I think I could be convinced in Jansen. But dealing Martin is a complete white flag. If that's the approach, so be it, but then why did we sign Giolito? I get doing it for 2024, especially now knowing that Sale was gone. We need innings. But if the idea is to white flag, giving the 2025 opt out kind of sucks. That's not a white flag move. I guess we just have to hope Giolito is good so he opts out, but I feel like I've been saying that in recent years for Sale and we've been burned.
As much as Martin proved valuable last year, I consider him a prime candidate for selling high. He's 37 and I don't think any of us expect him to put up the same numbers in '24. Not looking to give him away, but he could easily (imho) be included in part of a deal. I personally like Houck in the closer role if we move Jansen, so I'd have to give more thought to a setup guy.
I think my thinking here is that between Sale, Jansen and Martin, we're talking about 200 innings last year, on a team that was already very innings challenged. I think the fact that we just couldn't eat innings and so all the arms were way overtaxed was a pretty big problem last year. Now we're talking about trading away another 200 innings. Houk was good for 106 innings last year, so moving him to the bullpen would leave a deficit of another 50 or 55 innings or so.
Martin has been good-to-brilliant every year since like 2018, so while some dropoff might be reasonable, he'd still probably be our best reliever. I don't know what age even means anymore, but with a mere 300 innings across 8 seasons it's possible he has several more brilliant years left.
Well, we’re all operating off a rumor that had the team trying to shed payroll before making their top offer to an FA, perhaps a pitcher. So the reasoning may be to have Houck or Whitlock cover Kenley’s 50 IP at lower cost, while adding an FA who would throw more than that.
So in 2022, Pollock was a 33 yo coming off a typically excellent-but-injured season in LA. He had one year left on a 4/$55m deal. The White Sox acquired him, and he was never good again.
No, it is rather sobering, but closers are the running backs of baseball now. Good teams don't overpay, at least not for very long.
My thinking is that the Dodgers, to the extent they have any problems at all, could be running into a 40-man crunch next offseason and may value some of their emerging prospects over one semi-expensive post-surgery year of Dustin May.
I agree on trading Jansen. A team that is transition like the Sox are don't need to be spending 16m on a closer. If they were in championship or bust mode, I could see it. Especially when I think either Houck or Whitlock could handle the job at a fraction of the cost. I'd hold onto Martin though. he is the perfect 8th inning guy, especially if one of those i mentioned slides into the closing role. If the Sox remain in contention by trade deadline, keep him. If not, he'd be a great trade chip and teams are always looking for bullpen arms at deadline. Now that Yorke is pretty much blocked by Grissom, I wonder what Jansen and say eating 5-7 million of his deal and Nick Yorke bring back on trade?
Pivetta was a good soldier last year but I think he’d have a legitimate grievance in a swingman role in a contract year. Wouldn’t think it mattered if he hadn’t done whatever he did to resuscitate his season.
Not directed solely at you as others have mentioned being on board with bringing Paxton back, but have to say that I really don't get it. In essence you're looking at swapping out Sale and his health concerns for Paxton and his health concerns. Yes the Sale trade netted us Grissom, 2B was a position of need and I applaud the deal. But IMO, bringing Paxton in leaves with us no less uncertainty in that rotation slot than you were when Sale was here.
The argument would be that we somewhat de-risked the rotation by swapping out Sale for Giolito. I think you can get away with having one high risk/high upside starter but it starts to become a gamble beyond that. And when things go sideways as we saw in Jul/Aug last year it can quickly test the depth of your pitching staff.
I'm not one of those "__________ is made out of glass" guys, but at this stage in their careers I would have similar concerns about the health of both of these guys. With an eye toward adding a couple of arms that might be able provide more IPs than their predecessors, I would have reservations about swapping one for the other here.
I think the idea is that it’d allow us to deal Pivetta (preferable), Crawford or Houck (less so), which seems like a win in my book.
What do we think one year of control of Pivetta is really worth though? I like the concept of using FA money to indirectly buy prospects but I’m not sure it’s worth sacrificing important pitching depth.
We didn’t really use them that way, though. All of those guys were starters for at least half of the time and mostly pitched single innings when in the pen.
Eh it kinda did work. When Paxton, Bello, and Whitlock weren’t able to start the year, they plugged in Crawford and Houck. They survived the ineffectiveness and eventual shutting down of Kluber. Sale, Houck, and Whitlock were all out for large parts of the summer. At that point we were out 4 out of our planned top 8 SP options. And through it all, we managed to have a roughly league average pitching staff. If we had just normal injury luck (and maybe we did given the high risk nature of the staff), some of those multi-inning relievers stay relievers and we don’t have to resort to using the Garzas/Bleiers/Bearclaws.
How many FAs of noted have signed with other teams since the Giolito acquisition? You have season tix but are dropping NESN because of this cheap ownership?
Well the multi-inning relievers in 2024 I mean include Whitlock and possibly Houck, who were themselves injured starters last year. There's also Schreiber, who’s more of a one-inning guy but missed about 2 1/2 months.
It's worth noting that while Paxton threw 90-ish innings last year, he was only effective for about 80 of them. Is it reasonable to expect 140 innings out of him? There's also the question of how deep Paxton can go into games. It's more of a push, but I'd give the slight edge to Pivetta.
Maybe not in an off-season trade. It's worth noting Pivetta has only the one year of control left. If he's a solid starter for us, and if a short-window contention club has a season ending injury for a SP. . .that could be a pretty good return.
Very possibly. But also they traded a completely dead weight player (Segura) for Bell, for the stretch run last year — and besides that was a different GM. Bell’s quite a bad first baseman. He opted in to his second year, and De La Cruz should be their DH.
Agreed, hence the disclaimer at the beginning of my post. That said, given their respective ages (34 and 35 with roughly 6 months separating them) and the wear and tear on both of their bodies I see them as being equally risky bets to toss 140 plus innings. If you've moved on from one of those guys, I don't see much sense for THIS team in replacing that one with the another.
I AM NOT A DOCTOR.
Yup saw that, we agree on how to view these things I think.
Thanks, I appreciate the distinction. Anyway, since Sale is already out the door it's academic, and just a question of whether Paxton adds value to whatever the rotation will look like, were he to return. Enough people have spelled out the pros and cons so I'll just say I see his 2023 as more of a floor, given the lengthy recovery he went thru but otherwise signs of good health. And no, I was not remembering Tyler Thornburg at all! I believe his only real impact was allowing people an opening to trot out their vague familiarity with Australian romance fiction.
Has Jack Leiter's stock fallen far enough that he could be swapped in a Kenley deal? Saw a Kenley for Leiter trade proposal on Twitter. I'm guessing no unless maybe you cover the entire contract. Texas is a team that could use the bullpen help for a repeat effort, but their finances are reportedly up in the air with the DSG/Bally bankruptcy.
There was some legitimate reporting that Leiter was trying to purposely fall to the Sox at #4 in 2021, fwiw.
I’d say probably not possible but that’s a trade I’d be all over, especially with the pitching gurus in the fold. Leiter walks so many guys but the swing and miss stuff is potentially elite. But I doubt Rangers give up on the potential so soon.
Because you spin a subsidized Jansen to the Dodgers for a blocked Vargas and then send him to Miami.
I’m curious about the 73 wins. Last year’s team won 78 games and was 4 games above .500 going in to September when the wheels fell off.
