SoxProspects News
|
|
|
|
Legal
Forum Ground Rules
The views expressed by the members of this Forum do not necessarily reflect the views of SoxProspects, LLC.
© 2003-2024 SoxProspects, LLC
|
|
|
|
|
Forum Home | Search | My Profile | Messages | Members | Help |
Welcome Guest. Please Login or Register.
Evaluating the Front Office and Ownership
TearsIn04
Veteran
Everybody knows Nelson de la Rosa, but who is Karim Garcia?
Posts: 2,835
|
Post by TearsIn04 on Sept 13, 2023 20:16:00 GMT -5
Why doesn’t the Lou Gorman faction ever jump in? Louie Lunch got them to the PS three times and that was when winning a seven-team division was the only way in. Except for first-class ass-clown Haywood Sullivan, every GM/POBBO from the great Dick O'Connell to D-Dom delivered at least one first-place finish. But we flamed out in October every time until '04.
|
|
|
Post by manfred on Sept 13, 2023 20:50:13 GMT -5
Cluttered with overpaid, underperforming veterans… who is responsible for that? Sale was DD. Who else? Story? Paxton? Kluber? Kiké? Yoshida? You *seem* to be saying somehow they were let down… by the team they created!! That is not a defense. And — again — just as I don’t direct the movie but still want it not to suck, as a consumer, I am not primarily responsible for telling Bloom how to do a better job. I am, if I am paying for the product, entitled to say I’m not getting my money’s worth. JD was killing them in 2020 and 2022. Paying Price and Pedroia through 22 and 21, respectively, didn’t help. As for the other guys, it circles back to the pipeline running dry—when you can’t fill holes in the team with guys from the farm, you back yourself into corner and you have to go to the free agent market, where guys who aren’t very good—like Kiké, Kluber, and Garrett Richards—can command good money on short-term deals. $230 million doesn’t buy you all that much at the ~$8m/WAR rate, especially when you take into consideration that over $20 million of that is going toward player benefits, the bonus pool, and guys on the 40 man but not the MLB roster. You can deal with Connor Seabold blowing up for the league minimum, but when it’s a veteran with a 5-figure salary it really puts you in a hole. If you can’t even produce a number 5 starter then you have to spend a ton of money on pitching just to fill out the rotation, and as we know far too well as Red Sox fans, pitching breaks. When the Sox won in 2018, best season ever, they were carrying Rusney Castillo $11.7 million Hanley Ramirez $22.75 million Pablo Sandoval $18 million Now, it is true that $51 million was not *dead* money… they got .1 bWAR out of the group. Teams are generally going to carry dead money. But here we are five years clear of DD, with only 1 of his contracts left (Sale, who at least managed .9 bWAR). If they are carrying dead money and it is a problem… it is no longer and excuse — it is an aggravation.
|
|
chaimtime
Veteran
Posts: 785
Member is Online
|
Post by chaimtime on Sept 13, 2023 21:21:23 GMT -5
Well I did say it’s a simple formula that’s hard to execute. Even the Yankees have needed to follow it. Jeter, Rivera, Posada, Bernie Williams, Sanchez, Judge, Pettite, Severino, Cano, Robertson, Gardner, Orlando Hernandez, even someone like Phil Hughes—they’ve relied heavily on good, controllable talent throughout that whole period. And they’ve still only won a single World Series in two decades despite spending more than anyone in the league year after year after year. Even the 2021 Red Sox are a perfect example—it’s the only season they’ve actually been good under Bloom, because it’s the only season their veterans were mostly healthy and productive. They got decent-or-better performances out of the likes of Dalbec, Devers, Barnes, Whitlock, ERod, Darwinzon, Pivetta and Houck for under $30 million combined, Kiké/JD/Xander/Eovaldi were all great (Schwarber for the second half, too) and even some of the scrap heap finds worked out. And I agree with you in the mean, but I still think that formula is missing a component or two, even with health (and luck) factored in. Maybe it's some combination of X number of position players performing at 4.5 or better WAR, X number of starters with an average of ERA+/xFIP/ERA/FIP at (whatever) and 3 or more relievers giving you 60+ innings at another level. As stated, though about 22-25 teams follow what you have here to some degree every year, with 4-7 teams in in the tank and Colorado is playing 4-D chess while everyone else is playing baseball. All of the failure within the first group can't be due to health and luck. All of which is to say I think your formula is accurate for the current structure and MLB environment to get you a 75-85 win team. But building consistent playoff teams requires something beyond health and luck with the components you listed. This assumes success = making the playoffs, which is (or should be) the standard in a cutthroat, results-oriented business like professional sports. Progression from losing seasons to winning seasons is nice, but playoffs are the goal. Once there, lots of formulas seem to fall apart, at least that's what the data say. As many have stated and shown here over the years, winning each series (except for maybe the recent play-in games) and the World Series is somewhere between a coin flip and 55-45 odds almost every year. Oh, and about NYY. I acknowledge your list of cheap, young controlables, but there were years in recent memory where they made the playoffs with very few of those guys and the ones they did have weren't impact players. Looking back, the 2004 Red Sox had very few young, controllable starting players and none of the rotation arms (though Arroyo did contribute significantly during the seasion). Ditto 2007 (Pedroia, Youkilis, Ellsbury for position players, Papelbon + Lester for 1 game) positions, and again in 2013 (Ellsbury, Pedroia, Bogaerts + Saltamacchia for 1 game, Lester and Buccholz). 