown.

I'm against the idea of trading Duran, but he is at his highest value, ever. He may raise that value, but his trade value is high, right now. Without Duran, our OF future would look like this: LF: Abreu/Refsnyder (Lugo?) CF: Rafaela/Anthony RF: Anthony/Abreu That's not bad. It is drop off from one with Duran, but what would be the increase with the return value and where would that improvement be? Again, I would not trade Duran. (Many of us would have 1.5+ years ago, when his value was low or so-so.)

What's interesting is that in 5 of those 6 starts we had Wink and Bernardino pitch 13.2 IP, combined with just 2 ERs allowed. I realize3 the taxing of the pen is the point, and is a good point. Here is a breakdown of the wins and losses by SP'er and their ERAs. If ever there was an argument to be made about a pitcher's W-L record, or the team's W-L record in his starts, not being all that meaningful, this would be an example: 5-1 Criswell 2.67 5-2 Bello 3.96 3-2 Pivetta 3.04 5-5 Houck 1.94 2-4 Pen starters 3-7 Crawford 2.17 1-3 Whitlock 1.94

They should have and could have signed more SP'er depth, even if to minor league deals. Criswell and Uwasawa were not enough. That being said, we did lose Gio for the season, and Pivetta, Bello, and Whit for a few games. That is hard for most teams to cover. No excuses: we dropped the ball on this.

Agree. Totally.

Making what up? I said nobody was gushing over him for 4-5 years. Is that untrue? I wasn't even implying anyone was re-writing history or forgetting his injury history. I get why people are gushing and giddy over his 2024 start. He has been amazing, and even better than his stretch in 2023. Who expected this?

Fixed it for you. LOL

My bad. I did not see the post was about Bard not Whit.

Yes, that was who I was asking it, along with you.

Exactly, but how many were gushing over last years pretty decent season? The guy is doing great, now, and he might keep it up. I hope he does. I get the argument for keeping him. Our weakness was thought to be the rotation, and it was for over 4 years, before last winter. It made less sense, when we only signed one SP'er with what amounted to just a portion of the "money saved" in the trade. As great as our rotation has done, this year, we still could have used Sale. (Bell's point about pen starts shows that.) I understand, this is not just hindsight complaining, as many, if not most, disliked the trade when it happened. (I did too, at first, but then I grew to think it was a decent deal, especially if we had spent up to the line, like I had hoped we would do.) Grissom's injury and then worse than piss-poor start has magnified the disparity between these two player current 2024 value. I get that. My point is that all this gushing over Sale was not around for 3-5 years, and now it's like he was never a question mark and a negative impact on 4-5 season teams in a row.

He did a really good job as a RP'er. The ability to go 2-3 innings cannot be undervalued, and his ability to include the 9th inning in those long relief games is somewhat rare. AS RP 2021: 1.96 ERA/2.84 FIP (1.105 WHIP) in 73.1 IP (11 games finished) That's 5-20 more IP than many closers get.) 2022: 0.93/2.21 in first 4 RP games (started 9 games) 3.34/3.05 in 18 games after starting 2022 as RP: 2.75 ERA, 0.788 WHIP (.547 OPS Against) His 2.2 fWAR as a RP'er from '21 to '22 ranked 22nd in MLB. His 73 xFIP- ranked 10th. His 51 ERA- ranked 2nd. His 5.43 K/BB ratio ranked 5th. What does it take to be a good RP'er, for you? That was for 2 years and 112 IP. 2023 was not good: 4.95 as RP (5.23 as SP) .784 OPSA as RP

There was no gushing for 3-4 years, and now this.

True. Most would have been happy with any 2 starters, but I didn't hear anyone specifically saying they wanted Lugo, and there was a long list of SP'ers suggested.

I think we all had hopes for Sale, just like we did for the 5 previous seasons- one by one. He had a real nice long stretch of starting in 2023, which showed he had not "lost it," and just needed to stay healthy. Last 15 starts of 2023: 3.16 ERA/ 3.41 FIP (not vintage Sale, but good enough, for sure) (Note: this 15 start run included missing a 5 week stretch) He was at 3.92/3.96 in his 9 starts after returning from his injury in '23. He has 9 straight starts, this year. That makes 18 straight, over 2 seasons. The last time he did that was....? 2019, when he had a 4.40 ERA (3.39 FIP) I'm a huge Sale fan, and I hope he has a great finish to his career, except when facing us, but I was tired of hoping against hope. 2020 2021 2022 2023 He went 5 seasons dashing our hopes. I got fed up with it. Of course, I wish we had this Sale, for this year, but this deal is so far from being completed. I'm pretty sure we would not have extended him. It looks like we might have taken the $20M option, if he completes this season, like this.