Nope.geoduck no quahog said:
Cause: deliberate strategy to allow 3 of the 4 starting up the middle players on a championship team to walk away uncontested.
Effects: the team sucks, the rookies struggled, necessitating more rookies.
Broken Records
- Thread starter Plympton91
- Start date
Cause: deliberate strategy to allow 3 of the 4 starting up the middle players on a championship team to walk away uncontested.
Effects: the team sucks, the rookies struggled, necessitating more rookies.
Riiiight. The fact that we have no production out of LF/RF, and a DH with .192 OPS less production, has nothing to do with our lack of offense.Plympton91 said:
[Broken Record]EricFeczko said:
Part of the reason they've gotten no production out of LF and RF is that they have no outfield depth, and a reason they have no outfield depth is that they replaced Jacoby Ellsbury with Grady Sizemore. Even if Ellsbury was too expensive for their taste, they should have acquired a proven major league CF and left Bradley on the Pawtucket shuttle.
[/Broken Record]
Plympton91 said:
[Broken record]This strategy only works with the assured foresight that Bradley would struggle all season offensively. Otherwise you've just wasted a lot of money to block one of your best prospects for no good reason...like the Sox have just done by signing Drew and moving X to 3rd base, which hasn't worked out at all and was a stupid decision which has yielded nothing except to derail and depress our best and most exciting positional prospect. And Rajai Davis/Chris Young were looking for starting gigs and weren't going to sign here with Bradley around.[/Broken Record]
Time to move on. Jacoby doesn't love you anymore. And no one on the team is hitting at all. Not Bradley, not X, not Drew, not Pedroia (to his usual standards), none of the catchers, Ortiz' OPS is down 130 points, etc etc etc. Hell, for that matter Chris Young ain't hitting either. Jacoby or one of these mythical starting OFers who you would have magically signed wouldn't have kept this club from below .500 this season because the offensive suck has affected every last player on the team.
As we know, we should judge all multi-year contracts on the first half of the first season and extrapolate.
Likewise all rookies.
Which is why we cut Pedroia loose that bum.
But..... Jacoby!
Likewise all rookies.
Which is why we cut Pedroia loose that bum.
But..... Jacoby!
Smiling Joe Hesketh said:
I'd argue it wasn't a stupid decision, especially with Middlebrooks being shut down with no current timetable for his return.
In addition, what proof can you present that shows that the move "derailed" and "depressed" Xander? This strikes me as someone creating a narrative around Xander's to fit their own thoughts of the Drew trade. And it actually reflects poorly on Xander if true.
Obviously if you knew JBJ was going to struggle, you'd want to sign a starting-caliber OF, but obviously none of us can see the future, either. What did the odds of JBJ struggling have to be to make it worth adding more depth? 30%? His MLE for 2013 was about at the fringes of acceptable offense, so while the depths of his struggles have been surprising, the fact that he struggled shouldn't be. And it's not like he was the only risk factor - Victorino is 33 and missed 40 games last year, and Nava was a JAG before 2013. 4th OFs routinely play 100 games. Bad luck, injuries, and underperformance have all contributed to making the OF a disaster, but inadequate depth has played a role, too.Smiling Joe Hesketh said:
Why not? We're not talking about Bryce Harper here. Bradley shouldn't have been and wasn't guaranteed a starting job.Smiling Joe Hesketh said:
You're right that injuries and underperformance mean the offense would probably be bad anyway, but that doesn't mean the FO should get a pass on the extent to which their decision-making contributed to the situation.Smiling Joe Hesketh said:
I think they should've signed both Young and Davis. They both would've definitely had an OPS over .900 and this team would be in first place. Also they should've given Jacoby an 8th year at $22m per. Then they'd have contingency plans for every possible OF disaster.
How many more times are we going to get sucked into the same pointless discussions by P91?
How many more times are we going to get sucked into the same pointless discussions by P91?
Who?Plympton91 said:
I mean, the best they probably could have swung would have been Felix Doubront and Alex Hassan for Dexter Fowler. Is that a deal in hindsight that we would have probably been fans of? Sure, but at the time Doubie was a key part of the rotation, the youngest guy in the rotation, and a lefty with a nice K/9 at that. Kind of a lot to give up for a CF from Colorado with a big home/road split and who you might not need in a year if Bradley comes through (and a free agent in two years tops even if he does pan out).