2018 is the closest to your formula. Pedroia, Youkilis, Ellsbury and Papelbon gave them 12 WAR for the league minimum, and they had Becket on an arbitration salary. In 2013, they had Lester, Buchholz, Pedroia, Ellsbury, Salty, and Nava as pre-FA guys who each gave them over 2.5 fWAR. Even 2004 had Trot, Tek, and Lowe as team control guys, plus a bunch of undervalued guys they got for nothing because teams didn’t realize not making outs is the most important thing for hitters to do. Maybe that’s the missing part of the formula, or at least a corollary—if you can’t develop cheap guys, you have to hit on guys from the scrap heap, which is a lot harder to do now that most teams realize a .285/.320/.365 line isn’t very good. In the end, the basic rules of thumb are that you can’t rely on player development to build the team because it’s wishful thinking for any org to think they can fill all holes from within, and you can’t just rely on getting all your talent from the FA market because then you don’t have any value players that help you stretch the budget.
|
|
chaimtime
Veteran
Posts: 785
Member is Online
|
Post by chaimtime on Sept 13, 2023 21:51:59 GMT -5
JD was killing them in 2020 and 2022. Paying Price and Pedroia through 22 and 21, respectively, didn’t help. As for the other guys, it circles back to the pipeline running dry—when you can’t fill holes in the team with guys from the farm, you back yourself into corner and you have to go to the free agent market, where guys who aren’t very good—like Kiké, Kluber, and Garrett Richards—can command good money on short-term deals. $230 million doesn’t buy you all that much at the ~$8m/WAR rate, especially when you take into consideration that over $20 million of that is going toward player benefits, the bonus pool, and guys on the 40 man but not the MLB roster. You can deal with Connor Seabold blowing up for the league minimum, but when it’s a veteran with a 5-figure salary it really puts you in a hole. If you can’t even produce a number 5 starter then you have to spend a ton of money on pitching just to fill out the rotation, and as we know far too well as Red Sox fans, pitching breaks. When the Sox won in 2018, best season ever, they were carrying Rusney Castillo $11.7 million Hanley Ramirez $22.75 million Pablo Sandoval $18 million Now, it is true that $51 million was not *dead* money… they got .1 bWAR out of the group. Teams are generally going to carry dead money. But here we are five years clear of DD, with only 1 of his contracts left (Sale, who at least managed .9 bWAR). If they are carrying dead money and it is a problem… it is no longer and excuse — it is an aggravation. The secret to 2018 was getting about 35 fWAR for around $40 million between Sale, Mookie, Benintendi, Bogaerts, JBJ, ERod, and Eovaldi. Barnes, Brasier, Devers, and Steve Pearce gave them about 4.5 fWAR for ~$3 million. When you’re getting value like that AND ownership is willing to run the highest payroll in baseball, you’re gonna have an all-time great team regardless of whatever crap you have down the roster. When you don’t have that sort of value, it’s going to cause issues. And those bad contracts have limited their flexibility the past few years. Story is looking like a bit of a bust (although he was pretty much worth his salary in year 1–that’s how little $20 million gets you on the free agent market these days) but otherwise, they’ve been trying to pick from a bad bunch to plug leaks without committing to players they don’t really love, because they’ve had too many holes to drop a big portion of the open payroll space on players they do like. To wrap it back to the empty system, not only does it ding you by not having cheap guys to fill out the roster with, it also screws you because you don’t have any trade chips that would bring back anybody decent, you have to go to the FA market. It’s absolutely frustrating as a fan, but I can only imagine that the past few offseasons have been absolute nightmares for the entire front office with how much work they’ve had to do and how comparatively few resources, both dollar- and prospect-wise, they’ve had to do it with. I guess my overall sense of this era is that ownership wouldn’t have unceremoniously shitcanned Dombrowski and hired Bloom if they weren’t ready to weather a storm. I can’t imagine they thought one guy had all the answers and could be an overnight organizational messiah.
