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Let’s discuss the Red Sox horrendous pitching
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Post by kman22 on Sept 5, 2020 17:05:18 GMT -5
Might be a lost cause at this point, but passed on the chance to claim Carson Fulmer, now he's with the Orioles.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 5, 2020 18:10:00 GMT -5
Godley is 9.72 (69 PA) on short or regular rest and 3.22 (74 PA) on 5 days or more. But if you remove him from his 8/30 start after giving up the leadoff HR in the 4th, when his EV split was 83.3 in his first 12 contacts, and 100.9 in his last 3 (1 in 785 chance of being random), it's 2.98 in 65 PA. Obviously, it goes up with each extra batter he was left in to face, but leaving him in to give up three more rockets is not normal or predictive (or sane).
The extra-rested Godley has been the team's best pitcher other than Darwinzon's SSS. And the sample size is topped only Perez, Eobaldi, Weber, and Brewer. And it's not like there's no precedent here; he had 4.3 bWAR in 2017. It seems that nothing has happened to his skills in the three years since; he's just lost the ability to pitch long outings on regular rest. You have to figure out how to use a guy like that.
Barnes was 6.73 before the deadline and is -1.96 in his 3 outings as a closer. 5 K, 0 BB, 84.0 EV and -6.7 PA.
Taylor has an equally small sample starting 8/30 and is 5.93 turning into 0.73.
For his career, Godley has a starting ERA of 14.04 on 3 days rest (only 3 starts) 5.22 on 4 days rest (38 starts) 4.48 on 5 days rest (28 starts) He had a bWAR OF 4.3 in 2017. Since then, he is -2.4. In that span, he has pitched 74 times, with 48 starts, to the tune of a 5.45 ERA. ERA+ of 79. WHIP of 1.512. Interestingly, in his one good year, rest was not the issue: 4 days: 3.39 ERA (11 starts) (OPS .654) 5 days: 3.53 ERA (8 starts) (OPS .690) 6+ days: 3.25 (6 starts) (OPS .637) The point being: the one season he didn’t stink, rest was not a problem. So maybe — Occam’s razor — the rest issue doesn’t explain his stinking so much as he stinks, but being better rested he stinks slightly less — just as many athletes (especially as they age) would benefit from a bit extra rest? And maybe he is *better* when served his ideal conditions, but isn’t the bigger picture point that he is simply not very good? That he had one big year when he was 27, and now, at 30 he has a pretty established record of not being that guy? Add: and Godley’s starts this season: 1 game on 3 days rest. Bombed. 3 games on 4 days rest: 12.00 ERA 1 game on 5 days rest: 2.25 ERA 2 games on 6+: 5.19 ERA That does not seem like a lot of data. His longest appearance is 4.2 innings. A starter who a) can’t finish the fifth inning and b) needs extra rest to give 4 good innings is not helpful. One last comp: Godley has given the Sox 4 good innings 3 times this season. Weber has a comparable record, with 3 scoreless innings against the Yankees, a near-miracle 6 inning, 1 run performance against the Rays, and 4 inning, 2 runs against the Braves. And he stinks, too. But you cherry pick their best performances, and Weber comes out just as good or better. There's a way to determine whether a split is real or random. Doing those statistical tests is the next step. But I've been using them for almost 20 years and am seldom surprised by the results. Not never, which is why I do them. But my instincts have gotten pretty good.
The next question is of course, when there is a statistically significant split, how often does that turn out to be real and sustainable? Not always, of course. Maybe the split was caused by something real that he has no control over, and later only the bad situation is in play. Troy O'Leary had personal problems and when he returned from them he was unquestionably his old self for a stretch. But that didn't last long, alas. Or maybe you can't take advantage of it (which might prove to be the case here). Bill Mueller was unquestionably hugely better hitting 8th than elsewhere (simply because he liked it), but Tito couldn't resist batting him higher up on days when the lineup was thinned from injuries.
This methodology has a really good track record. Johnny Damon had a terrible second half in 2002 and first half in 2003. The other halves of those seasons matched his KC numbers. Lump the bad stretch together and there was no way it was a random variation on the other halves and his KC performance (his bad year in Oakland was a separate story). It turned out that the bad stretch was his divorce. I called a return to his KC form for 2004. Nobody bought that. John Henry did hire me after that season, though.
