My man! I love the spirited debate, but you misrepresent my point here about twelve times, and your arguments are super blustery when they aren't straight up wrong.
Apologies for the long post. I'll try to make it an entertaining read.
No, they don’t. They might want to and it might be smart to but they don’t need* to. As you note, Sale/Erod missed a good among of time as well Wright, Price and Porcello either missing significant time , a little time or being ineffective for good stretches (in some combination ). And they win 108 games. And a WS.
This is wrong. The Sox need at least one starter for next season. They need three, arguably, by 2020, which may be Mookie's last season in a Red Sox uniform. Furthermore, their ace just collapsed down the stretch two consecutive years despite being treated with kid gloves last year. They did win 108 games, but they couldn't have advanced in the playoffs without Eovaldi. Who do you propose those three pitchers are? How do you think we acquire them? Why are you comfortable with the risk/cost?
Pollock got a QO. He’s not in the conversation. They’re already going to get hit with a draft penalty they don’t need another one. Brantley is much more likely to get hurt than stay healthy, McCutchen is already toast and the other two suggestions I hope are a joke.
Your assessment of these players strains your credibility. Pollock is a very good player, albeit injury-unlucky. He had a monster first half but a down second half after breaking his thumb. He's a former MVP-caliber player and not old, and, since those injuries aren't chronic, a decent candidate to bounce back. You're right that he costs a draft pick, and that has value. On the other hand, the Sox have the 30th pick in the draft next year. Not very valuable! The last guy picked 30th overall to make it to the majors, incidentally, was Casey Kelly in 2008. Before that? Adam Ottavino in 2006, a reliever who took 11 years to become good.
McCutchen isn't an MVP anymore, but it's absurd to say he's toast. He played well in the worst hitters' ballpark in baseball until September and then put up a .391 wOBA over his last month for the Yankees. His walk rate is elite (12th in MLB) and his hard hit ball percentage is too (24th in MLB). He was, all told, a roughly similar, if not better hitter than Benintendi last year, and doesn't need to be pinch-hit for.
Brantley is not "much more likely to get hurt" than stay healthy, because he just played a full season with his skills intact. He's the best contact hitter in baseball in 2018. That's interesting because there's a
strong correlation there with Sox hitting philosophy under DD—the Sox have finished top-3 in contact rate every year since Dombrowski took over, and his acquisitions of Nunez and Kinsler support it. You may not like him, but Brantley had a (slightly) better year at the plate than Beni.
Marwin Gonzalez has some questions, but he put up a .362 wOBA over the second half last year, and had a monster postseason, neither of which you can say for Beni. Signing him to play LF for a year is maybe clever, as it gives you 2B/SS insurance in 2020 (though he's not a great defensive SS).
Pearce/Span is mostly a joke, because Pearce should be our first baseman. But for kicks, here are Beni and Span's numbers side by side:
Player A: .290/.366/.465, 10.6 BB%, 16.0 K%, .174 ISO, 28.0 hard hit %, 83.5 contact %, .328 BABIP, 122 wRC+
Player B: .261/.341/.419, 10.2 BB%, 15.8 K%, .158 ISO, 31.0 hard hit %, 87.0 contact %, .291 BABIP, 112 wRC+
Obviously I'd rather have Beni (Player A) on my team than Denard Span, but normalize that BABIP a bit, and it's close. (Please resist the temptation to extrapolate that I prefer, in a vacuum, to employ Denard Span.) My point is that his production is replaceable on the market.
I wrote: Because they play in the AL East, the Red Sox have a harder time signing pitchers than position players. That’s not a hard science, but it’s certainly been true in my lifetime.
Please show your work here.
Tiresome request! I already posted upthread that the Sox have signed six FA SPs to multi-year contracts since 2002 (Price, Lackey, Dice-K, Burkett, Clement, and Dempster—seven if you wanna count Wakefield). The pitchers they've acquired by trade in that time include Beckett, Sale, Kim, Schilling, Rubby (sorta), Peavy, Miley, Porcello, Rodriguez, Wright, Pomeranz, and Kelly (and Pedro and Lowe, who were already on the team in 2002). Maybe there's a more thorough analysis to be done here about how the Sox acquire players, but it's reasonable to think that pitchers worry that signing with a team that plays in a hitters park in the AL East would hurt their numbers. (Recall that Schilling expressed exactly this to Theo.) That's why I think the Sox tend to get pitchers via trade.
We just won the WS with everyone coming back except Eovaldi. They can replace his two wins.
Did you watch the postseason? We very much needed Eovaldi to win the series, so framing his contribution as two wins over the course of a major league season is weird. I'd like to get someone who can—as he did—slot into Game 3 of a DS/LCS/WS against the best teams in baseball, and that person is sure as shit not the 2019 version of Anibal Sanchez. If Sale goes down (for the third year in a row), the need becomes even more acute, to say nothing of 2020.
they’re also in the worst division in baseball, finishing 13 games ahead of second which still left them 17 games behind us. They don’t need an immediate fix and because they’re ‘listening’ does not indicate a fire sale.
I didn't say Cleveland was having a fire sale.