|
|
|
Post by manfred on Sept 13, 2023 22:01:22 GMT -5
When the Sox won in 2018, best season ever, they were carrying Rusney Castillo $11.7 million Hanley Ramirez $22.75 million Pablo Sandoval $18 million Now, it is true that $51 million was not *dead* money… they got .1 bWAR out of the group. Teams are generally going to carry dead money. But here we are five years clear of DD, with only 1 of his contracts left (Sale, who at least managed .9 bWAR). If they are carrying dead money and it is a problem… it is no longer and excuse — it is an aggravation. The secret to 2018 was getting about 35 fWAR for around $40 million between Sale, Mookie, Benintendi, Bogaerts, JBJ, ERod, and Eovaldi. Barnes, Brasier, Devers, and Steve Pearce gave them about 4.5 fWAR for ~$3 million. When you’re getting value like that AND ownership is willing to run the highest payroll in baseball, you’re gonna have an all-time great team regardless of whatever crap you have down the roster. When you don’t have that sort of value, it’s going to cause issues. And those bad contracts have limited their flexibility the past few years. Story is looking like a bit of a bust (although he was pretty much worth his salary in year 1–that’s how little $20 million gets you on the free agent market these days) but otherwise, they’ve been trying to pick from a bad bunch to plug leaks without committing to players they don’t really love, because they’ve had too many holes to drop a big portion of the open payroll space on players they do like. To wrap it back to the empty system, not only does it ding you by not having cheap guys to fill out the roster with, it also screws you because you don’t have any trade chips that would bring back anybody decent, you have to go to the FA market. It’s absolutely frustrating as a fan, but I can only imagine that the past few offseasons have been absolute nightmares for the entire front office with how much work they’ve had to do and how comparatively few resources, both dollar- and prospect-wise, they’ve had to do it with. I guess my overall sense of this era is that ownership wouldn’t have unceremoniously shitcanned Dombrowski and hired Bloom if they weren’t ready to weather a storm. I can’t imagine they thought one guy had all the answers and could be an overnight organizational messiah. Not going to keep rehashing.
|
|
|
Post by grandsalami on Sept 14, 2023 9:56:19 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Guidas on Sept 14, 2023 10:29:07 GMT -5
And I agree with you in the mean, but I still think that formula is missing a component or two, even with health (and luck) factored in. Maybe it's some combination of X number of position players performing at 4.5 or better WAR, X number of starters with an average of ERA+/xFIP/ERA/FIP at (whatever) and 3 or more relievers giving you 60+ innings at another level. As stated, though about 22-25 teams follow what you have here to some degree every year, with 4-7 teams in in the tank and Colorado is playing 4-D chess while everyone else is playing baseball. All of the failure within the first group can't be due to health and luck. All of which is to say I think your formula is accurate for the current structure and MLB environment to get you a 75-85 win team. But building consistent playoff teams requires something beyond health and luck with the components you listed. This assumes success = making the playoffs, which is (or should be) the standard in a cutthroat, results-oriented business like professional sports. Progression from losing seasons to winning seasons is nice, but playoffs are the goal. Once there, lots of formulas seem to fall apart, at least that's what the data say. As many have stated and shown here over the years, winning each series (except for maybe the recent play-in games) and the World Series is somewhere between a coin flip and 55-45 odds almost every year. Oh, and about NYY. I acknowledge your list of cheap, young controlables, but there were years in recent memory where they made the playoffs with very few of those guys and the ones they did have weren't impact players. Looking back, the 2004 Red Sox had very few young, controllable starting players and none of the rotation arms (though Arroyo did contribute significantly during the seasion). Ditto 2007 (Pedroia, Youkilis, Ellsbury for position players, Papelbon + Lester for 1 game) positions, and again in 2013 (Ellsbury, Pedroia, Bogaerts + Saltamacchia for 1 game, Lester and Buccholz). 