SoxProspects News
|
|
|
|
Legal
Forum Ground Rules
The views expressed by the members of this Forum do not necessarily reflect the views of SoxProspects, LLC.
© 2003-2024 SoxProspects, LLC
|
|
|
|
|
Forum Home | Search | My Profile | Messages | Members | Help |
Welcome Guest. Please Login or Register.
|
Post by jclmontana on Sept 6, 2015 12:16:50 GMT -5
I know Margot is the top prospect most commonly sited as being available this off season, but is he really? As much as we love what we've seen from the Betts-Castillo-Bradley outfield, there are still some questions about Bradley and Castillo. And who do we have for depth after that? Margot is a guy that could be ready mid-season and be the depth the team needs should one of the top 3 get hurt or underperform. Unless he's part of a package for a premium pitcher, it may be worth it dEven if one sees Margot strictly as trade bait, holding onto him until next trade deadline might be worthwhile. If he repeats AA, he may be posed for for a big season and reclaim some lustre. I'm not denegrating his performance this year, but he could be a perfect July 31 deadline trade guy IF he has shiny traditional slash numbers. Or the team could really use him and not trade him away. The risk, of course, is that he gets off to a slow start or simply underperforms expectations. This will be an interesting test of DD's trading accumen. There is a lot at stake in terms of Margot's trade value. He could be one of the hottest commodities next year or a add-in only guy.
|
|
|
Post by larrycook on Sept 6, 2015 14:17:39 GMT -5
Lauber of the boston herald says if rameriez can not play first base dombrowski would probably trade him. Even if we do a bad contract for bad contract trade , is there a team that will take Rameriez?
|
|
|
Post by ray88h66 on Sept 6, 2015 14:23:20 GMT -5
Lauber of the boston herald says if rameriez can not play first base dombrowski would probably trade him. Even if we do a bad contract for bad contract trade , is there a team that will take Rameriez?
I don't know. Have to be an AL team willing to clog up the DH spot.
|
|
|
Post by Oregon Norm on Sept 6, 2015 14:26:35 GMT -5
Lauber of the boston herald says if rameriez can not play first base dombrowski would probably trade him. Even if we do a bad contract for bad contract trade , is there a team that will take Ramirez? Fix that for you. This has been discussed a few times on the board. The Sox would have to eat some salary and there would have to be other enticements probably prospects sent along with him.
|
|
|
Post by jimed14 on Sept 6, 2015 14:34:30 GMT -5
Lauber of the boston herald says if rameriez can not play first base dombrowski would probably trade him. Even if we do a bad contract for bad contract trade , is there a team that will take Ramirez? Fix that for you. This has been discussed a few times on the board. The Sox would have to eat some salary and there would have to be other enticements probably prospects sent along with him. He just traded Josh Hamilton without giving prospects up. It all depends on JH I guess.
|
|
|
Post by sarasoxer on Sept 6, 2015 21:12:45 GMT -5
Is Hanley at first more valuable than Pablo at third or at first. I don't like Hanley's affect and I don't like Pablo's indiscriminate swinging..which in the first instance has been has been a contributor to our malaise and secondly with Pablo has also contributed to our offensive decline. It is a hard choice but I don't think both survive DD.
|
|
ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,941
|
Post by ericmvan on Sept 6, 2015 22:06:01 GMT -5
I know Margot is the top prospect most commonly sited as being available this off season, but is he really? As much as we love what we've seen from the Betts-Castillo-Bradley outfield, there are still some questions about Bradley and Castillo. And who do we have for depth after that? Margot is a guy that could be ready mid-season and be the depth the team needs should one of the top 3 get hurt or underperform. Unless he's part of a package for a premium pitcher, it may be worth it to hold. He went into yesterday with a .237 MLE TAv in Clay Davenport's generous translation system, after posting a .245 last year. He's probably back up to .245 or more after going 7/10, 2B, 3B, 2 HR, BB, but it seems very unlikely to me that he'll be ready by mid-season next year. I've always pegged his ETA as mid-2017 or April 2018.
