Trevor Story has signed with the Boston Red Sox

Ganthem

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There is old friend Benintendi. Do I need to duck? Conforto is probably looking for a one year deal and assuming he is healthy he could be an interesting stop gap for one of the OF spots until Bloom comes up with a long term solution.

Why does it say a ray of sunshine underneath my name?
 

Daniel_Son

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There is old friend Benintendi. Do I need to duck? Conforto is probably looking for a one year deal and assuming he is healthy he could be an interesting stop gap for one of the OF spots until Bloom comes up with a long term solution.
No need to duck, I honestly think Beni is one of the best options available this offseason - which says more about the quality of those options than anything.

Conforto is interesting - apparently he had a shoulder injury in the offseason? As far as I know, he wasn't targeted by anyone other than the Mets, who gave him a qualifying offer. Average year in 2021, but he's had some really good seasons in the past. 30-year-old slugger on a show-me contract shouldn't break the bank, and it's not like we've got a surplus of outfield power waiting in the wings.
 

chrisfont9

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No need to duck, I honestly think Beni is one of the best options available this offseason - which says more about the quality of those options than anything.

Conforto is interesting - apparently he had a shoulder injury in the offseason? As far as I know, he wasn't targeted by anyone other than the Mets, who gave him a qualifying offer. Average year in 2021, but he's had some really good seasons in the past. 30-year-old slugger on a show-me contract shouldn't break the bank, and it's not like we've got a surplus of outfield power waiting in the wings.
Speaking of Bennie, gonna keep my eye on Franchy for a bit. SSS but his contact is much better. With his talent and athleticism, some sort of breakout could be a major development. We'll see though.
 

Petagine in a Bottle

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Too little, too late. :)

This is the beauty of baseball. A guy can’t buy a hit for a few weeks, and now nobody can get him out….and suddenly a team that couldn’t do anything right can’t don anything wrong.

ALIVE!
 
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jon abbey

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That was Soriano’s final hurrah (412 career HRs!), he was entirely out of baseball less than a year later. Not sure I’ve ever seen anyone drop off so suddenly, he was 38 but still.
 

steveluck7

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That was Soriano’s final hurrah (412 career HRs!), he was entirely out of baseball less than a year later. Not sure I’ve ever seen anyone drop off so suddenly, he was 38 but still.
Off topic but holy s**t. I knew he was a very good player but if you had asked, i wouldn't have come within 150 career HRs of his total.
 

johnlos

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Story is now at a 121 wRC+ which is right in line with his top 3 seasons. His 1.4 WAR puts him on pace for 5.2 fWAR, which would be the second-highest mark of his career
 

A Bad Man

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57 games in, OAA has Trevor Story as the third best defensive 2B in baseball. DRS has him tied for second best.
 

scottyno

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3rd in the league in OPS, too. Remarkable, considering he had a .596 in April.
And his defense in April wasn't so great either. Which isn't a surprise since it was a brand new position, but still a very fast turnaround.
 

CanvasAlley

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Yeah, the "he only started playing better after visiting Texas" argument reminds me of some of the Eric Van conclusions from days of yore. For example, his studies on day/night splits of various players, particularly Varitek and Youkilis. IIRC, he concluded that that the reason why Youkilis was playing poorly in day games that followed night games at home was his (Youkilis) hot girlfriend. As far as correlation = causation arguments go, the idea that getting to visit Texas lifted Story's spirits enough to hit better is a muddled one at best.
Ahh, I sometimes miss the halcyon days of Eric Van.
 

chawson

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Good piece on Story from Chad Jennings in The Athletic. He’s brought over a practice of postgame hitting sessions he learned from Arenado in Colorado, and it’s catching on with some teammates and creating a “culture of work” here.

It’s paywalled but here’s an interesting (and slightly lengthy) pull relevant to discussion in this thread:

His personality, tenacity and capacity for work don’t show up in the statistics, and so on May 5, when Story was booed at Fenway Park after striking out four times and did not wait at his locker to answer questions postgame, it was seen as a red flag. New England sports culture prides itself on accountability, and the new guy had failed to face the music. His absence was telling — it remains, perhaps, the defining moment of his early Red Sox tenure — we just didn’t know yet what it was saying.

