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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 27, 2022 1:39:52 GMT -5
Fun Fact : over the last 3 seasons, Yankee Stadium leads all of MLB in opposite-field line-drive homers hit by RHB, and it's not close.
That's no surprise. But this might be:
Aaron Judge 4 Giancarlo Stanton 3 Luke Voit 2 D.H. LeMahieu 2 Aaron Hicks 1 Glyber Torres 1 Gio Urshela 1 Gary Sanchez 1
Yandy Diaz 1
That's right, a 15 to 1 home-away split.
On the road, Stanton has 4 and LeMahielu 1.
(Stumbled on this while trying to create a player-specific park adjustment method. So far Judge doesn't look like a good fit for Fenway, but that's no surprise.)
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 26, 2022 13:48:39 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure you're misremembering at least one detail in this story... ….misremembering June 31… Suppan was taken by AZ in the expansion draft originally wasn’t he. Hey, I remembered it was the last day of June!
I had to look up who we traded Suppan for, as I assumed ... in fact, he was the 3rd pick in the draft.
A fun thing to do: Just bring up b-Ref Sox page and go back in time and read the bottom of the lists of guys who plated and pitched. Go back far enough and it becomes mostly a mixture of guys you had forgotten but now remember, and guys that ring no bells at all.
What's disappeared from history is the list of failed Sox prospects from before the Baseball America era. I wonder, for instance, if anyone else on this board remembers Gage Naudain. I just looked him up; it seems as if he suffered a crippling injury in AA.
(Perhaps the only source for this is the Red Sox Yearbooks, because they had entries for everyone on the 40-man, and in the pre-draft days, that included all the major signings, because of the Bonus Rule. I have them starting in 1961 and maybe through the 70's.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 26, 2022 3:25:14 GMT -5
I literally remember bringing a radio with me somewhere to listen to his first start. 3 runs in 5.2 at age 20. Went South after that. Did Duquette mess him up by bringing him up too soon? It probably didn't help him, but Suppan just never had the high-ceiling stuff that they were talking up at the time they brought him up. He was a high-floor command/control guy, and, it being the time when Greg Maddux was the best pitcher alive, every command/control guy was getting that comp. In his 1999 to 2006 prime, he threw 1628 1/3 innings (204 per year) and had a 106 ERA+. Ended up with 17.1 bWAR, which is actually deflated some from being so bad from 2008 onward. That's a really good career! And of course we traded for him in 2003 when we needed another starter, and because they (apparently) didn't trust the former failed-prospect who was having a great season with the PawSox after being claimed on waivers the previous winter, kept under the radar in ST, and passed though waivers again just before the season opened. I spent the next winter breaking down his whole career and arguing at SoSH that he the real deal. That of course was Bronson Arroyo.
But the mention of "Jeff" gnawed at me and I had to figure out who were the two acclaimed pitching prospects I was being reminded of -- Jeff Sellers and Rob Woodward.
And that in turn led me to hunt down the name of another tantalizing pitching prospect, who took a line drive off the head in the first game of doubleheader against the Orioles, a game I was at, in the bleachers. And when I found it, I immediately recognized Tony Muser as the guy who hit him. What I had forgotten completely that he was 2 outs from a shutout and my buddy and I thought we were seeing a confirmation that he was going to be a reliable member of the rotation. That was June 31, 1975, and he was out until 9/1.
And has anyone in MLB history ever needed a nickname less than Dick Pole?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 26, 2022 0:33:13 GMT -5
At the end of 1999 22YO 6' 5" Juan Pena gave up one run in 13 innings with 15 Ks in two starts. Projected to start in 2000, he got hit in the elbow in ST and tore his MCL. Never made it back to mlb. I followed him all through the minors, as he kept on getting great results while remaining unheralded because he didn't throw hard, and was overshadowed as a prospect by by Carl Pavano and Brian Rose who were teammates a year ahead of him. I remember the two starts where he had solid stuff and great command. He had a 4.15 ERA in Pawtucket and from that you'd guess that we were just seeing him at the top of his game, but I recall being really excited, and that suggests to me that he had started poorly and had returned to his earlier sub-3.00 form in the second half of the season.
