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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 21, 2020 5:36:07 GMT -5
Fiers absolutely stands for fair play and integrity in the game of baseball. Fraud. Yeah, because I've never seen an MLB pitcher use sunscreen in a dome before. Get real, man.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 21, 2020 5:25:28 GMT -5
Or a fan of the team that projects to be much better than the Jays and only 2 games worse than the Rays, and to make the 2nd wild card spot. How'd they project last year? They're fringe contenders for a wild card spot at best. They could easily finish 4th and under .500 as easily as they could get the Wild Card. The lineup isn't extremely deep, the starting pitching is shaky at best and very reliant on a vintage and healthy Chris Sale and a resurgent Nate Eovaldi, and the bullpen has a lot of question marks attached to it. If a lot breaks right then they could grab the wild card. If things go wrong, they could free fall. Flip a coin.
That's what projecting as a wildcard contender is.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 21:23:51 GMT -5
His opinion brought a mourning city to it's feet in 2013 with one of the best speeches I've seen from my lifetime in a athlete.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 18:26:13 GMT -5
Stop trying to trade Chavis, people. I know you can theoretically get a shinier object but we're not planning a five year rebuild here, maybe just stick with the guy who's like young and in the majors already.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 18:03:06 GMT -5
Well yeah, anytime the legend of Ortiz agrees with me on a game that he mastered for 20 years, I feel pretty good about myself. Would you say that Trout has mastered the game? He doesn't agree with you. I mean do you really need a player to validate your opinion one way or the other? We're supposed to trust a guy with PED allegations hanging over his head? Ortiz is famous for being a great hitter, not for having great opinions.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 16:17:06 GMT -5
Major league hitters, who can hit 95, faced 611 Cal Quantrill sinkers last year, and hit three home runs off it. He gave up 116 hits, of which 15 were HR in only 113 innings and only got 89 Ks. People hit .260 against him — I’d say that’s his best stat maybe or maybe his 4.28 FIP vs 5.16 ERA? His ERA+ was 82. How many of his sinkers were strikes btw? You have to throw pitches that are strikes for people to bother with your sinker in the dirt. I am more interested if you tell me he can locate his 95 mph fastball up and not get hit and that he can land sinkers in the bottom of the zone that people can’t hit. If he gives up only few HRs off balls he throws in the dirt, you can’t really just focus on that pitch unless he has a pitch he can throw for strikes that don’t get hammered to set it up. Do you know if his sinker can stay in the zone and not get hit or if he has another offering to play the dirtball off of that is effective at the MLB level? Serious question. Can you quote the part where I said Cal Quantrill was good last year? The whole point I'm trying to make is that he has skills that HAVEN'T translated to performance, which is WHY he is a buying target. If he already had great command and a full range of secondary pitches, you wouldn't be getting him in this trade! Everything your saying about him is WHY he's a trade target. Like what would have been smarter in retrospect, trading for Randy Johnson before he found command, or afterwards? Since we don't have a time machine, the way to make the next smart trade for a breakout pitcher is to trade for a pitcher who's currently having problems.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 15:52:25 GMT -5
On Quantrill — there are a lot of guys who throw hard that never make it in the big leagues. He throws hard — but people can obviously hit the ball off him, which tells me he lacks life. So I looked at some video quickly, and you can see what the numbers suggest — a fastball that has velocity with no life that got him through college and to the big leagues, but probably won’t work against guys who can hit a 95 mph fastball. What I also saw was that his catcher was framing very well, getting him calls that were out of the zone (which you can see in the video). I think he is expendable because they already figured this out. Major league hitters, who can hit 95, faced 611 Cal Quantrill sinkers last year, and hit three home runs off it.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 15:42:32 GMT -5
I guess the next time I give up four hundred thousand dollars on principle, I'll be pretty cheesed off at Mike Fiers. Well the next time I win four hundred thousand dollars through unethical means, you can feel free to call me a rat. Every other person on the team did the same thing AND kept quiet about it later!
