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Ryan?

I don’t think he is necessarily traded. And don’t forget, having some control of his own destiny is how he got to Boston. The biggest reason he won’t opt out is he’s not likely to get a better deal than the one he got when he was two years younger, coming off a career year at the plate and where he actually played in the field, and didn’t have a QO attached...

Ah Recency Bias rears its ugly head. Bush is a different person with a different background and professional history. If the Sox wanted another LaVangie, they never would have fired the first one...

I think another good under-the-radar candidate is Tanner Roark. Roark made $10mill last year and could get a raise and still be under a paycut from Porcello. Since the Sox are extremely unlikely to make a splashy deal for Cole or Strasburg, the best of the second tier candidates might be Porcello and Roark...

But then Holt might be a candidate for a starting position in the infield, and has proved his value. And despite trying to get under the tax limit, it does not mean the Sox are going to spend nothing this off-season. They still have to field a team and play 162 games...

He'll finally break his way completely out of professional baseball...

Well, it actually is a different approach. Just because he came from the Sox does not mean he is the same type of coach, as I explained earlier. In fact, you seem to be advocating for the same old approach by getting a coach well-versed in mechanics (which Bush may or may not be). But those candidates largely fall into two categories: 1. Experienced pitching coaches who were fired by their previous organization 2. Inexperienced candidates who have never been an MLB pitching coach. Which is preferable? And how is either better or worse the Bush? Bush might fail miserably, or he might succeed. But to say he is the same old as LaVangie because he came from the same organization is just silly. That's like saying the Sox should unload Bobby Dalbec because Lars Anderson was a flop...

That is an argument many are making and MLB might even be considering. It's absolutely not hypocritical. While baseball hs embraced using technology to influence game play in the past - like the adoption of instant replay, that doesn't mean everything has to be an "either or" scenario. And the decision that "people need to be consistent" is immaterial. MLB doesn't mandate the use of software and experts for the calcualtion of UZR. That's an after-the-fact analytical tool used by the statistics companies. The changing to robot umps absolutely has some benefits, but to call the in-game decisions be made using MLB must meet the exact standards of the analytics afterwards is two completely different things. Maybe a good parallel is our election process. We do maintain human exit polls and allow humans to do the actual voting. But many people have devised statisitcal models to predict elections with surprising accuracy, notably Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com (and formerly of Fangraphs.com). Just because we have the ability to predict elections with surprising results doesn't mean we need to dump the entire electoral process and replace human voting with statistical analysis....

So the 7 game sample of the ALCS usurps the 162 game sample that precedes it? The Astros' starting pitching ranked 4th in MLB with 19.4 fWAR. The Yankees' SP tied for 16th with Detroit at 10.6 fWAR. Even the pitching-needy Red Sox did better. Perhaps you outpitched the Astros because Astro pitching was facing a tougher lineup? It's not like all things were equal there...

Then you have also seen plenty of instances where the Sox made internal hiring options that did work out...

See and this is why I keep making posts abouyt cognitive biases. Bush is a completely different option than LaVangie, as one was a Major League pitcher while the other was a minor league catcher. LaVangie got the job as a show of faith for many years of service to the club. Bush was hired for the job because of his analytical background and probably because he also has been an MLB pitcher. But because both came from inside the organization, the failure of one assures the failure of the other in some eyes. This is a form of Confirmation Bias called Background Bias or History Bias. If Bush had been performing the exact same role in, say, Tampa, would the same questions still exist?

The Yankees top priority isn't likely to be infield. They could easily go into the season with Voit/Ford-LeMahieu-Torres-Urshela around the infield, and still be looking for a place to play Andujar. So unless Gennett converts to SP and excels at it right away, I would doubt this is a move for them...

A few assumptions here. What makes you think Bush is no different than previous candidates and what makes you think external candidates are?

That can be accomplished numerous ways. Not to mention, re-signing Martinez at a lower AAV would help towards that goal. John Henry might not want to pay luxury tax, but he also understands the profitability of a winning team, and he isn’t going to just put some dirt cheap reset team that loses 95 games and costs $175mill out there...

What makes you think that even if he opts out, he isn’t coming back to Boston?

Yes. He can bump Andujar back to fourth string DH. Maybe the Yankees can sign JD and the Red Sox can sign Aroldis Chapman...

What’s your point? Are you implying you know more or your opinion should be taken into consideration?

Well, many people believe that nothing captures the human element worse than a human, due to our inherent cognitive biases. For example, the belief that an individual can better evaluate defense than trained experts and software is a form of the common cognitive bias called the IKEA Effect, which is the tendency for people to place disproportionately high value on their own accomplishments regardless of actual quality - and so named after the crappy do-it-yourself furniture from IKEA. (And yes, it’s really called that.) And of course, there is the tendency for a person to believe they are immune to cognitive biases, which itself is a cognitive bias called the Bias Blind Spot. Umpires also naturally have their own set of cognitive biases as well, which can make an already crazy difficult job even worse...

You do realize Dave Bush is a former MLB pitcher who presumably gained some understanding of mechanics in his 9 MLB seasons, right?

True. Someone has to tell the batter what the robot umps call was...

As a former player, coach and umpire, I get how difficult the job is for a human. My daughter used to complain about umpire ball and strike zones. I've had to tell her "look, that guy's job is to decide whether or not any part of the ball passed through any part of an imaginery box while it's traveling about 40 miles per hour. It's not easy so cut him some slack." And that's with pre-teen girls playing softball. With MLB umpires, that ball can be traveling upwards of 100mph. If you have ever faced am 80mph fastball, you know how quick it gets on top of you. And in MLB, a pitch that slow won't ever make it to the catcher, and all the ump has to do is decide what side of the foul pole it was on...

Oh outside of the umpire's union, I doubt anyone thinks umpire's are more reliable than the technology. I am in favor of human umpires making calls because that is the tradition. But the one problem with umpires is that when you start noticing them, it means they are not doing their jobs properly. And when they start making calls a matter of flexing authority, that is an issue baseball will not have to deal with. You say you do not like UZR because it is an argument-ender. Well. nothing in baseball will stop arguments more than robotic strike zone calls. That's what the majority of arguments are about (despite it actually being illegal)...

Yeah, living in the most beautiful of all US cities could be a real drag...

When Lance Barksdale allegedly called a strike a ball solely because he felt the catcher usurped his authority by getting ready to throw it around the infield (something that happens so often, umpires should just be used to it by now), it absolutely was a point in favor or robot umps in my mind...

I would agree. I lean towards to Angels. For all the big money the Dodgers throw around, really how many mega contracts have they given to players coming from other teams in recent years? Te Yankees will certainly be in the running, but if Cole's teammates - people who know him and talk to him, possibly about this subject - think he is headed for So Cal, I have to defer to them on this. The dark horse might be the Padres...