Last time I checked he was the all-time MLB leader in ERA+, minimum 2 G started and some reasonable innings minimum.
It's worth noting that after their AA season in Trention, Pivano and Rose were BA's #17 and #44, and after their PawSox season, #9 and #22. I don't know if the latter has been matched before or after.
All three of these guys were worked too hard in the minors and had physical problems, but that was the rule in those days.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 26, 2022 0:06:13 GMT -5
......... 14 plate appearances? It's what happened. The whole overall picture of Pedroia struggling mightily in his MLB debut but then righting himself by being league-average the rest of the way was actually 3 games he started and two he came off the bench, where he went bonkers, before returning to struggling nearly as bad. I hadn't realized that, and it explains Law's famous dis, which appeared after the 14 killer PA (where he looked good) had made us all say, "this guy will be fine."
Total coincidence that Casas had 14 PA hot when I looked into the comp.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 25, 2022 16:32:24 GMT -5
I think they need to clean house a bit and fill in with FAs or some of the high-minors kids who haven't been tested yet. If the idea was to get under the tax threshold after 2024 (Sale's last year), with Xander, Raffy and Story as their three long-term position players, then maybe they can entice someone like Nimmo with a 2-yr, high-AAV deal (although he's having such a good year now it's hard to see him settling for less than 5 years). If you are confident in multiple young pitchers taking the next step (and your ability to find the next Wacha), maybe you can even afford to pay a guy like Nimmo for 5 years (age 30-34). The position players I would move on from while trying to maximize return would be Verdugo, Dalbec, Hosmer, Arroyo, maybe Refsnyder (coming off a career year but also missed a lot of time to injuries). Not exactly a gold mine to exploit but you just can't hold onto guys who never quite tap into their perceived potential or (in Ref's case and maybe also McGuire's) who may be at their zenith now. Nimmo's strength is his pull power. He has no opposite field power at all.
He's spent his career in the 21st best ballpark for LH pulled fly balls, and he has actually used a different approach there, limiting pulled flies and hitting liners to all fields instead.
He actually hits too many weak flies to left and not a lot of flies to right given how good his contact is when he does. He has to be looking for a park that's suited to him so he can concentrate on pulling the ball in the air.
So he's not going to sign with the team that that has the 28th best park for his kind of hitter, is he?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 25, 2022 14:19:47 GMT -5
395 MLB pitchers have thrown 40 IP or more. Bello ranks 5th in lowest HR/BFP. Among starters, he's off by himself: Name Team HR/BFP Brayan Bello BOS .005 Jose Quintana - - - .012 Spencer Strider ATL .013 Patri. Sandoval LAA .014 Framber Valdez HOU .014 Martin Perez TEX .014 Logan Webb SFG .014 Alex Cobb SFG .015 Dakota Hudson STL .016 Justin Steele CHC .016 218 hitters faced, # of hard hit balls hit ...
400' -- 1 (405) 380' -- 5 350' -- 10
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 25, 2022 13:33:04 GMT -5
Hitting is hard.
Casas is 5 months younger than Pedroia at the same point in his career. You may recall that Pedey was just BA's #77 prospect, versus Casas's #19 (#16 at MLB).
.122 / .173 / .204 (-12 wRC+) -- Pedey in his first 18 G / 53 PA.
.079 / .205 / .236 (24 wRC+) -- Casas in his first 13 G / 45 PA
.500 / .571 / .667 (227 wRC+) -- Pedey is next 14 PA (5 G) .375 / .653 / 1.125 (339 wRC+) -- Casas in his subsequent 14 PA (3 G)
.179 / .258 / .321 (45 wRC+) -- Pedey the rest of the way. It was apparently during this stretch that Keith Law scouted him and pegged his ceiling as a utility guy, because he "lacked the bat speed to hit major-league pitching."
.275 / .356 / .435 (102 wRC+) -- Pedey combining the last two stretches, 13 G / 45 PA. If he plays every day, Casas's post-breakout stretch will be 14 G.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 24, 2022 16:06:20 GMT -5
Casas came unto this series with a .441 OPS.
He's .375 / .643 / 1.125 in this series (3/8, 6 BB, 2 HR).
