Red Sox ‘22 offense: offensively offensive

moondog80

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Well, if we're going to say that 620 MLB plate appearances tells us that this is what he is, we have to look at the whole 620 plate appearances. So what do 620 MLB plate appearances tell us?

- He doesn't hit for high average (.232 career BA) or get on base tons (.297 OBP).
- He does hit for a lot of power (34 homers in 565 AB - or one HR every 16.6 AB).
- He's slightly above average in terms of OPS+ (103 for his career). - and remember, OPS+ factors in their home ballpark, the era in which they play, and the position they play
- He's streaky.
- First 92 PA: .959 ops+, one HR every 10.0 AB
- Next 292 PA: .651 ops+, one HR every 27.4 AB
- Next 161 PA: 1.059 ops+, one HR every 9.5 AB
- Next 75 PA: .449 ops+, one HR every 68.0 AB

So that's the Bobby Dalbec story over 620 PA. He's a slightly above average hitter by OPS+. Lots of power. Not much in the on-base department. Streaky. So he'll go terrible for a while, but then he'll get absolutely red hot for a while and carry the team.

Can a good team live with a player like that? Well...sure, if the other players are doing their jobs. But of course, that's not happening with the Sox right now. Look at the ops+ numbers for their starting nine (ten if we include Arroyo who is kind of a super sub):

163 - Bogaerts
157 - Martinez (but only 16 games played)
120 - Devers
86 - Verdugo
76 - Story
70 - Hernandez
55 - Vazquez
30 - Arroyo
29 - Dalbec
26 - Bradley

I mean...seven of the ten guys are at 86 or lower. Half of the top ten position players on the roster are at 70 or below. 30% of them are at 30 or below. These are unconscionably bad numbers. Only three guys are hitting, and one of them has missed 30% of their games so far (JD). And the offense looks a lot better thanks to the utterly meaningless grand slam yesterday in the 9th by JD. The only way that might NOT be meaningless is if it somehow sparks his bat and gets him rolling.

So yeah, Dalbec has been a problem so far this year, but if we're going to say that 620 PA gives us the true Bobby Dalbec story, we have to look at all 620 PA and not just say that the last 75 represent what he truly is, because that would be grossly unfair to him.

I'll take the over on Dalbec continuing to have an OPS+ of 29 this year. But if his career norms are who he is, I don't want my high payroll team to get sub .300 OBP from 1B. Fortunately, there is a solution waiting in the wings -- what we do with 1B in the interim is a marginal decision I'm not going to worry too much about.
 

streeter88

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But given what we heard about Schwarber helping hitters last season, and what we've seen so far this season....at this point I would be thoroughly in favor of looking at some turnover among the hitting coaches.
It seems as if we are always hearing news of some new “hitting savant” amongst the players. JD Martinez is another one who has coached his teammates informally in the past, though he has had to change that approach during the pandemic.

https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2020/07/boston-red-soxs-jd-martinez-will-alter-how-he-mentors-teammates-while-practicing-social-distancing-im-going-to-do-my-best.html?outputType=amp

Unfortunately the season is still very young and Spring Training was also shortened. Plus they have a new hitting coach this year in Peter Fatse who was promoted to replace Tim Hyers who had been hitting coach for the past four years then moved on to Texas in the off season, and Fatse’s approach does not yet seem to be yielding the same positive results as last year.

I am not a hitting coach or a team executive. But it would seem pretty hard to judge then dismiss a hitting coach on one month’s results, when we have all seen how long a JBJ slump can continue - just to cite one example. And it’s apparently a pretty thankless one… according to the below 17 teams changed hitting coaches after last season, apparently in response to 2021 having been one of the worst hitting seasons since 1968, when Yaz led the AL with a .301 average, and El Tiante (then with Cleveland) was one of 7 pitchers with a sub 2.00 ERA.

https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/50022341

“The widespread changes at hitting coach occurred after the major league batting average dipped to .244 last season, its lowest since the year of the pitcher in 1968. There were a record 2,664 more strikeouts than hits, the gap increasing from 1,147 during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and 784 in 2019, when strikeouts topped hits for the first time.“

EDIT: Moral of the story - while it seems a bit tragic that we lost Hyers after what seemed a pretty successful run through the playoffs last year, his previous assistant Peter Fatse needs to be given the opportunity to try to continue that good work. How much time he gets I don't know. But as hard as it is to write this as I am not a patient person, I think we need to wait a bit longer.
 
