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Post by mandelbro on Nov 22, 2015 18:54:32 GMT -5
Short answer for RHH outfielder preference: they already have Holt and Shaw (who hit lefty) on the roster and will be in the mix for fourth outfielder reps. OK thanks. If Shaw can play left field that would be tremendous for our offense. Has he been considered an OF in the past? Or is it a new position for him now that his bat appears to be an asset?
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 22, 2015 13:13:36 GMT -5
I've noticed that Dombrowski keeps emphasizing that he wants a SP and a RHH in the outfield. Why not a LHH? We have the following outfield options in-house: RHH Mookie Betts who should play everyday LHH Jackie Bradley, who hasn't shown much of a split in his career despite being a lefty (unless you think the reverse split is real, and not going to move towards a more normal neutral split) RHH Rusney Castillo, whose ability to hit MLB pitching is a question mark and who has a very strong split LHH Brock Holt, who doesn't have a split
It seems like the biggest question mark and most platoonable of the outfielders is Castillo. He plays the easiest defensive position of the three (LF), he has the biggest split, and he's quite likely the weakest overall hitter. Why isn't the goal to get a 4th outfielder who can split time with him?
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 19, 2015 10:16:07 GMT -5
I'm not sure I'd want the Sox giving up that much for Salazar (who I really like, btw), in that Devers is the type of potential 3/4 hitter they sorely need. That said, JBJ/Miley/Johnson/Chavis or similar I could stomach. Tbh, I'm not sure how much I'd give up, but I do think Salazar has bigtime potential, and obtaining him for an equivalent salary like Miley's would allow them to sign Price, and have a tremendous rotation, provided, yeah, they could swing getting another OF at semi-reasonable cost. As offensively starved as Cleveland is, I would think they would want a more ML ready bat. That said, I'm not sure who they have in their high minors who could replicate Devers & may be a couple of years ahead of him.....Not too many teams would be willing to give up relatively cheap offense, meaning some teams are overloaded with pitching, but not too many teams are overloaded with offense. Maybe they take a future middle of the order Devers +. If they would, I'd do it (but it would sting). Yeah, the point of intentionally weakening what might be the best rotation in the sport would be to better supplement that rotation. I have no doubt that they'd want MLB bats. I don't think JBJ is the bat that gets it done but I'd go there. Hell, you can pocket the "pitcher money" if you traded for Salazar and splurge on the J-Hey kid. Betts in CF, Heyward in the Fenway RF, Castillo in LF with Benintendi and Moncada in the wings is a good OF and we'd have a burgeoning young ace at hand. I think the concerns about Salazar's durability (whereas Price is a horse) are valid. But I also think now is the time to strike for Salazar. He's got stuff that is more impressive than the results. 8th-best SIERA in the AL last season. Behind Sale, Archer, Price, Keuchel, Carrasco, Kluber, and Hernandez. He's an electric player and I'd want him bad if I were DD. I suspect Cleveland wouldn't trade him for anything we'd offer though. Their best match would be young pitching for older and more expensive hitting.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 18, 2015 19:21:58 GMT -5
I think it'd take something like below, just because I don't think JBJ is the OF they are looking for, and the Red Sox are going to have to stretch to avoid their real tops guys (Bogaerts, Betts, Erod, Owens, Swihart, Moncada, Benintendi, Kopech, Espinoza) GULP: Danny Salazar for: JBJ, Joe Kelly, Devers and Matt Barnes What is the gulp for? You're trading a 26 year old CF who steamer projects to give you .730ish with GG defense, and who is a Boras client. That hurts. You're trading a 5th starter with bullpen potential, a third baseman in A who might not stick at third base, and AAAA bullpen prospect. You're getting 4 years of a staff ace talent who is only 26, whose peripherals were outstanding. There's a lot of reason to think Salazar would be better in the AL East than names like Cueto or Zimmerman, and possibly even Price. Why would you pay 7 years and $210 million for a declining Price, if you could just do this, get an ascendant Salazar, and keep the money? If the next 4 years of Salazar and Price are equal: Are 4 more years of Bradley, plus Devers, plus the last 3 years of Price's deal worth anything close to $210 mil?