His expected BABIP coming into this game was .211. Which sucks, but is still way better than .074. It's 3.7 base hits of bad karma, ignoring batted ball type and direction.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 24, 2022 3:15:54 GMT -5
as much as some want to deny, Verdugo is clutch Year batWAR WPA Clutch 2020 0.66 0.49 -0.17 2021 0.49 2.14 1.65 2022 0.05 2.12 1.82 Total 1.21 4.75 3.29
We Love Round Numbers Department:
3.4 -- Official fWAR, 2021-2022 6.8 -- Actual fWAR, adjusting for clutch hitting
Encouraging Reality Department
J.D. Martinez WPA:
5.24, 2018
0.0, 2019-2022
This is encouraging because they can upgrade DH relative to the last 4 seasons much more easily than you might think.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 24, 2022 1:09:52 GMT -5
Lost in all this discussion is that he'll cease to be a 2023 rookie with 2.2 more IP, which should happen Sunday night on national TV.
(Tyler Danish is 0.2 IP shy; Winck, Crawford and Schreiber went over a while ago, while Seabold, and all the other relievers will still be rookies next year.)
Back to A Game of Clones ...
Who was the last Sox rookie starting pitcher who had exciting success and ...
... whose FB averaged 97 mph or better? Clemens? (Kopech and Montas if we hadn't dealt them.)
... who had no pedigree at all in terms of draft position or FA signing bonus? Anyone? (E-Rod, BTW, signed with the O's for $175K, so it's not him.)
Bryan Mata would be another, BTW.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 24, 2022 0:11:59 GMT -5
Vazquez and McGuire have similar sample sizes since the trade in which Vazquez OPS’d .500 He was overperforming his talent level in the first half and he’s consistently a bottom 5 base runner in the game. Glad we moved on personally. That whole thing was overblown at the deadline. I am curious to see if they try a McGuire and Wong tandem next year, trade for an upgrade like Murphy, or sign someone cheaper like Sanchez. fWAR per 1000 innings caught:
5.0 Murphy 1.0 McGuire, Whjte Sox 7.1 McGuire, Red Sox
2.4 Wong (career; 1.1 this year)
McG is 2.8 overall, but I think that by season's end the stats will show that the Sox performance was not random variation, and that he projects to be rather better than that.
They'll be getting under the tax limit and the McGuire / Wong combo will give excellent bang for buck. Trading one and getting Murphy would yield even better bang for buck, but it makes it harder to stay under the limit (both Murphy and and McGuire will be newly arb-eligible, but Murphy's going to get quite a bit more), and when you add in the extra prospect cost it's likely a net loss. Every small-market team desiring a catching upgrade will be after Murphy, and I think the bidding gets too high for us, since we project to be very solid. You also lose a lot of time invested in mastering pitch-calling the Bloom / Varitek way, and there's no certainty that Murphy would be good at it.
Exception case: they believe McGuire is a fluke and sell high, they already like Murphy's pitch-calling, and they are secretly low on one or more of our better prospects. That's a lot of ifs.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 23, 2022 3:54:50 GMT -5
Chaim has said they expected to make another move in the OF after the JBJ trade and he regrets that it didn't happen. We know they were talking to Pham and it's still a little strange that deal didn't happen. They were in on AJ Pollack, but the Dodgers ended up getting Craig Kimbrel for him.
Ironically, they did make the single best RH OF move that any team could have made - sign Rob Refsnyder. But then they gave the 4th OF job to Christian Arroyo out of spring training (in part to find the flexibility to keep Travis Shaw on the team), which was a serious error that deserves more scorn.
Ugh, what an ugly chain of decisions. And yet still this all could have turned out decently if Kiké had been healthy - a JBJ/Refsnyder platoon in RF and Kiké in CF would have been totally viable. Instead we got way more Duran and more JBJ than was ideal.
That's not exculpatory, though; you can never assume everyone's going to stay healthy.
Dept. of one of these things is not like the other ... best wOBA vs. LHP, minimum 65 PA.
Goldschmidt Pujols Austin Riley Altuve Bogaerts Betts Trout Refsnyder
He does have a much less impressive xwOBA (but still well above average). I'll run his batted-ball-type and location-adjusted numbers at some point.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 23, 2022 3:04:13 GMT -5
Just posted this comment ...
