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danr
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Post by danr on Jul 1, 2015 10:30:18 GMT -5
Ericvan, I always take your analysis seriously, but I disagree about the value of sending Swihart to AAA.
As a side note, the base running metrics on him clearly are screwed up. He is a good base runner and certainly faster than almost any catcher. That he got caught stealing a couple of times may have been on botched hit and run plays. I don't know. But anyone paying attention when he has been on base knows the metrics are wrong.
In any case, he is a very smart kid who has shown an ability to adjust and learn quickly. He will learn more in the majors than he will at AAA - especially with Hanigan back on the team. He also will be working with the right pitchers, for the most part. With the new strike zone, and the way many of the umpires are calling balls and strikes, pitch framing may be less important. In any case, the problems of the pitching staff can't be blamed on poor pitch framing.
BABIP always is going to be up and down. However, we don't know yet what kind of a hitter he is going to be. I'm willing to bet he'll be well above average. What I find interesting about his upsurge in hitting is that it has been relatively consistent, a little above an average of a hit a game, instead of a few games with a lot of hits.
Maybe the Sox can claw their way back into contention. I hope they do, but if they don't it's not going to be because of Swihart. If anything, his hitting will increase their chances.
So I think both in the short term, and in the longer term, the team is better served, as is Swihart, by keeping him playing with the big club.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 30, 2015 17:06:40 GMT -5
Looks like Swihart/JBJ will go back to AAA when Hanigan/ShaneO are ready, per Farrell, with Leon being Buchholz's personal catcher and De Aza/ShaneO platooning in RF. Sending Swihart down is unbelievably stupid. In the last two weeks he has caught in 11 games and has hits in ten of them, and a total of 12 hits during that period. He is getting more and more adjusted, and playing better and better. Going to AAA can't possibly help him. They should be operating for the future. Buchholz could adjust to Hanigan. Leon can't hit. Can't argue against playing De Aza. He has been a great addition. I don't know if he can keep it up, but he has earned the chance. I hate to say it because I don't wish him a bit of harm, but I doubt that Shane will play for the Sox much longer. He'll either get hurt again, which is very probable, or will (should) be included in some package at deadline time. If the Sox win tonight they will have have won one more game than they lost during June, an improvement over May, but that pace is not enough to catch anyone.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 30, 2015 15:36:25 GMT -5
That link doesn't work. Do you know how Sandoval has done against LHPs since he stopped batting right-handed. My impression was that he has hit them better left-handed than he did right-handed.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 30, 2015 12:33:08 GMT -5
There seems to be some talent on that GCL team.
And in the maybe interesting fact department, Rei is only 1 1/2 years younger than Swihart.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 30, 2015 11:24:23 GMT -5
I've never been a Buchholz fan but he is starting to change my opinion of him. All things considered, this might turn out to be his most impressive season. But to completely change my mind - which hardly is important - he has to keep it going.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 29, 2015 14:59:42 GMT -5
So much attention and much writing has been focused on the alleged poor performance of Sandoval and Ramirez when they really are not the major problems with the team.
Both have had defensive problems. If you look at the fielding metrics, Sandoval is well below his historical averages. He had been an above average defender. He has not been that with the Sox so far. However, there is plenty of data to support a belief that he is likely to get better.
Ramirez is playing a position he never played before and he hasn't take to it very well. I think that wall injury made him even more tentative. Recently, he has been doing better. But he has been a really terrible defender.
So, it is fair to say that both players have not performed defensively as was expected - and to the levels a championship team needs. Sandoval is likely to improve. He never will be a Gold Glover, but he ought to be OK. Ramirez is an unknown.
At the plate, however, both are hitting almost exactly what they hit last year. Neither one is doing any worse than anyone had a right to expect. Now there is an anomaly in the fWAR calculations that maybe someone who knows a lot more than I do can explain because both have much lower batting WARs this year than last when their stats are remarkably comparable.
Their slash lines: Sandoval 2015 .275/.321/.414/.735 2014 .279/.324/.415/.739 Sandoval's HR rate is about the same as last year.
Ramirez: 2015 .283/.330/.482/.812 2014 .283/.369/.448/.817 Ramirez HR rate is ahead of last year's by a good margin.
So why are their hitting fWARS much lower?
In any case, we might have hoped, as I certainly did, that they would hit even better - and they might (assuming Ramirez isn't seriously hurt). Both have hit better this month than their averages.
