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Post by strike23 on Mar 1, 2024 14:08:30 GMT -5
Another day, another walk. Any idea if these are non-competitive walks or is he noticeably better at working counts thus far? I know its a statcast game but I'm not sure if that makes gameday accurate. From their strike zone it looks like he worked an 0-2 count into a 2-2 single in the 1st and laid off 6 balls (2 borderline/called strikes) for a walk in the 3rd Edit: On statcast the zone is a little bigger, it looks like he's made good swing decisions and hasn't just been passive
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Post by wanderingdude on Mar 1, 2024 14:41:58 GMT -5
I’d be curious to know if there’s a way to figure out what types of pitches he chases on. Today the walk looked like on all pitches away, but i remember a couple times this spring, and one particular AB last year, where he had chased fastballs in off the plate trying to turn on them. Granted this is for sure a small sample size, but i’d love to know on what types of pitches and locations where he chases the most.
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Post by wcsoxfan on Mar 15, 2024 10:58:19 GMT -5
The power has really picked up for Rafaela with 2 doubles and 3 homers in his last 8 games (23 PA).
On the flip side, after compiling a very exciting 7 walks in his first 5 games (18 PA) he hasn't drawn a walk in his last 9 games (25 PA) while striking out 7 times (28%).
He also hasn't stolen a base in his past 9 games, but that's due to never reaching 1st (0 singles).
I would prefer the walks over the power, but at least the power isn't taken time to develop as it did last year.
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Post by scottysmalls on Mar 15, 2024 11:05:32 GMT -5
Unless they extend Rafaela now starting him in the Majors would feel widely inconsistent with the rest of their offseason strategy. It would be the clearest example of giving up long term value for short term gain.
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Post by ematz1423 on Mar 15, 2024 11:11:24 GMT -5
Unless they extend Rafaela now starting him in the Majors would feel widely inconsistent with the rest of their offseason strategy. It would be the clearest example of giving up long term value for short term gain. They could probably get away with Duran, ONeill and Abreu starting the bulk of the games in OF with Yoshida playing a little more OF than maybe anticipated early on until Refsnyder is back and/or the extra year of service time deadline passes on Rafaela. If they feel they need another backup OF option they could try and claim someone off waivers when teams trim their rosters too if. I'm not expecting them to sign anyone else unless it's to a minor league deal at this point. I'm leaning much more pessimistic on this Sox team than I was a month ago so yea it probably is in the best long term interest of the organization to leave Rafaela down in the minors to start.
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Post by scottysmalls on Mar 15, 2024 11:19:36 GMT -5
Unless they extend Rafaela now starting him in the Majors would feel widely inconsistent with the rest of their offseason strategy. It would be the clearest example of giving up long term value for short term gain. They could probably get away with Duran, ONeill and Abreu starting the bulk of the games in OF with Yoshida playing a little more OF than maybe anticipated early on until Refsnyder is back and/or the extra year of service time deadline passes on Rafaela. If they feel they need another backup OF option they could try and claim someone off waivers when teams trim their rosters too if. I'm not expecting them to sign anyone else unless it's to a minor league deal at this point. I'm leaning much more pessimistic on this Sox team than I was a month ago so yea it probably is in the best long term interest of the organization to leave Rafaela down in the minors to start. Im not even that pessimistic but if you won’t spend $7m on pitching depth or a righty bench bat for this team how do you justify giving up a year of control of Rafaela to have him on the team an extra month.
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Post by 0ap0 on Mar 15, 2024 11:31:37 GMT -5
I've come around to the camp of extend-anyone-who-looks-promising. Offer him a ten year contract for $20M.
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Post by julyanmorley on Mar 15, 2024 11:39:26 GMT -5
They could probably get away with Duran, ONeill and Abreu starting the bulk of the games in OF with Yoshida playing a little more OF than maybe anticipated early on until Refsnyder is back and/or the extra year of service time deadline passes on Rafaela. If they feel they need another backup OF option they could try and claim someone off waivers when teams trim their rosters too if. I'm not expecting them to sign anyone else unless it's to a minor league deal at this point. I'm leaning much more pessimistic on this Sox team than I was a month ago so yea it probably is in the best long term interest of the organization to leave Rafaela down in the minors to start. Im not even that pessimistic but if you won’t spend $7m on pitching depth or a righty bench bat for this team how do you justify giving up a year of control of Rafaela to have him on the team an extra month. Your logic is sound, but they have no plausible deniability if they go that route. They told the world he's fighting for a spot, then he went out and played great and showed some progress on the things they told him he needs to improve. Remains to be seen if they're willing to be seen transparently playing service clock games.
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Post by ematz1423 on Mar 15, 2024 11:46:41 GMT -5
I think Julyanmorley hits the nail on the head, is it probably in the organizations best long term interest to play service clock games with Rafaela? I think you can make a strong case that yes it is. That being said does the organization want to be seen as playing service clock games and the bad press that is going to come along with it? I have my doubts they will want to be seen as doing that since frankly it'd be pretty apparent that is what they are doing if he does not break camp with the team at this point, especially now with Refsnyder out to start.
