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Half Way Into the Season With Half Way to Go
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Post by James Dunne on Jun 30, 2023 9:08:58 GMT -5
It was a 0.8 bWAR season (ERA+ of 85) for a team on which pitchers tend to overperform. Which, I'm usually inclined to trust FIP over RAA as a one-season indicator in a lot of cases, but in this case it was a 37-year-old picther with 1.9 bWAR in 280 innings over four seasons and also had the lowest strikeout rate of his career . I would've been fine with using resources on that type of guy if the rotation had a couple reliable guys, even if they were reliable medicrities. But he was the wrong type of risk for a staff of Sale, Paxton, Bello, and Whitlock.
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Post by Guidas on Jun 30, 2023 9:19:03 GMT -5
This team has no life. They're playing like it's September and just playing out the string. How do you lose 3 in a row against Miami at home? It's almost like they don't care. If they don't care, why should I? Another lost season. Blah. I hate this. Miami is 48-34 and of the three starters they used in the series, the 2022 Cy Young winner is having the worst season. The Red Sox defense and roster construction issues are real and should be criticized. Using limited financial resources a boom/bust reclamation project like Kluber instead of an innings eater to a staff that already had Chris Sale and James Paxton was very, very stupid. If Chaim Bloom got fired today, like within the hour, I don't think anyone would be shocked. It's not a good enough roster and he's had enough time to be responsible for that. But losing games to a Marlins team that is clearly better than them isn't an effort thing. It is 100% my pet peeve when people immediately write off bad playing to bad effort. Jarren Duran is probably the best example of this, he plays a bad outfield at 100 miles an hour. It's not at all an effort thing, it's that trying hard hasn't yet made him good at it. This team is playing hard, they just have huge holes that no amount of hustle is going to overcome. Miami is a legit playoff team and one slugger away from being a playoff favorite. That pitching is withering, and the Sox didn't even face their hottest starter.
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Post by Guidas on Jun 30, 2023 9:20:54 GMT -5
I hate this. Miami is 48-34 and of the three starters they used in the series, the 2022 Cy Young winner is having the worst season. The Red Sox defense and roster construction issues are real and should be criticized. Using limited financial resources a boom/bust reclamation project like Kluber instead of an innings eater to a staff that already had Chris Sale and James Paxton was very, very stupid. If Chaim Bloom got fired today, like within the hour, I don't think anyone would be shocked. It's not a good enough roster and he's had enough time to be responsible for that. But losing games to a Marlins team that is clearly better than them isn't an effort thing. It is 100% my pet peeve when people immediately write off bad playing to bad effort. Jarren Duran is probably the best example of this, he plays a bad outfield at 100 miles an hour. It's not at all an effort thing, it's that trying hard hasn't yet made him good at it. This team is playing hard, they just have huge holes that no amount of hustle is going to overcome. Well here's a unique complaint... and I don't understand it at all. First, Kluber was like their Plan D after Eovaldi, Eflin, and Heaney all turned down the Red Sox' putting the best offer on the table. Second, Kluber had a dodgy health history, but that hasn't been the problem with him this season. I think he was generally regarded as a high-floor/low-ceiling type option - the opposite of a boom/bust type. Third, they had Pivetta as the innings eater, but his underperformance goes to show that being an innings eater is not a guarantee of adequate performance (or good health, for that matter). Fourth, the rotation has turned out to be pretty good, following the limited depth in the early season when Whitlock, Bello, and Paxton were all on the IL. If Houck doesn't get in the face with a line drive they look very solid top to bottom. Fifth, just conceptually I don't think there's anything wrong with having several boom/bust types, provided you have enough of them. If it works out with just one or two of Paxton, Sale, and Kluber, that's enough; and that's more or less how it's gone. I think Bloom should know by now not to grab pitching cast-offs from TAM or LAD. Cast-offs being guys they let walk, as opposed to guys they traded away.
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Post by scottysmalls on Jun 30, 2023 9:27:20 GMT -5
Well here's a unique complaint... and I don't understand it at all. First, Kluber was like their Plan D after Eovaldi, Eflin, and Heaney all turned down the Red Sox' putting the best offer on the table. Second, Kluber had a dodgy health history, but that hasn't been the problem with him this season. I think he was generally regarded as a high-floor/low-ceiling type option - the opposite of a boom/bust type. Third, they had Pivetta as the innings eater, but his underperformance goes to show that being an innings eater is not a guarantee of adequate performance (or good health, for that matter). Fourth, the rotation has turned out to be pretty good, following the limited depth in the early season when Whitlock, Bello, and Paxton were all on the IL. If Houck doesn't get in the face with a line drive they look very solid top to bottom. Fifth, just conceptually I don't think there's anything wrong with having several boom/bust types, provided you have enough of them. If it works out with just one or two of Paxton, Sale, and Kluber, that's enough; and that's more or less how it's gone. I think Bloom should know by now not to grab pitching cast-offs from TAM or LAD. Cast-offs being guys they let walk, as opposed to guys they traded away. Not sure if this holds for Tampa. They have a super limited budget and gave the Kluber money to Eflin (who the Sox also tried to get over Kluber). If he had picked Boston they might have taken Kluber back.
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Post by incandenza on Jun 30, 2023 9:29:24 GMT -5
It was a 0.8 bWAR season (ERA+ of 85) for a team on which pitchers tend to overperform. Which, I'm usually inclined to trust FIP over RAA as a one-season indicator in a lot of cases, but in this case it was a 37-year-old picther with 1.9 bWAR in 280 innings over four seasons and also had the lowest strikeout rate of his career . I would've been fine with using resources on that type of guy if the rotation had a couple reliable guys, even if they were reliable medicrities. But he was the wrong type of risk for a staff of Sale, Paxton, Bello, and Whitlock. So who is the reliable starter they could've gotten on a 1/10 deal who would have come with fewer caveats and qualifications than the ones you listed here for Kluber?
