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Post by 1toolplayer on Jul 25, 2019 11:25:10 GMT -5
Many of those one-run wins were specifically because the bullpen gave up runs. Just like tonight's game... Both their Era and FIP are almost a full run higher than in 2018. Right, but it would be used like the blown saves stat to discredit them if it were reversed. And the Yankees have 2 fewer blown saves than the Red Sox and spend about 10 times as much. And by the way, runs are up almost a half run per game for every team in the league. To update this, the Yankees now have the same amount of BS as the Red Sox, the Dodgers have 2 more then them. 6 playoff teams blew saves on Tuesday night, and a 7th team within 2 games blew one. This year, more so than ever, the bullpens are just mediocre across baseball, but the the media in this town won't ever provide the proper context, and people want DD fired. I am at my wits end with "Red Sox Nation", and for some reason, this post comforts me.
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Post by kingstephanos on Jul 25, 2019 12:53:57 GMT -5
Right, but it would be used like the blown saves stat to discredit them if it were reversed. And the Yankees have 2 fewer blown saves than the Red Sox and spend about 10 times as much. And by the way, runs are up almost a half run per game for every team in the league. To update this, the Yankees now have the same amount of BS as the Red Sox, the Dodgers have 2 more then them. 6 playoff teams blew saves on Tuesday night, and a 7th team within 2 games blew one. This year, more so than ever, the bullpens are just mediocre across baseball, but the the media in this town won't ever provide the proper context, and people want DD fired. I am at my wits end with "Red Sox Nation", and for some reason, this post comforts me. If blown saves are your marker of bullpen "goodness", then sure the Red Sox are a part of the 'mediocrity across baseball'. But that, in and of itself, is pretty reductive, as a multitude of other simple stats (e.g. FIP, xFIP, Holds etc.) suggest a narrative in which the Red Sox have not had a good bullpen in 2019 (even compared to other clubs) - and especially in contrast to their winning season last year. The bullpen playing better, regressing to the mean is definitely possible with over two months left. But finding a stat or two that belies not only what our eyes are telling us, but go against what the front office and team management are talking about seems a little off the mark.
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Post by jimed14 on Jul 25, 2019 12:55:52 GMT -5
To update this, the Yankees now have the same amount of BS as the Red Sox, the Dodgers have 2 more then them. 6 playoff teams blew saves on Tuesday night, and a 7th team within 2 games blew one. This year, more so than ever, the bullpens are just mediocre across baseball, but the the media in this town won't ever provide the proper context, and people want DD fired. I am at my wits end with "Red Sox Nation", and for some reason, this post comforts me. If blown saves are your marker of bullpen "goodness", then sure the Red Sox are a part of the 'mediocrity across baseball'. But that, in and of itself, is pretty reductive, as a multitude of other simple stats (e.g. FIP, xFIP, Holds etc.) suggest a narrative in which the Red Sox have not had a good bullpen in 2019 (even compared to other clubs) - and especially in contrast to their winning season last year. The bullpen playing better, regressing to the mean is definitely possible with over two months left. But finding a stat or two that belies not only what our eyes are telling us, but go against what the front office and team management are talking about seems a little off the mark. I only brought up team blown saves because it has been used all season to prove the bullpen is terrible and when looking at other teams, it's clearly meaningless. Goes right along with Matt Barnes only being 4 of 10 in save opportunities, but he's been used in far higher leverage than Kimbrel ever has and cannot possibly get saves most of the time because he's coming in for the 7th inning with runners on base and the middle of the lineup up.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Jul 25, 2019 13:01:20 GMT -5
If blown saves are your marker of bullpen "goodness", then sure the Red Sox are a part of the 'mediocrity across baseball'. But that, in and of itself, is pretty reductive, as a multitude of other simple stats (e.g. FIP, xFIP, Holds etc.) suggest a narrative in which the Red Sox have not had a good bullpen in 2019 (even compared to other clubs) - and especially in contrast to their winning season last year. The bullpen playing better, regressing to the mean is definitely possible with over two months left. But finding a stat or two that belies not only what our eyes are telling us, but go against what the front office and team management are talking about seems a little off the mark. I only brought up team blown saves because it has been used all season to prove the bullpen is terrible and when looking at other teams, it's clearly meaningless. Goes right along with Matt Barnes only being 4 of 10 in save opportunities, but he's been used in far higher leverage than Kimbrel ever has and cannot possibly get saves most of the time because he's coming in for the 7th inning with runners on base and the middle of the lineup up. They really should change the rule that if you can't qualify for a save, you shouldn't be charged with a blown save. Blown hold?
