S5Dewey

Pretty obviously I haven't seen Kopech pitch (have you? ) but here's something I learned from watching Kimbrel this year. It's not how many K's a pitcher has, it's whether he can find the strike zone with his pitches. In much of 2016 Kimbrel was able to get away with not finding the zone because he was a reliever and hitters didn't get a good chance to look at his pitches. If Kopech is going to be that TOTR pitcher that Plescoff says he can be he needs to be able to throw his heat for strikes or he's going to just be another Henry Owens. I'm not saying that Kopech can't find the zone, I'm just saying that those 12/1 and 86/33 K/BB ratio may be misleading, especially when a respected scout says that he needs to work on his command.

I don't see this whole thing being a problem. IMO either Swihart or Vazquez will be included as a part of a trade by March.

Got it. Thanks. And I learned something I wasn't aware of, too. The QO for 2017 is $17.2M. Do we have anyone receiving a QO this year?

Speaking of this, would someone refresh my memory? Isn't there a 'quiet time' immediately after the WS when players can't be signed? Or does that just apply to players receiving QO's? And what's the timetable on QO's? I know I could look it up but I'm feeling lazy. :-)

Ughhh. This is MYbad (see what I did there? ) I somehow got the idea that it was going to cost us $2M to get rid of Abad. OOps. thanks for the correction.

Here's how to add a quick ~$3M to our bottom line. 1) Cut ties with Fernando Abad (a/k/a Fernando Adreadful). Do we really need to sign a guy who has an ERA of >6.00? 2) Getting rid of Holaday will save us another $900,000. We have Leon, Vazquez and Swihart coming back and of the four Holaday is the most expendable. And don't we still have Butler in AAA as our super-emergency catcher? In fact, if I were making the decision I'd blow the entire $3M+ and sign Hanigan rather than pay Holiday $900,000.

Umm...yeah...about 3B now... While I agree that even with the eye test 3B is the Sox weakest position, but some position has to be. And as Moon has pointed out, much of that wasn't due to Shaw's contribution. It was those other clowns who played there that dragged the position down. I see Shaw as probably not being a great solution but he is a decent solution - assuming of course that the real Travis Shaw wasn't the one who stood up during the last month of the season, requiring Holt to be our 3Bman during the playoffs. If that's who he is then we DO have a problem. BUT.. if Shaw can play his defense at 3B and put up an OPS of ~.750 I can live with that if it means improving our BP.

I have no objection to quantification. Baseball is made up of quantifications. I like things like OPS, ERA, BA, etc., etc. etc. They're just not the be-all, end-all. External factors can change what a player does. If a player is in the midst of a messy divorce or has sickness in the family it can affect their play, just as pressure from any other source (like the playoffs!) can. My specific issue regarding quantification is with WAR. WAR reminds me of a 6'10" pitcher with a big motion. There's a lot going on in that motion, so much in fact that when things go South on him it's hard to figure out where the problem is. It's the same with WAR. It's a huge multi-page calculation involving not only objective data but subjective data, and when it goes South it's hard to figure out where the problem is. The difference between my 6'10" pitcher and WAR is that it's easy to see when the pitcher isn't providing the results he should be. However, many people are so deeply invested in WAR they simply assume that since it takes so many variables into account, whatever values WAR is returning must be correct, and they preach that. Going back to my original comparison now between WAR and my 6'10" pitcher, there are too many possibilities for things to go South in both of them for my comfort level.

I have to say... there is evidence..... However... and this is what I've said a couple of times before, Price is a guy who can get you there. I expect 15-20 wins from him in each of the next six (gulp!) years. He just needs to be accompanied by a true Ace. Someone you can give the ball to and be confident of a win in the playoffs. Kinda like Buch. Buch is a guy who's going to give us a good 1/2 year. We just need someone to give us the other 1/2.

