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Post by iakovos11 on Jun 17, 2014 15:04:17 GMT -5
With Sizemore gone and JBJ riding the bench, will Victorino be playing CF when he gets back? Brock Holt will now be playing CF, too. In fact, he'll be playing LF, RF, and CF and he'll bat 3 times.
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Post by jmei on Jun 17, 2014 15:04:15 GMT -5
With Sizemore gone and JBJ riding the bench, will Victorino be playing CF when he gets back? Doubt it. Tonight might just be a day off for Bradley, and they apparently trust Holt to play CF. I believe they also specifically ruled out the idea of Victorino playing any position but RF during his rehab assignment, and if they desperately need a CF, Betts might very well be ready sooner rather than later.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 17, 2014 15:59:07 GMT -5
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Post by bigpupp on Jun 17, 2014 16:27:07 GMT -5
David Ortiz! David Ortiz! David Ortiz!
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 17, 2014 16:28:41 GMT -5
David Ortiz! David Ortiz! David Ortiz! He was hardly a reclamation project. He was an amazing platoon 1B/DH at worst when the Twins waive him.
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Post by James Dunne on Jun 17, 2014 16:41:41 GMT -5
Bret Saberhagen worked out pretty well. Ended up the second best pitcher on two playoff teams.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 17, 2014 17:01:34 GMT -5
Bret Saberhagen worked out pretty well. Ended up the second best pitcher on two playoff teams. Ok, how about position player? He at least had a few starts the year before we were counting on him. And we also barely needed more than two starters with Pedro and Wakefield.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Jun 17, 2014 21:27:16 GMT -5
One of the best Red Sox pitchers ever was a reclamation project and he wasn't very good during his first year with the Sox.
I'm talking Luis Tiant. He was damaged goods when the Sox picked him up in 1971 and he struggled. He turned it around big time in 1972 and was the staff ace throughout most of the 1970s.
You could also say that Wakefield was a reclamation project as well and he turned out pretty well.
They don't all work out well and there can be a cost to having a reclamation project. In Sizemore's case I think he took ABs away from Nava. I think Nava would have snapped out of his slump sooner if they had just simply kept platooning him with Gomes, but the Sox had visions of Grady circa 2008, so Grady got the ABs. The Sox figured correctly that they needed LH power beyond Papi, but unfortunately 2014 Grady wasn't that guy.
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Post by zil on Jun 18, 2014 5:44:41 GMT -5
Bret Saberhagen worked out pretty well. Ended up the second best pitcher on two playoff teams. Ok, how about position player? He at least had a few starts the year before we were counting on him. And we also barely needed more than two starters with Pedro and Wakefield. Kevin Millar and Bill Mueller were basically picked up off the scrap heap. So was Bellhorn. He only had one good year for us, but it was very well timed.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 18, 2014 8:42:24 GMT -5
Ok, how about position player? He at least had a few starts the year before we were counting on him. And we also barely needed more than two starters with Pedro and Wakefield. Kevin Millar and Bill Mueller were basically picked up off the scrap heap. So was Bellhorn. He only had one good year for us, but it was very well timed. Kevin Millar had a 133 wRC+ the year before we got him. Bill Mueller, a 125. Bellhorn, a 135. Undervalued isn't the same as reclamation. Like someone who has been out of baseball for 3 years.
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Post by okin15 on Jun 18, 2014 8:58:19 GMT -5
Kevin Millar and Bill Mueller were basically picked up off the scrap heap. So was Bellhorn. Undervalued isn't the same as reclamation. Like someone who has been out of baseball for 3 years. So we're going on a sample size of one? ADD: Especially given the questions surrounding Bradley in ST it would have been criminal not to sign a guy like Sizemore to back him up.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 18, 2014 9:16:14 GMT -5
Undervalued isn't the same as reclamation. Like someone who has been out of baseball for 3 years. So we're going on a sample size of one? ADD: Especially given the questions surrounding Bradley in ST it would have been criminal not to sign a guy like Sizemore to back him up. Um, it was criminal that they didn't sign a much better player than Sizemore to backup both JBJ and Victorino. That was the point. They backed up two guys with a good amount of risk with a 3rd guy who hasn't been a good major league player in 6 years. Holt is saving (the OF) somewhat, but I doubt that was the plan. Betts might be the rest of it. But we shouldn't be in this position.
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Post by okin15 on Jun 18, 2014 9:47:53 GMT -5
Yeah, I was right along with BC in expecting that of the 4 guys returning from our championship team, at least 2-3 would play as well as they did last year.
