Mookie details Boston exit

Sad Sam Jones

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Yes, that Oscar Gonzalez.
While technically true, Gonzalez re-signed with Cleveland the same day he reached free agency. There's not much extra other teams can offer to lure away a minor league free agent. He still could have been selected in the Rule 5 draft had there been one, but he has said that he never even considered leaving the only organization he's ever known when he was so close to the majors (and although he wouldn't say it, there was little to block him from reaching the majors this year).
 

HangingW/ScottCooper

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I think the bigger point is if this is Mookie’s new normal, Sox made the right move. That said, that money needs to go to Devers.
I don't think the Red Sox will regret trading Mookie at the end of that contract. I do think the Red Sox still could have done better in the trade.

As for giving money to Devers and Bogaerts. It's very likely that one or both contract extensions for both of those guys will end up being a bad deal for the team from a baseball perspective. That being said, they probably have to do both regardless.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Mookie's postseason OPS is .741, his regular season OPS is .888. A dropoff to be sure but there have been many postseason series where he's been excellent ('17 ALDS, '20 NLDS, '20 WS, '21 NLDS). And in two Wild card series he's got a 1.227 OPS.

The narrative of his postseason struggles is overrated but the narrative seems to have stuck for now.
 

tims4wins

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Mookie's postseason OPS is .741, his regular season OPS is .888. A dropoff to be sure but there have been many postseason series where he's been excellent ('17 ALDS, '20 NLDS, '20 WS, '21 NLDS). And in two Wild card series he's got a 1.227 OPS.

The narrative of his postseason struggles is overrated but the narrative seems to have stuck for now.
His "issue" in the playoffs has mainly been slugging. I looked at it yesterday. His OBP is down like 20-25 points, but his SLG is down 125 points. 55 playoff games, 252 plate appearances, so a little more than 1/3 of a regular season. 17 doubles, which is pretty good, but only 4 HR.
 

AlNipper49

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So basically 35 million bucks a year for someone who turns into a shitty version of Hunter Renfroe in the postseason. The narrative has stuck because it's not a narrative, he's statistically a complete and absolute piece of shit come the playoffs given what they are paying him (and even without consideration of his disproportionate drain on their payroll he's been really bad)

You don't remember 2018? Guys had a historic regular season then once the games mattered he turned into Darren Lewis. Thank god for Steve Pearce. Two years in a row with the Dodgers his team has exited the playoffs, in large part due to his lack of performance.
 

Minneapolis Millers

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So basically 35 million bucks a year for someone who turns into a shitty version of Hunter Renfroe in the postseason. The narrative has stuck because it's not a narrative, he's statistically a complete and absolute piece of shit come the playoffs given what they are paying him (and even without consideration of his disproportionate drain on their payroll he's been really bad)

You don't remember 2018? Guys had a historic regular season then once the games mattered he turned into Darren Lewis. Thank god for Steve Pearce. Two years in a row with the Dodgers his team has exited the playoffs, in large part due to his lack of performance.
This is really only because he doesn’t get to face that choke artist/bum, Clayton Kershaw, enough. Mookie went 2-5 with a HR and BB against him in 2018. That’s a 1.500 OPS!
 

Sin Duda

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Mookie's postseason OPS is .741, his regular season OPS is .888. A dropoff to be sure but there have been many postseason series where he's been excellent ('17 ALDS, '20 NLDS, '20 WS, '21 NLDS). And in two Wild card series he's got a 1.227 OPS.

The narrative of his postseason struggles is overrated but the narrative seems to have stuck for now.
If the umpire calls fan interference, does the closest fielder get credit for the putout?
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Also, Craig Calcaterra has this very reasonable take on the Dodgers today:

The 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers won 111 regular season games. They also:

  • Lost three of four games between April 26 and 30 to the Diamondbacks and Tigers;
  • Lost five of six between May 9 and May 14 to the Pirates and Phillies;
  • Lost three in a row to the Pirates between May 30 and June 1;
  • Lost three in a row to the Mets and White Sox between June 4 and June 7;
  • Lost three in a row to the Giants between June 10 and June 12;
  • Lost three of four to Atlanta and Colorado between June 25 and June 28;
  • Lost three of five to the Royals and Brewers between August 14 and 18;
  • Lost three in a row to the Mets and Padres between August 31 and September 2;
  • Lost three of four to the Diamondbacks and Cardinals between September 20 and September 23; and
  • Lost three in a row to the Rockies between October 2 and October 4.
Obviously the NLDS is more important than those games, but it’s also the case that three losses at a bad time does not make the Dodgers a bad team or a failure of a team or a group of chokers. It just means that they had three or four bad games against a really good team at a really unfortunate time and, welp, that’s how it goes sometimes.
Spot the lie. Because I cannot.
 

