2024 Lineup Discussion

I get what you're doing here with risk mitigation and trying to plug holes, but Verdugo is your team leader in fWAR at 2.5 and the only outfielder with a plus defensive rating 1.8 (Duvall -1.7, Duran -3.1, Yoshida -14.9, Refsnyder - 2.4). Duran is tied for third in fWAR at 2.3 even though he's not played since the NYY series and only had 362 PAs this year.

btw, to show how truly mediocre this team is, your leading pitcher by fWAR is...Chris Sale, with all of 77 innings.

Selling low on Yoshida seems like a bad move all around. I'd give him one more year, but the suggestion speaks to some of the significant flaws in this roster construction - at least six of the starters have negative fielding abilities.

While there's a lot of noise in defensive stats and you can get away with slightly negative players (say, around -3.5 or so) in a few positions, when your first baseman is at -15.6 and your third baseman is at -6.1 and your left fielder is -14.9, well, the offense can only make up for so much, especially when the combined fWAR for every pitcher the team ran out there this year is at 11.0 fWAR.

We can talk about injuries, but every team has that excuse.

Trade scenarios here are of course dependent on the return, but I agree with a lot of what you said here. That’s why some of the scenarios include keeping all of those guys. You can get to good OF defense by moving Yoshida to DH, or by selling Duran or Verdugo. You can’t keep all of those guys and Turner and have good defense out there because Duran isn’t a CF and Yoshida is bad in left. It’s also not the end of the world to have mediocre OF defense though, just need Casas and Devers to improve a bit.

Adding a starting pitcher or two is a separate issue and a no brainer.

Huh, I thought he'd been pretty good at picking throws, but maybe I'm misremembering.

For what it's worth the scouting report here says "Confident picking out throws in the dirt. Soft hands and surprisingly fluid actions. Moves well enough for first base. Potential solid-average defender there." I assume the evaluators here at least sort of know what they're talking about, and I'm not willing to throw that evaluation in the trash can after one rough season as a rookie.

Watch the throws from Devers and Hamilton from yesterday.  Both are errors hung on the guy making the throw, and they were errant throws, but at least Hamilton's should have either been picked or blocked.  He stretched out early in the wrong direction, which made him in a bad position to get the throw.  On Devers throw - a bit more nuanced.  He stretched out early again, but the throw went high and looked maybe not much over his glove.  If he waited and watched the throw to stretch, he could have stretched more up than out.  It was hard to see at game speed, but I am not sure he couldn't have caught that ball going up.  In the Devers throw case, Devers bobbled, and maybe going straight up would have made him catch the ball too later to get the out and stretching forward was the only chance.  But I am not sure that was true.  It's possible a better receiver would have gotten at least one of those, if not both.  So he needs to wait and see where the throws are before he commits his feet and body to bad positioning to receive throws.  That's something that is taught in high school, so I am not sure why he isn't doing that.  Maybe he spent too much time at 3B when younger, but I have to believe people worked with him in the minors on that kind of thing.

He also doesn't know when to charge hard and throw.  He may have had a play at the plate against -- I think it was Altuve.  Now - you have to get an out, and he did on that play.  But if he charged at the ball hard and committed to coming in to get the ball vs what looked like weighing letting it come back to him and mostly doing that -- he maybe could have cut down the runner.  A very good 1B would have charged and cut the runner down I am pretty sure on that play.

So I don't know.  I have watched him other times and thought he could generally improve and still think if they work on his body (lose 15 lbs) and work on his agility, I think that would go a long way.  But there are some fundamentals and decision-making at game speed that aren't great.  So I think it's probably 2 years to get him to average if he works hard at it.  There's doing all these things when you know you are practicing them in a drill, and then there is knowing what to do and when in a game.  So to me -- his bat is obviously MLB ready, and they were right to keep him working on it in the bigs.  But he has development to do defensively.  It will need to be done in the bigs.  So just hard to not have the rest of the defensive lineup account for that.  I think they need great fielding OFs and MIs - not just average.  Guys like Kutter Crawford would really benefit from better defense, and he can be a solid 4/5 starter I think for years.  But you need to have a lineup that doesn't make him get 4 outs an inning because he's not mowing everyone down by K.  