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Post by larrycook on Jul 25, 2019 13:09:51 GMT -5
I really like Hernandez as a 6th/7th inning reliever. There are going to be growing pains, but his stuff is legitimate and has good movement. The investment made in his development in Boston this year should pay off big next year,
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jul 26, 2019 10:47:25 GMT -5
Seems that's exactly the case and let's use xwOBA to predict future performance when the people who compile the stat say that's not what it's designed for. What part of "scouting his stuff is paramount" don't you understand?
Oh, and last year I was the only guy on the board who had an accurate sense of how good he was going to be. By looking at xwOBA.
Maybe the fact that Eovaldi has always had electric stuff, all the way back to his days with the Marlins. The results come and go with him. A big issue is he always gets injured which I'm sure messes with his ability to maintain a certain level of performance. A lot of us liked getting Eovaldi and unless you use ERA it was clear he was pitching well. His WHIP, strikeout and walk numbers told us that. Yet you breakdown his numbers to just act like his crazy bad rough stretch never happened and he was just this truly elite pitcher. When in reality he had two great starts, sucked for like 7 starts/ 1 relief appearance and then had two good starts to end the year. Was lights out in the postseason and then sucked this year. Even with Tampa last year he was crazy good and then crazy bad from start to start. That is who Eovaldi is. Sure your xwOBA data did a great job predicting Eovaldi's future performance when you litterally remove his bad stretches and only look at when he's good.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jul 26, 2019 11:42:01 GMT -5
What part of "scouting his stuff is paramount" don't you understand? Oh, and last year I was the only guy on the board who had an accurate sense of how good he was going to be. By looking at xwOBA.
Maybe the fact that Eovaldi has always had electric stuff, all the way back to his days with the Marlins. The results come and go with him. A big issue is he always gets injured which I'm sure messes with his ability to maintain a certain level of performance. A lot of us liked getting Eovaldi and unless you use ERA it was clear he was pitching well. His WHIP, strikeout and walk numbers told us that. Yet you breakdown his numbers to just act like his crazy bad rough stretch never happened and he was just this truly elite pitcher. When in reality he had two great starts, sucked for like 7 starts/ 1 relief appearance and then had two good starts to end the year. Was lights out in the postseason and then sucked this year. Even with Tampa last year he was crazy good and then crazy bad from start to start. That is who Eovaldi is. Sure your xwOBA data did a great job predicting Eovaldi's future performance when you litterally remove his bad stretches and only look at when he's good. Even in his dominant playoff run, Eovaldi had weirdly low strikeout numbers. He succeeded by severely limiting hits, walks, and power. I've been around long enough to have gotten excited about more than a few pitchers who had supposedly mastered the art of avoiding hard contact and succeeding without strikeouts, and while I'm not going to say it's never a real thing, it's much more of a high wire act than the guy who just gets a ton of swings and misses all the time. I think it's this practice of trying to separate luck from "true talent" that misleads us sometimes, because when Eovaldi was going well and getting all this soft contact, you can look at heat maps and how he's locating his cutter and all these things and figure out that his good results on balls in play is a skill rather than dumb luck. The crack in the foundation for me though is this: just because it's a skill, doesn't mean it's sustainable. This goes to my thing about people having unrealistic expectations for Betts this year. Because we could point to his exit velos and his barrel percentage and the types of pitches he was swinging at or nor swinging at and say, ah, this is real. But the old school sabermetic wisdom that guys tend to gravitate back to their established level isn't really about assuming that career years are all luck-based, it's that regression to the mean is just the way the world tends to work for whatever reason.