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RobertS975

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Both Dalbec and Story have unacceptably high strikeout rates of 34%. That's a lot of completely non-productive plate appearances. .
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Ok, it's clear you were angry when you wrote this, but a complete overhaul is an unrealistic expectation.

Literally *everyone* - baseball writers, fans, insiders - all expected the Sox to have a top offense this season. That hasn't happened so far, but while it's fair to an expect a GM to anticipate some underperformance, what the Sox have put up in April is beyond any reasonable range of expectations.
Then they were all wrong. Including Bloom.

Bloom built this mess. He needs to fix it now. That means making changes, and big ones. If that means punting Dalbec into the sun, so be it.

It's never ever ever EVER acceptable to throw up one's hands and say "maybe they'll snap out of it." No. This is very possibly the worst Sox offense of all time in the modern era, and it simply cannot continue. That means players, coaches and yes GMs could lose their jobs. That's the deal. Always has been.
 

lexrageorge

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Then they were all wrong. Including Bloom.

Bloom built this mess. He needs to fix it now. That means making changes, and big ones. If that means punting Dalbec into the sun, so be it.

It's never ever ever EVER acceptable to throw up one's hands and say "maybe they'll snap out of it." No. This is very possibly the worst Sox offense of all time in the modern era, and it simply cannot continue. That means players, coaches and yes GMs could lose their jobs. That's the deal. Always has been.
So the GM should be fired because Story and Devers and Verdugo all had a bad month at the same time? Or should be fired if the doesn't blow up the team?

There's a lot of focus on Dalbec, when the reality is that Dalbec wasn't being counted on to be one of the team's offensive leaders. And a single month, as bad as it has been, is not enough time to judge a player like Story or Devers.

The era of team's blowing up rosters over a bad April, a-la George Steinbrenner, is over for the forseeable future; teams are run differently these days, including the Red Sox.
 

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So the GM should be fired because Story and Devers and Verdugo all had a bad month at the same time? Or should be fired if the doesn't blow up the team?

There's a lot of focus on Dalbec, when the reality is that Dalbec wasn't being counted on to be one of the team's offensive leaders. And a single month, as bad as it has been, is not enough time to judge a player like Story or Devers.

The era of team's blowing up rosters over a bad April, a-la George Steinbrenner, is over for the forseeable future; teams are run differently these days, including the Red Sox.
He should be fired if he makes no moves to fix the team after an abominable start. This really isn't hard.

They're seven and a half games out of the division already. It's May 2. They've won only one series all season. That pace is horrifying. The 2012 team got off to a better start than this FFS.

Dalbec should be gone. It's not just about his terrible offense, his defense is awful as well and there's not a single positive thing about his game. JBJ should be moved to part-time status and defensive replacement. Casas and Duran should be called up.

You're goddamn right I'm angry. For two years we've been getting fed a bunch of prattle that gaining financial flexibility and getting below the luxury tax threshold after trading Mookie would pay dividends for this club, and so far with that perk they've not only refused to extend two homegrown superstars in X and Devers (stop me if you've heard THAT before) but have additionally compounded those errors by promptly kicking away this season. I don't like being lied to and no one here should either. A club with the financial might that the Sox have should never be in the business of punting seasons.

There's zero reason to follow this team right now, especially with the Celtics and Bruins in the playoffs.
 
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moondog80

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Did everyone really see this team as an offensive juggernaut? Seems to me that the production from C, 1B, and RF was a pretty big question mark coming into the season. Maybe not 30 OPS+ bad, but I wasn't confident at all in those spots.

Xander, Devers, and JD have all been more or less what we would expect.

Kike? OPS+ of 85 his last two years in LA. Maybe last year was an aberration this is within range of who he really is?