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 18, 2015 12:44:47 GMT -5
Voted "3". My issue is less with the moving pieces themselves and more with the big picture - specifically the timing (did we really have to cave in mid-November?) and the fact that adding a closer to a 78-84 team smacks of management getting a few steps ahead of themselves. The whole thing feels rushed.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 16, 2015 17:37:51 GMT -5
I wouldn't put too much stock in that Cueto and Zimmerman story. That's Rosenthal wanting eyes, with no credible source. Him and Jon Heyman are two guys that have amazing connections and break stories, but really suffer when they start throwing out their own theories. If DD can't get Price or Greinke, I see him kicking the tires on Cueto and Zim, but potentially going after Kazmir and more pen help instead. I'd really like Kazmir. I don't know why we aren't hearing more about him. Yeah. I'd love to see someone put together a cogent argument why Kazmir would fare much differently in the AL East/Fenway park than Jordan Zimmerman or Johnny Cueto. The three have similar peripherals. And Kazmir is an AL guy. He's done it before. Do we really want to bet $150 million on Johnny Cueto having a 7-9% HR/FB rate at Fenway?
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 16, 2015 11:33:57 GMT -5
I still believe that Hanley Ramirez is part of the solution, for several reasons. 1. Until he got hurt last year he was raking. 2. Our best hitter is 39 years old right now, due for a decline, and we have no in-house replacements other than Ramirez. 3. No one wants him, unless we hemorrhage money or assets to facilitate it. 4. He is a career infielder.
I really hate this whole "wish away Ramirez" thing. We inked a deal with Hanley Ramirez to be an impactful player. Now we need him to step up to the plate, literally and metaphorically, and do that. We aren't going to be the team we can be without all hands on deck and that includes Hanley.
The Sox are a team with several holes looming on the horizon. Ortiz is going to be gone soon. And that's a colossal hole to fill. Pedroia is getting older. Clay, who is our best pitcher in the present, is on the other side of 30 with FA looming. Oh and our relief ace (pre-Kimbrel trade) is on the verge of croaking. Hanley and Pablo were signed to bridge this gap and I believe Hanley can deliver on that promise. Selling him for 5 cents on the dollar at the nadir of his pro career, so we can turtle and wait for the kids to arrive, is an unacceptable option IMO.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 15, 2015 9:34:24 GMT -5
The only one of the "real aces" that intrigues me is Price. If he's off the table I'm going straight to Kazmir. Assuming his arm hasn't finally fallen off I think he's well suited to pitch in the AL east. Don't think he's any worse here than Zimmerman or Cueto, but he'll presumably come on more favorable terms. He keeps the ball down and locates his pitches. As an aside he'd be a great mentor to our younger pitchers, as a former fireballer who reinvented himself.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 14, 2015 17:40:33 GMT -5
Since there's a lot here, I'm gonna go through it issue by issue. CRAIG KIMBRELThe dude is a beast, no doubt. And I'm happy to have him. The salary is reasonable for arguably a top-3 reliever in baseball. If Kimbrel's salary is anywhere near reasonable then this trade was a debacle for the Red Sox. I'm sorry, but it really is that simple. I'm sure if you asked JWH, he'd say the real debacle would be finishing in last again.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 14, 2015 14:14:16 GMT -5
Saying DD should not have made this deal is OK. Saying that he should have been as brilliant a negotiator as you and forced SDPadres to accept less than he paid is a little naive about his and your respective talents. Amen. People spent months talking about which study young controllable starting pitcher with a ~3.00 ERA/FIP were going to trade Miley and Guerra for. Then when we trade Margot and Guerra for Kimbrel they say it was a bad deal because they could have traded Miley and Guerra for a study young starting pitcher. At what point do you revisit your assumptions about trade value instead? I get consternation with the value here. But if the Sox could do better they would have. Acting like the FO are turning down lopsided megadeals offered by front offices run by keystone cop executives, to insist to overpay for a reliever, is obtuse.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 14, 2015 12:27:44 GMT -5
