Lucas Giolito has an elbow issue.
- Thread starter soxhop411
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Having the rotation as unsettled going into next season as it was heading into this season.
Yeah Bres said they wanted to add two at the start of the offseason prior to trading Sale.
They lost 200 SP IP at about a 4.40 ERA between Sale and Paxton. I know some of Wink Houck Whitlock etc. will pick up some of those innings but at what effectiveness? This roster has some major major downside potential if things go wrong in the second half. Like a 15-45 post deadline record type bad.
Yeah, while some suggest moving on from Montgomery and punting, if they can sign him (depending on the deal) you are potentially looking for one less hole to fill next season.
I didn't comment at all on Giolito just because I really didn't know. There were flags (what pitcher doesn't have them???) but also some good indicators of future successful turnaround. But most of the people that didn't like the contract were pissy about it only being for 1-2 years and wanted him on a 4 year. I'm not sure how this squares up at all with that but it's hard to not feel your stomach falling.
I'm going to stay positive on the "younger" (as in service time, not actual age) guys so far looking pretty damned good in ST so far. With all the shit luck the Sox have had, it seems like they're due for some positive developments yeah????
I'm going to stay positive on the "younger" (as in service time, not actual age) guys so far looking pretty damned good in ST so far. With all the shit luck the Sox have had, it seems like they're due for some positive developments yeah????
The team has spent a ridiculous amount on payroll for what likely will be three consecutive last-place finishes. This is probably what's causing John Henry's head to explode -- they could have spent $100 million less each year and still finished last.
Sure. But was there an actual identifiable health issue? Do we have reason to believe they didn't do a physical when they signed him?
Those are the questions that go to injury risk.
This offseason couldn't have gone much worse. We have gained nothing, and last year's team had major issues. I like Grissom and hopefully his injury is a very short term issue, but the pitching staff was awful last year, and we have replaced Sale and Paxton with nothing. This offseason is so bad that I found myself suggesting that signing Bauer wasn't the worst idea. And a small part of me agrees with the lawyer above that the case was thrown out and the woman was caught admitting she was after his money so he deserves another chance...but a bigger part of me knows he's probably still a piece of shit and I have way too much respect for women to support him. This offseason is really messing with me.
Ironically, this is exactly why a guy like Cooper Criswell was added. AAA depth that might be able to start.
Not for an entire season. You add Cooper Criswell as someone who can come up and make a few starts if someone is on the shelf for a little while.
Going into the offseason, they had some very talented arms that simply needed to be pushed down the depth chart. Now, suddenly, Houck is your 4th starter vs. swingman. Whitlock is your 5th starter vs. pen arm. Cooper is your 6th starter vs. 8th.
I just don't know how to explain how this is anything other than a complete disaster.
From the ST thread:
View: https://twitter.com/TJStats/status/1763644416365899899?ref_url=
Throwing your slider three MPH faster in your first two IP of spring training feels aggressive when the rhythm of spring training always seems to be that pitchers ramp up over time.
There's also a tweet in the ST thread about K Crawford(and Houck) showing a large velo bump:
View: https://twitter.com/tylermilliken_/status/1764443118449877013?ref_url=
In the Breslow thread he signaled a new approach to ST:
View: https://twitter.com/TJStats/status/1763644416365899899?ref_url=
Throwing your slider three MPH faster in your first two IP of spring training feels aggressive when the rhythm of spring training always seems to be that pitchers ramp up over time.
There's also a tweet in the ST thread about K Crawford(and Houck) showing a large velo bump:
View: https://twitter.com/tylermilliken_/status/1764443118449877013?ref_url=
In the Breslow thread he signaled a new approach to ST:
So, did Breslow and Bailey identify a goal for LG to throw his slider harder and now two innings pitched later- perhaps coincidentally- Giolito's elbow blew up? Three pitchers, three marked jumps in velocity at the very beginning of ST, and now one (potential) Tommy John surgery. Hmm.
I agree, but it's only a bump of one slot. Bello/Pivetta/Crawford/Houck/Whitlock/Winckowski, then Cooper/Fitts/Murphy/Walter.
I'm actually more concerned about the pen.
Houck may not be a viable starter.
Whitlock probably isn't a viable starter.
Winkowski most likely isn't a viable starter.
Fitts maybe a viable stater
Murphy and Walter are not viable starters.
It's a staff that was on a razors edge BEFORE the Giolito injury. They have to, at the bare minimum, bring in another arm and really they need two.
I'm pretty ready for this discussion to go to its own separate thread that I will never click on.
Anyway, it's got like 1% chance of happening.
