Craig Mish is usually super reliable. Oh well.
View: https://twitter.com/ChrisCotillo/status/1620213199869218816
View: https://twitter.com/ChrisCotillo/status/1620213199869218816
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Matt Barnes DFA'd, traded to Marlins for LH reliever Bleier
- Thread starter soxhop411
- Start date
It’s possible, but I’d have to think this would be easier to pull off with Ort, who is 5+ years older than German and doesn’t throw 98. They must have something lined up.
Perales was signed in July 19, so he’s not a Bloom acquisition but you are right on Rodriguez-Cruz.
Ort throws hard, from last September:
“Given ample days off last week, Ort’s fastball touched 101 MPH — technically 100.7”
Well, I think it's safe to say that it's an okay deal with no cost savings, and a great deal with cost savings.
Oh of course. I thought he was a 2020 signing, but there were no 2020 signings.
I mean, Barnes was probably going to be a piece of shit. If this guy is a piece of shit, at least he'll be a left-handed piece of shit. Chances are this will be a small print move when all is said and done, but I kind of dig small print types of deals. It's where Ortiz and Koji came from, so I guess my fandom inclines me to favor them.
Yeah…. Honestly didn’t love it to start. Now I d t like it at all…. Especially with German dropping. I don’t get it.
mom still betting the Barnes will revert to pre-contract version when 90% of the board here said would be a steal if he didn’t perform at his Mariano-level.
Currently, pending what happens with German, the overall roster result of the recent moves is:
Taylor for Bleier
Barnes for Duvall
German for Mondesi and PTBNL
I think this helps to fill a few holes for the Sox without giving up much of value. Mondesi's health and the identity of the PTBNL will be big factors in determining whether they're better or worse off as a result.
Taylor for Bleier
Barnes for Duvall
German for Mondesi and PTBNL
I think this helps to fill a few holes for the Sox without giving up much of value. Mondesi's health and the identity of the PTBNL will be big factors in determining whether they're better or worse off as a result.
Upon hearing the news today, I immediately wondered if (a) someone in the front office had seen this video and (b) how quickly this video would appear here on SoSH:
View: https://youtu.be/avpxsR2wH7s
View: https://youtu.be/avpxsR2wH7s
Wow, that’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing. Former college teammate with Sale, very interesting. Fascinating stuff!
I don't really get the move. They brought in a low leverage guy saving very little money. Why not roll the dice on a camp competition so they at least have someone with options The only guys who can be sent down they are going to be relying on out of spring training.
Isn't there a chance one of Mills, Kelly, Ort, Crawford, even Mata as a piggy back guy could outperform him?
Edited: He is effective against lefties so I guess that makes a little more sense.
Isn't there a chance one of Mills, Kelly, Ort, Crawford, even Mata as a piggy back guy could outperform him?
Edited: He is effective against lefties so I guess that makes a little more sense.
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They have up a bad reliever and got a good reliever in return. What doesn't make sense is why the Marlins made the trade. I assumed it was because the Marlins aren't very bright.
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Eh...
They traded an ~ok reliever who walks too many people & was overworked for an ~ok reliever who doesn't strike out enough people & is old.
The main differences are Bleier is a lefty & the $3.75m team option on him has more value than the $8m option on Barnes because it's cheaper.
They're banking on Barnes last 2 months being legit. If they are and they're repeated then they can trade him at the deadline for some sort of prospect.
Getting the Marlins to kick in more money as originally reported would have been sweet, but I'm still good with this deal. If they are not convinced that Barnes's late season improvement was real, then best to roll the dice on a move like this. I'm assuming that German getting DFA'd is a precursor to a trade (he was in Boston recently as part of the team's Rookie Development Program, so no reason to think they were down on him).
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While the cost savings in 2023 aren’t what they seemed (frankly it never made sense) the 2024 savings are still very real.
Great video- I'm looking forward to seeing him in Fenway. And, as a parent of teens who are bombarded with hype about the need to throw harder, it is great to see this model of success using location rather than max velocity.
I'm guessing that this is just a gamble by Bloom that no other team takes German and the Sox can outright him to Worcester. Every team has a full 40-man roster except for the Astros, so if someone claims German off of waivers, that team would have to drop someone from their own system.
I don't think the Sox are particularly interested in getting rid of German. They had to add him to the 40-man before the end of last season or else he would have been a minor league free agent. So if they can waive him and outright him now, they can stash him for another year before he has to be permanently on the 40-man.
Incredible, thanks. Bleier seems pretty close to the lefty version of Brad Ziegler. He's also now primed to be one of my favorite players on the team.