Why is Castillo not a no-bat guy? His 2015 performance was less than ideal. .253/.288/.359 and a wRC+ of 72. I'd consider that kind of line no-bat, 9-hitter territory. There appear to be fundamental reasons he has struggled, namely the groundball tendency that seems mechanical in nature. He's a dreadful baserunner and not quick out of the box to steal singles on his groundballs. He's a free swinger who doesn't have much of a plan at the plate. Takes strikes and swings at breaking balls. I don't think 1.5 wins is Castillo's median. That's the upside. The median is more like 1 win and the floor something like 0.5 wins as far as I can tell. Hope I'm wrong if he's here to stay. 1 win at $10M is not that bad if you look at what a win generally costs on the open market but I wouldn't like it if I were another club either. You cannot judge Castillo based solely on his 2015 major league line while ignoring (a) his excellent 2014 major league cameo, which raises his aggregate major league line to an 83 wRC+, (b) his .282/.337/.385 (110 wRC+) line in Pawtucket and (c) the scouting reports which justified paying him 7/$72.5m a little over a year ago ( Dan Farnsworth's excellent scouting report on Castillo still rings true to me today). In particular, while he's a worse baserunner than you'd expect because he's slow out of the box and lacks basestealing instincts, his raw speed makes him an averagish baserunner overall (or at least it should once he stops trying to steal so often). Similarly, his flat swing mechanics means his raw power plays down, but he has a swing geared for line drives and hard ground balls (read: a plus BABIP) and still has that plus raw power in the back of his pocket. He has below-average plate discipline, but enough bat speed and bat control to make a good amount of contact despite swinging at a lot of bad pitches. I think he's likely a a 90-95 wRC+ hitter (Steamer projects him for .270/.312/.398 (90 wRC+)), which, combined with average-to-better CF defense (or excellent corner OF defense), makes him a median ~1.5 win player or so. I also think he has upside to be better than that if he improves some combination of his baserunning/plate discipline/swing mechanics. You're right about his BABIP. If he gets more balls off the ground he'll have a high LD% with his swing. That said I have a hard time believing in his ability to overcome the plate discipline issues. Would you trade him at all? If I were convinced he's likely a 90-95 wRC+ hitter I wouldn't.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 14, 2015 12:20:57 GMT -5
Since there's a lot here, I'm gonna go through it issue by issue.
CRAIG KIMBREL The dude is a beast, no doubt. And I'm happy to have him. The salary is reasonable for arguably a top-3 reliever in baseball. If the Sox had a better pen down the stretch they would have been in the hunt. And with pitchers like Rodriguez and Kelly who are inexperienced and waste pitches, or Miley who tends to hit a wall in the sixth.... having a dynamite 7-8-9 is going to make our "medicore starters" better. This also creates a plan of succession for 40 year old Koji - if Barnes or Light can join the party than our pen is going to be a weapon. The 2016 Red Sox just got a good deal better, and presumably the 2017 and 2018 editions as well.
LOGAN ALLEN No idea.
CARLOS ASUAJE No biggie. Not the kind of skillset I'd lose sleep over.
JAVIER GUERRA I wanted to move him. I don't think he comes close to the offensive ceiling that has been projected for him. I feel this is the high water mark. The question is less whether or not we should have sold high, and more whether or not this was selling high.
MANUEL MARGOT Losing Manny sucks. This the part that stings. I don't think the timing is right. I get that he's exceedengly unlikely to ever to play an inning in Boston... but that doesn't mean you have to trade him NOW. He can still (and I'd be willing to be on it) increase his value by producing at AAA as a 21 y/o. As an OF, Margot also has more avenues to make the big club better as a defensive sub than Guerra (you play with three outfielders and one shortstop). I'm not happy to see him go.
JOHN HENRY The man wants to win games, and the negativity that Ramirez and Sandoval have created for the team brand has only intensified that. There's a reason Dombrowski has been so direct about what he's doing and thinking all offseason - he doesn't have a choice in the matter. He was brought here by JWH to do exactly this.
