And they acquired depth: Anderson, Criswell, Uwasawa, Fitts.
Just curious, where do they keep this pitching depth that they should have built up more? Let's say they sign at least one more starter in addition to Giolito (Montgomery, Snell, whoever). That pushes one of the guys who is in the rotation now (Houck/Whitlock/Crawford) into the pen? Does that guy still count as rotation depth if he's a reliever? There's only so much depth a team can have such that they can survive severe injuries to two of their starters. The teams that have that kind of depth tend to be the ones who develop pitchers themselves, not shop for them on the open market. In other words, the "fix" for surviving Giolito/Pivetta injuries isn't really solved in the off-season.
Here's the current roster of MLB starting pitchers under control of the Dodgers:
You're looking at it solely through the lens of this past offseason. What we're seeing now in regards to the total lack of depth (just as we saw last year) is the result of a years-long strategy/fear on the part of the Red Sox to invest in pitching.
Right. In part, this is because you can’t get good, uninjured FA starters to sign to be your sixth starter.
If your suggestion is to be like the Dodgers, that is not going to happen. Even if they wanted to, it wouldn't work. It would probably be more useful to compare them to any other ML team.
Rangers seem pretty similar.
They have $105m in salary on the IL right now, almost all of which are those SPs. DeGrom is owed like $130m after this year. So that might work out for them but it's not a model I would want to copy.
It's not possible for the third richest team in the sport to act like the second??
More than 1?
Thing with the Rangers and the Dodgers is a bunch of those pitchers on the IL were there before the season started. They knew they wouldn't have those guys until mid-season if not longer and brought in guys to fill in the gaps. That's not the case with the Red Sox who started spring training with 6-7 presumably healthy guys competing for the rotation. Hard to recruit or justify signing too many more starters for depth purposes when that's the case. And that's not a money thing, that's a roster size thing. They only have so many places on the 40-man for pitchers. Outside that, the depth options have to be internal or reclamation types on minor league deals (the Barracloughs and Littells of the world).
At least two of those names were not coming here. Free agents aren't bound to take an offer from the Sox. I get that you are frustrated but this scenario isn't very realistic.
There are ten people on this list. Six are currently on the team. Gausman was not a Free Agent this off-season: that was 2022. So you're saying they should have signed three pitchers, two of whom are currently injured? I don't think it's as easy as you make it seem to suddenly have ten starting pitchers.
Look up Scherzer and de Grom's stats and tell me that's why they won the WS. They won in spite of their spending spree on pitching. The big move they made was an in-season pickup of a guy they couldn't afford to re-sign because of all the injured guys they are paying $100m to this year.
The Sox did sign Criswell for this. Right now we have to hope he's up to the task.
Breslow called it "mild" and said he wouldn't likely need more than the 10 days, apparently.
Yes, that is my entire point: pitchers get hurt. An incredibly rich team like the Red Sox should therefore be even more aggressive in adding them, thus exercising their economic advantage, not cower from the free agent pitching market like a small market team that cant afford to absorb the injuries.
That’s sort of my point, if a little tongue in cheek. It just seems like everyone is dismissing what two of the top teams are doing, the Rangers and Dodgers. I get everything is different but it frustrates me, especially on Opening Day, when we focus too much on spreadsheets and not enough on wins and losses.
He also said that Pivetta returning after the 15 days was "a reasonable goal" at this point. He said Nick was having some recovery issues between starts, and they are taking this time now to hopefully straighten it out.
Exactly. Counting de Grom or Ohtani is disingenuous, because neither team was expecting them to be available at this point
To follow up on this, the Dodgers currently have eight players on the injured list. Seven of the players are pitchers. From truebluela.com:
So the Dodger pitching depth isn't as deep as it initially appears
Cool. Then swap them out for Chris Bassitt, or Nate Eovaldi, or Jameson Taillon, or Zack Wheeler, or. . .