Now that I think about it, there's a whole host of incoming players that seem endearingly idiosyncratic. I'm excited to watch Yoshida, Mondesi, Jansen, Turner, Martin and Alfaro, plus Casas, Refsnyder and Bello. Even McGuire is intriguing — can he keep up that 31% line drive rate?
Before every bullpen was filled with guys who throw 103, it used to be standard (or at least desired) practice to have a guy who induced poor contact and could be brought in with runners on and fewer than 2 outs to get a DP grounder. Bleier gives Cora that option, as well as being good against lefties generally.
I am really looking forward to the 2023 Red Sox team. I am very optimistic. I do think the Jansen move might be the best. Just to have a legitimate closer again makes me think 2023 will be better than 2022.
Not to sidetrack the discussion (too much), but if I’m reading FanGraphs correctly, Freddie Freeman led the majors with a 27.5% LD% last year, so I’m going to guess the answer to your question is, sadly, “no.”
If NY gets a chance at him, I think they could cut/move Deivi or Abreu for him, both are out of options, German still has 3 and they know him as they drafted him. Just my hunch, I have not read anything about this.
Finally got a chance to watch the video. Really well done. Unfortunately he wasn't nearly as good last year.
He stayed pretty consistent in his approach against lefties - pretty much all sinkers (69%) & sliders (30%). He lost a bit of velocity (0.2 MPH on sinkers & 1.2 MPH on sliders), & both were less effective than the year before.
Against righties, he diversified his pitches more than he did previously - adding more sliders, changeups & 4-seam fastballs into the mix in lieu of some of the sinkers.
2022 Pitch Percentages against righties (2021 in parens):
Cutter 39% (40%)
Sinker 34% (57%)
Changeup 12% (2%)
4-Seam 9% (1%)
Slider 6% (2%)
How much of that was due to a poor start to the season & trying to find a workaround I'm not sure. Overall, though, his sinker got pounded pretty hard - .330 BA, .515 SLG, & so either he has to continue to evolve & work more with these other pitches, or he's going to have to get his sinker back to being more impactful (in 2021 his sinker was much more effective, .283 BA, .333 SLG).
At the same time, his ground ball rate dipped from 66% to 53%, his BB/9 doubled from 0.9 to 1.8, his WHIP increased from 0.98 to 1.44, & his soft contact rate decreased from 22% to 14%
He stayed pretty consistent in his approach against lefties - pretty much all sinkers (69%) & sliders (30%). He lost a bit of velocity (0.2 MPH on sinkers & 1.2 MPH on sliders), & both were less effective than the year before.
Against righties, he diversified his pitches more than he did previously - adding more sliders, changeups & 4-seam fastballs into the mix in lieu of some of the sinkers.
2022 Pitch Percentages against righties (2021 in parens):
Cutter 39% (40%)
Sinker 34% (57%)
Changeup 12% (2%)
4-Seam 9% (1%)
Slider 6% (2%)
How much of that was due to a poor start to the season & trying to find a workaround I'm not sure. Overall, though, his sinker got pounded pretty hard - .330 BA, .515 SLG, & so either he has to continue to evolve & work more with these other pitches, or he's going to have to get his sinker back to being more impactful (in 2021 his sinker was much more effective, .283 BA, .333 SLG).
At the same time, his ground ball rate dipped from 66% to 53%, his BB/9 doubled from 0.9 to 1.8, his WHIP increased from 0.98 to 1.44, & his soft contact rate decreased from 22% to 14%
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That's the best video I've seen posted on Sosh. Thanks so much. I am now so excited about seeing this guy. I'm wondering how things like restricting the shift and other factors might affect him. And whether getting fast-moving infielders like A. Mondesi might play into all that. (Altho now that I've read @JM3 's post, I'm curbing my enthusiasm.)
Sorry, don't mean to reign on anyone's optimism. Even getting pounded as hard as he did last year, he still had a 3.55 ERA last year, so his downside is probably mostly competent low leverage reliever. He's definitely someone who is likely somewhat dependent on good infield defense, & likely to be negatively impacted by the shift ban.
His performance against righties will be worth tracking... they put up a .883 OPS against him in 2022. While he was much better against righties in 2021 (.690 OPS), over his career, righties have a .792 OPS against Bleier, which makes it imperative that he be used strategically.
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Before.....yes, I agree wholeheartedly but now with less than 2 outs he's got to face a possible pinch hitter and can't be switched. Still, I like the Bloom move.
View: https://twitter.com/peteabe/status/1630682900009041920?s=46&t=sOB4SuN3rqPM4lSWVqHlHA
So who qualifies as currently running it but not the people at the top? Bloom?