RELIEVERS IN GENERAL On one hand, I do find the "only pitches 60 innings!" line of thought to be overly reductionist. Win probablity is important if you're quantitatively measuring these things. I don't think its debateable that relief pitching can be more valuable than the metrics we like to throw around (fWAR, bWAR) say it is. On the other hand, I think a lot of the value we are getting in Kimbrel is going to be wasted trotting him out as a "closer" to protect two run leads in the 9th.
EXPECTATIONS IN GENERAL I think the notion that the Red Sox are going to trade for a cost controlled young starter was always a fantastical one, and this should be the crash back to reality. Most of the ideas being floated around have involved Wade Miley and his 2 WAR. But no rebuilding team wants Wade Miley - they want a player like Margot or Logan Allen that they can dream on. If this seems expensive... imagine what Carrasco or Gray would cost? People keep mentioning Joakim Soria but Kimbrel is relatively young and his regression is at least partly due to the fact that not so long ago he had one of the best relief pitching seasons in history. BTW I also think a lot of the "why didn't we trade for Ken Giles?" talk is ignoring the fact that Giles might well have been more expensive. You have to pay to play and the Red Sox have zero leverage in trade talks.
THE BIG PICTURE If the Sox want to compete they have to get better. If they want to get better they're gonna have to do some inefficient things. Punting the next 2 years to maximize asset value sounds okay to us. We watch the games either way. But its not really something the Sox can do. In Detroit, Dombrowski had a very good track record trading players. Ultimately, Dombrowski's real challenge will be whether or not the Red Sox continue to find and develop promising MiLB talent.
Overall I think this is a bad trade on paper. If we use Kimbrel in a more innovative way than as a generic closer I might change my mind a bit, but I wouldn't count on it with Farrell's unimaginative jaw on the sidelines. But I get it and I can see it working out for the better. I think its the rest of the offseason that is really going to shape my opinion.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 13, 2015 0:26:38 GMT -5
An all glove/no bat OF is something which a lot of teams have in the minors or on their team. Such players are relatively available commodities. Is the upgrade from that guy to Castillo (the same guy but with the toolsy label and some latent upside) worth $10 million a year? Castillo isn't a bad contract, but that doesn't make him a tradeable one. Because a prospective trade partner isn't judging the value of the contract in a vacuum. They're comparing it to alternatives, and alternative ways to spend the money. I agree that Castillo's cost can be justified. I just have a hard time buying that a team wouldn't rather just use some replacement level type in AAA and spend the money elsewhere. I think you're exaggerating the degree to which teams can pull ~1.5 win players out of a hat. There's a tendency to lump together all below-average guys in one category, but Castillo is a good bit better than the Darnell McDonalds of the world. For instance, Castillo's not a no-bat guy-- he makes enough contact and has enough power to be a respectable (if below-average) hitter. Guys who can do that and play average-to-better CF defense don't grow on trees. Why is Castillo not a no-bat guy? His 2015 performance was less than ideal. .253/.288/.359 and a wRC+ of 72. I'd consider that kind of line no-bat, 9-hitter territory. There appear to be fundamental reasons he has struggled, namely the groundball tendency that seems mechanical in nature. He's a dreadful baserunner and not quick out of the box to steal singles on his groundballs. He's a free swinger who doesn't have much of a plan at the plate. Takes strikes and swings at breaking balls. I don't think 1.5 wins is Castillo's median. That's the upside. The median is more like 1 win and the floor something like 0.5 wins as far as I can tell. Hope I'm wrong if he's here to stay. 1 win at $10M is not that bad if you look at what a win generally costs on the open market but I wouldn't like it if I were another club either.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 12, 2015 13:46:57 GMT -5
It's two extra years at a lower AAV for his age 31 and 32 seasons. When you're talking about signing a 28-year-old, there's not a huge difference between 3/$36m and 5/$56.5m. An all glove/no bat OF is something which a lot of teams have in the minors or on their team. Such players are relatively available commodities. Is the upgrade from that guy to Castillo (the same guy but with the toolsy label and some latent upside) worth $10 million a year? Castillo isn't a bad contract, but that doesn't make him a tradeable one. Because a prospective trade partner isn't judging the value of the contract in a vacuum. They're comparing it to alternatives, and alternative ways to spend the money. I agree that Castillo's cost can be justified. I just have a hard time buying that a team wouldn't rather just use some replacement level type in AAA and spend the money elsewhere.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 10, 2015 18:33:42 GMT -5
Serious question - is "had Tommy John surgery" even a bad thing? He's gotten out of the way.