To clarify, Nava, Vic, Carp and Gomes were 4, 5, 7, 9 on the team in offensive runs last year. I woulda thought that between them, a promising rookie, and a still prime-aged reclamation project, we coulda come up with three good OF (or platoons to make it work.) I was wrong, and you were right, but I don't have any issues with what was tried here.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 18, 2014 9:51:49 GMT -5
Yeah, I was right along with BC in expecting that of the 4 guys returning from our championship team, at least 2-3 would play as well as they did last year. Even if Nava and Gomes and Carp were as good as last year, none of them could really backup JBJ and Victorino. Last year was a lot different in that we had JBJ as CF/RF depth and Ellsbury was way more of a sure thing than JBJ. This year? We had Sizemore.
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Post by suttree on Jun 18, 2014 10:06:48 GMT -5
The problem with the benefit of hindsight is that Sizemore was always considered a backup for JBJ. What he became was a backup for Victorino. The expectations were so low for JBJ that it seemed reasonable to have a reclamation project as his backup. However, Vic is our best OFer right now and there was no real plan if he went down.
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Post by ctfisher on Jun 18, 2014 10:17:38 GMT -5
If Middlebrooks' bat isn't good enough to stick at 3B, why would you think it's good enough to stick in LF? Isn't it a little premature to make that statement? He's 25 with less than 750 major league PA's and has hit 34 homers. I think this is something that people probably mention all the time, but given the premium on legit RH power (see the Trumbo trade) there's no way we should be conceding that at this point. I do agree at this stage that he make much more sense as a 3b against lefties, but I also think he really needs more reps, cause his problem is his approach, so why not put him in left sometimes too? Can't imagine he'd be much worse than Gomes against righties, even though I admit that with Farell's tendencies, that's probably not who he replaces. But in the long run, if he can lay off enough bad pitches to get to a BB% in the 8-10% range (not unimaginable) I think he becomes an extremely valuable player, because if you get him 600 PA's he'll probably hit 25 bombs, and that's with solid d at 3b
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Post by ctfisher on Jun 18, 2014 10:31:48 GMT -5
So we're going on a sample size of one? ADD: Especially given the questions surrounding Bradley in ST it would have been criminal not to sign a guy like Sizemore to back him up. Um, it was criminal that they didn't sign a much better player than Sizemore to backup both JBJ and Victorino. That was the point. They backed up two guys with a good amount of risk with a 3rd guy who hasn't been a good major league player in 6 years. Holt is saving (the OF) somewhat, but I doubt that was the plan. Betts might be the rest of it. But we shouldn't be in this position. Yea hindsight's 20/20, but where was this line of thinking when sizemore was raking in ST? Or when they announced the signing? I'm not saying you might not have been thinking that, but given bradley's minor league track record, and the presence of carp, nava, and gomes, along with brentz at AAA, I personally thought we were reasonably well insured, and OF depth was not really a big problem in most peoples' eyes until nava couldn't hit in april, victorino went down AGAIN (admittedly that was obviously happening at some point), bradley couldn't reach the mendoza line, and Farrell decided to roll with sizemore and gomes for 2 months. Also, it's worth pointing out that we're not really far out of the division lead at this stage, especially given the health problems, and if holt's even 75% for real, when/if everyone's healthy again, this team will at the very least be over .500 and probably make some noise in the playoff race before the year's over. I'd favor dealing one of our excess starters, doubront or peavy, and some of our redundant depth options (carp) for someone who can hit lefties and play cf. Much as I love mookie, I think we should give him time. He's obviously had a different path than JBJ, but I think he may have been pushed a little fast/felt the weight of expectations, and that can't have made things easy on him. And he came out of a top college program, was a couple years older than mookie, and had a reputation as having outstanding make up. Although if mookie is hitting .330 in Pawtucket in a month and not too much has changed, then I'd have no problem with throwing him into the mix and seeing how it plays out
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Post by jmei on Jun 18, 2014 10:55:24 GMT -5
I do agree at this stage that he make much more sense as a 3b against lefties, but I also think he really needs more reps, cause his problem is his approach, so why not put him in left sometimes too? Can't imagine he'd be much worse than Gomes against righties, even though I admit that with Farell's tendencies, that's probably not who he replaces. But in the long run, if he can lay off enough bad pitches to get to a BB% in the 8-10% range (not unimaginable) I think he becomes an extremely valuable player, because if you get him 600 PA's he'll probably hit 25 bombs, and that's with solid d at 3b Middlebrooks' problem is that he is a guess hitter; he does not recognize pitches coming out of a pitcher's hand and cannot track trajectory and break anywhere as well as someone like Mookie Betts. That's related to physical attributes (visual acuity, fast-twitch reflexes) that don't improve much as a hitter gets