In fact, as exasperating as Owens has been, I'm nowhere near giving up on him. He's one of those big, rangy left-handers who has a lot going on in his motion. Hence, there's a lot that can go wrong. He just needs to harness it, and if someone is going to be able to do it I'd rather it be us than someone else. I feel the somewhat the same way about Johnson. Great stuff, but his emotional issues are holding him back. Could he be the next Zach Grinke? I'm not 'married to' either one of those guys. They could go in a trade and I wouldn't object, but I wouldn't DFA them or anything stupid like that. (and I wasn't accusing anyone of wanting to DFA them... I'm just sayin'.)

OK.... Q. What was the trade value of Andrew Miller when he was with the Marlins in 2010? A. The Sox traded LHP Dustin Richardson for him. Richardson was 25 at the time with an ERA of 3.31 with a WHIP of just over 2.00 in 29 appearances. The Sox bought low on Miller, and Richardson has been out of baseball since 2010. Both Johnson and Owens have issues that might make a team take a flyer on them. Johnson's problems are between his ears -he has good stuff but has anxiety issues - and Owens, like Miller at the time, has trouble finding the strike zone. There is a market for these guys and I wouldn't trade either of them for a bag of balls, but they'd be good throw-ins to sweeten the pot to a team that wants to take a chance on them.

I'm sorry, but Mr. Cameron's opinion - and that's all it is, his opinion - sounds like it's coming from someone who's never played organized sports. Anyone who's does it knows that some people can play under the stress of having a championship on the line and some can't. However, we can't quantify who can and who can't until the game(s) are over, and even then we can attribute failure to "randomness" if we so choose to. I don't choose to because I know better. Stress and the mental/emotional aspects of the game play a HUGE part in a player's performance. There's a big difference between, for example, making a 6' putt for par during the middle of the summer and making that same putt when the Club Championship is on the line. Some people can harness their emotions and make that put for the Club Championship... and some can't. It's the same with baseball, and most especially the pitchers. There's an incredible amount of stress on a pitcher when he knows that every batter he pitches to is only one 'mistake pitch' away from hitting a HR. Some people 'step up' in that situation (Hello, Curt Schilling) and some don't. And it can't be quantified. To try to find a way to say that David Price = Curt Schilling is flying in the face of the facts. I'm not one to beat up on guys on my own team, but let's get real. Price has an ERA of 5.50 in 15 post season games while Schilling has an ERA of 2.20 in 19 post season games, and while these sample sizes are smaller at the same time they were games played under the same pressure. Some can handle the pressure, some can't. The part of Mr Cameron's quote that has the highest garbage quotient is the last sentence, "It’s a three week tournament on a level playing field between teams that are fairly evenly matched up, and one where a single bounce here or there can change the entire outcome." It's not as simple as that. The two teams he speaks of may be fairly evenly matched up in terms of raw talent or record, but if so the team with the stronger emotional make-up will usually win. Bill James (again) has said that most one-run games are decided by luck. A bounce here or a ball hit six inches one way or the other can decide a one run game. The implication there is that games that are decided by more than one run are decided by other things, things like talent and emotional makeup. Anyone who's played sports knows it.

I am too. All the statistics say he should have! If you think there's not something going on there then you have a lot more confidence in coincidences than I do.

Well, if what you're saying is that a winning streak or a losing streak can end anytime, obviously I'd agree with you. If that weren't the way some teams would never win and some would never lose. Their streaks would go on forever. However, speaking as someone who's played and coached sports all his life I know for sure that confidence has a lot to do with wins and losses. All things being equal, a team whose players have confidence will be more successful than a team whose players don't have confidence. There's an old saying that applies in baseball as well as in life. "If you don't think you're going to be successful you're not going to have much trouble being right". A good portion of any sport is mental and the mental aspect can't be quantified. I realize that many people wrongly assume that if something can't be quantified then it isn't true but anyone who's played any sport, whether it be baseball, basketball, golf, or any sport, knows how important the mental aspect of any sport is. And a lot of the mental aspect of a sport relates to wins, losses. winning streaks and losing streaks.

No problem. I wasn't aware that the QO's were tied into the CBA. Every day that I don't learn something is a wasted day.