However, is isn't fair to blame them for the team's hitting woes. The problems have been at C, 1B, RF, DH, and for a while in CF. However, the team's hitting June has been quite good, I think the best in the league. Betts, Bogaerts, Ramirez, Sandoval, Swihart and Pedroia all have hit very well. Ortiz has done better. De Aza has been a pleasant surprise. Bradley looks better.
So, with the exception of Napoli, the team's hitting has come around to closer to what many of us expected.
The pitching, however, remains a big problem.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 29, 2015 12:28:04 GMT -5
Napoli has to be enormously frustrated and it probably is affecting his performance. He either has lost some of his strike-zone judgment or he just can't adjust to the changes. It might be a little of both.
However, he also has been taking pitches right down the middle over and over. It's like he can't pull the trigger.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 29, 2015 12:23:12 GMT -5
Its absolutely not impossible to win every year. Money has a much higher correlation to future success than draft position. The NBA is a cyclical league. The MLB, not so much. The rich teams should be good most of the time. We should be competitive every yeae This has not been empirically true in recent years, due in part to increased revenue sharing (which has decreased the payroll gap between the richest and poorest teams), changes in aging curves which increasingly favor young talent, and new limits to spending on amateur talent in the CBA: www.providencejournal.com/article/20140825/SPORTS/308259994There is one part of this article that doesn't entirely compute. PEDs may have contributed to better performance of older players but it was for just a limited number of years. I can't think of any reason why there should be an earlier decline in player performance today than they was historically. Players are bigger, stronger, better fed, better nourished, better conditioned and trained than ever before. Aging has slowed in general across the population because of better health and nutrition. However, despite this logic, player performance stats still show that most players still peak at around age 28 and are likely to show measurably declines after about age 32. And last I read, which was a couple of years ago, these stats have remained reasonably constant over a very long time. It isn't universal. There always are exceptions. I still find it astonishing that so many front-line pitchers had relatively long careers 50 years ago when they completed a high percentage of the games they won. No doubt the improvement in overall pitching since then is due to reducing the load on pitchers and focusing on improved performance, but, if anything, the current approach should lengthen careers.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 28, 2015 23:03:18 GMT -5
His fazstball pretty consistently was in the high 80s to 90 and a couple of times 91 or 92 - much better than earlier in the season. But he also was mixing his pitches well, and had a wipe-out slider.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 27, 2015 1:56:09 GMT -5
Lester having a crappy year The Sox FAs aren't the only ones having adjustment problems....
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 25, 2015 15:18:28 GMT -5
By my count Rodriguez threw 51 fastballs, five changeups and 10 sliders. In the 4th inning he threw 22 fastballs. Most of them in the 94-95 MPH range, but to Weiters, all three were at 93 including the one hit hit for a homerun. In that inning Rodriguez threw three of his five changeups and six of his ten sliders. Five of the six sliders resulted in hits, including two doubles. The sixth was the SAC fly that knocked him out of the game.
In the first three innings he threw 29 fastballs, 2 changeups and four sliders (three in the third inning).
Clearly he was relying almost entirely on his fastball in the first three innings. In the fourth, when he began to use more of his other two pitches, the slider apparently was not very good. While they probably were sitting on the fastball, they hit the sliders more than the fastballs.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 25, 2015 10:36:00 GMT -5
When they brought Masterson up I thought it was pretty obvious that he would get a start or two. The reason why I think it is the right thing to do has not been mentioned by anyone. I don't know for a fact if the following is why this is happening, but it is why I would do it. If they did not give Masterson another chance or two it potentially would damage their ability to sign veterans in similar situations in the future. They knew when they signed Masterson that he was coming off an injury and that it might take some time for him to recover - if he was going to recover. A veteran player in this situation is going to expect some patience and a fair opportunity to recover. The Sox had to give him that. Part of it, of course, is they gave him a lot of money, but that is only part of it. He had to know that he wouldn't be dumped as soon as he pitched poorly.
They have followed the script. When he didn't do well - and his velocity did not come back - he was DL'd to rehab. They then gave him some starts in the minors and he did pitch fairly well in his last start. Now if he doesn't pitch well they can DFA him and no one can say they didn't give him a fair chance.
How a team treats its players is important to a team's chances of signing veterans below the star, big-money level, the kind of players who have always been important to the success of Sox teams. The Sox are doing the right thing with Masterson for the overall good of the franchise.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 24, 2015 15:05:02 GMT -5
Of the players in the system now - so not counting this year's 1st pick - Devers seems to be the one most likely to become a superstar. Since there are so few superstars these days, I think he is totally untouchable.