Jen, Statcast vertical movement includes that caused by gravity, so the harder you throw, the less movement it measures. I have no idea why they do it that way only, instead of giving you an option to see it either way.
PitchInfo has the numbers that reflect the true movement quality of the pitch. Bello is getting 9.2" of break from spin, tied for second on the team with ... Rich Hill. Pivetta has 11.8", which is 6th-best in MLB.
----
I mean, this is silly. He's thrown it twice and, out of the box he's getting 37% more break than Barnes.
Bello looks like a top of the rotation starter if he can ^ command the baseball with consistency. I think you left out the phrase "continue to" at the point indicated.
Besides the curve (and then a cutter), there are two things he needs to work on. He's had a tendency to struggling at first with his stretch mechanics when he hasn't needed to use them for a few innings. And he's actual overshot the mark in going after hitters aggressively with the bases empty--he has a 4:1 K/W ratio versus 2 : 1 withe men on, but he's actually pitched better with men on (despite the occasional mechanical struggle) because the extra walks are more than offset by weaker contact. Clay Buchholz made exactly that adjustment early in 2010.
I think that when trying to find that sweet spot, it's immensely easier to start by going all-in with challenging hitters to hit your stuff, and then back off a bit and add some nibble to the mix, than it is to slowly work your way up to the right degree of challenge.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 21, 2022 14:01:27 GMT -5
But the other part of that is this. Here's the difference, other than paying tax, of going over or not: 1) Future desire to get under the cap (no third year to lose rev sharing, etc,.) - starts the clock on this. 2) If signing a QO free agent, now must also give up 5th pick and lose an extra $500k in IFA money. 3) If losing a QO free agent, comp pick falls back from ~75 to ~135. Is that a big deal? Maybe. I do think they'd have approached the deadline differently if the knew Sale wasn't coming back and they were only getting 2 more starts from Eovaldi. What they thought instead was they were 2 games back and would get Story, Wacha, and Sale back soon in addition to the recently activated Hill and Eovaldi. I get the analysis of "we can still be in this," and determining the above is worth it, although I also get disagreeing with it. I don't see them either signing or losing a QO guy.
Right now I'm looking at Tyler Nayquin for RF (wait till I post the argument!) and Joc Pederson, already a platoon player, at DH. As I've said already, the extra rotation guy would likely be a #3 starter type that they think has unrealized upside. Sale, Wacha, Bello, Pivetta is already a very solid post-season rotation so you're looking for one more guy who's better than MLB average (definition of a #3) for depth. And that's in addition to Whitlock and Crawford.
They really want to stay under the tax limit and as I understand it, that's doable.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 21, 2022 13:47:15 GMT -5
Being 4.5 million over cap and finishing last is the absolute definition of roster mismanagement. The BONEHEAD BRADLEY TRADE made a huge contribution to both of these outcomes I have a mind to block anyone who uses the phrase "finishing last" henceforth.
The Sox are on a pace to win 84 games in a neutral division. Given the insane amount of injuries, that's pretty good. And every single players stat has been clobbered by their playing 47% of the time against opponents who collectively are good enough to play .580 ball outside the division.
To say you finished last in a division where the average team was a 94-win team says absolutely nothing.
Roster mismanagement? The first thing they did was let Eduardo Rodriguez walk for 5/$77M ($15.4 for 2023 AAV) and sign Michael Wacha for $7M.
That's 4.2 wins added, $8.4M saved, and as a penalty for this gross mismanagement they were forced to draft and sign Roman Anthony (compensation pick), the current #11 prospect.
Meanwhile, the JBJ mistake cost them 1.2 wins (1.9 Renfroe, -0.4 JBJ, 1.1 Refsnyder) but that's without adjusting for the division. It's less than a win in reality.
