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8/19-8/21 Red Sox @ Astros Series Thread
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Post by johnsilver52 on Aug 19, 2024 23:56:07 GMT -5
I will now be predicting an August collapse for the Red Sox every season until further notice. It’s like Groundhog Day with this org. Moves back a month. During the near entire 1970's could book a September collapse. O's manager Earl Weaver used to joke about it. Shame of this season's is so much of it was done with idiotic moves done by the team themself, rather than any plaer(s). many have done a good, or great job, it was manager/front office to me more responsible for wwhat has happened than individual players. not holding breath on any being heald accountable either, nor any lessons learned for future reference.
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asm18
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Posts: 2,524
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Post by asm18 on Aug 20, 2024 0:25:13 GMT -5
There will shuffling for Divsional Crowns/Seeding among the Yankees, Orioles, Guardians, Twins, Royals and Astros, but the Red Sox are the closest to any of that group with the 4.5 back of last WC. Mariners are 5 back of Houston in the West after losing to the Dodgers tonight, and 6.5 back of the WC. The AL could turn into a real snoozer.
Meanwhile, you have all but 4 NL teams 5.5 games or less back of the last WC over there
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Post by bentossaurus on Aug 20, 2024 3:00:35 GMT -5
Jettison everyone but Martin and Jansen. You're better off not looking who we have under control for next season then.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Aug 20, 2024 6:41:20 GMT -5
And rightfully so, that contract is awful. He’s a good player but not worth that. It's hilarious to me that people watching this team in this second half can complain about paying too much money to one of the planet's best closers. And then people complain about Henry not spending. smh. Swap Hader in for Weissert this year and we might be in first place. You could swap Weissert for prime Mariano Rivera and this team wouldn’t be in first place. A reliever just doesn’t make that kind of difference, and it’s not all about this year’s team. Obviously Hader would make this team better, that doesn’t mean he’d have been worth the contract.
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Post by wvusox on Aug 20, 2024 7:50:43 GMT -5
Our combined bullpen acquisitions (Sims & Garcia, 16 appearances) since the deadline: 0-2, 0 saves, 3 blown saves, 9.92 ERA, 1.84 WHIP, 6 BB, 13 K in 16.1 IP Rest of Sox pen since deadline: 5-3, 3 saves, 3 blown saves, 5.31 ERA, 1.51 WHIP, 18 BB, 57 K in 57.2 IP
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Post by ematz1423 on Aug 20, 2024 8:14:17 GMT -5
12 is even worse than I had thought when I posted last night that the team would probably have a WC spot right now if they had only just blown half of their saves since ASB. This cements it they'd easily be in the drivers seat of a WC slot if they did and honestly even 6 blown saves since the ASB would be a lot. 12 is just bonkers..
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Post by greenmonster on Aug 20, 2024 9:05:31 GMT -5
12 is even worse than I had thought when I posted last night that the team would probably have a WC spot right now if they had only just blown half of their saves since ASB. This cements it they'd easily be in the drivers seat of a WC slot if they did and honestly even 6 blown saves since the ASB would be a lot. 12 is just bonkers.. Further to your point, if its only 4 blown saves they are leading the division (never mind wild card)
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Post by lostinnewjersey on Aug 20, 2024 10:42:06 GMT -5
It's great to know that this team will be competitive in 2026.
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Post by gregblossersbelly on Aug 20, 2024 10:45:36 GMT -5
12 is even worse than I had thought when I posted last night that the team would probably have a WC spot right now if they had only just blown half of their saves since ASB. This cements it they'd easily be in the drivers seat of a WC slot if they did and honestly even 6 blown saves since the ASB would be a lot. 12 is just bonkers.. Further to your point, if its only 4 blown saves they are leading the division (never mind wild card) You can more than one blown save in a game. And, we have. Had 2-3 in a couple of games. They stink. But, just providing a little context.
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nomar
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Post by nomar on Aug 20, 2024 10:50:21 GMT -5
It's great to know that this team will be competitive in 2026. This might be sarcasm but given how things have gone since 2018 it actually is nice to be confident in that
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asm18
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Post by asm18 on Aug 20, 2024 11:19:46 GMT -5
“One MLB hitting coach admitted that he had his hitters sit slider against the Red Sox when they came to town, and it looks like he’s not alone. Take a look at the swing rate against the big four Red Sox starters since last year. While they had traditional swing rates last season, you can see that batters are starting to swing more against their breaking balls.”