(What are you talking about?) There's a report that they're cutting payroll, and they're a contending team with at least five legit studs and zero outfielders and (seemingly) little money to acquire them. They in fact
do need an immediate fix.
Did you think for a second that maybe it wasn’t about risk but that they didn’t think he was worth it? (Brantley). You’re pegging him as getting 3/$36 but you think it’s a matter of ‘we can’t do it!’ to deny offering him 1/$18? Maybe you’re theory of ‘OF production is super easy to replace’ applies to them too? Or maybe they have injury intel? Or maybe they don’t focus on exit velocity?
Dude, this shit is exhausting. Brantley just put up an extremely productive season where he would have been
very good value at $18M. Maybe they have new injury intel, but they paid him $14M in 2016-17 for absolutely no production while he was rehabbing, and chanced that he'd be dependable in 2018. And we just saw him put up a season where he showed literally elite—as in very best—skills in an area that fits our team philosophy.
I wrote: They’re looking for cost-controlled outfielders with guaranteed production because their window is now. The complete list of MLB outfielders who fit that description (pre- or early arb, >1 year of control) who could possibly be in a trade conversation for Kluber or Carrasco is: Acuña, Benintendi, Eloy Jimenez (charitably), Whit Merrifield, Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo, Aaron Judge, Gregory Polanco, Mitch Haniger, Harrison Bader, Tommy Pham, and Juan Soto.
But you said AB isn’t guaranteed production. So cross him off. The rest is a mosh mash of no chance in hell or would need significant prospects attached, which even AB would. But you said they don’t want prospects so now I’m confused....
I never said AB isn't guaranteed production. I've said about five times that he's a very good player, he's just easier for us to replace than pitching, which we need.
Are you deliberately misreading that list? I think your posts are smart, but this take is uncharacteristically unsmart. I'm saying that if Cleveland were to target cost-controlled outfielders who were guaranteed to produce next season—and we can infer that they are because they have five superstar players, budget constraints, and zero outfielders—then those are the guys who exist. Like, all of them. Many play for teams who aren't in contention or can't afford Kluber's salary (CHW, KC, SEA, TB). Atlanta's not trading Acuña. The MFY aren't trading Judge. The Nats aren't trading Soto. Polanco and Bader aren't good enough. The Mets could conceivably do it, I guess. Boston makes sense. And as a major market team are pretty likely to be able to afford a suitable replacement for a position player they trade away.
It doesn’t because here’s why:
- it’s highly doubtful they’d do a straight up trade and the Sox don’t have the ammo to back fill and compete.
I agree it's highly doubtful. Most trades don't happen. The Sox, however, don't need to "back fill" because four LF replacements are on the market for only money, and that's the resource we have most of.
- as Savin noted, the Sox have zero outfield youth and JBJ probably has a good shot of not being resigned, so in a year you’ll need a CF as well.
This is wrong. Bradley is a FA in 2021. Additionally, Benintendi is not a good CF. In fact,
he's bad.
- with the amount of salary (Pablo, Porcello, Kimbrel, etc) coming off after next year they’ll have money but they still have to get ready for Mookie and X.
Okay! Yes, I'd also like to sign Mookie. That's why I'd like to lock in Kluber at $15-16M for three years instead of sign, like, Bumgarner or Keuchel or Verlander or Sale or Cole to be our 2020 ace at $20-30M.
- HES A FUCKING 23 YO BORDERLINE ALL STAR IN HIS SECOND SEASON AND YOU WANT TO DUMP HIM BECAUSE HIS SSCOND HALF WASNT AS GOOD AS HIS FORST AND YOU SOME HOW THINK THATS PREDICTIVE.
Here you seem to be yelling. I'm not sure why. Do you think I'm arguing that the Sox non-tender him? I'm not trying to "dump him." I want to trade him for a perennial Cy Young candidate, a durable top-3 pitcher in baseball (who, to be fair,
may have taken a small step back in 2018).
Do I think Beni's slightly overrated around here and in MLB? Yes. I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but if I'm showing my work, here's why:
- His current production is replaceable
- He still hits LHP poorly and more LHP are about to join the division
- He has the perceived value of a capable center-fielder, yet we have him playing the easiest outfield position in baseball (which he plays well)
- The Sox have
no other trade assets
- I'm
not saying he's about to collapse, but his underlying peripherals don't inspire confidence that he'll improve. Here are the players with the
worst Hard Batted Ball rate (>95mph,
per Fangraphs) in MLB last year: Billy Hamilton, Dee Gordon, Cesar Hernandez, Odubel Herrera, Jean Segura, Miguel Rojas, Mallex Smith, Brett Gardner, Amed Rosario, Andrew Benintendi.
- I wouldn't say his bad second half was necessarily predictive, but it's not nothing, right? I haven't crunched the numbers to see if he was pitched differently, but it doesn't seem to be bad luck.
they just proved they don’t need some kind of super rotation as many teams have before. Sub in with what you have and pick up the best guy you can for reasonable terms, be it Eovaldi, Morton, shit even Happ or Sanchez ok a stopgap one or two year deal.
Here's where you go on record as rather having a team with Andrew Benintendi and Anibal Sanchez than Andrew McCutchen and Corey Kluber.
I'm sure they meant well
