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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 14, 2021 18:37:55 GMT -5
Nick Yorke's hit streak is at risk with him going 0-2 in the first game of the double header, but his on-base streak continues. Salem will need a long inning in the 7th as Yorke will be up 7th and the team so far has gotten no-hit.
EDIT: Got beaten to it
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 14, 2021 18:17:01 GMT -5
How does that kind of malpractice even exist? I mean really baseball should call these owners out on the carpet and say either try to keep up or sell your team. This isn't like owning a Burger King franchise, this is a multi billion dollar industry. Because there's more of them that want to reserve the right to maximize profit and minimize investment costs and the owners that want to win are fine with limited competition? Relegation would solve that. However the owners own the league and so they would never vote for that.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 14, 2021 15:59:19 GMT -5
The author of the analysis (who did this as a senior thesis) explains his work in the following thread:
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 12, 2021 21:55:57 GMT -5
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 12, 2021 18:11:59 GMT -5
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 12, 2021 17:03:12 GMT -5
This must've been what it was like to be a Phillies fan last year and watch their shiny new acquisition, Workman, pitch.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 12, 2021 11:27:30 GMT -5
Pitching wasn’t awful. Eovaldi and Rios were great. Valdez had a bad inning up 19. Nbd. But we knew that Eovaldi is dependable he's not a concern. Valdez getting hit like a piñata in the 9th inning when the team doesn't have much of a bullpen is a concern. Good win though. I'd disagree, Eovaldi's been struggling the past few games before tonight, a time when we really needed him to be that shutdown pitcher to put a stop to the streak. Both the Tampa and Toronto games he pitched were winnable games that he couldn't deliever in. So Eovaldi pitching great last night was exactly what we needed to see to gain some confidence that the team could turn it around for the final 6-7 weeks.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 11, 2021 21:20:33 GMT -5
You’re not wrong, but what do the hitters do? Not swing hard at a BP pitch? It’s not their fault the Rays stopped playing. No - batters are going to swing. I'm talking about managers doing this. Must have a pitcher pitch. This is (supposed to be) professional competition. I hope this is more a function of 2021 and the need to save the pitchers arms rather than a new trend. It feels like every night there's another position player pitching somewhere.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 11, 2021 21:19:03 GMT -5
This is the kind of game that makes me doubt pythag record... My thought watching this is hopefully the pythag normalizes and we don't have to listen to talk about them overperforming. The optimist in me says "great they really needed a fun game like this to recharge" while the pessimist in me says "if only this offense was matched up with yesterday's pitching and Eovaldi was matched up with yesterday's hitting". Let's just go win tomorrow, get the series win, and make it all moot.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 10, 2021 21:29:10 GMT -5
That's how you don't squander
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 10, 2021 18:06:30 GMT -5
The FCL appears to be scheduled for two games today, but the milb website only says they're warming up for game 1 now. There's no way they play two right? Is there something weird with the listing, which is fairly common for the FCL? They have a 5pm start for game 1 and game 2 after that. They've been playing some Monday/Tuesday nights under the lights at Jet Blue so this seems to be planned, even if it started a bit late. Note that they are both at Jet Blue but game 2 is listed as away because it's yesterday's rainout and they are already playing 2 the next time at the Rays.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 10, 2021 12:13:54 GMT -5
Agreed, let's hope the offense builds off of what they did on Sunday, and it goes without saying that we really need ERod and Eovaldi to step up and give us strong performances in this series.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 9, 2021 18:59:42 GMT -5
I fully expect coming into spring training they are going to push hard on getting him to go 5-6 innings per start. I don't expect the early hook next year until he proves he can't go 2 or 3 times through the order. If he can't go 3 times I think he stays in the rotation, if he can't go 2 times he becomes the Whitlock super-reliever of 2022.
I also hope over time the game looks at relievers more as "dominate one time through the order but not multiple times" rather than as "failed starters". Not a knock on your comment, just building off of it to comment on what I hope will be the evolution of the game. 2-3 inning relievers have been underutilized in my opinion and could become great assets.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 9, 2021 18:44:49 GMT -5
So then what you see is less important than how everyone else has him ranked ? I see. Doesn't that define saving face ? I'm also not so sure that the offensive bar for a second baseman is lower than for a shortstop. If anything, it's the other way around and that's where his problems lie. The group that is the collective second basemen is pretty clearly less than the group that is collectively shortstops though. I was actually impressed with his defense at the ATS, he was better than I expected. He made several plays at SS that Bogaerts has no shot at. I think I'm missing something in the bolded section, Ray could you clarify? SP has Houck 5th, which I thought is where the consensus has him ranked. Are you asking more from a perspective of why Houck is a 4.5 instead of a 5, or why Downs is a 5 instead of a 4.5? Or both? I'm particularly curious about Houck being at the 4.5 instead of a 5. It feels like he plays up slightly more than a fringe starter, and if he were in the pen he'd be in that elite set-up vs. middle-reliever tier. Chris, I assume he's likely at that 4.75 mark given he's the top of the 4.5 class but the 5 must be pretty close to getting tagged on him now. Fair?