So really this comes down to Story and Verdugo being better, and the production from the rest of those spots elevating even a little from a very low bar.

The past two seasons have basically been bridge years until the next wave of prospects start to roll in. Last year everything clicked. This year, not so much, not yet anyway.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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I think what Bloom failed to account for is that the offense in general fell off rather drastically after the ASB last season, and needed far larger improvement than what we got in order to remain competitive.

What's depressing is the complete non-competitiveness of so many ABs. There's zero plate discipline, zero game awareness, and zero ability to bear down and drive in a run when needed. We saw a lot of this same thing last season as well, which makes me wonder about the mental makeup of the club. Is there a sports psychologist on staff for the team?
 

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Martinez is the exception. And he was a year younger.

I hope that I’m wrong but Dalbec is not going to be anything more than he is now, an inconsistent hitter who shows flashes of promise. And that’s what makes him so infuriating because everyone gets fooled into thinking he’s “just a few at bats from turning his season around”.

MLB history is littered with dudes like this. And no matter how many times we see this movie, we think that the ending is going to be different. Bloom should have planned for the possibility that Dalbec might not be the guy you give 500 ABs to.
If you want another example, go look at Jose Bautista. He didn’t break out until he was 29. The bottom line is that there are going to be outliers on the development curve, and sometimes guys put it together outside of the trajectories that have been mapped for them. Dalbec has shown flashes of that dominance, and since he’s still cheap there’s no reason not to take a flier on him, especially if we’re in a bridge year (which seems like the case, although Bloom is too smart to announce that).
 

CoffeeNerdness

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Then they were all wrong. Including Bloom.

Bloom built this mess. He needs to fix it now. That means making changes, and big ones. If that means punting Dalbec into the sun, so be it.

It's never ever ever EVER acceptable to throw up one's hands and say "maybe they'll snap out of it." No. This is very possibly the worst Sox offense of all time in the modern era, and it simply cannot continue. That means players, coaches and yes GMs could lose their jobs. That's the deal. Always has been.
All I can say is thank the sweet lord that you aren't pulling the levers over on Yawkey Way. Good grief.

Short spring + a brand new wet rag of a baseball + cool weather + a shit schedule = April was not their month.

You gotta at least wait until the weather starts warming up and they get settled in at home. A team playing a god-awful month of baseball isn't some huge unprecedented occurrence that means you have to panic and start firing people and giving up on your limited assets. That's insane.

They've played seven games at home, they haven't had an off day since April 14th, and they've played one game outside of a dome that had a starting temperature over 70 degrees. Let's see how they shape up in May. They've got 18 games at home and there are only two teams (LAA + SEA) who are playing over .500 ball on the schedule.
 

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All I can say is thank the sweet lord that you aren't pulling the levers over on Yawkey Way. Good grief.

Short spring + a brand new wet rag of a baseball + cool weather + a shit schedule = April was not their month.

You gotta at least wait until the weather starts warming up and they get settled in at home. A team playing a god-awful month of baseball isn't some huge unprecedented occurrence that means you have to panic and start firing people and giving up on your limited assets. That's insane.

They've played seven games at home, they haven't had an off day since April 14th, and they've played one game outside of a dome that had a starting temperature over 70 degrees. Let's see how they shape up in May. They've got 18 games at home and there are only two teams (LAA + SEA) who are playing over .500 ball on the schedule.
So explain to me how all these other teams were able to win tons of games with those same conditions?

Give me a break with the excuses. Every team is facing the same adversity, and only 3 teams in baseball are worse off in their division than the Red Sox, one of which is the clearly tanking Reds. The Sox have a worse record than the Pirates. Arizona lost 110 games last year, they've got a better record than the Sox do.

The Sox have played horseshit baseball in the wake of other teams playing very good baseball, conditions or no.

The Mets...the METS! are 16-7. The Twins play home games in a chest freezer, they're 13-9. If a notoriously inept organization like the Mets can get off to a good start despite cold conditions and bad baseballs and a short spring and solar flares or whatever other excuse you'd like to trot out, there's zero reason for this team not to be able to do the same. Instead they've puked all over themselves and have shown that there are multiple players on the team that should be replaced in the lineup.

