I'm unclear on what made this year's team uniquely "not built to contend" when it was built with the same MO as the 2021 and 2022 teams. Is this just a Bogaerts thing?
Tanking vs. whatever it is the Sox are doing
- Thread starter tims4wins
- Start date
2022 Red Sox - Built with Vaz, Story, X, Devers, Verdugo, Kike off a great 21, JDM, Wacha, Mountain, and Eo in the rotation. Wasn't built to win a world series but that team could easily make the playoffs and steal a series. Then didn't dump everything when it stunk. But that team was the example of middling it between tank and contend. Honestly, sort of like the 2013 team except everything went right for 2013 (and blew up the next year) and nothing really went right last year.
21 team has Renfroe and ERod on top of that.
Big difference between that and this group.
21 team has Renfroe and ERod on top of that.
Big difference between that and this group.
Tanking is a lot easier when, like in 2020, 1) there are no tickets to sell and 2) there are only 60 games
that option isn’t coming back, hopefully
that option isn’t coming back, hopefully
Truly ridiculous thread.
Is this kinda thing just like a reflex whenever Sale gets hurt?
We’ve got an excellent young pitching staff that’s been fantastic the last month. Bello has put up 8 quality starts in a row. Paxton’s put up quality starts 5 of 6. Whitlock is showing he’s a capable starter. Houck is holding his own, and better than his ERA. Crawford had a 3.00 FIP since April 9th.
Yoshida is a star. Verdugo has taken the step forward and is a 5-win player. Casas had a rough April but is a very good hitter. Devers is probably pressing a bit but is still great. The Kiké-at-short experiment didn’t work and I’m glad they’ve moved on.
We’re not tanking. The team is good now, and several players (Casas, Duran, Valdez, Wong) are getting valuable reps, because not every rookie is a star. I genuinely don’t hate our chances of making the postseason this year, and I like the team going forward.
Is this kinda thing just like a reflex whenever Sale gets hurt?
We’ve got an excellent young pitching staff that’s been fantastic the last month. Bello has put up 8 quality starts in a row. Paxton’s put up quality starts 5 of 6. Whitlock is showing he’s a capable starter. Houck is holding his own, and better than his ERA. Crawford had a 3.00 FIP since April 9th.
Yoshida is a star. Verdugo has taken the step forward and is a 5-win player. Casas had a rough April but is a very good hitter. Devers is probably pressing a bit but is still great. The Kiké-at-short experiment didn’t work and I’m glad they’ve moved on.
We’re not tanking. The team is good now, and several players (Casas, Duran, Valdez, Wong) are getting valuable reps, because not every rookie is a star. I genuinely don’t hate our chances of making the postseason this year, and I like the team going forward.
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Amen. I'm a Sixers fan. I know what tanking looks like. Tanking is, "Call me crazy, but this T.J. McConnell might be the point guard of our next championship team." This is not tanking; this is staying in the mix for a playoff spot as best as possible while building the next championship level team.
I voted “thread the needle” because of the nature of the sport. A top-5 revenue team like the Red Sox can outspend most of its opponents year in and year out, and tanking doesn’t confer the kind of benefits it does in basketball.
Also a lot easier when you get 0 starts from your 2 aces. The 2020 Sox and the 2006-7 Celtics are pretty similar, neither planned on tanking, both would have been mediocre, then because of injuries it became clear they had no path to compete that year. Even if they wanted to the 2023 Sox have no path to "tank".
They went into the season with no pitching, no defense, and no shortstop. There were people on this board that legitimately thought this team could have a sub 4 era with 4 guys throwing 25 starts.
Last 30 days: 3.66 ERA. That's the whole team, Kluber and some of the worthless fill-in guys. We should have at least three guys with 25 starts -- Houck, Bello, Whitlock -- and Paxton might get close to it. If you haven't noticed how solid the rotation is now, I don't know what to say.
And what difference does it make if starts go:
Houck 30
Bello 28
Whitlock 24
Paxton 23
Crawford 17
You're saying that the rotation would be better off keeping Pivetta and Kluber just because they could "give you 25"?
The team has a 4.54 ERA heavily weighed down by 20 appearances from the since-departed Brasier and 17 starts from Kluber and Pivetta, who are now in the bullpen. That ERA has shrunk from nearly 5.00 in mid-May.