BaseballJones

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That’s baseball, and it’s why you just gotta enter the tournament because even the worst teams can have short term success against the best teams (except for 2022 Boston against Toronto and anytime Minnesota plays the Yankees).
 

walt in maryland

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I also wonder if Covid never happened, would he have actually gone to FA (and still re-signed with the dodgers) but was able to get a bidding war started...

It was smart for him to sign the extension when he did given the uncertainty of sports in general at that time (plus the upcoming CBA hostilities during this past offseason




you beat me to it lol
So true. My guess (and it's only that) is that, absent COVID, Mookie would have played 2020 without a contract and likely have signed a larger deal than L.A. gave him. But given the circumstances and the uncertainty, he made the right decision.
 

moondog80

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That’s baseball, and it’s why you just gotta enter the tournament because even the worst teams can have short term success against the best teams (except for 2022 Boston against Toronto and anytime Minnesota plays the Yankees).
Yes. Just ran a simulation and a team with a 60% chance of winning every game (which is a big edge) loses a 5 game series 30% of the time. Billy Beane was right. The Dodgers should just remember that and run it back.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Yes. Just ran a simulation and a team with a 60% chance of winning every game (which is a big edge) loses a 5 game series 30% of the time. Billy Beane was right. The Dodgers should just remember that and run it back.
I don't think it's possible to build a team that is "built to win in the postseason." A team that wins in the regular season is usually in good shape to win in the postseason...except that there's ONLY good teams in the postseason so all but one good team will lose.

I suspect we've been asking the wrong questions this entire time.
 

BaseballJones

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Well that’s not entirely true. If you have three good starters and three excellent relievers that can be enough to win in the postseason, especially with the days off for travel. That’s not nearly enough, though, over a 162 game grind.

In the regular season, if you have fewer studs and more average to good players, and good depth, you can do pretty well over 162 games but that might come up short against more talented teams in the postseason.

I do think there’s something to the idea of playoff baseball being a little different.
 

lexrageorge

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I don't think it's possible to build a team that is "built to win in the postseason." A team that wins in the regular season is usually in good shape to win in the postseason...except that there's ONLY good teams in the postseason so all but one good team will lose.

I suspect we've been asking the wrong questions this entire time.
There will always be an element of randomness of outcomes in the MLB postseason. Do not know if it will be as unpredictable as the NHL, but favored teams will lose a lot more often than people may expect.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Well that’s not entirely true. If you have three good starters and three excellent relievers that can be enough to win in the postseason, especially with the days off for travel. That’s not nearly enough, though, over a 162 game grind.

In the regular season, if you have fewer studs and more average to good players, and good depth, you can do pretty well over 162 games but that might come up short against more talented teams in the postseason.

I do think there’s something to the idea of playoff baseball being a little different.
Good point, if you're top heavy you might do better in the postseason. But if you're top-heavy you might not even MAKE it to the postseason due to the grind of the 162.

I am just not sure it's possible to deliberately construct a team designed to be dominant in the postseason without merely constructing one that's excellent in the regular season.
 

moondog80

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Well that’s not entirely true. If you have three good starters and three excellent relievers that can be enough to win in the postseason, especially with the days off for travel. That’s not nearly enough, though, over a 162 game grind.

In the regular season, if you have fewer studs and more average to good players, and good depth, you can do pretty well over 162 games but that might come up short against more talented teams in the postseason.

I do think there’s something to the idea of playoff baseball being a little different.

I think that's true, but emphasis on the "little". You can only move the odds so much. The Padres' 5 run inning Saturday night involved one solid line drive and a bunch of ground balls.
 

Van Everyman

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His "issue" in the playoffs has mainly been slugging. I looked at it yesterday. His OBP is down like 20-25 points, but his SLG is down 125 points. 55 playoff games, 252 plate appearances, so a little more than 1/3 of a regular season. 17 doubles, which is pretty good, but only 4 HR.
Mookie also doesn't have a signature moment, which--let's face it--matters in playoff baseball and often has no correlation to talent or contract. There's a reason WS history is littered with Reggie Jacksons and David Ortizes ... but also Steve Pearces and Jeff Conines.

