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9/22 - 9/24 Red Sox vs. Orioles Series Thread
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 23, 2020 22:03:47 GMT -5
Bill James Online @billjamesonline · 1h What the Red Sox have accomplished in the course of this miserable stinking season is pretty astonishing. They've found a lot of pieces for next year, advanced many young players a step forward, sorted through a lot of options. They've done more than I would ever have believed.
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art
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Post by art on Sept 23, 2020 22:46:35 GMT -5
Bill James Online @billjamesonline · 1h What the Red Sox have accomplished in the course of this miserable stinking season is pretty astonishing. They've found a lot of pieces for next year, advanced many young players a step forward, sorted through a lot of options. They've done more than I would ever have believed. Is James still on the Red Sox payroll? Not that I disagree with him, just wondering if this has to be taken in the context of kissing the boss's ass. I think Bloom is a very astute dude. He was dealt a bad hand and has played it superlatively.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 23, 2020 22:58:53 GMT -5
Bill James Online @billjamesonline · 1h What the Red Sox have accomplished in the course of this miserable stinking season is pretty astonishing. They've found a lot of pieces for next year, advanced many young players a step forward, sorted through a lot of options. They've done more than I would ever have believed. Is James still on the Red Sox payroll? Not that I disagree with him, just wondering if this has to be taken in the context of kissing the boss's ass. I think Bloom is a very astute dude. He was dealt a bad hand and has played it superlatively. No, he's no longer associated with the team.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Sept 24, 2020 1:23:44 GMT -5
This looked to be the master plan from the get go. Of course carrying it off is another matter. But, if you're going to mine MLB for hidden gems, run through an endless collection of pitching rejects panning for gold, try out your TTO candidate, expand a prospects' pitching repertoire before throwing him into the breach, and get as much value as you can out of your firesale items, this was definitely the (truncated) season to do it.
Consider how much pressure was removed from all the newcomers who came to the team on a trial basis. James may not have a feel for epidemiology, but he definitely knows ballplayers when he sees them: Arroyo, Arauz, Seabold, Pivetta, Valdez, Houck, Dalbec, Rosario, Potts, Verdugo, Downs, Wong... I believe there's a few of those ballplayer types in that list. All are new faces: acquired, promoted, reclaimed, and reworked. And that's before we talk about the draft.
I don't really see it as a lost season. It was time to reload and the FO has done that in spades.
Add: Also Tapia and maybe... Mazza. He drives me nuts. Great stuff but the command goes AWOL and he gets hammered. Someone needs to emphasize that he can't highlight his pitches anywhere near the middle of the plate. It doesn't work that way in MLB.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 24, 2020 3:30:02 GMT -5
Also, at the alt site, Gonsalves (who I like more than Mazza), Simpson, Blair, Grullon, & recent addition Wallace and the PTBNL.
Also not mentioned Munoz and if he ever figures it out, Peraza.
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gerry
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Post by gerry on Sept 24, 2020 3:47:58 GMT -5
The final strokes of Bloom’s masterpiece will come this offseason. And we can only guess at what the finished work will look like when he is done. A starting pitcher or two? A closer? A big bat? He has some needs, has a very strong core in place, has the money, obviously has the skills.
Perhaps most importantly he has buy-in from an embarrassed ownership which wants to contend now. IMO, the Sox do NOT see 2021 as a bridge year. That is a very happy thought. Enjoy.
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Post by unitspin on Sept 24, 2020 5:55:55 GMT -5
The final strokes of Bloom’s masterpiece will come this offseason. And we can only guess at what the finished work will look like when he is done. A starting pitcher or two? A closer? A big bat? He has some needs, has a very strong core in place, has the money, obviously has the skills. Perhaps most importantly he has buy-in from an embarrassed ownership which wants to contend now. IMO, the Sox do NOT see 2021 as a bridge year. That is a very happy thought. Enjoy. The red sox lineup is too good for a bridge year. If jd had a jd year this team would be drafting 15th. They have deff found some pitching now if they add a couple bullpen arms and starter this team is ready for a run.