There's no reason to think the staff can't be approaching a 4.00 ERA by season's end.
Since 2018, only 4 different teams have made the ALCS, and the Sox were one of them. 6 NL teams have made it. That’s out of a possible 16. Point? 20 teams didn’t make it. And we have people wanting to trade everyone, fire the rest, and tank. I’m too lazy to spend 10 more minutes and look further, but I bet almost half of MLB hasn’t made the championship series in the past decade. Should half the league be tanking at any given time?
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I voted "The Process" but not because I want them to tank.
Drafting and developing should be the focus of the franchise. They are 3 years into this process and to abandon it now would be foolhardy. Patching the holes at the major league level with veteran talent should also be a part of this process so that it does not hinder the development of the players on the farm who are not ready. That said, given the current play of the team I am not sure why they are not trading Turner and Kike for younger talent and using players like Fitzgerald and Dalbec who are not a big part of the future to plug those holes.
Drafting and developing should be the focus of the franchise. They are 3 years into this process and to abandon it now would be foolhardy. Patching the holes at the major league level with veteran talent should also be a part of this process so that it does not hinder the development of the players on the farm who are not ready. That said, given the current play of the team I am not sure why they are not trading Turner and Kike for younger talent and using players like Fitzgerald and Dalbec who are not a big part of the future to plug those holes.
I've seen these guys win 4 WS. My dad lived to see zero. My grandfather lived to see zero.
I want them to play good baseball so I can enjoy watching/listening to the games in my garage. A five year tank would consume what I'm assuming is about 15-30% of my remaining years. Fuck that.
I want them to play good baseball so I can enjoy watching/listening to the games in my garage. A five year tank would consume what I'm assuming is about 15-30% of my remaining years. Fuck that.
The trade market for veterans who won’t return draft pick compensation isn’t what it used to be. If you can find a buyer for those guys, what do you get back? Likely low level minor leaguers who are far away or fringey AAAA types (like a Valdez) who are kind of similar to guys you already have and need to be added to the 40.
5 year tank job? F that. I’ll go root for the Dodgers instead if that’s on the horizon. I don’t think I’m the only one either.
I doubt I can even handle a 2 year intentional tank job.
I doubt I can even handle a 2 year intentional tank job.
What's the big difference? In a negative way I mean.
We made a big upgrade at C over last year, what looked like upgrades in the rotation (Kluber's 2022 was better than Hill and Wacha's 2021s combined, as far as Chaim Bloom's one year deals are concerned), very definite upgrades in the pen, a crossgrade at DH after years of declining numbers from JDM, Casas at 1B replacing Dalbec, Yoshida and Duvall replacing what we got in the outfield from Franchy, Duran and the ghost of JBJ.
X was a loss of course, but the middle infield situation looked tenable before Story went down (after we'd already committed the bulk of the payroll elsewhere), and Bloom found adequate replacements with upside. Should they have blown through the tax signing [I have no idea who] in January? Traded the farm? We've got Story coming back and Mayer on the way; I fail to see how either option would have been wise, when what we knew we could field shorter-term seemed adequate with reinforcements on the way.
Things have, in some cases, broken poorly (again) this year, mostly (again) due to injuries. Story, Sale, Kiké's yips, Duvall, Schreiber, Chang, Arroyo, Mondesi, Joely; the list is long and it sucks to feel so snakebit two years running. But "Bloom didn't build a contender" seems like a weird take to me when we've been running out backups to the backups for a big chunk of the season.
And back to my original point: nothing we've seen from Bloom's approach to roster construction in 2023 feels like not trying to contend in comparison to prior years. If anything, his investment in Yoshida and Devers, along with the bullpen, feels to me like his most serious shot at the postseason yet.
Story feels like a difference maker to me, not because he’s an amazing player (he’s good), but because what he offers is SS defense and RHH power, both of which we need desperately.
LH Verdugo F
RH Story SS
LH Yoshida LF
RH Turner DH
LH Devers 3B
RH Duvall CF
RH Arroyo 2B
LH Casas 1B
RH Wong C
That’s a long lineup.
LH Verdugo F
RH Story SS
LH Yoshida LF
RH Turner DH
LH Devers 3B
RH Duvall CF
RH Arroyo 2B
LH Casas 1B
RH Wong C
That’s a long lineup.
