5/1-5/4 Red Sox vs. Blue Jays Series Thread

Said it before in one of the off-season threads, and I don't have anything to back this up so take it fwiw, but I definitely think there was a conscious effort in the off-season to move on from certain players who were, if not toxic, at least a bad fit in the clubhouse culture going forward.

Also, and again I know this is probably too far on the theoretical side for many, but I really think that players like Jansen, Turner, and Kluber give the team a sense of legitimacy they had lost previously. Having respected, winning, veterans not only join the team but clearly buy in and become a "part" of the team and culture does a lot for the group in the clubhouse, and says something to opponents as well. It's different when players like that choose to join a team and buy in, rather than when players are still here and simply playing out a contract. Put another way, I don't think they have the swagger they do right now without those guys

Merloni (who is doing excellent work in the radio booth) kept mentioning how among all teams’ 7-9 hitters, the Sox rank first in hits and second in XBH. Duran’s a nice chunk of that, but it’s come from a lot of other places, too. You have to imagine this lineup is a real pain to pitch to. There’s a lot of grind at bats and traffic, and the bottom half is doing a great job of making pitchers spend some of their bullets before they have to go through the top half again. I don’t want to see guys taking pitches for the sake of it and putting themselves in holes, but it’s not what’s happening. A very disciplined approach that, in between more hitters’ counts/deep counts and more contact, is creating way more opportunities for the opposition to help us out than we had in the past two years.

Clicking through the Blue Jays top prospect list, looks like 0 out of 10 guys are having a good season. Lots of big arb raises coming this offseason. Manoah will be their only guy still cheap and he's replacement level this year. Chapman is a free agent. Looks like after this season that club will have passed their peak and start to decline.

Would be hilarious if they developed a ton of talent, tastefully entered into Go For It Now mode and the bottoming out Red Sox still finished ahead of them two out of three years.

I do not enjoy checking in on the guys on the Rays and Orioles prospect lists

If he comes cheap that would be the logical add.

I am considerably more optimistic about the starting pitching than most. Considering the injury history and recovery curves, we're actually doing quite well. If I heard the Jays announcer correctly, the Jays have only used 14 pitchers all year.

We started the year with 3/5 of our starting rotation on the IL and we're about to get an additional piece.

Stats don't take the situation into account and what I'm seeing visually has me hyped.

I thought a great outcome for this season would be to get 3 WAR out of the CF position, and they're at 2.4 through May 2nd. (With a 204 wRC+, which is higher than any single player in the majors.)

I don’t tend to put a lot of value into the concept of a “good clubhouse guy”, but if there IS such a thing, it’s Justin Turner. I am in SoCal and watch a lot of Dodgers games. He’s been the glue on that team for many years. He’s the guy all the other players love and rally around. I’m guessing he brought that vibe to the Sox. There are a lot of other differences between this year and last year, but I think he’s a big plus.

But they're not in any of those divisions so they're in last place. They're in the AL East in a 5 team division, looking up at 4 teams, so last place Yankees it is. It has a nice ring to it.

Sure last place in the AL East won't be confused with the 1962 Mets, but one thing is guaranteed, whoever finishes last in the division won't be going to the postseason. Hope the Yankees are watching their division mates in October.

I now think only acceptable outcome is Duran at 5+ WAR.

I’m wearing my engineer cap on the train cheering insanely.

I really like the new, productive Duran (and the new happy, positive train engineer).