Sticking with just that team, Derek Lowe in '04 was streaky and total Jekyll and Hyde. He had a reputation as a hard partier and my hypothesis was that he'd party until he realized it was causing him to suck, stop it, be great, start partying again, lather, rinse, repeat. I did a chat at ESPN with a guy named Phil from the Yankee equivalent of SoSH where I claimed that there was a Good Derek Lowe, he was better than Mussina, and that he would very likely show up for the playoffs, and that's why I was picking the Sox in 5. I was mocked! Of course, I was right about Lowe and about how much the Sox were better. (I recently did an analysis on Quora that showed that the Yankees winning 3 straight was hugely less likely than the Sox winning four, which is to say that the amazing stretch in that series was actually games 1 through 3! I should really post that here.)
Remember Papi's struggles, the year that Sports Illustrated said he should be released? I used this kind of analysis to argue he would return completely to form. To do that, I had to remove the awful stretch of games he had after the PED story broke, and people objected to that, you know, because baseball players are random number generations, not human beings (Papi actually reported he hadn't been sleeping). He had started to hit again, then the story broke, and he had an awful stretch, and I think it was less than a week into his second recovery that I ran the numbers and declared him fixed. In fact, he outperformed my projection for the rest of the season.
Another Papi one -- he tweaked his stance (in KC, IIRC) to get better plate coverage against LHP. His numbers against them took off. After maybe a month I ran the tests and it was completely real and not random. I noted that in a comment at FanGraphs and the Statistically Correct mocked me with small sample, yada yada yada yada. He hit lefties well the rest of his career.
(I'd forgotten about both of those.)
And while we're on the Papi subject, I called his amazing final season after either 2 or 3 games, right here. The sample size is half the story. The other half is the size of the effect.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Sept 5, 2020 18:23:43 GMT -5
For his career, Godley has a starting ERA of 14.04 on 3 days rest (only 3 starts) 5.22 on 4 days rest (38 starts) 4.48 on 5 days rest (28 starts) He had a bWAR OF 4.3 in 2017. Since then, he is -2.4. In that span, he has pitched 74 times, with 48 starts, to the tune of a 5.45 ERA. ERA+ of 79. WHIP of 1.512. Interestingly, in his one good year, rest was not the issue: 4 days: 3.39 ERA (11 starts) (OPS .654) 5 days: 3.53 ERA (8 starts) (OPS .690) 6+ days: 3.25 (6 starts) (OPS .637) The point being: the one season he didn’t stink, rest was not a problem. So maybe — Occam’s razor — the rest issue doesn’t explain his stinking so much as he stinks, but being better rested he stinks slightly less — just as many athletes (especially as they age) would benefit from a bit extra rest? And maybe he is *better* when served his ideal conditions, but isn’t the bigger picture point that he is simply not very good? That he had one big year when he was 27, and now, at 30 he has a pretty established record of not being that guy? Add: and Godley’s starts this season: 1 game on 3 days rest. Bombed. 3 games on 4 days rest: 12.00 ERA 1 game on 5 days rest: 2.25 ERA 2 games on 6+: 5.19 ERA That does not seem like a lot of data. His longest appearance is 4.2 innings. A starter who a) can’t finish the fifth inning and b) needs extra rest to give 4 good innings is not helpful. One last comp: Godley has given the Sox 4 good innings 3 times this season. Weber has a comparable record, with 3 scoreless innings against the Yankees, a near-miracle 6 inning, 1 run performance against the Rays, and 4 inning, 2 runs against the Braves. And he stinks, too. But you cherry pick their best performances, and Weber comes out just as good or better. There's a way to determine whether a split is real or random. Doing those statistical tests is the next step. But I've been using them for almost 20 years and am seldom surprised by the results. Not never, which is why I do them. But my instincts have gotten pretty good.
