Do we have to go through this again? We don't know that Dombrowski made any such "choice." Mookie was going to test free agency. Mookie was always going to test free agency. They got something back before that happened, when the cost would have been prohibitive. This idea that Mookie would have signed here before going into free agency has to end.
Red Sox in season discussion
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Kind of not really the point, but Mookie was never a free agent. He signed an extension with the Dodgers in July, during his final year under contract (the Red Sox contract traded to the Dodgers).
Wacha did not have a "caddy" for any of his starts. Hill is the only one who has had a planned piggy-back for his starts. And that's over now.
48 innings over 10 starts is exactly the Red Sox average innings per start, which is 0.1 innings below the league average per start. Those two aren't putting any more strain on the bullpen than anyone else.
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to put ANY of the blame for this season's disastrous start on Michael Wacha. Dude has been unbelievable. Too bad he got hurt but up til then he was awesome. Now maybe moving forward we can say that his injury (some might say, injury-prone-ness) will contribute to their problems moving forward these next couple/few weeks, but until then, yeah, he's been one of the few bright spots.
That's what I was clumsily saying. He wasn't going to sign an extension with the Red Sox, despite what the previous poster claimed Dombrowski failed at doing, without going to FA ... so they traded him before they got just a draft pick in return
He signed that massive deal with the Dodgers (which, to be fair, Boston would have never offered), but AFTER the arrival of COVID. I know there's that whole fallacy of predetermined outcomes thing, but I don't think Mookie being kept in Boston would have warded off COVID. If he wanted security, he may have signed with Boston for the same reasons he signed that extension with LA. So, to say he was always leaving town is a bit of a supposition that we will never see play out either way.
That said, I'll concede that neither Dombrowski nor Bloom could have seen COVID coming when they made the decisions they made.
That said, I'll concede that neither Dombrowski nor Bloom could have seen COVID coming when they made the decisions they made.
I wish my dad was still alive to see this ... not your post, but the evolution in baseball. One of his biggest gripes was why pitchers couldn't pitch a couple of innings every day
That's one way to look at it.
Another way to look at the post-Epstein era as one where Henry and Co brought on GMs for particular purposes and then parted ways. Cherington was brought in to refit the farm team. Dombrowski was brought in to close off a WS, and now Bloom is coming in to refill the farm again.
Then again, I don't think Henry and Co has handled a single GM departure well. Perhaps they simply don't care?
I’m not in favor of firing anyone now. This season is turning into a lost one. Let’s use the next five months to evaluate and potentially make some moves before the deadline to improve the team’s future. Players to keep on eye on as the season progresses are Kike and Verdugo. Are they going to part of this team’s future or not? Those are two important pieces. It’s safe to say now that Dalbec isn’t. Let him ride it out until Casas is ready. Hopefully Story turns it around soon. He’s here for a while.
I understand why people who root for all the Boston teams might have trouble understanding this given the past twenty-plus years, but winning championships is HARD and not an entitlement. As great as the Rays have been run, they have won NOTHING by the standard you're suggesting. As much brainpower and dollars have gone into the Dodgers and the Yankees in recent times, the Red Sox have twice as many titles as they do COMBINED this century, so I guess we can view those two operations as perennial failures despite them yearly putting together teams that are championship contenders. The best any organization can do is field a competitive team in its sport and hope for the best. Right now it might appear like Bloom has failed to do that, but this team is a week or two of playing good baseball away from making the negativity in this thread seem silly.
Other than maybe having more confidence in Kike, this is pretty much how I viewed the team going into the season. I didn't understand why Shaw was still on the team, and as much as I love JBJ, expecting him to be anything more the defensive replacement at this point seemed delusional, and I had no faith in any guy in the pen other than Whitlock to reliably get outs.
But I did not expect their offense to turn them into the Bynars, with offensive output options limited to 0 or 1. I'm still praying for a crooked number every time they come to bat, but this team has had trouble putting up a crooked number in most games. But I'm going to hold out hope that this will change soon, because this many players can't continue to underperform indefinitely.
Yeah, in fact we know for certain that the Sox made multiple fair extension offers to Mookie before they extended either X or Sale. Of course we don't know much about how confident they were about being able to retain him when they made the decision to trade him, but they clearly were interested in keeping him long term initially.
