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By the time he got to “fatter”, I assumed he’d gone all the way back to the days of Babe Ruth and Hippo Vaughn...

And you already have my answer

You clearly ignored me on BDC when I was predicting this 10 years ago. It’s not happening exactly as you say, but the Moneyball era tried to find underpaid aspects of the game for poorer teams to capitalize on. First was OBP. Then defense. Then came middle relief, which allowed teams to spend less on the rotation and still be competitive. Tampa and KC have been doing this for a long time...

Well, it did help that they were pitching exclusively to equally smaller/weaker/slower/fatter white guys. You have to bear in mind that for a long time, the talent pool was not admitting everyone...

And that is undoubtedly the goal of ownership. Players and agents, however, do not necessarily agree. Really what’s happening now is middle relief pitchers get paid more than they used to. The salaries are adjusting, but not how teams want them to...

Hey history against pitcher you face a maximum of one time per game is always going to be small. But in his limited history, Mueller was successful against Rivera. In fact, he was very likely the most successful Red Sox hitter against Rivera ever. And in that situation, having him come up with the tying run in scoring position was a very good thing for the Sox. What hitter would you have preferred? Before you answer “Ortiz, obviously”, bear in mind Papi did bat in that inning with two outs and the bases loaded and popped to second...

I like our staff now that it’s been Weber-Free since 2020...

No, that’s finances at work. The finances are the reason (good SP costs a lot more than good RP) and the metrics show teams how to make it work...

Mentioned in the post. Mueller had 12 career PA against Rivera. Not many hitters have a bunch of PA against a closer...

My point was Mueller owned Rivera like very few other hitters. You know, like the stats showed. Maybe you remember, way back on July 24th, 2004, Bill Mueller launched a 3 run walk off blast off Rivera to jump start the 52-44 Red Sox off to a 46-20 finish to the season. Maybe THAT was Mueller's truly underrated hit?

I like Cosell because he must have had a sense of humor about himself, often playing unflattering portrayals of himself in Woody Allen movies...

Oh they aren't going back. But the modern usage has obscured how we view some of the greater relievers from the past because the new kid got more "saves" by being a ninth inning specialist...

Before my time, although I was well aware of his distinctive voice from "This Week in Baseball". With Harry Carey, it wasn't the drinking and slurring that was the distraction. It was the singing at the 7th inning stretch and the bizarre, off the wall commentary in the middle of an inning. With no prompting, and for no reason he would just say stuff like "Bowa spelled backwards is Awob". To this day, no one still knows why...

See and sportrac has a different variant. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/boston-red-sox/j.d.-martinez-8690/ I do not think it matters, since there is no way in Fresno he is opting out...

Well, you are talking about one GM specifically, and one who hasn't had a real season with a full strength roster to work with yet. He's in his second season running the team, and has yet to get a single inning out of Sale. If JDM bounces back this year, then why not keep him for 2022? We all know they are getting an ace-caliber starter back without spending a penny. Barring extensions, the team might lose ERod, Barnes and Ottavino. all of whom will need to be repalced. Why add DH to that mix as well? Especially if you have to tie up money by sending it with JDM? If he does not bounce back, no one will want him unless the Sox pretty much pay the bulk of the fare. So why not hold on to him for one last season? At worst, he becomes a placeholder for Triston Casas, allowing the Sox to play those nasty service time games...

What helped us like JDM's contract, too, was it fell far, far short of the $300million Boras was asking for. It felt like a bargain the team could win with and not an albatross that would eventually drag the entire team down...

Harry Carey was not there to announce baseball. He was there to make the broadcast fun and bring the party atmosphere to Wrigley, since there was no way the Cubs were capable of doing either task with anything related to baseball. Carey was a distraction, and a very successful one. Skip Carey, on the other hand, was an outstanding play-by-play man...

How much of a miracle was that hit really? For his career, Mueller hit .455/.500/.727 against Mariano Rivera. The only hitters (min 10 PA) to have a higher OPS vs Rivera than Mueller were Edgar Martinez, Jason Kubel and Aubrey Huff. Period. End of list...

People like Nate Silver don't change baseball; they change the way people look at baseball. Harry Carey didn't change baseball; he gave people something to watch that wasn't baseball...

Miller had 3 saves in 3 chances his first month in Cleveland. In two of those games, the opposing team was bringing up the top of order in the ninth. (One was against the Yankees, with 1-2-3 coming up and a 3 run lead, the other against the Twins with 9-1-2 coming up and a 1 run lead.) His third save was in a 1-0 against Oakland.

I have seen Yaz being criticized for not being clutch by popping out to end the 1978 season. I think a lot of people forgot he was 39 years old at the time....

Gossage once said a one inning save felt cheap to him, and it was too easy. A few years back, back when he was into baseball and not politics, Nate Silver threw out the idea of a new way to evaluate relief pitchers with a stat called the "goose egg." A goose egg was basically an outing in which the reliever entered a close game (lead of 2 runs or less) after the 6th inning and did not give up any earned runs. For every shutout inning, the reliever gets credited with one "goose egg." Per his research, Gossage was the all time leader in goose eggs (and, yes, they were named after him)...

That was also a rare case where the closer was not the best relief pitcher. On most teams, the closer is the best reliever..

And while I am certain Henry would prefer to spend $150 million on a 95 win team over spending $200 million on a 95 win team, he still has a very long history of not limiting his GMs payrolls, outside of the occasional reset. There is probably some sort of wins/dollar metric that he likes and would prefer to get as many wins as possible for as little money as possible. But he till seems to want those wins...

Again, the Sox still have a massive payroll and are still one of the highest spending teams in the league despite not signing a major free agent contract to a player from another team since 2018. We really don't know if Bloom will ever be a spender or not. We know in 2020, despite all public statements that there was no mandate to get under the tax limit, there very likely was a mandate to get under the limit. This off-season, when they could have spent, the season was already under question from the previous March when Sale finally went under the knife and would be sidelined for up to 18 months. So why spend and go for it? I don't think we will get an accurate idea of his financial commitments until next season. And if his Tampa history is the only reason for this label, bear in mind his predecessor in that role and former boss and mentor does run the time with the highest payroll in the league. We've seen other GMs come from small market, low payroll teams and suddenly change their spending habits when they get their hands on real money. Dan Duquette was a prime example. Dombrowski, who was not allowed to spend in Florida (now Miami) also was a totally different GM when he had an actual budget, first in Detroit and then again in Boston. Right now, there is no reason to think Bloom will be any different...