(2021 thread) Red Sox Sign Michael Wacha to a One Year Deal

depends which site you look at. Fangraphs had him at 1.1 fWAR. Does seem crazy there's a 1.8 difference in WAR between baseball reference and fan graphs

The roster spot also might be a higher cost than the money. And I cant remember ever feeling that way about a signing in recent memory.

Hope he works out better than Andriese. That was a pretty big reach at the time. Andriese was never good. Wacha has at least been good at times.

He’s made 3 million each of the last two seasons, if you get him for around that number I like the move

Fingers crossed but from what I saw of him last year he isn't a guy I would want to give the ball to on a regular basis. I sure hope Bloom is right.

If wacha is just a potential 5th starter insurance/swing guy in case houck and or Whitlock don't take the rotation as expected then I don't hate the move. If they're expecting him to be a guaranteed rotation member then I would definitely hate the move. I have to see what else they do with the pitching staff before I form a full opinion on it.

I think he's more the swingman you describe, but I much rather have seen Rich Hill in that role instead.

I'm not a big fan of collecting guys with 5 ERAs. I was hoping they'd do better in that regard. Better than the Richards/Perez caliber.

I know Wacha was a lot better in his last 40 innings, but does that really mean that he has turned the corner?

We heard about how Andriese had turned a corner with his new pitch mix ir whatever in Sept 2020 and he pitched well in April 2021 and was brutal afterwards. Wacha hasn't had a good season in quite some time.

Scanning through his stats from last year, there's not a lot to latch onto.
He was mostly a starter but was bad in the first inning (.852 oOPS), so it's not like he was good and then tired late.
Indeed, he was much worse in 6 relief appearances than in 23 starts.
He was really good vs. 7- and 9-hole hitters but terrible vs. 8-hole hitters.
He was much better the third time through the order than the first two (and best from pitches 51 to 75) -- it's just a matter of getting that far! I guess what that means is when he was good, he was really good.
His best work by far was on 6+ days of rest, so maybe they're just going to pitch him once a week? (Not on Sunday though, as he was bad in day games.)
He was actually a lot better (at least in terms of oOPS) vs. teams with winning records than vs. losing teams.
Finally, he was great with Angel Hernandez behind the plate! Of the umps he's pitched to more than once in his career, Doug Eddings, Jerry Layne, and Mark Ripperger have been kindest to him.

They had Perez and Richards last year, a lefty and a righty, so I think that Wacha and perhaps Hill, who is better than Wacha and certainly would be a better bullpen lefty than Perez was, wou look d fit. And they'd still need to replace E-Rod with a legit 2 or 3 starter.

I'd want that depth in case of injuries plus I like easing Houck and Whitlock into the rotation.

Put me down for sub-meh.   Hopefully he is cheep-cheep.

I mean… I know this is the wrong crew to say this to, but I just have a far harder time rooting for a journeyman pitcher on a 1-year contract than I would for ERod. I know, the money is totally different, but… I can’t warm to the Renfroes, Richards, Wachas of the world.

When I was young, I worked in a big chain bookstore. Our general manager told me on the first day that we don’t sell books, we sell barcodes. This iteration of the Sox seem to see players as barcodes.