I am proud of my contributions to this board, but the thing I am proudest about this year is that I never even clicked on the "Is Bloom Good at his Job" thread.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 21, 2022 12:26:25 GMT -5
“I think that was something that was received really well and he continues to ask great questions and wants to learn,” Hill said. “It was something to be able to see the other night where he took that (curveball) and brought it into the game and then after he came out of the game he was showing me a couple of the videos of the curveballs he threw a few times in the game, which was really good.” ... “It fits with how he does things,” Bush said. “His aptitude is really high and his willingness to try things is great, openness and willingness and get feedback right away too, whether he likes or doesn’t like it. I think that process he’s been really good at, and that’s what’s helped him make adjustments quickly at this level.” ... “There are challenges in learning how to communicate, not everyone speaks the same language,” Bush said. “I try to speak a little Spanish as best I can. He’s been very determined to learn English. He’s done a really good job with it really fast. In some ways I try to meet him halfway and do the best I can with Spanish and other times he’s like, ‘No, I want to do this in English,’ and is determined to learn it, and it’s been really good.” theathletic.com/3609429/2022/09/20/brayan-bello-learning-curveball-red-sox/Love this guy Just posted this comment ...
Jen, Statcast vertical movement includes that caused by gravity, so the harder you throw, the less movement it measures. I have no idea why they do it that way only, instead of giving you an option to see it either way.
PitchInfo has the numbers that reflect the true movement quality of the pitch. Bello is getting 9.2" of break from spin, tied for second on the team with ... Rich Hill. Pivetta has 11.8", which is 6th-best in MLB.
----
I mean, this is silly. He's thrown it twice and, out of the box he's getting 37% more break than Barnes.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 21, 2022 12:05:18 GMT -5
The more I see from him and read about him the more I legitimately think he can be a #1 This is very interesting ... Eovaldi is apparently his #1 role model. Nate is one of the rare guys that throws cutter, slider, and curve. The cutter is the easiest pitch to learn of the three and the curve is the toughest. (The slider produces the most success relative to learning curve, so it's a good choice as a first breaking ball to master.)
It's a little counter-intuitive, but if you plan to learn both a curve and a cutter, and you are confident you can learn both. you start with the curve since it takes longer to master.
I think it almost certain that Bello adds a cutter next year at some point. His 4-seamer and sinker are so distinct that they really count as two pitches (not always the case). So we're talking about six pitches, most or all of them average or better (with at least 2 high up in plus territory), plus the smarts to use them to maximal effect. (Note that adding a pitch that gets a bit below-average results can still be an overall win, as it gives hitters miore to think about and makes all the other pitchers a bit better.)
This is the sort of thing you can't pick up by scouting his stuff.
Note that Eduardo Rodriguez, not quite the coachability poster-child, learned the cutter in his second season and never tried to learn a curve, even though he
had no pitch that broke to his glove side (his slider was pretty much vertical).
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 21, 2022 11:21:56 GMT -5
Bello has a 2.67 ERA as a starter since his recall in mid-late August, but if you adjust for Ort allowing all 3 of his inherited runners (the run expectancy was 1.2 runs), plus accurately assess the two errors made behind him in the Yankees inning, it's 2.39. If you just adjust for Ort, it's 2.13.
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 17, 2022 12:58:13 GMT -5
I'm about where y'all are. Locks: Walter Murphy Rafaela Ward Valdez German Abreu (I can't imagine they trade for him then expose him) Maybe/potentially picked: R. Fernandez Paulino W. Gonzalez Politi Shugart I'll add that Bazardo's roster spot might depend on this audition. Ort too. Sperier in today's Globe names the same seven, plus Paulino and W. Gonzalez.
I missed what Ort did in his last outing:
FB 95.8 > 99.1 Sl 85.9 - 87.9
But the 99.1 average is misleading, since he went:
97.2, 98.6, 98.9, 99.2, 99.7, 99.8, (2 sliders), 99.8, 100.2, 100.7.
Re Paulino and Gonzalez ... sure, grabbing one and using him as the 26th man works fine in a vacuum. But how many teams will have an roster spot, and how many other low-A prospects as good or better are going to be left unprotected because so many teams have a 40-man crunch?
To put it another way, how many low-A guys do you expect to be drafted? A couple, maybe, at best? What are the odds that one of those guys is from the Sox org, given where our farm system is ranked ?
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 17, 2022 3:24:27 GMT -5
BTW, my quick-and-dirty division adjustment still has the Sox 1.5 games ahead of the Guardians. In a balanced schedule, we'd be 4.5 G behind the Mariners for the last WC spot, and 5.5 behind the O's.