2018 is the closest to your formula. Pedroia, Youkilis, Ellsbury and Papelbon gave them 12 WAR for the league minimum, and they had Becket on an arbitration salary. In 2013, they had Lester, Buchholz, Pedroia, Ellsbury, Salty, and Nava as pre-FA guys who each gave them over 2.5 fWAR. Even 2004 had Trot, Tek, and Lowe as team control guys, plus a bunch of undervalued guys they got for nothing because teams didn’t realize not making outs is the most important thing for hitters to do. Maybe that’s the missing part of the formula, or at least a corollary—if you can’t develop cheap guys, you have to hit on guys from the scrap heap, which is a lot harder to do now that most teams realize a .285/.320/.365 line isn’t very good.In the end, the basic rules of thumb are that you can’t rely on player development to build the team because it’s wishful thinking for any org to think they can fill all holes from within, and you can’t just rely on getting all your talent from the FA market because then you don’t have any value players that help you stretch the budget. Agree, this is an important part of it. Also, what Incandenza and a couple of others noted in this thread about LAD not being afraid to have long, expensive contracts, but being smart enough to pick the players who will generate high value for much of the contract. In their case, Betts and Freeman. That's not an easy decision, and one, coincidentally that many small budget POBBOs never have to make. They can't afford blue chip talent on the open market and have to either hope for a team-friendly extension of free-agent bound All Stars (José Ramírez) or sell them off with 1-2 years of control left for greatest return in talent. Those aren't even decisions. The tiny budget dictates everything. Much tougher when you come to a big budget team and you suddenly do have the cash to keep some of these guys. Then, difficult decisions have to be made. Theo was really good at doing that for the most part, although after trading Nomar then winning the WS, he was virtually bullet proof so could let Pedro, Lowe and some others walk. The one guy he screwed up on badly was Beltre, but no POBBO is perfect. Cherington, too, felt both sides of this, rightly letting Ellsbury go despite great outcry from fans (me included) and media, but also letting Lester walk, which was probably as big a blunder as Beltre. Screwing up that way creates as big organization mess as signing big deals that don't work out, but in different ways (I once read a piece that basically said, "Keep Beltre, you never need Adrian Gonzalez, so you keep Rizzo and other prospect wealth to develop or deal, maybe make the 2011 playoffs with his added WAR plus some kept prospects to get pitching, never get Trash Panda, etc.").
|
|
|
Post by stevedillard on Sept 14, 2023 11:25:31 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by briam on Sept 14, 2023 11:29:02 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by briam on Sept 14, 2023 11:30:12 GMT -5
So that answers that, puts to bed the thought that ownership is complacent with losing regardless of what the farm looks like.
|
|
|
Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Sept 14, 2023 11:31:01 GMT -5
My personal opinion is that he wasn't as bad as his detractors incessantly made him out to be, but he certainly wasn't great, so while I would've been fine with him getting another year I'm also perfectly good with them feeling the need to move on. I think he did some good things and I think whoever replaces him will be in a good position to succeed. Hope he lands on his feet somewhere and that this thread can finally be burned to the ground.
|
|
ematz1423
Veteran
Posts: 5,361
Member is Online
|
Post by ematz1423 on Sept 14, 2023 11:31:14 GMT -5
I'm kind of shocked and yet not shocked?
|
|
mobaz
Veteran
Posts: 2,789
Member is Online
|
Post by mobaz on Sept 14, 2023 11:31:46 GMT -5
I'm kind of shocked and yet not shocked? Exactly!
|
|
|
Post by ephus on Sept 14, 2023 11:32:09 GMT -5
Well, I am in need of a recipe for crow. Wow. Shocked.
|
|
|
Post by ortiz on Sept 14, 2023 11:33:24 GMT -5
I never did understand how people could question whether he was in danger of losing his job. I understand that this is the Sox PROSPECTS website, but the primary product will always be the Red Sox. 4 years with no improvement in the major league product and hesitancy at the trade deadline were never going to be tolerated. Best of luck to Chaim, he seemed like a nice enough person.
|
|
|
Post by chr31ter on Sept 14, 2023 11:34:02 GMT -5
Henry's "new direction" quote has me a little scared.