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Post by James Dunne on Jul 26, 2019 11:52:25 GMT -5
just because it's a skill, doesn't mean it's sustainable. In science we call this the Joe Kelly Theorem.
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Post by jimed14 on Jul 26, 2019 11:59:39 GMT -5
Didn't Eovaldi always have a pretty severe third time through order penalty? It seems logical that guys like that would immediately be far better in the bullpen and that it actually would be sustainable.
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Post by James Dunne on Jul 26, 2019 12:15:38 GMT -5
Didn't Eovaldi always have a pretty severe third time through order penalty? It seems logical that guys like that would immediately be far better in the bullpen and that it actually would be sustainable. He did. It might also make sense to just accept twice-through-the-order starters as twice-through-the-order starters. The idea that if someone isn't a 180 inning per year guy then we don't let him be more than a 60 inning per year guy seems outmoded. Just roll with a guy for 120 innings.
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Post by rjp313jr on Jul 26, 2019 12:27:14 GMT -5
I only brought up team blown saves because it has been used all season to prove the bullpen is terrible and when looking at other teams, it's clearly meaningless. Goes right along with Matt Barnes only being 4 of 10 in save opportunities, but he's been used in far higher leverage than Kimbrel ever has and cannot possibly get saves most of the time because he's coming in for the 7th inning with runners on base and the middle of the lineup up. They really should change the rule that if you can't qualify for a save, you shouldn't be charged with a blown save. Blown hold? But, the rule is already set up that way.
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Post by soxjim on Jul 26, 2019 15:53:23 GMT -5
So, one of the things that I find has made these bullpen discussions border on pointless is the way people want to go down each individual and point out how they could be fine. "this guy's been good, and this guy has potential, and maybe this guy will get healthy and that guy will revert to previous form' etc. It's really the way this FO seemed to view the bullpen this offseason, if most things worked out real well, then it should be fine. Eovaldi has never been a closer before, has never been able to stay healthy and may be needed back in the rotation. Hernandez is a kid with control issues. Hembree and Brewer are mediocre at best. Walden, even with an out of nowhere season, is still about average. Taylor and Workman are having career years, Barnes seems fatigued. A small percentage of things could go wrong with these question marks and it could be crippling. A smart organization that's trying to compete goes and gets someone else so that they can survive some things not going right.
If people want to just pretend the best-case scenarios are all sure to happen, we can just agree to disagree. No offense - but I think you are cherry-picking the negative of your team yet ignoring the world around you. Are you the sure the word "smart" actually means the organization is only "smart" if they do exactly as you say? I just think you or anyone else could argue that there is only one "smart" organization at the end of the year in terms of "competing" and that's the team that wins it all. Just look at last year on here -- as the sox were a juggernaut throughout the season. Think of all the talk as to how the SOx bullpen wasn't up to snuff and this was "DD's fault." This is while we were witnessing one of the greatest baseball teams over the last 40 years - yet there were a lot of complaints. And it's not like it was just coming from this site. Another sox site was extremely rough on them including the mod. I had mentioned a while back in our local paper our sports editor all but trashed the Sox chances because of their bullpen. Much of what i listened to from the NY media had the Yanks as the superior team. Cashman made some statement during the season suggesting / implying his team was stronger etc. So when you speak of "smart organizations" -- when was it the Sox were classified as a "smart organization" considering after they lost each time one game to Yanks and Houston in the playoffs they were no longer favored at that moment? Isn't it possible you are classifying smart only after they win it all or unless they have to do exactly what you want? So - when do you classify the organization in your book as "smart?" The Sox bullpen was a question last year by many so were they still "smart" going into the playoffs? And if they were smart- so now this year the organization has turned from smart to now a "stupid" organization? And what about the other teams they beat last year? The Yanks obvious they needed starting pitching - were they a "smart organization?" They could've gotten Eovaldi instead for example. Instead they were relying on CC in the playoffs. What about Houston? They could've gotten Eovaldi too. The prior year as they went through the playoffs their bullpen was thought to be weak. And the Dodgers not having sufficient rh bats last year. Are all these dumb? How confident should the Yanks be this year with their starting staff or Houston with their bullpen? One of them or both will lose their last game this year - so is the loser a part of a smart organization or dumb one after one or both lose? So last year who were these "smart organizations" you speak of? So last year were the Sox "the smart organization" and all others dumb, and now this year the Sox are a stupid one?
