Red Sox sign Chris Capuano for $2.25m with incentives

Great, low cost depth signing. He has potential to help as a spot starter, swing an or loogy. Personally love the consistent moves. Sox playing like smart investors, looking to build a portfolio of assets with common attributes. All do not have to be home runs... Just look at the overall collection performance over time. 

Agree and think Morales is the right comp. That said, my mind went immediately to the worst case comp -- if he becomes just a loogy. Would everyone rather have Matt Thornton for 2 years at $7M?

I would love to ban that term, or at least its misuse. There is no sense in making Capuano a LOOGY, a Lefthanded One Out GuY. I think he can be a successful lefty reliever, but bringing him in to face one lefthanded hitter would be a waste. He's been pitching his whole career against righties, and as jmei pointed out, his splits are favorable vs LHH but not particularly concerning vs RHH.

And aside from the annoyance of a raft of extra pitching changes for one-out relievers, unless you have a true specialist, it's probably a poor use of roster space and poor bullpen construction.

I'd look at Capuano almost solely in terms of April/May depth, meaning if one of our 5 starters breaks camp on the DL who would you be comfortable with taking a regular turn in the rotation right away? What if 2 starters end up on the DL sometime in the first 60 games?

Workman maybe, Webster maybe, the rest I am not comfortable with starting the year in Boston. And even those two are best served not breaking camp with the big league rotation. Workman's greatest value to me is in the pen, and Webster needs to show consistency in AAA first.

In that context, I like this signing.

I'm not optimistic that Capuano is going to help much.
I don't have faith in AAAA pitchers moving to the al east.

The one upside I can see is that for Workman, Webster et all this will push back their innings again into the latter part of the season.

I for one have more faith in the prospects than a 36 year old averaging 5 inning starts last year.
Let him pitch early in the year, keep Workmans innings low, then the mid year impact is from within at the trade deadline.

For a few reference points, Breslow averaged about 3 outs per game in 2013, similar to the team's RH relievers, while even Miller averaged 2.5 outs, which stretches the boundary of what could be reasonably considered a LOOGY. Javier Lopez, a true lefty specialist, has averaged 1.6 outs/game over the past two seasons, 2.0 career. Our old friends Tony Fossas & Mike Myers averaged 2.2 & 1.8 for their respective careers. In his few stints as a reliever, Capuano has been used in long relief, averaging nearly 5 outs/game, and that seems to be his most likely bullpen role.

Apologies if this point has been made already, but remember that the only locks for the bullpen assuming health are Uehara, Tazawa, Mujica, Breslow, Miller and Badenhop. Capuano doesn't have to be the automatic 6th SP. If one of our front 5 goes down and the Sox feel that Workman or Webster represent a stronger option that Capuano, they can call one of them up while leaving Capuano in the bullpen. That spot creates a little more flexibility than people seem to be implying.

Plus later, if 1+ of the hot starting prospects shows up well in AAA and then you need a starter, they could be called up for Fenway starts and Capuano could be called up for road starts and/or starts against left-hand-heavy teams. Extreme depth allows that type of pitching platoon.

The Capuano signing makes great sense. I don't know if his pitching will translate as positively from the NL West to the AL East, but at this point I would think he'd be a much better option than Webster early on as a starter and at this point it's not a given that Workman is necessarily better than Capuano. And I frankly don't think it is an either/or proposition. Pitchers are going to get hurt and the Sox are going to carry 12 pitchers. If Buchholz or Peavy go down early Capuano is excellent insurance, the kind that gives the Sox a chance to be competitive as opposed to 2011 when the Sox were reaching down for Kyle Weiland to help them and had no other options at their disposal.

If Webster or one of Barnes, Ranaudo, Workman, or Owen are knocking down the door in June or July or even later and there's an open spot in the rotation and Capuano is merely alright, they can move Capuano to the bullpen and he can be an effective long man. Injuries happen there too.

Worst case scenario is Capuano isn't that good. If that's the case the Sox didn't exactly spend a ton of money signing him.

It's not only a great depth signing, but someone who has been amazingly consistent for the last few seasons. He's a perfect pen/stretch arm.

Yea won't he be coming in when their in the 5th inning and 4 runs down anyway? Seems to me in his role right now he will be asked to keep a game honest after the starter gets his rear kicked. No big deal if he can't hold it to a 5 run deficit. Now if he was coming in about the the 7th or so with a one run lead on down one it might be different but somehow I don't think that is going to be his role, do you?

Two things, which surprised me by proving to be related.

1) Capuano has some interesting big splits besides his platoon split of 619 / 808.

By batting order position, give or take a few points:

1&2: 692
3&4: 1002
5-8: 753

This is indeed a guy who loses value against better lineups. But this split is much more important for late inning relievers than for starters, because of leverage.

Times around the batting order: 707, 757, 867.

This is a guy who should be much better pitching out of the pen, especially so if you can keep him away from elite RHB. As a starter, a quick hook will be helpful.

By month: 718, 716, 753, 783, 809, 816.

There's a real possibility that a familiarity split is underlying this, since it almost certainly underlies the previous split. If so, changing leagues and hence facing guys who have barely seen him before may work in his favor.

Finally, he has the most neutral challenge / pitch-around splits I've ever seen, which means that his alteration of approach according to base-out situation is precisely the average of everyone else. I don't think that means anything, except for being ironic given the above.

2) I always thought that the overall team pitching depth made an eventual trade of either Peavy or Dempster more likely than not. Signing Capuano restores that situation, with the big difference being that Capuano should have much more trade value than Dempster would have.

There has always been a scenario where by, say, the end of May or early June, it has become evident that the 5th best starter is in the organization is not Jake Peavy, but Allen Webster, Rubby De La Rosa (whom I believe will be in the PawSox rotation), Brandon Workman, or (much less likely) even Anthony Ranaudo or Matt Barnes. With five candidates to surpass Peavy, the odds of this happening are interestingly high.

With Dempster gone, trading Peavy to upgrade the rotation to whoever the stud kid is would be a risky move in terms of depth. Adding Capuano makes such a move much easier to justify.

And furthermore, imagine it's June and you've got a couple of kids in AAA who seem irresistably ready for MLB. And imagine that Capuano has been smartly used as a 2-inning reliever and in a couple of spot starts. All of the splits I just cited are likely to make Capuano look tremendously desirable to other clubs (much more so than he ought to be), given his salary. So you have the option of trading him or Peavy.

It's really hard not to view this signing as one likely to pay off well. Just don't let him face the likes of Cabrera.

Right only Jimei could possibly argue with a straight face that Chris Capuano belongs in the same conversation with Ubaldo Jimenez.