|
|
|
Post by bigpapismangosalsa on Sept 7, 2015 8:59:02 GMT -5
To determine if someone can be moved, it's a question of how much money you're willing to kick in. For instance, if we paid half of Hanley Ramirez' salary, yes, I think teams like Cleveland and pretty much any of the AL West teams would take him as a full time DH on a 4yr/$44M commitment from their end. Also, for those teams, it would end up being a good deal. Honestly, I'm almost fine having Hanley as a $22M insurance policy on Ortiz where he'd DH about 35 times a year and maybe be able to play half a season at first base.
For Sandoval, I don't think that's the case as he's literally the worst 3b in all of baseball. Unlike Hanley, his bat wouldn't carry him at DH. As such, we'd have to pay more than 50% of his contract for any team to take him for nothing, and honestly I'd do whatever dollar amout that takes up to straight up releasing him (but I assume someone would take him for something like 4yrs/$32M commitment on their end). Take whatever savings you can and be happy that you've got that $8M a year back and can play a better option (like a Holt / Shaw platoon) at third base next season, thus not costing your team his presence in the field and at the plate.
Of our big money deals, the most easily moved is Porcello. He's overpaid, for sure, but he is the guy of those three you look at and chalk this year up to an outlier. There is literally no reason to think he's going to be any worse next year than the 4.30ERA / 4.06FIP pitcher he was in Detroit, and a decent shot he could be a little bit better. If we have him as our number 3 starter going into next year, we should be in very good shape. The issue we ran into this year is that he was probably our "ace" in terms of reasonable projection and assumed dependability and he has put up a line this season that doesn't deserve to be in a major league rotation. However he is the one that I think (and I'd assume executives of other teams do as well) is the most likely to bounce back.
To me our most interesting trade candidates in terms of return and willingness to give them up are Miley and Buchholz. With their very reasonable contracts and similar full year value, I think they could be of interest to a lot of small market teams.
*I am in no way saying that Wade Miley is as talented of a pitcher as Clay Buchholz. I'm saying that half a season of what Clay provides in elite performance and a full season of what Miley provides in dependable mediocrity are roughly equivalent in terms of dollar spent and value earned.
|
|
|
Post by jmei on Sept 7, 2015 10:27:00 GMT -5
Why do you project Hanley's bat to regress to career norms but not Sandoval's bat (and glove)?
|
|
redsox04071318champs
Veteran
Always hoping to make my handle even longer...
Posts: 15,696
Member is Online
|
Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 7, 2015 11:15:14 GMT -5
Why do you project Hanley's bat to regress to career norms but not Sandoval's bat (and glove)? I'd guess that would be because Sandoval's bat has been consistently declining. The season he has had is not altogether shocking. He plays a lot older than his natural age. Given his conditioning it's not that surprising. Sandoval could improve next season to his career norms, but I would think the odds would be more against it than for it.
|
|
nomar
Veteran
Posts: 10,907
|
Post by nomar on Sept 7, 2015 11:19:17 GMT -5
Why do you project Hanley's bat to regress to career norms but not Sandoval's bat (and glove)? I'd guess that would be because Sandoval's bat has been consistently declining. The season he has had is not altogether shocking. He plays a lot older than his natural age. Given his conditioning it's not that surprising. Sandoval could improve next season to his career norms, but I would think the odds would be more against it than for it. Yeah I have to agree, it's hard seeing Sandoval any better than a league average bat, but his glove will be better. He's never going to be close to worth the money, but the 3B market is bare, Holt wouldn't be a better bet and is more valuable as a UTIL, and Moncada and Devers won't be ready to take over anytime soon.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Sept 7, 2015 12:57:09 GMT -5
I believe it is somewhat misleading to say that Sandoval has been consistently declining in his hitting. He actually was fairly consistent from 2012 through 2014. 2011, his best year, obviously was an outlier. Also, he had far fewer PAs in 2011 and 2012 than he did in 2013 and 2014. His OPS and OPS+ declined a little, from .789 to .739 but his PAs increased substantially and so did his total bases. He hit almost the same number of doubles, triples and HRs each year.