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Post by scottysmalls on Jun 30, 2023 9:33:08 GMT -5
It was a 0.8 bWAR season (ERA+ of 85) for a team on which pitchers tend to overperform. Which, I'm usually inclined to trust FIP over RAA as a one-season indicator in a lot of cases, but in this case it was a 37-year-old picther with 1.9 bWAR in 280 innings over four seasons and also had the lowest strikeout rate of his career . I would've been fine with using resources on that type of guy if the rotation had a couple reliable guys, even if they were reliable medicrities. But he was the wrong type of risk for a staff of Sale, Paxton, Bello, and Whitlock. But all of that value pretty much was in the last two seasons so who cares about the prior two? And it’s also weird to discount FIP but then quote K rate, which is captured by FIP. If you didn’t believe in Kluber clearly you were right I just don’t see the same warning signs that make it such a bad choice for $10M. Especially after they did try to get several other guys with that money and were turned down for equal offers elsewhere.
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Post by manfred on Jun 30, 2023 9:33:28 GMT -5
It was a 0.8 bWAR season (ERA+ of 85) for a team on which pitchers tend to overperform. Which, I'm usually inclined to trust FIP over RAA as a one-season indicator in a lot of cases, but in this case it was a 37-year-old picther with 1.9 bWAR in 280 innings over four seasons and also had the lowest strikeout rate of his career . I would've been fine with using resources on that type of guy if the rotation had a couple reliable guys, even if they were reliable medicrities. But he was the wrong type of risk for a staff of Sale, Paxton, Bello, and Whitlock. So who is the reliable starter they could've gotten on a 1/10 deal who would have come with fewer caveats and qualifications than the ones you listed here for Kluber? I was not terribly opposed to signing Kluber, but this is a form of response that I hate. I’ve quoted Dr. Johnson before… one can say someone did a bad job even if one *personally* could not give you a better product. If a doctor leaves a sponge in me in surgery, he can’t say “well, how would you gave performed the operation?”
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Post by jmei on Jun 30, 2023 9:59:53 GMT -5
I hate this. Miami is 48-34 and of the three starters they used in the series, the 2022 Cy Young winner is having the worst season. The Red Sox defense and roster construction issues are real and should be criticized. Using limited financial resources a boom/bust reclamation project like Kluber instead of an innings eater to a staff that already had Chris Sale and James Paxton was very, very stupid. If Chaim Bloom got fired today, like within the hour, I don't think anyone would be shocked. It's not a good enough roster and he's had enough time to be responsible for that. But losing games to a Marlins team that is clearly better than them isn't an effort thing. It is 100% my pet peeve when people immediately write off bad playing to bad effort. Jarren Duran is probably the best example of this, he plays a bad outfield at 100 miles an hour. It's not at all an effort thing, it's that trying hard hasn't yet made him good at it. This team is playing hard, they just have huge holes that no amount of hustle is going to overcome. Well here's a unique complaint... and I don't understand it at all. First, Kluber was like their Plan D after Eovaldi, Eflin, and Heaney all turned down the Red Sox' putting the best offer on the table. Second, Kluber had a dodgy health history, but that hasn't been the problem with him this season. I think he was generally regarded as a high-floor/low-ceiling type option - the opposite of a boom/bust type. Third, they had Pivetta as the innings eater, but his underperformance goes to show that being an innings eater is not a guarantee of adequate performance (or good health, for that matter). Fourth, the rotation has turned out to be pretty good, following the limited depth in the early season when Whitlock, Bello, and Paxton were all on the IL. If Houck doesn't get in the face with a line drive they look very solid top to bottom. Fifth, just conceptually I don't think there's anything wrong with having several boom/bust types, provided you have enough of them. If it works out with just one or two of Paxton, Sale, and Kluber, that's enough; and that's more or less how it's gone.I hate to keep responding on this point, but you keep making it, so here we are. Yes, there is something wrong with having too many boom/bust types. A lot of them will bust before you can move on to options B, C and D (and a lot of those options will bust as well), and those games where you played all the busts count, too. I don't think you can say the rotation has been "pretty good" or "worked out" given that it's halfway through the season and Red Sox starting pitchers, as a whole, rank 20th in fWAR and 22nd in RA9-WAR and their playoffs odds are down to 10.2% (which ranks 11th of 15 teams in the AL).
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Post by incandenza on Jun 30, 2023 10:31:50 GMT -5
Well here's a unique complaint... and I don't understand it at all. First, Kluber was like their Plan D after Eovaldi, Eflin, and Heaney all turned down the Red Sox' putting the best offer on the table. Second, Kluber had a dodgy health history, but that hasn't been the problem with him this season. I think he was generally regarded as a high-floor/low-ceiling type option - the opposite of a boom/bust type. Third, they had Pivetta as the innings eater, but his underperformance goes to show that being an innings eater is not a guarantee of adequate performance (or good health, for that matter). Fourth, the rotation has turned out to be pretty good, following the limited depth in the early season when Whitlock, Bello, and Paxton were all on the IL. If Houck doesn't get in the face with a line drive they look very solid top to bottom. Fifth, just conceptually I don't think there's anything wrong with having several boom/bust types, provided you have enough of them. If it works out with just one or two of Paxton, Sale, and Kluber, that's enough; and that's more or less how it's gone.I hate to keep responding on this point, but you keep making it, so here we are. Yes, there is something wrong with having too many boom/bust types. A lot of them will bust before you can move on to options B, C and D (and a lot of those options will bust as well), and those games where you played all the busts count, too. I don't think you can say the rotation has been "pretty good" or "worked out" given that it's halfway through the season and Red Sox starting pitchers, as a whole, rank 20th in fWAR and 22nd in RA9-WAR and their playoffs odds are down to 10.2% (which ranks 11th of 15 teams in the AL). I refer you back to my second point in that quote. To make an additional point: for these purposes we need to make a distinction between "boom/bust" types. One type is the Paxton type - he's likely to "boom" is he stays healthy but he could bust by getting injured. In that case the downside risk is not what you're pointing to here - that you get a bunch of bad performances before you figure out who's good. The risk is just that you don't get as many innings as you hope out of such a pitcher. Given how cheap Paxton is that's a very reasonable gamble.
