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5/17-5/19 Red Sox vs. Astros Series Thread
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Post by soxfansince67 on May 19, 2019 16:49:07 GMT -5
One of those really huge (as in a Bernie esque YUGE) wins we may look back on later in the year and consider as a key win. Blacked out here (on Cape Cod visiting family), so listened to some, but no WiFi on the beach walk - so delighted to read of the win after the game was over.
Chavis! Walden!
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Post by patford on May 19, 2019 17:08:38 GMT -5
If Miley was having the same strike zone as Sale, the game won't be tied by now. If Miley was still in a Red Sox uniform he would be Johnson or Velazquez.
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Post by telson13 on May 19, 2019 17:10:48 GMT -5
Walden hit 96.0 on a sinker per statcast; sat 94. Sale was comfortably 93-96, which is good news. I’m not sure he wouldn’t have had a substantially longer, more efficient, more impressive outing if it weren’t for a litany of bad calls. Barnes pretty much his usual these days, but Workman sitting 92-94+ with the 4FB was a nice sight. I still contend that the top of the bullpen is strong, even if 2/3 are legit surprises. I have hope for Brasier getting back on track. Depth is certainly a concern, though. I’m encouraged by the SP rebound; tough one for Porcello but he pitched well vs a very, very good offensive team; Sale has been progressively looking more and more himself, which is huge given their semi-dependence on him, his potential huge postseason role, and his contract extension. I’d’ve really like to see the Sox take 2 of 3, but these were all close games and Houston’s been white-hot. Fighting back from what could’ve been a demoralizing El Foldo sweep was good juju.
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Post by telson13 on May 19, 2019 17:13:14 GMT -5
If Miley was having the same strike zone as Sale, the game won't be tied by now. If Miley was still in a Red Sox uniform he would be Johnson or Velazquez. Houston has got to be at least a little concerned about Whitley, who had the PED suspension and is getting lit up this year. He’s got five plus to plus-plus pitches and premium velocity/movement, so I’m sure they’re not that worried. But I thought it was probably 50-50 Whitley had Miley’s spot.
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Post by incandenza on May 19, 2019 17:28:26 GMT -5
This is probably obvious to others but it's just now occurring to me that Barnes' performance this year is even more impressive when you consider that he's invariably brought in to face the heart of the other teams' lineups, a source of value that even the leverage stats like WPA don't capture.
And it points up a further limitation of inflexible closer types like Kimbrel - not only are they wasted in a lot of low-leverage situations, often as not they're also brought in to face weaker parts of the lineup.
Related: despite the occasional grumbling, I think Cora's done an excellent job of handling the bullpen this season. It's not an optimal bullpen, but it feels like its use has been about as optimal as could be.
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Post by telson13 on May 19, 2019 17:36:03 GMT -5
OTOH, it looks like Miley topped out at 93.7, which seems a couple ticks harder than I remember him with the Sox. For $4.5M tho, he’s been a great signing for the ‘Stros while they wait on Whitley et al. He’s basically been what he used to be, an innings-eating 3/4.
I’m getting really anxious waiting for **some** Sox pitching prospect to break out. They’ve had such positional success, you’d think at least one guy from the pitching side would figure it out. With Sale, Price, Rodriguez, even a reliable low-cost 3/4 with upside would be huge with Porcello almost certainly gone and Eovaldi in the cooler and being a health question mark.
Hammerhead’s comment earlier was on the money: bullpen (and really, overall staff) depth is a problem. I have serious concern that continuing to “bullpen” every fifth start is going to catch up to them when Velasquez going 3-4 means Walden’s in there for 2, and Workman or Barnes is almost assured to pitch unless it’s a smokeshow. Burnout is a serious threat, especially when your truly reliable relief options are limited.
As for the offense, yeah...continuing to play Nunez when e legitimately has very little to offer on either side of the ball is a problem. They can hide JBJ’s bat for a little while, because his defense is a boon and Vazquez’s crazy resurgence lengthens the 1-6 they had last year to at least 1-7. But two dead spots back-to-back in the order, one of them being almost crippling defensively as well, is a rally-killer. Without ubiquitous longball capability, they need to rely on stringing together hits. That takes 3-4 batters, not 1, to manufacture a run or two. I’d much prefer they give Lin a chance to develop further because at least he takes walks, runs the bases, and plays good defense.