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Post by unitspin on Sept 24, 2020 5:58:51 GMT -5
How does everyone sit on the mookie trade? In verdugo you found your lead off guy that is fighting for a batting title in his first year in a sox uniform. All while playing top notch d. If downs turns out to be your everyday 2b id say we got a haul.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 24, 2020 6:00:42 GMT -5
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redsox04071318champs
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 24, 2020 7:23:59 GMT -5
How does everyone sit on the mookie trade? In verdugo you found your lead off guy that is fighting for a batting title in his first year in a sox uniform. All while playing top notch d. If downs turns out to be your everyday 2b id say we got a haul. I sit the same way. Hate that they put themselves in a situation they had to make the trade. Wish they would have given Mookie a Trout offer to see if he would have accepted. Fine with the actual trade itself given the players involved. Verdugo verified the player I figured he is. No, I don't think he's a .330 hitter, but I suspected a .300 with 20 HR power and great D would be there. Really the only thing I learned about Verdugo is that he has an enjoyable and engaging personality. I'm still uneasy about what happened with the Dodgers but at this point all he can do is move forward and be a solid citizen and for all I know, he seems to be doing that. I had wanted them to expand the deal to include Workman as a way for them to keep Graterol in addition to getting Downs and Wong. That didn't work out but Bloom figured out a way to parlay Workman and an unneeded Hembree for pitching anyways in getting Seabold and Pivetta.
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Post by dirtdog on Sept 24, 2020 9:16:10 GMT -5
Team is currently 4th in hitting, 12th in runs scored, 29th in ERA and 30th in WHIP. A surprise signing like Kris Bryant would be interesting but looking at those numbers it is easy to see where they need to put assets this offseason. No idea what Sale or ERod contribute next year and Eovaldi is like that sports car that is always in the shop.
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Post by dirtdog on Sept 24, 2020 9:18:25 GMT -5
This looked to be the master plan from the get go. Of course carrying it off is another matter. But, if you're going to mine MLB for hidden gems, run through an endless collection of pitching rejects panning for gold, try out your TTO candidate, expand a prospects' pitching repertoire before throwing him into the breach, and get as much value as you can out of your firesale items, this was definitely the (truncated) season to do it. Consider how much pressure was removed from all the newcomers who came to the team on a trial basis. James may not have a feel for epidemiology, but he definitely knows ballplayers when he sees them: Arroyo, Arauz, Seabold, Pivetta, Valdez, Houck, Dalbec, Rosario, Potts, Verdugo, Downs, Wong... I believe there's a few of those ballplayer types in that list. All are new faces: acquired, promoted, reclaimed, and reworked. And that's before we talk about the draft. I don't really see it as a lost season. It was time to reload and the FO has done that in spades. Add: Also Tapia and maybe... Mazza. He drives me nuts. Great stuff but the command goes AWOL and he gets hammered. Someone needs to emphasize that he can't highlight his pitches anywhere near the middle of the plate. It doesn't work that way in MLB. Good post Norm. I hate lose but I chalk this year up looking at the bigger picture and I do think Bloom is a very intelligent GM, and will prove that out.
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Post by manfred on Sept 24, 2020 10:19:22 GMT -5
How does everyone sit on the mookie trade? In verdugo you found your lead off guy that is fighting for a batting title in his first year in a sox uniform. All while playing top notch d. If downs turns out to be your everyday 2b id say we got a haul. Don’t get me started. I will simply say this: bWAR 3.3. Since 2016, Trout’s bWAR: 37.1. Since 2016 Mookie’s bWAR: 36.7. For all the falling over themselves people do to talk about Trout, Mookie is just as good. There is no “winning” a trade when you give up a HOFer in his prime (and potentially watch him win another MVP immediately). There is only surviving.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Sept 24, 2020 10:36:56 GMT -5
How does everyone sit on the mookie trade? In verdugo you found your lead off guy that is fighting for a batting title in his first year in a sox uniform. All while playing top notch d. If downs turns out to be your everyday 2b id say we got a haul. Don’t get me started. I will simply say this: bWAR 3.3. Since 2016, Trout’s bWAR: 37.1. Since 2016 Mookie’s bWAR: 36.7. For all the falling over themselves people do to talk about Trout, Mookie is just as good. There is no “winning” a trade when you give up a HOFer in his prime (and potentially watch him win another MVP immediately). There is only surviving. There's no winning in him signing somewhere else for nothing. There is only losing. See how spin works?
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 24, 2020 10:48:38 GMT -5
Don’t get me started. I will simply say this: bWAR 3.3. Since 2016, Trout’s bWAR: 37.1. Since 2016 Mookie’s bWAR: 36.7. For all the falling over themselves people do to talk about Trout, Mookie is just as good. There is no “winning” a trade when you give up a HOFer in his prime (and potentially watch him win another MVP immediately). There is only surviving. There's no winning in him signing somewhere else for nothing. There is only losing. See how spin works? Chose one: Trout's career or 4 rings.