Klaw's latest scouting report on Devers (http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/keith-law/post/_/id/4037/scouting-red-soxs-moncada-other-class-a-prospects) is very positive. Not very positive on Moncada. I think he also is the first to say that Devers has superior defensive skills and can stick at 3B. Barring injuries he is going to be the Sox 3B in three years or maybe a little sooner.
Dubon and Guerra are the Greenville players who could be traded and would have value, especially Guerra.
I think the Sox may try to solve the 1B problem this year, but I don't have any idea what they might, or even, could do. There aren't that many really good 1Bs and very few, if any, who could be acquired. Sam Travis might have a chance in two years, but seems unlikely to be ready next year. He's got to prove himself in AA and AAA and those are big jumps. Witte has cooled off, but should be given a shot at AAA. Travis Shaw can handle the job defensively but hasn't had a chance yet to show if he can hit. If they can't make a good trade, playing him at 1B frequently the rest the season might be the best option.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 23, 2015 21:45:04 GMT -5
I was one of the biggest Kelly supporters here but it is time to do something different with him. I think he should go to Pawtucket as a reliever. Maybe the same thing could happen to him that happened to Pat Light. They both throw close to 100 MPH and they both have good sinkers. They both had command problems as starters.
I think they had to bring up Masterson as a good faith thing, but I don't expect him to last long - unless. of course, he can pitch better than he has in a while. If he doesn't do that, the Sox will DFA him, or trade him, or both. That will be the time to bring up Johnson.
Sending Castillo to Pawtucket makes a lot of sense. Once the catching situation improves they can bring him back, or bring up JBJ, which is what I think they should do.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 23, 2015 14:14:55 GMT -5
Thanks. That is more or less the way I thought it worked. But the difference between defensive metrics and offensive metrics is that offensive metrics measure actual events, rather than hypothetical ones.
You mention one way in which shifts might affect the fielder's performance. There are lots of things that affect a fielder's performance other than his own talent, or lack there of: Everything from the weather, sunlight and glare, a bird pooping on him, and the actions of the other players around him. to many others. He might have limited range, but he might be very good with his routes, his reflexes and his positioning. Another player might have great range but take bad routes.
Things do average out over time and fielding metrics are valuable in assessing a player's abilities. However, since they don't measure his actual defensive performance they are a different form of measurement from offensive WAR which is based on actual performance. So I think they should not be collated together but should be shown separately like a slash line: o4.2/d-.7.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 23, 2015 13:42:36 GMT -5
Edes points out in his ESPN piece today that since Henry's public comments, "the Sox have undergone a transformation at the plate. They come into Tuesday's game against the Baltimore Orioles hitting .296 in June, the highest average in the majors. They're first in hits (205), first in doubles (47), tied for first in triples (8), third in slugging (.466), fourth in on-base average (.343), seventh in runs (94) and 11th in home runs (19)... (Since June 11) "They've posted a slash line of .305/.358/.517/.876..." Ortiz is .324/.444/.649/1.093 in that span
"Five Sox players since that date are hitting .300 or better, led by Mookie Betts, who is batting .556 ... Pablo Sandoval (.429), Blake Swihart (.360) and Brock Holt (.356),..."
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 23, 2015 10:56:58 GMT -5
This is just speculation at this point by me, but I think these WAR calculations have too much value assigned to defense. Intuitively they don't look right. There are quite a few really good hitters whose WARs are low because their offensive value has been diminished maybe too much by their defensive value.
Defensive value seems more subjective than offensive value. Just because a player has less range doesn't necessarily convert into a measurable drop in value. However, his offense does convert into objective value.
If I am off-base, please someone, explain it to me.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 22, 2015 16:43:15 GMT -5
Steve - just noticed (I think it's new) your caption below your Mookie picture, aprticularly the bit about jai-alai. As a freshman I went to the Univ of Miami and about month into school a bunch of guys on our floor piled into 2 cars and went up to (Lauderdale, I think) to take in a jai-alai match. It was pretty cool. The ride back was race between the 2 cars, both going 100mph down 95 towards Miami. I'll never forget that night. Thankfully we all survived. The car I was in lost as we got off the wrong exit and literally got lost. Some things never change. Christmas, 1964, my college roommate and I drove to Miami Beach from Baltimore in my 1959 Ford Galaxy 500 convertible. One of our fraternity brothers lived on an island in Biscayne Bay. We drove 120 MPH through south Florida at midnight. My car had spotlights on each side and we had them on as well as our brights and still almost rear-ended a stopped truck. When you are 20 you think you are indestructible and can do just about anything.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 22, 2015 12:05:27 GMT -5
I am somewhat encouraged by the recent performance of the Sox, but I can't see them winning without improving the pitching, and maybe filling the hole at 1B if Napoli doesn't wake up. You think he's sleeping too much now? What else could it be?