So, no doubt now that he exercises the 2025 option for $19 million and so we already start 2025 with a $19 million commitment for a player that probably will miss some of 2025. Great.
The only good news is if he comes back strong in the second half of 2025, they have a very reasonable $14mm option for 2026.
This is the exact scenario for why they included the 2026 team option
Nobody will improve over last year? I don't get the defeatism. It's baseball, player performances are constantly changing.
Nobody else will get worse or get hurt? Yes, performances are always changing but not always in a positive direction.
I don't know if I would phrase it quite that way but it's fair to say that the error bars on all of these guys are pretty wide. That is (was) a key part of the rationale for signing Monty. Whatever he is, his error bars are pretty narrow. His injury risk is relatively low for his occupation (which starts at, what, 30%? anyway). The Sox need an ace-level performer, like everyone else, but unlike most teams, they need to KNOW what they are getting from at least one or two of their key pitchers.
Silver lining I guess. Just really hard to take that we're already $19 million on the books for the guy in 2025.
This is the problem with dumpster diving contracts where you give out these options. I guess it's better than having a 5/150 player need TJ but I guess is it? I hated this contract when it was signed. Downside with little upside. I guess the 2026 upside is ok, but fuck, man -- to already have some of 2025 mortgaged as we are staring at a shitty 2024 is very hard to take.
Sure, but they are a young team coming off ridiculous numbers of injuries. Even the older guys like Yoshida are more likely to trend upward in performance for the obvious reasons. But you never know.
I would think the "exact scenario" was not a catastrophic injury, but one or more smaller ones that reduced his IP in 2025 below 140. The idea that the 2026 option would be insurance for him missing a year+, after which he pitches really well but less than 140ip in 2025 is . . . a dimension of chess I hope we're not playing.
That’s the player’s decision, not the club’s. I could argue that Giolito also would benefit from having surgery sooner rather than later (more likely to pitch 140 innings in 2025 and avoid the 2026 club option), but players are human and naturally tend to defer surgery until doctors are no longer presenting viable non-surgical options.
Maybe @radsoxfan can speak to this, but my understanding is that every veteran pitcher has issues that would raise concern on an MRI. Perhaps you can tell if a specific past injury has healed properly, but pre-signing physicals don’t seem to have much predictive value.
I don’t think so. Most projections have them around .500, and I think the new pitching infrastructure plus any modicum of good fortune regarding health (insert joke here) makes them an 85ish win team. This definitely hurts, no doubt. But a lot of the people who mocked the Giolito signing are the same ones crying that his absence tanks the season. If the Sox go out and get Clevinger or Lorenzen, I still think they’re a mid-80s contender. If they get Montgomery, perhaps better. I’m also fine with selling off expiring vets and accelerating the rebuild. That was Bloom’s biggest flaw: never folding nor raising any hands. I don’t think Breslow will make the same mistake.
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Breslow on the Sox broadcast said what you would expect. Waiting for more information on Giolito, believes they have the candidates internally to fill role, seeing positive effects of new pitching infrastructure.
Both the team's hitters and pitchers were the sixth-oldest groups in all of baseball last year. Sure, they got rid of Kluber and Paxton while adding Vaughn Grissom and Rafaela, but this is not a "young team." They did suffer more than average injuries last year, but it was nothing egregious -- eighth in both number of days missed and players to go on the IL. But that's to be expected when you have an old team, as the Red Sox do.
View: https://twitter.com/redsoxstats/status/1765087682282319939?s=46
The Opener’s Tour coming to a city near you
Bello is a below average #1 starter
Pivetta is a below average #2 starter
Crawford is a below average #3 starter
Houck and Whitlock aren’t yet guys you want to go third time through the order, maybe even second time with Whitlock
A ~74 win team becomes a ~70 win team. Cool cool cool.
When you go into a season with limited depth this is what happens.
When you go into a season with limited depth this is what happens.
C Wong 27
1b Casas 24
2b Grissom 23
ss Story 31
3b Devers 27
LF Duran 27
CF Rafaela 23
RF Abreu 24
DH Yoshida 30
SP Bello 24, Crawford 27, Houck 27, Pivetta 31, Winckowski? 25
Reserves O'Neill 28, McGuire 29
Giolito is 29, though he's not in the plans anymore. Two key players are 30+ and Story is healed from injury while Yoshida hopefully is over his learning curve.
You can be down on their talent level but I don't see how they continue to profile as an "old" team. The numbers from last year no longer apply, and were pretty skewed by Turner, Kluber, Paxton and Sale.