If the Sox wait till June to make changes the season will be lost. It's hardly a "panic" to make changes after a terrible month, it's the only responsible thing to do.
 

chawson

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The past two seasons have basically been bridge years until the next wave of prospects start to roll in. Last year everything clicked. This year, not so much, not yet anyway.
If this is effectively bridge year #3, then they aren’t really “bridging” much of anything, are they? If next year is intended to be competitive, the only players remaining from the ‘19 team are Devers in his walk year and (a far less effective) Sale. Splitting hairs maybe, but that’s more like a “reset” — which is a shame, because it seems rather wasteful of Xander and Raffy’s prime.

I think it’s still too early to properly know what’s going on this year but almost none of it looks good (and yes, including to a degree Bogaerts, who is running a very high GB rate and leads the AL in infield hits). I’m all for a youth movement and trust Bloom’s development machine, but I do think we could have done a lot more to “retool” in the interim.

I’m hopeful that the weird offseason will mean teams will be more inclined to trade in May and June. It’s plenty early for them to snap out of it. Kiké will fix his IFFB rate, Story’s bat is coming around, Devers’ 3B defense looks far improved somehow. Sale and Paxton will help a lot.
 

Rovin Romine

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Bobby Dalbec is 27-years-old and has 620 major league plate appearances. I think that we are very, very close to determining what he can be. I mean, how many more plate appearances do you want to waste on him?

And I don't think that we should bring up Cassas, I think that's a very bad idea. What I think is that going into 2022, crossing your fingers and hoping that Bobby turns the corner (based on six solid weeks of production) without a Plan B was a very dumb move on Chaim Bloom's part. I mean, we're kind of stuck with Dalbec for the rest of the year. Or Franchy. Who's never played first base in the majors. And was a pretty shitty hitter last year.
The main question was whether the second half of 2021 was a mirage for Dalbec. The answer is apparently that whatever he did then, he's not doing it now.

However I disagree there wasn't a backup plan - in the sense a backup plan is only assessable relative to the risk. To the extent they thought Dalbec a low risk to underperform, with Casas in the wings, you really just want a Shaw type on the roster. An early 30s type who won't embarass themselves. You might also pick up a few high-upside AAAA bats and hope one gets lucky.

This was sort of the perfect storm. Or would be, if Casas stalled.

If Bloom has a fault, it's holding onto players with only nominal upside for too long. Cordero might be the exception to that, but it's too early to tell. I think you see it more with pitchers.
 

Hee Sox Choi

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What about Sweet Willie Calhoun?

Willie Calhoun said Sunday that he wants to be traded after the Rangers demoted him to Triple-A Round Rock.

Between injuries, bad luck and sporadic chances, he was always someone on the precipice of being a solid bat. Goes oppo sometimes and doesn't K very much.
 

Rovin Romine

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So explain to me how all these other teams were able to win tons of games with those same conditions?

Give me a break with the excuses. Every team is facing the same adversity, and only 3 teams in baseball are worse off in their division than the Red Sox, one of which is the clearly tanking Reds.
Exactly. I never gave Cora a pass for loafing out of the gate in 2019. 2020 was what it was. 2021 was a skin-of-the-teeth slide into the post season followed by a very credible run. So to the extent that Cora gets panned for 2019, he gets credit for 2021 - it's only fair.

This year, what with the strike, there's another more difficult layer to parse out. That said, the results argue the players are not as prepared (in one sense or another - I really don't have to figure out what exactly it is) than the players on the other teams.

With the strike, I can't quite lay the unpreparedness entirely at Cora's feet, but the proverbial "Ten Game Winning Streak" will soon only be enough to pull the club even. And that's a very real problem.

I think Cora's got a decent set of managerial skills - certainly no worse than the average manager. But I suspect his (and his staff's) largest weaknesses is in making adjustments and being prepared early on. They seem to have a very much "it will all even out in the end" mentality. That's just my subjective impression based on what I see in games. I don't watch pressers.

