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He’s a bench player doing a good job. Let’s not get carried away…

Skenes costs Anthony plus Mayer at a minimum. No way around. As a Sox fan, you know Cherington is a total prospect whore. They’re not trading Skenes yet. But if/when they do, it won’t be for a package headlined by a player with fewer years of control..,

For some, thats circular logic, as IP is a factor in WAR…

Pitcher W-L is pretty much meaningless when talking about how good a pitcher is. Back in the Ol’ Hoss Radbourne days, it was all they had. But pitchers back then threw 300+ IP regularly and bullpens were made of starting pitchers on their days off. Also pitchers back then chewed tobacco bricks, guzzled whiskey, and punched out carriage horses. ERA came along but was never meant to replace W-L; as teams started having dedicated relief pitchers, ERA was developed to measure THEIR effectiveness not only as pitchers but also compared to starters, which is why it is scaled to 9 innings. ERA is now probably the most widely recognized pitching stat, and certainly carries more weight than wins with most (almost all?) fans. It’s not without flaws, however. It’s influenced by defense and ballpark, both of which are not in the pitcher’s control. Being on a team with the best lineup also helps, since you never face them. I mean, facing Aaron Judge a few teams probably wouldn’t ruin Max Fried’s season. But never facing him certainly helps. I look at the 2005 Cy Young going to Bartolo Colon when Johan Santana clearly out pitched him. But Colon pitched for the ALCS runner up Anaheim Angels while Santana pitched for a s***** Twins team. So Bartolo got more wins, which was the only stat where he surpassed Santana. I know some like to say “but the goal is to win.” But get real. Think Colon gets more wins than Santana if their teams were reversed?

Actually one way. If I’m presented with data that disagrees with my theories, my first reaction is not to accuse it of being manipulated. In fact, that’s not on my list of reactions at all…

That it’s new, despite what it’s allegedly causing is not. Right now the pitch clock era doesn’t have enough data to make a conclusion about its impact either way…

Little early to make such a call about Breslow. But picking the keepers is probably easier than we realize. When acquiring Beckett, Cherington and Hoyer rebuffed the asks for Pedroia and Lester in favor of Hanley and Anibal Sanchez. While both players he gave up had good careers, they were clearly the right choices to give up over the ones he kept. Bloom never gave up any good prospects either. (I think the best young player he dealt away was Chavis.) But he never really got involved in acquiring the type of stars that required giving them up. Talking about buyer type deals with Bloom; Mookie was when he was acting more like a seller…

Or highlights…

Maybe they’ve already offered Story to Atlanta. Rumors about that move have been floating around for months…

I don’t think Eaton will get many starts. He does bat RH, as you pointed out, but he also plays everywhere except C and SS. Hes even pitched in MLB. Sure it was blowout mop up Dominic Smith stuff. But Eaton does throw about 99 mph, so maybe he gets a bullpen look. He COULD be worse than Liam Hendricks, but he probably wouldn’t be…

I had the same experience with “Go Dog Go”…

Ye Sox are along the top teams in runs scored as it is, and among the leaders in LOB, which is always true for high scoring teams. And also the leaders in LOB in games played as the only team playing their 61st game today, and this boosts those cumulative totals. The strikeout total is misleading. The Sox lead MLB in games is a factor here as well. They are tied for fourth in K% with Detroit, who is not exactly struggling. I don’t consider the bench guys and injury replacement players to be st the root. Toro, whom I originally railed but have been impressed with lately, isn't the problem. Neither is Hamilton, who never plays. Players like Story certainly are a big concern, especially with Bregman down. Duran is also not the player he was last year. Campbell is becoming a cause for concern, which is worrisome because Plans B and C are, in whatever order, Hamilton and Grissom…

I’m not a Cora fan, but I have no issues with his adopting new logic for a batting order as opposed to Old School logic. And to say Wilyer Abreu isn’t a RBI hitter might be a huge mistake. He has an .802 OPS with men on base. And rather than re-open clutch debates, acknowledge that Abreu’s .816 OPS in one run games is his highest for any score scenario…

Torpedo bats!!