The next question is of course, when there is a statistically significant split, how often does that turn out to be real and sustainable? Not always, of course. Maybe the split was caused by something real that he has no control over, and later only the bad situation is in play. Troy O'Leary had personal problems and when he returned from them he was unquestionably his old self for a stretch. But that didn't last long, alas. Or maybe you can't take advantage of it (which might prove to be the case here). Bill Mueller was unquestionably hugely better hitting 8th than elsewhere (simply because he liked it), but Tito couldn't resist batting him higher up on days when the lineup was thinned from injuries.
This methodology has a really good track record. Johnny Damon had a terrible second half in 2002 and first half in 2003. The other halves of those seasons matched his KC numbers. Lump the bad stretch together and there was no way it was a random variation on the other halves and his KC performance (his bad year in Oakland was a separate story). It turned out that the bad stretch was his divorce. I called a return to his KC form for 2004. Nobody bought that. John Henry did hire me after that season, though.
Sticking with just that team, Derek Lowe in '04 was streaky and total Jekyll and Hyde. He had a reputation as a hard partier and my hypothesis was that he'd party until he realized it was causing him to suck, stop it, be great, start partying again, lather, rinse, repeat. I did a chat at ESPN with a guy named Phil from the Yankee equivalent of SoSH where I claimed that there was a Good Derek Lowe, he was better than Mussina, and that he would very likely show up for the playoffs, and that's why I was picking the Sox in 5. I was mocked! Of course, I was right about Lowe and about how much the Sox were better. (I recently did an analysis on Quora that showed that the Yankees winning 3 straight was hugely less likely than the Sox winning four, which is to say that the amazing stretch in that series was actually games 1 through 3! I should really post that here.)
Remember Papi's struggles, the year that Sports Illustrated said he should be released? I used this kind of analysis to argue he would return completely to form. To do that, I had to remove the awful stretch of games he had after the PED story broke, and people objected to that, you know, because baseball players are random number generations, not human beings (Papi actually reported he hadn't been sleeping). He had started to hit again, then the story broke, and he had an awful stretch, and I think it was less than a week into his second recovery that I ran the numbers and declared him fixed. In fact, he outperformed my projection for the rest of the season.
Another Papi one -- he tweaked his stance (in KC, IIRC) to get better plate coverage against LHP. His numbers against them took off. After maybe a month I ran the tests and it was completely real and not random. I noted that in a comment at FanGraphs and the Statistically Correct mocked me with small sample, yada yada yada yada. He hit lefties well the rest of his career.
(I'd forgotten about both of those.)
And while we're on the Papi subject, I called his amazing final season after either 2 or 3 games, right here. The sample size is half the story. The other half is the size of the effect.
That’s fine, but those are examples of good players in bad stretches. Godley is a bad pitcher, age 30. It flips that paradigm. Are there age 30 guys with single flukey (by definition— one out of his career) good seasons that recapture their glory by extending their rest? And all of those examples have non-baseball reasons: divorce, sleep apnea etc. What is wrong with Godley these last 3 years? If there is an answer to that, I concede the point. But sometimes the answer is simply lack of talent. And the problem with dismissing sample size and saying “sample effect” is it becomes really hard to prove. If you take a guy with 8 starts and say we can tell this — that may or may not be put into effect — his next 8 starts could look different for any number of reasons that can’t be isolated. It becomes an argument that is neither verifiable nor refutable. Godley could gave a few decent games in a row because hitting a baseball is hard. But it doesn’t mean he’s not what he has been for, what 88 career starts? Edit: I’ll go a step further. If Godley is 2 bWAR or better for any big league team next season, I’ll give $250 to the Jimmy Fund. (People will have to remind me of this, please, if it happens). Edit again: 2 bWAR is too high. Let’s say, how about, 1.5 bWAR.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 6, 2020 0:18:48 GMT -5
There's a way to determine whether a split is real or random. Doing those statistical tests is the next step. But I've been using them for almost 20 years and am seldom surprised by the results. Not never, which is why I do them. But my instincts have gotten pretty good.
The next question is of course, when there is a statistically significant split, how often does that turn out to be real and sustainable? Not always, of course. Maybe the split was caused by something real that he has no control over, and later only the bad situation is in play. Troy O'Leary had personal problems and when he returned from them he was unquestionably his old self for a stretch. But that didn't last long, alas. Or maybe you can't take advantage of it (which might prove to be the case here). Bill Mueller was unquestionably hugely better hitting 8th than elsewhere (simply because he liked it), but Tito couldn't resist batting him higher up on days when the lineup was thinned from injuries.
