moonslav59

He quickly identified players to trade, last winter, and he did not shy away from trading some bigger names, like Sale & Verdugo. I'm pretty sure he has a list of players he does not see as longer term Sox. I could see him making several moves, and one again, we could see some sort of "buyer" and "seller' type moves. I'm not sure being "in the hunt" will matter, in terms of the types of trades being made. I doubt we make any trades for a rental, even if we are 2 games up in the WC standings. (Just my opinion. I think the strategy is all about 2025 and beyond.) Recap of winter moves: Chris Sale for V Grissom Verdugo for Fitts, Weissert & Judice N Robertson & V Santos for Tyler O'Neill Urias for I Campbell Schreiber for David Sandlin R Ammons for Justin Slaten (Rule 5 selection) Cash for T Heineman In season: Signed S Smith Cash for G Cooper Cash for V Gutierrez Cash for B Horn Cash for Z Short & Short for cash. Possible summer trade chips: Last year of control: Pivetta O'Neill Martin Jansen Anderson Cooper Smith 1.7 years of control: McGuire Might not be part of long term plans (might not have any or much trade value, either:) Winckowski (apparently had issues with management before demotion) Zach Kelly (can't seem to find control) E Valdez (Romy & DHam seem to have won his slot) Wikelman & Perales (perhaps as pieces to an upgrade in pitching) Mata (out of options) Dalbec, Murphy, Walter This deadline may be much more interesting than any under Bloom, except for maybe the Schwarber trade.

He's already been out hurt 45-50 days, right? Can we retro the start date to give us a few more weeks?

Like clockwork. Just like the silence after a 3 for 5 night.

If you randomly generated sample sizes the size of what players have in the playoffs, some would have better or much better numbers than their regular season norms, and some would not. The fact that reality matches up with what a computer would generate proves nothing about the make-up of the people who dod exceptionally good or bad. It doesn't prove there is no skill involved, either. On Papi, he playoff, RISP, high leverage or whatever "clutch" stat you choose was pretty close to his norms of the regular season, which happen to have been pretty damn awesome. I will say, no player I know of hit more big homers or hits than Big Papi. If anyone can be called clutch, it would be him.

A whole thread on a guys first few weeks of play?

The Brewers were my first baseball team. I grew up living 2 blocks from the old County Stadium. Those were the days when parents just cut their kids loose to roam the area, at will. I remember going to some games, by myself at 12 years old. The bleacher tickets were a dollar. I quickly became a huge fan of the game and Tommy Harper. Shortly after we moved to Maine, Harper was traded to the Sox, and I switched team loyalty to the Red Sox in 1972. We face a lefty today: Koenig, and we send Pivetta to the hill. The Brewers are a good team, even without Burnes, and we have our work cut out for us. One game at a time!

Had to watch the game, this morning, due to work needing to get done. Crawford looked human. Duran was about the only highlight. Get 'em, today!

Even if he had options, his time seems to be running out.

He's certainly made more plays most or no others make than errors, so he is a clear plus on D, at SS and CF. His offense is a big negative, and rbis are not something WAR counts. It is also not a skill or something that can be counted on as being repeated, going forward. That being said, those RBIs were huge and helped us win, so yes, WAR does not recognize things like that. By and large, the other numbers look about right. I listed games played to highlight how some of our highest WAR players have half the games as other near them in the team rankings. Ref would jump. Wong + McGuire would place 5th.