Because he got a combined 0 innings out of his 2 best pitchers who he expected to get 300+ innings from when spring training began, and because he was given no budget to even try to replace them outside of grabbing guys off the scrap heap.
What are these "bunch of other moves" he made that "didn't work out"? In fact he made a bunch of nice moves that year, several of which ended up helping the 2021 team made the ALCS.
There's a "then why did Jay Payton sign here" joke to be made here to lighten the mood, but I can't get all the pieces together to make it work.
Ken Rosenthal has an article in the Athletic today that essentially summarizes this thread aside from the calls to fire Bloom.
https://theathletic.com/3302899/2022/05/10/boston-red-sox-season-struggles?source=user-shared-article
I mean, he got a code red to trade Mookie and had little to no payroll flexibility, not to mention a depleted farm system. That wasn’t his team.
I think this year is shaping up to be a legitimate knock on him, but I’m having trouble sticking him with 2020.
totally agree here----having better starting pitching pick ups would have been nice---how much did we really expect from Hill and if we knew Sale was still hurt why not get another #2? They went for 1 year deals which always shows owners are not all in for at least this year---I can give them a pass and call it a pitching rebuilding year??
Hill and Wacha have been fine though. Not “ideal” Chris Sale replacement but they are not the problem
Sale "still hurt"? Still hurt from when/what? He was uninjured in December when Bloom might have had his best chance to get another "#2". Then the lockout happened. The lockout ended, Sale turned up with the rib injury, and the only "#2s" left on the free agent board were Kershaw and Rodon. Both those guys had injury question marks of their own and weren't available for very long.
Probably worth keeping in mind that even with Sale on the IL to start the year, they still had six guys who they viewed as rotation pieces. Clearly, Bloom felt the rotation was going to be able to weather Sale's absence. And to his credit, so far it has.
So whose fault is 2020? John Henry's? I mean, if Ben Cherington gets 2012 tagged to his resume by having Bobby Valentine foisted on him, why doesn't Chaim Bloom get the same treatment? I mean, I'm sure it came up in his interview that "You know, you're going to probably have to trade Mookie Betts, you cool with being labeled as the guy who did that?"
It's weird to me that on a board famous for pretty much being on the forefront of strictly looking at numbers to determine a player's worth, that Bloom's 2020 is considered a mulligan.
Outside of Pivetta, the entire starting rotation has been outstanding. Not remotely the problem.
Eovaldi: 6 starts, 6 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 2.94 era
Wacha: 5 starts, 5 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 1.38 era
Whitlock: 3 starts, 3 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 1.50 era (as a starter)
Hill: 5 starts, 4 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 2.86 era
Houck: 4 starts, 4 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 4.32 era
Pivetta: 6 starts, 3 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 6.08 era
So of the six guys that have started games, they've had 29 starts, and 25 of them they've allowed 3 r or fewer. Now that's a bit misleading because some of their starts that have allowed 3 er haven't been good. Houck, for example, gave up 3 r in 2.2 innings the other day. But that's where you see the era come into play. And in terms of the smaller number of innings pitched, that's not really on these guys. That's on Cora, Bloom, and management, who have made a conscious decision to limit the number of innings they throw (really, number of times through the order they go). The starters have absolutely done their jobs this year so far. In fact, with decent bullpen work and normal Red Sox offense, this team would be like 19-10 or better. That's how good the starting pitching has been for them.
Eovaldi: 6 starts, 6 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 2.94 era
Wacha: 5 starts, 5 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 1.38 era
Whitlock: 3 starts, 3 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 1.50 era (as a starter)
Hill: 5 starts, 4 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 2.86 era
Houck: 4 starts, 4 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 4.32 era
Pivetta: 6 starts, 3 starts allowing 3 r or fewer, 6.08 era
So of the six guys that have started games, they've had 29 starts, and 25 of them they've allowed 3 r or fewer. Now that's a bit misleading because some of their starts that have allowed 3 er haven't been good. Houck, for example, gave up 3 r in 2.2 innings the other day. But that's where you see the era come into play. And in terms of the smaller number of innings pitched, that's not really on these guys. That's on Cora, Bloom, and management, who have made a conscious decision to limit the number of innings they throw (really, number of times through the order they go). The starters have absolutely done their jobs this year so far. In fact, with decent bullpen work and normal Red Sox offense, this team would be like 19-10 or better. That's how good the starting pitching has been for them.