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Post by manfred on Sept 24, 2020 10:49:39 GMT -5
Don’t get me started. I will simply say this: bWAR 3.3. Since 2016, Trout’s bWAR: 37.1. Since 2016 Mookie’s bWAR: 36.7. For all the falling over themselves people do to talk about Trout, Mookie is just as good. There is no “winning” a trade when you give up a HOFer in his prime (and potentially watch him win another MVP immediately). There is only surviving. There's no winning in him signing somewhere else for nothing. There is only losing. See how spin works? That isn’t spin. That is conjecture. The question was about the real world. You reply with hypothetical scenario. Man, if they don’t trade Devers bedore he has a burst embolism, that would be a real loss.
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Post by manfred on Sept 24, 2020 10:51:51 GMT -5
There's no winning in him signing somewhere else for nothing. There is only losing. See how spin works? Chose one: Trout's career or 4 rings. Whose four rings? Derek Jeter? I don’t remember, but does any Red Sox in history have four rings? I feel like I recall someone from the 19-teens, but I am not sure. Add: and that is no longer a you-lnow-what related answer. I am not discussing this yet again. Just go back in the archives for my views. But I am asking about the Sox rings... don’t have time this am to go back and look.
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redsox04071318champs
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 24, 2020 11:01:23 GMT -5
Chose one: Trout's career or 4 rings. Whose four rings? Derek Jeter? I don’t remember, but does any Red Sox in history have four rings? I feel like I recall someone from the 19-teens, but I am not sure. Add: and that is no longer a you-lnow-what related answer. I am not discussing this yet again. Just go back in the archives for my views. But I am asking about the Sox rings... don’t have time this am to go back and look. Yes. Harry Hooper got 4 rings as a Red Sox, playing RF for all the 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918 championship teams, although I think he didn't live to get his 4th ring. I think Frazee withheld the 1918 ring and 75 years later the Red Sox gave a ring to Hooper's son. I believe Duffy Lewis and/or Larry Gardner would have gotten their 4th as well, but didn't play for the Sox in 1918 because they were serving in WWI.
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TearsIn04
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Post by TearsIn04 on Sept 24, 2020 11:07:20 GMT -5
How does everyone sit on the mookie trade? In verdugo you found your lead off guy that is fighting for a batting title in his first year in a sox uniform. All while playing top notch d. If downs turns out to be your everyday 2b id say we got a haul. Don’t get me started. I will simply say this: bWAR 3.3. Since 2016, Trout’s bWAR: 37.1. Since 2016 Mookie’s bWAR: 36.7. For all the falling over themselves people do to talk about Trout, Mookie is just as good. There is no “winning” a trade when you give up a HOFer in his prime (and potentially watch him win another MVP immediately). There is only surviving. B-Ref shows Verdugo's 2020 WAR as 2.3 through 49 games. Multiply that by three to get to a full season and he's a 7-win, 24-year-old cost-controlled player. I can deal with that. He's the same player the other guy was for us in 2019. And we got a top-50 prospect who plays a middle-of-the field position and will be under team control through about 2027? Not bad. But management was so cheap and eager to get rid of the other guy that they didn't even bother to get back a third prospect in the trade, right? Oh, wait. They got a C who has a good shot at having a useful ML career. That trade return looks like it's going to be a real haul.
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Post by manfred on Sept 24, 2020 11:14:31 GMT -5
Don’t get me started. I will simply say this: bWAR 3.3. Since 2016, Trout’s bWAR: 37.1. Since 2016 Mookie’s bWAR: 36.7. For all the falling over themselves people do to talk about Trout, Mookie is just as good. There is no “winning” a trade when you give up a HOFer in his prime (and potentially watch him win another MVP immediately). There is only surviving. B-Ref shows Verdugo's 2020 WAR as 2.3 through 49 games. Multiply that by three to get to a full season and he's a 7-win, 24-year-old cost-controlled player. I can deal with that. He's the same player the other guy was for us in 2019. And we got a top-50 prospect who plays a middle-of-the field position and will be under team control through about 2027? Not bad. But management was so cheap and eager to get rid of the other guy that they didn't even bother to get back a third prospect in the trade, right? Oh, wait. They got a C who has a good shot at having a useful ML career. That trade return looks like it's going to be a real haul. OK one new thing, then back to no comment: if Connor Wong spends 162 games in a Red Sox uniform, I’ll give the Jimmy Fund $100.
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Post by unitspin on Sept 24, 2020 11:14:53 GMT -5
Xander has two rings and signed long term he could possible get 4 by the time he hangs the cleats up.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 24, 2020 12:10:23 GMT -5
I don't have the tech savvy to upload the .JPG, but if you superimpose Brandon Workman's face on Heath Hembree's, it looks exactly like Heathcliff Slocumb's.