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Post by incandenza on Mar 15, 2024 11:50:39 GMT -5
Would it be hopelessly naive to speculate that they might not want to play service clock games just on principle? (If not out of pure altruism, at least with an eye toward maintaining good relations with Rafaela and other players.)
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Post by ematz1423 on Mar 15, 2024 11:56:21 GMT -5
There is also a scenario that isn't all that unlikely in which Rafaela breaks camp with the team and struggles for a month or two and gets sent down to AAA for a bit and they get the extra year anyway. We've seen plenty of prospects come up struggle and go back down to the minors before settling into the MLB.
Personally I say let him start in MLB as the opening day CFer and see how it goes but I get both sides.
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Post by julyanmorley on Mar 15, 2024 11:59:44 GMT -5
Would it be hopelessly naive to speculate that they might not want to play service clock games just on principle? (If not out of pure altruism, at least with an eye toward maintaining good relations with Rafaela and other players.) Unfortunately, I kinda get the impression that that teams that play these games tend to have the most success in getting team friendly long term extensions
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Post by keninten on Mar 15, 2024 11:59:51 GMT -5
If they want to play clock games they should get some opportunities to send him down during the year. If not he should be offered a long term deal before he hits arbitration.
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Post by notstarboard on Mar 15, 2024 12:37:33 GMT -5
I think Chris hit the nail on the head in Podcast 307. It's not that it would impossible for him to break camp with the team, but he would have to be *substantially* better than the next plausible option. Otherwise the team would be shooting itself in the foot to call him up early.
Keep in mind too that Refsnyder is just a 5th OF / weak-side platoon bat and he's probably going to miss like 2-4 weeks. Last year 28% of starts league-wide were by LHP. So, even if he misses a bit more time than expected, we're probably talking about ~7 starts and maybe a couple PH appearances. Maybe 30 PA. They could totally call up Rafaela to soak up those PA, but I don't think they're going to do that unless they intend to start him almost every day in CF, and currently the Sox have Abreu, Duran, O'Neill, and Yoshida who are all healthy and likely to be in the lineup most days. So, I think it would be more prudent to start him in AAA pending another injury and/or serious underperformance from a guy like Abreu who could get optioned in his place. This is as much for practical reasons as it is for service time reasons, even if he definitely is a top-5 healthy OF in the organization now.
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asm18
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Post by asm18 on Mar 15, 2024 13:13:45 GMT -5
Where is the line in terms of manipulating his service time vs trying to have a successful first month of the season or so? Like Refsnyder is hurt (for how long we don't know), O'Neill just got moved to DH for tonight after initially being slated to play RF (he had a calf issue and didn't make the trip to the DR), and Abreu has started out slow in Spring Training. If Romy Gonzalez or Bobby Dalbec is playing OF for a month+ because the team doesn't want to call up Rafaela, that's not exactly giving this year an ideal chance to try to win, even if they do end up selling/tanking 4 months from now. Is there any reason they can't just start Rafaela and send him down to Triple AAA later in the year if the team is already out of it? I'll admit I'm not fully up to speed on all the minutiae of service time manipulation, so please correct me if that is not feasible.
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Post by julyanmorley on Mar 15, 2024 13:24:15 GMT -5
Where is the line in terms of manipulating his service time vs trying to have a successful first month of the season or so? Like Refsnyder is hurt (for how long we don't know), O'Neill just got moved to DH for tonight after initially being slated to play RF (he had a calf issue and didn't make the trip to the DR), and Abreu has started out slow in Spring Training. If Romy Gonzalez or Bobby Dalbec is playing OF for a month+ because the team doesn't want to call up Rafaela, that's not exactly giving this year an ideal chance to try to win, even if they do end up selling/tanking 4 months from now. Is there any reason they can't just start Rafaela and send him down to Triple AAA later in the year if the team is already out of it? I'll admit I'm not fully up to speed on all the minutiae of service time manipulation, so please correct me if that is not feasible. You just add up the days in the big leagues. You need 172 days (there are 187 days in a season) for a service year and Rafaela has 35.
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asm18
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Post by asm18 on Mar 15, 2024 13:36:09 GMT -5
Where is the line in terms of manipulating his service time vs trying to have a successful first month of the season or so? Like Refsnyder is hurt (for how long we don't know), O'Neill just got moved to DH for tonight after initially being slated to play RF (he had a calf issue and didn't make the trip to the DR), and Abreu has started out slow in Spring Training. If Romy Gonzalez or Bobby Dalbec is playing OF for a month+ because the team doesn't want to call up Rafaela, that's not exactly giving this year an ideal chance to try to win, even if they do end up selling/tanking 4 months from now. Is there any reason they can't just start Rafaela and send him down to Triple AAA later in the year if the team is already out of it? I'll admit I'm not fully up to speed on all the minutiae of service time manipulation, so please correct me if that is not feasible. You just add up the days in the big leagues. You need 172 days (there are 187 days in a season) for a service year and Rafaela has 35. So if my math is right, he just needs to be down in Triple A for 50 Days to get the extra year of control? In the Darkest Timeline, where the team is out of it in July and trades away Pivetta, Kenley, & Martin in a Fire Sale, and then Cora is Scape-goated and fired in August - is there anything aside from the threat of a greviance (and possibly shame) that would prevent them from sending Ceddy back to Triple A after the trade deadline to "work on some things"? (I realize I am trying to have it both ways here.)