It’s true, Story did retreat that afternoon. He descended the stairs to the indoor batting cage for a postgame hitting session with J.D. Martinez, Alex Verdugo and hitting coach Peter Fatse. The Red Sox media relations department, not yet accustomed to Story’s tendency to do more postgame hitting than most, did not alert him to the inevitable media crush and ask him to wait a few minutes before heading to the cage. The longer the hitting session lasted, the less anyone wanted to interrupt him. After more than an hour, Story was officially a no-show. He talked the next day (and said he would have talked the night before if anyone had let him know).
 

scottyno

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Even with his slump he's on pace for a 4-5 WAR season, depending on which WAR you use. You'd hope for a bit more offense, and it's probably fair to expect that he gets it and ends the year a bit over average instead of a bit below average offensively, but you can't really argue that even if he just prorates his current season to a full season, that it would be a poor first year.
 

scottyno

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Does Colorado have higher BAbip? I'd guess yes but I'm not certain.

edit: Yeah. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/coors-field-and-babip/ I figured. No idea what a normal BAbip would look like for Story outside of Coors.
He has a career road babip of .316, compared to .349 at home. The various projection systems listed on fangraphs had him at about a .305-.310 babip for this season, and he's at .293 now. Of course the projection system had no way to factor in MLB changing or fucking with the ball, and then possibly changing it again midseason, so who knows how to factor that in.
 

Jed Zeppelin

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I have seen some people throwing around less friendly FA comps but I’m getting very strong JD Drew vibes. Streaky, but defense always great at a key position, and capable of carrying the team on his back for a month (JD’s June 2008 remains the stuff of legend).

Story is not the quality of hitter that JD was but adjusting for the era I think it’s a decent comp. Won’t know for sure until he hits a crucial bomb in the playoffs, of course.
 
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Minneapolis Millers

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I have seen some people throwing around less friendly FA comps but I’m getting very strong JD Drew vibes. Streaky, but defense always great at a key position, and capable of carrying the team on his back for a month (JD’s June 2008 remains the stuff of legend).

Story is not the quality of hotter that JD was but adjusting for the era I think it’s a decent comp. Won’t know for sure until he hits a crucial bomb in the playoffs, of course.
Pretty good comp. Drew made better contact and walked more. Story has more power and speed, and is a comparably good defender but at middle infield positions. Story’s been a little more durable. But both are good, multi-skill players. If Story stays healthy, he’ll be a solid value for us.
 

scottyno

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I have seen some people throwing around less friendly FA comps but I’m getting very strong JD Drew vibes. Streaky, but defense always great at a key position, and capable of carrying the team on his back for a month (JD’s June 2008 remains the stuff of legend).

Story is not the quality of hotter that JD was but adjusting for the era I think it’s a decent comp. Won’t know for sure until he hits a crucial bomb in the playoffs, of course.
And if people thought Story sucked based on one month just imagine how much they must have thought Drew sucked after a lackluster first regular season!
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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And if people thought Story sucked based on one month just imagine how much they must have thought Drew sucked after a lackluster first regular season!
Sadly, there were people who thought Drew sucked his entire time in Boston (not saying any of them are on this site). There are a lot of "fans" who don't actually know a lot about the game.
 

Van Everyman

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Sadly, there were people who thought Drew sucked his entire time in Boston (not saying any of them are on this site). There are a lot of "fans" who don't actually know a lot about the game.
In fairness to those people (I was not among them), Drew played in an era when most offensive players were still judged by the casual fan on BA, HR and RBIs. OPS was something most fans hadn’t heard of much less understood. Even OBP wasn’t really widely appreciated or shown on television broadcasts when a batter would come to the plate. And few defensive metrics were seen as reliable.

Add in the optics of the Sox paying Drew good money, his agent being Boras and the only emotion anyone ever saw from him was on that grand slam in 2007, and you can at least kind of understand why a lot of people thought we were paying a premium for a less than premium talent.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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In fairness to those people (I was not among them), Drew played in an era when most offensive players were still judged by the casual fan on BA, HR and RBIs. OPS was something most fans hadn’t heard of much less understood. Even OBP wasn’t really widely appreciated or shown on television broadcasts when a batter would come to the plate. And few defensive metrics were seen as reliable.

Add in the optics of the Sox paying Drew good money, his agent being Boras and the only emotion anyone ever saw from him was on that grand slam in 2007, and you can at least kind of understand why a lot of people thought we were paying a premium for a less than premium talent.
Oh I get the "hidden value" aspect of the time. Add to it that he was a great defensive outfielder that he made tough plays look routine, which only made him look more blase and unexciting when he was camped under balls that other players would be diving to catch. Funny thing is that $14M AAV was hardly superstar money even then, so people expecting him to come in and be another Manny or Ortiz at the plate were setting themselves up for disappointment. He was a second-tier guy with a second tier contract who gave second-tier contributions, and despite that, the fans wanted/expected a Hall of Famer.