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 9, 2021 18:27:12 GMT -5
I disagree, you're looking through a biased lens. There were 3 1-run games, why would they not have "deserved" to win the other two of them? Especially yesterday's game, they most certainly deserved to win that game but it didn't happen. By my very basic assessment, they had a 50/50 shot for the last 3 games and had no shot on the first one (although to be fair at the halfway point of the game they were up 2-0). That's a 1.5 win expectation. I'm not sure if this is direct to me, but how did the Red Sox deserve to win yesterday's game? They lost it in 8.5 innings. The Jays only batted 8 times. Who was going to pitch the 9th for the Sox? The most successful pitcher the Sox had yesterday (Taylor) only pitched 1/3 of an inning and gave up a hit and a walk and left those runners for Sawamura to clean up. Yes they had a 7-2 lead, but there were still 6 innings left to play. Unfortunately this wasn't one of those 7 inning games. Let's be honest they were fortunate to win the nightcap on Saturday. The bad baserunning in the top of the 7th. Even Barnes thought he gave it up. Kiké made one of the catches of the year given the circumstances (in the bottom of the 7th) - that was very fortunate. That ball was hit very hard. The Sox simply did not deserve a split in the series, and any honest Red Sox fans that think they did are delusional. The last three games were 50/50, either team could have won and they fell to the Blue Jays. Did they deserve a split, no, but they most certainly deserved 1 win and 2 wins wouldn't have felt like a steal. 3 would have for sure. Thinking about it as a Blue Jays fan, I think they are thrilled to come away with 3 wins given their hitting on Saturday and the deficit they faced yesterday. I doubt they are thinking 3 was a steal, but objectively it feels like a "we deserved 2 and are glad we eked out a third". This series in hindsight has a lot of parallels to our Yankees series a few weeks back, we felt we deserved 2 (the Cole game and the one we blew) and are thrilled we stole one more.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 9, 2021 9:37:37 GMT -5
I disagree, you're looking through a biased lens. There were 3 1-run games, why would they not have "deserved" to win the other two of them? Especially yesterday's game, they most certainly deserved to win that game but it didn't happen.
By my very basic assessment, they had a 50/50 shot for the last 3 games and had no shot on the first one (although to be fair at the halfway point of the game they were up 2-0). That's a 1.5 win expectation.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 8, 2021 23:33:30 GMT -5
He's actually been getting extended recently to 7 days rest. Not sure why but if he was on 6 days instead of 7 he would have gone the last game in Tampa on the 12th and the last game in New York on the 18th. But I 100% agree that they shouldn't be planning Sale's return based on a matchup for a pennant.
July 15th - FCL, 3 IP July 20th - Portland (5 days rest) 3.2 IP, 49 pitches July 25th - Portland (5 days rest) 3.2 IP, 64 pitches July 31st - Worcester (6 days rest) 5 IP, 81 pitches August 7th - Worcester (7 days rest) 4.2 IP, 89 pitches August 14th - Boston (7 days rest) August 20th - Boston (6 days rest) August 26th - Boston (6 days rest) August 31st - Boston (5 days rest)
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 8, 2021 21:53:47 GMT -5
I would have thought they strike out a lot, but their 23.2% K rate is middle of the pack. Their BABIP of 0.306 is best in the league, so perhaps what we're seeing during this rut is some of that luck running out.
Even with MOB they're 2nd in the league in BABIP at 0.316 and middle of the pack for K rate at 22.4%.
Since July 1st though, with MOB they are 13th in the league in BABIP at 0.301 and 6th from the bottom for K rate at 23.6% (0.270 and a league worst 29.7% K rate in the past 2 weeks). That's the big difference, pre-July they were in the top 10 for K rate at 22.0% and 3rd in the league in BABIP at 0.321 with MOB.
It sucks to say this, but it feels like we're witnessing the luck normalizing...
