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The Rotation Going Forward
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Post by James Dunne on Jun 11, 2014 9:22:57 GMT -5
You're getting yourself awfully worked up over a bunch of transactions the Red Sox haven't actually made.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Jun 11, 2014 9:23:07 GMT -5
The Pirates are only one game better than the Red Sox. They are likely looking to move Snyder since they just called up Polanco. They've also been trying to move their fourth outfielder who's pretty much busted and is overpriced (name escapes me, former decent prospect). They also just put their second baseman, Walker, on the DL when they called up Polanco and I don't see anybody better than replacement level there.
The highlight of their minors from the Sox perspective are Austin Meadows and Josh Bell who has been hot recently.
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Post by jmei on Jun 11, 2014 9:33:16 GMT -5
This is a pretty one-sided reading of recent history. This front office has absolutely been willing to move depth when they've gotten sufficient value in return. Think about the trades of Iglesias, Youkilis, Bowden, Reddick, Lowrie, Weiland, etc. They've also been happy to trade/DFA spare parts that are blocking more talented players-- think Clayton Mortenson (traded for Quintin Berry), Pedro Ciriaco (moved to the Royals for a PTBNL), DFA of guys like Daniel Bard, Jose De La Torre, Brandon Snyder, etc. Just because Cherington hasn't moved guys like Mike Carp or whichever pitcher you think needs to hit the road yet doesn't mean he's unwilling to move anyone, it means he hasn't gotten offers that are good enough yet. The fact that Sizemore and Lavarnway and Wright and whoever else you think is an affront to the 40-man roster is still in the organization just means that noone has seriously challenged for their roster spots yet. I'm strictly talking about the post-2012 Cherington when the org philosophy completely changed. ...and in 2013 they they traded Pedro Ciriaco in mid-June, Clayton Mortensen at the end of June, and Jose Iglesias at the trade deadline, while DFAing guys like De La Torre and Bard later on in the season to open up 40-man spots. I bet you would be a lot happier if you didn't constantly think the front office was run by buffoons.
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Post by terriblehondo on Jun 11, 2014 9:36:39 GMT -5
Trading Workman makes no sense to me. The most important thing a pitcher can do is pound the zone. Of all the prospects the Sox have he is the only one that has shown the guts or talent to keep pounding the zone. The others only have shown marginal control. While Workman has shown the ability to Start and Relieve in high leverage situations. I thought he was better than Peavy when they traded for him and I still do. If RDLR can put up a few more good starts like his last 2 I will buy into him. But right now he is the 3rd best starter on the team.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 11, 2014 9:39:09 GMT -5
I'm strictly talking about the post-2012 Cherington when the org philosophy completely changed. ...and in 2013 they they traded Pedro Ciriaco in mid-June, Clayton Mortensen at the end of June, and Jose Iglesias at the trade deadline, while DFAing guys like De La Torre and Bard later on in the season to open up 40-man spots. I bet you would be a lot happier if you didn't constantly think the front office was run by buffoons. Iglesias/Peavy was the only big trade, and we had Xander on the way. The rest of the moves are very minor. I pretty much called the OF situation this year in the offseason. We didn't address it because Ben wouldn't part with Carp. And Sizemore pushing first JBJ and second Nava to the minors instead of reshaping the OF completely is basically the major reason why we are where we are. We should not have relied on JBJ 100% without a real backup plan. We should not have relied on Victorino to remain healthy without a real backup plan. And here we are. The plan was Sizemore, Nava, Gomes and Carp, while giving up on the best of the 4 earliest.
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Post by mgoetze on Jun 11, 2014 9:43:44 GMT -5
The plan was Sizemore, Nava, Gomes and Carp, while giving up on the best of the 4 earliest. Rewriting history already? Sizemore was never part of the plan. Check what the media was writing a week before opening day. P.S. I don't mind this line of discussion in general but I would prefer it get its own thread.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 11, 2014 9:48:25 GMT -5
The plan was Sizemore, Nava, Gomes and Carp, while giving up on the best of the 4 earliest. Rewriting history already? Sizemore was never part of the plan. Check what the media was writing a week before opening day. P.S. I don't mind this line of discussion in general but I would prefer it get its own thread. Probably belongs in the OF thread. But if Sizemore wasn't part of the depth plan, then there was no plan at all.
