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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 3, 2024 13:59:07 GMT -5
Did I miss something? Beyond the missing coach, why is the rest of the stadium empty? As someone who just landed in Chicago, the weather isn’t great. As someone who has Cubs tickets tonight and White Sox tickets tomorrow, I hope it gets better lol Cubs game made it through (though it was freezing), White Sox game sadly postponed. Kyle Freeland’s career is surprisingly interesting for how boring a pitcher he is. I’m so fascinated by, in this world where MLB draft picks often flame out before ever reaching the bigs, a top draft pick making the bigs and then proceeding to have an extremely average career. Is that a bust? In any other sport getting an average player from a top 10 pick is certainly a disappointment, but in baseball he probably represents an okay outcome, especially given he had two very quality seasons. Anyway, all that came to mind because I was watching him get completely drilled last night. Seiya Suzuki hit an absolute rope that the stadium announced was 115 mph. Given how low the ball flew but still got out, I believe it. Sad to not be able to see Strider pitch against the White Sox today, but oh well! Going to see the Brewers Saturday, luckily that one is safe weather-wise. Last point - Wrigley pretty comfortably slides into #2 in my stadium rankings and if I weren’t a Sox fan it’d probably be #1, it’s such a perfect environment in my opinion.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 3, 2024 13:27:08 GMT -5
Sorry to be a little bit of a contrarian here, but I think Rafaela's catch last night was a fine catch, but not stupendous. I suspect there are a number of CF in the majors who would have made that catch, albeit with maybe a bit more effort. He made it look pretty easy, in fact; he actually slowed down and gathered his legs under him a bit before he did the little leap to make the catch. The most impressive part of the play to me was AFTER the catch. He didn't hit the wall; he worked the wall to reverse his momentum back toward the infield while pivoting and then hitting the cutoff man. Not only does the guy have tools - he knows how to play baseball. Not sure if you’ve ever been to a game in Oakland (wouldn’t blame you, if I didn’t grow up near there I wouldn’t be clamoring to go), but that outfield is MASSIVE, so I think the optics of his ease are probably underselling how much distance he had to travel, which I’d bet is why the xBA was so high on the contact.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 3, 2024 10:04:49 GMT -5
That’s fair, but really to me, moving him out of the majors causes other issues as this roster is not that deep. Take him from center, really the only other option is Duran who is mediocre at best in center. Put Duran in center, then Abreu or Yoshida is in left. Abreu also is struggling offensively, so if you put him in left you make the defense worse without helping the offense. If you put Yoshida in left you severely harm the defense, and there really isn’t another guy who is deserving of being the DH spot. When Refsynder really isn’t a full time player, so he doesn’t alleviate the issues. Frankly, having Rafaela in center. Is maximizing overall value. I suppose if you think Valdez is a full time second baseman, and Grissom can’t handle second and should be in left (as the Braves thought), then it is a different conversation. The Braves didn't think Grissom couldn't handle 2nd, they just happen to have Albies locked up and going nowhere and he's arguably the best 2nd baseman in the league. Certainly he is one of them anyway so Grissom if he was going to get consistent PT with the Braves it was going to have to be at a position other than 2nd. Yeah if the Braves actually thought Grissom should be a left fielder than they would’ve just made him one lol
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 3, 2024 9:49:58 GMT -5
I’ll start my disagreement here by saying that I’m not in the camp of those who want to send him down, and I generally don’t have strong reactions to his individual plate appearances, no more than I would any other as a snap judgment. Now the former is as much because I think this high variance hitter may just be who he is and I’m willing to ride with it given the value he provides on defense. Anyway, you present it as if the ant-Rafaela camp (I know no one here is actually “against him” but you get what I mean) is coming up with new and unrelated things to criticize him for every night, when I don’t think that’s the case. The criticisms have always been that doesn’t appear to have a plan at the plate and gets too chase-happy, which then manifests itself in different ways game to game, whether it be striking out or taking too few pitches. I can see how that would appear logically scattered on its face, but I think it’s generally consistent. And the scouting report and podcasts here have been talking literally for years about how Rafaela makes poor swing decisions, but the excellent bat-to-ball skills translates to him making a lot of weak contact on balls outside or on the edge of the zone. So "he strikes out too much" and "he pops up several times" fit into the same, very well-established concern about his approach.