Other than that the CF options where pretty horrible. The only real 20/20 hindsight regret I can see is letting Nelson Cruz sign for $8M to a division rival. Cruz has serious issues with his game, especially defensively, but he's worth more than $8M, could have replaced Mike Carp, and now we can see would likely have been an every day cornerstone hitter. But then it's hard to sign a guy looking to build his FA value when you can't even promise him a full time job.
This season is what happens when the exact opposite of 2013 strikes. In 2013 most everyone had a season equal to or greater than their career norms. Most everyone stayed pretty healthy except Buchholz and Middlebrooks. Now in 2014 almost no one is staying healthy (including Buchholz and Middlebrooks again), most players are having years below their career norms, and a bunch of rookies are getting thrown into the fire because again, no one is staying healthy. Shit happens. Seasons like this happen. They can't always be avoided via pre-planning.
So Im confused on some things. Lets stipulate Ellsbury would be three games or so better than Bradley and ignore out year stuff. So the Sox are then 40-43.
So...
How did a lack of CF depth cause our corner OFs to suck and 3/5 of our rotation to underperform?
How did the Sox allow Drew to walk away uncontested when they a) made him a QO and B) he eventually took a pro-rated QO? How should the Sox have made Scott Boras and Steven Drew correctly read the market?
How did letting Salty walk and playing old man river at catcher lead to more rookies playing?
This post was about how the Sox have so many rookies in the lineup
This post seems to be talking about how we ended up with so many rookies.
So...
How did a lack of CF depth cause our corner OFs to suck and 3/5 of our rotation to underperform?
How did the Sox allow Drew to walk away uncontested when they a) made him a QO and B) he eventually took a pro-rated QO? How should the Sox have made Scott Boras and Steven Drew correctly read the market?
How did letting Salty walk and playing old man river at catcher lead to more rookies playing?
I don't understand this hindsight is 20/20 stuff... It was pretty obvious that Ellsbury was gone from the get-go. He wanted a lot more than he was worth. He had a lot of injury baggage and he'd been pretty inconsistent. In 2010 Brian Cashman drove the price up on Crawford and later said "I was like, 'I feel like we've got Carl Crawford in Brett Gardner, except he costs more than $100 million less, with less experience.'"
That's kind of what the Sox figured they were doing with JBJ, and they may well be proven right.
Saltalamacchia is a good player but with Vazquez and Swihart on the way it made no sense to make a long term commitment to him, especially since his bat doesn't really play at 1B or DH.
The team let Drew walk because they had a shortstop who was rated the #2 prospect in baseball by everyone.
Letting 3/4 up the middle guys from a championship team go was a very defensible decision. Most of us would have done it.
That's kind of what the Sox figured they were doing with JBJ, and they may well be proven right.
Saltalamacchia is a good player but with Vazquez and Swihart on the way it made no sense to make a long term commitment to him, especially since his bat doesn't really play at 1B or DH.
The team let Drew walk because they had a shortstop who was rated the #2 prospect in baseball by everyone.
Letting 3/4 up the middle guys from a championship team go was a very defensible decision. Most of us would have done it.
Except that they didn't just let them go. We've gone over this a million times. They gave Drew a QO. He turned it down. They reportedly offered him a multi-year deal. He turned it down. They reportedly made Ellsbury a lucrative, multi-year offer. He turned it down. I don't know what, if anything, they did with Salty.
The fact that all of these players didn't accept the Sox' offer doesn't mean they were let go. Giving Ellsbury $153m was pretty insane. Refusing to match that was a no-brainer for the FO. To me, the most questionable decision was Salty, especially when they ended up replacing him with AJP. Salty at 3/21 seemed very reasonable to me, even with the catchers in the system.
This team could've ended up with a very overpaid Ellsbury for the next 7 years and a full year of Drew at $14m for shit production while keeping Bradley and/or X and/or WMB in the minors. The fact that some other moves haven't turned out great and that pretty much every hitter has struggled doesn't change the offseason evaluations of these FAs.