This methodology has a really good track record. Johnny Damon had a terrible second half in 2002 and first half in 2003. The other halves of those seasons matched his KC numbers. Lump the bad stretch together and there was no way it was a random variation on the other halves and his KC performance (his bad year in Oakland was a separate story). It turned out that the bad stretch was his divorce. I called a return to his KC form for 2004. Nobody bought that. John Henry did hire me after that season, though.
Sticking with just that team, Derek Lowe in '04 was streaky and total Jekyll and Hyde. He had a reputation as a hard partier and my hypothesis was that he'd party until he realized it was causing him to suck, stop it, be great, start partying again, lather, rinse, repeat. I did a chat at ESPN with a guy named Phil from the Yankee equivalent of SoSH where I claimed that there was a Good Derek Lowe, he was better than Mussina, and that he would very likely show up for the playoffs, and that's why I was picking the Sox in 5. I was mocked! Of course, I was right about Lowe and about how much the Sox were better. (I recently did an analysis on Quora that showed that the Yankees winning 3 straight was hugely less likely than the Sox winning four, which is to say that the amazing stretch in that series was actually games 1 through 3! I should really post that here.)
Remember Papi's struggles, the year that Sports Illustrated said he should be released? I used this kind of analysis to argue he would return completely to form. To do that, I had to remove the awful stretch of games he had after the PED story broke, and people objected to that, you know, because baseball players are random number generations, not human beings (Papi actually reported he hadn't been sleeping). He had started to hit again, then the story broke, and he had an awful stretch, and I think it was less than a week into his second recovery that I ran the numbers and declared him fixed. In fact, he outperformed my projection for the rest of the season.
Another Papi one -- he tweaked his stance (in KC, IIRC) to get better plate coverage against LHP. His numbers against them took off. After maybe a month I ran the tests and it was completely real and not random. I noted that in a comment at FanGraphs and the Statistically Correct mocked me with small sample, yada yada yada yada. He hit lefties well the rest of his career.
(I'd forgotten about both of those.)
And while we're on the Papi subject, I called his amazing final season after either 2 or 3 games, right here. The sample size is half the story. The other half is the size of the effect.
That’s fine, but those are examples of good players in bad stretches. Godley is a bad pitcher, age 30. It flips that paradigm. Are there age 30 guys with single flukey (by definition— one out of his career) good seasons that recapture their glory by extending their rest? And all of those examples have non-baseball reasons: divorce, sleep apnea etc. What is wrong with Godley these last 3 years? If there is an answer to that, I concede the point. But sometimes the answer is simply lack of talent. And the problem with dismissing sample size and saying “sample effect” is it becomes really hard to prove. If you take a guy with 8 starts and say we can tell this — that may or may not be put into effect — his next 8 starts could look different for any number of reasons that can’t be isolated. It becomes an argument that is neither verifiable nor refutable. The entire point is that he's not a bad pitcher. That's what the numbers show. For the last two years he's been very good when sufficiently rested, in a sufficiently large sample, and that represents his talent. And he's been terrible beyond belief when he isn't sufficiently rested. There is no pitcher who has his numbers. It's exactly like Lowe in 2004.
It kind of boggles my mind that a pitcher can alternate between pitching on 5+ days rest and less rest (which is what you'd do in a controlled experiment!), and have four starts of each, and be the best pitcher on the team or the worst (2.98 true ERA, versus 9.72), and that someone would dismiss this as essentially not worth thinking about, and insist that he's just a no-talent, because combined it's 6.19. How is that different from a guy who hits 6 popups and 6 homers or wall balls and has a bad flyball distance as a result?
You don't have an entire year like Godley's in 2017 by accident, right? Something happened to turn his results mediocre and then bad. Well, we know what that is. It couldn't be more clear.
Obviously as arms age they sometimes become less able to recover from use. And in fact there's a long history of careers that were extended by having pitchers go less often (on Sundays only, in fact).
