SoxProspects News
|
|
|
|
Legal
Forum Ground Rules
The views expressed by the members of this Forum do not necessarily reflect the views of SoxProspects, LLC.
© 2003-2024 SoxProspects, LLC
|
|
|
|
|
Forum Home | Search | My Profile | Messages | Members | Help |
Welcome Guest. Please Login or Register.
Recent Posts
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 20, 2015 15:57:41 GMT -5
The one way I could see parting with Swihart would be in a deal for one of the top young pitchers, like a Sonny Gray, etc. I wonder if a Margot+Swihart offer would bring in a Gray type? If it would, it might be the right kind of deal, particularly if the other side included another useful player, a decent RP, or a low level high ceiling prospect.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 20, 2015 15:47:29 GMT -5
I don't doubt that Shaw is going to cool off at some point, but I probably am higher on him than most on the site. I think there is a real possibility he could be an above average 1B and solve the Sox problem there. And it would be a bonanza for the Sox if that happened. It is going to be very hard to find someone else to play 1B for the Sox exceptionally well. Shaw might. If he does the Sox can spend more resources fixing the pitching. The reason I think this is that his minor league record is more impressive than he gets credit for and he has demonstrated good power and a good batting eye throughout. He had a rough start this year and it is on that basis that many people seem to doubt him, not noticing how well he hit once he got going. He started with Lowell is 2011 out of Kent State and he had an OPS of .816 with 8 HRs in 216 ABs. In 2012 he was fast-tracked. He began with Salem where he had a .957 OPS and 16 HRs in 359 ABs. He then was promoted to Portland where he had a .781 OPS and 3 HRs in 110 ABs. He spent 2013 at Portland where he had a .736 OPS and 16HRs, but he tore up the Arizona Fall league with an OPS of 1.157 and 5 HRs in 61 ABs. In 2014 at Portland he had a .954 OPS and 11 HRs in 177 ABs and then a .751 OPS and 10 HRs at Pawtucket in 318 ABs. I think he led the minor league system in HRs. Those are pretty good numbers and they show that he made adjustments and got better as he progressed. He still seems to be doing that. When you combine what appears to be very good hitting skills with very good defensive skills you have a very good player. I may be wrong but I think more people will agree me on him by the end of the season. And what if he turns out just to be average? That's all the Sox really need with the way the other players are developing. What we have seen recently is not as bad a team as it was earlier in the season. And Pedroia isn't playing now. With him in the lineup, it is an even better team. Really nice pattern for a while of being below average (for a 1b) until he adjust to a league, then above average after that. But... the pattern is broken by his poor 2015 at AAA: .249 .318 .356 .674, omitted from your summary, and adding up to over a full year at AAA hitting .256 .319 .395 .715. This is the fly in the ointment. I thought someone else pointed out that he basically had two seasons at Pawtucket this year. He started out poorly but then started hitting very well, above .300 for a period of time after his first call-up, until he was called up this time. I don't have the breakdown, but he followed the same pattern as he has all along, getting better, in this case significantly better. And he carried that to Boston. One of the radio broadcasters asked what happened and he said "things just suddenly clicked," and he has been hitting well every since.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 20, 2015 14:26:21 GMT -5
I don't doubt that Shaw is going to cool off at some point, but I probably am higher on him than most on the site. I think there is a real possibility he could be an above average 1B and solve the Sox problem there. And it would be a bonanza for the Sox if that happened. It is going to be very hard to find someone else to play 1B for the Sox exceptionally well. Shaw might. If he does the Sox can spend more resources fixing the pitching.
The reason I think this is that his minor league record is more impressive than he gets credit for and he has demonstrated good power and a good batting eye throughout. He had a rough start this year and it is on that basis that many people seem to doubt him, not noticing how well he hit once he got going.
He started with Lowell is 2011 out of Kent State and he had an OPS of .816 with 8 HRs in 216 ABs.
In 2012 he was fast-tracked. He began with Salem where he had a .957 OPS and 16 HRs in 359 ABs. He then was promoted to Portland where he had a .781 OPS and 3 HRs in 110 ABs.