The fact that all of these players didn't accept the Sox' offer doesn't mean they were let go. Giving Ellsbury $153m was pretty insane. Refusing to match that was a no-brainer for the FO. To me, the most questionable decision was Salty, especially when they ended up replacing him with AJP. Salty at 3/21 seemed very reasonable to me, even with the catchers in the system.
This team could've ended up with a very overpaid Ellsbury for the next 7 years and a full year of Drew at $14m for shit production while keeping Bradley and/or X and/or WMB in the minors. The fact that some other moves haven't turned out great and that pretty much every hitter has struggled doesn't change the offseason evaluations of these FAs.
joe dokes said:
It also makes sense if you look at it from the perspective that winning the World Series last year was a whole lot of luck (yes, they were good, but a lot of guys had career-year kind of contributions). They were building the "next great Red Sox team". That was the big sales pitch we heard from Ben Cherington from the moment he took over. That "next great team" wasn't the 2013 Red Sox. It's still the 2015 or 2016 or 2017 Red Sox. That was part of the building process and everything happened to click into place. That it happened hasn't derailed the overall plan Cherington put in place when he took over.
Basically what I'm saying is win or lose last year, Jacoby Ellsbury was walking out the door. Win or lose last year, Stephen Drew was on a one-year deal as the bridge to a new young SS (be it Iglesias or Bogaerts). Win or lose last year, Saltalamacchia probably wasn't going to be offered anything resembling a three year deal. The idea that somehow winning the World Series is what triggered any of that is utter bullshit, as is the idea that winning the World Series should have led to a deviation from the overall plan (i.e. retain the entire World Series roster).
glennhoffmania said:
AJP is a proven major league catcher.Plympton91 said:
To state the arguments as:
Plympton91 said:
ignores that there have been no rookies at catcher. And it ignores that they found a veteran to play middle infield, but to solve a corner infield problem more than a middle infield problem.
If Victorino had played this way, and this little a year ago, and Napoli had played this way a year ago, and Ortiz had played this way a year ago. . .
or what everybody other than Plympton has said. And will say next time it comes up.
This team certainly did not make a Mike Lowell-level mistake after winning the World Series. I think you can even say they bent over backward to avoid making that kind of mistake, so they didn't want to pay a lot of money over multiple years (Ellsbury and Drew) and they didn't want to block and promising propsects (Salty, and a bit of Ellsbury and Drew).
You know, Plympton, I agree generally that this front office hasn't shown the ability to find the one key piece that doesn't exist in the farm system, is tough to find under any circumstances, and cost more and more each year in FA every season -- and then go get that guy. But there aren't a lot of those guys. And I remember a front office guy who found two of them (one was named Manny and one was named Pedro). And we all learned, along with the front office, that surrounding those guys with guys named Troy and Brett and Darren wasn't good enough.
This isn't easy, it's hard.
I don't mind the decision to let Ellsbury walk -- he's clearly not going to earn his contract, and this was obvious at the time of signing -- but Jackie Bradley never instilled much confidence in me. I understand that he performed reasonably well in the minors, but there was nothing exceptional about his performance there. Plenty of outfielders had put up Bradley's numbers in AA, at a similar age, and didn't turn out to be anything special. Many posters advocated for outfield depth. Maybe our expectations were unrealistic (was Rajai Davis ever going to sign here? He would have had plenty of playing time if he had).
I think the best the Sox can hope for going forward is that Bradley has a Michael Saunders-type turnaround.
I think the best the Sox can hope for going forward is that Bradley has a Michael Saunders-type turnaround.
I actually specifically made that stipulation -- that Ellsbury was unsignable -- in the initial post precisely to avoid the usual pile on from the Jackie Bradley Jr. uber alles group. I've gotten the message from the mods that they don't want to keep coming back to the "sign Ellsbury" debate, so I've intentionally been making this argument very generically. Again, that generic argument is that the de facto strategy of handing CF to Bradley meant that they went into this season needing both Victorino and Bradley to be healthy and productive for a combined 1200 at bats in order to not end up short of outfield depth. That's not a good strategy.Stitch01 said:
Because of the unique RF at Fenway, a lack of CF depth almost by construction means you also have a lack of RF depth. So, when Victorino went down, they ended up playing Jonny Gomes against too many righthanders and Daniel Nava against too many lefties. That made them double down the failed rejuvenation of Grady Sizemore, who used to be able to hit lefties, by pretending he could play everyday while Daniel Nava was wasting an 815 OPS against righthanders in AAA.
