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I’m hoping Story gets healthy, but my faith in him being healthy for 2025 is less than it was for 2024, which was less than it was for 2023, which was less than it was for 2022, which was where is all began. If the Sox moved on from Story, I would understand why. I might not like it, but I would certainly understand it. Just like I understand why they moved on from Sale…

I will admit my faith in Story dwindles every season. And he’s a shortstop, where injuries end fewer careers than pitchers. He’s also not even 35 yet, when production can fall off rapidly and without warning…

If the Sox traded Story this off-season, and Story bounced back with a 4 or 5 fWAR season, what would your opinion be?

There are so many situational examples of why blown saves carry the appropriate abbreviation of BS. And even saves themselves are corrupted, because any pitcher who pitches the last 3 innings of a game without blowing a lead of any size is credited with a save…

I’m not sure that was viewed as positively as you think it is. If he’s healthy, it’s great. If he keeps getting hurt, it’s not a bonus…

Agreed. You can never have enough pitching. So why are you advocating tying up $27.5mill for a pitcher who has pitched 150 IP in the past 4 years? Wouldn’t it make sense to allocate that money to someone more likely to actually pitch? Sale has been paid about $800K per inning for 4 seasons now. What part of this says it makes sense to hope he gets healthy and bounces back effectively?

Did they need one if Sale was healthy? Sale had multiple chances and simply never stayed on the mound. Sure he gave them 40 IP at the end of 2023. He did the same thing in 2021, and then followed up the next year with FIVE INNINGS PITCHED for the season. And all this started when he was 30. Sale is 35 now. Why would anyone think his inability to stay healthy at ages 30 through 34 would suddenly disappear at 35? If the Sox brought back Rick Porcello, you’d probably think “this guy hasn’t pitched in years and is getting older.” And if you didn’t think that, I certainly would have. But he’s also only pitched about 90 less IP than Sale in the previous 4 seasons and is only 3 months older. Also, he hasn’t been on a team since 2020. (And if 2020 was a full season, Porcello’s total IP in the last 4 years very likely exceeds Sale’s total.)

Did they need one if Sale was healthy?

It all makes a ton of sense when you admit they really had no reason to have faith in Sale. None of us did (except cp). Because every Spting Training since 2020, I’ve said the upcoming season depends heavily on Sale, and 100% of the responses said “you can’t count on Sale.” If Sale had been pitching, they don’t trade him and don’t sign Giolito…

But Giolito made things MORE EXPENSIVE. Why was Giolito involved in this at all?

Most of the main points look painfully obvious. If the Sox had as much faith in Sale’s 40IP August/September last year as you think they should have, do you think they really trade him and sign Giolito? They had no faith in him bouncing back, and he gave them very little reason to have any in recent years…

Explain to me how trading Sale and singing Giolito saved money? The Sox are playing Sale and Giolito a total of about $35mill this season. Before the deal, that number was only about $27.5 mill…

It looks painfully obvious Sale’s injury risk was a driving factor here, not just part of the calculus. That the main contribution of his replacement is the ability to rack up IP also lends some support to this. In this trade and subsequent transactions, the Sox 1. Moved on from Sale, who gave them 150IP in the past 4 years. 2. Replaced him with a pitcher whose thrown nearly 600 IP in that same timeframe 3. And added an MLB-ready 2b who was ranked as highly as #3 in a stacked Atlanta farm system to fill what had been a void in their infield. The one thing they didn’t do was save money; they spent an additional $7mill for these moves. The downsides are multiple, as Murphy’s Law just ran wild on the Sox here. Sale bounced back. The normally durable Giolito got injured. Grissom got off to a slow start and battled injuries and illness. The middle infielders that made him necessary (Valdez, Hamilton) all got off to great starts and leapfrogged him. But not one item on this list looked like any sort of obvious outcome…

And that’s fine. But it also means this trade was not solely about saving money. They could have traded Sale for much less and included less cash, right?