He spent 2013 at Portland where he had a .736 OPS and 16HRs, but he tore up the Arizona Fall league with an OPS of 1.157 and 5 HRs in 61 ABs.
In 2014 at Portland he had a .954 OPS and 11 HRs in 177 ABs and then a .751 OPS and 10 HRs at Pawtucket in 318 ABs. I think he led the minor league system in HRs.
Those are pretty good numbers and they show that he made adjustments and got better as he progressed. He still seems to be doing that.
When you combine what appears to be very good hitting skills with very good defensive skills you have a very good player.
I may be wrong but I think more people will agree me on him by the end of the season.
And what if he turns out just to be average? That's all the Sox really need with the way the other players are developing. What we have seen recently is not as bad a team as it was earlier in the season. And Pedroia isn't playing now. With him in the lineup, it is an even better team.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 20, 2015 14:04:53 GMT -5
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 20, 2015 9:49:07 GMT -5
I don't think the Sox should do anything with Swihart until it is determined that Vazquez has fully recovered. That won't be until next spring.
It also would make no sense to trade Bogaerts. His defense has improved enormously and he has become one of the best hitters in the league. He is part of the core of the Sox now and I really doubt Dombrowski - who is a big believer in being good up the middle - is going to screw with that. And he doesn't have to. He has plenty of other options.
If any big name gets traded, my bet is that it is Hanley. He doesn't fit into this team. I will be very surprised if he still is with the team come spring.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 19, 2015 22:59:23 GMT -5
Wish I heard him say this in context because I could say the same thing. Hope it was a joke. I was an accounting major, too, for an entire semester. Also took two semesters of Stats and Linear Algebra. Doesn't make me an expert or qulified in any of this. Kind of like when I go to Western Europe and drive. I can read the road signs and follow traffic, but a lot of the time I have minimal confidence in my route or outcome. I usually have that problem on the roads England, Japan or Singapore where having to do everything the opposite of what I'm used to makes me feel dyslexic. Maybe that is the problem many of us have had adjusting to sabermetrics which sometimes seems to produce counter-intuitive results.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 19, 2015 17:09:24 GMT -5
Why do the Sox managers rest several of their best players at the same time? Francona did it and Farrell did it. It seems unfair to the fans who bought tickets to this game not to see Betts or Bogaerts or Hanley.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 19, 2015 8:40:29 GMT -5
There also is Sam Travis at Portland. He has been one of the best hitters in the Sox system this year even though he has not shown a lot of power so far.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 22:58:29 GMT -5
Some time ago when I wrote a piece pushing Shaw I pointed out that he had a history of getting better but sometimes it took him a while, including three shots at Portland. This year at Pawtucket looks worse than last year, but it is deceptive. He had a poor start but then caught fire and hit well above .300 before he started riding the shuttle between Pawtucket and Boston.
He is very good at the game of baseball. He does the little things very well. He has excellent instincts. I will be surprised if he is not a major league regular. He may not be a superstar, but I think he will do reasonably well. Given the present options he seems like a good bet next year. However, now with Dombrowski, all bets are off.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 22:08:51 GMT -5
For weeks dozens of us have been trying to figure out how to fix the Sox and there was very little consensus. Mostly, we scratched our collective heads about what to do about Hanley and Sandoval, a terrible bullpen and lousy starting pitching without spending a fortune on free agents or trading away the farm. It didn't seem that the team management had any better idea than most of us. Well, folks, that's about to change. Things are going to happen. And I am all for that. I always have believed that when things are not going well, make changes even if the changes are not obviously better. Change is better than standing still. This is the type of thinking that allowed Tito to be replaced by Bobby Valentine. I didn't say make a change that almost any idiot would know is the wrong one.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 21:46:09 GMT -5
For weeks dozens of us have been trying to figure out how to fix the Sox and there was very little consensus. Mostly, we scratched our collective heads about what to do about Hanley and Sandoval, a terrible bullpen and lousy starting pitching without spending a fortune on free agents or trading away the farm. It didn't seem that the team management had any better idea than most of us.