The rejoinders about Chris Young and Rajai Davis still assume that they would have been looking for Bradley insurance, and that would have been one such alternative strategy. But, it's not the strategy I've been arguing for. I'm not arguing that they should have signed someone to be "Bradley insurance." Rather, what I've been saying is that they should have acquired an everyday CF or RF (with Vic moving to CF) and continued to view Bradley as their insurance policy, and been content to have him ride the shuttle if no needs arose in the major leagues.
Looking over the easily available names, David Murphy is the one that would have fit perfectly with the 2013 season strategy of signing veterans coming off down years to reasonable contracts. They easily could have outbid Cleveland for his services, he can play all three outfield positions, he hits righties better than Victorino for his career meaning you could platoon them if Bradley had blossomed. Of course, he hasn't really bounced back to any meaningful extent (680 OPS this year), so really he's just another data point in the case of "There is just a complete lack of good outfielders right now across the major leagues."
They also could have used their incredibly awesome farm system to acquire a real CF this offseason. but with so few teams having enough good outfielders in the first place, it is perhaps unsurprising why a 4th outfielder like Craig Gentry cost a top prospect in Michael Choice. It also becomes less surprising why the Yankees were willing to pay so much for Ellsbury, and why the Dodgers, with Matt Kemp now up to a 791 OPS on the season, decided to hold onto their stable of current or formerly highly productive outfielders rather than allowing one to be plucked for pennies on the dollar. Given the state of outfield play in baseball, Kemp's 791 OPS might be worth $20 million a season.
Moreover, to bring this back to the initial topic even though it's been split, this is why moving Mookie Betts (and maybe Garin Cecchini and Will Middlebrooks) to the outfield makes so much sense. Outfielder is the new pitcher. They are far from a dime a dozen right now, and you cannot rely on the free agent or trade market being there to cover up a hole that you create on your team. The Red Sox would do well to create their own stable of outfielders, and then hold some other team hostage in the not too distant future.
Outfield depth starting the season:Plympton91 said:
Victorino
Bradley
Sizemore
Gomes
Nava
Carp
Brentz
Hassan
WMB
Holt
Proven major league center fielders available to sign on a short term deal and expected to vastly outperform these 10 guys (either in February or in retrospect):
?
So the team should have prioritized their depth, but the one opportunity they had to prioritize their depth, they shouldn't have.Plympton91 said:
Gomes and Nava have both had fewer % of PAs on their weak platoon side than they did last year. None of this makes any sense.
Moving Betts to the OF, or at least playing him in the OF, certainly seems viable given the Sox positional needsPlympton91 said:
I'm still not clear how letting go three up the middle players led to so many rookies starting or how they let go of Steven Drew. Stiil don't see a lot of solutions given that Sizemore, Chris Young, and David Murphy all have sort of sucked and the options were give Ellsbury a fuck ton of money, overpay in prospects to pay Kemp a zillion dollars a year. Not sure the latter two were better long-term plays than gambling Bradley would hit a little and Victorino would contribute again.
Bigger picture, I figured in the offseason that 1) there wasn't a path to improving the team from '13 to '14 with Ellsbury gone and 2) the OF would be worse but could be somewhat compensated for by a full year of X, not having a black hole at 3B all year, Pedroia returning to career norms, and slightly better pitching plus that the farm system would be available to patch 1-2 holes at the deadline. Then in '15 they'd have more pieces from the farm ready and have a better idea where they might have to spend to put together a really good team for '16 and beyond.
This year hasn't panned out obviously, but prospect development has been good so Im still pretty optimistic about the broader plan. YMMV, and I agree with you that the Lester question and the dearth of available talent in the free agent market are still problems in need of solutions.