Anyway, I think when proposing Hanley trades for elite talent you have to apply the Schwarber test. Would Cleveland choose Hanley and Castillo over Schwarber? And would the Cubs do it?
The MLB has more than two teams, and a lot of these "Well.... it wouldn't be a BAD deal for them" trade proposals really ignore that fact imo.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 4, 2015 11:43:23 GMT -5
Rob Bradford @bradfo Dombrowski says on Hot Stove Show that Matt Barnes will head into spring training as a reliever Glad to see the new regime is willing to move quickly on something like this, rather than cling onto the fantasy of him as a more valuable starting pitcher. Barnes doesn't fool anyone right now and he won't until he improves his command to the edges of the plate. Maybe ditching the curve and pitching out of the stretch can help him do that?
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 2, 2015 9:28:27 GMT -5
Anyone can be traded for the right price. I think people are looking at position too much in this exercise. A lot of these minor leaguers are not going to be good players, that's just the nature of the game. Keeping the ones who are going to succeed is more important than keeping the ones who play an obvious position of need. Anyway, where I'm at is something like this. Disclaimer I'm not a scout!
PRACTICALLY UNTOUCHABLE: Betts - The game is so easy for him.
Bogaerts - I'm not sold on his hitting improvement as sustainable, but the defensive growth makes him too valuable to part with.
LISTENING ON OFFERS: Swihart - What impresses me about Blake is that he was very visibly overmatched when he arrived in Boston, and despite having relatively pedestrian MiLB production for a young callup, he settled in a bit. That said.... I've come around on the prospect of trading Blake if Vazquez is ready to go.
Margot - The "Royalz and contact!!!!!!!" angle keeps coming up but befor the Royals did it, our boy Brock Holt did it. Iggy as well. Baseball is at a very fundamental level about putting a bat on a ball, and I think a lot of success stories start with that. I don't think of MM as surplus like some do.
Benintendi - I am more excited about him than I am most prospects, just less so than I am about Margot. The combination of his swing and batting eye seems like the real deal.
WILLING TO PART WITH:
Bradley - I think Jackie is a 90-95 wRC+ elite defensive OF. That is a hell of a player but if someone thinks he's more than that, then we have a fit. We have a very good CF in Betts, an defensively strong OF man in Castillo and two stud prospects in the minors (three if you include Moncada). It could happen.
Owens - I just have a hard time believing in Henry based on what we've seen. Getting ahead seems to be an issue for him and I'm not convinced its going to change. He's never been a stud "location" pitcher and I have a hard time dreaming in him suddenly turning into one. Its hard to part with a young homegrown pitcher when we've had so few of late but if someone else is more bullish on his prospects then you work out a deal.
Moncada - I'm going to ignore the signing bonus aspect of this for the purpose of the exercise. Yoan is a stud prospect but when you're looking to engineer a trade you want to find a case of the other party valuing the player more than you do. I think most are higher on Moncada than I am, so I'd put him in this group.
I'm not sure if he's really an infielder, or a corner outfielder - the actions at 2B are the issue for him and he's got straight line speed and a strong arm. People talk about him as a 3rd basemen but he supposedly isn't comfortable playing the ball in front of him at 2B. How is he going to take to charging balls at 3rd? What is his position?
Devers - Sounds like he has considerable downside. There's alot that can go wrong between the bat not developing, his body not sticking at 3rd. I'm not a scout but as an observer it sounds like his hit tool is overrated to me. His youth is a double-edged sword - it makes what he's doing at the plate more impressive but it also means there's a lot more time/growth left for his body to go south.