You are putting way too much stock in the fact that Godley had his breakout year and then started having trouble pitching with regular rest the next year. Guys do figure it out at different ages. Guys do start declining with age, for various reasons. There will always be a guy or two who has his breakout just before he hits the downward wear-and-tear curve. Again, the alternative hypothesis, that he was inexplicably good for no reason in 2017, is not sustainable.
And the problem with dismissing sample size and saying “sample effect” is it becomes really hard to prove.
NO. That's the entire point. There are mathematical formulas that assess the two factors and tell you the exact truth as to how likely it was to be random (happen in a simulation, e.g.). Your next few sentences suggest that the problem is identifying the cause of the performance split, but this one may have been the most obvious one I've found.
You are missing here what may be the single greatest principle in baseball development.
A player's performance is not his talent. There is almost always a gap between talent and performance. The job of baseball development and operations is to accurately asses talent, and when performance lags behind talent, to identify why it does, and how the gap might be closed.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 6, 2020 2:56:48 GMT -5
Barnes was 6.73 before the deadline and is -1.96 in his 3 outings as a closer. 5 K, 0 BB, 84.0 EV and -6.7 PA. Taylor has an equally small sample starting 8/30 and is 5.93 turning into 0.73.
Actually, Barnes is "just" -0.33 as a closer, and Taylor went from 7.87 to 1.77 -- but that went up last night.
Spreadsheet bug.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 6, 2020 3:11:00 GMT -5
Edit: I’ll go a step further. If Godley is 2 bWAR or better for any big league team next season, I’ll give $250 to the Jimmy Fund. (People will have to remind me of this, please, if it happens). Edit again: 2 bWAR is too high. Let’s say, how about, 1.5 bWAR. Figuring that Matt Barnes has never done that, and we don't know what role-tweak might be found that would keep Godley pitching well, that's still probably too high.
The only setup guys or swingmen that have done that for the Sox in the last 3 years are Brasier, Velazquez, and Wright, all in 2018.
1.0 bWAR gets you Barnes the last two years, and Taylor and Walden last year, and so on. Is that worth half a donation?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 6, 2020 4:25:57 GMT -5
And the problem with dismissing sample size and saying “sample effect” is it becomes really hard to prove.
NO. That's the entire point. There are mathematical formulas that assess the two factors and tell you the exact truth as to how likely it was to be random (happen in a simulation, e.g.). OK, so the odds you get the observed splits in K%, BB%, and Hard Hit% between long rest and otherwise in a random simulation are 1 in 652. Just the p values for the 2 correlated measures of hard contact, Barrel% and HardHit%, are .015 and .02 respectively. Using Barrel% instead of HH% gives you 1 in 852, and it actually has a bigger influence on pERA, but I'm being conservative.
And note that this was the only test I performed. I did no fishing to find a significant split. The days-rest jumps out at you just looking at his b-Ref game log.
And to be intellectually honest, I used the long-rest stats that eliminated the slow hook batters, even though that hurts both the K% and Barrel%, because he happened to not give up a barrel and had a good K/BB while 3 of the the last 4 balls hit off of him were smoked (98.9 EV). If you insist that I don't cherry-pick that, and I use Barrel%, which is perfectly defensible, it's 1 in 6,052.
Next I want to see if there are differences in pitch quality, use and location, and get the effectiveness of each pitch / location combo for both splits. But a first look yields this very interesting nugget: that tremendous debut was 27 cutters, 24 curves, 2 changeups and 0 fastballs. The FB shows up in later outings and has been mostly hit really hard. In 2017 the curve, cutter, and change were terrific and the fastball, which is only 2 mph faster than the cutter, was hit hard. The cutter is essentially his fastball, a la Mike Timlin.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 6, 2020 5:27:42 GMT -5
OK, something may be going on with Godley that could render this all moot. Let's go back two outings.
The first half of the outing is terrific, but it doesn't resemble any of his earlier good ones. No SO, no BB (there is a HBP) but remarkably consistent weak contact--an .083 HardHit rate when his previous best had been .200.
Then, after 13 hitters, like a switch gets thrown, he's completely different. This version of Godley has the highest K rate since his debut, but he also gets completely annihilated when contact is made, even though he has a better BB rate than any of his bad outings. Instead of 1 hard hit ball out of 12, it's 6 out of 7. You could expect to see a split like that at random in 1 out of every 588 starts. And there's also the sudden bunch of K's.
