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8/29 ML Gameday Thread: Barnes debuts for the PawSox
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Post by widewordofsport on Aug 29, 2013 20:31:05 GMT -5
Son born in January... How soon can I road trip to see that Greenville rotation. Cant wait.
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Post by iakovos11 on Aug 29, 2013 20:44:17 GMT -5
Great pitching tonight - Solid outings from Barnes & Luis Diaz. Also Keith Couch. And Stank and Alcantara as well.
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Post by johnsilver52 on Aug 29, 2013 20:55:05 GMT -5
I still blame Bobby V for breaking bard. This will be the last season. Funny how Valentine is blamed for every fault and not Francona for any warts. It's like someone else I know of who blames his predecessor for everything that went wrong. One thing many can't blame Valentine for was his knowledge of BP use and he wasn't even a former pitcher. The issue with Bard has been hashed over hundreds (if not thousands) of times. I have brought it up on another site also months ago.. Bard showed immediate drop in velocity when ST started and it never improved. He should have been yanked right there and then and back to the BP, even if it meant starting the season at Pawtucket to once again get him reaclimated to the relief role. Franklin Morales, most of you remember, was also starting that same spring and having -0- issues reverting back to the starting role. He was "humping" it up to 95-97 early on even and his curve was doing fine, even bringing his change back from the recycle bin. Why go forward with a 1 pitch pitcher like Bard, 96-8FB with a loopy slider that only works because batters are looking for heat? It had to be Bard's insistence, or "up top" not Valelntine.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Aug 29, 2013 21:22:34 GMT -5
I will repeat this to the ends of the earth, but Bard was starting to break in September of 2011. Starting probably just sped things up.
Salem clinched a playoff spot, PawSox magic # is now 1 to clinch IL North. Portland got a win to eliminate NH (which they didn't really need), and now needs to sweep Trenton to make the playoffs.
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Post by taftreign on Aug 29, 2013 21:28:01 GMT -5
Clearly Barnes wasn't being challenged enough at Portland and needed a higher level of competition!
Perhaps its just my perception but I don't remember a year that has seen the team be more aggressive in promoting prospects. Not only have numerous players advanced but many seem to have handled the transitions well. Could simply be a case of determining which players will be added to or remain on the 40, determining which will be trade bait, assessing which positions will need addressed in the off season free agency market vs filled by the farm system, or simply a reflection of the depth in the system "pushing" other players up to the next level to prevent holding players back. It has been a very promising year on the Red Sox farm. Great anticipation for next year.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Aug 29, 2013 21:30:51 GMT -5
Perhaps its just my perception but I don't remember a year that has seen the team be more aggressive in promoting prospects. Not only have numerous players advanced but many seem to have handled the transitions well. Could simply be a case of determining which players will be added to or remain on the 40, determining which will be trade bait, assessing which positions will need addressed in the off season free agency market vs filled by the farm system, or simply a reflection of the depth in the system "pushing" other players up to the next level to prevent holding players back. It has been a very promising year on the Red Sox farm. Great anticipation for next year. I would say that it has indeed been your perception alone. Pretty typical year, imo, in terms of promotions. (Admittedly, that's without crunching any numbers.) What has been atypical is the years that the players are having, and thus the promotions are more exciting. Barnes' promotion, for example, reminds me a lot of the promotions of Brentz and Hazelbaker at this time last year. I'd say the other atypical thing is that there has been opportunity for homegrown players in Boston during a pennant race that hasn't been there the past few years, hence the "double promotions" for guys like Workman, Britton, and Bogaerts.
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Post by gregblossersbelly on Aug 29, 2013 22:06:41 GMT -5
Buttey is old and has to move on and put up/shut up. Are you serious? Because he's a year older than Callahan he's considered old? We're not going to quibble about months. Your normal 18 year old goes to college for 3 years, barely pitches his draft year. And, hits Greenville his 22 year old season. A la; Brian Johnson, Pat Light and Matt Barnes. Why is he considered old? He's actually one year ahead of the normal college prospect when he hits Greenville as an ancient 21 year old next spring.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Aug 29, 2013 22:34:34 GMT -5
Entering 8/30 (Teams in BoldItalics have clinched a playoff spot. Teams in Bold would make playoffs if season ended today.)