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Post by soxjim on Jul 26, 2019 16:16:30 GMT -5
So, one of the things that I find has made these bullpen discussions border on pointless is the way people want to go down each individual and point out how they could be fine. "this guy's been good, and this guy has potential, and maybe this guy will get healthy and that guy will revert to previous form' etc. It's really the way this FO seemed to view the bullpen this offseason, if most things worked out real well, then it should be fine. Eovaldi has never been a closer before, has never been able to stay healthy and may be needed back in the rotation. Hernandez is a kid with control issues. Hembree and Brewer are mediocre at best. Walden, even with an out of nowhere season, is still about average. Taylor and Workman are having career years, Barnes seems fatigued. A small percentage of things could go wrong with these question marks and it could be crippling. A smart organization that's trying to compete goes and gets someone else so that they can survive some things not going right. If people want to just pretend the best-case scenarios are all sure to happen, we can just agree to disagree. This type of post was made ad nauseam last year too -- other than Kimbrel . . .
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Post by jimed14 on Jul 26, 2019 18:27:00 GMT -5
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Post by larrycook on Jul 26, 2019 21:53:39 GMT -5
I like how the Sox have transitioned in these youngsters in the bullpen. Next up needs to be Houck.
I am concerned that Poyner and lakins have taken a step backward this year.
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Post by rjp313jr on Jul 27, 2019 7:56:36 GMT -5
I like how the Sox have transitioned in these youngsters in the bullpen. Next up needs to be Houck. I am concerned that Poyner and lakins have taken a step backward this year. Pretty normal stuff that’s why it’s important to have a big number of guys to cycle thru.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Jul 27, 2019 15:45:47 GMT -5
They really should change the rule that if you can't qualify for a save, you shouldn't be charged with a blown save. Blown hold? But, the rule is already set up that way. Am I wrong or can you not get a blown save in the 5th inning?
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Post by rjp313jr on Jul 27, 2019 16:45:06 GMT -5
But, the rule is already set up that way. Am I wrong or can you not get a blown save in the 5th inning? It has to be a late game save situation. There’s some scorer discretion involved with that but it’s got to be a save situation.
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Post by coachmac on Jul 27, 2019 16:52:56 GMT -5
Am I wrong or can you not get a blown save in the 5th inning? It has to be a late game save situation. There’s some scorer discretion involved with that but it’s got to be a save situation. In the defintion of blown save, there is a statement that middle relievers often get blown saves but seldom get saves because they are not in the late game save situations.
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Post by rjp313jr on Jul 27, 2019 19:10:25 GMT -5
It has to be a late game save situation. There’s some scorer discretion involved with that but it’s got to be a save situation. In the defintion of blown save, there is a statement that middle relievers often get blown saves but seldom get saves because they are not in the late game save situations. By late game I meant last third of the game. The scorer doesn’t typically issue a blown save in the 5th inning.
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Post by grandsalami on Jul 27, 2019 19:30:01 GMT -5
If prices get to high I could see tanner houck being our “addition”
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radiohix
Veteran
'At the end of the day, we bang. We bang. We're going to swing.' Alex Verdugo
Posts: 6,330
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Post by radiohix on Jul 27, 2019 19:40:48 GMT -5
If prices get to high I could see tanner houck being our “addition” Barnes, Workman, Taylor and Darwinzon is a fine, if not elite, Bullpen IMHO.