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 15:38:39 GMT -5
I don't, because of the aforementioned clubhouse culture. Look, I'm sorry that Fiers has to deal with stupid people calling him a snitch, and I'm glad that he spoke up. I understand that speaking out against your own teammates would be incredibly uncomfortable, and I'm not sure I'd have been able to do it either. But he took home a bonus check worth $440,000 and a World Series ring, and unless he's willing to give those up, I still think he came out pretty well in this deal. I guess the next time I give up four hundred thousand dollars on principle, I'll be pretty cheesed off at Mike Fiers. I'm not nominating the guy for sainthood here, but come come on, every single person here would have done the same in his situation.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 15:00:28 GMT -5
Fiers' did more to speak out on the cheating than every single other member of the Astros organization, and his reward is to be called gutless, hypocritical, and lacking in integrity. Again, I don't understand how people can support this "don't break the code of silence" BS and not see how that's exactly the environment that incubates bad behavior. I mean, there's some pretty obvious and pretty ugly analogies here that I'd rather not even make... Obviously it's ludicrous to call Fiers the bad guy here, but you have to admit that his whistle blowing is cheapened a bit by the fact that it only came after Fiers stopped personally benefiting from the cheating.I don't, because of the aforementioned clubhouse culture.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 12:14:05 GMT -5
Quantrill had only one good month last year - July (1.69). Every other month his ERA was in the 4.02 to 5.14 range, until his September collapse to 10.90. He never dominated in the minors — not for a single year (best ERA was 3.80 in 2017 and was >4.50 every other year). He has not had a year with Ks > IP since 2016. And he has never limited hits to <1 per IP. If his name weren’t Quantrill, we would not be discussing him. He has bust written all over him. That doesn't mean he won’t turn out to be great at some point, but there is no in-game data to support him even being a good bottom of the rotation innings-eater. Most likely outcome is bust. Chaim Bloom seems to me to be smarter than this if he is looking at doing this deal at all. The SD press may want to send us Quantrill, but I hope we don’t bite on that bait. Quite the opposite: 16 Mike Foltynewicz 94.9 17 Anthony DeSclafani 94.7 18 Justin Verlander 94.7 19 Trevor Bauer 94.6 20 Cal Quantrill 94.5 21 Charlie Morton 94.4 22 Adrian Houser 94.4 23 Tyler Beede 94.3 24 Lucas Gioliton 94.3 (That's average fastball velo, 2019, minimum 100 innings pitched.) I mean, sure, fastball velo isn't everything, but he throw the sinker as his primary pitch (611 of them) and hitters had a .123 ISO against it -- in the bouncy ball year, remember. If nothing else he's got a solid base to build on in that pitch. Without the bad performance you're citing, a pitcher with that kind of base skill wouldn't be available in the first place.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 11:18:58 GMT -5
You can if Fiers wants out of the Astros uniform at the time and that's the reason why. Not what happened. Pedro listed all the things Fiers could have done at the time, but he didn't do any of them. Add- The Astors organization would have had to release a guy they had just traded for all because they were cheating. Maybe that would have woken them up and cleaned up their act. Game would have went on without this this disaster MLB has most likely too. I get that it's theoretically possible to deal with issues inside the clubhouse while maintaining a totally insular culture, but like... that's just not how the real world works. Less transparency equals more corruption, period.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 20, 2020 7:47:49 GMT -5
"If he was to do it when he was playing for the Houston Astros I would say Mike Fiers has guts. But to go and do it after you leave the Houston Astros because they don’t have you anymore, that doesn’t show me anything. You’re just a bad teammate.” Martínez continued, “If you tell me that Mike Fiers is coming to my team and you already threw your team under the bus, the team that you used to play for … Now everybody knows you are going to have a whistle-blower in any other situation too. Whatever happens in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse and Fiers broke the rules. I agree with cleaning up the game. I agree that the fact that the Commissioner is taking a hard hand on this, but at the same time players should not be the one dropping the whistle-blower.” You truly cannot have it both ways on that one.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 19, 2020 8:19:05 GMT -5
I don't think ERod is pitching over his head, I think he's finally reaching his potential. I mean, yeah. Sell him when he's good. You'll get more in return. That's the point.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 18, 2020 19:20:52 GMT -5
I include Chavis to bring back more value back. I think he’s a perfect guy to sell high on. If and when Peraza crashes, we’ve got Arauz, Lin, and Hernandez. I don’t think not having Chavis saves the season. What makes you think his value is high right now?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 18, 2020 8:51:30 GMT -5
If they were being truly genuine and honest, instead, they would have admitted that they didn't want to pay Mookie his market value ( which of course they wouldn't because how do you do that??). On one hand, you get Henry saying that players deserve the right to go to free agency, which Musial and Williams didn't have, but yet I don't remember ever reading about any offers that weren't considered a hometown discount by market standards. I think the truth is that they didn't want to pay market value for him, and I think a reasonable guess isn't necessarily because of the annual although had he offered say 10 years and $350 million and was turned down, which still might have been turned down, I think it would feel a bit different. I'm sure the years were the big turnoff, but if the Sox ever do land a premier free agent, they're going to have to give in terms of years which won't feel comfortable, and if that's ever the case, then why go to an outside free agent and give it to him versus your own player? I always thought it was interesting when I was reading David Ortiz's book about how the Sox will go crazy to get somebody else's free agent but then suddenly be very restrictive when it comes to their own free agent if they don't sense that they're getting some sort of discount. There's no world in which the Red Sox can't afford to keep Betts. Math, however, is hard.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 16, 2020 22:00:11 GMT -5