Gonna call "bullshit" on this one buddy. But a friendly kind of bullshit, since yeah, they (like all pitchers) could all get injured or faceplant. But the case for them is this:
Houck was doing pretty well as a starter in 2023 before the comebacker that hospitalized him. He was uneven in his return, but I'm comfortable chalking that up to the trauma of the event and the recovery. He can still go deeper though, as he has the third time through problem - which is kind of mysterious as it does not seem to be tied to any noticeable fatigue or loss of stuff or location. (From looking at Savant.) I am hoping Bailey is the fix.
Whitlock has been hamstrung by injury. Hipstrung actually. When he came back from his second injury last year he wasn't stretched out and so they yo-yo'd him into the bullpen. But he actually seems more likely, with health and coaching, to be a more viable starter than Houck. Again, fingers crossed for Bailey.
Winckowski is interesting. He lost a year to covid in 2020, and had 1 year of decent AA/AAA starting experience in 21. He was called up as an emergency starter in 2022 and was not great. But he was probably a bit rushed as far as development goes - a year off, then 1 season in the high minors. Over the 2022-3 off-season he revamped almost all his pitches. In 2023 he was put in the pen due to an abundance (heh) of starting arms, and was never quite yo-yo'd into the rotation despite all the comings and goings. He was exceptional as multi-inning reliever early on, then as a single inning reliever later into the season. He's one of those guys who has better stuff now than he did in the minors. It's really again a coaching question in terms of transitioning him to the rotation from the pen. Again, Bailey will have an impact here, but perhaps not the Houck-whispering or the Whitlock-conditioning. So he may be the easiest at the end of the day.
These are not bad arms. They're not even bad pitchers, even though they are not sure things.
What they all have in common is they've never gotten a true, uninjured, full season of starting (except for Winckowski's emergency call up). But that does not mean they can't do it. And we only need 2 of the 3 of them to rise to the occasion. Would I be more comfortable if it were only 1? Sure - absolutely. Would I have preferred healthy 2021 Giolitto in the rotation? Again, yes - absolutely. But this is not yet an abject disaster.
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Murphy I'm agnostic on, and Walter I'm less sanguine about. But I think that out of the Fitts/Criswell/Murphy/Walter group, there might be a ML arm. Even if it's only Murphy as an effective multi-inning lefty out of the pen, like he was in the beginning of '23.
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Well he's not going to say on a podcast "I guess we are desperate to sign a free agent starter now". Gotta wait and see. I'm sure they know openers are unacceptable long term.
Dude, numbers are numbers and there are 29 other teams with plenty of talent in the mid-to-late 20s, too. This isn't a matter of opinion. We'll find out exactly where they stand when opening day rosters are finalized, but last year they were the sixth-oldest team in baseball and there hasn't been a lot of roster turnover since the last day of the season. At best, it looks they'll be slightly younger this season.
I’m open minded, but could you develop this case a bit?
It looks to me, eyeballing things, that for Whitlock the potential effects are all swamped by BABIP madness and small samples. Like, last year (as a starter), he allowed a .925 OPS the first time through the order, but with good K/BB numbers and a .391 BABIP, suggesting very bad luck/defense. Then, the second time through, he had insanely good numbers: a .505 OPSa, a 14+ K/BB rate, and a .239 BABIP. Then, the third time through, he got absolutely housed: .361 BABIP, 1.200+ OPSa, and a sharp spike in HR rate.
Those are weird numbers, and probably the result of a bunch of layered sample and survivorship biases. But looking through them does not leave me feeling confident enough that I understand what was happening during his starts to have any idea what to expect from him looking forward.
One poster I saw read that Gio was changing his routine as far as his slider, and the program was adding as much as 3 mph to the pitch. Pitchers are always developing things in the spring. Just terrible luck that this change caught the guy in the worst way.
Sometimes numbers aren't numbers. Give us a link.
Otherwise we're left wondering if the "age" of the team is weighted to account for the players who will actually play the most? Or is a 26 year old Devers cancelled out by a 33 year old Ryan Sherriff or Kyle Barraclough appearing for a game or two as emergency call-ups? If so, I doubt the average age says anything remotely useful about the core players.
OK, well then circling back to the start of this thread, I asserted that their 2024 performance wasn't set in stone, and given the age of the players involved, plus the rash of injuries that almost certainly won't recur (e.g. Story's elbow), there's reason not to just write off the season because last year sucked. That's all. It doesn't really come down to who else has an average age of whatever. I'm simply saying that last year looks a lot closer to this team's floor than its ceiling.
Median age of mlb was 28 for batters and 29 for pitchers last season. Significant players for the Sox who will be below that this year are Grissom (23), Casas (24), Devers (27), Duran (27), Abreu (25), Rafaela (23), Bello (25), Crawford (28), Houck (28), Winckowski (26).