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Tyler Thornburg (6/15 edit: out for 2017 season)
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 16, 2017 10:12:36 GMT -5
If Thornburg was pitching like last year and Shaw was playing like he did at the end of last year, I think the rhetoric would be toned way down. Why was that not a reasonable outcome? Why does everyone pretend they knew that Thornburg would never throw a pitch for the Red Sox and that Shaw would be an All-Star?
People are way more pissed now than they were when the trade was made, which makes it mostly an argument using hindsight.
People also are not considering that it's possible to likely that Milwaukee didn't even value Shaw that much, given the other 3 prospects included in the trade.
People are also not considering what sounded like a pretty big riff between Shaw and Farrell and that the team may have been pretty much forced to trade him if they weren't firing Farrell.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 16, 2017 10:14:28 GMT -5
Did you think that 3b was an issue by the end of the year or did you think, Shaw is having a fine year? Nothing here to see? By the end of the year he was playing at a replacement level and got replaced. Farrell didn't look around and say he's got a 2.2 bWAR - let's keep playing him. His bWAR was probably 3.5 - 4 before he played bad enough afterwards. jmei asked me why I discount his first few months. I don't discount it as much as I would say flip it around. Say Shaw stunk the first couple of months and lost his job and/or the Red Sox look around and find no better option, and say he spent August and September mashing like he did in April and May, then 3b would not have been a question mark heading into the end of the season. Also, the sense would be that Shaw figured something out and would be penciled in as the 3b for 2017 and I don't mean in a "tentative" way. If he would have raked those last two months after a lousy start, I doubt he's the headliner in a Thornburg deal. Look at the way he played at the end of 2015 - he raked. He went into 2016 as a guy the Red Sox needed to make room for. At the end of 2016 he was a guy that was very expendable. And for a guy having the year Thornburg had, I, too, would have gladly dealt him for Thornburg. I wasn't thrilled about losing Dubon, but I could live with it. I was fine with Pennington, but for me, losing Coca tips it. It's like the Red Sox should have thrown in Sam Travis, too, so they could furnish Milwaukee with a future infield of Shaw at 3b, Coca at SS, Dubon at 2b, and Sam Travis at 1b. Maybe in Dombrowski's next deal he can accomplish this! The lingering memory in your (and likely Dombrowski's) mind going into the offseason was Shaw playing poorly. But that just seems like recency bias to me, and I remain unconvinced that it was appropriate to weigh his second half so much more heavily than his first half. You could have said the same thing about Middlebrooks (and countless other MLB players who pitchers figured out). Also, is it impossible to believe that his success this season is due to facing new pitchers in the NL?
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Post by Coreno on Jun 16, 2017 12:45:37 GMT -5
The lingering memory in your (and likely Dombrowski's) mind going into the offseason was Shaw playing poorly. But that just seems like recency bias to me, and I remain unconvinced that it was appropriate to weigh his second half so much more heavily than his first half. You could have said the same thing about Middlebrooks (and countless other MLB players who pitchers figured out). Also, is it impossible to believe that his success this season is due to facing new pitchers in the NL? I was actually just looking at his numbers and thinking this same thing. Right now his line is strikingly similar (though a touch better) to what he did at the end of '15 when he got his first time in the majors. Last year, he picked up where he left off for about a month and a half and then cratered. I think most of us assume a big part of the hot and cold to his season had to do with pitchers making adjustments on him. I'm not sure we are to that point yet with the NL v. Shaw. I'm also glad this quote has jmei's comment about recency bias. My problem with that is if he had OPSed .600 to start the year instead of from mid-may on, he would have never gotten the chance to pull his numbers up with a hot streak. This also brings us back to the question of how much his numbers are driven just by hot/cold streaks, and how much is pitchers finding his weaknesses involved. Lastly, I think jimed also brought up the Shaw/Farrell thing. I agree this is part of the reason he was expendable. Part of it also had to do with Sandoval coming back from surgery. It would have been somewhat redundant to have both of them on the roster, since neither can hit LHP. --- For the reasons above, I didn't have a problem trading Shaw, though I did think the deal in totality was an overpay. Anyway, it will seem much less lopsided if Thornburg makes a full recovery from the TOS and starts pitching like he's capable of again next year. Honestly, we are at the point where these deals aren't really made for the immediate future anymore. So many guys have struggled though year 1, that it feels like we make deals for year 2 on. Hopefully we can start judging the Carson Smith deal soon, similar to the way we've recently been able to consider the Kimbrel deal at least close to worth it. Maybe next year we'll be at that point with Thornburg.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Jun 16, 2017 13:27:57 GMT -5
This one has been beat to death. At lot of posters are returning to the same point that's been made a bit over the last two seasons: the number of players included in individual trades has really piled up and that has badly depleted the farm system.
Now, you can look at it from many different angles: talent, depth, richer trade options, all of that. I can understand some of this, but in the end 4 for 1 trades for relief pitching don't make a ton of sense. It greatly increases the likelihood that you've sent off dozens of future wins for a handful at present value, and you're leaving yourself very vulnerable to the injury bug. That has, unfortunately, happened in spades with these trades. Smith, Thornburg and Kimbrel are real talent, there's no denying that. But losing even one or two years of service time or having your closer go from lights out to badly in need of a range finder, that really skews the value proposition. Not good.
