I hope this doesn't sound terribly ignorant, but can't many of those pitches - if not thrown perfectly as intended - resemble one another (curve/sweeper ...sinker/split). Are these stats based partially on subjective determinations of the pitches Martin threw? Though the point stands that his big breaking stuff is the least effective ...
Yeah, I could see him succeeding also. A lot of it we just don't have any strong information on, one way or the other.
The number of 1st round pitchers in the draft has dropped for 4 straight years. I would imagine it is because of the horrible hit rates. Pitching is witchcraft, which is why teams are investing in position players early and a bulk of "traits" pitchers late. The teams that are successfully developing those types (LAD, TBR, CHC) are the ones who are winning the pitching battle right now. I don't think the answer is greater investment at the top of the draft. It seems like the cycle is bending away from that.
I’m guessing his general point was that IF you had two fully healthy and effective starters through all last season, the Sox would have been in the mix for much longer…. And if they were, I’d bet they wouldn’t have quit in mid August.
I think the pitch tracking is usually quite good, but not perfect. I think it's done by not humans, so I think it's technically objective, but it doesn't mean that the pitch is always going to register as what the pitcher was trying to throw.
I'm not sure how much "winning" the Rays and Dodgers are doing when their entire pitching staff goes down for Tommy John surgery and they have nothing when the playoffs roll around. Health and effectiveness have to be balanced to be an overall successful team.
Eflin 16-8, 3.01 FIP , averaged 6 IP per start
Citing their win-lose record with another team doesn't really mean squat. The only way to make that argument is if you want to cherry-pick the games in which they'd have replaced what the Sox did have. That's not compelling at all.
I love the thought that Hoyer had to to Craig to pretty much say “please dumb down your presentation, its way to advanced for some of the FO folk”
Citing FIP for one guy (Eflin had a 3.50 ERA & 3.01 FIP) & ERA for the other (Eovaldi had a 3.63 ERA & 3.88 FIP) comes across as not actually making a good faith argument.
I just can't get over the image of David Ross sitting there and just humming along to Shania Twain as Breslow is talking about his plan to turn Justin Steele from a decent minor league pitcher with "meh" control into a Cy Young candidate. (Or at least that is how it goes in my mind).
Well, beyond the contribution of those two guys, (and addition by subtraction of no Kluber), there's the following cascading impacts:
That's pretty relatable. And it says a lot about Breslow that he learned that lesson and was able to make an impact so quickly.
They were 15 games over .500 pitching for two of the best teams. Using the team records is a really unreliable comparison. How about they were 3.5 and 3.1-win bWAR players? That's almost 7. Assuming they replace zero-win players. Anyway, I'm sure we would have been better with more pitching but the injuries wouldn't have stopped and the defense was atrocious from day 1.
Right! But at some point the conventional wisdom goes a little too far and nobody takes a pitcher in round 1 and then it becomes an opportunity? Anyway, it's interesting to me. Top end pitchers in the postseason are like quarterbacks in terms of their impact, except instead of being protected like QBs they are the most at-risk players in terms of physical stress.
To add to that, if we had gotten Efflin and Eovaldi as starters, we'd have rolled into the season with the following starters:
Eovaldi gets hurt every year, it doesn't mean he's not valuable. 2.5 WAR for him, 4.8 for Eflin. That puts us in a different position in July where we would most assuredly be adding players at the deadline.
Well you can chase those hypotheticals if you want. So then do we trade some actual prospects at the deadline? And then play two playoff games and get eliminated? Or do you think we are getting ready for game 1 of the World Series? Because if not, then I am glad we bottomed out.
I'm genuinely confused (admittedly it doesn't take a lot), are you saying that teams that are successfully winning the pitching battle are (or are not) the ones drafting pitchers in the first round?
That seems like a pretty ideal strategy. One of the easiest criticisms of Bloom is he leaned in to certain analytical advantages so heavily that he couldnt build an adequate enough pitching staff. It is pretty clear that returns (especially in the first round and even more so in the top 15) are better among bats than pitchers and that HS pitching have the worst results. These are generally good principles to follow, but he seemed to follow them to a fault. In a job where you can just not participate in a market to get better returns (e.g., a hedge fund), avoiding the less productive market is a pretty sound strategy.