Well, folks, that's about to change. Things are going to happen. And I am all for that. I always have believed that when things are not going well, make changes even if the changes are not obviously better. Change is better than standing still.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 21:10:26 GMT -5
Well, with the Dombrowski announcement, everything we all assumed about what the Sox might or might not do can now be trashed. Our minds should be wiped clean, and we should start over with this thread!
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 21:04:31 GMT -5
Dombrowski got Iglesias from the Sox two years ago and Cespedes during the winter and he traded Cespedes at the deadline for two pretty decent pitching prospects. I think Detroit came out ahead on those deals. Just saying.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 20:55:28 GMT -5
Rodriguez hitting 95 in the 8th.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 17:37:49 GMT -5
Cespedes was not good for the Red Sox last year for us and I didn't really hear anyone arguing to keep him. And who predicted he'd be (on pace for) over 5 fWAR player this year? That's gotta be as unlikely of an outcome as Panda and Hanley being a combined -2.4. I bet I could have gotten 100,000-1 odds that Cespedes would lead Panda and Hanley combined by 7 fWAR this season. This is just using hindsight to argue about what they should have done. May as well go through the entire major leagues and pick the top 10 players in fWAR that changed teams as the targets they should have gone after. It's not entirely true that there was no support for Cespedes here. I was one of them and had a series of arguments here about him. I liked him a lot more than most but I also liked the Porcello trade. I thought it was going to turn out a lot better than it did. I still hope will work out.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 15:43:54 GMT -5
I don't disagree with your conclusion that the Sox might be in the race if they had Lackey and Cespedes - assuming they performed the same for the Sox as they are doing now - but I disagree with using WAR as the method of analysis.
As I see it WAR is a method of comparing players, but in no way do I see that it guarantees any actual wins. I think it is an indicator, but no more.
The weird thing about it is that if you put Lackey in the rotation in place of one of the starters with no WAR - or even minus WAR - from the beginning of the season, the actual result probably would be more wins than Lackey's WAR. And I think it gets even more extreme if an even better pitcher is put into the rotation. What if the Sox had Scherzer? They probably would have at least ten wins more than they do now, maybe more, and that's more than his WAR.
Does this make sense?
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 13:12:18 GMT -5
I am in favor of trading Hanley because I think the team is better off with a better defensive outfield, and I don't think he will be a good 1B. Also, his bat has not turned out to be all that great. It might be better next year, but if a deal could be done, it would be smart for the Sox to do it. But I think it will be very difficult to do.
The only teams that should be interested in him are AL teams in need of a DH. And he might turn out to be a really good DH. But his salary is well above what a DH should get - i.e. what Ortiz is getting - and the Sox would have to kick in a bunch of coin.
I think there is a reasonable chance that Sandoval will be better next year. I write that because at times this year he has been really good, which I think means he isn't in a true decline phase, just in a terribly inconsistent one. That may be due to changing teams, leagues, etc. and tension he feels about his situation. There also isn't a good near-term alternative to him in the minor league pipeline, or in the FA market.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 12:55:39 GMT -5
In recent years the Sox have not made it a practice to recall a large number of players in September. Francona didn't like having a whole lot of players crowding the locker room and I don't think Farrell was real fond of having a bunch, either. So, what are the chances things will change this year?
The ones that I would like to see, in reverse order of the list, Hernandez, Light, Marban, Diaz, Cuevas, Johnson, Aro, Noe, Escobar, Marrero, Hill, Weeks and maybe Leon if Buchholz is really coming back. Basically, every pitcher who has a chance of being useful next year plus a few position players who might compete for a bench job, or might be traded.
I don't know what they do with Craig if they can't get someone to take him almost for free, with the Sox eating some of his salary.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 18, 2015 10:07:07 GMT -5
I think this idea of selling high on prospects is not realistic.
First, there is a strong tendency to value one's prospects higher than they really are worth and, especially, before they really have shown their skills against higher level competition. I have seen that consistently here over the years, especially with new, young prospects. I used to argue against rating new prospects until they played - or at least not rate them in the top 20 - but didn't get much support for that argument.
Second, there is a presumption that other teams can be fooled into paying top price for a prospect when he is highly valued here. Other teams have scouts and talent evaluators and they also are looking at the prospects of other teams. They are not going to be fooled by a sudden surge of performance. Much of the time, they are looking for the undervalued talent, not the overvalued players.