Really, it's practically like the official position of soxprospects.com, and it seems strange to act as if it's just some ad hoc anti-Rafaela complaining for the sake of complaining or something. (It also has nothing to do with sabermetrics or whatever; we're all watching these PAs...)
Haha yeah I’ve always found the “watch the games” argument regarding Rafaela to be funny when this has been the report from everyone that has laid eyes on him, from our resident game-watcher Ian to neutral parties
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 3, 2024 9:48:57 GMT -5
The Red Sox have a 92 wRC+, .106 ISO, and 27.6% K Rate. They’ve faced some great pitching aside from game 5 so it’s not a big concern, but I would love to see them mash long ball prone Ross Stripling today. This is the other thing in the Rafaela discussion - if the rest of the offense starts humming, you can more easily look past his struggles, but they’re heightened when that spot is relied upon more to help keep the offense afloat. In my opinion, anyway.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 3, 2024 8:11:35 GMT -5
The glove is game changing. Unfortunately, the bate is nearly as bad in the opposite direction and mostly the fault of chasing anything and everything. him being so gifted defensively in the OF, ability to play 2b, so fast makes him a valuable roster addition regardless. knock on why Duran was removed late in the game with runs at a premium. Everyone is over-analyzing him. Let him play and make adjustments and figure things out. Everyone complains that he strikes out too much. Tonight he puts the ball in play 4 times and draws a walk. Now the complaints are that he’s not seeing enough pitches. People need to be a little more patient here. He’s been a big leaguer for about 10 minutes. There will be growing pains. His ability to impact the game defensively cannot be overlooked, however. I’m enjoying the show. He will improve at the plate too. I’ll start my disagreement here by saying that I’m not in the camp of those who want to send him down, and I generally don’t have strong reactions to his individual plate appearances, no more than I would any other as a snap judgment. Now the former is as much because I think this high variance hitter may just be who he is and I’m willing to ride with it given the value he provides on defense. Anyway, you present it as if the ant-Rafaela camp (I know no one here is actually “against him” but you get what I mean) is coming up with new and unrelated things to criticize him for every night, when I don’t think that’s the case. The criticisms have always been that doesn’t appear to have a plan at the plate and gets too chase-happy, which then manifests itself in different ways game to game, whether it be striking out or taking too few pitches. I can see how that would appear logically scattered on its face, but I think it’s generally consistent.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 2, 2024 22:36:34 GMT -5
I know there’s much more nuance to the discussion regarding Rafaela because he has service time considerations and there is reason to believe there is development left with the bat that may or may not be best served in AAA, but I think we’re starting to see the aesthetic byproduct of his game that we saw with JBJ (which, not tooting my own horn because it’s not that smart a take, I did predict that’d happen and it does affect my biased).
What I mean by that is that Rafaela can hit like this and still be a valuable player, but because it is so frustrating and awful to watch he won’t be treated as providing the value he still does.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 2, 2024 22:27:23 GMT -5
Am I reading it incorrectly or is that chart wrong? The teams are off, looks like they sorted a column and the rest didn’t go with it. I think the left column is individual pitchers and the right column (which overlaps the left slightly) is team stats. Oh yeah I just hadn’t clicked into the actual tweet lol good call
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 2, 2024 22:15:01 GMT -5
Ceddanne is such a joy to watch in the field and such a nightmare to watch at the plate Careful, the resident Ceddane defender will come around and tell you that, even though you’re specifically talking about watching him, you’ll need to take your nose out of the spreadsheets and learn the game!