Put it this way....Arizona won 6 more games than the Red Sox in the regular season and are in the World Series. If his examples of Eflin and Eovaldi were in this rotation, I'd feel pretty comfortable that adding those two would have given the Sox a chance to make the playoffs and if they do who knows what happens. Cora does his best work in the postseason.
Arizona would have missed the playoffs in the AL by 4 games. But yeah, it's time to invest some $$$ in pitching.
My point was that Arizona did not exactly impress in the regular season, but got in and they made a run. The Red Sox had so much go wrong for them this year, yet entering August they were firmly in the mix. There are big moves that have to be made, but if they are able to land 1 or 2 big fish they will be a contender.
Agree. If the Red Sox let Breslow spend to the $ penalty only limit, they're going to be a really competitive team next year.
I think we mostly agree that the Sox have a decent foundation which could transform into a playoff team with some key additions on the pitching side and not a ton more. My view of this year is that it all collapsed under the weight of injuries at key areas of the roster, and two more players might not have changed that, but with some luck 2024 will be much different.
If we had Eovaldi and Eflin we would have been a better team. Given the timing of Eovaldi's injury, acquiring a starter to replace him would have been a hypothetical deadline deal. The mindset of "well we could be eliminated from the playoffs, so let's not risk improving the team" is a defeatist attitude. It's conservative and it's one of the reasons Bloom was fired. The counter argument is the aggression is probably a big reason why Dombrowski was fired.
Back to the thread topic. Do we see any internal candidates that could benefit from a Breslow led pitching program? I don't believe the Sox have many pitching prospects currently that are projected to be top of the rotation starters so is this development program going to be a 3-5 year burn?
There are a lot of pitchers in the system with varying chances of being useful contributors at all levels, albeit most of the more intriguing ones are 2+ years away.
Top of the roster? Perhaps not, but Houck, Whitlock and Pivetta have all shown flashes, are currently on the roster and have questions as to what their roles might be moving forward. One or two of them making improvements to help strengthen the bottom of the rotation will hopefully be a benefit bringing Breslow aboard.
I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news...& I think you realize I follow this stuff very closely...
What you're referring to is the very start of the year when he was in Greenville & was a flat out disaster for a while. He got it together & started dominating, & pitched really well after getting called up to Portland, but the walks are still omnipresent (6 bb/9 in A+, 5.31 bb/9 in AA).
Health is a dice roll. They are consistently producing major league pitching talent from mid/late picks through pitching development. Some years you'll get good health fortune, sometimes you wont.
Conceptually, sure. But the problem is the assumption is that top end pitchers come from high draft picks. If you look at where they come from, I think its pretty surprisingly not there. I posted the following information in a Chaim Bloom thread in September. There is almost no correlation between great pitching and high draft picks, at least not until after those players are older, and where there is one, its usually at a pick level the Red Sox rarely pick and the last two times they did they took Mayer and Benintendi (and when they picked a pitcher it was a disaster.)
He seems more judoka (the gentle way) but it’s definitely impressive. Blood letting all around the organization after getting smoked again in the division…and he gently slides into ownership smelling’ like a rose.
I always viewed Kennedy as Bloom's and now Breslow's direct boss. Between the title as President & CEO, and being a partner/shareholder in FSG, he seems to be the one that is responsible for running the entire organization. And Kennedy is now the guy being the voice of ownership to the fans and media.
So meta.
To add to the actual conversation, here's Ryan Dempster on the hire (he thinks it's good).
Thank you that makes sense. Title inflation has made all this completely impenetrable to me.
I believe they separated titles/job responsibilities for Kennedy back when Dombrowski was hired. Kennedy was Team President and Dombrowski was President of Baseball Operations and I believe they were on an equal level of authority. It seems since then, Kennedy's role has changed back to overseeing everything in the organization including baseball ops, though I think the percentage of his portfolio that is truly "baseball ops" is probably 50% or less (though maybe it was a bit more than that following Bloom's dismissal).