The other kind of boom/bust type does carry the risk you're talking about - that's where they might be good but they might suck. So okay... just get a bunch of pitchers who are guaranteed not to suck, right? But that brings us back to the question I put to James: who was the pitcher they could get on a 1/10 deal who was guaranteed not to suck? Or who could they have added who was in their arb years, like Pivetta, who was likewise guaranteed not to suck?
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Post by incandenza on Jun 30, 2023 10:38:38 GMT -5
So who is the reliable starter they could've gotten on a 1/10 deal who would have come with fewer caveats and qualifications than the ones you listed here for Kluber? I was not terribly opposed to signing Kluber, but this is a form of response that I hate. I’ve quoted Dr. Johnson before… one can say someone did a bad job even if one *personally* could not give you a better product. If a doctor leaves a sponge in me in surgery, he can’t say “well, how would you gave performed the operation?” And this is a form of response I hate. At a certain level of abstraction you can say "ultimately the team's record is what counts, and that's the only way to judge the front office." There's a certain crude validity to that, but it's willfully overlooking a lot of reporting we have access to, and a lot of reasonable conjecture we can make. And ending the argument at "well, they're getting paid to make good decisions, they should just figure it out" makes for a pretty boring discussion.
Here's what I would say to you and jmei and James: what we know about what the team did this offseason is that they made the biggest offer to Eovaldi as well as Eflin, both of whom turned them down, and they've proven to be clearly the best two FA signings. Additionally, they made the best offer to Heaney, who also turned them down, and he would also have been a solid addition. Then, when all that fell through, they turned to Kluber, who turned out to do worse than any reasonable person could have foreseen (in particular due to his loss of command).
Looking at that sum of facts, I do not think it is a very strong criticism of the team's approach this season to say they mismanaged the starting pitching roster construction.
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Post by briam on Jun 30, 2023 10:55:15 GMT -5
I was not terribly opposed to signing Kluber, but this is a form of response that I hate. I’ve quoted Dr. Johnson before… one can say someone did a bad job even if one *personally* could not give you a better product. If a doctor leaves a sponge in me in surgery, he can’t say “well, how would you gave performed the operation?” And this is a form of response I hate. At a certain level of abstraction you can say "ultimately the team's record is what counts, and that's the only way to judge the front office." There's a certain crude validity to that, but it's willfully overlooking a lot of reporting we have access to, and a lot of reasonable conjecture we can make. And ending the argument at "well, they're getting paid to make good decisions, they should just figure it out" makes for a pretty boring discussion.
Here's what I would say to you and jmei and James: what we know about what the team did this offseason is that they made the biggest offer to Eovaldi as well as Eflin, both of whom turned them down, and they've proven to be clearly the best two FA signings. Additionally, they made the best offer to Heaney, who also turned them down, and he would also have been a solid addition. Then, when all that fell through, they turned to Kluber, who turned out to do worse than any reasonable person could have foreseen (in particular due to his loss of command).
Looking at that sum of facts, I do not think it is a very strong criticism of the team's approach this season to say they mismanaged the starting pitching roster construction.
But despite the reporting we’ll never ever truly know what options were available to them. We don’t know who they discussed in potential trades, we know they weren’t in on any of the QO guys, but was that a result of them not liking them at that price or that price AND the QO compensation, which is a direct result of their own CBT mismanagement. You keep saying for 1-10, is that all they were allowed to spend on starting pitching? We don’t know! There’s still a decent amount of room to the CBT that leads me to believe they had more wiggle room. We know they could have had Eovaldi if they didn’t pounce on Kluber, was Eovaldi an arm good enough to be patient with? His performance thus far says he was, at the time, I’m not so sure. So, if the barometer of criticism is a bunch of regular guys on a message board have to produce a better decision in historical context, than it’s a pretty lousy barometer.
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Post by awalkinthepark on Jun 30, 2023 10:56:42 GMT -5
Well here's a unique complaint... and I don't understand it at all. First, Kluber was like their Plan D after Eovaldi, Eflin, and Heaney all turned down the Red Sox' putting the best offer on the table. Second, Kluber had a dodgy health history, but that hasn't been the problem with him this season. I think he was generally regarded as a high-floor/low-ceiling type option - the opposite of a boom/bust type. Third, they had Pivetta as the innings eater, but his underperformance goes to show that being an innings eater is not a guarantee of adequate performance (or good health, for that matter). Fourth, the rotation has turned out to be pretty good, following the limited depth in the early season when Whitlock, Bello, and Paxton were all on the IL. If Houck doesn't get in the face with a line drive they look very solid top to bottom. Fifth, just conceptually I don't think there's anything wrong with having several boom/bust types, provided you have enough of them. If it works out with just one or two of Paxton, Sale, and Kluber, that's enough; and that's more or less how it's gone.I hate to keep responding on this point, but you keep making it, so here we are. Yes, there is something wrong with having too many boom/bust types. A lot of them will bust before you can move on to options B, C and D (and a lot of those options will bust as well), and those games where you played all the busts count, too. I don't think you can say the rotation has been "pretty good" or "worked out" given that it's halfway through the season and Red Sox starting pitchers, as a whole, rank 20th in fWAR and 22nd in RA9-WAR and their playoffs odds are down to 10.2% (which ranks 11th of 15 teams in the AL). I understand this complaint, but how many starting pitchers are there in baseball that you can truly rely on heading into a season? Pitching is just such a crapshoot sometimes, every guy is a walking injury risk. The Yankees had Gerrit Cole and Cortes, then went out and signed Rodon, and by fWAR have had a worse rotation than the Sox this year. Gausman has been good for the Jays but I think Berrios, Menoah and Bassitt have all been disappointments. The Rays have seen their rotation take huge hits due to injuries. That's not to say the Sox shouldn't be better here, but I think we should give a little more slack. Building a rotation is really hard, and I would argue takes a lot of good luck, and it's easy to say the Sox should have signed so-and-so in hindsight.
