8/12-8/13 Red Sox @ Reds Series Thread

I've mentioned my stance in other threads: he has a very nice fastball but the rest of his arsenal is just okay. Control isn't a strength. Not enough strikeouts, too many walks. Lots of baserunners. Now, last year he was very successful at buckling down with runners on and stranding them; this led to a very good ERA as a starter. It's not impossible that he could continue that particular trend, but I'd bet against it.

Just strikes me overall as a guy who is a bit overdue for a regression to the mean.

EDIT: Having said that, some reason for hope: he's only 26 and he's a very good athlete. An argument could be made that this isn't his ceiling and he could still develop further. I'm just not overly impressed by what I've seen of him thus far.

Kelly kind of reminds me of a reggie Cleveland type with the way he throws and all, just has 3-4 more ticks on his velocity. Decent poise on the mound, multiple pitches, doesn't have good control of any. Enough to tease us with and will hang around for years with the potential. I put Webster in the same Cleveland category.

Didn't care for Monty as a Sox broadcaster except for when he would give rock bottom facts as to that he saw as potential for young pitchers. THAT he would do and he was very good at it also. Would like to hear his take on young Kelly.

Cleveland's best pitch was a sinker also, like mentioned above, he didn't throw nearly as hard and was also a contact/GB pitcher. Both have/had control issues withing the k-zone. Something Cleveland never mastered and hope Kelly can. Dick Pole was another on those same staff's at the same time who had the same repertoire/issues, great sinker/stuff, but poor control of the zone, couldn't locate.

I'd like to see Farrell oversee the work with Kelly on that issue. I think it possibly (hopefully) can be fixed, r improved, same with Webster. Webster's case is worse, but both need one on one work.

Cespedes sure looks like a stud to me. Extend this guy quick.

Extend him to 5 years 90 million before it gets to 7 and 150 million, don't make the same mistake twice.

Because the Red Sox already have a lot of prospects who project as back-end starters, while one league-minimum year of a three win starting pitcher is INCREDIBLY valuable (and would be to the 2015 Red Sox).

I'm still skeptical of Kelly's ability to bear down with runners on base. Maybe it is a sustainable skill (there is some evidence of sequencing skill a la Tom Glavine), but the odds are against it. Given Kelly's career 279 IP, it's more likely than not that it's just SSS noise. Even if he does have that skill, it needs to be heavily regressed, and the magnitude of the skill is generally very limited (for Glavine, Tango et al estimated that he performed about two points (i.e., .002) of wOBA better with runners on base, which is next to nothing).

I read it, thought it was mostly just SSS noise (200ish BF per spot in the order is next to nothing IMO). That's especially true because of his really poor K/BB numbers verses middle-of-the-order hitters. There are just relatively few pitchers who can generate weak contact without also getting more whiffs, and like his strikeout rate versus 3/4 hitters, Kelly's strikeout rate with runners on (15.8%) and RISP (16.1%) are not that much higher than his strikeout rate with the bases empty (15.2%). It's just incredibly low BABIPs with runners on (.238 with RISP, .279 with runners on, .313 with the bases empty), and as someone who thinks alleged instances of pitcher BABIP skill in general are mostly just noise (unless there's a substantial enough sample), that's doubly true for pitcher BABIP skill in clutch situations.

I see what you're implying when you call it "pitching unintelligibly with the bases empty" as opposed to "bearing down with runners on"-- that if he pitches with as much a focus on minimizing hard contact with the bases empty that he does with runners on, he can pitch overall as well as he has with RISP and be a front-of-the-rotation type. I think it's the other way around-- that he's just gotten lucky with runners on base/in scoring position in his early career. After all, he's had a larger sample with the bases empty (143 IP) than with to men on base (136 IP) and RISP (73.2 IP), and his BABIP with the bases empty is closer to the league-average BABIP than his low BABIP with runners on and his ludicrously and unsustainably low BABIP with RISP. To me, it seems more likely that all his BABIP splits regress towards league-average, and he ends up the 4.00 ERA-type guy his peripherals seem to suggest.

Starting to remind me of 2012

We have over 4 years of control with Kelly and less than 1.5 years with Lackey. Presumably Kelly is getting better an Lackey getting worse. I like our chances.

I think I'll go with the Carp one. Just through the end of this miserable season. You'll get plenty of opportunities to turn the tables this offseason and beyond.

Renaudo seems to have pretty good stuff, but he keeps missing up here in the 1st. Stuff isn't good enough to miss there.

Butler's throw made me realize how awesome it is to watch Vazquez on an everygame basis.