I want to see the Sox turn into a glorious homegrown dynasty as much as the next guy, but if I had to pick players out of their heralded crop that will disappoint I'd go with Moncada and Devers. That's just where I'm at.
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Post by mandelbro on Nov 2, 2015 9:00:18 GMT -5
Thanks for sharing. As he progresses, Javier he will see less of the fastballs inside from RHP that he has feasted on, and the cluster of pitches he sees will gradually migrate towards low-and-away. All the scouting reports seem to suggest he has a short, line drive swing and is capable of spraying the ball. So is it all about pitch recognition for Guerra?
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Post by mandelbro on Oct 30, 2015 14:56:12 GMT -5
I don't think that gets you a strong #2 unless it's a one year rental. Miley's value this past offseason was De La Rosa and Webster. Miley didn't do a lot to damage or raise his trade value. Owens and pieces aren't likely to bring back a lot of value unless those pieces contain a Margot or a Devers. That would be the only way I could see getting a reasonably priced #2 for some duration. I would offer their choice of Owens or Miley plus Devers....by making Moncada "untouchable", he replaces Devers as the future 3B, with Chavis as insurance.....I prefer to have Margots' skills over Devers'...Looking @ KC, they seem to have a bunch of guys with Margots' abilities. That plus maybe a lower B prospect could/should get you Carrasco. What makes you think that Moncada is likely to be an MLB third baseman? Serious question.
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Post by mandelbro on Oct 25, 2015 9:09:26 GMT -5
Oh man. Nicky Cafardo is in rare form on this one - calls the guy who was hired as GM for the 2009 season the architect of the 2008 Phillies.
Anyway, the amount of players getting picked off stretching singles into doubles last year was infuriating. Hopefully RAJ is better at field coaching than he is at GMing and can help this team run into fewer outs.
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Post by mandelbro on Oct 22, 2015 9:29:52 GMT -5
This is a potentially interesting discussion, even if it hasn't played out as such.
Personally, I get the sense that the Red Sox looked at Andrew Benintendi, and figured they should go to the short-athletic-dude-who-keeps-producing well again. He reminds me of those guys in that if you pitch him inside he will turn on it and make you pay. His swing is gorgeous.
On the other hand, I think people are reading too much into their statistical track records. Margot has a compact swing, with uncommon pitch recognition and bat-to-ball skills, and he puts the ball in play. Players who have great Z-contact talent tend to progress level to level with more success. Is Margot going to be some kind of phenomenon, or so-called "star" in the bigs? I doubt it. But its very easy to see him hitting 7th and flying around in CF.
While we're talking about center fielders: can Moncada play in CF, and if so should he be in this discussion at all? I know we don't have a "need" at CF but it really seems like his skillset (blazing speed, strong arm, makes spectacular plays laying out, questionable footwork) would be well suited for the outfield.
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Post by mandelbro on Oct 16, 2015 12:48:53 GMT -5
Dan Farnsworth's hiring as the new Fangraphs prospect guy reminded me of the following piece he wrote on Castillo right after he signed: www.fangraphs.com/blogs/scouting-rusney-castillo-from-video/Pretty prescient evaluation, especially the bit about his swing plane limiting his power, and I think his conclusion ("about a 2 WAR player with the potential for another win or two coming from his bat in a good year") is still about what I would project for Castillo going forward. Farnsworth ought to have quit while he was ahead. Instead he's doubling down. Regarding the J-Hey Kid: I don't doubt that he can justify a $25M/year contract on the surface. My greater point was that its not the primary objective to do that. You've doled out $25M to add Heyward, you've kept Rusney as a 4th OF as the weak side of a platoon with JBJ. Now what? You're getting a fair deal but are you a much better ballclub?