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Post by manfred on Jun 30, 2023 10:58:32 GMT -5
I was not terribly opposed to signing Kluber, but this is a form of response that I hate. I’ve quoted Dr. Johnson before… one can say someone did a bad job even if one *personally* could not give you a better product. If a doctor leaves a sponge in me in surgery, he can’t say “well, how would you gave performed the operation?” And this is a form of response I hate. At a certain level of abstraction you can say "ultimately the team's record is what counts, and that's the only way to judge the front office." There's a certain crude validity to that, but it's willfully overlooking a lot of reporting we have access to, and a lot of reasonable conjecture we can make. And ending the argument at "well, they're getting paid to make good decisions, they should just figure it out" makes for a pretty boring discussion.
Here's what I would say to you and jmei and James: what we know about what the team did this offseason is that they made the biggest offer to Eovaldi as well as Eflin, both of whom turned them down, and they've proven to be clearly the best two FA signings. Additionally, they made the best offer to Heaney, who also turned them down, and he would also have been a solid addition. Then, when all that fell through, they turned to Kluber, who turned out to do worse than any reasonable person could have foreseen (in particular due to his loss of command).
Looking at that sum of facts, I do not think it is a very strong criticism of the team's approach this season to say they mismanaged the starting pitching roster construction.
I started from that general position. I don’t think it speaks well for the team that they couldn’t get their *three* top choices, but things happen. I appreciate that there is more to a team than record. But multiple seasons? I mean, DD was fired in 2019 after a year when one could say the record was tough… 84 wins with hurt Sale, damaged Price, and brutal Eovaldi. Imagine how good they’d be if any of those guys performed to potential! And here we are, years later, still shrugging and saying if only about Sale…
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Post by jmei on Jun 30, 2023 11:08:55 GMT -5
I hate to keep responding on this point, but you keep making it, so here we are. Yes, there is something wrong with having too many boom/bust types. A lot of them will bust before you can move on to options B, C and D (and a lot of those options will bust as well), and those games where you played all the busts count, too. I don't think you can say the rotation has been "pretty good" or "worked out" given that it's halfway through the season and Red Sox starting pitchers, as a whole, rank 20th in fWAR and 22nd in RA9-WAR and their playoffs odds are down to 10.2% (which ranks 11th of 15 teams in the AL). I refer you back to my second point in that quote. To make an additional point: for these purposes we need to make a distinction between "boom/bust" types. One type is the Paxton type - he's likely to "boom" is he stays healthy but he could bust by getting injured. In that case the downside risk is not what you're pointing to here - that you get a bunch of bad performances before you figure out who's good. The risk is just that you don't get as many innings as you hope out of such a pitcher. Given how cheap Paxton is that's a very reasonable gamble. The other kind of boom/bust type does carry the risk you're talking about - that's where they might be good but they might suck. So okay... just get a bunch of pitchers who are guaranteed not to suck, right? But that brings us back to the question I put to James: who was the pitcher they could get on a 1/10 deal who was guaranteed not to suck? Or who could they have added who was in their arb years, like Pivetta, who was likewise guaranteed not to suck?
Two things: (1) if your injury risk guy is injured, your 6th/7th/8th starters need to fill in, and those guys probably aren't very good, and (2) there's a false dichotomy between injury risk and performance risk. As we've seen at times this season, pitchers coming off injury are no guarantee to perform at that same level when they return, and there's a real likelihood that they're healthy but just not that good anymore (or need time when they're got performing very well on the field in order to round back into form - see, e.g., the fact that Sale, on the year, still has a below-average ERA-). You also fundamentally misunderstand my point. I am not criticizing their signing of Kluber in isolation. I am criticizing the broader idea that the 2023 rotation was in good shape because they had a bunch of options like Sale, Paxton, Bello, Whitlock, Houck, etc. who have high ceilings but low floors. They chose to allocate resources more towards the position player side and the bullpen rather than allocating it to the rotation presumably because they were comfortable with the idea that, even though a lot of their options were high risk, they had a lot of those options and enough of them would work out such that, on the whole, they'd get good performance out of it. They took the same general approach with respect to the middle infield. You, specifically, continue to champion this idea that they had plans A through E and you can't blame them because it took awhile to find the right one that stuck. I am criticizing that logic. The risk of trying to fill a hole with a bunch of $10M or less guys rather than one $25M guy is that you're racking up bad performance trying to find which guy sticks. Sometimes it makes more sense to just sign the good, expensive guy rather than try and go bargain hunting for bruised apples. (Ironically, they were willing to pay more for more certainty for their bullpen, which is one area where I am more in favor of a "spaghetti against the wall" approach.)