I think you're mostly right (though I don't worry about blocking prospects like Vazquez and Swihart), but my concern is that you reach a limit making decisions this way. A better-than-replacement-level rookie is almost always going to be more cost-effective on a $$/W basis than a free-agent vet, but that doesn't mean you can fill a whole team like that. Maybe Anthony Ranaudo can be a 0.5-1.0 WAR player filling a rotation slot for major league minimum next year; that's going to be better $$/W than Lester at 5 wins / $20 MM. But it's a loss of four wins. Maximizing their dollars is a critical component of building a team, but sometimes you have to pay retail (judiciously, of course) if you want to field a winner.BosRedSox5 said:
There were compelling reasons for letting all the guys go last offseason that they let go. But if this becomes a pattern of behavior - letting Lester go and replacing him with a budget FA, trying to skate by with rookie C in addition to young holdovers at three or four other positions, not getting another middle-of-the-order bat to complement an aging Ortiz - then the FO starts crossing the line from being smart to being cheap.
Names isn't depth. Victorino's the only one of those who figured to be an above-average player as a total package. Holt and WMB had never played the OF before the season - in fact, Middlebrooks has still never played OF professionally. Sizemore, Carp, Brentz, Hassan - what's the point of even listing guys like that?kieckeredinthehead said:
Super Nomario said:
Because they're guys on the 40 man roster that are capable of playing outfield for the Red Sox, in rough order of who you'd expect to play OF at the beginning of the season. Most teams have about 4-5 major league caliber outfielders on their 40 man, with another 3-4 in the minors. The Oakland A's started the season with 5 total players on their 40 man able to play the outfield. The Red Sox had plenty of depth in the sense that any of those players could step in in the event of multiple injuries, which is what's happened.
Last year the Red Sox used 7 outfielders (Berry, Nava, Victorino, Gomes, Carp, Bradley, Ellsbury, Snyder). So far they've used 9 (Carp, Holt, Bradley, Gomes, Sizemore, Victorino, Hassan, Betts, Nava). The only real difference in "depth" between last year and this year is Ellsbury, whose retention would have bumped the Red Sox from 4th place all the way into 4th place. The author of this thread has been told not to argue about Ellsbury any more, so he's been forced to invent self-contradictory stories to whine about something that's not actually what he wants to whine about.
I think the difficulty with getting a "proven center fielder" before this season was that before 2013 they thought they had signed one in Victorino. I presume they were expecting Ellsbury to be gone after last year before the season started and that they would have the option of sliding Victorino to CF in 2014 if need be. Victorino was a great signing - probably the biggest between 2012 and 2013 - but while he was terrific in RF he looked marginal at best in CF, and with his various injuries on top of that CF this year wasn't really an option. So then they were left with scrambling with JBJ and whatever they could pick up last minute, which was Sizemore.
Just to be clear: when I talk about OF depth, I'm talking about the former group, the guys who are actually MLB-caliber OF. I don't think the Red Sox had 4 or 5 - they had Victorino, two halves of a platoon in Nava / Gomes, and a bunch of question marks or worse. And Victorino and Nava weren't sure bets, either - Victorino was a 33-year old who'd missed 40 games in 2013, and Nava was a guy who'd had one good BABIP-driven year.kieckeredinthehead said:
That's a pretty big difference in depth, isn't it? They went from one star, one good starter, and one platoon to one good starter, one platoon, and one guy who'd been out of the league for three years. Losing Ellsbury meant they were counting on Victorino and the LF platoon to have decent OF production. That's not to say they should have re-signed him at all costs, but it was certainly a big blow to depth.kieckeredinthehead said:
EDIT: There's no point in re-hashing the Ellsbury signing / non-signing, so to put a forward-looking conclusion on this: adding a star or borderline star OF should be a priority this offseason. Victorino is a question mark given this lost season, counting on Bradley or Betts is risky, Nava looks more like his mediocre career line than his near-star 2013 season, Holt projects better as a super-sub than an everyday corner guy, and none of the AAA OF (including Cecchini) have had the kind of years that suggest they can start in 2015. If they just try to stand pat with the guys on the roster, we're likely to be having the same discussion again next year.
Who though? There aren't any, unless you want to bend over for the Marlins and outbid everyone else for Stanton, then give him $300 million.Stitch01 said:
People keep tweaking me about having some sort of Ellsbury obsession, but I repeatedly pointed out that one reason to break the bank on him was because there simply were not viable all star level alternatives. And if they didn't want Ellsbury they could have gone for Choo. But there's nobody even close to that level available on 2015, and to the extent there's someone who might be available for 2016, you have to hope they don't sign. A prospect increasingly unlikely in the new economics.