To the extent that the billion dollar ogranization is bringing in someone to specifically help Dalbec, like Schwarber did. . .that'd be good. But the "aggressive early in the count" schtick seems to be an already old strategy that's being exploited by other teams.
 

Petagine in a Bottle

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The team clearly wasn’t prepared or ready to start the season, as evidenced by the lack of at least a platoon bat for JBJ, a backup at 1b, a set lineup, a rotation, clear roles for the pitching staff, etc. The constant shuffling of the lineup and all that suggests a team that is treating the beginning of the year like it’s still spring training. I don’t understand why roles weren’t more established, and why more depth wasn’t provided for the clear concerns on the team. I don’t really get what the plan was for the off-season, at all.

If it’s a bridge year, I’m not sure what it’s a bridge too. Most of the best players on this team aren’t under team control for much longer; and most of the best prospects probably aren’t ready for a year or two. If the team struggles, there is clearly the potential for a bigger reset similar to what the Cubs did last year, I guess.
 

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I find the notion of blaming Bloom for what’s going on so far a little silly. My guess is that he was hired to build up a farm system while still keeping the team competitive, something he certainly achieved last year and not so far this year. If that continues for another few years, maybe he’ll deserve more blame I guess. But I don’t think there is anything he could do now or could have done to make this team as good as
Toronto or the Yankees this year.
I think I have far more of a problem with the people running the team on the field. The approach seems to be “be aggressive up there, no matter what”. As a result, they swing at a remarkable number of first pitches, swing at every 2-0 or 3-1 pitch no matter where it is. I don’t think I ever watch this team and say “wow, what a great at bat” And someone is obviously scouting the team and telling their pitchers about this. I don’t see why any pitcher would ever throw Dalbec a strike. Or throw JD anything other than a slider that he will swing at every single time.
I once heard an interview with Mike Schmidt where he said he knew he was breaking out of a slump when he started averaging a walk a game.
Pitchers Make mistakes all the time. This aggressive attitude at the plate prevents this team from ever letting them make mistakes. The at bat is always over in a pitch or two whenever it matters.
With the Boston press and fan base, anything bad like this always leads to the “Fire Bloom. Or Fire Cora” idiocy. I prefer that a team take the approach the Dodgers took with Alston and LaSorda. We like what we have. He gonna have good years and bad years. We believe in him. I wish the Red Sox took that approach with Francona. So he lost the team one year. So what? If they stuck with him we would not have had to endure Farrell and Valentine and the like. My guess is that he would have worked it out somehow. Because he was good. And so is Bloom
Some of you I’m sure feel this would all be solved with Andrew Benintendi in left, Schwarber Still around etc.Its a reasonable stance, but I disagree with it. No team can be great with the pitching this team currently has, and I’m not sure exactly what can or could have been done about that.
 

moondog80

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I’m all for a youth movement and trust Bloom’s development machine, but I do think we could have done a lot more to “retool” in the interim.
I don't mean this in a snarky way, but what would you have done differently? The directive seems to have been "spend, but don't make long term commitments", and I think they've done that about as well as could be expected. Sure, they could have loosened up on the long term deals, but how would you feel if they had signed Kris Bryant, who is slugging .351 in Colorado and on the DL with a sore back? And if the answer is "not trade Mookie", he hasn't done much other than walk this year, 231/348/372. There were some nice pieces in place when Bloom took over, but also a lot of holes with few replacements waiting in the high minors and limited ability to spend their way out of it (and that's a tough approach even if the $$$ is there). They took the patient approach and got an ALCS appearance; if they now have a down year but the situation in the minors continues to improve, I can live with that. Not because I like down years, but because I think they've taken the best approach they could have given the options.
 

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I would prefer to leave Casas in the minors. Casas needs regular ABs, not a platoon situation. I would strongly consider calling up Duran and letting him play RF. This is a sink or swim year for him in terms of being a major leaguer. JBJ can be the 4th OF.
 

Rovin Romine

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As a PS, after 23 games this year, we're 9-14 on May 2nd.