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Post by manfred on Jun 30, 2023 11:12:23 GMT -5
I refer you back to my second point in that quote. To make an additional point: for these purposes we need to make a distinction between "boom/bust" types. One type is the Paxton type - he's likely to "boom" is he stays healthy but he could bust by getting injured. In that case the downside risk is not what you're pointing to here - that you get a bunch of bad performances before you figure out who's good. The risk is just that you don't get as many innings as you hope out of such a pitcher. Given how cheap Paxton is that's a very reasonable gamble. The other kind of boom/bust type does carry the risk you're talking about - that's where they might be good but they might suck. So okay... just get a bunch of pitchers who are guaranteed not to suck, right? But that brings us back to the question I put to James: who was the pitcher they could get on a 1/10 deal who was guaranteed not to suck? Or who could they have added who was in their arb years, like Pivetta, who was likewise guaranteed not to suck?
Two things: (1) if your injury risk guy is injured, your 6th/7th/8th starters need to fill in, and those guys probably aren't very good, and (2) there's a false dichotomy between injury risk and performance risk. As we've seen at times this season, pitchers coming off injury are no guarantee to perform at that same level when they return, and there's a real likelihood that they're healthy but just not that good anymore (or need time when they're got performing very well on the field in order to round back into form - see, e.g., the fact that Sale, on the year, still has a below-average ERA-). You also fundamentally misunderstand my point. I am not criticizing their signing of Kluber in isolation. I am criticizing the broader idea that the 2023 rotation was in good shape because they had a bunch of options like Sale, Paxton, Bello, Whitlock, Houck, etc. who have high ceilings but low floors. They chose to allocate resources more towards the position player side and the bullpen rather than allocating it to the rotation presumably because they were comfortable with the idea that, even though a lot of their options were high risk, they had a lot of those options and enough of them would work out such that, on the whole, they'd get good performance out of it. They took the same general approach with respect to the middle infield. You, specifically, continue to champion this idea that they had plans A through E and you can't blame them because it took awhile to find the right one that stuck. I am criticizing that logic. The risk of trying to fill a hole with a bunch of $10M or less guys rather than one $25M guy is that you're racking up bad performance trying to find which guy sticks. Sometimes it makes more sense to just sign the good, expensive guy rather than try and go bargain hunting for bruised apples. (Ironically, they were willing to pay more for more certainty for their bullpen, which is one area where I am more in favor of a "spaghetti against the wall" approach.) This is the best critique of the approach anyone has produced. Chapeau.
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Post by julyanmorley on Jun 30, 2023 11:28:13 GMT -5
I hate to keep responding on this point, but you keep making it, so here we are. Yes, there is something wrong with having too many boom/bust types. A lot of them will bust before you can move on to options B, C and D (and a lot of those options will bust as well), and those games where you played all the busts count, too. I don't think this describes what happened. Every pitcher is an "or bust" candidate. Paxton and Sale were the two especially risky pitchers and they've played well and the Sox look poised to get a decent amount of combined innings out of them. Bello, Whitlock, Houck, Pivetta and Kluber were five pitchers with pretty typical risk profiles that were reasonable guys to put in a major league rotation at the start of the year. Then they had Crawford, Winckowski, Walter, Mata and Murphy as depth.
It seems like your complaint is basically boiling down to it would have been better if they had Sandy Alcantara or Gerritt Cole. Well they don't, and it would have been very expensive to change that.
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Post by awalkinthepark on Jun 30, 2023 11:42:22 GMT -5
I refer you back to my second point in that quote. To make an additional point: for these purposes we need to make a distinction between "boom/bust" types. One type is the Paxton type - he's likely to "boom" is he stays healthy but he could bust by getting injured. In that case the downside risk is not what you're pointing to here - that you get a bunch of bad performances before you figure out who's good. The risk is just that you don't get as many innings as you hope out of such a pitcher. Given how cheap Paxton is that's a very reasonable gamble. The other kind of boom/bust type does carry the risk you're talking about - that's where they might be good but they might suck. So okay... just get a bunch of pitchers who are guaranteed not to suck, right? But that brings us back to the question I put to James: who was the pitcher they could get on a 1/10 deal who was guaranteed not to suck? Or who could they have added who was in their arb years, like Pivetta, who was likewise guaranteed not to suck?
Two things: (1) if your injury risk guy is injured, your 6th/7th/8th starters need to fill in, and those guys probably aren't very good, and (2) there's a false dichotomy between injury risk and performance risk. As we've seen at times this season, pitchers coming off injury are no guarantee to perform at that same level when they return, and there's a real likelihood that they're healthy but just not that good anymore (or need time when they're got performing very well on the field in order to round back into form - see, e.g., the fact that Sale, on the year, still has a below-average ERA-). You also fundamentally misunderstand my point. I am not criticizing their signing of Kluber in isolation. I am criticizing the broader idea that the 2023 rotation was in good shape because they had a bunch of options like Sale, Paxton, Bello, Whitlock, Houck, etc. who have high ceilings but low floors. They chose to allocate resources more towards the position player side and the bullpen rather than allocating it to the rotation presumably because they were comfortable with the idea that, even though a lot of their options were high risk, they had a lot of those options and enough of them would work out such that, on the whole, they'd get good performance out of it. They took the same general approach with respect to the middle infield. You, specifically, continue to champion this idea that they had plans A through E and you can't blame them because it took awhile to find the right one that stuck. I am criticizing that logic. The risk of trying to fill a hole with a bunch of $10M or less guys rather than one $25M guy is that you're racking up bad performance trying to find which guy sticks. Sometimes it makes more sense to just sign the good, expensive guy rather than try and go bargain hunting for bruised apples. (Ironically, they were willing to pay more for more certainty for their bullpen, which is one area where I am more in favor of a "spaghetti against the wall" approach.) How many pitchers in baseball are there that a) have high floors and b) were available in the offseason? Senga?