Is that really true in 2007?
For true followers of the Sox, especially at the height of the Theo-era, it shouldn't have been. But there were plenty of EEI-caller level doofs who hated all that moneyball crap. And few personified Moneyball-style valuation like Drew did.
 

tims4wins

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Oh I get the "hidden value" aspect of the time. Add to it that he was a great defensive outfielder that he made tough plays look routine, which only made him look more blase and unexciting when he was camped under balls that other players would be diving to catch. Funny thing is that $14M AAV was hardly superstar money even then, so people expecting him to come in and be another Manny or Ortiz at the plate were setting themselves up for disappointment. He was a second-tier guy with a second tier contract who gave second-tier contributions, and despite that, the fans wanted/expected a Hall of Famer.



For true followers of the Sox, especially at the height of the Theo-era, it shouldn't have been. But there were plenty of EEI-caller level doofs who hated all that moneyball crap. And few personified Moneyball-style valuation like Drew did.
Maybe. Moneyball was published in 2003. I feel like OPS was pretty mainstream at that point. But I agree there were definitely people who resented Drew for doing things like taking a walk with a man on third and one out instead of putting the ball in play for an easy RBI (and the same was said of Boggs, and Ted, etc.).
 

AlNipper49

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This is why I loved the Story signing. He’s playing a premium position where the alternate options were basically filler, particularly if he sticks at 2B.

It would be nice for him to shatter through the contract. On the other hand here we are thinking it’s a kinda sorta good deal and he’s probably a top 5 second baseman. I do like the JD comp and it makes me like this better given Drew played a non-premium position (though he did play it extremely well)

It’s a really nice use of assets. A great use of assets if Boegarts sticks around. Thus far that is.

It’s also kind of weird they haven’t solved 1B given the thought process that I’m assuming that they took on Story. It’s a much easier position to fill. At this point I’m not sure that Dalbec’s mother thinks that he is in the Sox long-term plans there. They must reeeaaaaaallllly love Casas or have had their plans mucked up somewhere else along the way.
 

scottyno

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It’s also kind of weird they haven’t solved 1B given the thought process that I’m assuming that they took on Story. It’s a much easier position to fill. At this point I’m not sure that Dalbec’s mother thinks that he is in the Sox long-term plans there. They must reeeaaaaaallllly love Casas or have had their plans mucked up somewhere else along the way.
He's pretty much a consensus top 20 prospect in all of baseball, everyone loves him. Coming into this year it seemed like he could play a part as soon as this summer, now injuries may end up pushing that back to next year. Really the only thing they could have done was to sign a 1 year stopgap on the cheap, and I'm not sure who that could have been that would have been expected to outplay Dalbec's expected production coming into this year.
 

Yo La Tengo

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Interesting note from Rosenthal, especially when considering Xander leaving and the assumption that Story would slide over to shortstop:

"Story, according to Statcast, had not touched 80 mph on a throw entering Friday night’s play and had reached that velocity only once since the start of Aug. 2021, when he was still the Rockies’ shortstop. Prior to that, he had more than 150 throws of 80 mph since 2017. His hardest throw this season was 78.2 mph."

Curious how often other 2Bs hit 80 mph on throws?
 

Kliq

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Interesting note from Rosenthal, especially when considering Xander leaving and the assumption that Story would slide over to shortstop:

"Story, according to Statcast, had not touched 80 mph on a throw entering Friday night’s play and had reached that velocity only once since the start of Aug. 2021, when he was still the Rockies’ shortstop. Prior to that, he had more than 150 throws of 80 mph since 2017. His hardest throw this season was 78.2 mph."

Curious how often other 2Bs hit 80 mph on throws?
Story doesn't play SS at all when Xander sits, and has been pretty adamant about how he wants to be a second-basemen. I'm not that confident at all that Story is just going to slide back over to SS if Bogaerts is gone after the season.
 

Spelunker

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Story doesn't play SS at all when Xander sits, and has been pretty adamant about how he wants to be a second-basemen. I'm not that confident at all that Story is just going to slide back over to SS if Bogaerts is gone after the season.
Is it easier these days to get a good hitting shortstop than a good hitting second baseman?
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Is it easier these days to get a good hitting shortstop than a good hitting second baseman?
Potential free agents this winter (asterisk means they have an option/opt-out):

Shortstops
Tim Anderson *
Elvis Andrus *
Xander Bogaerts *
Carlos Correa *
Didi Gregorius
Dansby Swanson
Trea Turner

Second Basemen
Adam Frazier
Kike Hernandez
Whit Merrifield *
Jose Peraza
Jace Peterson
Jean Segura *
Kolten Wong *

I'd give the slight edge to SS as far as good hitters go.
 

Manramsclan

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Potential free agents this winter (asterisk means they have an option/opt-out):

Shortstops
Tim Anderson *
Elvis Andrus *
Xander Bogaerts *
Carlos Correa *
Didi Gregorius
Dansby Swanson
Trea Turner
I'd give the slight edge to SS as far as good hitters go.
I hope the Red Sox don't get too cute with this, but Trea Turner on the team would be unbelievable