You are correct that one player doesn't change things in baseball like it could in BBall, but 3-4 premium talents can. Look at the Os.
The most straightforward to put a team in a position to obtain premium talent is to get a high draft pick. GMs don't always nail the pick so the more chances the better.
Yes it does. Plus, teams seem to be smarter now.
A team trying it's best (when it has no realistic chance of winning a championship) became dumb when contracts exploded but draft picks were put on a salary scale. The amount of excess value Rutschman is going to create for BAL is going to be hundreds of millions over the next several years; that's hard to pass up,
But how long can Story actually stay on the field? He is frequently injured. The contract looks like a bargain compared to what is being handed out, but his health is a big reason he was as "cheap" as he was. What can we realistically expect from Story as he gets older? 30-40% of a season? 50-65? I'm not sure I know the answer to that.
A .500 club is a .500 club. I'm not seeing much change coming, but I can always wish for some wins.
He really hasn't been "frequently injured." 2017-2019 he played 145, `157, and 145 games. 2021 he played 142 games. If this arm injury is actually fixed--which is what the surgery is supposed to do--he should be able to be counted on to be on the field again.
What we're seeing now isn't tanking. It's treading water with the promise that the prospects will elevate the team from it's current medicroty into a perennial contender. On its surface, its a good idea. It's the execution that is suspect. Last year, I was banging on the drum that the development machine (mainly minor league coaching) was the problem as the ratio of blue-chippers to bona-fide major leaguers seemed lower than the rest of the league. My stance on that has somewhat lessened as Bello, Durran, Casas are all starting to look like major league players. But looking at the way this team was constructed, it wasn't built to contend. They're just treading water. If they become buyers at the trade deadline, I won't be happy.
I doubt that they would fill Fenway if we were looking at a five year tank job. The local fans have too many options and would support the team for maybe two years before attendance declines substantially. Once they start losing that allure of Fenway being a destination event, ticket sales will go down. Since tanking is not a guarantee on future results, there's a decent chance that they could start losing a generation of fans. Henry and Co. are looking to make money. They're smart enough to know that fielding a team with no chance day in and day out will make less money than treading water.
I doubt that they would fill Fenway if we were looking at a five year tank job. The local fans have too many options and would support the team for maybe two years before attendance declines substantially. Once they start losing that allure of Fenway being a destination event, ticket sales will go down. Since tanking is not a guarantee on future results, there's a decent chance that they could start losing a generation of fans. Henry and Co. are looking to make money. They're smart enough to know that fielding a team with no chance day in and day out will make less money than treading water.
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Story was also not a great offensive player last year. He hit well against lefties and at Fenway but was terrible against RHP. A little unclear what to expect from him once he’s back, although a league average hitter who can play SS is still valuable.
Yeah, I'm not really concerned about his health once we clear this injury. His defense is going to be good. Hopefully, the arm bounces back a bit. The real question to me is what kind of hitter we're getting. He has an OPS+ of 102 over his last 1000 PA. His OBP during that time is a paltry .319. Strikeouts will always be part of the package so he needs to slug to offset that. No reason to think his power won't return when he does though.
Portland Sea Dogs are loaded with talent. About 2025 this Red Sox team will be very good. Now that I have taken that perspective I am much happier. Sure I want the 2023 Red Sox to make the wild card, but most of the 2023 team won't be on the 2025 team.
This seems to have played out in Baltimore. They've been good for the last year and a half, yet the team still only draws 16,000-17,000 for weeknight games. If you tank interest in your team, it's hard to build it back.
One thing about this is how much "superstar" talent (and its really a rhetorical question)? If its full of future servicable/league average major league talent, its not really all that different from what you can pick up off the discount rack during free agency.
Here we go again with the “wait until 2025 brigade”. I don’t see how this is any better than if they had just tanked starting in 2020 if we have to wait 5 years to be a contender again anyway. And it’s still based on the hope, not the certainty, that these prospects pan out.
Because tanking really assures very little.
What they're doing now -- putting together a "playoffs if things break right" while also trying to build from below-- worked in '21, not in 22, and is not looking great for this year, today, but somethings, like starting pitching, are trending up.
To me, a "playoffs if things break right" approach is considerably better than simply fielding a team with a great shot at losing 95 games.