They're basically hosed. They're just going to have to hope they hit the prospect lottery and be patient. It looks like they have another top 10 draft pick in their near future, maybe 2. Hopefully they'll do a better job with this one than the last one.
It's going to take more than one batter to turn this club around. This table shows a comparison of the Red Sox between this year and last by position (and the totals do not include pinch-hitting or pitcher's batting). The first numbers are the projected totals for this season and the numbers in parentheses following are the totals from last year for that position.
[tablegrid= It's going to take more than one hitter ]Pos 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO GDP as C 28.9 (51) 1.9 (0) 13.5 (19) 67.5 (89) 27.0 (55) 135.0 (192) 19.3 (13) as 1B 36.6 (48) 0.0 (3) 19.3 (26) 77.1 (106) 100.3 (88) 160.1 (220) 21.2 (13) as 2B 44.4 (42) 0.0 (2) 7.7 (9) 65.6 (84) 71.4 (74) 96.4 (77) 13.5 (24) as 3B 23.1 (29) 1.9 (1) 11.6 (20) 54 (79) 50.1 (37) 163.9 (141) 15.4 (14) as SS 36.6 (36) 5.8 (10) 5.8 (14) 34.7 (81) 55.9 (66) 154.3 (145) 13.5 (13) as LF 28.9 (37) 3.9 (1) 7.7 (18) 73.3 (101) 63.6 (61) 146.6 (153) 19.3 (12) as CF 32.8 (37) 3.9 (8) 3.9 (13) 40.5 (65) 61.7 (53) 163.9 (120) 13.5 (13) as RF 28.9 (35) 3.9 (2) 9.6 (20) 46.3 (86) 42.4 (50) 156.2 (118) 15.4 (9) as DH 23.1 (44) 0.0 (2) 38.6 (33) 102.2 (110) 88.7 (86) 115.7 (102) 15.4 (26) Total 283.5 (359) 21.2 (29) 117.6 (172) 561.2 (801) 561.2 (570) 1292.1 (1268) 146.6 (137)
[tablegrid= It's going to take more than one hitter ]
Given that the K and BB rates aren't too far off from last year, it seems that main problem is a complete lack of power. Comparing last year's ISO (.169) to this year's (.124) certainly confirms that. (Numbers from Baseball Prospectus)
I wouldn't say that at all. The FO just needs to identify the best values to fix their OF needs. They're out there to be found.Plympton91 said:
Examples:
1. Rusney Castillo, 26 year old Cuban defector who just got permanent Haitian residence and OFAC approval. He's supposed to have plus-plus speed but there is doubt as to whether he's a full time guy or a very good 4th OF. Winning the bidding on what will likely be a lower cost Cuban defector like this, giving him a month in AAA, and then having him up in the majors by mid-August if the OF is still a ramshackle mess is one way to start patching the holes.
2. Yasmani Tomas, 23 year old Cuban defector in the process of getting citizenship and OFAC approval. Probably not signing until this off-season. Supposed to have huge natural power. Splashing the pot on him wouldn't be a bad idea at all.
3. Internal options. Both Cecchini and Middlebrooks are expected to work in the OF at AAA. Only one of them can be the every day 3B, assuming Marrero doesn't bump Bogaerts over to 3B permanently sooner than expected. I could see Middlebrooks as a guy who clicks if moved into an OF position where his good athleticism and strong arm make him an average or better defender,and where he finally stays healthy in a less physically abusive defensive role. Options like these guys with Betts and Bradley still working on breaking through, and some dark horses like Alex Hassan (who is starting to hit again in AAA) and Bryce Brentz (who this spring showed the ability to hit at least borderline ML pitching) give an acceptable talent pool to address a need or two, just not all three OF positions.
4. Free agents. After last off-season I think a lot of players will be quicker to take the qualifying offer, and as a result I think fewer teams will actually offer them to mid-tier FAs. That means guys like Colby Rasmus, Melky Cabrera, Norichika Aoki, and Michael Cuddyer are unlikely to get them (maybe Cuddyer and Cabrera). I'd expect the Orioles to opt out of Nick Markakis' $17.5M option with a $2M buyout. And it's probably 50/50 that the Rangers do the same with Alex Rios. Then you have guys like Chris Denorfia, Nate Schierholtz, and Tyler Colvin who aren't having good 2014s and do not have the track record to get multi-year offers in 2015 who could also be worthwhile sleepers. On top of that we have a few interesting non-tender candidates, probably the most interesting would be Peter Bourjos who hasn't hit for shit since moving to the NL and the Cards have a crowded OF as it is.