So who qualifies as currently running it but not the people at the top? Bloom?
My guess is he was just trying to say something nice about being a Sox player. I heard him on Carrabis' pod, he wasn't overly bitter, although every player who got traded thinks the team/person trading him made a mistake.
uh... Matt, who was it that gave you that big extension right before the sticky stuff ban... If you are mad at Bloom I dont know what to say...
FWIW, I'd say yes, it's intended as a shot at Bloom while specifically excluding FSG from any ire so to speak.
Now, I don't get why Barnes should have any animosity toward Bloom at all. It was Bloom that decided to give $9m a year to a 31 year old set up man / middle relief pitcher based on one half season where he actually demonstrated really good control and command, so he should be nothing but pleased with Bloom, regardless of where he traded him. But that seems pretty clear to me whom he was "blaming" and whom he was "excluding."
Now, I don't get why Barnes should have any animosity toward Bloom at all. It was Bloom that decided to give $9m a year to a 31 year old set up man / middle relief pitcher based on one half season where he actually demonstrated really good control and command, so he should be nothing but pleased with Bloom, regardless of where he traded him. But that seems pretty clear to me whom he was "blaming" and whom he was "excluding."
Considering the source (Pete Abe), I would love to see the rest of the context of that quote, before I assume Barnes was the one being an asshole.
Yeahhh, not putting too much stock into the whole quote thing period. No one likes to be traded, let it go and move on. Good luck Matt!
Good time to go back and look at that thread when Bloom signed him to that extension. Universally approved on SOSH— with alot of “even if he’s not this great version and regresses it’s still a great extension”
I suspect his collapse was injury related. I don’t think he’ll be as incredible as he was for that stretch either though. But I still think he’ll be better in ‘23 than Brasier
Eh, Barnes is a career middle reliever with an ERA over 4. He’s accumulated a whopping 4.4 bWAR in 9 seasons. Good at times, but at other times, not. He is what he is. Can’t imagine he will be missed much.
Okay, but what do you make of the fact that between May and August of 2021 — i.e. across the sticky stuff ban — he loses ~170 RPM on his fastball and the swing and miss percentage on the pitch drops from 35 percent to 21 percent?
If he hadn't made the same transformation in reverse from the first to second half of 2018, I guess there would be a case for an injury causing his spin rates to decline, but he did.
Yes, I'm aware. Which is why (as someone whom was only lurking then and not posting) I have mentioned multiple times that with the way modern bullpens are constructed and the seemingly endless supply of arms for those specific roles, I am against the entire idea of giving out - for lack of any better term - anything above MLB minimum to literally any career relief pitcher (lets just say over the age of 27 to put some manner of number on it) that isn't an entrenched closer with multiple seasons of closing games under their belt.
I was against the Barnes extension. I am against the deals / money we gave to Martin, Rodriguez, Brasier, etc (I believe we are paying more than the MLB minimum for Ort, so I'm against that too). I'd also love to at least have heard we were TRYING to turn Schreiber into a different piece (I don't know if we did or did not, we very well might have, but I would have liked to have done that, however). We follow the Rays approach in so many things, I'd like to follow their approach to bullpen spending as well, or at least close to it. Pay for one closer (I'm all for the Jansen deal, for the record, I think this was a good signing). Fill in the rest of the 'pen with minor leaguers, prospects getting their feet wet in the bigs and MLB minimum guys.
Add more money per year to have kept Bogaerts, or include it to have gotten I'll just say Chris Bassitt (to pick a name whom left his team for the AL East) instead of Corey Kluber. Do basically anything with the money besides spending it on career relief pitchers.
You don't think that MLB clubs might be able to distinguish between non-closer + 27yr old pitchers? Like, identifying one as better or worse than another?
I was just trying to illustrate the point that I differentiate something like extending Whitlock (or Houck if we were to) very early in their career when there is still a bunch of potential upside due to their age, the fact that they might be excellent starters OR closers, as opposed to signing a Chris Martin / Matt Barnes (at 31 when we gave him the extension) type where there is a track record to point to and make a reasonable projection of what they are based on multiple seasons of major league performance. I believe a really smart front office can find what Martin / Barnes provide for much cheaper (ala the Rays and their cycling through of arms in the 'pen) and better allocate the resources elsewhere.
No matter where one falls on their view of Bloom, I think we can all agree he is quite intelligent - therefore, I think he could find 15 dirt cheap guys and cycle them through until he lands on a good "rest of the bullpen" mix, the way Tampa Bay seems to every year.
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