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 22, 2015 11:08:34 GMT -5
All that you say is true, but the fact is, if you look at the historical record, standings usually follow the order of run differential. There certainly are exceptions, but when there is such a close correlation over a long period of time, it is not coincidental. And I think it becomes a better indicator as the season progresses. Scores like yesterday's are countered by similar scores in reverse, etc.
And when it is almost completely upside down, like it is in the AL East, it is something to think about. This doesn't happen and the odds are it won't. It tells me that a lot of shifting of position is likely to occur in the AL East. And, if I am in charge of Toronto, I am trying to find ways of adding a couple of really good starting pitchers as well as RPs. Toronto has a good minor league system. They could part with some good players to get a Hamels and Papelbon - if Rogers will pay for it.
I am somewhat encouraged by the recent performance of the Sox, especially the key younger players. I hope Swihart's injury isn't too bad. He has been hitting pretty well recently. If this upsurge continues, the Sox could get back into contention, but I can't see them winning without improving the pitching, and maybe filling the hole at 1B if Napoli doesn't wake up.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 22, 2015 8:20:43 GMT -5
The standings of each division fairly consistently are in the order of run differential except this year there is something very weird in the AL Eastern Division and to a lesser extent in the West. The current standings in the East are in the reverse order of run differential except for the Sox. In the West Oakland is in last place despite having a substantial positive run differential.
The East: Tampa +19 NY +26 Baltimore +41 Toronto +78 Boston -45
In the West Oakland is in last place with a run differential of +35, which is only four runs less than Houston's +39.
The standings in the Central and in all three NL divisions are in order of run differential, as usually is the case.
Based on historical results, one would think that the current standings in the AL East are likely to change significantly as the season progresses. If Toronto were to acquire some pitching, they would be hard to stop. But it still looks like any team that makes the right moves could win this division.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 21, 2015 15:40:11 GMT -5
Betts now has 15 hits in his past six games.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 21, 2015 12:17:21 GMT -5
It's almost the opposite with Buchholz. Some of us have worried that he was too thin...
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 21, 2015 11:57:13 GMT -5
I think Farrell still is playing to win this year, although it isn't always obvious. He does very little during a game to liven things up, to shake the team out of its duldrums. When De Aza got that triple yesterday, it would have been a perfect time to try a squeeze - and KC never would have expected it from the Sox.
When Porcello melted down, someone should have come out of the dugout to talk to him, or to crew his ***.
I think De Aza is playing because he is playing well. He has seven hits in his last four games. Only Mookie and Holt had more. Castillo has seven hits in the last nine games in which he has appeared, three of them in one game and two in another. Still, he should be playing more than he is.
Ortiz has a nine-game hitting streak during which he has had 10 hits. Napoli has five hits in his last five games. Holt has nine. Mookie has 12.
I've been on this board for quite a few years and I never have seen such irrational hate of a player as has been expressed here for Sandoval. And never has such hate been so undeserved. Prejudices get in the way of reason and that is what is happening here because the man is heavy. Many do not seem to notice that he is a good hitter and while he has had some memorable defensive lapses, he also has made some very good plays. If he met your standard of what a baseball player should look like, you might notice things like the fact that in the past 11 games - since June 7 - Sandoval is tied with Holt for the most hits on the team - 16 - and led the team in multihit games during this period with seven.
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danr
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Post by danr on Jun 20, 2015 22:54:33 GMT -5
Pedroia back in lineup. 0 for 5, left 3 on base and we lost. Maybe it is coincidence but everybody seems to play better when he is on the bench. I think you are just pulling our legs. The Sox won three games while he was out and he probably shouldn't have come back today. The only other time he has been out this season, the Sox lost. However, before Pedroia got hurt, he hit in 24 or the previous 25 games, getting 38 hits. Yeah, they really could do without him.
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