I think the organization has generally been headed in the right direction, albeit not as efficiently or as smoothly as hoped.
Mostly, I hope this doesn't mean that the idea of sustainable excellence has been scrapped in favor of a more Veruca Salt-like "Don't care how, I want it now" approach.
|
|
|
Post by manfred on Sept 14, 2023 11:35:13 GMT -5
Henry's "new direction" quote has me a little scared. I think the organization has generally been headed in the right direction, albeit not as efficiently or as smoothly as hoped. Mostly, I hope this doesn't mean that the idea of sustainable excellence has been scrapped in favor of a more Veruca Salt-like "Don't care how, I want it now" approach. I’m hoping “new direction” just means up the standings instead of down the standings?
|
|
|
Post by ortiz on Sept 14, 2023 11:37:41 GMT -5
Henry's "new direction" quote has me a little scared. I think the organization has generally been headed in the right direction, albeit not as efficiently or as smoothly as hoped. Mostly, I hope this doesn't mean that the idea of sustainable excellence has been scrapped in favor of a more Veruca Salt-like "Don't care how, I want it now" approach. You have to reach excellence in order to sustain it. The final product was sliding away from excellence.
|
|
|
Post by oldfaithful2019 on Sept 14, 2023 11:37:45 GMT -5
Really did not expect that ! The 1st GM/POBO since Douquette to not earn a seat in the WS banner club.
|
|
chaimtime
Veteran
Posts: 785
Member is Online
|
Post by chaimtime on Sept 14, 2023 11:40:56 GMT -5
Ownership has spoken. Time to close the thread?
|
|
|
Post by chr31ter on Sept 14, 2023 11:41:34 GMT -5
Henry's "new direction" quote has me a little scared. I think the organization has generally been headed in the right direction, albeit not as efficiently or as smoothly as hoped. Mostly, I hope this doesn't mean that the idea of sustainable excellence has been scrapped in favor of a more Veruca Salt-like "Don't care how, I want it now" approach. You have to reach excellence in order to sustain it. The final product was sliding away from excellence. Fair. I'm just saying that I think Bloom had the right general approach, even if the execution was lacking at times.
|
|
chaimtime
Veteran
Posts: 785
Member is Online
|
Post by chaimtime on Sept 14, 2023 11:44:34 GMT -5
My personal opinion is that he wasn't as bad as his detractors incessantly made him out to be, but he certainly wasn't great, so while I would've been fine with him getting another year I'm also perfectly good with them feeling the need to move on. I think he did some good things and I think whoever replaces him will be in a good position to succeed. Hope he lands on his feet somewhere and that this thread can finally be burned to the ground. Perfect summation. I think he’s left the org in a good place and I think he’s getting fired largely for PR reasons, but the PR problems exist for a reason.
|
|
|
Post by Guidas on Sept 14, 2023 11:53:08 GMT -5
It's crazy because, having worked in PR, I noticed immediately who O'Halloran didn't mentioned and praise here - his boss. I held back because I've been accused of "Bloom bashing," but the omission turned out to be prophetic.
|
|
|
Post by Smittyw on Sept 14, 2023 11:54:40 GMT -5
Doesn't sound like Cora's job is in dire jeopardy if the guy in line for the throne calls him "one of the best managers in baseball" twice.
|
|
|
Post by Guidas on Sept 14, 2023 11:59:38 GMT -5
My personal opinion is that he wasn't as bad as his detractors incessantly made him out to be, but he certainly wasn't great, so while I would've been fine with him getting another year I'm also perfectly good with them feeling the need to move on. I think he did some good things and I think whoever replaces him will be in a good position to succeed. Hope he lands on his feet somewhere and that this thread can finally be burned to the ground. This is basically how I felt. He was neither awful nor great. Under his leadership the org succeeded in one of his major charges - improving the farm and they'll finally be under the tax (maybe a year too late in ownership's eyes?). But it's a result-oriented business, and since Theo, this ownership group has shown itself to be unforgiving regarding certain benchmarks, even if the incumbent (Cherington, Dombrowski) reached the ultimate pinnacle of success.
|
|
|