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Jun 30, 2023 11:47:32 GMT -5
I was not terribly opposed to signing Kluber, but this is a form of response that I hate. I’ve quoted Dr. Johnson before… one can say someone did a bad job even if one *personally* could not give you a better product. If a doctor leaves a sponge in me in surgery, he can’t say “well, how would you gave performed the operation?” And this is a form of response I hate. At a certain level of abstraction you can say "ultimately the team's record is what counts, and that's the only way to judge the front office." There's a certain crude validity to that, but it's willfully overlooking a lot of reporting we have access to, and a lot of reasonable conjecture we can make. And ending the argument at "well, they're getting paid to make good decisions, they should just figure it out" makes for a pretty boring discussion. Here's what I would say to you and jmei and James: what we know about what the team did this offseason is that they made the biggest offer to Eovaldi as well as Eflin, both of whom turned them down, and they've proven to be clearly the best two FA signings. Additionally, they made the best offer to Heaney, who also turned them down, and he would also have been a solid addition. Then, when all that fell through, they turned to Kluber, who turned out to do worse than any reasonable person could have foreseen (in particular due to his loss of command). Looking at that sum of facts, I do not think it is a very strong criticism of the team's approach this season to say they mismanaged the starting pitching roster construction.
Maybe they wouldn't have pulled their offer to Eovaldi to spend the money elsewhere if there had been more money in the budget for 2023, but no, he failed to get under on 2022 for a team that some of us felt weren't going to make the postseason. That impacted the moves he could make in the winter. The Sox needed reinforcements for the rotation and basically they added Klubdr and lost Eovaldi and Wacha, important pieces that could have helped them weather the storm of injuries to Sale and Paxton and Whitlock earlier and Houck now. Maybe we wouldnt see Ort starts, bullpen games, and Winckowski being burnt out because of lack of other options once Schreiber went down. There is a cascading affect.
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Post by jmei on Jun 30, 2023 12:07:18 GMT -5
I hate to keep responding on this point, but you keep making it, so here we are. Yes, there is something wrong with having too many boom/bust types. A lot of them will bust before you can move on to options B, C and D (and a lot of those options will bust as well), and those games where you played all the busts count, too. I don't think this describes what happened. Every pitcher is an "or bust" candidate. Paxton and Sale were the two especially risky pitchers and they've played well and the Sox look poised to get a decent amount of combined innings out of them. Bello, Whitlock, Houck, Pivetta and Kluber were five pitchers with pretty typical risk profiles that were reasonable guys to put in a major league rotation at the start of the year. Then they had Crawford, Winckowski, Walter, Mata and Murphy as depth. It seems like your complaint is basically boiling down to it would have been better if they had Sandy Alcantara or Gerritt Cole. Well they don't, and it would have been very expensive to change that.
Fair point that my criticism is probably better directed at the middle infield situation than the starting pitching, but the front office made a conscious decision during the offseason that more resources should be put into the bullpen than the starting rotation, and that's a decision that I disagreed with at the time. Bello et al were reasonable guys to put into a rotation, but I think they really ought to have targeted a more established (lower risk) mid-rotation guy to fill out that group rather than Kluber. I don't love playing the "who would you have signed" game since no one knows who would have signed for what and it just invites cherry picking by all involved, but I would have signed someone more in the $15-20M range for the rotation (pushed harder for Eovaldi or Eflin or signed someone like Walker or Senga) and gone cheaper at closer.
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Post by Guidas on Jun 30, 2023 12:52:46 GMT -5
I don't think this describes what happened. Every pitcher is an "or bust" candidate. Paxton and Sale were the two especially risky pitchers and they've played well and the Sox look poised to get a decent amount of combined innings out of them. Bello, Whitlock, Houck, Pivetta and Kluber were five pitchers with pretty typical risk profiles that were reasonable guys to put in a major league rotation at the start of the year. Then they had Crawford, Winckowski, Walter, Mata and Murphy as depth. It seems like your complaint is basically boiling down to it would have been better if they had Sandy Alcantara or Gerritt Cole. Well they don't, and it would have been very expensive to change that.
Fair point that my criticism is probably better directed at the middle infield situation than the starting pitching, but the front office made a conscious decision during the offseason that more resources should be put into the bullpen than the starting rotation, and that's a decision that I disagreed with at the time. Bello et al were reasonable guys to put into a rotation, but I think they really ought to have targeted a more established (lower risk) mid-rotation guy to fill out that group rather than Kluber. I don't love playing the "who would you have signed" game since no one knows who would have signed for what and it just invites cherry picking by all involved, but I would have signed someone more in the $15-20M range for the rotation ( pushed harder for Eovaldi or Eflin or signed someone like Walker or Senga) and gone cheaper at closer. This. If you're getting beat out by another team for essentially the same offer then...up the offer unless you have comparable alternative. They did not. Also, this ownership/front office completely failed to read the market in the off-season. AAVs rose dramatically, which should be no surprise since that has happened in the first full off-season after virtually every new CBA has been reached. Add to this that owners were newly flush having received at least $100M per team in revenues from various deals reached by MLB for rights, software, etc. Yet the Sox seemed to be caught off-guard by this. They also seemed to consider that Boston is no longer a destination for top-level free agents anymore. The chance to win consistently with the Sox has been diminished in the last 4-5 years. This is not seen as a playoff team - and they're doing zero to diminish that perception this year, so far. Add to this, Massachusetts also has it's new millionaire tax to accompany its already extensive state income tax and fees portfolio. Pro Tip: when you're offering the "same" salary as teams in tax-free Texas and Florida, your salary is actually significantly less, at least for 81 games a year.