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Post by ematz1423 on Mar 15, 2024 13:38:43 GMT -5
You just add up the days in the big leagues. You need 172 days (there are 187 days in a season) for a service year and Rafaela has 35. So if my math is right, he just needs to be down in Triple A for 50 Days to get the extra year of control? In the Darkest Timeline, where the team is out of it in July and trades away Pivetta, Kenley, & Martin in a Fire Sale, and then Cora is Scape-goated and fired in August - is there anything aside from the threat of a greviance (and possibly shame) that would prevent them from sending Ceddy back to Triple A after the trade deadline to "work on some things"? (I realize I am trying to have it both ways here.) The optics of sending him down after fireselling at the deadline if he was playing remotely decent would be a terrible idea in my opinion anyway.
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Post by julyanmorley on Mar 15, 2024 13:41:48 GMT -5
If he's having a good season over hundreds of at bats and they send him down in that scenario then they might actually lose a grievance.
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asm18
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Post by asm18 on Mar 15, 2024 13:55:06 GMT -5
So if my math is right, he just needs to be down in Triple A for 50 Days to get the extra year of control? In the Darkest Timeline, where the team is out of it in July and trades away Pivetta, Kenley, & Martin in a Fire Sale, and then Cora is Scape-goated and fired in August - is there anything aside from the threat of a greviance (and possibly shame) that would prevent them from sending Ceddy back to Triple A after the trade deadline to "work on some things"? (I realize I am trying to have it both ways here.) The optics of sending him down after fireselling at the deadline if he was playing remotely decent would be a terrible idea in my opinion anyway. The thing is if much worse players are playing over him in the OF (or even at 2B) for the first 50 days, that's not exactly doing the team any favors in avoiding the division cellar and avoiding a sell-off to begin with, no? As notstarboard noted, maybe the number of at bats is limited enough that you can get away with one the Triple A depth guys playing in the Refsnyder role until the beginning of May when the extra year of control has been secured. But if the rest of the outfield starts to get banged up or underperform early (say O'Neill's calf issue doesn't go away) and Rafaela is still looking great in Worcester... at what point do you say "screw it" and call him up?
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Post by wcsoxfan on Mar 15, 2024 15:36:01 GMT -5
Cora has been pretty clear that if Rafaela makes the team then he's the starting CFer. So it would likely cut into the playing time of the Abreu/Duran/O'Neil trio.
Even if the Red Sox leave Rafaela down for 51 days, he would acquire super-2 status unless kept down for an additionally 38-57 days (top 22% of service time recipients; varies based on season). There's still good value, but 4th year arb players don't typically provide huge discounts off of free agent rates.
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Post by ematz1423 on Mar 15, 2024 15:55:33 GMT -5
To break up the Rafaela service time talk and since I didn't see it posted yet. Cora said Rafaela would play some 2nd and SS next week. I don't think it'd be in his best interest to break camp as a utility guy since he needs everyday ABs but it's at least possible.
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Post by soxinsf on Mar 15, 2024 16:35:56 GMT -5
To break up the Rafaela service time talk and since I didn't see it posted yet. Cora said Rafaela would play some 2nd and SS next week. I don't think it'd be in his best interest to break camp as a utility guy since he needs everyday ABs but it's at least possible. It makes zero sense to turn this potential superstar into a utility player to start the season in Boston. Either he is the mostly full-time CF or let home go out Route 9 to work on his strike zone management. Then bring him up after the big sell off as well as bringing any other youngster who is proving to be ready. And that could include someone starting the season in Portland. If this season is as woeful as most predict, let the salary/old guy clear out begin by midseason. .
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Post by wcsoxfan on Mar 15, 2024 17:00:03 GMT -5
To break up the Rafaela service time talk and since I didn't see it posted yet. Cora said Rafaela would play some 2nd and SS next week. I don't think it'd be in his best interest to break camp as a utility guy since he needs everyday ABs but it's at least possible. And just like that Cora changes his mind - likely due to the organizational meeting previously mentioned by Ian Brown. This opens up more space for Refsnyder (assuming Rafaela makes the roster) as having 6 OF-only (aside from Refsnyder at 1B) guys didn't make sense from a long-term roster construction standpoint. It also may mean that Vaughn Grissom will be out past opening day.
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Post by incandenza on Mar 15, 2024 17:10:15 GMT -5
Did Cora change his mind? Rafaela being the starting CFer but also getting a few reps in the middle infield to stay fresh at those positions is not inconsistent.
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