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Post by telson13 on May 19, 2019 17:42:23 GMT -5
This is probably obvious to others but it's just now occurring to me that Barnes' performance this year is even more impressive when you consider that he's invariably brought in to face the heart of the other teams' lineups, a source of value that even the leverage stats like WPA don't capture. And it points up a further limitation of inflexible closer types like Kimbrel - not only are they wasted in a lot of low-leverage situations, often as not they're also brought in to face weaker parts of the lineup. Related: despite the occasional grumbling, I think Cora's done an excellent job of handling the bullpen this season. It's not an optimal bullpen, but it feels like its use has been about as optimal as could be. Yeah, Barnes is no joke. He’s been stupidly good against the best other teams have to offer, in the highest leverage situations, and sometimes for multiple innings. And he often comes in with runners on base. He’s been incredible this year. His progression has been very impressive, incrementally growing from failed-SP and last man in the bullpen, to truly elite.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on May 19, 2019 17:44:09 GMT -5
The counter moves for tomorrow when Price and Leon are activated.
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Post by dirtdog on May 19, 2019 17:44:48 GMT -5
Walden with a win again. Great job to salvage one of the three games. Really needed that one - pick up a half game on first. Have to agree that of all the much needed wins in 2019 this was at the top of the list, if for no other reason than psyche. Team needed to know they can play with these guys. A loss with your ace on the mound at home and getting swept would have been a bad way to start a road trip.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on May 19, 2019 17:47:58 GMT -5
That was a badly needed win. Getting swept at home, even against a strong Houston team, would have been bad. I didn't think they'd win today, but fortunately for the Sox, Walden is aiming to be a 20 game winner, the way he's going.
And Chavis hit the ball a mile again. He might just lead the team in HRs when all is said and done, even though I suspect JDM will do the honors.
Cora is definitely managing the bullpen sabermetrically with Workman getting the save in a 1 run game so Barnes could pitch to the tough part of the order in the 8th. That's a gutsy thing to do.
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Post by telson13 on May 19, 2019 17:50:16 GMT -5
Lol, I was just looking at Barnes’s stats, and 1) his walk rate is excellent at 1.9/9, which is all the more impressive since he’s pitching backwards off the CB, and 2) his xFIP is 0.80, and somehow it almost seems like he hasn’t peaked yet. I had high hopes for him as a starter, but to see him turn into such a relief weapon is almost as satisfying, especially remembering the struggles.
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Post by incandenza on May 19, 2019 18:07:59 GMT -5
Lol, I was just looking at Barnes’s stats, and 1) his walk rate is excellent at 1.9/9, which is all the more impressive since he’s pitching backwards off the CB, and 2) his xFIP is 0.80, and somehow it almost seems like he hasn’t peaked yet. I had high hopes for him as a starter, but to see him turn into such a relief weapon is almost as satisfying, especially remembering the struggles. This jumped out at me - K-BB%: 2015: 12.1% 2016: 13.9 2017: 19.2 2018: 24.5 2019: 43.5
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Post by Oregon Norm on May 19, 2019 18:16:05 GMT -5
Chavis leading off. Vazquez in the 5 hole. Very strange lineup. One analysis says your best hitter should be first. Right now Chavis is their best hitter. As for Vazquez, after today his OPS is just about at .900, so 5 looks ok also. The bottom of that lineup, however, is what it is, and what it is is invisible offensively.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on May 19, 2019 18:39:42 GMT -5
Lol, I was just looking at Barnes’s stats, and 1) his walk rate is excellent at 1.9/9, which is all the more impressive since he’s pitching backwards off the CB, and 2) his xFIP is 0.80, and somehow it almost seems like he hasn’t peaked yet. I had high hopes for him as a starter, but to see him turn into such a relief weapon is almost as satisfying, especially remembering the struggles. This jumped out at me - K-BB%: 2015: 12.1% 2016: 13.9 2017: 19.2 2018: 24.5 2019: 43.5Relievers who've had a season with a K-BB% over 40%: Kimbrel (twice), Capps, Chapman, and Millar. Josh Hader is on pace to do it this year.