I'm not one who puts 2012 on Cherington's shoulders any more than I put 2020 on Bloom's shoulders. First year in the job, complications outside his control (Valentine and an aging/grumpy core in 2012, COVID in 2020), there's only so much that can be done. To both GM's credit, they took advantage of the bad situation to line things up and perhaps accelerate the rebuild. The Punto trade for Cherington, and as much as people don't like it, the Mookie trade plus the deadline deals (getting Pivetta in particular) helped set up the success of the following season.
Unless we think Bloom is supposed to be a miracle worker, I'm not sure anyone would have done much better with the hand he was dealt. How he plays that hand is how he should be judged and, IMO at least, the hand isn't quite over yet.
I don’t think anyone here expects the Red Sox to win a league championship or the World Series every year. I think we expect the team to at least compete for a wild card every year, though.
And being 10 games back in May is an entirely different psychological experience than finishing 10 games back after a September collapse.
I don't follow. I think that almost 100% of the people here that think it's not completely fair to tag 2020 to Bloom's resume also felt the same way about Cherington's 2012.
The issue is that the payroll for the 2020 team was mostly the work of Dombrowski. Bloom's starting point was Dombrowski's roster from the 2019 season. And there were 2 direct edicts from ownership that were put in place before Bloom was brought on: trade Mookie, and keep payroll below the tax threshold. I don't know how any VP of Baseball Ops could build a contending roster given those known constraints.
And then the #1 and #2 starting pitchers go down for the season, which is completely out of Bloom's control.
In fact, the ownership probably understood that when they hired Bloom, and presumably communicated their priorities to him. So I don't find it weird at all that Bloom gets a mulligan for 2020.
I personally prefer to judge a GM/VPOBS first on whether his (or her) moves make sense in the context of when they were made. Because the future is unknowable when those moves are made, so we look at what happened when they were made. I can still judge the Pablo Sandoval signing as a huge mistake based on that criteria; he wasn't going to be a fit on the roster, and he did not fill a need. The second factor is what happened after the move was made; hindsight is a guide, but not the only one.
I fully expect that people will have differing opinions of Bloom and his moves when judging the 2022 team, regardless of whether they use my criteria above or their own. Bloom's performance in 2022 is absolutely a fair topic of discussion. However, I truly don't understand how posters can ignore the actual circumstances that Bloom was working with in 2020 and before debating whether it makes sense to give him a mulligan for 2020.
Sometimes shit just happens. The 2020 Red Sox played 60 games under bizarre conditions with their top 2 pitchers out for the season and massive under production from JDM and Andrew Benintendi. The lineup was pretty good, pitching was terrible -- the opposite of this year. Did Cherrington know how to build a lineup then but not a staff, and somehow flip those two skill sets this year? Or is team building heavily influenced by the hand you are dealt and random variance, and performance better judged by the process? Do we need a singular scapegoat?
If the Red Sox were projected to win 87 games by the best models out there but fall well short of that due to player underperformance, how much of that is Bloom's fault? Again, I wish they had better options at 1B and RF, I think having so much Arroyo in RF is bizarre. But just because you and I don't know the reason why he did that doesn't mean he there isn't one. Maybe he wasn't cleared to spend another 15 mil to address those issues and even if he was, he was going to have to really strike gold to have those moves make a meaningful impact. I'm reasonable sure he knew both of these outcomes were on the table with those spots.
If the Red Sox were projected to win 87 games by the best models out there but fall well short of that due to player underperformance, how much of that is Bloom's fault? Again, I wish they had better options at 1B and RF, I think having so much Arroyo in RF is bizarre. But just because you and I don't know the reason why he did that doesn't mean he there isn't one. Maybe he wasn't cleared to spend another 15 mil to address those issues and even if he was, he was going to have to really strike gold to have those moves make a meaningful impact. I'm reasonable sure he knew both of these outcomes were on the table with those spots.
2020 was a season that might not have even happened given the Covid lockdown. The Sox lost Sale in spring training to TJ. Then Erod caught Covid 19 and had an enlarged heart. Then Devers and JD and Benni proceeded to hit like dogshit in the early going. Most of the acquisitions played well, and were at least flipped for useful parts.
Most importantly, we were in a good position heading into 2021 and made a post-season run. (2021 is also hard to grade though, given the Covid outbreak and roster shuffling - but the team adapted.)