Yeah, OK then. IMO the high-dollar version of building depth can work, I guess, but the low-dollar version not only preserves more flexibility (assuming your ownership has limits) but maybe lasts a little longer, if we are talking younger players? Not sure if that is true, young elbows seem to blow up too.
We have like 18 threads on the Eovaldi signing process. Stick another pin in the Chaim doll if you want, but it's water under the bridge now.
So it's your opinion that Whitlock and Crawford and Houck and Bello would have been given opportunities to be in the rotation even with this strategy of retaining or signing free agents?
Who cares?
Paxton as well.
Sure, but what is the strategy? Last year they had like 7 starters lined up. They opened with Sale, Paxton, Kluber, Pivetta, and Whitlock, with Houck, Crawford and whoever else waiting in the wings. They know they need numbers. But there are like 26 teams taking the same approach, or trying to now, so it's not like this is all a mystery to them. It's just harder than it looks.
Man the Rays are decimated by injuries. Springs/Rasmussen/Mclahanan have missed a year each recently, and their depth in the minors at starter is not what it once was.
Midnight Ryder Jones made the above quote, not I. In any event, I applaud the Sox for sticking to their plan of developing young pitchers instead of trading them away.
Fixed and my apologies. I have no idea why that happened - I must have edited down a multiple post response incorrectly.
Stuff happens...Like I said, I'm just glad that the Sox long-term plan is starting to yield some fruit.
Yes, I am just dealing in hypotheticals and the individual names don't matter The point is that the team has opted out of the free agent pitching market for five years, and has no pitching depth as a result.
Yes. Once again, you're not really laying out any problems here. You start 2023 with a rotation of Gausman, Senga, ERod, Sale, and whoever you want out of Houck/Whitlock/Kutter/Bello/Pivetta. Whoever you don't believe in long term you either shift to the bullpen, leave in AAA to provide the depth that team didn't have, or trade to improve other areas of the team. A team with that rotation would have entered the season as postseason favorites and then been easily able to weather the injuries that resulted.
It is working, right now, for the best team in baseball. The Dodgers didn't let Kershaw walk in 2021 because Dustin May was ready to start. They just added more depth. They didn't pass on Trevor Bauer in 2022 the next season because Walker Buehler turned into an all-star in 2022. They just added more depth. They didn't pass on Yamamoto and Paxton this year because they would have Buehler and Keshaw coming back mid-season. They just added more depth, which allowed them to trade Pepiot, just as it would have allowed the Red Sox to trade assets to improve the team.
I'm not arguing that those staffs you present wouldn't have been more successful. I'm arguing that it's not a means of building depth. You don't build depth through free agency. You build it through developing pitchers. You can't do that if you leave no room on the roster for them (or rely on injuries to clear the way for them).
Well, not sure why the Dodgers have earned the title as 'best team in baseball', but leaving that aside, now dig into what they've done with shortstop? They did let Corey Seager walk, they did let Manny Machado (who played SS for them briefly) walk, they did let Trea Turner walk, they did use the offensive black hole Miguel Rojas (.612 OPS) there all of last year, and now they have moved their superstar RF there out of desperation. He is Mookie so he can do anything but every team has to make decisions.
You build depth by adding as many good players to your organization as possible. It literally does not matter how you add them.
There are only so many roster spots though. If you have 10 starting pitchers, sure thats depth but some other position is going to be thinner as a result.
We are not at the point where it makes sense to be trading away assets. The Dodgers are one of the oldest teams in baseball and they're trying to win now. We're one of the youngest and trying to matriculate the next core.
Three posts above you I created an incredibly realistic scenario wherein, with a few smart free agent pitching signings, the 2022, 2023, and 2024 teams all likely would have been competing for the postseason, and have been able to do so without having had to trade any members of a future core. That's the beauty of free agency! You don't need to weaken your minor league system to improve your MLB team!
It’s not about roster spot counting, it’s about the arm quality in the spots.