And given all the injuries, being 6 games over .500 wouldn't have folks in despair for next year. In fact, you can set aside the bullpen struggles and lack of clutch hitting -- the reasons why we're not in the thick of the W/C race amounts to:
A) Chris Sale essentially missed the whole year B) We played in the AL East, who collective have played .580 ball against everyone else.
Fun fact: Tampa is further west than Cleveland, by about 50 miles.
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 15, 2022 23:34:32 GMT -5
There are 142 starting pitchers that have faced 100+ hitters since August 1. So that's basically the rotation of every team.
Bello ranks 32nd in wOBA and 35th in xwOBA. Ranking 30th would make you a league-average #2 starter.
There are 150 starters with 20 IP. Bello ranks 10th in FIP- and 36th in xFIP-. But I'm inclined to use only the Statcast numbers henceforth, while adjusting them for batted ball distribution when possible (doing everyone in MLB is not much more effort than doing one guy, and I intend do that after the season is over).
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 14, 2022 23:04:43 GMT -5
Big thing we learned in this game was that Statcast is pre-loaded with a pitcher's known arsenal -- because Bello says he threw two curveballs in this game, and they were really easy to identify from among his "sliders," using vertical movement and velocity. Slider vertical break in this game averaged 39" (including gravity), max 44", and these two were 53" and 54". They were also the two slowest of his "sliders", at an average of 80.5 versus 84.5 for the slider.
If you have the game recorded, go to 47:13, 1-0 count on Hicks in the 3rd, and 1:27:55, 0-2 count on Hicks in the 5th.
First thing you'll notice is that Wong, each time, take an unusually long time poking around on PitchCom.
His first pro curve was in the dirt. Hicks managed to get his bat on the second and fouled it off the ump.
Looks to me like a pretty good, classic 12 to 6 curve. Maybe someone with a recording and skills I've never heard of it can create a video of the one in the 5th.
NESN had footage of some guy named Hill teaching it to him, and Bello was upbeat about adding it to his repertoire.
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 14, 2022 13:30:00 GMT -5
The easiest way to dodge the QO dilemma is to re-sign them before the deadline for doing so.
I'm hoping to see that for Wacha.
That would be buying high. The idea, of course, is that you wouldn't.
A surprisingly accurate predictor for perceived worth (and hence FA contracts) is just a pitcher's last 3 seasons weighted 3-2-1. That's essentially the Marcel the Monkey predictor without an age adjustment.
Wacha is worth $14M this way.
Now, the first catch is that he was worth minus $4M in each of his previous two seasons and projects be worth something like $32M this year.
The second catch is that he appears to have a real wOBA - xwOBA skill, going back to 2018.
It may well be true that the Red Sox completely understand why both of these things have happened. At the very least, they almost certainly have a very good idea. It looks as if they signed him because of his apparent balls-in-play skill, and it appears as if they did something that contributed a lot to turning his below replacement level results into that of a borderline ace.
IOW, the Sox are in a position to make the most accurate possible projection of his future value. Every one else has to try and figure it out.
From Wacha's POV ... given who Bloom is, you'd have to guess that analytics contributed to Wacha's success. Pitch selection, pitch sequencing and tunneling, and so on. If so, that's a very strong incentive to re-sign with the Sox.
And players who re-sign with teams do so a bit below FA market value.
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 13, 2022 12:32:22 GMT -5
I’d like to know which names the Cubs would ask for in Ian Happ discussions. I think he’d be a good fit for LF if you move Verdugo to RF, which you could. Happ only has one year remaining on his deal. Normally I’d say you could lock him up for longer with an extension but I’m not sure that’s Bloom’s MO. The player would also have to agree, obviously. Happ seems more like a Theo move than a Bloom move. Still, I like the player and he fits into the lineup well enough. When we got Verdugo, he was a good enough defender to play RF in Fenway. He's apparently put on weight since then.
Even if they end up finding a RF, they should sit him down and tell him it's time to turn himself into an age-27 start by getting in the proverbial Best Shape of His Life. But finding a guy who can play LR in Fenway would be hugely easier than finding a RF.
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