Not really. Mookie is going to the highest bidder after this season. How much more are you really asking for? Dodger stadium shouldn't be great for his swing. I don't expect him to suck, but if he has an .848 OPS and a 6.0 WAR, would that really be worth a top 5 prospect in baseball that some of you are expecting? Asked for comment, Betts replied "You fools. This isn't even my final form.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 16, 2020 16:38:21 GMT -5
If he did a decent job, the baseball players who are furious with the Astros would be satisfied, not angry. Bellinger wouldn't have said a word if players were suspended for a year or more and Crane was forced to sell the team. He's doing a great job, at his actual job. He's not accountable to Cody Bellinger, he's accountable to Jim Crane and John Henry, and as far as those guys are concerned he's killing it. Got guys like you talking about the Red Sox can't afford Mookie Betts.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 16, 2020 10:54:31 GMT -5
Is that genuinely what you took away from that or are you just trolling? I really can't tell. Right, I took nothing away from this because it's all baseless speculation. No one knows how much Sale weighs right now. No one knows that his weight is directly tied to his durability. No one has any proof that any of this matters one bit and they never will. But please continue. I'm sure if talked about enough, all the answers will come forth and Chris Sale will finally understand what he's doing wrong. Wasn't Sale the guy that the Red Sox set up as Groome's like workout mentor a year or two ago? There's reasons to worry about Chris Sale but his conditioning is not one of them.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 15, 2020 17:54:33 GMT -5
Well, as early as the middle of last season I identified Verdugo as the one and only guy you would trade Mookie for (that the other team might conceivably give you). Already a first-division starter at age 23, an above-average defender in CF or in Fenway's RF, with five years of control. Even though I don't like the trade in principle, and I'm not that high on Verdugo on top of that, a lot of people still don't seem to grok how lucky the Red Sox actually were to get a player as good, young, and established as Verdugo in return for one (1) year of Betts. That there's a little bit of injury risk attached to Verdugo is part of the reason he was available at all. I'm not trying to say the injury is a huge deal, it very likely isn't, but still the price would presumably be a bit higher if he wasn't attached to a fractured spine.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 15, 2020 12:27:06 GMT -5
Good lord. This narrative is just a minefield of pop culture click bait, and so devoid of between the lines baseball. Don't fall the "blame game" and "analytics driven" hype. Real baseball is just 6 weeks or so away. Sheesh. Please do not respond as I will ignore this thread in future internet meanderings.That's unfortunate because I don't understand what any of the stuff you just said is supposed to mean.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 14, 2020 15:30:31 GMT -5
The thing with Sanchez is that he's not even a good-when-healthy guy. He's been both very bad and very unhealthy for a while now. If his career isn't in jeopardy I'm not sure who's is.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 14, 2020 14:57:21 GMT -5
I’d pass on Harvey unless he has returned to his peak (which is virtually impossible). His attitude appears to stink. I don’t feel bad using Shawaryn and Johnson as openers. They seem capable of pitching ok once through a lineup. He had thoracic outlet syndrome, which is a lot worse for your pitching career than a bad attitude.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 14, 2020 9:35:20 GMT -5
]One of Theo's rules of thumb was "avoid the urge to build an uber-team." The Dodgers just broke that rule. If they don't win the WS this year and don't re-sign Mookie, the trade will be a disaster for them. And the odds are against both of those things. Given the team they had last year, and how much of a notorious crapshoot the post-season is, had they made the trade they just did last July 31, they would have been mocked and called insane. The thing is though, the Dodgers have built a super team without the downside. If the trade totally bombs out on them, they don't win the World Series, Mookie is more ordinary out of Boston, Price is toast, Verdugo develops, Downs hits his ceiling... they're still totally fine. Their window isn't closing, their core is still excellent and they can try for Lindor next year. The whole point, one would think, of all this precious "financial flexibility" is that you have the flexibility to do something that increases your chances of winning or is otherwise important to your franchise (extending Kershaw for example) even it isn't a good move on a strict value basis.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Feb 13, 2020 8:28:11 GMT -5
Also would have been tougher for fans to stomach. I don't really think so. They were struggling to keep pace with the second Wild Card. The division was out of reach and the WC1 wasn't very realistic. They didn't do anything to fix the warts on the team and I think Sale was hurt despite catching back up. They weren't beating good teams outside of the Rays on that first homestead before losing the next 4 or 5 before the deadline. Outside of this board, there weren't many believers in that team. Then again, I wrote them off after 2 weeks. Just a roundabout way of talking about how this was completely botched by not making this move during the deadline. I would understand it if they traded for pieces to reinforce their roster, but the indecision was inexusable. I guess? If we're going to play that game, Dombrowski could have just not signed the Sale or (especially) Eovaldi and avoided the whole mess altogether.
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