Pawtucket, 77-62, 4 games remaining: 2 vs. Syracuse, 2 @ Lehigh Valley Magic # is 1 IL North: 1st place, 3.5 GA of Rochester (IL Wild Card: 3.0 GA of Norfolk)
Portland, 67-70, 5 games remaining: 5 vs. Trenton Trenton is still playing in extra innings right now, but will either be up 4 or 5 games, so Sea Dogs need to sweep the series either way. That simple
Salem, 39-27 2nd half, 72-64 overall, 4 games remaining, clinched Southern Division title
Lowell, 38-29, 6 games remaining: 1 @ Connecticut, 2 vs. Tri-City, 3 @ Aberdeen Won and both Tri-City and Jamestown were swept in doubleheaders, so they picked up 1.5 games. Suddenly right in the thick of it. NYPL Stedler: 2nd place, 1.5 GB of Tri-City NYPL Wild Card: 2nd place, 2.0 GB of Jamestown
GCL Red Sox, 35-25, clinched GCL South #3 Red Sox will face #2 seed Yankees2 on Friday in Tampa. First round is a one-game playoff. Finals are best-of-three. Other game is #4 Pirates at #1 Nationals.
DSL Red Sox, Clinched 1st place, Boca Chica NW Defeated Giants, 2-0, in first round. Got crushed in opener w/ Rangers.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 30, 2013 2:20:17 GMT -5
The issue with Bard has been hashed over hundreds (if not thousands) of times. I have brought it up on another site also months ago.. Bard showed immediate drop in velocity when ST started and it never improved. He should have been yanked right there and then and back to the BP, even if it meant starting the season at Pawtucket to once again get him reaclimated to the relief role. Complete and utter bullshit. (Except for the part about it being hashed over endlessly. Here's the version with actual facts.) Plenty of guys don't have their maximum velocity early in ST. In Bard's first start in MLB, he averaged 95, maxed at 99, and got an outrageous 17 swings and misses. If you watched that game intelligently, you realized that absurdly bad BABIP luck was the only thing preventing it from being a completely dominant performance. And there have always been # 2 and #3 starters in MLB with Bard's repertoire, which is to say, three pitches: plus fastball and slider (or curve) and so-so, show-me change. In fact, once you exclude aces (who require four pitches, and often four good ones), starters with just three pitches are, as a group, significantly better than guys with four or more, which is to say that most of them are #2 and #3 types and very few are back-of-rotation guys. That indicates a selection bias against them, so the Sox were being intelligently bold here. Converting starters to relief has worked more often than not, and when the Sox did so with Bard they had every reason to believe it would work. In Bard's second start, he averaged 93, maxed 97, and got 13 swings and misses. He walked 7 in that game, but gave up only 1 R in 6.2. Start 3, 11 days later, he averaged 94, maxed 97, got 11 swings and misses, and had a 7 6 3 2 1 6 line. At this point, the end of April, he had a 3.47 FIP. The drop of 2 mph, the one start where he was wild, and maybe the gradual decline in swings and misses -- these were probably red flags, but at the time they were easy to see as just random variation. In terms of results, the experiment was, so far, a resounding success. Start 4, he averaged 94, maxed just 96, got just 5 swings and misses and 1 K (after 6, 7, 6 previously), and it was all downhill from there. By the time he got to his last start before being shut down, in June (conveniently, like his first one, in Toronto, so that the pitch/fx comparison to his first start is particularly accurate) his FB was averaging 92.5 and maxing 94, and perhaps more importantly, had gone from 7.5" of rise to 1.7", and from -3.4" of run to -1.4". And his release point had dropped dramatically and was much less consistent. As an ex-grad student in psych, I can make no sense of a guy having Bard's April success and then losing 5 mph off his best FB and 73% of its movement for psychological reasons. His mechanics weren't obviously out of synch (and what would mess them up starting in May?), although his ability to repeat his delivery and hence his command were. This gradual loss in FB velocity, movement, and command, combined with the lower release point, looks for all the world like a guy who's hurt. We all saw Matt Clement and then John Lackey pitch through crippling injuries that they didn't even know they had (apparently because of high thresholds of pain), and in those cases the team may well have been guilty of ignoring their advanced medical data, or looking at it through rose-colored glasses. And I know that the club has sent at least one hurting pitcher out to pitch (apparently when they thought no further damage would result) while keeping this knowledge completely out of the media, even when said pitcher (whose shoulder was "killing him") got hammered in important games. Clearly, Bard's current complete loss of control does seem to be psychological, the fallout from the whole ordeal of 2012, and akin to the loss he suffered his first year in the minors. But even if it never comes out, I'll go to my grave believing he was pitching hurt in 2012. I believe the Sox were guilty, as they have been too often, of dropping the ball medically with Bard, and big-time at that. But the idea that the decision to convert him to the rotation was an inherently terrible one that was doomed to fail for psychological reasons, and that it ruined a great reliever (instead of merely hastening his decline), yada yada, is just nonsense and is absolutely contradicted by the facts. It worked beautifully for a month, but with red flags that suggested a possible injury, and then it gradually decayed and rotted.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 30, 2013 3:03:31 GMT -5
Dupe while editing ... so I'll instead say that it's exciting to see so many teams in playoff contention, and very much appreciate the info about it.