Campbell was brought up to start the season, not to help a struggling team. 0-0 isn’t a losing record. Mayer was brought up to clean up a childish mess made by Devers that Breslow either couldn’t think of another way out or played the biggest PR card he had…

It’s fair to not accept velocity as the cause; it might not be. But if it isn’t, it doesn’t mean it’s got to be the pitch clock, for which I have no feelings either way. I never once complained about the pace of games, but I also know it’s been in the rule book for decades…

And while refresh time between exertions can be a factor in injuries, we’re not talking about enormous samples here. If we limit it to UCL injuries, we see how many per year in MLB? 10? 20? Out of the maybe 609-700 pitchers who will appear in MLB each year? Not every pitcher had to change their pace for the pitch click. Are these 10-20 affected pitchers ones that had to change? And by how much? Were they starters throwing 150 IP? Or relievers just throwing 50-60IP? How much refresh time is safe? Was 20 seconds ok and 15 unsafe? Does it vary from pitcher to pitcher? Did just a couple of seasons of using the pitch clock provide enough time for damage? Especially considering the numbers really haven’t spiked that much? Maybe 5-10 years down the road, more will be known. Right now it’s just looking at correlation and calling it causation. Might as well observe pitcher injuries increasing since Russia invaded the Ukraine and blame Putin for the rise…

Do me a favor. Don’t repeatedly tell me about always having to be right when I’m not the one floating unsupported theories and getting angry when they’re openly questioned by people supplying actual data (which was ripe for questioning). And while I agree data can be manipulated and misinterpreted, that doesn’t mean the floor is open to any and all crackpot theories being accepted as facts. Just because you hate the pitch clock doesn’t mean it’s actually causing any issues…

At a minimum, I’d say it’s too early in the pitch clock era to see if it’s a contributing factor. These injuries are largely ergonomic and don’t happen in a few starts. The tendon gets stretched like a rubber band with each pitch and tears happen over numerous cycles. Knocking off a couple seconds for 1-2 seasons worth of starts is a complete unknown as a contributor….

Because I’ve looked into this and seen the data. The worst year for TJ surgeries was 2021, which was before the pitch clock was implemented in MiLB (2022) and in MLB (2023). https://www.leanblog.org/2024/04/theres-no-special-cause-of-common-cause-variation-tommy-john-surgeries/ This has been pointed out to you before, but somehow you keep indsisting you’re right and the rest of the world is stubborn. If you have any data that suggests otherwise, please share. If you have reasons to doubt the claims made by this blogger with medically-questionable credentials (besides those reasons, I mean), again, like to hear it. But if you’re just going to repeat some unsupported hypothesis as truth because it meets your definition of common sense and label everyone else as obstinate for not seeing this, then you should accept all criticisms because you’re clearly inviting them…

Plenty of pitchers have seen their routine unchanged by the pitch clock and gotten injured anyway…

Pitchers throw harder than they did 10 years ago. And this all starts at younger ages. You have kids in high school throwing 98mph (yes, you do). You don’t need to throw 98 mph to get high school hitters out. But throwing that hard at that age does get you noticed by Division I college coaches as well as by MLB scouts. It’s all about scholarships and signing bonuses. But by the time these kids get to MLB - a big if in itself - they’ve been straining their tendons with 98mph fastballs for 7-10 years. Injuries become more likely with every pitch, and at some point, that tendon just snaps from shear overwork…

So are you arguing Cora shouldn’t move Devers down in the order because Abreu hits differently in those spots? Why not use Devers’ numbers? Other than that they show no such disparity and ruin your argument, I mean?

The rise in bullpen dependency was a bigger factor…

Well, they do award Wins to hitters now; they just award them in comparison to replacement level players…