S5Dewey

I keep hearing more and more evidence that makes me think that dWAR is a bogus stat.

Can I agree with your assessment and at the same time say that Castillo's and Sandoval's contracts are inconsequential within this discussion? I'd have been all over Kimbrel for $10M this year, and worry about next year next year. If he had another good year and the Sox want to reset he might be able to be traded.

This doesn't look like a bad contract for Kimbrel. In exchange for holding out he got two additional years. It's not the five or six additional years he was hoping for but it's a fair contract. He'll be 34 early in the first year of his next contract so his big payday years are probably over. He'll have made about $100M over 11 years of playing baseball.

3 years, 45M. The season is 1/3 over so 10M this year? Or is he going to get paid for the time he missed? Yeah, I'd have been very interested in that.

That's what's frustrating to me about JBJ's dry spells. It seems all he needs to do to be successful is go to LF more, so why doesn't he do it, dammit!!

Absolutely. Always more pressure playing for a winning team. Anyone can play with a bunch of losers.

But... players with a lower OBP are kept off base more than 60% of the time. I like my guys on base.

Doesn't this imply that the leadoff hitter and #2 guy have a low OBP? Who manages that way?? I sure didn't!

Not really pertinent to MLB umps, but I thought this was worth sharing. It was written by a HS ump who was working a tournament recently. From behind my mask, I can observe quirks and eccentricities that make baseball and the people who play it so interesting. This weekend’s games involved teams from three different states, so I got a glimpse of the subtle ways the game is played differently in each state, along with some unique personal and collective rituals. The members of one team would stop and pat the top of their heads twice with their throwing hands whenever the top of the other team’s order came up to bat. That was charming and innocuous compared to the “rally zipper” ritual adopted by a team in a different game. Most casual baseball fans are probably familiar with the “rally cap” scenario in which players on a team that’s trailing turn their caps inside out or backward in an effort to change their luck. In the rally zipper scenario, the team was leading by five runs but decided that to clinch the victory, the players would all unzip their flies as they took the field for the last inning. Teenage boys will be teenage boys. They promptly gave up eight runs and lost. Until they started frittering away the lead, their coach seemed all in on the concept. By the time they started rethinking it, the proverbial cart was out of the barn. As an umpire, I did briefly wonder if I should intervene. But while the baseball rule book is very clear on what constitutes an infield fly, it does not expressly address the question of whether flies should be zipped. I suppose the situation might have bumped up against the “making a travesty of the game” dictum, but the level of play during the previous six innings had already firmly established that we had all been participating in a travesty long before the floodgates opened. And BTW, I like the idea of players patting the top of their heads when the leadoff hitter comes to bat. I shows that they're in the game and warns everyone else on the team that the (allegedly) best hitters on the team are coming to bat.

Without analysis, it would appear to me that the #3 hitter has a better chance of getting up with someone on base than does the #2 hitter. Now, if you want to swap the #2 & #3 hitter that's fine as long as the (previous) #3 has a better OBP than the previous #2. But then you're back where you started from with your best OBP people up before the #3 hitter. Lengthy analysis aside, I'm willing to sacrifice a little OBP in my #3 guy in exchange for a better SLG. In short, put the guys who are on base a lot up first, then follow them with the guys with the best OPS. Rocket science?

The WC is nothing more than a MLB manufactured gimmick to keep fans involved in their team. And of course I know about the Sox record in the playoffs when going in as the Wild Card team. And I still think it's a gimmick. What they should do is do away with the Central Division and have two divisions in each league, East & West. The top four teams in each division make the playoffs, 1 vs. 4 & 2 vs.3 in three game series. Then the winners play in a 5 game series, and the WS is best of 7. Doing away with interleague games wouldn't break my heart either. It's just another MLB gimmick as well as giving some teams a distinct advantage in W/L records because it affects the strength of their schedule. JMO!!

He can't help it. He's a Yankees fan and it's inbred. He reminds of of a bumper sticker I once saw: "I don't dislike like the Yankees. It's their obnoxious fans that I hate". But I will admit that there have been a few Yankees players I developed an intense dislike for without even meeting them. To paraprhase Mr. Subliminal "One of them is still playingBrettGardner". You figure out who.

IMO we agree on more than either of us wants to admit.

Realizing that Free Agents care only about how much money they're going to get and don't care about the ramifications of their salaries on the team, it'll be interesting to see what Kimbrel signs for. He's already turned down the $18M QA from the Sox. Let's see what he'll sign for in a multi-year contract.

I never have been a fan of Fernando Rodney and his theatrics. As a fan I have to draw the line someplace and that's where. However, I do think it's time DD made a move someplace and signed someone who'll help this team. It's either that or admit that their strategy of 'standing pat' during the off season was a failure and throw in the towel for 2019.

Exactly right. The FO has been years building this team. This is a team that won 108 games just last year. To think that blowing it up is going to make things better in 2020-2022 is frankly, asinine. It's easy to say "blow up this team" in June of 2019 but what are these same posters going to say in June of 2020 when the Sox are cellar dewellers, "Well, at least John Henry is saving money"? No thanks. I'll put up with the struggles and take the longer view. There's too much baseball talent here to piss it away over a poor start lasting two months.

Equally important, is there any empirical evidence that he's doing it incorrectly OR correctly?

As evidence of that, it seems to be a widely accepted fact that the reason the Red Sox pitching staff got off to a slow start is because they didn't get enough work in ST. People want to take the fact that the Starting Five averaged 6 fewer IP in ST in 2019 than in 2018 and blame that on the slow start by our starters. I've been skeptical all along that 6 fewer IP (the average for our 5 starters) over the ~30 days of ST would cause our starters to be ineffective in their first 2-3 starts but I don't have any evidence to the contrary. Therefore I'm not willing to blame the slow start on the fewer IP without more evidence. In short, I'm not willing to allow correlation to determine causation. But I seem to be the only one here who isn't. Jus' sayin'.

LOL Mal is right, but the sacrifice to the rotation would be too big to make it worthwhile.

That's cold.

Excellent suggestion. I'm in.

By all means. Civility sucks.

And I can't take any poster seriously when he nit-picks over the posts of a gentleman three times his age.

Sometimes my memory fails me and I'm certain that if this is one of those times I'll be corrected on it posthaste, but... As I remember the post-season much of the success of our bullpen was because our starters did a lot of bullpen duty. Bringing in Evoldi, Price, Sale and Porcillo for short BP stints can work well for a short series at the end of a season but it's not a sustainable way to manage a pitching staff.

What??? Did someone shoot the Easter Bunny?