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Post by jmei on Jun 27, 2023 10:48:58 GMT -5
If you don't find Verdugo charismatic, you're not paying enough attention. (Either that or you're just holding a grudge against him for being in the Mookie trade.)
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Post by jmei on Jun 27, 2023 6:43:29 GMT -5
Five teams have tried to turn Westbrook into a pass-first distributor now and it hasn’t stuck. I have zero confidence that the sixth team will succeed.
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Post by jmei on Jun 26, 2023 6:51:59 GMT -5
I think we’ve reached a dead end here. Please move on. Thanks.
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Post by jmei on Jun 25, 2023 6:26:00 GMT -5
I’m not a Cora defender, but the one thing to remember with his bullpen management is that he was in that position because of Paxton’s shocking injury. Does anyone seriously expect to ride Paxton? He makes Sale look like Cal Ripken Jr. Paxton is purportedly going to make his next start.
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Post by jmei on Jun 23, 2023 15:27:04 GMT -5
OK, Cora is starting Refsnyder over Duran vs. a righty. I am not understanding. Please help me understand. Refsnyder LF Turner 1B Yoshida DH Devers 3B Duvall RF Wong C Arroyo 2B K. Hernández CF Hamilton SS Bello P Also: Dalbec up, Reyes to the IL. Easy answer. Cora is a bad tactical manager.
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Post by jmei on Jun 23, 2023 13:57:20 GMT -5
Random aside, any thoughts on who the Sox all star representative(s) will be? Verdugo seems likely and deserving (although not sure how many make it past the top 6 vote getters). Maybe Jansen gets in less deservingly? Yoshida should contend for a spot (All-Star voters are less focused on defense). Maybe Devers gets a spot on name recognition.
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Post by jmei on Jun 23, 2023 10:20:20 GMT -5
It’s not just the penalties for the “blow up the draft cap” scenario, it’s the fact that the commissioners office and the other 29 owners will hate you and have extrajudicial ways of taking out their anger on you.
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Post by jmei on Jun 22, 2023 15:08:23 GMT -5
Was not aware that today was a day game and kind of glad I missed it to be honest.
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Post by jmei on Jun 22, 2023 15:04:35 GMT -5
That's a hell of a hot take. They dump fan favorite Ryan Brasier, and then a month later acquire some waiver wire reliever while they have room to spare on the 40, therefore Chaim Bloom is a loser. Are there any WEEI talent scouts lurking? That escalated quickly. Again probably amounts to nothing, but if the Dodgers got to see the guy you DFA'd side-by-side with Scott and they decided to dump Scott, could you not infer something from that assessment? That's less of a hot take and more of a logic test: Brasier < mlb player Scott < Brasier Scott < [fill in the blank] The Red Sox presumably disagree with the Dodgers on which of those players is better. That dynamic is not much different than when they claim any other player on waivers or sign a free agent or make a trade--all of those transactions imply that they're higher on the player than the rest of the league is. Maybe they'll be right, maybe they'll be wrong, we'll see!
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Post by jmei on Jun 22, 2023 14:58:11 GMT -5
Also, it makes the 2024 Warriors pick that we just received more likely to be late in the first round, which stinks.
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Post by jmei on Jun 22, 2023 14:57:32 GMT -5
This Wizards front office has not inspired much confidence.
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Post by jmei on Jun 22, 2023 7:29:02 GMT -5
As an aside, I guess I'm higher on Brodgon than most. When healthy, he's a better player than Smart and a much-needed ball handler/scorer off the bench. Health is a concern, but the wrist injury during the Heat series was more bad timing than a chronic injury (his knees have been a concern going back to the draft, but seemed to not be an issue last year).
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Post by jmei on Jun 22, 2023 6:38:40 GMT -5
Sign and trade for Williams get something there, you get to use the MLE and sign a guy for $5M. Pray for health. You can't do both, using any part of mid-level hard caps you at upper tax level. I don’t think that part of the CBA comes into effect until next offseason.
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Post by jmei on Jun 22, 2023 6:11:28 GMT -5
A few scattered thoughts without the benefit of reading/listening to much analysis on the deal:
Smart was a huge part of the team culture over the last few years, which at face value is a big loss. But honestly the team culture probably needed some shaking up (or at least some tweaks), so maybe that’s a hidden bonus. I’m thinking about Smart’s slightly snide remarks about Mazzula’s coaching in the Heat series, for instance—maybe the team takes better to coaching without that voice in the locker room.