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Post by jmei on Jun 16, 2017 14:13:31 GMT -5
Let me be clear here: my position is not that trading Shaw for Thornburg, as a one-for-one deal, was crazy at the time, or that we should have all known that Shaw was an above-average starter. I thought then (and mostly think now) that, long-term, Shaw is a 1.0 to 1.5 win player who is best suited to be the long half of a platoon at 3B or a really good bench player who gets 450+ PAs a year spread across 1B/3B/LF. Thornburg also looked like a really good reliever, and his injury was not particularly foreseeable. At the time of the trade, I think I said I would have been OK (though not thrilled) with a Shaw-for-Thornburg swap, but that I really disliked adding the other pieces to the deal. With that said... It's not necessarily recency bias to weigh more recent history ahead of past history in this situation. This wasn't a player with a years-long track record of hitting in the majors. You could also call a young player hitting well in his first 3.5 months in the league then performing below replacement level for the next 4.5 the league figuring him out and him being unable to make adjustments to the adjustments. It happens all the time. It's also possible they evaluated Shaw the person as someone who wasn't going to make those adjustments too. We've heard his comments about when he lost his job, and it seems pretty clear he was clueless that he hadn't been holding up his end of the deal for months. You're right, it's not necessarily just recency bias. But I see a bunch of folks advancing the "the league figured him out" narrative without citing any real evidence for that conclusion, which looks a lot like recency bias. If you're going to push that narrative, it can't just be conclusory, there needs to be real evidence cited for it. My view, as previously discussed here, is that it seems more likely that he just went on a poorly-timed cold streak (which he's had a lot of over his career), and that there's not a lot of reason to put a lot more weight on his post-May production as opposed to his pre-May production. IMO, the default position should be "assume that streakiness is mostly random" and it's on the burden of the narrative-believer to present real evidence to support their narrative. I haven't seen a lot of that. I was actually just looking at his numbers and thinking this same thing. Right now his line is strikingly similar (though a touch better) to what he did at the end of '15 when he got his first time in the majors. Last year, he picked up where he left off for about a month and a half and then cratered. I think most of us assume a big part of the hot and cold to his season had to do with pitchers making adjustments on him. I'm not sure we are to that point yet with the NL v. Shaw. I similarly don't buy the "NL pitchers just need time to figure him out" stuff. We're talking about a guy who had 750+ major league PAs entering this year. Are pitchers really that reliant on actually facing a guy before they make adjustments as opposed to just reading the scouting report and realizing he struggles with hard stuff inside? At any rate, similar to the above, if you're going to push that narrative, let's see the evidence for it. So far, he's been hot for a month longer in the NL than he has in the AL, and he's hitting .333/.442/.528 in June. Not sure it's fair to conclude that it's just a matter of time before the NL figures him out.
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Post by grandsalami on Apr 30, 2018 21:25:05 GMT -5
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Apr 30, 2018 21:40:51 GMT -5
Whoah that curveball is absolutely filthy. Jesus. That looks like a Ben Sheets curveball.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Apr 30, 2018 22:17:08 GMT -5
Officially changed my avatar to Thornburg, I'll start the bandwagon. That nasty stuff deserves it.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Apr 30, 2018 23:43:48 GMT -5
At the time the Sox traded for him, he'd established himself as one of the best relievers in the NL. As jmei pointed out at the time, though, his velocity drop seemed to indicate an arm problem. So it did. If he's back he's high value, and it does look like his stuff is there. Smith also had a good outing this evening. He seems to be locating his pitches more consistently. Good news all around. That's two tough arms for hitters.
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Post by chipdouglas on May 1, 2018 0:07:46 GMT -5
If Thornburg and Smith return to form, they will be be part of a great pen with Kelly and Kimbrel.
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redsox04071318champs
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Post by redsox04071318champs on May 1, 2018 0:15:57 GMT -5
If Thornburg and Smith return to form, they will be be part of a great pen with Kelly and Kimbrel. I'd add that even though I've been beating the drum for a deal for a setup man, if Thornburg and Smith were able to return to form, all they'd need is a dominating lefty to add. Bobby Poyner was impressive in his stint with the Red Sox and pretty much at every stop he made in the minors, but Jalen Beeks is opening eyes with his K numbers. Perhaps he could be that late inning lefty this season and perhaps a guy competing for a rotation spot next season. And then what do you do with Velazquez who has been awesome? The problem is that there are guys like Hembree (who's been pretty good, too) and Johnson, and Wright who are out of options and in some ways the guys with options have actually pitched better. Velazquez and Barnes have done nothing to deserve demotions. It'll be interesting to see how the Sox handle the roster. They might have to make an upgrade type of deal in which they consolidate their relief assets, which is a very good problem to have. A Brewers version Thornburg would be a huge difference maker in the pen. And if Smith can do what he did in Seattle - he's still not there yet - it could be a nasty bullpen with all sorts of good options.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 1, 2018 1:39:54 GMT -5
Well and good for AAA, but I don't think he can get away with throwing the same three pitches again and again to big league hitters.
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