5. Trade. I think you can get something done here if you're the Red Sox because of all the pitching. If they want Stanton they could probably walk away the winners without completely gutting the farm. Personally, I think they should really be kicking the tires on Allen Craig. He hasn't hit this year (I'd bet it's lingering issues from the Lisfranc, which would make him a strong bounce back candidate in 2015). They need pitching and middle infield help at the ML level. They have OF talent blocked by Craig right now. His deal long term is very good if he bounces back. I'd think a Peavy + Herrera + $3.5M (half of Peavy's remaining salary for the season) would be an attractive little offer to help them free up some space. The Rockies need to make a decision on Dickerson and CarGo because they're both really just LFers. They both also have pretty legit home/road splits for Colorado players however, so some cause for concern. They'll want young pitching however and the Sox have got that to deal.
The options are out there. Personally I'd like to see something like signing both Castillo and Tomas, trade for Allen Craig during this season, and sign Tyler Colvin in the off-season (he'll only be 29 and when he's played a full season he's been a >.800 OPS guy) as the 4th OF. Let Gomes go, trade Nava for what you can get. Betts and Bradley battle for CF with the loser going to AAA as the shuttle rider. The ML OF would be (left to right) Craig, Betts/Bradley, Victorino with Castillo and Colvin as depth. The AAA OF would be Tomas, Betts/Bradley, Hassan/Brentz. If Craig is unobtainable he can be replaced with one of the Colorado guys, Stanton, Nelson Cruz (if the Sox decide to spend some money and draft picks on FA signings), Cuddyer, Rios, or Markakis depending on where they view good value to be had.
The front office simply needs to be aggressive about resolving it. They have been too passive on all the young Cuban talent coming in to baseball the last few years and need to start using all the financial muscle they're supposed to have to gain those young cost controlled guys available outside the bounds of the draft or international signing pool.
metaprosthesis said:
The team's BABIP has also taken a big hit, dropping to .294 from .329 last year. That's a big gap and one we kind of had to expect - hard to assume a team could hit for a .329 BABIP on a repeatable basis.
People keep bringing up Rajai Davis - factoring in defense, he's actually been worse than Bradley. It's been eye-bleedingly-bad to watch JBJ at the plate at times, but he's been equally as masterful in the outfield and has helped our pitching look as good as it has. Both Fangraphs and B-ref have his defense worth about 10-11 runs at the midway point, which means even though he has hit like a replacement-level OF, he's still on pace for ~2 wins.
Plympton91 said:
Jacoby Ellsbury is not an all star in New York. He is on pace to be overpaid this year without being injured. If he can't return to MVP caliber play in Yankee Stadium, a stadium practically built for him, at the age of 30 while healthy, it probably isn't in the cards.
I rather have JBJ, Xander Bogaerts, Mookie, and the rest of the crew struggle their way through their first season up a year after winning the World Series than to overpay for the rotting corpse of a one hit wonder like Jacoby Ellsbury.
Personally I think they need to trade Peavy, Uehara, Gomes, and Pierzynski (as well as Drew if anyone is dumb enough to let take him off our hands now) and extend Lester. Get Rubby, Hassan, and Vasquez up (moving Swihart to AAA) then see what you got.
Edit - I still would bidding on David Price.
jscola85 said:
I do agree that some BABIP regression was to be expected, but I think that a power drop-off contributed more than might have been expected. For starters, just look at Otto's numbers: a drop from 172 HRs to 117-118? That's huge. If you look at the batted ball profiles of this year's and last year's teams, the changes are mostly minimal, except for HR/FB (please correct me if I am misrepresenting how large a change in GB% or FB% those ~2% deltas are).
That HR/FB rate is tied for third worst in the majors... with the Mets. If that can climb up to the high 9s, I think we are all a lot less miserable. How likely that is, I don't really know.