On the court, Smart turns 30 in March (he’s somehow 18 months older than Porzingis), his defense has noticeably declined and he still takes too many shots (particularly in the clutch). I don’t hate the idea of selling high on him. I think they arguably got more value from this deal than the Brogdon deal (that Warriors pick has real upside—they’re one Curry injury away from being a lottery team and it’s only top four protected). White can do a lot of what Smart does on the court (with worse court vision but better shooting efficiency and fewer turnovers).
I don’t think this is the last significant offseason move. Brogdon may still be available in the right deal, Grant sign and trades are still out there and I wonder if this opens up Horford’s salary for a trade (would they re-sign Grant if they traded Horford?). They could still use a real rotation wing player, for instance.
Porzingis is not going to help the ball movement, but his combination of floor stretching, offensive release valve and rim protection fits well around Tatum and Brown.
Chris Paul would look nice on this team but not sure there’s a way to get him on the roster.
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Post by jmei on Jun 22, 2023 5:02:49 GMT -5
Starting to believe this to. Having Kiké at SS continues to lose us winnable games. At some point all these f-ups start to add up. Before it was inexcusable. I'd like to blame anyone for anything myself in sports. Right now, Pablo Reyes is hurt. Arroyo is really a second base only guy, because he gets hurt so easily. He's already announced he doesn't want Kiké starting regularly anymore at short stop. Right now he doesn't even have a choice until Reyes gets healthy. The choice is to start Arroyo at SS and Kiké at 2B.
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Post by jmei on Jun 22, 2023 4:57:26 GMT -5
One thing is for sure. Brad is willing to shoot his shot.
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Post by jmei on Jun 18, 2023 19:32:48 GMT -5
HUGE hit from Casas.
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Post by jmei on Jun 15, 2023 21:03:56 GMT -5
The “corner outfielders need to hit for power” concept is very early 2000s. A front office should focus much more on just getting good players and much less on how they derive their value.
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Post by jmei on Jun 15, 2023 10:40:57 GMT -5
It's great that they settled into what looks like a decent rotation now that we're in in mid June. But what it took to get there included nine bad starts from Corey Kluber (6.26 ERA/6.59 FIP), eight bad starts from Nick Pivetta (6.30 ERA/5.75 FIP) and a non-competitive start from Matt Dermody, and now they're below .500 with 11.2% playoff odds. Yes, if you throw enough spaghetti against the wall, you'll get some to stick eventually, but you might lose a bunch of games in the meantime cycling through guys who couldn't cut it, which is what ended up happening. Yes, that's true. But what's the alternative? Having 5 very good healthy starters would be nice, but how many teams manage that? The Yankees have gotten 38 starts from pitchers who aren't among their top 5 starters. The Blue Jays have been healthy but Manoah, Kikuchi, and arguably Bassitt have just sucked.
And the team's swoon coincides with the offense going into hibernation. Weirdly, it also coincides with the starting rotation getting a lot better, so it seems hard to pin their below-.500 record on the bad early season pitching performances.
It's less a criticism of their team-building philosophy (you do the best with the tools you have) and more a criticism of how we (you) evaluate teams with a lot of higher-risk options. Just because you have a lot of guys with upside, some of whom will likely end up hitting a 75th+ percentile projection, doesn't necessarily mean you'll end up with good production overall because you still have to churn through the guys who underperformed as well. I don't pin the entire record on the starting pitching but it seems beyond reproach that the bad starts they've gotten from Kluber and Pivetta have hurt the team.
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Post by jmei on Jun 15, 2023 10:35:47 GMT -5
I don't know if that's fair. Kluber and Pivetta were both reasonable guys to give a chance to at the start of the season. Bello, Whitlock, Crawford and Paxton all missed time, too. I'm not sure how they were supposed to get to this five significantly faster. I'm more criticizing the idea that having a lot of decent options means that you'll end up with good production at a given spot. Yes, more options means better odds that you'll land on decent production eventually, but it's often a bumpy process before you figure out who those guys are.
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Post by jmei on Jun 15, 2023 10:30:03 GMT -5
So - if Verdugo is a .300 hitter with 15 HR and 80 RBI and 50 doubles and over 100 runs scored - I'll take it if he can do that for a handful of seasons. Except that: -He isn’t a .300 hitter -He won’t hit 15 homers -He won’t get to 80RBI -He won’t have 50 doubles He’s never reached any of these levels in a full season, actually. Verdugo is a COF with strong arm but limited power. He’s a nice player. But since they already have Yoshida locked up in LF, they need more production out of this slot. I don’t imagine that Verdugo is part of the next great Red Sox team anyway. I’m not saying that you give him away, but they should definitely look to move him. Since he joined Boston prior to 2020, Verdugo is at .288/.347/.428 (110 wRC+) and 2.4 fWAR, 12 HRs and 37 2Bs per 600 PAs. You don't have to squint that hard to project him to be that sort of player. He's not a star, but every good team needs solidly above-average players, too, and it's not like they have a lot of those to go around.