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Post by jmei on Jun 11, 2014 9:51:45 GMT -5
Trading Workman makes no sense to me. The most important thing a pitcher can do is pound the zone. Of all the prospects the Sox have he is the only one that has shown the guts or talent to keep pounding the zone. The others only have shown marginal control. While Workman has shown the ability to Start and Relieve in high leverage situations. I thought he was better than Peavy when they traded for him and I still do. If RDLR can put up a few more good starts like his last 2 I will buy into him. But right now he is the 3rd best starter on the team. It's unfair to suggest that the reason guys like Webster and De La Rosa don't throw strikes is because they don't have "guts." It is incredibly difficult to throw baseballs into a two-by-two box sixty feet away, especially when you're also trying to add movement or deception to those pitches. This overly macho stuff about oh, he must not have the balls to throw it in the strike zone-- baloney. I always think it's fair to criticize a player's skills or talent, but it is usually unfair to criticize their character. (The same holds true for front office staff and managers, which is why I often push back against that as well.)
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Post by jmei on Jun 11, 2014 10:01:40 GMT -5
...and in 2013 they they traded Pedro Ciriaco in mid-June, Clayton Mortensen at the end of June, and Jose Iglesias at the trade deadline, while DFAing guys like De La Torre and Bard later on in the season to open up 40-man spots. I bet you would be a lot happier if you didn't constantly think the front office was run by buffoons. Iglesias/Peavy was the only big trade, and we had Xander on the way. The rest of the moves are very minor. I pretty much called the OF situation this year in the offseason. We didn't address it because Ben wouldn't part with Carp. And Sizemore pushing first JBJ and second Nava to the minors instead of reshaping the OF completely is basically the major reason why we are where we are. We should not have relied on JBJ 100% without a real backup plan. We should not have relied on Victorino to remain healthy without a real backup plan. And here we are. The plan was Sizemore, Nava, Gomes and Carp, while giving up on the best of the 4 earliest. I won't press the point, because I'm not going to change your mind, but this is completely revisionist history. The original tentative plan was for Sizemore to start the season in the minors and build up to a point where he could help the major league team. Instead, he surprised by looking awesome in Spring Training (while Bradley looked awful), to the point where it seemed to make sense to start Sizemore on the major league club while Bradley got himself figured out in Pawtucket. Instead, it turned out Sizemore couldn't play CF, which necessitated recalling Bradley, while Nava played terribly enough to erase some of the good vibes from 2013 and get himself optioned. The real problem was that the front office didn't have a good grasp on Sizemore's true talent level, and in that situation, it makes sense to hold onto a guy who flashed star-level upside (remember this game?) and see if there's anything there. The only legitimate beef re: not giving up depth I think you have here is the inability to move Carp and get a backup CF during the offseason. But we know that Cherington explored the idea of trading Carp, but presumably didn't get a trade offer good enough to part with a guy who some (including many on this board) considered a breakout player with star potential. Without inside information on what other teams offered, it's hard to say that keeping Carp was the wrong decision.
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Post by mgoetze on Jun 11, 2014 10:06:22 GMT -5
Instead, it turned out Sizemore couldn't play CF, which necessitated recalling Bradley, Bradley got recalled in time for opening day because Shane hurt his hamstring. It became apparent that Sizemore couldn't play CF during the 15 days Victorino was on the DL, so they kept Bradley.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 11, 2014 10:09:12 GMT -5
If Sizemore wasn't part of the plan for OF depth, then we didn't have any plan for CF/RF depth. Which I pretty much spent the entire offseason arguing. Not sure why the difference matters, but this is where Cherington screwed up and exactly what I warned of. Sizemore screwed things up even more because it left us with the better OF in the minors. I also asked in April/early May how many PAs Sizemore was going to get before he was DFA'd.
I didn't really care and argued at the time, what we got for Carp if he prevented us from improving the OF the way we needed to do by getting a real outfielder who could back up and/or takeover for the rookie CF and oft-injured RF. We needed a much better than average 4th OF this year. Not really revisionist history.
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Post by jmei on Jun 11, 2014 10:23:49 GMT -5
I agree with all of the above and was right with you all offseason about needing a better fourth outfielder rather than Carp. The difference is that I don't let one bad front office decision cloud my judgment to the point where I make sarcastic remarks about how depth-obsessed the front office is in every tangentially-related thread.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 11, 2014 10:30:35 GMT -5
There is a pattern here - Workman, JBJ, Nava, all undeservedly getting sent to the minors to preserve the (marginal at best) depth at the expense of not having the best 25-man roster. I know that every move can be argued individually, but it is a pattern. And I'll bet that Workman and RDLR get sent down again no matter how well they're pitching, until I see Ben do something different, which at this point probably means giving up on the season.
Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if we have 5 veteran starters penciled into the rotation next year even though we have about 7 minor league options to take even one spot.
BTW, I concede that you won our bet.
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Post by jmei on Jun 11, 2014 10:35:53 GMT -5
Let's go double-or-nothing, then-- I bet that De La Rosa and Workman will both end up with 12+ starts in Boston by the end of the season (RDLR is at 2, Workman is at 4 as of this post).