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Post by telson13 on May 19, 2019 18:46:29 GMT -5
Lol, I was just looking at Barnes’s stats, and 1) his walk rate is excellent at 1.9/9, which is all the more impressive since he’s pitching backwards off the CB, and 2) his xFIP is 0.80, and somehow it almost seems like he hasn’t peaked yet. I had high hopes for him as a starter, but to see him turn into such a relief weapon is almost as satisfying, especially remembering the struggles. This jumped out at me - K-BB%: 2015: 12.1% 2016: 13.9 2017: 19.2 2018: 24.5 2019: 43.5 Yup. And that huge leap is coincident with making the CB his #1 pitch, which makes me think it’s likely fairly sustainable. He’s getting a ton of chases, the CB produces lots of grounders, and he just isn’t getting deep in counts the way he used to. Like, last year he switched to the knuckle-CB grip, and his command and whiff rate on the pitch went up. Now he features it and the 4FB up high is all the more tempting, because most guys don’t wanna swing at the CB. He’s just fantastic...even better right now than Kimbrel at his best, because Barnes can pitch anywhere, anytime, to any hitters. No clean-inning hangups, no 5-runs up giving up 3 walks and a GS...just all business. His SwStr rate is 16.7%, and his first-strike % is 62.3; the former a career high and the latter his highest since his debut. He’s also added **10** percentage points to his O-Sw, from a meh 27% to an outstanding 37%. And, he’s had no BABIP luck (it’s a totally average .286). What really gets me? He’s a career mid-70s LOB% guy. Which is pretty average. This year it’s a totally ludicrous 98.4%. That’s just unsustainable. I mean, Mariano Rivera obviously had a strand skill and his highest season was 92%, 80% for his career. So Barnes simply can’t keep this up. But that doesn’t make it any less impressive when you think about **how frequently he comes in with runners on and the best part of the opponents’ lineup coming up**. And to top it all off, he’s got a GB rate over 65%, which is fantastic (and has incrementally risen over the years), but also a ludicrous 40%HR/FB rate, which is why his xFIP is half his FIP. That’s going to come way down. He’s one of the five best relievers in the game right now, and he’s gotten there stepwise through lots of trial and error.
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Post by telson13 on May 19, 2019 18:57:19 GMT -5
Also, wow does the Kinsler trade bum me out. I was ok with it at the time (tho I’d been making a stink about getting a look at Buttrey at the MLB level for a while), because of the situation. But it’s as bad as the Shaw-Thornburg deal, maybe worse because Shaw was sorta redundant and they had seen him enough to kinda know what they had. Buttrey never got a look despite there being a bullpen need, and while Kinsler helped stabilize the defense and they ultimately won the WS, it was just botched from the start. DD’s enduring issue is bullpen mistakes and poor construction, and I expect it will be forever. It’s fine because he does most everything else well (except maybe the continued overpay-to-get-it-done thing), but it could certainly come back to bite them the way it did during Detroit’s 2013 run.
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Post by patford on May 19, 2019 19:44:26 GMT -5
The counter moves for tomorrow when Price and Leon are activated. Wait a second. Are we sure this Josh Smith guy isn't Wade Miley ?
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Post by redsox04071318champs on May 19, 2019 19:51:36 GMT -5
The counter moves for tomorrow when Price and Leon are activated. Wait a second. Are we sure this Josh Smith guy isn't Wade Miley ? Not unless Wade Miley became a righty all of the sudden. I'd say this Josh Smith guy is Ryan Brasier because that's who the photo is of.
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Post by patford on May 19, 2019 20:36:29 GMT -5
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,933
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Post by ericmvan on May 19, 2019 23:03:39 GMT -5
Random observation: your sense that the Sox squander a disproportionate number of game-altering opportunities is not wrong. They rank 22nd in MLB in FanGraph's imperfect but useful "Clutch" measure.