(Am I the first to make this comp? It seems unlikely.)
Meanwhile, Alex Cobb has one crazy outlier in his wOBA and xwOBA data, 9/11 against the Yankees, and Statcast has no Gamefeed info for that start, and all the data is "null" in Search..
Without that game, he's allowed a .299 wOBA and .408 xwOBA. The former is lower in every single start. There's a 460 to 1 chance of it being random, paired t-Test.
Devers, Xander, and JBJ have struggled against him, while CV and JDM have killed him.
I like his chances of outpitching Perez.
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Post by patford on Sept 24, 2020 12:43:30 GMT -5
How does everyone sit on the mookie trade? In verdugo you found your lead off guy that is fighting for a batting title in his first year in a sox uniform. All while playing top notch d. If downs turns out to be your everyday 2b id say we got a haul. I love the Verdugo-Downs-Wong trade. I also love Mookie and since he's in the NL I can continue to root for him. Particularly if the Dodgers ever play the Yankees. I'd want no part of the deal Mookie signed with the Dodgers. It would have crippled the Sox for years to come. Let's not forget the Sox had some bad years with Mookie. He's one guy.
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Post by incandenza on Sept 24, 2020 13:04:30 GMT -5
Perhaps this is the thread where we finally decide whether the Mookie trade was good or not...
I don't have the tech savvy to upload the .JPG, but if you superimpose Brandon Workman's face on Heath Hembree's, it looks exactly like Heathcliff Slocumb's.
Was just going to say exactly this. (Well, not exactly this, but this basic idea.) Pivetta and Seabold could both still wash out, of course, but for right now I think it looks like about a 70% chance this was one of the steals of the century so far. And to redsoxyearschamps' point... I think I'd rather have Pivetta + Seabold than Graterol.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 24, 2020 13:16:16 GMT -5
How does everyone sit on the mookie trade? In verdugo you found your lead off guy that is fighting for a batting title in his first year in a sox uniform. All while playing top notch d. If downs turns out to be your everyday 2b id say we got a haul. I love the Verdugo-Downs-Wong trade. I also love Mookie and since he's in the NL I can continue to root for him. Particularly if the Dodgers ever play the Yankees. I'd want no part of the deal Mookie signed with the Dodgers. It would have crippled the Sox for years to come. Let's not forget the Sox had some bad years with Mookie. He's one guy. These things are clear:
- We will never know whether Mookie would have signed an extension here if we hadn't traded him. In fact, we don't have that good a guess about the odds.
- The return we did get, for a year of control plus a draft pick, projects now to be exceptional. It is likely to become the reference point for walk-year superstar trades, the return that GM's seek the equivalent of when they find themselves in that situation. They are unlikely to do as well.
- All imaginable odds about him re-signing yield the trade as the right thing to do. The better your odds of extending him, the better your odds are that you can sign him back after the trade, which makes it an absurdly great win. That keeping Mookie this year wouldn't have helped us make the playoffs (he's been worth 0.8 more bWAR, 0.7 fWAR, than Verdugo), so the walk year proves to be worthless to us, is just gravy.
The really interesting (though probably not meaningful) question, the one that fasscinates us, is whether we would have been better-off extending Mookie, if it turned out that we could. If the luxury tax remains in the next CBA, then the main result of the trade is that you are freeing up a lot of money that, in most scenarios, can be reinvested in cost-controlled talent, and result in a better team for any given payroll. This is the classic "don't tie up too much money in too few players" principle.
However, superstars are uniquely valuable. If your farm system is good enough and you are always flush with cost-controlled players, then it might not be true any longer that you're better off spending the $ difference between Mookie and Alex to upgrade the rest of the roster.
So the irony here is that if Bloom can turn us back into a player development monster, that will reduce the value of not retaining Mookie (if we could). There are scenarios where you have such a manageable payroll that you'd gladly swap Verdugo back to the Dodgers for Mookie, even with the salary difference. But under the current luxury tax system, those are very unlikely. (A change in the CBA -- e.g., to needing to get under the cap every five yerars instead of three -- could make it likelier.)
And the reason for this is simple: as valuable as superstars are (even making superstar money), they are not as valuable as cost-controlled mere All-Stars. Now, Verdugo is no guarantee to end up that good -- we thought Benny would be one by this point -- but if he turns out to be a 5.0 WAR player, it's going to be really hard to wish we could have kept Mookie. That's the reason I thought the Dodgers would never include Verdugo in the trade.
I hope that's the last word on the trade! (I also hope to date Rooney Mara.)
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