It kind of is though, because if you have a bunch of league average major league talent under control for 6 years at controlled salaries, you can build around them via trades and FA.
Trades... yes. And hopefully you can convince another team's GM that your prospects are can't miss so you can get a Pedro or a Josh Beckett back.
I think Henry and Co. are done with blockbuster FA signings unless its to extend someone already on their roster. Sign a FA superstar usually means that you're paying a player for what they have already accomplished for another organization and not necessarily what they'll do for yours. More often, you'll get a short-term bump and a long-term albatross. There are exceptions of course (Manny being the most obvious). The Sox recent history with Panda and Crawford would lead me to be gun-shy.
I think I'm in between these arguments. I'm definitely anti-tank because I want to watch a competitive team every year and I don't need titles given the recent or semi-recent success. However, I also don't think you can look at 2023 AA numbers and just assume that 2025 will be great. Like, sure, we all hope these guys move on to being impact MLB guys but what happens if Mayer shows up and hits .190 like Volpe? Or if Rafaela, who has a .747 OPS in AA, is another Vidal Brujan? Between Yorke and Meidroth, I think you can realistically hope for 1 of those guys to be legit MLB player.
There is definitely a path for the 2025 team to be very good but it's far from certain no matter how much we love the performance of the AA guys.
There is definitely a path for the 2025 team to be very good but it's far from certain no matter how much we love the performance of the AA guys.
Agreed. The one thing to watch is that Trevor Story's K rate ballooned to 30% last year after trending down year over year in Colorado to about 23%. If the UCL surgery works it's magic, hopefully he'll get some bat speed back and be able to play SS at the level he used to. That's a player who could make a big difference. That he won't be playing SS until August is a bummer, of course. Regardless, I'm sick of relitigating "injury prone" nonsense. He had UCL surgery and a broken hand. Otherwise he's been durable.
The team is playing .500 ball right now, but there's cause for optimism. The rotation has looked way better with Pivetta and Kluber excised. Unfortunately the offense went cold just as the pitching came around.
But while the offense has been middling for at least a month, I still think it's one of the best in baseball. Masa, Dugo, Devers, Casas, Turner, Story, Duvall, Wong, with mystery man at 2nd (Yorke?!? Meidroth?!?) - that's an incredibly deep lineup. There's guys with top percentile patience in Casas and Masa, balanced hitters in Dugo and Turner, Devers, who's getting killed by BABIP... and the guys who aren't patient, Wong and Duvall, are serious power threats. Refsnyder is absolutely killing LHP also.
The case for optimism is this: the pitching stays hot and the lineup heats up. That simple. If that happens, they'll steamroll teams.
I don't disagree in general, but I think there are other ways to sign free agents. It looks like they did their due diligence on Yoshida, and I'm sure they'll try to find others like him. I also think they'll be in on very good/less splashy FA's like Bassitt and Eflin. Or maybe they'll find other guys like Story, where they have to sacrifice a year to get him "fixed." People can, obviously, debate whether this is the front office that can be that smart and creative, but I do think there is a path, and I think that Yoshida and Story are part of the blueprint.
I think that is, in a way, a point against tanking. Most of us have been around long enough to have experienced some great AA players not pan out. I suppose the point is, the more good ones you have, the more than pan out, assuming the bust potential is somewhat constant. I am not confident that tanking yields *that* many more "good ones" to make it worth the pain. (*my* pain)
The problem with outright tanking is you dont give yourself a chance at a run like we saw in 2021, or a better example would be 2013, which I think we all remember quite fondly. A quick google search shows the 2013 Red Sox had over/under wins projects anywhere from 79-82. The 2021 team 80.5 (draft kings). This year's team is also 80.5 (vegas insider). So all three of these teams were thought of as mediocre at the start of the season...one went onto win the world series, one came a couple games shy or reaching the world series (YMMV as to whether or not this team was a legit contender, but bottom line is they did indeed provide us with fun/good/entertaining baseball deep into October), and one looks like it's headed right for that firmly mediocre team. And given the volatile nature of prospects across all sports, but especially baseball and the time it takes for them to bloom (sorry, I had to), I much prefer the attempting to thread the needle route than to outright tank.