This Version 4 shows up again in his next outing and is even worse.
Here's his pERA by outing, with days rest:
-0.47 7.68 (4)
3.83 (6)
8.36 (3)
2.91 (5)
7.65 (4)
3.99 and then 7.03 (6)
11.29 (4)
The odd usage pattern suggests something might be going on, too. Ditto for the argument with Roenicke.
Later today I'll try to figure out what's behind this.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Sept 6, 2020 8:16:15 GMT -5
Edit: I’ll go a step further. If Godley is 2 bWAR or better for any big league team next season, I’ll give $250 to the Jimmy Fund. (People will have to remind me of this, please, if it happens). Edit again: 2 bWAR is too high. Let’s say, how about, 1.5 bWAR. Figuring that Matt Barnes has never done that, and we don't know what role-tweak might be found that would keep Godley pitching well, that's still probably too high.
The only setup guys or swingmen that have done that for the Sox in the last 3 years are Brasier, Velazquez, and Wright, all in 2018.
1.0 bWAR gets you Barnes the last two years, and Taylor and Walden last year, and so on. Is that worth half a donation?
Sure. But I thought the point was he could be a good *starter* — not Barnes or Taylor. But no problem. I think he stinks period, so 1 bWAR= $150; 1.5 bWAR= $250. But seriously: bookmark this and remind me. Cause I will do it, and I don’t want to forget.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 7, 2020 19:48:30 GMT -5
Updated portrait of just the spaghetti on the wall. Weber excludes his first 3 outings where he walked everybody.
Name BFP pERA Godley 5+ rest 74 3.22 Mike Kickham 25 3.71 Dylan Covey 26 3.75 Phil. Valdez 103 4.00 Chris Mazza 58 4.36 Jeffrey Springs 71 4.39 Ryan Weber* 89 4.93 Austin Brice 80 5.14 Robert Stock 40 5.22 Robinson Leyer 24 5.24 Andrew Triggs 26 7.10 Matt Hall 39 7.23 Kyle Hart 67 7.56 Godley other 69 9.72
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Post by patford on Sept 7, 2020 20:46:14 GMT -5
Toronto with 10 runs and counting in the 6th. What we need is a, "Let’s discuss the Yankees horrendous pitching" post.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 7, 2020 20:57:55 GMT -5
Toronto with 10 runs and counting in the 6th. What we need is a, "Let’s discuss the Yankees horrendous pitching" post. It would be awesome (and unlikely) if Baltimore or Detroit caught NY and dumped them out of the playoff spot. You know the Yankees have 3 automatic wins left this season as they play the Red Sox. Here's one - if the irresistable force met the immovable object kind of question. If beating the Yankees kept them out of the playoffs but screwed the Red Sox out of a #1 pick, who would you root for? The Sox to win to keep the Yanks out or the Sox to lose to get the #1 pick (instead of #2 or #3)? It is very unknowable in a way because we don't know for sure (I suspect he would) if Manfred would screw over the Red Sox if they had the worst record in the league and prevent them from picking first. But it's an interesting thought exercise. I'd go for the Red Sox losing to NY even if they make the playoffs. You figure it's a long tournament where you have to win 4 rounds and if their pitching sucks that bad, their odds of going that far would be low. Getting the #1 pick could be extremely beneficial for the Red Sox long-term....as much as I hate the Yankees.....I'd take the loss to benefit the Red Sox down the road. But I can see how somebody would choose differently if there were such a choice.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Sept 7, 2020 21:01:50 GMT -5
Toronto with 10 runs and counting in the 6th. What we need is a, "Let’s discuss the Yankees horrendous pitching" post. It would be awesome (and unlikely) if Baltimore or Detroit caught NY and dumped them out of the playoff spot. You know the Yankees have 3 automatic wins left this season as they play the Red Sox. Here's one - if the irresistable force met the immovable object kind of question. If beating the Yankees kept them out of the playoffs but screwed the Red Sox out of a #1 pick, who would you root for? The Sox to win to keep the Yanks out or the Sox to lose to get the #1 pick (instead of #2 or #3)? It is very unknowable in a way because we don't know for sure (I suspect he would) if Manfred would screw over the Red Sox if they had the worst record in the league and prevent them from picking first. But it's an interesting thought exercise. I'd go for the Red Sox losing to NY even if they make the playoffs. You figure it's a long tournament where you have to win 4 rounds and if their pitching sucks that bad, their odds of going that far would be low. Getting the #1 pick could be extremely beneficial for the Red Sox long-term....as much as I hate the Yankees.....I'd take the loss to benefit the Red Sox down the road. But I can see how somebody would choose differently if there were such a choice. If the Sox could keep the Yankees out of an *expanded* playoff after signing Cole, it would make this season worth it. I’d be willing to drop multiple spots for that. I trust the FO to make a #5 special. But Yankees embarrassed? Alllllwwwwaaays special.
