S5Dewey

The bad news for the Yankees is that they're 4 1/2 back and everyone ahead of them is playing one another. That means that even if the Y's win they won't gain on at least one team that's ahead of them. Even if one team falters they still have two others to catch. The good news for the Yankees is that they have several games left with Tampa Bay so they should win a majority of them - but one never knows. Just look at what the Rays did to the Jays recently.

From my playing experience, ^^THIS!^^

Serious question: Does anyone KNOW what the Red Sox' position is on people doing this? I'm asking because I MAY want to do somewhat the same thing with ST season tickets for just 2017, but I don't want to jeapordize my ability to keep my tix for the future.

And if he continues to pitch like that, what do we do about a closer? There is more than one of us here who believe that Kimbrel has no idea where the ball is going once he lets go of it, while if Koji comes around he's an out machine. Kimbrel can't pitch well (?) in anything other than a save situation so does he have any value to the team if Koji has one more rabbit in his hat? And another wrinkle, which again is nothing more than a question: If JF decides Koji has earned the closer's role in a week or two what does that do to Kimbrel's ability to get people out as a closer if Koji falters in October?

Ok. I get that there are qualified people ranking every play that's made and translating that into numbers for us. But here's my problem with it - and I'm saying this with a semi-straight face: What these trained observers are doing is using statistics to tell us what to expect from a player based on their prior performance, and apparently some people think it's very close to dead-nuts on. So at what point do we not even bother to play the games? Let's just plug all the data for each team into the computer and it will tell us who wins. For me all of this uber-information is sucking all the fun out of the game. It's a game and it's made to be played by people. Instead, as Bill James' character said in one episode of The Simpsons, "I've made baseball about as much fun as doing your taxes".

I think the biggest rush is holding all that money, but at the same time holding the trophy does have a certain cache to it that can't be equaled any other way.

How quickly things change in Major League Baseball!

Grrr.. and just when i was going to walk away from my computer this morning I see THIS! One of my pet peeves! While I agree that JH probably DOES have the money, it's a matter of whether he wants to spend it, and not spending it can certainly be justified. For us baseball is fun, but for JH it's foremost a business. I have no information about the inner workings of the finances of a baseball team but in this day and age I'd BET that the Red Sox bean counters know how much money making the playoffs is worth as well as how much money every win IN the playoffs is worth to the team. And at the end of the day for JH and the other owners it's all about the money. While I'd like it if they did this, I can't fault them for not drawing from one business to support another, especially when that "other" one falls somewhere between a business and a hobby. From a business perspective I also can't fault JH for 'taking the money and running' rather than pour more money into a team that's already making money... if they are. Professional sports franchises are an "odd duck" in that nearly all of them are privately owned and therefore the fans have no idea how much money the franchises make or lose. We can only speculate, but based on what I see at the parks combined with the tv rights and all the advertising and when I play that against the contracts that are being given out it appears that the Red Sox are hemorrhaging money. Whether or not JH and his bean counters think it's prudent to spend more money in an effort to make more money is something only JH can decide.

Thanks. Great reply, especially in the first four paragraphs, which I've snipped. Being a disciple of defense, I'm not sure I'd refer to outfield assists as a parlor trick. The assist itself is nice but in the bigger picture the assist impacts situations later in that game and in later games. Does JBJ get 'extra credit" in calculating WAR when a player doesn't score from 2B or go from 1st to 3rd on an OF hit three games 'down the road'? IMHO we're getting too wrapped up in trying to quantify everything, to the point where we're 1) taking away from the enjoyment of the game (not to be confused with the enjoyment of analyzing the game, post-game), and 2) we're getting so many numbers thrown at us that many of them serve to only muddy the waters. But... JMO!

The issue is not whether WAR grossly underrates or overrates a player. My gripe with it is that when two sites try to calculate the same thing and get different results it brings the entire process into question. And the issue isn't on the offensive side. Anyone with a calculator and a rudimentary knowledge of baseball can calculate BA, OBP, SLG, OPS, etc. The error is entirely on the defensive side of the WAR equation, which magnifies the error.

I agree completely with this, point by point. One of the biggest differences between AA (I was going to say AAA but it doesn't apply) is the quality of the pitching. There's a BIG difference between AA and MLB pitching and there's going to be an adjustment period when pitchers figure him out and he learns how to hit ML pitching. Were I a GM of an opposing team I'd be quaking in my boots looking at what the Sox will be able to put on the field in the immediate future. Especially now that the pitching staff is gelling. And WE (that includes you, mal) are going to be around to watch it. You ain't getting out of this until the Sox win at least one more WS! However, as good as this team looks to be in the future I can't help but think how much better they could be if they didn't have those two contracts in Pawtucket hanging around their necks. If they had that kind of money to spend on pitching they'd be SCARY good.