Was wondering recently why the Red Sox pitch metrics (aka Stuff+) have still been so high yet the pitching so bad of late. They dive into it that a bit here. As Sarris and McCaffrey note: “It’s important even within a pitching model like Stuff+, which aims to judge pitches just by their physical characteristics. On FanGraphs, sliders have better average Stuff+ than fastballs — but sliders are defined within the model off of the fastball. Hitters traditionally have to time their swings off the fastball, so the model wants to capture that, and defining secondaries off the fastball increased the predictive power of the model. What happens to that model when the hitter is sitting slider?”
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Post by GyIantosca on Aug 20, 2024 11:30:20 GMT -5
This team deserved so much more . Think about it. You can’t get by with what we have all season . Breslow made a decision he knew the bullpen and the defense is inconsistent . That what you get when you roll the dice .
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Aug 20, 2024 11:30:22 GMT -5
Our combined bullpen acquisitions (Sims & Garcia, 16 appearances) since the deadline: 0-2, 0 saves, 3 blown saves, 9.92 ERA, 1.84 WHIP, 6 BB, 13 K in 16.1 IP Rest of Sox pen since deadline: 5-3, 3 saves, 3 blown saves, 5.31 ERA, 1.51 WHIP, 18 BB, 57 K in 57.2 IP Sims was pitching low-leverage for CIN when he was acquired. No mystery that he has struggled when thrown suddenly into high-leverage spots. Sadly, there aren't many other options with Slaten and Martin (until recently) out. Garcia is much more of a mystery. He was the Angels' set up guy and was pitching well most of the year. I would be more patient with him than Sims.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Aug 20, 2024 11:40:17 GMT -5
The fortunate thing for the Sox is that the teams in front of them, both in the WC and division, are no juggernauts.
KC are 19-4 vs. CHW and DET and not so good vs. teams over .500 -- they're going to get a big dose of the latter soon, while the Sox schedule eases up.
As bad as the Sox have played, they're still within shouting distance of first place with six weeks to go. If BAL and MFY were really all that, they would've run away and hidden from the Sox. MFY just lost a series to DET and have scored one earned run in their last 20 innings. BAL just split a series at home to the Sox in which BOS went 1-for-one-million with RISP in the two games they lost.
The Sox are finding ways to lose. If they can get healthy in the bullpen, push guys like Sims, Garcia and Kelly to low-leverage roles, and keep the ball in the yard, they're going to make a surge down the stretch and be the team no one wants to face in the playoffs.
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Post by GyIantosca on Aug 20, 2024 12:09:19 GMT -5
I agree nobody should scare the Sox. We looked good against the Baltimore . It looks like the Astros have our number but Houck pitched great both times.
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nomar
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Posts: 11,497
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Post by nomar on Aug 20, 2024 12:16:59 GMT -5
The fortunate thing for the Sox is that the teams in front of them, both in the WC and division, are no juggernauts. KC are 19-4 vs. CHW and DET and not so good vs. teams over .500 -- they're going to get a big dose of the latter soon, while the Sox schedule eases up. As bad as the Sox have played, they're still within shouting distance of first place with six weeks to go. If BAL and MFY were really all that, they would've run away and hidden from the Sox. MFY just lost a series to DET and have scored one earned run in their last 20 innings. BAL just split a series at home to the Sox in which BOS went 1-for-one-million with RISP in the two games they lost. The Sox are finding ways to lose. If they can get healthy in the bullpen, push guys like Sims, Garcia and Kelly to low-leverage roles, and keep the ball in the yard, they're going to make a surge down the stretch and be the team no one wants to face in the playoffs. And you hope that one of KC or MIN sweeps the other. If they split their remaining games that’s no good, but if one dominates the other it puts the Red Sox in a way better place to catch up.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Aug 20, 2024 12:40:49 GMT -5
It's hilarious to me that people watching this team in this second half can complain about paying too much money to one of the planet's best closers. And then people complain about Henry not spending. smh. Swap Hader in for Weissert this year and we might be in first place. You could swap Weissert for prime Mariano Rivera and this team wouldnât be in first place. A reliever just doesnât make that kind of difference, and itâs not all about this yearâs team. Obviously Hader would make this team better, that doesnât mean heâd have been worth the contract. We'll have to agree to disagree. Let's say you have Hader face Freeman, instead of Bernardino. Let's say you have Hader vs. Kiké, instead of Weissert. Let's say you have Hader in Denver when Kenley can't go. Let's say you have Hader vs. Judge instead of Kelly. Those are just off the top of my head. I get that on paper relievers aren't worth much WAR but when you add one at the top of a bullpen who pushes all the shaky guys down or off the roster, you have better match ups. Also, let's agree to disagree about whether Hader, or anyone on a winning team, is "worth the contract." As I said, it's not my money, it's Henry's, so if he's willing to shell it out, I don't care if the guy contributes 1 WAR per $8m, I just want him to contribute to wins. If Hader was pushing guys off the roster who have negative WAR, would you add that to his contract? If a guy on the roster has negative WAR, then what really is "replacement," if there's no one in Worcester or on the waiver wire that's better? The whole idea kind of falls apart. I just want guys who help you win and I'm not so worried about getting a steal on their contracts if it's the right guy.