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 2, 2024 20:49:20 GMT -5
At this moment Rafaela is leading the team in RBI has the same number of strikeouts as Casas. Has a higher batting average than; Casas, Story, Devers, Duran, Yoshida, and Valdez. Yet people want to give up on him after five games? The fact is his weaknesses have always been his weaknesses and as he has advanced through the minors at each level people have said, "Yes he hit in the DSL but will his approach work in the; GCL, in low A, in high A, in AA, in AAA and every time it's worked. In fact he's gotten better in most cases. These are the same people that gave up on Duran. Knowing statistics and knowing baseball are two completely different things. They see what they want to see. “gave up” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this very ironic argument.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 2, 2024 20:47:53 GMT -5
Am I reading it incorrectly or is that chart wrong? The teams are off, looks like they sorted a column and the rest didn’t go with it.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 2, 2024 17:00:07 GMT -5
Ian and Chris discussed it on the new pod and it's true. The Woo-Sox are immensely boring. Well they didn't exactly say that. Even the guys who are ranked are older org-up-and-down types. Particularly the lineup. I feel like the AAA team has always been kinda boring since I’ve started following the minors, outside of a couple guys a year. It’s mostly just semi-functional MLB depth, if a guy is a bona fide prospect more often than not he won’t stop between AA and the bigs for long.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 2, 2024 11:59:25 GMT -5
Red Sox will have a total draft bonus pool of $10,521,600. By pick: 1(12): $5,484,600 2(50): $1,846,400 3(86): $878,800 4(115): $630,900 5(148): $457,900 6(177): $351,100 7(207): $274,600 8(237): $219,900 9(267): $194,600 10(297): $182,800 www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2024-mlb-draft-bonus-pools-slot-values-for-each-team/ So roughly the same pool as last year despite the two fewer picks, will be a smaller class this year but the money is there to move around for a few high level guys.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 2, 2024 9:29:04 GMT -5
the CHW game was delayed in the bottom of the 8th because the 1st base coach was MIA,,, Did I miss something? Beyond the missing coach, why is the rest of the stadium empty? As someone who just landed in Chicago, the weather isn’t great. As someone who has Cubs tickets tonight and White Sox tickets tomorrow, I hope it gets better lol
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 2, 2024 4:10:31 GMT -5
Great win against The Bad News Bears. Houck made it one strong start the first time around the rotation. Duran has become a dynamic leadoff man. I'm not even sure this A's team makes it to 50 wins or even plays .300 ball. They're as bad as some of the worst Orioles teams we've seen prior to their revival. Truly don't wish to be a down er on the nice end result of Houck's game, but we all must take into consideration he did manage to be around the plate consistently all 6 IP, which he doesn't always manage to do. Had really good command and drop of his splitter, which he doesn't always have, plus was facing which many have pointed out a team that just may lose more games than the 112 they lost in 2023.. They seem that bad. Yes, I have always thought houck was the perfect 2-3IP reliever, or once thru the lineup guy, but today he just kept mowing the same guys down. He did change tactics 2nd time thru, many probably noticed, rather than hitting them slider hvy 1st time round #2m he attack with FB and the splitter, which doesn't always work for him real well. Take it and move on. Rotation looks 90's Braves caliber thru 5 games does it not? Be a downer if you want, but I’m not really understanding the basis of your pessimism. He pitched well because he pitched well but he doesn’t always pitch well? I think the “he doesn’t always do this” argument kind of ignores that the optimism around him revolves around the brand new coaching being a reason to believe this could become a more consistent thing. Now the level of competition is absolutely a massive grain of salt to take all of this with, but I think if you look at that start and lean towards “yeah but he’s not always like that” over “hey maybe the work the new coaching staff has put in will pay dividends” then yeah, I’d say you’re probably being unnecessarily pessimistic. Either option is equally possible, so why not lean towards the fun one after a win?