It started many years ago with Bill James. James is the first person I can remember who said that a manager should use his "closer", i.e. his best pitcher in a high leverage situation, in the highest leverage situations regardless of the inning. Unfortunately since it was such a novel idea that nobody started doing it for several years. IMO that may be because managers are always concerned about losing their jobs by being second-guessed if something they do doesn't work. Now Tito has the personnel to do it and make it work. Something that still rankles me is that when the Sox got Andrew Miller he was always seen as someone with electric stuff who couldn't find the plate. Then under the tutelage of John Farrell et. al. Miller has become what he is now, and we don't have him!

Let's roll back to 2004. The Red Sox come from a 3-0 deficit to beat the Yankees, then beat St. Lous 4 games to 0. I've always thought that the Cards were a better team than they showed in that series but had the misfortune to step in front of a rolling freight train. Now let's go forward three years. The Sox come back from being behind the Guardians 3-0, then sweep 4 straight from the Angels, then take four straight games from the then-hot Rockies. Two rolling freight trains collided, but the Rockies may have been suffering from the same malady that the Sox were suffering from this year, being unable to sustain a long winning streak. Sometimes it's hard to stop one of those trains!

Let's wait until the LT threshold has been established before we start making those predictions. The fact that it hasn't gone up in the past three years may mean that it's going to be at that level in 2017, or it may mean that it's time for a reset. There's speculation that it may be reset to ~$210M. It went up every year from 2003 through 2010, then it went up again in 2011 and again in 2014 to where it's stayed for three years. It's due for a reset and if/when it gets reset the Sox may be able to get under it.

On the professional level, yes.

My thoughts, FWIW: Sign someone not named Encarnacion for the DH (unless EE can be had for a reasonable price, which I see as unlikely). We can't replace Papi but we can get some power help for the linup, which is always a good thing. Maybe "EE lite" a/k/a Bautista? He'll probably be cheaper and for fewer years. By all means sign Koji. He's Plan B in case Kimbrel continues to pitch like he has no control over where the ball is going once he lets go of it. If we end up needing a Plan C, at least we had a Plan B. Ideally that power hitting DH I mentioned above should be capable of playing 3B. (And I know, that eliminates Bautista. But I said this was ideally). Maybe a converted 3Bman. This guy could be our Plan E if things don't work out with The Fat Man and Plans B, C, & D. Or he could be the bridge between a failing Fat Man and Moncada with a DH by committee during that time. Then if Moncada doesn't work out and we have to go shopping again we'll have the option of looking for either a DH or a 3Bman.

You have to like a man with a sense of humor. :D

While I of course agree that the ultimate goal is to win a championship I wouldn't call four straight 1st place finishes a failure either. Only one team is going to win the WS each year and as we've said here many times, the playoffs are a crapshoot. I don't break things down into "success" or "failure" based on whether or not a team wins the WS. For me, the 2016 season was a success of sorts with the Sox finishing first in their division. The season would have been more of a success had the Sox advanced in the playoffs but winning their division after two last place finishes makes me happy. As they say, you have to creep before you can walk. The only "failure" here is the Tiger's inability to build a strong farm system to replace the players who 'age out' or opt for Free Agency. Building a farm system seems to have been something that happened while Theo and Ben were here but it's difficult to say if it was their doing or the doing of the scouting system. The jury is still out on whether or not the Sox continue to build their farm(s) under DD.

Troublemaker!!

I'm not sure now if this is another of your weak attempts at humor. I'll say this whether it is or not - This is just another reason I'm glad you're not sitting behind DD's desk.

I will give you that he's a slightly above average player NOW, but at the time he was a Mercedes. Like I said, runner up ROY SS batting >.300 with several years of control remaining. Who is there on the Sox that you wouldn't trade for that player tomorrow? But my points remain that having Peavy wasn't the tipping point for the Sox winning the WS, and the Sox overpaid for a formerly great player on the downside of his career. Edited afterthought: And it's still MO that the Sox would have been a better team in 2016 with Iggy and Xbo in the IF and Sandoval's money spent on pitching.