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Post by incandenza on Aug 20, 2024 13:13:38 GMT -5
“One MLB hitting coach admitted that he had his hitters sit slider against the Red Sox when they came to town, and it looks like he’s not alone. Take a look at the swing rate against the big four Red Sox starters since last year. While they had traditional swing rates last season, you can see that batters are starting to swing more against their breaking balls.” Was wondering recently why the Red Sox pitch metrics (aka Stuff+) have still been so high yet the pitching so bad of late. They dive into it that a bit here. As Sarris and McCaffrey note: “It’s important even within a pitching model like Stuff+, which aims to judge pitches just by their physical characteristics. On FanGraphs, sliders have better average Stuff+ than fastballs — but sliders are defined within the model off of the fastball. Hitters traditionally have to time their swings off the fastball, so the model wants to capture that, and defining secondaries off the fastball increased the predictive power of the model. What happens to that model when the hitter is sitting slider?” This tends to confirm what I suspected - that the league's made an adjustment. There's a promising suggestion that the Red Sox have counter-adjusted in the observation that the last time through the rotation has been the best in a while. Though it feels like that counter-adjustment has taken a little longer than it should have.
The article doesn't mention the bullpen though. Is the same dynamic at play? It just seems like everyone in the bullpen other than Jansen and Martin hit the wall all at once.
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Post by rhswanzey on Aug 20, 2024 13:59:18 GMT -5
I would like to give now-released Hector Neris a try over one of the Kelly/Winck/Weissert group
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redsox04071318champs
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Aug 20, 2024 14:02:07 GMT -5
You could swap Weissert for prime Mariano Rivera and this team wouldnât be in first place. A reliever just doesnât make that kind of difference, and itâs not all about this yearâs team. Obviously Hader would make this team better, that doesnât mean heâd have been worth the contract. We'll have to agree to disagree. Let's say you have Hader face Freeman, instead of Bernardino. Let's say you have Hader vs. Kiké, instead of Weissert. Let's say you have Hader in Denver when Kenley can't go. Let's say you have Hader vs. Judge instead of Kelly. Those are just off the top of my head. I get that on paper relievers aren't worth much WAR but when you add one at the top of a bullpen who pushes all the shaky guys down or off the roster, you have better match ups. Also, let's agree to disagree about whether Hader, or anyone on a winning team, is "worth the contract." As I said, it's not my money, it's Henry's, so if he's willing to shell it out, I don't care if the guy contributes 1 WAR per $8m, I just want him to contribute to wins. If Hader was pushing guys off the roster who have negative WAR, would you add that to his contract? If a guy on the roster has negative WAR, then what really is "replacement," if there's no one in Worcester or on the waiver wire that's better? The whole idea kind of falls apart. I just want guys who help you win and I'm not so worried about getting a steal on their contracts if it's the right guy. Only works if Hader was the closer and if so he wouldnt displace their lefty relievers in the 7th or 8th innings. The Sox wouldn't offer him 100 million to have Jansen close and Hader is not signing anywhere unless he is the closer. Jansen and Hader wouldnt have coexisted on the same roster anymore than Lee Smith and Jeff Reardon would have. So if the Sox had signed Hader, Jansen would have been traded, as its doubtful he'd be cool with being the setup man.