Sandoval is the classic streak hitter. Looking through the game logs on baseballreference.com you can see how he has streaks of multiple hit games and then streaks when he doesn't hit at all.
He had a very strange year in 2014. On May 6 he was hitting .167. He hit .306 the rest of the year and had a huge post season. Remarkably this season has been almost the mirror opposite of last year. On May 10 he was hitting .306. Since then he has hit .236. However, on May 19 he was hit on the knee with a pitch and didn't play for several games and the knee bothered him for quite a while. It may still be bothering him. He has been hit with pitches on the hand and the arm since then. One of the commentators in the ESPN game last week said he was playing with a painful leg - I think the right leg - and it was affecting his swing. I think it is reasonable to assume that the injuries he has suffered this year may have prevented him from having the good hitting streaks he normally might have had.
There is no sign that his swing has slowed down. He has clobbered some pitches this year. He doesn't seem to have a problem with any particular pitch. He does seem to have gotten over anxious and is swinging at even more balls out of the strike zone than normal for him - and he always has been a free swinger. And the fact that he has had some hitting streaks this season is evidence that he isn't declining.
I think his less than normal performance this year is most likely due to a combination of the effects of the injuries and the anxiousness he no doubt has felt about his performance and the intense pressure of playing for the Sox. I've spent a fair amount of time in both Boston and San Francisco and I love both, but Boston is far, far, more intense.
Thus, I think there is a reasonable chance that he will be better next year.
|
|
|
Post by bigpapismangosalsa on Sept 7, 2015 19:15:21 GMT -5
Fair question Jmei, and I'm in line with what others said following my post, however I feel it's only right to answer on my own. I think Hanley's bat will regress to career norms IF he were a DH (that's why I said a team using him as a DH and paying half his salary would get a very good deal). Granted, it's a small sample size, but on his splits on BBRef, you can see that as a DH (or when he only has to worry about hitting) he is a .316/.364/.582/.946 hitter, now, I don't think he'd be THAT good over a full season as a DH, but I don't think that projecting him to "progress" back closer to his career .861OPS hitter as a 32 year old DH is that unreasonable (though I'd project him to be more of an .800 to .825 OPS guy from age 32-35 and with the overall decline in offense in the game if he were soley focused on hitting.
Specifically regarding why I don't think Sandoval will revert back to his career norms is that over the past 5 years he has been in a continual decline as his OBP has gone .357/.342/.341/.324/.294; and his OPS has gone .909/.789/.758/.739/.670. Furthermore, Hanley (for all his faults) looks to be in excpetional shape while I don't think anyone believes that Sandoval has a body type that will age gracefully. He also has not shown the same steady decline over the past 5 years, more normal season to season variance his 1.040OPS in 2013 is clearly an outlier, but again, I'm picturing him more in the .800 to .825OPS range if he were a DH moving forward.
In a perfect world, it would be great to jettison both deals, but I don't think that's in the cards. As such, I think paying Hanley $22m to be a part time DH/1b and Ortiz insurance is less of a waste than paying Sandoval $20m to be, literally, the worst 3b in baseball and take playing time away from a Holt / Shaw platoon.