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Post by mandelbro on Oct 15, 2015 14:10:49 GMT -5
Heyward has a floor of a 105 wRC+ and average base running/defense, which is probably a 3 WAR player. If you can get him at 20-22M AAV, I think he's actually a pretty good bet. He has a lot of upside offensively because of his untapped power potential, and at 25 I don't think he'll regress to being average on defense for at least 5 years, by which time I would be he's a slightly better hitter than he is today. He's the first perennial 5 WAR underachiever, I think. I'm not sure I would bite considering that we'd lose a pretty high draft pick too, but I do like him and think he will be a good investment for the team that signs him. He would kill it in NY/BAL so hopefully he doesn't end up there. This is what I mean about "earning the contract in an academic sense" though. Just because it breaks even based on a good back-of-the-envelope $/WAR sense, doesn't make it the right allocation of those dollars. Castillo, for his warts, is an out-of-zone machine and has a strong arm. So Heyward is not going to perceptibly improve our run prevention over what it already is. He's going to give us the offensive upgrade from Castillo to Heyward, and a nice 5-tool upside play if he rediscovers the power. That... for $25M, plus money that needs to be eaten to move Castillo? After all, most teams won't be interested in paying a 29 year old 4th OF/weak side of a platoon. I don't deny that Heyward is a fine player. Especially given his talent and age. I just don't see how this translates from the back of the envelope to making the Red Sox a much better team.
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Post by mandelbro on Oct 15, 2015 10:13:57 GMT -5
I would very much like to trade him for absolutely anything you can get, even for nothing if the other team absorbs the contract fully. Failing that I think you need to give him a half season as the primary fielder in LF or RF to see if he actually can play baseball or if he's actually a rugby player in a Red Sox uniform as I suspect. If nothing else they need to bring in a LHH OF to hedge their bets for a platoon. De Aza should come cheap. I wouldn't be opposed to going all out for Jason Heyward assuming he doesn't command 7/200 ish. Not to bag on you, but I've seen this suggestion (Heyward) a few times and I REALLY don't like it. 1) OF is an area of organizational depth. Our best position player prospects in my estimation are two outfielders (Benintendi, Margot) and an infielder who probably belongs in the corner outfield (Moncada). 2) The big league squad has multiple strong defensive outfielders already. One of whom (Betts) was just as good a hitter as Heyward this past year, and one of whom (Bradley) is an all-galaxy center fielder. Castillo is here and probably here to stay. Can he earn his contract in the academic sense, sure, but that won't help us trade him when other teams likely have a guy in AAA who plays great defense and can't hit a lick who doesn't cost $10M. So are we going to keep Castillo as a 4th outfielder? 3) Heyward's value is rooted largely in speculative measurements of defense and baserunning. I'm not Dusty Baker but I'd like my $25M corner outfielder to hit like one. We have no shortage of CF who could play a rangy corner OF, hit 15 HR and take walks. Overall, the Heyward thing irks me because it seems like an extension of a strategy that consistently hasn't worked for the Red Sox. Make massive decisions that have a high variance in outcome (i.e. pay for Heyward's upside), with a mean outcome (Heyward in the present) that is pricey but justified by abstract value accounting, and figure out the details (the fact that OF is actually a strength, and many other areas are not) later. Its the kind of thing that got the last general manager fired.
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Post by mandelbro on Oct 14, 2015 8:59:35 GMT -5
For me, the pen is really where I'd like to see FIREWORKS!!!!!!.
If I were the Red Sox I would target two high-end relief arms with goal of reducing the length of games to 6 IP for our starters.
Ideally, one elite guy (Kimbrel, Chapman, Storen, Robertson) and one LOOGY who is good enough to set up (Sipp, Will Smith).
This transforms the worst bullpen in baseball into a weapon. Robertson, Koji, Taz, Will Smith? With Pat Light figuring out his splitter on the farm? Oh my.
All of a sudden, the worst BP in the league is a weapon. It also makes the pitchers we have (and are realistically stuck with) better. Rodriguez, Miley and Kelly all waste pitches - telling them to go 6 IP a night should greatly improve their bottom lines and indirectly improve our rotation.
This also creates a plan of succession for Koji, who is a few years older than Papi, who is a few years older than everyone.
All this with less expenditure of resources than the other possible ways to improve the team. So we still have the flexibility to make more moves as necessary. People always talk about renting relievers at the deadline. Perhaps the opposite approach - start the season with a fearsome bullpen and rent-a-starter if the need arises, is just as relevant and worth pursuing.
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