Actually, that's not true. They rank 11th. But that includes Mitch Moreland, who leads all of MLB hitters in the metric and is 5th overall in Win Probablity Added. Our subjective sense of how the team performs in high-leverage removes how ridiculously good Moreland has been in those situations, so I ran the numbers that way, too.
Betts, Devers, and (just barely) Bogaerts have positive "Clutch."
But wait, there's more. There's a guy on the Sox who is dead last in WPA in all of MLB. He's a major contributor to the bad team clutch performance (not that I'm going to run the numbers to nail it down). With Holt and Pedroia on rehab, his chances to kill future rallies will hopefully be limited.
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Post by soxfansince67 on May 20, 2019 7:15:48 GMT -5
Taking stock - my view of things as I sit at Eastham on Cape Cod pondering a windy beach walk....
In one respect, where we are should not be surprising. Last season, although not all players hit individual bests or had outstanding seasons, the team as a whole really clicked - rallies, clutch hitting and pitching - all leading to the record in wins and stampede through the various playoff series...it was one for the ages, truly.
So, this year is really to be expected - some drop offs, some loss in focus, some flagging energy and enthusiasm. How to top last year? Not really possible - not with nearly the same group of players...motivation after that is so difficult. Cora has a tough job and is certainly trying different things to light the fires again. It is getting better. It could be the slight upward slope is the way to do this. I am hopeful.
Looking at the roster - Smith, Brewer, Thornburg, Weber, perhaps Hembree (though he is proving useful and to me surprisingly effective) are the main dead or nearly dead weight. The return of Price, Eovaldi and Johnson will bump Smith, Weber and one of Brewer, Thornburg or Hembree off the mountain. We will have a tight rope part of the pen. My feeling is that if the offense can ignite a bit better it can compensate and take off some of the heat for pen perfection.
Ah, the bats - JBJ, Pearce, Nunez. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Holt will hopefully send Nunez packing. Maybe Marco Hernandez will displace Pearce. Sandy's return will bump Oscar H back down. I think we will have to live with JBJ and hope that hot streak is close. The glove really does need to be there.
So - we are 24-22 and only 4.5 games back. We have the 6th most wins, and with such an awful start, and the best (hopefully) ahead, we can do this. Mookie hasn't gone blazing hot yet, Benni hasn't been at his best, JDM has a power burst coming, Chavis has been astounding, CVaz a very pleasant surprise, Xander pretty much Xander and Mitch an early season savior.
Let's play ball!
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on May 20, 2019 7:27:58 GMT -5
I rejected the notion at first that Weber isn't good. Just thought he was just another soft tossing side arm reliever.
However the guy has a lot of movement on his pitches, kind of like Walden, but with less velocity.
He has given up one run in 8 innings so far and he should be given a longer look, especially given the depth of this bullpen right now. He just went 3 innings against the toughest lineup in MLB in the Astros and only gave up one run.
I mean really, he's not worse than Brewer, Thornburg, and Nunez at the moment and all 3 of those players have been given longer leashes to this point. When all 3 of Pedrioa, Holt, and Johnson get back, all three of those players should go first before Weber.
The interesting part is when Eovaldi comes back. One of the three of Velazquez, Weber, and Brasier will be sent down at that point (unless there's another injury).
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Post by sarasoxer on May 20, 2019 7:40:30 GMT -5
Weber would be the guy to go. He has the least cache. Velazquez is that spot starter/save the pen reliever and Brasier proved himself.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on May 21, 2019 0:19:16 GMT -5
Assuming no injuries:
I see it as Nunez (DFA), Weber, Brewer
when Pedroia, Holt, Johnson are ready.
Lin will remain at Pawtucket and Eovaldi should make for an interesting decision but maybe Velzquez at that point..
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on May 21, 2019 1:25:52 GMT -5
Assuming no injuries: I see it as Nunez (DFA), Weber, Brewer when Pedroia, Holt, Johnson are ready. Lin will remain at Pawtucket and Eovaldi should make for an interesting decision but maybe Velzquez at that point.. You think Thornburg deserves a spot?
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