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Post by jmei on Jun 15, 2023 10:19:38 GMT -5
All five starters in the current rotation have an xFIP under 4.00. Bello: 3.92 Whitlock: 3.91 Houck: 3.71 Crawford: 3.32 Paxton: 3.10 I think this is sort of vindicating my thought going into the season that with like 8 starters, each of whom is a big question mark, things would probably turn out okay because with that many options you only need to hit on about half of them. So we have a very solid looking rotation despite Pivetta disappointing, Kluber imploding, and Sale most likely being out for the rest of the year. Of course the caveat here is that now we have used up all the margin for error and another injury would open up a hole in the rotation. Also in an ideal world Houck would be in some role where he never has to go through a lineup a third time.
It's great that they settled into what looks like a decent rotation now that we're in in mid June. But what it took to get there included nine bad starts from Corey Kluber (6.26 ERA/6.59 FIP), eight bad starts from Nick Pivetta (6.30 ERA/5.75 FIP) and a non-competitive start from Matt Dermody, and now they're below .500 with 11.2% playoff odds. Yes, if you throw enough spaghetti against the wall, you'll get some to stick eventually, but you might lose a bunch of games in the meantime cycling through guys who couldn't cut it, which is what ended up happening.
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Post by jmei on Jun 12, 2023 14:29:30 GMT -5
Bello has six career starts on six+ days' rest (127 total PAs). That's a pretty aggressively small sample size to be drawing any conclusions. I'm just looking at the six starts he's made beginning with his first good outing (by xwOBA), under the assumption that he's using the same between-starts routines for 5 days rest for all of those starts. We know that his 6-day routine (or routines) has to be different.
Let's adjust each xwOBA by normalizing for the season xwOBA vs. RHP of the offense he was facing. The four starts on 5 days rest are .266, .278, .259, .239. The two starts on 6 days rest are .393, .398. (Strike % is distinctly lower, exactly as you'd expect.) That's being the 3rd best SP in MLB vs. the 4th worst (current xwOBA of the 150 SP with the most PA).
The odds of this happening at random are 1 in 5027. I'm not sure that using an even smaller sample size (both by reducing the number of starts and using an odd metric (normalized xwOBA vs. RHP)) is doing you any favors here. Citing odds or p-values for analysis that is not based on null hypothesis testing is just statistical hand waving tomfoolery.
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Post by jmei on Jun 12, 2023 10:52:12 GMT -5
I continue to maintain that, in the current NBA, drawing up good plays on a whiteboard is less important than being able to get buy-in from your star players. From that perspective, it seems preferable to have young, Black, ex-player lead assistants who have championship experience than retread former head coaches. I am confident that Tatum, Brown, Smart, etc. are going to be more receptive to coaching from Lee and Cassell than they would have been from, say, Terry Stotts (not to pick on him, but just the example that came to mind first).
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Post by jmei on Jun 12, 2023 9:25:43 GMT -5
Assuming that the t.b.d. Sox starter in the Wednesday games vs the Rockies is a spot starter, Whit, Houck and Bello would be on vs Yankees next weekend. It will be a good test of their ability to adjust and respond to the Yanks adjustments. It would be insane to insert a spot starter before a day off, and then have the same three pitchers face the Yankees, all on 6 days rest, while not allowing Paxton, who is very likely their best pitcher now, to face them. As I've pointed out, Bello has been awful on six days rest -- his strike % goes from good to bad.
The TBD has to be about Whitlockl going on 4 days rest. The alternative would be a bullpen game on Wednesday, and then Whitlock piggybacking on Houck in the opener. That might be better. Whitlock days rest this year: 4 (rehab start) 4 4 5, injured 4 (rehab) 5 6 5 The first start on 4 days was bad, the second great. I think they're deciding whether they want to continue babying him a bit. If they do this, then you have: Crawford 5, bullpen, Houck 4, Whitlock 5 at Twins Bello, Paxton, Crawford , all 5, at ChiSox. I think they're very into giving the extra day, given everyone's history
Bello has six career starts on six+ days' rest (127 total PAs). That's a pretty aggressively small sample size to be drawing any conclusions.
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