older. Yes, an improved approach (i.e., getting better at guessing when pitchers are going to throw him fastballs, sitting on certain pitches in certain situations) will help him hit slightly better, but I tend to think that he'll always be a guess hitter who racks up high strikeout and low walk rates because he just doesn't have the physical skills to have above-average pitch recognition. Even if you think he has some untapped potential, though, he should still not be playing in left field ahead of far better options. As has been so helpfully demonstrated by the Grady Sizemore odyssey this year, the goal of the major league team is first and foremost to win games, not give away at bats in the hope that a player somehow reaches the 99th percentile of his projection. Middlebrooks is a far, far worse hitter versus righties (a career .228/.273/.427, 85 wRC+ hitter versus RHP in 499 PAs) than, say, Daniel Nava (career 125 wRC+ vs. RHP), who he'd be taking plate appearances from. He's even a worse hitter versus righties than Gomes (career .222/.307/.417, 92 wRC+ vs. RHP), not that "not much worse than Gomes against righties" is anywhere close to the baseline against which we should evaluate potential outfield additions. Remember, in my scenario, Middlebrooks would still get plenty of at-bats, playing everyday versus LHP (whom he mashes, in large part because he doesn't have to worry as much about breaking stuff away) with the potential for more playing time (including against RHP) when Holt has to fill in anywhere else (a virtual inevitability). He'll still get every opportunity to show improvement and potentially work his way back to being a full-time starter at 3B. And if Middlebrooks does turns out to be a good hitter, you absolutely, 100% want him at 3B rather than LF, because it's so much harder to get a good bat at 3B as opposed to LF (and we know Middlebrooks is at least a solid defender at 3B).
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Post by mgoetze on Jun 18, 2014 12:22:09 GMT -5
(and we know Middlebrooks is at least a solid defender at 3B). You know that, and I know that, but some people on this forum are in serious denial on this topic.
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Post by jmei on Jun 18, 2014 14:32:59 GMT -5
Does Peavy really have a15M player option for next year? Per Cot's: He's not going to get there, though-- he'd need 168 innings from today forward to reach 400 between the last two years, which is just about impossible.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 18, 2014 17:19:28 GMT -5
There are about 5 pitchers in the minors I want in the rotation before Floyd.
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Post by grandsalami on Jun 18, 2014 18:07:08 GMT -5
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Post by ctfisher on Jun 19, 2014 1:16:01 GMT -5
Middlebrooks' problem is that he is a guess hitter; he does not recognize pitches coming out of a pitcher's hand and cannot track trajectory and break anywhere as well as someone like Mookie Betts. That's related to physical attributes (visual acuity, fast-twitch reflexes) that don't improve much as a hitter gets older. Yes, an improved approach (i.e., getting better at guessing when pitchers are going to throw him fastballs, sitting on certain pitches in certain situations) will help him hit slightly better, but I tend to think that he'll always be a guess hitter who racks up high strikeout and low walk rates because he just doesn't have the physical skills to have above-average pitch recognition. Even if you think he has some untapped potential, though, he should still not be playing in left field ahead of far better options. As has been so helpfully demonstrated by the Grady Sizemore odyssey this year, the goal of the major league team is first and foremost to win games, not give away at bats in the hope that a player somehow reaches the 99th percentile of his projection. Middlebrooks is a far, far worse hitter versus righties (a career .228/.273/.427, 85 wRC+ hitter versus RHP in 499 PAs) than, say, Daniel Nava (career 125 wRC+ vs. RHP), who he'd be taking plate appearances from. Yea i was really thinking a moderate improvement in learning to lay off some of those off speed pitches in the dirt that he seems to chase more than anyone else on the team, maybe get his walk rate the lower end of that 8-10% range. And I was thinking more of a situation where nava would be in right, middlebrooks in left, and holt in center, whenever bradley needs a day off/if that becomes more the norm, which is certainly possible. I guess I should have clarified what I hope for at this stage out of Middlebrooks: a .250/.310/.450 slash line, with his solid 3b defense, which isn't conservative I guess, but I wouldn't think of it as a "99th percentile" outcome. If that's what we think he can be, it's worth getting him a few extra at bats, given the lack of demonstrably better options. I forgot carp's coming back though, which makes this all kind of redundant
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Post by jmei on Jun 19, 2014 8:20:42 GMT -5
Well, that's just the thing, by the time Middlebrooks comes back, Victorino likely will have as well, so giving Will reps in LF takes at-bats away from better players (namely, the Gomes/Nava platoon). Giving Middlebrooks reps in LF if the team is out of contention is all fine and good, but until then, it doesn't make a lot of sense to play him there.
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Post by ctfisher on Jun 19, 2014 9:28:39 GMT -5
I'm kindof assuming this won't be victorino's last DL trip this year though...
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