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Post by patford on Sept 7, 2020 21:02:59 GMT -5
Aside from the Sox winning the WS there is nothing sweeter in baseball than the tears of Yankees fans. Particularly since Aaron Boone is an insufferable ass.
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cdj
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Post by cdj on Sept 7, 2020 21:30:03 GMT -5
Reds released Alex Powers. Great minor league numbers. Throw him at the wall, why the hell not? MA kid....also struck me out in 3 pitches
I might have been at the plate for 20 seconds. I was a pace of play machine at the dish
Powers throws low 90s with movement from a low angle. Solid secondaries. Good deception. Kept the ball in the park at AAA. We’ve thrown worse....
He could be our Chaz Roe!!!
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Post by foreverred9 on Sept 7, 2020 22:24:40 GMT -5
If the Sox could keep the Yankees out of an *expanded* playoff after signing Cole, it would make this season worth it. I’d be willing to drop multiple spots for that. I trust the FO to make a #5 special. But Yankees embarrassed? Alllllwwwwaaays special. 100% agree. The only thing worse than the Yanks winning their 28th in this shortened season is the Yanks winning it from one of the 6th through 8th positions, so let's push them down to the 9th position (and if we can't do that, I guess we should get swept so the Yanks move up to 5th).
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 7, 2020 22:34:36 GMT -5
If the Sox could keep the Yankees out of an *expanded* playoff after signing Cole, it would make this season worth it. I’d be willing to drop multiple spots for that. I trust the FO to make a #5 special. But Yankees embarrassed? Alllllwwwwaaays special. 100% agree. The only thing worse than the Yanks winning their 28th in this shortened season is the Yanks winning it from one of the 6th through 8th positions, so let's push them down to the 9th position (and if we can't do that, I guess we should get swept so the Yanks move up to 5th). I totally understand the sentiment, but if Manfred let the draft order stand and the Sox could draft Kumar Rocker, who could be the best pitching prospect they've had since Clemens and if he stayed healthy and developed as hoped for could give the Sox a pitching ace for a number of years that they could build around, wouldn't that be worth the risk that the Yankees would still probably flop in the playoff if their pitching is that unreliable? I mean, it is hard to slug your way through four rounds of playoffs? I hate the Yankees with a passion, so I totally understand the sentiment. Like I said, I know that Manfred could torpedo the whole thing. I have more faith that the Red Sox can finish with the worst record than I do in Manfred to maintain the usual draft procedure if the Sox do finish with the worst record. But I really do think it's an interesting thought exercise. I mean, it is true - the Sox could pick first - choose Rocker and he doesn't develop. I mean, the Yankees picked Brien Taylor with the first pick in the 1991 draft and he got hurt and never amounted to anything - amazingly enough it did nothing to derail them from being the team of the latter half of the decade, so maybe the first pick isn't the end all be all - although it goes against the grain to think that way and yeah, it would be so enjoyable to see the Yankees miss the playoffs and have their window start to shut without experiencing a championship. At least 2018 is forever.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 8, 2020 0:08:58 GMT -5
For the draft, the earliest likely contributions by players from next year's draft would be late 2024 and that's likely true no matter where we draft.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 8, 2020 0:25:51 GMT -5
For what it's worth, Baltimore is now closer to New York than New York is to Toronto.