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Post by iakovos11 on Jul 27, 2019 20:15:31 GMT -5
If prices get to high I could see tanner houck being our “addition” Since when did a AAA top prospect ever become the "addition" for Dombrowski? C'mon, people. Stop making stuff up to feed your anti Dave, raping the farm, agenda. The throw in for Kimbrel was Allen whose turned out well, but was a lottery ticket. Similar deal with Milwaukee for Thornburg (a bad trade). But I don't ever remember him throwing in a high level top prospect.
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Post by grandsalami on Jul 27, 2019 20:17:24 GMT -5
If prices get to high I could see tanner houck being our “addition” Since when did a AAA top prospect ever become the "addition" for Dombrowski? C'mon, people. Stop making stuff up to feed your anti Dave, raping the farm, agenda. The throw in for Kimbrel was Allen whose turned out well, but was a lottery ticket. Similar deal with Milwaukee for Thornburg (a bad trade). But I don't ever remember him throwing in a high level top prospect. No I’m not saying it would be bad. In fact I would prefer that he be our addition. I shouldn’t have put it in quotes since it comes off as sarcastic With our payroll restrictions, there really isn’t anyone out there who I want that won’t cost a ton.
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Post by telson13 on Jul 27, 2019 20:21:03 GMT -5
Maybe the fact that Eovaldi has always had electric stuff, all the way back to his days with the Marlins. The results come and go with him. A big issue is he always gets injured which I'm sure messes with his ability to maintain a certain level of performance. A lot of us liked getting Eovaldi and unless you use ERA it was clear he was pitching well. His WHIP, strikeout and walk numbers told us that. Yet you breakdown his numbers to just act like his crazy bad rough stretch never happened and he was just this truly elite pitcher. When in reality he had two great starts, sucked for like 7 starts/ 1 relief appearance and then had two good starts to end the year. Was lights out in the postseason and then sucked this year. Even with Tampa last year he was crazy good and then crazy bad from start to start. That is who Eovaldi is. Sure your xwOBA data did a great job predicting Eovaldi's future performance when you litterally remove his bad stretches and only look at when he's good. Even in his dominant playoff run, Eovaldi had weirdly low strikeout numbers. He succeeded by severely limiting hits, walks, and power. I've been around long enough to have gotten excited about more than a few pitchers who had supposedly mastered the art of avoiding hard contact and succeeding without strikeouts, and while I'm not going to say it's never a real thing, it's much more of a high wire act than the guy who just gets a ton of swings and misses all the time. I think it's this practice of trying to separate luck from "true talent" that misleads us sometimes, because when Eovaldi was going well and getting all this soft contact, you can look at heat maps and how he's locating his cutter and all these things and figure out that his good results on balls in play is a skill rather than dumb luck. The crack in the foundation for me though is this: just because it's a skill, doesn't mean it's sustainable. This goes to my thing about people having unrealistic expectations for Betts this year. Because we could point to his exit velos and his barrel percentage and the types of pitches he was swinging at or nor swinging at and say, ah, this is real. But the old school sabermetic wisdom that guys tend to gravitate back to their established level isn't really about assuming that career years are all luck-based, it's that regression to the mean is just the way the world tends to work for whatever reason. Yes. It’s very much like Porcello, who has so many ups and downs because when he’s on, he’s getting lots of weak contact and frustrating the hell out of guys. But lose the feel for the sinker, or struggle getting the SL over and then being down to two pitches...and the hits rack up, and the HR hurt way more. I’m 100% with you here...it has very little to do with velocity in the end...guys who pitch to contact can be incredibly efficient and dominant when they have feel. But pitching to contact (when you have no other option, especially) is an incredible high-wire act. Because all sorts of fielding-dependent things come into play, and very small changes in location or break on a guy's go-to pitch (or struggling with walks) can mean hard contact instead of weak, lots of baserunners, and poor results. Eovaldi needs *something* that’s a swing-and-miss. Or, he needs some delivery funk. He has an absolute laser for an arm...but so did Kelly. They might have a little more margin for error because of the velocity, but they’re still not fooling people. And for everyone here who saw Koji pitch, that’s what really matters.
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