And I think this is why Rafaela should play CF the rest of the year frankly -- to see what he does for the defense and weigh seriously if he will be a reasonable answer out there from the beginning of next year.  His bat may or may not be ready.  But we need to see the glove and what it allows us to keep in the grass next to him.  I think Abreu will be the up and down man next year who can grab a starting role and stick when somebody is hurt.  But if the glove is spectacular, which everyone says it is, they need to give Rafaela every chance they can to provide defensive value and try to get whatever outs they can from the guys who are plus fielders.

Honestly, unless he is truly atrocious or otherworldly at scooping it’s not going to change his first base defensive value much. He has had occasional issues misjudging a scoop but I doubt he will end up on either end of the spectrum. He’s still young and learning. His problems are bad reaction time and incredibly slow movements. He’s had issues with judgement and misplays that I think can be cleaned up, but the range/reaction are much harder fixes. I think (and hope) he can improve from the abysmal defense he has played this year, but given the inability to get to balls not right at him, I don’t see him ever being better than “bad”, or maybe “average” in a good year. Given his ability with the bat and years of control it’s not the end of the world, just something that has to be part of the calculation. He’s still a very good player.

Eh I dunno, it's supposed to be the easiest position to have decent defense, but if you're losing ten outs because of poor range I'm not sure if it matters so much that they came on ground balls to first or third.

Fangraphs' def is based on OAA (plus positional adjustment) and his OAA is -11, which is much worse than his UZR and DRS numbers. It's certainly possible OAA is overstating how bad he is, and if DRS is more accurately capturing his level of defensive play then I agree with you that -3 over 100 games is something you could certainly live with.

Boston:

9th in the AL in Batting fWAR at 14.2
9th in the AL in Pitching fWAR at 11.0
15th in the AL in Defense at -54.5

Every team ahead of them in the AL is in the playoffs (BAL, MN, SEA, TX, HOU, TB) or still in the hunt (TOR), plus LAA in Batting and CLEV in Pitching.

In all of MLB they are 18th in batting, 20th in pitching and dead last in defense.

If this isn't the definition of mediocre/mid in comparison to their peers, I don't know what is.

It also speaks to a significant deficit in roster construction/philosophy.

Yup, I truly do like a good portion of the roster and many if not most of them are good enough to be starting caliber players on a post season team but it's just the sum of the parts isn't good enough as a whole to be a post season team. It's a team full of solid role players for the most part, it's a bunch a pony's with little to no thoroughbreds and arguably the only true thoroughbred in Devers has played like a pony most of the year. 

You look around the league and how many of the best Red Sox players would be even top 3 or 4 on the better teams in the league? Arguably none of them, at least with their production this year. To rag on Devers, talent wise he's as good as they come but his production this year is just solid. They need him to be much better than just solid. 

What's the answer for 2024 lineup? I don't know I don't have one right now other than hope for a bounce back year from Devers, a healthy Story can be an above average SS and Casas solidifies himself as a middle of the order thumper. Is that enough? I'm not really sure it will be. 

I certainly agree with you and theoretically Story at SS suppling above average if not better defense at SS instead of having Hernandez the butcher at SS for roughly half the year, possibly going with Rafaela in CF and moving Duran/Duvall if he's retained while moving Yoshida the statue to DH most the time should move the needle quite a bit. Not going to make them the all defensive squad of the century but should at least get them closer to league average.

One team, offensively: The Twins. Verdugo, Devers and Duvall/Duran (tied) would be better than all of their top three players, by fWAR. However the Twins' pitchers cumulatively have a 15.7 fWAR; the Sox pitchers, 11.0 fWAR.

For all other current playoff teams in the AL, only Verdugo, 2.5 fWAR, would be in any of the team's top three - tied for third on the Orioles with Anthony Santander. This includes the Rays, even with the subtraction of Franco. In fact, no Sox player would even be in Tampa's top 5 in fWAR even after subtracting Franco.

Also, Verdugo would be third on the Blue Jays (technically not a playoff team but still in the hunt) over current third place candidate, Whit Merrifield (2.3 fWAR).

Cumulatively, the offenses play out like this:

Orioles 17.9 fWAR
Twins 17.7 fWAR
Mariners 21.8 fWAR
Rays 27.8 fWAR (23.2 w/out Franco)
Rangers 27.6 fWAR
Astros 22.4 fWAR

Blue Jays 20.3 fWAR

Red Sox 14.2 fWAR

The disparities in pitching are even more dramatic with the Red Sox being 9th in the AL, just above Detroit. None of the Sox pitchers would be in the top three of any AL playoff team or Toronto.