9/17-9/19 Red Sox @ Rays Series Thread

Crawford is a culprit there. 28 homeruns allowed since June 1 in 103.1 inning. If he was in Seattle, he’d look like an ace…

Despite all the bombs Crawford and Pivetta have been like fine-ish on the year:

Kutter - 171.2 IP, 4.19 ERA (103 ERA+)
Pivetta - 134 IP, 4.37 ERA (99 ERA+)

Those aren't bad players. They're fine! But that ultimately might have been the issue for this team. There's a lot of guys who were just fine on the team (Yoshida, Rafaela, Wong, Bello, Criswell, etc). That works if your stars elevate you (like Judge and Soto and have done, and which Duran, Devers, & Houck were doing through the end of July), or if your depth is such that you are not cycling through the likes of Bobby Dalbec and Bailey Horn through your roster for weeks and weeks. Otherwise you will get "just fine" results.

Like if Kutter Crawford is like the #4/5 starter on your team instead of the #2/3 you probably have a much higher floor than a .500 team. But of course we all probably said as much at this point twelve months ago haha. Entering a new offseason it feels like the wishlist has not really changed from fall 2023...

Feels like bat speed is going to be a pretty good "is he playing hurt?" indicator going forward

If we find out that throwing hard a lot is not going to be a great thing for Devers to be doing then I am thinking we will see them force a Casas trade. I do not expect that Casas will have inspired a lot of impassioned pleas to keep him at all costs. It would make it a lot less stressful trying to figure out what to do with all the infielders if 3B was open. I am worried that his trade value is pretty low right now.

Going forward - what good does it do continuing to play Raffy if he is hurt based on the bat speed post above?

I've kind of lost the plot of this team - how they once again collapsed, and how they dig themselves out of it and aim for more success next year. Which "OK player" kind of mediocrity do we keep - which do we show the door?

What a mess (hopefully a short term one)

That's true about Devers' specific defensive issues

In terms of the metrics he will do a lot better at 1B just because he will be compared to a bunch of stiffs instead of the pool of 3B.

Proportionally, that’s like a guy who throws 95 coming out around 92-93. So not quite “cant play through it” territory but definitely in “clearly diminished” territory. Given that hitting is probably the most difficult thing in all of sports, I wouldn’t be surprised if the slight timing disruption made a bigger impact than one might initially expect, though.

Casas missed most of the season with an injury and was absolutely demolishing baseballs prior to that. I do not want to move on from him. Trade Yoshi. Any savings from him is going to be good. He's an OK singles hitter who can't play the field. He's going to be perfect for a small-to-mid market team. The Red Sox will have over 40 million coming off the books before a Yoshi trade and the tax is going up.

While I'm at it, I might just promote Mayer to start next year, put Devers as a the DH, and make Story a super utility. I don't believe in his bat or ability to stay healthy. His glove is still very good. If Campbell is ready, put him at 2B or have Story split some time there with Hamilton or Grissom or whomever.

How my opening day roster would look

C - Wong/Jansen
1B - Casas
2B - Grissom/Story/Rafaela/Hamilton until Campbell
SS - Mayer/Story/Rafaela/Hamilton
1B - Casas
3B - Bregman signing
DH - Devers
RF - Abreu until Roman Anthony is ready or just call him up to start the year.
CF - Rafaela
LF - Duran
SP - Burnes
SP - Houck
SP - Bello
SP - Crawford
SP - Giolito
SP - Priester

Bullpen I'll just defer to the FO on, but would like to see Whitlock get a look at the closer role.


Or my dream scenario and sign Soto and Burnes or Soto and trade one of the 4 for an young ace pitcher.

Devers will either get surgery this off-season or go on some kind of shoulder healing/strengthening regimen. I'm not a doctor, but I think it's pretty unlikely the outcome of either will be some kind of medical edict that for the next X years he's perfectly fine to DH but can't make throws in the field.  I can't recall ever hearing of something like that.  

Yoshida's K rate is 12.5%. Second best on the team is Duran at 21.7%. Red Sox have the third worst K rate in the majors. So yeah, I'd hold onto Yoshida.

As for Casas, there are suddenly a lot of people bringing up the idea of trading him ever since he went into a slump a couple weeks ago. But here is another case where I actually think it would be a good idea to hold onto one of their best hitters.

Casas’s value is probably the lowest it will ever be right now? Why not use that to your advantage and sign him to a long term contract

But he can't play a position on the field. That's the problem and he doesn't have the power to justify occupying the DH position like Devers.