I guess here's a question, and I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm honestly asking this to anyone defending Sandoval as a player of value for the team going forward: If you saw a random player not on the Red Sox with 5 straight years of decline, one who was in awful shape, had shown no true signs of committing to his health, was very well known to have an extremely undisciplined style of hitting, what reasons would you give beyond saying "well, he's only 29" for the Red Sox to sign that player to a 4yr/$80m dollar contract and replace a platoon of Shaw and Holt.
|
|
|
Post by jmei on Sept 7, 2015 20:12:44 GMT -5
I don't know that I look at a career 117 wRC+ hitter putting up seasons of 149, 118, 117, 112, and 79 and see that as a trend that I would continue to extrapolate downwards. Those middle three years are technically a decline, but it's not a meaningful one that I would read anything into, so it looks more to me like a guy who has been a good hitter over his career who is having an aberrant down season (and who had a career year five years ago). Plus, generally, I'm someone who, when presented with a so-called trend, is more likely to expect it to regress to historical norms than to continue to extrapolate it.
With respect to his defense, I think Sandoval is likely to be an average-to-slightly-below defender at 3B going forward, at least for 2016. He was one of the worst defensive players in baseball for a couple months, but a lot of that was due to uncharacteristic throwing errors and misplays, and he's looked pretty good defensively in recent months (both DRS and UZR have rated him as above-average for the last couple months, I believe).
I see him as a league-average player next year. That's certainly not worth his contract, but it makes it worth keeping him around (unless another team is willing to shoulder more of his contract that I anticipate), and it makes him a better option than Holt (doesn't have the arm for 3B, bat is rapidly regressing for the second year in a row) or Shaw (questions both offensively and defensively), both of whom are more valuable as bench players than as starters.
|
|
ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,941
|
Post by ericmvan on Sept 7, 2015 22:32:03 GMT -5
I don't know that I look at a career 117 wRC+ hitter putting up seasons of 149, 118, 117, 112, and 79 and see that as a trend that I would continue to extrapolate downwards. Those middle three years are technically a decline, but it's not a meaningful one that I would read anything into, so it looks more to me like a guy who has been a good hitter over his career who is having an aberrant down season (and who had a career year five years ago). Plus, generally, I'm someone who, when presented with a so-called trend, is more likely to expect it to regress to historical norms than to continue to extrapolate it. With respect to his defense, I think Sandoval is likely to be an average-to-slightly-below defender at 3B going forward, at least for 2016. He was one of the worst defensive players in baseball for a couple months, but a lot of that was due to uncharacteristic throwing errors and misplays, and he's looked pretty good defensively in recent months (both DRS and UZR have rated him as above-average for the last couple months, I believe). I see him as a league-average player next year. That's certainly not worth his contract, but it makes it worth keeping him around (unless another team is willing to shoulder more of his contract that I anticipate), and it makes him a better option than Holt (doesn't have the arm for 3B, bat is rapidly regressing for the second year in a row) or Shaw (questions both offensively and defensively), both of whom are more valuable as bench players than as starters. This just about the last word on the Sandoval situation, which I think is a non-issue for DDo. The only thing I would add is that if he does return to his career norms, there's a good chance he'll be a bit of a pleasant offensive surprise next year, because I think part of the rationale for signing him is that he'd be a good fit for Fenway, and I thought at the time that that was correct. There's some suggestion that it's been true. Home / Road versus RHP: 130 / 192 145 / 103 116 / 132 149 / 124 119 / 87 Obviously there's too much year-year-variation to draw any conclusion from, but he'd been averaging 17 over the previous 3 years, and it's 32 this year. Splits vs. LHP are such a small sample that they should be even less consistent, but instead they're more so: 107 / 84 129 / 91 110 / 91 59 / 61 56 / -1
|
|
|
Post by pedey on Oct 25, 2015 15:49:13 GMT -5
It has recently become clear that the Sox are more willing to trade prospects this off-season now that Dombrowski is the president of baseball operations. A front-line starter is obviously on the Red Sox's shopping list this off-season. Whether they acquire a front-line starter via FA or trade, who do you think should be traded or kept? Are there any young players that we can say with confidence will be in Boston next year?