Keep in mind that the ratings here of the Sox prospects are relative to one another, not to those on other teams. So, even though a player may be in the top ten here, he may not be in the top 50 when considered against other talent. I am not saying that is the case, but just that it could be.
There has been a tendency on this site for many years to rate new, high draft choices, quite high initially and once done their rating is a bit sticky, often not dropping as fast as the player's performance. And just the opposite frequently occurs with players without great pedigrees when they perform well above expectations. Thus, just for a current example, Trey Ball still is rated ahead of Travis Shaw and Pat Light, and even Michael Chavis, who seem to me to have demonstrated better skills and potential. Marerro is rated ahead of all of them, yet Shaw is the one on the verge of winning a major league starting position. I doubt Ball has much trade value at all. Marrero has some, but the other three have more.
My purpose is not to overly criticize the ratings, but to caution that they should be kept in perspective. They do not necessarily represent how other teams view the Sox minor league players.
An example, I think, is Margot. He is very highly rated here and there is no doubt he has great skills. He is very young for his level and that makes it a bit hard to evaluate him fairly. The tendency here is to rate a player higher when he is playing in a league where he is much younger than the average even when his performance is not all that exceptional. And that is the case right now with Margot. He is only hitting .243. When I have raised that as a caution about him here I have been criticized for not taking his age into account. However, if you look at the minor league records of star players they usually hit well at every level regardless of age. Not every one, but most.
I think that if the Sox could have gotten Hamels, or, more probably, another, younger, ace, for a deal involving Margot as the centerpiece it would have been done. So I would not assume that he is at peak value right now.
I think it would be a mistake to trade Bradley, especially right now. For him to have great value he would have to show that his recent performance can be sustained over time, after pitchers have made adjustments. Right now, for the most part, they are pitching him the way they did when he had holes in his swing that he now has corrected. They soon will start trying other ways of pitching him and that is when he will show whether this performance is real. Until he does that his trade value will not be significant.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 17, 2015 19:52:45 GMT -5
I was away from the computer when Hanley did whatever he did, or didn't do, but the guys on the radio were really ripping him up a couple of minutes ago.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 17, 2015 12:00:51 GMT -5
The only other defensible pick was probably Meadows, who they should have taken. But we also might note how there are very few good pitchers in our system, and lots of position players. I had Shipley as the guy I wanted after Fraizer and Stewart, but Smith, Peterson, McGuire, and Crawford all had some top 10 helium and would have been justifiable picks, even if they weren't rumored as matches. Remember when Gonzalez was rumored as being a possibility at #7? IIRC, some members were threatening bodily harm if they took him at #7, or maybe that was just me. There are five pitchers on that list who already have made the majors: Marco replacement level pitcher for 34 innings in 2014, followed by 5.5 ERA in AAA in 2015 and supporting FIP data. 50 grade overall from Kileyand ChiChi Gonzales Replacement level pitching this year, striking out less per 9 than he is walking. Average-ish minor league stats, but still a solid prospect from the scouting side. Best of this bunch, Rob Kaminsky Don't see this guy in the majors, unless I'm looking up the wrong one Michael Lorenzen 5.46 ERA in 90 MLb innings supported by FIP data. Solid in AA last year, but nothing that would suggest other than his 50 gradeand Corey Knebel Reliever. Given the obvious Sox need for pitching, it would have made more sense to draft a pitcher with more advanced development, with a record of achievement at a higher level. The more I think about it, the less sense this pick made. Added some context in the blue. While the Ball pick is not looking good, these guys were not obvious answers. Off subject from Ball... The 2013 draft clearly looks weak at the top with Ball's performance, and Denny's off field issues, but I think we did good after round ten with Asuaje, Dubon, and Longhi. All ~ top 20 in the system while only spending 350K over slot. There's only so much detail one can put into a post. I considered putting the records of the players in the post, but it would have made it far too long. My point is that there were players closer to the majors and several have made it. It's probably too early for some of them to say that their immediate performance is indicative of what they might be. It also is possible, but I don't know for a fact, that some of them were rushed. I did read a comment about Knebel being rushed because of Detroit's RP problems. And you are right. These three might be real bargains. However, since their promotions Asuaje and Dubon have cooled off, Dubon more so, but it may be just a period of adjustment. Longhi has gotten very good notices at Greenville and is holding his own in competition with the big name players there.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 17, 2015 11:10:58 GMT -5