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Jun 11, 2014 10:36:54 GMT -5
A change of direction, related to the topic: PawSox ?@pawsox 1h Clay Buchholz will make a rehab start at McCoy this Friday with the PawSox. First pitch is at 7:05pm. http://instagram.com/p/pG0sJtydlb
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 11, 2014 10:44:44 GMT -5
Let's go double-or-nothing, then-- I bet that De La Rosa and Workman will both end up with 12+ starts in Boston by the end of the season (RDLR is at 2, Workman is at 4 as of this post). That could happen a lot of ways, like if Buchholz never comes back or someone else gets hurt. I bet they don't get 12+ starts because of either Doubront moving to the pen or Peavy getting traded. Though it's a lot easier to move Doubront to the pen if they can phantom-DL Mujica.
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Post by mgoetze on Jun 11, 2014 10:53:15 GMT -5
Though it's a lot easier to move Doubront to the pen if they can phantom-DL Mujica. They can also just DFA Mujica. Jmei's bet seems very optimistic to me. Even if they do plan to try and make room for Workman and RDLR, SSS bad results could quickly get them sent back down, and then maybe next time someone else is lighting it up in Pawtucket. I would feel much more comfortable betting on 25+ combined starts for RDLR, Workman, Webster, Ranaudo and Barnes. And I know y'all hate knuckleballers, but Steven Wright might be much higher on the depth chart than some of you want him to be.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 11, 2014 10:54:57 GMT -5
Mujica getting DFA'd is something I really doubt happens. I agree about Wright, but he's probably pretty far down the list.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Jun 11, 2014 10:57:00 GMT -5
There's also the fact that limiting the bet to two specific players is screwed if one of those players gets traded.
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Post by mgoetze on Jun 11, 2014 10:57:15 GMT -5
Mujica getting DFA'd is something I really doubt happens. Well, given John Henry's bio, I'd expect him to understand the pitfalls of sunk costs much better than any of the other 29 owners.
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Post by njsox on Jun 11, 2014 10:59:05 GMT -5
I'm a little biased since I was a huge fan of his in the offseason, but I think that they can find a way to carry Mujica as the lowest-leverage reliever for as long as possible and see if he can work himself out of it. Good relievers get out of whack all the time, and given his upside, Mujica should get more than 23 innings (the equivalent of four or five bad starts in a row) to try and work out of it. It will be another two or three weeks before the "if everyone is healthy" caveat starts becoming a possibility, and further injuries (or phantom injuries) may push that threshold back. Most teams can carry a fringy guy in the back end of their bullpen for blowouts, especially a team like the Red Sox with a good number of reliable bullpen arms ahead of him. There's also the possibility that if the Red Sox actually fall out of contention by July, they start selling some of their mid-end bullpen arms (think Badenhop, Capuano, Breslow, maybe even Miller) and make room for Mujica and whoever gets bumped from the bullpen. I agree with everything else, though. I'm also curious about how they're going to handle the fact that even with those two promoted to Boston, the Pawtucket rotation is getting a little crowded. By mid-season, they're going to have Webster, Ranaudo, Barnes, Owens, and one of Wright/Hernandez/Couch. Not all those guys are going to lock down rotation spots in Boston. A trade is on the horizon, and I'm curious to see which of those names they want to keep. Don't forget about Johnson here, he doesn't look long for Portland either.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 11, 2014 11:00:52 GMT -5
We could just alter the bet to say that any two AAA starters move to the permanent rotation because Ben made room for them by trading Peavy and moving Doubront to the pen or any other move(s). That's the main thing that I don't think Ben does. I can't bet on injuries forcing the issue.
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Post by mgoetze on Jun 11, 2014 11:02:09 GMT -5
We could just alter the bet to say that any two AAA starters move to the permanent rotation because Ben made room for them by trading Peavy and moving Doubront to the pen. But then what if he does it by convincing Clay to accept an assignment to Pawtucket?
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 11, 2014 11:03:45 GMT -5
We could just alter the bet to say that any two AAA starters move to the permanent rotation because Ben made room for them by trading Peavy and moving Doubront to the pen. But then what if he does it by convincing Clay to accept an assignment to Pawtucket? That's fine I guess. It's probably the most likely thing he does because he wouldn't have to lose anyone.
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Post by jmei on Jun 11, 2014 11:14:37 GMT -5
We could just alter the bet to say that any two AAA starters move to the permanent rotation because Ben made room for them by trading Peavy and moving Doubront to the pen or any other move(s). That's the main thing that I don't think Ben does. I can't bet on injuries forcing the issue.
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