For what it's worth, if the season ended today, Boston would have the 3rd pick, one ahead of Pittsburgh.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 8, 2020 6:58:47 GMT -5
For the draft, the earliest likely contributions by players from next year's draft would be late 2024 and that's likely true no matter where we draft. Most likely true, but not all contributions from draft picks selected next year from 2024 on up are equal so draft position could matter.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Sept 8, 2020 20:42:18 GMT -5
For the draft, the earliest likely contributions by players from next year's draft would be late 2024 and that's likely true no matter where we draft. I'm not sure of the context here, but it wouldn't be crazy for a top college pitcher to be up by mid-2023. Consider that's about how long it took Casey Mize. But that's probably the best-case scenario.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 8, 2020 22:32:00 GMT -5
For the draft, the earliest likely contributions by players from next year's draft would be late 2024 and that's likely true no matter where we draft. I'm not sure of the context here, but it wouldn't be crazy for a top college pitcher to be up by mid-2023. Consider that's about how long it took Casey Mize. But that's probably the best-case scenario. The key word being "likely." I am just trying to put it into the context of a Red Sox timeline. For prospects, it's immediate.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 9, 2020 11:46:44 GMT -5
Updates of the wannabes:
Chris Mazza 4.36 -> 4.33. Pitching like a #4 starter. Phillips Valdez 4.00 -> 4.08 Austin Brice 5.14 -> 5.42
Mazza and Valdez seem now like definite keepers, Springs hasn't eliminated himself, and Kickham's SSS is good -- but he's out of options, and several guys have started out well and came back to earth. He's starting Thursday.
Brice's strong start showed he has clear upside, but his inconsistency combined with being out of options kills his roster worth. He needs to be lights-out the rest of the way to get a spot on the 40-man.
Godley is a wild card. If he starts in Tampa it will be on at least 6 days rest, which supports my notion that he needs 5 and the team has to know that. As noted earlier, I suspect he may have been hurt his last 2 starts, which were really uncharacteristic. This delay is either because of that, or because they've been tinkering with his side session schedule. Or some other reason.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Sept 9, 2020 12:34:58 GMT -5
Updates of the wannabes:
Chris Mazza 4.36 -> 4.33. Pitching like a #4 starter. Phillips Valdez 4.00 -> 4.08 Austin Brice 5.14 -> 5.42
Mazza and Valdez seem now like definite keepers, Springs hasn't eliminated himself, and Kickham's SSS is good -- but he's out of options, and several guys have started out well and came back to earth. He's starting Thursday.
Brice's strong start showed he has clear upside, but his inconsistency combined with being out of options kills his roster worth. He needs to be lights-out the rest of the way to get a spot on the 40-man.
Godley is a wild card. If he starts in Tampa it will be on at least 6 days rest, which supports my notion that he needs 5 and the team has to know that. As noted earlier, I suspect he may have been hurt his last 2 starts, which were really uncharacteristic. This delay is either because of that, or because they've been tinkering with his side session schedule. Or some other reason.
I’ve been impressed with Mazza. I could see him as 5th starter/long guy/swing man. He has a kind of sling-y motion that might help his stuff play up. I might be sounding like eric (!) but despite some superficial bad numbers, there have been spaghetti noodles that might be more valuable next year (not so fast Godley!).
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Sept 9, 2020 13:17:16 GMT -5
I'm not sure of the context here, but it wouldn't be crazy for a top college pitcher to be up by mid-2023. Consider that's about how long it took Casey Mize. But that's probably the best-case scenario. The key word being "likely." I am just trying to put it into the context of a Red Sox timeline. For prospects, it's immediate. I hear you. I just don't think you can really use a Red Sox timeline on a college pitcher they're taking that early. It's uncharted territory for them. The only college player they've ever picked top 10 is Benintendi, and that's how quickly he came up, but of course he's not a pitcher. Under this ownership group, the earliest they've taken a college pitcher is Barnes at 19, who didn't fly through the system quite like the previous college pitcher they took at #19. But if they get Leiter or Rocker, I don't think it's unreasonable at all to consider it reasonably likely they're ready in mid-2023, or at the very least hope for opening day 2024. when you take a college guy from a top program that early, you're not expecting him to take 4 years or anything.
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