In 2019, we started 9-14 on April 23rd. After that, we went on a tear that left us 22-19 on May 12th. On July 27th, we were 59-47, having alternated periods of hovering and modest gains. We were 8 games behind the NYYs and more or less tied with the Rays. But then we had an 8 game losing streak and nevery really got back in it. May, June, July, August were all over .500, but it wasn't enough.

This year it may be different with the relative strenghts of the clubs and the playoff format, but we're right on the verge of nothing good.
 

Cesar Crespo

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He has at 550 total PA’s a .780 OPS and 31HR’s. Shouldn’t we evaluate his potential based on these numbers with the likelihood that he’ll improve rather than regress?
Why would you expect him to improve, though? He's 27, so he's not exactly young. It's possible the book is now out on him.

If he were Jeremy Hermida, I'd might be more perplexed.
 

Cesar Crespo

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So explain to me how all these other teams were able to win tons of games with those same conditions?

Give me a break with the excuses. Every team is facing the same adversity, and only 3 teams in baseball are worse off in their division than the Red Sox, one of which is the clearly tanking Reds. The Sox have a worse record than the Pirates. Arizona lost 110 games last year, they've got a better record than the Sox do.

The Sox have played horseshit baseball in the wake of other teams playing very good baseball, conditions or no.

The Mets...the METS! are 16-7. The Twins play home games in a chest freezer, they're 13-9. If a notoriously inept organization like the Mets can get off to a good start despite cold conditions and bad baseballs and a short spring and solar flares or whatever other excuse you'd like to trot out, there's zero reason for this team not to be able to do the same. Instead they've puked all over themselves and have shown that there are multiple players on the team that should be replaced in the lineup.

If the Sox wait till June to make changes the season will be lost. It's hardly a "panic" to make changes after a terrible month, it's the only responsible thing to do.
And if the season is lost? Clearly it will be the end of the world so lets make huge changes now and possibly sacrafice the future.
 

CoffeeNerdness

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So explain to me how all these other teams were able to win tons of games with those same conditions?

Give me a break with the excuses. Every team is facing the same adversity, and only 3 teams in baseball are worse off in their division than the Red Sox, one of which is the clearly tanking Reds. The Sox have a worse record than the Pirates. Arizona lost 110 games last year, they've got a better record than the Sox do.

The Sox have played horseshit baseball in the wake of other teams playing very good baseball, conditions or no.

The Mets...the METS! are 16-7. The Twins play home games in a chest freezer, they're 13-9. If a notoriously inept organization like the Mets can get off to a good start despite cold conditions and bad baseballs and a short spring and solar flares or whatever other excuse you'd like to trot out, there's zero reason for this team not to be able to do the same. Instead they've puked all over themselves and have shown that there are multiple players on the team that should be replaced in the lineup.

If the Sox wait till June to make changes the season will be lost. It's hardly a "panic" to make changes after a terrible month, it's the only responsible thing to do.

The Twins Mets have faced teams with a record of 55-58. The Mets Twins have faced teams with a record of 69-81. The Red Sox have faced teams with a record of 71-61. I mean, would it kill you to actually look at b-ref? "They've been shitty in the past so therefore they must then have had a worse April 2022 record than the Boston Red Sox!!!!" is a bit thin.
 
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cantor44

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You're right that bargain shopping isn't going to solve the current issues with the team. So what now? Bemoan that Bloom didn't spend a billion dollars this off-season on the best players available? This is not a cheap team. Their payroll is over $200M. Can we stop acting like the problem with the team is they're not spending money?
Yes, that is true, they have a high payroll. This is more Rorschach test territory. Most of that money is inherited for Bloom. We still don't quite know how aggressive Bloom will get in spending capital and prospects. Yes he got Schwarber at the deadline, but only because he cost less than other all-star additions. And the same is true for Story this off season. And apparently he's way off with offers to X and Devers. I'm not saying any of these decisions are easy ones to make - not many slam dunk decisions. But we do see somewhat of a pattern with Bloom of being conservative.
 

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The Twins have faced teams with a record of 55-58. The Mets have faced teams with a record of 69-81. The Red Sox have faced teams with a record of 71-61. I mean, would it kill you to actually look at b-ref? "They've been shitty in the past so therefore they must then have had a worse April 2022 record than the Boston Red Sox!!!!" is a bit thin.
The teams the Sox have faced have a good record PRECISELY BECAUSE THE SOX HAVE BEEN HORSESHIT THIS YEAR.