Sox fWAR Leaders 2.2 Houck (10GS) 1st in MLB for pitchers 2.1 Duran 50 gms (T 13th in fWAR everyday players) 1.8 Crawford (10 GS) 10th in MLB 1.5 Abreu 44 (T for 33rd in MLB) 1.5 Devers 39 (T33) 1.1 Wong 34 1.0 O'Neill 39 0.9 Slaten (26 IP) 0.6 McGuire 31 0.6 Casas 22 0.5 Criswell (7 GS + 1 RP) 0.5 Jansen (17 IP) 0.5 Refsnyder 24 0.4 Bernardino (20 IP) 0.4 Whitlock (18 IP - maybe out for 1+ years) 0.3 Martin (19 IP) 0.2 Bello (8 GS) 0.2 DHam 25 0.1 Wink (24 IP) 0.1 Romy 12 0.1 Uwasawa (4 IP) 0.0 many -0.1 Kelly (14 IP) & Anderson (22 IP) -0.1 Cooper -0.2 Short -0.2 Joely (11 IP) & Campbell (6 IP) -0.5 Dalbec/Smith (in less gms than Dalbec) -0.6 Rafaela -0.7 Grissom, Reyes & Valdez (One can see why we tried to fix 2B.) Team Positional Rankings in fWAR 2nd Pitching 7.5 (4th SP 5.0 and 2nd Pen 2.5) 3rd RF 2.0 (Abreu & O'Neill have been bright spots.) T3rd LF 1.7 (Nice!) 8th C 1.7 (I had hopes we could be above average, this year, but WOW!) 11th CF 0.7 (A mix of players, here.) 18th 1B 0.1 (Only Casas kept us from being negative) 23rd 3B 0.3 (I know Devers at 1.5 missed time, but...?) 23rd DH -0.3 (What a shame! 28th SS -0.1 (No story has hurt, here.) 30th 2B -1.4 (Grissom has yet to fix the 2B problem.) The Pitching, Catchers and OF have saved us: 4th OF 4.4 (POW!) The pen is ranked higher than the rotation! It's obvious, our middle infield and DH have been big weak areas, this year.

He went 251-65 in 6 years. He played in 7. (106-21 in 2 seasons, combined) 325 GS in those 6 seasons. He had a career .313 BA.

Woo lost 6-3. Fitts did okay (5IP, 3H, 1ER, 3BB, 3K) Zeferjahn and Luetge lost it. Westbrook homered. Meidroth 1-4 w BB. POR lost 10-1. Mata 3IP, 5H, 3ER, 0BB, 2K Coffey got rocked. Mayer doubled. Arias walked 3 times in a loss w FCL.

Nobody doubts Koufax was dominant in his time. The question is about transfering that dominance to this era. I'm not sure we can so easily say no players from back then could be dominant, now. That seems pretty unilateral. We'll never know.

Luis Tiant's delivery would be illegal, today.

Top Farm OPS (90+ ABs) 1.056 Kavadas AAA 1.031 M lugo AA .912 K Campbell A+ .846 Gasper AA .830 Mayer AA .823 Teel AA .816 Sogard AAA .808 A Lugo A- .807 Paulino AA .787 Ugueto A+ .781 E Alvarez AAA .775 Yuten A+ .756 Jordan AA .754 Westboork AAA .741 Meidroth AAA .739 Anthony AA .733 Bleis A- .727 Hickey AAA .711 Castro A+ .688 Yorke AA Notables w 50-89 ABs: 1.063 Jo Garcia A- .998 E Valdez AAA .911 Jh Garcia A- (out for the year) .879 Dalbec AAA Best Pitcher OPS Against (25+ IP) .550 E R-C A- .551 Penrod AA .591 Dobbins AA .609 Cohen A- .632 JD Encarnacion A+ .635 Bastardo AA .656 Duffy A- .669 Wikelman AA .688 Paez A- .704 Hagenman AAA .710 Early A+ .715 I Coffey AA .725 Dean A- .733 Gambrell AAA .745 Fitts AAA .751 Alexander AAA Some notables under 25 IP: .486 Brand A+/AA .491 O'Donnell A- .512 Wehunt A- .549 Luetge AAA .551 Olivarez AA .596 Carlson A-/A+ .634 Olds AA .646 Guerrero AAA

Ok. That's what I assumed.

I went from '72 to '04, and I was wondering if I'd ever see glory.

The murky middle might be 8-20 teams.

How many times have people discounted the Rays? Then, you look up, and they have 92 wins. (I do think this is the year, they don't win over 85 or 86 games.

Yes, and by 2.5 games. I do agree; they are not a good team, but they are about as good as we are, and about 10 other teams in the current ranks of about 9th to 18th in MLB.

I might have more posts, but you and Red lead the league in rips.

Agreed. I wasn't the one saying "We can't eat good teams." (or our own division teams)

Nice memory for such a young sprout! There were so many "what ifs" in that classic game. I really thought we had the better team, on paper, that year, but as so many Sox teams did for decades upon decades, we came up just short.

My penchant for good defensive SSs, I suppose.

When we lost to the Rays, we heard, "We can't beat the good teams." Now, we sweep them, and it's "The Rays are not a good team, anymore." (Okay, okay, this might be a bit fictionalized, but it does seem to be similar to what we've been hearing.)