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asm18
Veteran
Posts: 2,524
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Post by asm18 on Aug 20, 2024 14:14:41 GMT -5
“One MLB hitting coach admitted that he had his hitters sit slider against the Red Sox when they came to town, and it looks like he’s not alone. Take a look at the swing rate against the big four Red Sox starters since last year. While they had traditional swing rates last season, you can see that batters are starting to swing more against their breaking balls.” Was wondering recently why the Red Sox pitch metrics (aka Stuff+) have still been so high yet the pitching so bad of late. They dive into it that a bit here. As Sarris and McCaffrey note: “It’s important even within a pitching model like Stuff+, which aims to judge pitches just by their physical characteristics. On FanGraphs, sliders have better average Stuff+ than fastballs — but sliders are defined within the model off of the fastball. Hitters traditionally have to time their swings off the fastball, so the model wants to capture that, and defining secondaries off the fastball increased the predictive power of the model. What happens to that model when the hitter is sitting slider?” This tends to confirm what I suspected - that the league's made an adjustment. There's a promising suggestion that the Red Sox have counter-adjusted in the observation that the last time through the rotation has been the best in a while. Though it feels like that counter-adjustment has taken a little longer than it should have.
The article doesn't mention the bullpen though. Is the same dynamic at play? It just seems like everyone in the bullpen other than Jansen and Martin hit the wall all at once.
Martin (and Slaten) have been on the shelf for the most part during this putrid pitching stretch, and Kenley is a unicorn when it comes to pitch usage throwing that same cutter 90% of the time for over a decade (though he has actually mixed in more sliders recently). So if there’s a pattern of hitters sitting on breaking stuff, it might not manifest itself when it comes to those two? It would explain a lot of the trouble for Weissert, Kelly, Sims, among others. I kinda wonder if the Run Prevention Unit (Bailey, Willard, Boddy, etc) saw what they thought was an opportunity originally to push the envelope (“we can throw pitches that grade well on Pitch Modeling machines and just throw them all the time and reap the reward”). Early in the season when the team was dominating with this approach we probably asked ourselves “why don’t more teams do this?” and… now we know. A slider that say, moves X% more with Y speed and has a 130 Stuff+ or whatever according to the models just isn’t as effective if that’s all the hitter is looking for.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Aug 20, 2024 18:56:51 GMT -5
We'll have to agree to disagree. Let's say you have Hader face Freeman, instead of Bernardino. Let's say you have Hader vs. Kiké, instead of Weissert. Let's say you have Hader in Denver when Kenley can't go. Let's say you have Hader vs. Judge instead of Kelly. Those are just off the top of my head. I get that on paper relievers aren't worth much WAR but when you add one at the top of a bullpen who pushes all the shaky guys down or off the roster, you have better match ups. Also, let's agree to disagree about whether Hader, or anyone on a winning team, is "worth the contract." As I said, it's not my money, it's Henry's, so if he's willing to shell it out, I don't care if the guy contributes 1 WAR per $8m, I just want him to contribute to wins. If Hader was pushing guys off the roster who have negative WAR, would you add that to his contract? If a guy on the roster has negative WAR, then what really is "replacement," if there's no one in Worcester or on the waiver wire that's better? The whole idea kind of falls apart. I just want guys who help you win and I'm not so worried about getting a steal on their contracts if it's the right guy. Only works if Hader was the closer and if so he wouldnt displace their lefty relievers in the 7th or 8th innings. The Sox wouldn't offer him 100 million to have Jansen close and Hader is not signing anywhere unless he is the closer. Jansen and Hader wouldnt have coexisted on the same roster anymore than Lee Smith and Jeff Reardon would have. So if the Sox had signed Hader, Jansen would have been traded, as its doubtful he'd be cool with being the setup man. I get it and I thought about that while I was banging his drum. But if I give a guy $100m, he pitches when I say he pitches. If he can't deal with co-closing with Kenley for the first year of his deal and then closing by himself in the last four years, then he won't sign and I don't want him anyway. If he signs and Kenley doesn't like it, I don't want Kenley either. I want guys who recognize that having multiple elite guys in your bullpen helps the club win more games. Also, Hader's not "a lefty reliever" any more than Kenley is "a righty reliever." But having both actually allows you to play matchups in a way you don't normally do with closers. The bottom line is that adding Hader at the back end pushes the 8th reliever off the roster and allows you to put a nails guy in with the game on the line, whether that's in the 7th, 8th or 9th. I sure would've liked Hader in for the 8th last night instead of Sims... EDIT: I'm running a baseball club here, not an ego-petting zoo...
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Post by cheers on Aug 20, 2024 19:12:18 GMT -5
Duran with the otherworldly hustle.
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Post by cheers on Aug 20, 2024 19:15:35 GMT -5
WOW. Triston Casas can still turn on a ball. Didn't look like it hurt him too bad.
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Post by keninten on Aug 20, 2024 19:17:57 GMT -5
Good start
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