Ellsbury's continued power outage leaves him not quite an all-star by ESPN's offensive WAR rankings, but still the 11th best offensive value outfielder in the AL and the 4th best offensive value CF in the AL.TomRicardo said:
I focus on offensive WAR because that is a validated and confidence inducing stat. You could include defensive WAR, but to do so would require believing that both Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner suddenly became borderline league average defensive outfielders this season, when they just happen to be covering the same ground in Yankee Stadium's expansive LCF. Sure.. Uh huh... Yeah... right.
I say this not to argue that the Red Sox should have resigned Ellsbury, but to further the point that there just aren't a whole heck of a lot of good outfielders these days, certainly not ones who are readily available to put into the Red Sox lineup in 2015. As any economist will tell you, when supply is constrained, the price will go up. It sort of puts in new perspective for me a rationale for the Yankees spending spree on outfielders, including the Gardner extension, last offseason. They saw a market with a scarce commodity and tried to corner it. Whether that ends up being smart remains to be seen.
What would an economist say about revenue inequality and how goods/services are priced in different markets? :What about substitution effects?Plympton91 said:
Since you seem to struggle with the fact that the Red Sox are no country for old men (or at least expensive players on the wrong side of 30) perhaps you should root for the Yankees.
jscola85 said:
True, but we've gone way past regression: that .294 mark, if it sticks, will be our worst BABIP since 1994's .293. In the intervening years we've usually been in the .300-.315 range, slipping to .298 or .299 a couple of times.
For a team that plays half its games in Fenway, an above-league-average BABIP should be the norm. Average = below average, and below average = awful.
That's an interesting list of potential options, but I guess I see substantially greater downsides in production, lower expected production, and a high prospect cost in any of the trades.Drek717 said:
The Cubans are much more likely to be JC Linares or Dayan Viciedo than Yoenis Cespedes or Abreu, yet they'll cost as much as a mid-tier free agent.
The most attractive mid-tier free agents you listed are PED guys, I just don't buy that Nelson Cruz is doing what he's doing as a clean ballplayer. He wasn't ever caught by the testing, so he's probably still doing whatever it was he was doing in the first place, but with a more discrete supplier this time. Once he gets a long-term contract, he'll stop using the drugs and go back to being a guy with average power and below average plate disciple, essentially Jonny Gomes. Coby Rasmus is a total tease, whose inconsistency would be maddening on a 3 year $39 million commitment or perhaps even higher as some team still pays for promise rather than performance. Aoki can't hit, Cuddyer, Cargo, and Dickerson come with the Coors factor, and the reason the Orioles are unlikely to pick up Markakis' option would be that he was awful for 2 years prior to this one and they would know more than others how much weight to put on each in calculating the the three-year average production.
I don't see the Cards as willing to trade Craig for what you're suggesting; they'd probably want at least Marrero, who'd allow them to move Peralta to 3B and Carpenter back to 2B, and one of the righthanded pitchers from AAA.
I still say Ellsbury or Choo was where to spend the money in the outfield for the next 6 years, and then fill in around that with the propsects the Sox have in their own system. To me, at this point, the best option is to keep the Nava/Gomes platoon while you figure out who among Betts, Middlebrooks, and Cecchini can play the best outfield corners, and whether Bradley can hit.
Savin Hillbilly said:
Well, I think it is safe to say we've had below-average hitters out there for long stretches as well - ie, Sizemore, Bradley, playing Gomes so much vs. RHPs, Pierzynski, etc. It's not out of the question that the true talent of this team offensively is below-average, meaning our BABIP (even adjusted for Fenway) should be somewhere around .300.
Even if we got to .315, that's still ~15 points below last year.
One area that should definitely regress in our favor is RISP. We're hitting .228 with RISP vs. .278 last year, and that .228 average is 13 points worse than our .241 overall average. So even if we don't improve BABIP, simply getting better luck in the timing of our hits should improve our scoring.
Choo got $130 million and has thrown up a 108 OPS+ for Texas this year. That's way off from his previous numbers and isn't promising from a 31 year old OFer with 6 more years to go on the deal and who'll be making $21 million in his age 39 season. And his defense is supposedly beyond awful and has graded out that way for years. If he hit for Texas the way he did for Cincy and Cleveland, the contract's not so bad, but since all of his value is with the stick I'd say so far it's an early candidate for the Contract of Regret.