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Post by grandsalami on Jun 30, 2023 12:59:39 GMT -5
Fair point that my criticism is probably better directed at the middle infield situation than the starting pitching, but the front office made a conscious decision during the offseason that more resources should be put into the bullpen than the starting rotation, and that's a decision that I disagreed with at the time. Bello et al were reasonable guys to put into a rotation, but I think they really ought to have targeted a more established (lower risk) mid-rotation guy to fill out that group rather than Kluber. I don't love playing the "who would you have signed" game since no one knows who would have signed for what and it just invites cherry picking by all involved, but I would have signed someone more in the $15-20M range for the rotation ( pushed harder for Eovaldi or Eflin or signed someone like Walker or Senga) and gone cheaper at closer. This. If you're getting beat out by another team for essentially the same offer then...up the offer unless you have comparable alternative. They did not. Also, this ownership/front office completely failed to read the market in the off-season. AAVs rose dramatically, which should be no surprise since that has happened in the first full off-season after virtually every new CBA has been reached. Add to this that owners were newly flush having received at least $100M per team in revenues from various deals reached by MLB for rights, software, etc. Yet the Sox seemed to be caught off-guard by this. They also seemed to consider that Boston is no longer a destination for top-level free agents anymore. The chance to win consistently with the Sox has been diminished in the last 4-5 years. This is not seen as a playoff team - and they're doing zero to diminish that perception this year, so far. Add to this, Massachusetts also has it's new millionaire tax to accompany its already extensive state income tax and fees portfolio. Pro Tip: when you're offering the "same" salary as teams in tax-free Texas and Florida, your salary is actually significantly less, at least for 81 games a year. Uh... NATE is the one who misread the market here.. NOT BOS... its been reported over and over and over again here
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Post by e on Jun 30, 2023 13:03:35 GMT -5
Fair point that my criticism is probably better directed at the middle infield situation than the starting pitching, but the front office made a conscious decision during the offseason that more resources should be put into the bullpen than the starting rotation, and that's a decision that I disagreed with at the time. Bello et al were reasonable guys to put into a rotation, but I think they really ought to have targeted a more established (lower risk) mid-rotation guy to fill out that group rather than Kluber. I don't love playing the "who would you have signed" game since no one knows who would have signed for what and it just invites cherry picking by all involved, but I would have signed someone more in the $15-20M range for the rotation ( pushed harder for Eovaldi or Eflin or signed someone like Walker or Senga) and gone cheaper at closer. This. If you're getting beat out by another team for essentially the same offer then...up the offer unless you have comparable alternative. They did not.Also, this ownership/front office completely failed to read the market in the off-season. AAVs rose dramatically, which should be no surprise since that has happened in the first full off-season after virtually every new CBA has been reached. Add to this that owners were newly flush having received at least $100M per team in revenues from various deals reached by MLB for rights, software, etc. Yet the Sox seemed to be caught off-guard by this. They also seemed to consider that Boston is no longer a destination for top-level free agents anymore. The chance to win consistently with the Sox has been diminished in the last 4-5 years. This is not seen as a playoff team - and they're doing zero to diminish that perception this year, so far. Add to this, Massachusetts also has it's new millionaire tax to accompany its already extensive state income tax and fees portfolio. Pro Tip: when you're offering the "same" salary as teams in tax-free Texas and Florida, your salary is actually significantly less, at least for 81 games a year. I would argue that it's unfair to frame the Eovaldi and Eflin contract negotiations as the Red Sox, "refusing to up their offer". This is from a Chad Jennings' article on the Athletic after Eflin signed with the Rays: "My understanding is that what transpired is that the Red Sox were the highest bidders, but Eflin is from Florida, and so the Rays were given an opportunity to match. If the Florida club put the same offer on the table, Eflin would sign... The Red Sox were not given an opportunity to raise their bid. They also didn’t know until the deal was done that the Rays were going to have the final opportunity to match." On the Eovaldi front, we've been down this road multiple times. Early in the offseason the Red Sox offered him what was reported to be a larger deal than what he actually got, but Eovaldi wanted to test the market. The Red Sox shifted to other signings and then Eovaldi came back asking if the deal was still on the table. The Red Sox obviously did not have that money anymore so he signed with Texas for less.
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Post by incandenza on Jun 30, 2023 13:05:58 GMT -5
And this is a form of response I hate. At a certain level of abstraction you can say "ultimately the team's record is what counts, and that's the only way to judge the front office." There's a certain crude validity to that, but it's willfully overlooking a lot of reporting we have access to, and a lot of reasonable conjecture we can make. And ending the argument at "well, they're getting paid to make good decisions, they should just figure it out" makes for a pretty boring discussion.
Here's what I would say to you and jmei and James: what we know about what the team did this offseason is that they made the biggest offer to Eovaldi as well as Eflin, both of whom turned them down, and they've proven to be clearly the best two FA signings. Additionally, they made the best offer to Heaney, who also turned them down, and he would also have been a solid addition. Then, when all that fell through, they turned to Kluber, who turned out to do worse than any reasonable person could have foreseen (in particular due to his loss of command).
Looking at that sum of facts, I do not think it is a very strong criticism of the team's approach this season to say they mismanaged the starting pitching roster construction.
I started from that general position. I don’t think it speaks well for the team that they couldn’t get their *three* top choices, but things happen. I appreciate that there is more to a team than record. But multiple seasons? I mean, DD was fired in 2019 after a year when one could say the record was tough… 84 wins with hurt Sale, damaged Price, and brutal Eovaldi. Imagine how good they’d be if any of those guys performed to potential! And here we are, years later, still shrugging and saying if only about Sale… I didn't say Bloom couldn't be criticized for anything; just that this particular tree - the idea that they had a poor plan for the starting rotation - is the wrong tree to bark up. (Subsequent events have made it more and more evident that the 2021-22 offseason is when the real sins were committed.)