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 2, 2024 3:48:48 GMT -5
RedSox legend Dinelson Lamet getting the call for the Dodgers Dodgers went Paxton, Brasier, Joe Kelly, Lamet yesterday. They want to be the Red Sox so badly
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 1, 2024 20:51:18 GMT -5
The patience with Duran....credit to the Sox. ML ballplayer. I was firmly team sell high and will be very happy to be proven wrong.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 1, 2024 20:15:38 GMT -5
I am glad to see that even with a new cast in the FO, you continue to work from the assumption that they know something no other person or organization does. I call it the “Eric Van/Zach Godley Hypothesis.” I hope you are right, but I’d say, for example, a 30-year old who has never pitched in America and was dumped by the Rays hardly counts as reliable depth. Maybe he is the next Koji-level discovery… but I am nervous to test that. Dumped by the Rays like ... Cooper Criswell?
Did you get that I implied that Uwasawa would be either the #7 or #8 starter? How high is that bar?
Track record of so far with non-established pitchers:
Traded Luis Urías to the Seattle Mariners. Received Isaiah Campbell. Traded Alex Verdugo to the New York Yankees. Received Richard Fitts (minors), Nicholas Judice (minors) and Greg Weissert. Traded Ryan Ammons (minors) to the New York Mets. Received Justin Slaten (minors). Signed Cooper Criswell as a free agent.
they know something no other person or organization does
No, no. The best organizations have figured out ways to make certain types of pitchers better. They have methodologies. It's not a mystic, guy-by-guy thing; it's "this guy fits the profile of guys who would benefit a lot from [X]."
And these teams soon become teams that don't need to add much pitching. So there are likely a few teams saying, damn, that closes the gap some, but we are full up with guys that are as good or better.
A final note ... one thing I have learned of late is that pessimists have no idea how they sound to other, else they would STF up. It's tiresome.
I mean, seriously ... I spend all winter arguing that the alleged bad rotation will be great, and so far it's playing just out as I thought ... and you feel compelled to go after any optimism over the #7 or 8 starter?
Dude, my goodness. You occasionally post some interesting information but you have become entirely insufferable. You are not nearly as smart as you think you are and it’s extremely ironic that you’re talking about others having no idea how they sound to others. Get off your high horse and attempt to let your data do the talking as opposed to instantly jumping to condescension the second someone dares to disagree with you. And for the record, you are *way* too deluded by optimism if you actually believe they are seeing things that no one else is seeing. The early returns have been good for sure but we can acknowledge that without deifying them.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Apr 1, 2024 8:29:31 GMT -5
This doesn't really feel like anything beyond aggregating a lot of the guys that have already been mocked to the Sox, really. The Morlando thing I'm just pretty out on, that's just not the type of archetype they should be chasing that high in the draft.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Mar 31, 2024 19:16:36 GMT -5
Is anyone else having issues with getting automatically logged out whenever you close out of the forum tab? Usually it’s whenever I close my window entirely on a computer or when I clear my history on my phone, I’ve never had it to where every time I went back to the site I’m logged out.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Mar 31, 2024 19:09:14 GMT -5
In a really good position to come off of this road trip with a winning record. Give me 6-4 and I’ll be happy. The losses were frustrating but this seems like a clearly competent team, and there is known offensive talent that has yet to fully coalesce.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Mar 30, 2024 17:59:55 GMT -5
My favorite part is that Castellanos takes the step towards the dugout knowing he’s cooked and you can see the moment where he’s like “are they really about to bail me out?”.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Mar 30, 2024 13:33:51 GMT -5
I feel like half of the angst from last night will disappear pretty immediately if Devers is in the lineup tonight
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Mar 29, 2024 23:06:19 GMT -5
Meh, pitching was mostly excellent and the offense had a bad day in a situation where the lineup got jumbled at the last minute with the best hitter scratched. Especially given it was against an excellent starter, I’m fine forgetting this ever happened and moving on.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Mar 29, 2024 23:02:17 GMT -5
Oh now he gives the bottom of the zone
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