So, overall, a mulligan for 2020. Too many unknowns.
To your question... some. It'd be one thing if Devers/X/JD have awful years, because there's not much one can do to overcome your best players playing poorly. But the issue at the moment is everyone but those guys, and many of them are players where there should be at least some kind of plan B if they fail.
And of course there are always reasons why move are, and aren't, made. But it's Bloom's job to get more decisions right than wrong. He did last year. This year... we'll see.
Lineup aside, I won't be able to understand how he thought this pen would be viable. I can only think the reason was that he expected the bats to carry them into the summer, when he could then make more moves to shore it up. To me it looked like a disaster waiting to happen from day 1.
Speaking of, Benintendi's had himself a couple of good years in KC after the trade. That's not looking like a good deal for the Sox at all. 132 OPS+ this year in a league where no one is hitting, that would sure be handy right now.
Well, first off, Sale would push all the starters down a notch, so you'd end up with a rotation of: Sale, Eovaldi, Wacha, Pivetta, Houck.
So your depth is then: Whitlock, Hill (Or maybe you swap Hill with Wacha or Hill with Houck, but regardless that's also your SP depth, along with maybe Strahm?)
The bullpen in order of arm/skill is: Whitlock, Robles, Taylor, Diekman, Strahm, Sawamura, Davis, Darwinzon, Valdez. Barnes is a wild card.
It's a perfectly serviceable pen. In retrospect, Crawford and Valdez shouldn't have been up, and Barnes has not gotten it together.
It's really the offense that cratered.
If it changes this much in a year, does it indicate a change in the underlying ability, or random variation?
Yep. That one looks like a turkey, money issues aside.
I'm really more concerned that the club does not seem to develop young hitters well. There were stories he bulked up and his game suffered for it. I may be naive, or he may have been a chucklehead, but you'd hope the club would be actively developing him to play to his strengths.
The BABIP gods have been good to Benintendi over 104 PA this year but yes, even at last year's performance of OPS+ 105, he would be exactly the kind of lowish-cost, not a long term contract that would fit well on this team. That doesn't look like a good deal at the moment. But maybe Josh Winckowski gives them 6 years of solid, cost controlled bullpen innings.
A little of both, right? I don't have much interest in trying to estimate a precise share of blame. Just noting that Bloom's job is to put a playoff-competitive team on the field, and a month into this season the team is anything but that.
Hopefully they improve, because all I ever want at this point is interesting baseball to watch from Memorial Day to Labor Day while I spend the summer on my back deck and in the pool!
And if they don't I'm not suggesting Bloom be fired.
I'm hardly wistful about the loss of Andrew Benintendi, contact-oriented slap-hitter, but the dead ball era is probably good for him. He's got a career-high GB rate this year, and it looks like he's given up trying for extra base hits and is just finding holes in the infield. It's surely a better era for his skill set.
AB became extremely redundant with Verdugo on the team (not to mention Duran, another LF-only outfielder), and Verdugo was, I assume, the best player we could have gotten in the Mookie deal. The scenario where DD had shipped Benny off for pitching after 2018 is, to me, the biggest Red Sox alt-timeline "What If?" since we let Beltre walk.
His OPS+ was 105 last year, so whatever ailed him in 2020 he's snapped out of it and is on his way to a solid career. Much better than anything Franchy has provided.
That would track with the hitting approach we've seen all year and most of last year. I think Schwarber came in and had a really positive effect on our hitting across the roster, which has completely disappeared this year. Guys swinging for the fences, chasing bad pitches, etc. The Sox seem to place a huge emphasis on power hitting, which is certainly a valuable tool to have, but not every hitter needs it to be successful. If Duran, for example, can find a way to make consistent contact and get on base without hitting home runs, what's wrong with that?
I don't think we can judge the Benintendi deal until the prospects who came over start getting a real look. Franchy was never going to be the crown jewel of that trade. It sucks that he's done basically nothing for the big club, but Winckowski, De La Rosa, Valdez, and/or Gambrell might be something in the future.
Last year's Red Sox starting outfield was 107, 107, and 113, which is why nobody missed him.
This year, a 105+ would look pretty freaking awesome out there.
At the moment, Winckowski is #12 on SoxProspects, the others are out of the top 60. If he can be a decent reliever for a few years while he is cheap, that's probably a decent return for two years of cromulent production from AB.