Players I would keep: Swihart Bogaerts Betts Shaw - I think he should start over Hanley E-Rod Owens Moncada Devers One of Margot or Benintendi There may be more I'd keep, but I honestly don't know very much about the latest draft class.
I'd trade basically any other prospect I didn't list.
|
|
|
Post by kjkramer on Oct 25, 2015 16:07:40 GMT -5
you didnt list Espinoza?
|
|
|
Post by kjkramer on Oct 25, 2015 16:11:27 GMT -5
I would part with Owens over Espinoza, Logan, and Kopech. I agree with your list otherwise. Unfortunately we know these are the exact guys that other teams would want
|
|
|
Post by blizzards39 on Oct 25, 2015 17:01:35 GMT -5
The question won't be if we trade any prospects but witch one/s. That will be DDs and the FOs biggest decisions. Try and figure out what guys to hold on to. Id like to see Moncada, Espinoza, Kopech and Benentendi off limits. Everbody else is in play. As for roster, Id say Erod Betts and Boegarts are off limits. I'm not saying id look to trade all of the other guys just that these are the players I would not trade under any circumstances.
|
|
ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,941
|
Post by ericmvan on Oct 25, 2015 17:06:26 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Oregon Norm on Oct 25, 2015 17:15:36 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Smittyw on Oct 25, 2015 17:20:06 GMT -5
(Copied from the post I was about to make in the thread that was merged:)
I wouldn't touch Bogaerts, Betts, Rodriguez, Moncada, or Espinoza this winter under almost any circumstance, and Swihart and Devers are in the next tier that would theoretically be movable, but only for an incredible return. There are others I'd hope to hold on to if possible, but those seven guys top the list.
|
|
|
Post by Sox Mojo Rising on Oct 25, 2015 19:11:01 GMT -5
Young players I'd keep (w/ MLB experience): - Betts - Bogaerts (I'd like to see an extension offer made at some point over the next calendar year to Xander. Something similar to what the Rays gave Longoria in 2008 and again 2012, but combined. Though it's a ways off, the closer he gets to FA, the less likely he signs an extension (Boras). IF he says no -- I think you at least gotta start listening to offers after next season, perhaps after 2017 -- depending on how great of a return you want) - One of CV/Swihart (I prefer Vazquez myself) - Bradley Jr.
'Prospects' I'd keep: - Moncada - Devers - Espinoza - Kopech
Trading for a young, cost-controllable 'ace' is the route Dombrowski will take. This ownership group does not give out 6-7 year mega-deals to pitchers entering their 30's... Forget about David Price and the 7/200 he's likely going to command... especially with expensive mistakes already on the books in Hanley, Sandoval and Porcello -- If this young, cost-controllable 'ace' can be acquired without dealing the two best position players and two best pitchers in the Sox farm system, that'd have be a real coup for Dave, et al.
'ace' I'd like to see acquired (in order of preference) 1. Sale 2. Harvey 3. Carrasco (the guy I think DD ends up landing) 4. Gray 5. Ross
|
|
|
Post by sox fan in nc on Oct 27, 2015 11:58:15 GMT -5
I agree about all the "untouchables" here......and definitely agree in not signing Pice Cueto to what they are going to command....but how untouchable are the untouchables....I mean wouldn't you trade Betts for Syndergaard straight up?....I think I would...JBJ in center, Castillo in RF & sign a De Aza type in LF....I think the team improves (although it would be difficult to pull that trigger)
|
|
|
Post by sox fan in nc on Oct 27, 2015 12:04:44 GMT -5
Continuing, I also like Carrasco, or another SOLID # 2 in that same group, he will not cost us our future. It will hurt, but will not cripple us.....Also, on the scenario above, If they wanted XB for Thor, I would think about that as Marerro wouldn't kill you @ short. I think he could be another Iglesias with the bat, just too good of hand eye coordination to not be able to hit 260-270. Just have to weight out Marerro or De Aza as your replacements.
|
|
|