It bugs me that the post-season data, as far as I can tell, isn't readily available and/or will disappear once the playoffs are over (just like the splits of players who are promoted). MiLB could be a better job archiving all of that.
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Post by James Dunne on Aug 30, 2013 5:28:40 GMT -5
It bugs me that the post-season data, as far as I can tell, isn't readily available and/or will disappear once the playoffs are over (just like the splits of players who are promoted). MiLB could be a better job archiving all of that. Agree 100%. Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs have really stepped up their game the last couple years on the minor league stats though. B-Ref adding the point-and-click custom ranges is wonderful, even if it does often lead to a case of arbitrary-endpoint-itis.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 30, 2013 6:33:29 GMT -5
It bugs me that the post-season data, as far as I can tell, isn't readily available and/or will disappear once the playoffs are over (just like the splits of players who are promoted). MiLB could be a better job archiving all of that. Agree 100%. Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs have really stepped up their game the last couple years on the minor league stats though. B-Ref adding the point-and-click custom ranges is wonderful, even if it does often lead to a case of arbitrary-endpoint-itis. You're knocking my favorite disease! B-ref apparently has the data to implement just about everything that MinorLeagueSplits had, and then some. Hopefully Sean Foreman can roll out some additional numbers, perhaps over the winter. I'd love to see pitcher's splits by batting order positions, one of the coolest and most underrated splits around.
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Post by borisman on Aug 30, 2013 8:17:20 GMT -5
Does Cecchini have a sickness for getting on base or what? It's like he's a base junkie (no pun intended).
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Post by ibsmith85 on Aug 30, 2013 8:59:13 GMT -5
I know he is mostly irrelevant at this point (and rightfully so), but JC Linares just finished a monster month of August
.359/.412/.621/1.034 (103AB) 16XBH 19R 22RBI
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Post by widewordofsport on Aug 30, 2013 13:38:51 GMT -5
Buttey is old and has to move on and put up/shut up. Are you serious? Because he's a year older than Callahan he's considered old? We're not going to quibble about months. Your normal 18 year old goes to college for 3 years, barely pitches his draft year. And, hits Greenville his 22 year old season. A la; Brian Johnson, Pat Light and Matt Barnes. Why is he considered old? He's actually one year ahead of the normal college prospect when he hits Greenville as an ancient 21 year old next spring. I actually thought he was a 2011 pick, but you arent as right as you think you are. As a 19 year old, he has one fewer year before being R5D eligible. As in, he should be a year ahead of Callahan. And as far as your nonsensical drivel about comparing to college kids, high schoolers dont get 3 extra years before having to be added to the 40 man. So comparing him to people in his draft class, by saying he should be in Lowell that means you want him two years behind Johnson. Hardly ideal. Your problem is with me saying its time to put up or shut up next year. If he fails to put up in your scendario, he'd be a R5D eligiple SP after Geenville, or just a few Salem starts. If he cant start in Greenville next year, he's a RP. Which he might be anyway, but yuk saying its crazy to think he has to hit A ball next year basically forces his value low and keeps him from having enough time to realistically become a SP.
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Post by widewordofsport on Aug 30, 2013 13:40:32 GMT -5
But no. He's not that 'old'. But he's been slow to advance and shown very little to suggest he will end up as a future SP with a power arm, as had been suggested early on, and next year is time to take a big step forward if he wants to reach anywhere near his predraft ceiling.
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