How do you improve the Red Sox

What a privilege to be allowed to watch deepjohn and ericmvan talking super-advanced Sabre with one another!

Scott Lauber
ESPN Staff Writer


John Farrell alluded Friday to Red Sox facing a decision once Ryan Hanigan returns from DL. While they typically view catcher as a "two-man position," Farrell said, red-hot Sandy Leon is out of options and might not clear waivers. Christian Vazquez is in lineup tonight to catch knuckleballer Steven Wright, but if he doesn't hit more, he might lose playing time -- or even his roster spot, unless the Sox carry three catchers.
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Mike Trout would probably look good anywhere but on the mound for the Sox.

There is one consistent ace right now, and that's Kershaw. But last year's consistent ace was Arietta, and he had a bad playoff game anyway.

Any #2 is going to have ace nights and #3 or worse nights. You would take a greater percentage of ace nights even it it were offset by being worse in his bad starts, when choosing between two guys with he same overall stat line.

Once you get to your #3 and #4 guys, if your choice is between a guy who is quite consistent (if there even is such a thing) and a guy who is less so, you want the guy who is less so, who can sometimes pitch like an ace. Porcello right now is a normally inconsistent borderline #2 / #3 -- his season stats right now are #3, but that describes him going back a few years -- and that's just the sort of guy you want in your post-season 3 slot. Having him as your 4 guy is a strength.

One skill that DD has that may have been previously mentioned in this thread is his ability to trade with other contenders at the deadline. I would not be surprised to see either a straight trade or three way trade with either Cleveland or Texas at the deadline. 

It's amazing how little of what he says actually makes sense. I mean, incredible even, because he's actually paid to do it. The worst.

So accurate. He's also an unrepentant douche in personal communication. I've never gotten anything other than sarcasm or smug stupidity back from him. Dan Shaughnessy might bitch a lot in his articles, but he's a major class act in email responses. Gracious, articulate, and complimentary. Cafardo is the polar opposite. Like Les Nessman sprinkled with Louie DePalma.

I got the Louie DePalma reference.

I compared him to Nessman because Les was always stuck in a time warp from the 1950s with no idea how the current world around him worked while in Nick's case, I'd say it's the 70s because he has no idea how analytical stats work. I'm no expert, but at least I can acknowledge their importance. Nick is all about pimping Boras' clients and old school baseball knowledge, stuff that he flaunts and then derisively shakes his fist at anything that takes more than 10 seconds of real thought.

But at least Les was likable in a dorky type of way.

Interesting what you said about Shaughnessy. He's frustrating in that he truly IS a gifted writer, but he has crafted his writing persona to be that cynical agitated archetype writer in the style of Dave Egan (which is ironic because Egan hated Ted Williams yet Shaughnessy using the same style wound up having a friend in Williams who gave his daughter moral support when she was sick). I get the sense that Shaughnessy is totally in it for ego and money, which is a shame - he doesn't exude that love of baseball the way Peter Gammons does. He shares a lot of that old school we did everything better - these young nerds in the basement with all those numbers know nothing attitude that Cafardo has. I was surprised to hear you say that his correspondence was respectful and courteous and it was Cafardo that was the other way. With Shaughnessy it's really a shame because he really is a talented writer and Cafardo has no talent other than being in the right place at the right time. Makes me sad because I remember rushing to 7-11 every Sunday morning to buy the Boston Globe for the privilege of reading Gammons' articles (prior to the internet of course.) Now that section (with the exception of Speier) is complete garbage.

Eloquently stated. I think very much the same. Right down to Gammons. Every Sunday in the dining hall in college, I searched the tables for the Sunday Notes, often nursing some degree of hangover, and gorged myself on omelets, cranberry juice, Lucky Charms, and baseball. Got me through some very dark Maine winters. -34F (straight up, sans windchill) makes imagining the smooth, golden shimmer of the setting sun on infield dirt and the impossibly white uniforms of the season's early days very, very difficult.

I was a little surprised with Shaughnessey, but I left the interactions thinking he actually loved baseball, and maybe writing even more, but that the persona he created to write successfully in Boston was molded by years of cynicism, loss, heartbreak, and frustration. It became impossible to separate the perception of the team by the populace from the reality itself. In some ways, I think that he (and crochety ol' Will McDonough, and maybe Bob Ryan) reinforced that perception to the point where the *teams* believed it. When the new ownership group came in, they swept a lot of that mindset away (in the organization), and that's how they could finally, cathartically, believe in their ability to win, and thus do so. Once 2004 had come and gone (God, beating the Yankees was so, so sweet), the curmudgeon character was outdated, tired...irrelevant. I think Shaughnessey spent so long writing as that persona that he's had a hard time creating (or even entertaining the genesis of) a new one.

What's really amazing, though, is that Cafardo is still there. It's as if the Globe, as an institution, is struggling to shed the shackles of past perception. Cafardo remains the hyper-reactionary, highly emotional, wed-to-the-oldschool voice of the populist Red Sox fan of the '70s-'90s, always sure the other shoe will drop. Always convinced that today is the only day. Always opining in a way that leaves you wondering if he's convinced himself that, come November, the franchise will close its hallowed doors forever. He channels all of the angst with none of the charm or eloquence. He is talk radio, bluntly re-imagined in print.

Yup. We're both definitely fans of the get-Vizcaino-cheap-on-a-salary-dump idea. Fernando Rodney may be 39, but he sits 95 and as pitched to a mid-2 FIP. SD would surely move him for something short of a top prospect. Maybe a guy like Chavis or Ockimey (which would sting a lot, but wouldn't be a complete disaster). I also think that they need to audition internal options, as you said. Trading for a starter is downright stupid unless they don't touch their top-5, and the starter is actually a real upgrade over Buchholz, which is debatable even for a guy like Teheran.

So, Fangraphs aside, you don't see this month as a regression closer to the mean - albeit below the mean - and the mitigation of the road record going forward as factors that would have this team playing roughly .500 ball the rest of the way?

When I have a minute I'm going to put Teheran's game data in a spreadsheet, along with all the Sox starters. My guess is that Teheran will have the highest "confidence level" of giving up the fewest runs in any given game.* 

Of course, I don't propose that I have a large enough data set to prove anything. I'm just saying that's all I mean by "consistency".

I feel like you and ericmvan may be using the word in another sense, which is also quite valid, while I'm thinking quite narrowly of: "consistency == confidence level". 

(And as a GM, consistency qua confidence level matters, IMHO.)

ADD:*Technically, the definition I am thinking of is, "the probability that the value of a parameter falls within a specified range of values." As a corollary, I suspect the "confidence level" will be quite low that Buch or Erod will allow as few runs as Teheran in any given game.