Nobody dragged Ted Williams' greatness because he turned into [INSERT RANDOM 1940S PLAYER WHO PROBABLY ALSO DROVE A BUS] in the 1946 World Series. But the Sox only won the pennant once in Williams' career. I do think when you're in the championship multiple times with not too much to show for it, the public perception begins to turn on "clutchness" and how well a player handles pressure and "big moments."
 

chrisfont9

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He was almost exactly as good in 2022 as he was in 2019. I agree that they made the right (albeit painful) move trading him, but I don't think Dodger fans should worry that he's not providing value.

I do think that contract is likely to be ugly in the back half of the decade, but that's part of the deal with 12-year contracts.
They should worry that the value he's giving them is being squandered by... I'm not even sure what. But at least some of it has to fall on our old friend Roberts. Love the guy but how can you not get more out of that team in the postseason? As random as postseason baseball can be... our last couple managers always seemed to get the Sox locked in.
 

chrisfont9

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So basically 35 million bucks a year for someone who turns into a shitty version of Hunter Renfroe in the postseason. The narrative has stuck because it's not a narrative, he's statistically a complete and absolute piece of shit come the playoffs given what they are paying him (and even without consideration of his disproportionate drain on their payroll he's been really bad)

You don't remember 2018? Guys had a historic regular season then once the games mattered he turned into Darren Lewis. Thank god for Steve Pearce. Two years in a row with the Dodgers his team has exited the playoffs, in large part due to his lack of performance.
Or maybe in the postseason you face pretty good pitching, such that in a small sample size you can't expect to be exactly as successful as you were all season? Also the Sox teams he played on were teams, where lineups and defenses are coordinated to be effective, so if those teams won with him in RF, maybe not everything he contributed shows up in his OPS? I get it, you'd expect more offensive production, but the Renfroe (last seen in Boston getting benched vs the Astros) comparison is insulting.
 

ponch73

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Or maybe in the postseason you face pretty good pitching, such that in a small sample size you can't expect to be exactly as successful as you were all season? Also the Sox teams he played on were teams, where lineups and defenses are coordinated to be effective, so if those teams won with him in RF, maybe not everything he contributed shows up in his OPS? I get it, you'd expect more offensive production, but the Renfroe (last seen in Boston getting benched vs the Astros) comparison is insulting.
I also was struck by how much Mookie underperformed his career regular season numbers in the postseason, and decided to compare his numbers to those of another highly-admired RF set for a huge payday.

Betts

REGULAR SEASON .368 / .520 / .888
POSTSEASON .345 / .395 / .741

Judge

REGULAR SEASON .394 / .583 / .977
POSTSEASON .324 / .483 / .807

It seems that facing improved pitching in the postseason is the most likely explanation for the falloff.
 

BoSox Rule

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Baseball player performance fluctuates. A bad week stands out more in October and July. However while he is still a great player, and defender, if I was the Dodgers I’d be more worried about what kind of player he looks like in his thirties if he continues to be a .265 hitter and then his speed and D inevitable decline.
 

effectivelywild

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Imagine Playoff Mookie serving food? Fucking guy would spill boiling soup all over some kid, disfiguring him for life, but would follow it up with a cute little dance and the entire place would burst into applause and proclaim him the best soup server ever.
Wow. That's some pretty intense vitriol. I get that Betts has had a significant dropoff when going from the regular season to the postseason, but from your comment you would think he had personally cost Boston a championship or two (although by baseball reference's estimate he was consistently a negative for Boston's WS odds in the playoffs). Still, the donating extra food to the homeless was, at least in my opinion, a genuinely nice thing to do and I never got the impression that he was doing it just to get some good will or puff up his ego. You may think the story is overblown but there's enough times that we have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of having an athlete on our favorite sports team that has (at least allegedly) done some not so great stuff (I've lived in Los Angeles the last few years and I'm glad I never was at a game Trevor Bauer was starting where I would have to make a decision about whether to cheer or boo, to say nothing of what is going on with the Browns).
 

chrisfont9

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Imagine Playoff Mookie serving food? Fucking guy would spill boiling soup all over some kid, disfiguring him for life, but would follow it up with a cute little dance and the entire place would burst into applause and proclaim him the best soup server ever.
WTF?! You don't get the difference between Betts actually spending some time helping people directly and not just bragging about his foundation that he visits in the offseason when he's bored? He really isn't like all the rest. And apparently a number of us sincerely appreciate this.