To me, the problem is not so much the "power hitters" but the kind of power hitters. They're all aggressive, swing early, don't work the count types. Our past success was based on guys like Manny, Big Papi, Petey and Mookie, who knew how to wait for their pitch and to draw a walk of the pitcher wouldn't give them what they wanted. Secondary players like Benitendi, Moreland and Nixon also knew how to draw a walk while providing some pop.
Kike is our only batter with double figures in walks right now. He's on a pace to draw about 55 over a full season. That would have placed him 6th on the 2018 team. (Xander had 76 that year, he's currently pacing for 45 - what's up with that?). Kike would have been 5th on the 2004 team and 4th on the 2007 and 2013 teams.
The organizational hitting philosophy has really gotten away from what worked both very recently and consistently over a long period of time.
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Yours was a really good post and everything you say here is true. They have been very erratic in their choice of direction for the club. This team is abysmal and the criticisms of Bloom in this thread are valid. The choice of Bloom to lead this organization would appear to be to build something sustainable and navigate through the aftermath of Dombrowski's profligate approach. When Dombrowski gutted the farm, misappropriated prospect capital and handed out huge contracts to aging players, maybe they finally realized that this was not sustainable. Maybe they saw that Cherington actually had the right idea, and could've mitigated the valleys that were inherent in DD's approach by letting Cherington continue his work and then add FA talent to put them over the hump. Maybe they learned from their mistakes. Is this wishful thinking? Maybe. That said, I doubt they would hire Bloom knowing what they know about his stated philosophy of building an organization and not give him a ton of rope.
I really think it's helpful sometime to discuss the actual outcome for the prospects that Dombrowski traded and whether his moves should be considered "misappropriating" prospect capital. Helps to note that many of the pieces acquired played significant roles in the 2018 title team, and flags do fly forever:
Currently in major leagues:
Logan Allen (Kimbrel): fungible, bottom half reliever for Cleveland
Javy Guerra (Kimbrel): bad reliever for Tampa
Manuel Margot (Kimbrel): Decent rotational OF for Tampa, but overall has been a below average bat (93 career OPS+)
Michael Kopech (Sale): Solid starter having a great start to the season.
Yuan Moncada (Sale):
Mauricio Dubon (Thornburg): 4/5th OF with no bat
Santiago Espinal (Pearce): Utility infielder who is having a bit of a breakout year with the Jays, but is also 27, so unclear if there is a lot more upside.
Jalen Beeks (Eovaldi): Is a solid bullpen arm for the Rays. Is also 28.
Out of baseball after short MLB career:
Carlos Asuaje (Kimbrel)
Aaron Wilkerson (Hill)
Luis Basabe (Sale)
Ty Buttrey (Kinsler): Still playing in AAA, but at 29 is no longer a prospect
Williams Jerez (Kinsler)
Still in minors:
Wendell Rijo (Hill): Struggling at AA at the age of 26
Anderson Espinoza (Pomeranz): FYI, at 24 still hasn't pitched above AA ball.
Yeison Coca (Thornburg): Stuck in A ball at 23
Esteban Quiroz (Brewer): Is 30
Never made majors:
Jose Almonte (Ziegler)
Victor Diaz (Sale)
Josh Pennington (Thornburg)
There is also the time value to be considered. The Pomeranz trade happened in 2016. 6 years later, and Espinoza is still in AA after battling multiple injuries. If he has a breakout next year, does that make the Pomeranz trade a mistake 7 years later? Kopech looks like a true major leaguer with a potential All Star appearance in his future, but do people really want to undo the Sale trade?
Agree that Dombrowski made a huge mistake with the Sale contract and his drafts were essentially garbage.
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I've never really understood why they got away from patience, but one of the benefits of patience was making starters work up pitch counts so you could get into weaker bullpens, and in the age of openers and piggyback starters and power relief arms, that benefit has largely gone away. The organization's greater insistence seems to be that a first-pitch fastball is likely to be the best pitch you will see in the at-bat, though I'm not sure that's as consistently the case as they seem to believe.
Last night's 6-run inning felt like a callback to old times. Two walks drawn by hitters at the bottom of the order leading up to the Devers grand slam.
I quibble with the characterization of Moncada as “Meh.” In his last two full seasons (excluding 2020) he was worth 9.6 fWAR combined. He’s an excellent young player.