You love to come into these threads and tell everyone how ridiculous they are and look down because they aren’t as high on a sub-.500 team as you. Glad you’re high on everyone. Can’t say I am surprised given you’re still holding out for Franchy Cordero Superstar. I’m glad the young pitchers are starting to look better. But they still don’t have a pitcher I’d feel confident about going into game 1 of a playoff series.
Great Verdugo is becoming a 5-win player. Now we need to see if the Red Sox will pay him going forward. I guess Casas look better as long as no one is on base. He’s also been recently pulled from the field because he looks awful there.
There’s some hope there but I would calla team under 500 good. Your mileage may vary.
Yoshida is a good counter to my argument, but its too early to tell. That said, he's really "just" a five year contract and not necessarily a superstar. But, judging his overall value to the Sox roster, its too early to tell since a period of adjustment is warranted and two and a half months may not be nearly enough.
But my point wasn't so much that the Sox current philosophy isn't to shy entirely away from FA, but that if the farm system produces nothing but league average players, it doesn't really give them a competitive edge that they need since they could have acheived the same thing via free agency. They have money. They can easily spend that since its one of the team's super-powers. I think that talent evaluation (and growing that talent) is not one of the team's super-powers.
Given what I'm seeing, what they need to do is cultivate superstars since it's apparent that is the only way this team is going to have a superstar on its roster.
Agreed. The most sobering thing you can do is look at past drafts' top 10. Here is 2013's, for instance:
Mark Appel
Kris Bryant
Jon Gray
Kohl Stewart
Clint Frazier
Colin Moran
Trey Ball (...sigh)
Hunter Dozier
Austin Meadows
Phil Bickford
Here's 2016:
Mickey Moniak
Nick Senzel
Ian Anderson
Riley Pint
Corey Ray
AJ Puk
Braxton Garrett
Cal Quantrill
Matt Manning
Zack Collins
Tanking just doesn't make sense. Most of these guys don't pan out, which is pretty different from the NBA where you have to basically try to be incompetent to screw up multiple top 10 picks.
You mean like the Timberwolves in June 2009? Kidding aside, this is the stuff I referred to a few posts above...appreciate you digging a little deeper into it.
Since the draft was started in the late 1960s, there have been two overall number one picks that have gone on to have a Hall of Fame career: Ken Griffey Jr. and Chipper Jones. MLB isn't the NFL, the NHL or the NBA. Tanking to get the top pick works out far less than anticipated.
BTW, people destroyed the Braves for taking Chipper number one in 1990. Everyone thought that Todd Van Poppel was the pick of that litter and while he goosed Atlanta by saying he'd rather go to the University of Texas (like his hero Roger Clemens) than sign there, there were many who said you take TVP because he had a "generational arm". Basically, the draft is worse than a crap shoot.
It’s kind of amazing that the Astros’ big rebuild worked as well as it did given that they botched two first overall picks - Appel never made it to the majors with Houston and the other guy (Brady Aiken, I think his name was?) didn’t sign (they did get a comp pick which they used on Bregman). Like, imagine if the 2017 Astros had Kris Bryant and Michael Conforto instead of Beltran and Reddick?
EDIT: The Correa pick was viewed as a reach, if I’m remembering correctly
Baseball players also take a really long time to produce in the majors. I was listening to some podcast recently and they tried to answer a very simple question, "What team had the best draft in 2017?" It was six years ago, when it would be clear as day who had the best in the NFL or NBA, but in baseball you still don't know. Maybe Tanner Houck is better than Hunter Greene. Or Shane Baz will come back and be effective. If it takes that long to figure out which players will produce, then tanking to get more of them is a very, very long term process.
I mentioned this upthread and without looking at any numbers I'll just throw out that it's my understanding that teams generally make more money while tanking than while treading water. The declining attendance is more than offset by the $100+M payroll reduction. I mean the Angelos family would have never agreed to tank it wasn't profitable.
That's not even including the excess value that their draft picks are going to provide over the next 6 years, which should either find its way into the bottom line (increased attendance but limited salary) or the team's valuation.
fake edit: OK, I looked. According to Bob Nightengale, the Os were the 4th most profitable team in 2022 earning $64.7M. That because their payroll was something like $30M.
View: https://twitter.com/BNightengale/status/1638944455578517504?t=znAlQHA4pO2J6c_COYxk_g&s=19