I'm not talking about "the yips". I'm talking about things like ADHD and things more serious than that. Things that affect concentration. I've often wondered (with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to back this up) whether certain players get a little 'help' from psychotropic drugs provided by the FO as needed.

My biggest problem with defensive stats is that we like to use them to make a case, but we ignore them in favor of offensive stats when it suits us. IMO that's mostly because deep down we know that defensive stats aren't as accurate as the offensive ones. When most people talk about a player they talk about his offense. His slash line. And defense barely gets mentioned. Even in the case of JBJ, when he was struggling to stay above the Mendoza line, very few of US were talking about how much of his stellar defense offset his offensive shortcomings. I see from Moon's post that JBJ is 6th in UZR. The fact aside that I want to see five guys in MLB who have better range than JBJ, that's ONLY UZR that's being talked about and JBJ leads the league in OF assists. Doesn't that move him up some on the chart? When we can put both offense and defense on a scale of, say, 1-100 and say that JBJ has an offensive rating of 85 and a defensive rating of 91 - and start talking about players whose defense is better than their offense like it matters (because it does!) I'll be a little more willing to consider defensive stats. And please don't talk to me about WAR. Have you even seen the "formula" for WAR? It reminds me of a 6'7" pitcher with control problems. He has a big motion and there's a lot that can go wrong in there, and often times when there are a lot of different things that can go wrong something often does. I believe in KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. When two sites can determine a player's WAR and even THEY don't agree, how are we supposed to have any faith in it?

Yeah. I knew a woman like that once. I've always liked Clay because his upside is huge. I've always thought that his problems are from the neck up rather than mechanical, which I've seen as a good thing for a patient team. I like your best-case scenario and IMO it's very realistic, all except the part about trading him at the deadline next year. If he's pitching well in July of '17 we're going to want him around, and if he's not pitching well no GM is going to take on his contract for a stretch run. But that option is looking better all the time.

I agree, but let's not sugar-coat that thing. Kimbrel gave up a walk and then a double. IMO that game was over without the error. All Holt did was speed up the process.

And who would have thought a month ago that anyone would have been saying THAT early in September?!

I agree that it was the right call. As Bill James has said, sometimes a manager should bring in his closer to face the best hitters regardless of the inning. However, I believe my frustration with Mr. Kimbrel has been documented elsewhere in this forum. (I don't trust the guy!! - but I didn't see a better option sitting in the bullpen either).

The difference of course is in identifying "his best relievers" in 2016.

I know this sounds strange, but having lived through the Mike Napoli years of K's there were times when, with a runner on 1st, I was actually GLAD to see him K as opposed to hitting into a DP. The same with Papi on occasion. And I know the two I mentioned are notoriously slow as opposed to Moncada who has very good 'wheels', but sometimes a K isn't the worst thing a player can do.

Yes. And they wouldn't be allowed to wear the legs of their pants down at their ankles.

...but while we're on that topic... :D This team has lost FOUR Freakin' games on "walk-off errors"! I'll admit to being old school and putting a lot of emphasis on defense. That's why I find that statistic (FOUR GAMES!!??) to be totally unacceptable. Especially when an error is generally considered to be a misplay on a ball that is a routine play. Making a throwing error in a situation like that is what we on BDC referred to as 'chocking', which is the polar opposite of being 'clutch' - if clutch even exists.

Yeah. We kinda beat it to death over there too. But I think it's inevitable that the topic will come up occasionally when we start talking about RISP. It's all good.

Yep. I agree it does seem that way. I'm torn on this topic. I remember reading that even Bill James has said that there's no such thing as "clutch hitting" (unless your name is David Ortiz). It's simply a matter of, say, a person who's hitting .300 getting one of his three hits in ten in a situation with people on base. A coincidence. OTOH, wouldn't one think that some Red Sox players would occasionally get those hits late in the game with people on base? Although I have no major league experience it's been my amateur experience that some players are more liable than others to get hits in big situations, though.

Bill James wrote in one of his earlier Baseball Abstracts that most one run games are won/lost by luck. A few inches here or there, a slip, a misstep is often the difference between winning and losing a one-run game. He also said that it only follows logic that over a long stretch of time a team's record in one-run games will be about 50-50. A good example of that would be the O's of a couple of years ago when they won an unusually high number of one-run games and then in the next year couldn't win one of their lives depended on it. We're 16-19 now. We need to get a few breaks and get back to 'even' again. That'll solve a lot of the stretch problems. But let's hope things don't wait until next year to even out. Of course if someone wanted to raise the point that this team has lost FOUR one-run games due to "walk-off errors" all you'd hear from me would be crickets.