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 8, 2021 21:13:53 GMT -5
Ok, I prefer to wait until the season is over, but Iâll just throw this out: I think the âbuilding depthâ credit may be overrated. Iâll grant Mayer and Yorke, though sucking helped a lot with the former. But a number of guys â maybe most â acquired in the last year are more likely to fill out your top-40 than eventually contribute at the big level. This is a huge caveat to tie to the question of trading at the deadline. The Conner Wongs and Hudson Potts of the system could end up rotting on the vine, which would make a mockery of the âdepthâ model. I know, we can never know. So I concede, a guy like Winckowski could end up being a valuable arm. But if all of this results in a lot of misses, people will need to do a substantial revision of the past year+. Ah, that's different than what I was thinking but that should be worth a call out. I was thinking the depth he added in free agency and waivers, rather than the system depth. Essentially what he did with his available cash this offseason (so Ottovino counts too). The free agency depth I was thinking about overlaps with Chris's comment above. Sure he has some missed badly but there's also Kiké, Renfroe, Arroyo putting up 5.4 fWAR for 10M. Add in Marwin and Danny Santana and it's 5 WAR over 15M, which is very good value. The pitching side is probably more of a miss now thinking about it, since Ottovino, Richards, and Perez put us over 20M, then add in Sawamura and Andriese and it's getting close to 25M for 3 WAR (incl. Whitlock, who I think belongs here). 8M per WAR isn't horrible, but it's surely not top-tier executive. Minor league depth is still incomplete, and thinking about that some more I'd like to think of a better way to evaluate it rather than wait 5-10 years to see results in the majors. Maybe we need two categories here too... depth in general is one criteria (i.e. use the FanGraphs metrics) but there's also the ability to optimize it. Trade away players when their value peaks, hold onto the ones who'll be elite, etc. To be fair, Dombrowski did this part well.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 8, 2021 19:23:50 GMT -5
That's a pretty fair assessment, unitspin. I was about to draft up the balance sheet on him but I think you hit it well already.
Pros: building depth, finding good value talent (Kiké, Whitlock, Renfroe), did great as a selling CBO last year Cons: TBD on high salary spending, uncertain if as a buying CBO he'll pull the trigger on a key trade if it's not a fair price (i.e. take a long-term hurt for a short-term gain)
Others - please feel free to add/edit/adjust this balance sheet. I think this would be valuable to maintain.
I still have the big ticket FA as incomplete rather than a knock. There's only 8-9 players each year he can spend on, and they essentially had those slots filled the past two years. To me the key outstanding question for his long-term grade will be if he's Cherington 2.0 or is he the blend of Cherington/Dombrowski that we are hoping he will be. They'll have some contracts finally coming off this offseason and they should strongly consider going into the luxury tax for 2022/23, so I'm looking forward to this offseason.
The second knock is also fair to discuss. I view it as evaluating the strategic decision between "let's just ensure we make the playoffs and not mortgage the future" (yes, I know they are trending badly, but at 7/31 I still thought they had enough in the tank to make the playoffs) versus "let's make sure we're really good this year". I do sense Bloom will drift to the former, but hopefully in years where they're peaking he makes a few of those trades we want.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 8, 2021 16:13:54 GMT -5
5 walks, 4 runs scored. That's the difference.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 8, 2021 16:01:43 GMT -5
Just when the hitting comes back and bails out the starting pitching, were seeing cracks in the back of the bullpen. It's like my golf game, can't ever seem to get all pieces working well at the same time.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 8, 2021 15:39:41 GMT -5
I feel like we all underestimated the value of just getting the black holes off the team and that this team was more than a bridge team. Most folks had this team as a mid-80s win team, Vegas had them at 77 for the over under.
I do wonder if Chaim would have done something different if they thought this was a 95 win team. To your point, do they go over the luxury tax this year rather than (hopefully) wait until next year? Do they make a big trade?
Pivoting a bit back to trades, I do think when they are going for it, they'll need to make trades that hurt. I'm not sure this was the team to do it though (at the beginning of a new multi-year run, seem to be overachieving, multiple holes to fill, etc.), but there will be a point where Bloom will need to make the call to give up good talent for the playoff run.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 8, 2021 15:20:32 GMT -5
I would agree with that, I was mostly thinking about Dalbec getting out of the starting 9. Maybe against lefties he still plays, but he can't be the everyday 1B this postseason.
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Post by foreverred9 on Aug 8, 2021 15:15:50 GMT -5
Is it crazy to hope Seabold gets a start vs. the O’s? Richards is pretty clearly toast and I feel like you’d be hard pressed to find a better place to debut than against the O’s at Fenway. 100% more confident in him over Richards. Ill be happy to see this team split the series. While possible, there's no way any one can be that confident in Seabold at this stage. This sounds like the crowd in June who were 100% confident Duran was an upgrade to the outfield and needed to be on the team. Duran's OPS before today was 0.557, Santana's was 0.554. The unused toy isn't always better than the known commodity.
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