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Post by julyanmorley on Jun 30, 2023 13:06:23 GMT -5
I don't think this describes what happened. Every pitcher is an "or bust" candidate. Paxton and Sale were the two especially risky pitchers and they've played well and the Sox look poised to get a decent amount of combined innings out of them. Bello, Whitlock, Houck, Pivetta and Kluber were five pitchers with pretty typical risk profiles that were reasonable guys to put in a major league rotation at the start of the year. Then they had Crawford, Winckowski, Walter, Mata and Murphy as depth. It seems like your complaint is basically boiling down to it would have been better if they had Sandy Alcantara or Gerritt Cole. Well they don't, and it would have been very expensive to change that.
Fair point that my criticism is probably better directed at the middle infield situation than the starting pitching, but the front office made a conscious decision during the offseason that more resources should be put into the bullpen than the starting rotation, and that's a decision that I disagreed with at the time. Bello et al were reasonable guys to put into a rotation, but I think they really ought to have targeted a more established (lower risk) mid-rotation guy to fill out that group rather than Kluber. I don't love playing the "who would you have signed" game since no one knows who would have signed for what and it just invites cherry picking by all involved, but I would have signed someone more in the $15-20M range for the rotation (pushed harder for Eovaldi or Eflin or signed someone like Walker or Senga) and gone cheaper at closer. You need to place the Sox strategy into a context where the winning bid for basically every single expensive pitcher is completely out of line with a day one spreadsheet forecast (and for whatever it's worth, lately these pitchers have been falling short of their projections by a lot in aggregate) If you can fill up your budget with lower-tier bargain signings, and your roster is dire enough that all these 1.5 WAR players can see the field without pushing productive players to the bench or minors, then that's the way to go. It's not a golden ticket to winning, it's a 15% edge in a high variance game., Sometimes you end up with Hunter Renfroe and 2021 Kiké, and sometimes you end up with Corey Kluber and 2023 Kiké.
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Post by incandenza on Jun 30, 2023 13:25:25 GMT -5
I refer you back to my second point in that quote. To make an additional point: for these purposes we need to make a distinction between "boom/bust" types. One type is the Paxton type - he's likely to "boom" is he stays healthy but he could bust by getting injured. In that case the downside risk is not what you're pointing to here - that you get a bunch of bad performances before you figure out who's good. The risk is just that you don't get as many innings as you hope out of such a pitcher. Given how cheap Paxton is that's a very reasonable gamble. The other kind of boom/bust type does carry the risk you're talking about - that's where they might be good but they might suck. So okay... just get a bunch of pitchers who are guaranteed not to suck, right? But that brings us back to the question I put to James: who was the pitcher they could get on a 1/10 deal who was guaranteed not to suck? Or who could they have added who was in their arb years, like Pivetta, who was likewise guaranteed not to suck?
Two things: (1) if your injury risk guy is injured, your 6th/7th/8th starters need to fill in, and those guys probably aren't very good, and (2) there's a false dichotomy between injury risk and performance risk. As we've seen at times this season, pitchers coming off injury are no guarantee to perform at that same level when they return, and there's a real likelihood that they're healthy but just not that good anymore (or need time when they're got performing very well on the field in order to round back into form - see, e.g., the fact that Sale, on the year, still has a below-average ERA-). You also fundamentally misunderstand my point. I am not criticizing their signing of Kluber in isolation. I am criticizing the broader idea that the 2023 rotation was in good shape because they had a bunch of options like Sale, Paxton, Bello, Whitlock, Houck, etc. who have high ceilings but low floors. They chose to allocate resources more towards the position player side and the bullpen rather than allocating it to the rotation presumably because they were comfortable with the idea that, even though a lot of their options were high risk, they had a lot of those options and enough of them would work out such that, on the whole, they'd get good performance out of it. They took the same general approach with respect to the middle infield. You, specifically, continue to champion this idea that they had plans A through E and you can't blame them because it took awhile to find the right one that stuck. I am criticizing that logic. The risk of trying to fill a hole with a bunch of $10M or less guys rather than one $25M guy is that you're racking up bad performance trying to find which guy sticks. Sometimes it makes more sense to just sign the good, expensive guy rather than try and go bargain hunting for bruised apples. (Ironically, they were willing to pay more for more certainty for their bullpen, which is one area where I am more in favor of a "spaghetti against the wall" approach.) But this plan, as far as it goes, has worked out! Sale was not a good signing, but that's a sunk cost, and he gave them a good third of a season, so that's something. Paxton, at very low cost, has given them a very good quarter of a season and counting. Bello has been great. Whitlock has been good enough. Houck was pretty good, even if it's still unclear whether he can make it three times through the order, until he got hit in the face by a baseball, which no amount of "reliability" can prevent. And Crawford has emerged as a viable 5th starter.
Meanwhile, Kluber and Pivetta, the two "high floor" guys they did have, have pitched their way out of the rotation!
But okay, let's go with the notion that by investing money on $25 million starting pitchers you can substantially mitigate the sort of risk you are lamenting. How has that gone for the big money SP signings that were available this past offseason?
Verlander (2/86): 57 IP, 4.11 ERA DeGrom (5/185): 30 IP, 2.67 ERA, Tommy John Rodon (6/162): 0 IP
So do you think they should have gone with a "reliable" option like DeGrom or Rodon? Or should they have sucked it up and spent 43 million/year on Verlander to be a slight upgrade on Kutter Crawford? Below this tier the best options were... Eovaldi and Eflin.
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