So what was the point of dropping Sale to add Giolito? Clearly not to save money, since keeping Sale was $7mill cheaper. It seems to obvious to point out, but just because WE expected them to add starting pitching didn’t mean it was on their radar. And this Sale/Giolito swap also points out they really didn’t add anything. They swapped out two plsyers and spent money to do it…

But why take back Grissom when you can include less money and take back a lesser prospect?

For box scores, the Globe was king. Only paper I know of in the USA that at one point included NPB box scores from Japan. No idea why…

Baseball Digest is still good. But it’s no longer that handy pocket-size journal. Full size pages (and not as many of them). It still has the Quick Quiz, which is the most difficult monthly baseball trivia quiz in print. (In 30 years of quick quizzes, my record is 6 out of 10.) Sporting News for baseball peaked (IMO) in the early 2000’s when they added journeyman RHRP Todd Jones to the staff, and then Jones got an offer to pitch for the Tigers, so he wrote his columns as an active major leaguer. Also, like him or not (and I like him), Ken Rosenthal was still there at the time…

There’s also a reasonable chance dgalehouse thinks all blown saves occur in the ninth inning. And are losses…

Well, if it was about dumping salary, why give $17mill and take back Grissom when you can include less money and get back a lesser prospect? Because despite what you think, Grissom was a highly regarded prospect at the time. Also, if it was only about saving money, why spend on Giolito to replace Sale? It seems obvious the Red Sox did not buy into Sale pitching 43 innings without any sort of injury as the indication that his health problems were clearly over and he was going to be able to pitch a full season. With the money to get the better prospect plus the money spent on Giolito to replace Sale, they didn’t save money. In fact, they would up spending about $7mill more…

Saves are wins but blown saves are kind of meaningless. First of all, they’re not necessarily losses. Second, you can get multiple blown saves in a game. And really, a relief pitcher can be effective but still get a blown save, thanks to inherited runners. Not to mention, a pitcher can be credited with a blown save in almost any inning and didn’t need to give up an earned run to get one. Ryan Brasier was credited with a blown save in the fifth inning when he was in Boston. How is that indicative of a win or a loss? The reason that fWAR was better was the similar FIP (unless you like blaming pitchers for weak defense) over the 100+ more innings pitched. That’s a huge chunk of innings, and a big reason the 2019 team didn’t do as well. The starters were more of a problem than the bullpen that year…

A few more facts, 2019 bullpen: 665 IP, 4.14 FIP/4.40 ERA, 10.5K/9, 5.6 fWAR 2018 bullpen: 561 IP, 3.90 FIP/3.72 ERA, 9.6K/9, 4.1 fWAR “Spin” is looking at saves and blown saves and pretending it measures bullpen performance…

The bullpen actually pitched better in 2019, considering they were needed for about 100 more innings. The big problem with the 2019 Sox was the rotation, with Sale, Price, Porcello and Eovaldi all pitching much worse than they did in the previous season for various reasons…

I think most people think of 2013 as a clear outlier in the Cherington years, which are most often described as “three last place finishes in 4 years,” are they not? If nothing else, that marginalizes his one title. The entire point was Henry clearly didn’t like paying the top dollar for a 90 win team. And the East was getting better, and his expensive Sox team probably wasn’t as good as the 2018 team lead us to believe. And that was a big part of why DD was dismissed. And not solely because of 2019. He wanted a cheaper winner, which he didn’t think he would get from DD, whose history of success is supported with large financial commitments, even in Miami. Or we could ignore all that and go with your theory, which was what again? Yes I did my math wrong. But if you include 2018, the standard deviation for his 4 years was 10 wins, which is a large variance and why it looks like the outlier over 2019. The standard deviation without 2018 is only 5.15. The point is his run was less stable than many want to believe, especially for that money. 90 wins was good enough for a WSC in 2023. But in 2021, 90 wins puts you fifth in the AL East, the division we need to get out of to get into the playoffs…