There are five pitchers on that list who already have made the majors: Marco and ChiChi Gonzales, Rob Kaminsky, Michael Lorenzen and Corey Knebel. Given the obvious Sox need for pitching, it would have made more sense to draft a pitcher with more advanced development, with a record of achievement at a higher level. The more I think about it, the less sense this pick made. You could go through every draft and make better picks using hindsight. It's pointless though. They were trying to go for upside and Ball had the most at that point in time. There was the physical projection, the fact that he wasn't a full time pitcher, the fact that he didn't play nearly as much as everyone else because he was up north. Because it didn't work out so far doesn't mean it was a bad pick at that time. It was right around where all the experts expected him to get drafted. I have a collection of quite a few years of Baseball Prospectus and the BA Prospect Handbooks and just for amusement I occasionally look through the ratings of prospects. The "experts" are wrong a good deal of the time. Humans just are not all that predictable, or projectable, particularly when they are very young. It truly is part of the fun of all of this, trying to guess who will succeed. And I use the word guess because there is a lot of subjectivity in the rating of prospects and very young players. Consequently, common sense and experience have to be applied as well. There were many good players in that draft but not a huge number of truly exceptional ones. The guess was that Ball might be one of those exceptional ones, but it was based on very limited data, as both you and I pointed out. That increased the odds that the experts were going to be wrong, and they have been. Given that the Sox seldom had so high a pick, did it make sense to take a very high risk? We can disagree about that but there truly is no right answer to that question. And it doesn't really matter now. It is just fun to speculate. Sox management was much smarter this year and they defied some of the experts because a number missed Benintendi and others did not quite accept that he was as good as his record indicated, Keith Law in particular - and he now seems to be realizing that he might have been wrong. BTW, this discussion reminded me of a stock broker I once had who said that darts could be thrown at the stock lists in the Wall Street Journal and the stocks hit would be as good as the ones recommended by the experts. Later the WSJ ran a contest for a number of years and while the experts came out somewhat ahead, it was embarrassingly close. www.investorhome.com/darts.htm
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 17, 2015 10:38:47 GMT -5
There are five pitchers on that list who already have made the majors: Marco and ChiChi Gonzales, Rob Kaminsky, Michael Lorenzen and Corey Knebel.
Given the obvious Sox need for pitching, it would have made more sense to draft a pitcher with more advanced development, with a record of achievement at a higher level.
The more I think about it, the less sense this pick made.
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 16, 2015 17:39:19 GMT -5
From SB Nation Palm Beach 1, Fort Myers 0 The Palm Beach Cardinals were on the winning end of a shutout on Thursday as they held the Ft. Myers Miracle scoreless. Brett Wiley had two hits including his 19th double and his 31st RBI, the game winning score. Carson Kelly scored the lone run after his first triple of the season. Corey Littrell showed why he was named Florida State League Pitcher of the Month for July, going 8 innings and allowing just 5 hits while walking 1 and striking out 6. www.vivaelbirdos.com/2015/8/14/9152841/st-louis-cardinals-prospect-report-edmundo-sosa-homers-david-oca-and
|
|
danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
|
Post by danr on Aug 16, 2015 17:34:42 GMT -5
An examination of the Sox draft results from 2005 through 2012 .... 2010: None ... . The class of 2014 is loaded with potential. It might turn out to be one of the best draft classes ever. ... A year after the 2010 draft it had produced what this site listed as 5 of the top 20 prospects, and might have seemed "loaded with potential" even with a curious first pick in Vitek. 2. Ranaudo 10. Brentz 17. Coyle 19. Cecchini 20. Vitek as well as the interesting Workman (who was in the WS two tears later) and Ramos Absolutely correct. Potential often is not realized, more often than not, unfortunately.
|
|
|