Hugh2

People can speculate all they want but the reality is we have zero ideal what this team would look like if Ben C. never left. Here is some food for thought. Despite his reputation, there was once a time when DD hoarded prospects and built up a great system. If the Sox had zero farm system and were still a last place team I suspect DD would take a completely different approach and would have held onto all the....oh well I guess we wouldn't have any chips. After 2013 the team completely fell apart, for all we know, Ben C. could have changed gears and have been a wheeler and dealer himself. I'm not saying I think he would have only that we have a small window to really judge him. Look at what Theo did when he want to Chicago, he took a different approach his first few years as G.M. there than he had here in Boston.

I think some of it has to do with people having little ideal what they are looking at and also their quench for blood. You watch an MMA match today and everyone in the crowd boos when the fight goes to the ground they want to see guys bang. It's like in baseball when chicks only dig the long ball. However there are many of us dedicated fans who can just as well get excitement out of a pitching duel and watching great defense. In my opinion wrestling is one of the great sports, but it just isn't sexy enough for today.

Personally, I think all combative sports are the toughest and it's really not a debate. They are both 100% anaerobic and aerobic with the the potential to cause physical harm. I've played just about every sport in my life but the ones I excelled the most at were wrestling and boxing. I wrestled for 8 years, and boxed/thai boxed for 15. I even fought a few pro-amueter fights in NYC in my lifetime. If you've never boxed or wrestled before just try imagining sprinting up a steep hill as fast as you can for 3 straight minutes.....now imagine someone slamming you into the ground and punching you in the face at the same time. Wrestling is considered a team sport, in the same sense that baseball is but in reality it's the collection of individual performances. Although I do think there is more of team aspect to baseball because you do need to work together as a team by being in place in the field and pitchers and catchers require a lot of coperation with each other too.

Devers is in a different class than Longhi, there's a reason he's a top prospect and Longhi,is not. I would however agree that Longhi might be a guy who is getting overlooked and perhaps is a bit under rated.

Well if that's true and is any indication of what we can expect from Pomeranz then that makes the trade for him look even worse.

The effect that ball park factors and the lack of a DH have are often overblown. They are very real, but not as significant as we often like to believe. The Sox didn't trade a kid who was argued by some as the best pitching prospect in baseball for a guy who they didn't believe could be a starter. Someone is going to have to be the odd man out and it will be unfair no matter who it is so we all have a good argument for these guys but I don't think Pomeranz is going to be the odd man out, at least not on opening day.

You're right we don't really have a lot of information to draw any type of conclusions. We only have what they have and it's small enough to just be random but by going by hist first month in full season ball so far he's put up a .504 and a .687 OPS. Could mean nothing, could be getting use to the cold weather state side, could be a slow starter....Even if he is some of the best players are notoriously slow starters.

I think they traded Moncada because he had a lot more value than Devers and if the Sox have some faith in Pablo to come back strong for a year or two the timeline matches up much better. I do think he's ready sometime in the by mid 2018 to mid 2019 though.

That would be nice but I think 2019 is more realistic. Devers has been a one level a year type guy who has historically started slow too. Not that he's not capable of making a jump in development. I think we see him in 2018 but not as an everyday regular. My biggest concern is Devers isn't ready, and Pablo is fat again in 2018

I take my first cup with cream an sugar in the morning but every additional cup is black. Speaking of which....

The problem is who replaces him? We traded Moncada and there's no SS in the system if you wanted to slide Bogaerts over. I have a lot of faith in Devers but I don't think we can pencil him in until 2019. I think the Sox don't necessarily like it but I think the like it more than a lot of us have because they've comited themselves to Pablo for a good two years.

JBJs turnaround was almost unprecedented and definitely an extreme case. Although in less extreme cases prospects follow his path all the time. I do think he's going to be a famine and feast type hitter however.

They've ran the numbers for basketball in some of the same studies with the same results. You see the same thing in Finance, there's always a few fund managers who outperform the market for several years. Sometimes you can find their book in Barnes and Noble but eventually unless you're Bill Miller you succumb to the law of averages.

The thing about baseball is you can find ancedotal evidence everywhere. There will always be examples to disprove what is otherwise generally correct. For example I can say there's good evidence that the more swing and miss in a players game the less value that player will have. Yet some players such as Chris Davis, Mark Trumbo and Kris Bryant seem to be just fine in spite.

I know I may come off as a dick sometimes but I mean well....sometimes. I hope everyone has a safe and happy new year!

https://priceonomics.com/can-an-athlete-be-streaky/ Maybe you don't have the same time I do to read. I'm in a house where no one speaks English right now so perhaps your New Years Eve is more involved but it's a great read when you get the chance. I feel some (in sports and life) are threatened by accepting they are largely victims of chance, but I find it empowering.

Randomness is the result of chance

Because results fluctuate, and it's a zero sum game where you're often facing an opponent of equal (or close to it) skill. Someone has to win/lose.

in other words performing optimally under normal conditions.

I think the cold hand is much more plausible than the hot hand. You can't make your eye sight better, brain faster, muscles stronger for some arbitrary period of time like you drank a potion in a video game. I do believe in the cold hand. I believe the randomness can get to you, and get in your head and cause you to press the issue. I also believe good athletes in the right state of mind can prevent and shorten these down turns. Baseball is mental, and sometimes winning that battle is just mainting focus while you let the other guy fall apart. But I also believe in the stats as well, but I also believe that the smaller a sample size the more deceiving the stat line. That 0-20 could entail 4-6 hard hit line drives right at someone and 1-3 amazing plays made against you. That 10-20 could entail 1-2 HR's against a guy was losing his stuff, an infield hit, a misplayed flyball, a weakly hit blooper turned double, and a soft liner that found a hole. In our innate thirst for pattern recognition I think we look at the small sample size and read into it too much. Again, I acknowledge the mental side of the game, but the long term statistics prove at the very least we often over estimate the hot/cool hand. While a stat guy at heart, I also believe incorporating the good old eye test at times too. If a guy is 0-20 with 10 k's and 10 weakly hit balls. I'd consider giving him a day off or dropping him in the order. But if 10 of those outs were scortching hot liners, and a a robbed home run ill bat that guy 3rd if it's Mookie, even if it's the bottom of the 9th and we're down 3-2 with two outs.

Nope, I believe in randomness and I believe in skill as well.

Actually they can often do just that.

I can see schrodingers curve is alive and well.

As someone who has studied statistics vastly in academia I always love and appreciate bits and pieces like this. Bill James is a genius, and it's a shame his biggest detractors are often those who take the least amount of time to understand the work. I always get a kick how people think their feelings and anecdotal stories can trump countless lines from years worth of data.

Truly there are many who are "fooled by randomness"