Oh no, our $200 million payroll club has a .391 winning percentage because they've had to play teams a little bit over .500! Woe is us!

Guess what you have to do to make the playoffs? BEAT GOOD TEAMS. OR EVEN MEDIOCRE ONES. The Sox just lost a series to the ORIOLES.

JFC. Stop making excuses. The team has grossly underperformed and the circumstances don't matter in the slightest. "It's been cold." You've got to be effing kidding me. What's next, "the other teams tried too hard"? My God.
 
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Smiling Joe Hesketh

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And if the season is lost? Clearly it will be the end of the world so lets make huge changes now and possibly sacrafice the future.
The season will be pretty much over if changes aren't made.

As for the future, Dalbec is pretty obviously not the future. Neither is JBJ, much as I love him. Casas and Duran are the future. Getting them up to Boston in place of Dalbec and JBJ will sacrifice nothing. You'll get the guys for the future acclimated now and as a bonus they couldn't possibly perform worse than the guys on the team now.
 

JCizzle

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Right field is the biggest head scratcher to me. I love the guy, but JBJ had a .497 OPS last year. How did they think it was going to go? He'd rebound to a .600 OPS in a strong division? Having him with Duran as a plan B seems like a huge gamble for a team with these resources since Duran hasn't shown any ability to compete at the MLB level either. Dalbec is more understandable as a bit of an unknown, but again having the 1B backup option as a AAA kid who seems to need a couple more months in Worcester isn't great. This team has the resources to balance winning in 2022 and the future. This isn't Tampa.
 
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chawson

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However I disagree there wasn't a backup plan - in the sense a backup plan is only assessable relative to the risk. To the extent they thought Dalbec a low risk to underperform, with Casas in the wings, you really just want a Shaw type on the roster. An early 30s type who won't embarass themselves. You might also pick up a few high-upside AAAA bats and hope one gets lucky.
I agree that this constitutes a kind of back-up plan, except for Shaw himself. The guy looked like he was in beer league shape when we picked him up last summer, and I’m stunned he was brought back.

If the plan all along was to buy Cordero a few weeks of Worcester PAs before Shaw was inevitably cut by his guaranteed contract date, that would make some sense. But Franchy hadn’t been playing a lick of first until last week, which suggests they thought Shaw could have a real role. With as much cash as the Sox have and a DH role opening next year, I don’t know hey you don’t throw $3M at Daniel Vogelbach or something.

I don't mean this in a snarky way, but what would you have done differently? The directive seems to have been "spend, but don't make long term commitments", and I think they've done that about as well as could be expected. Sure, they could have loosened up on the long term deals, but how would you feel if they had signed Kris Bryant, who is slugging .351 in Colorado and on the DL with a sore back? And if the answer is "not trade Mookie", he hasn't done much other than walk this year, 231/348/372. There were some nice pieces in place when Bloom took over, but also a lot of holes with few replacements waiting in the high minors and limited ability to spend their way out of it (and that's a tough approach even if the $$$ is there). They took the patient approach and got an ALCS appearance; if they now have a down year but the situation in the minors continues to improve, I can live with that. Not because I like down years, but because I think they've taken the best approach they could have given the options.
It’s a good question (and no snark inferred). I think I would have done more JBJ trades, “buying” prospects or role players by soaking up other teams’ bad contracts over the years. Of course I can’t see what’s actually available out there, but I’m surprised they didn’t do more. I still think there are targets on the Reds that are well worth taking Moustakas off their hands.

With the benefit of hindsight, the offseason’s big whiffs were Suzuki and Carlos Rodón, who is an absurd deal at 2/$44M. Mark Canha at 2/$26.5M seems like a ridiculous no-brainer for this team given our current right field disaster. I don’t see the problem with “overpaying” Collin McHugh to beat the 2/$10M he got from the Braves. I would have signed Schwarber, who I think is far better than whoever next year’s DH will be. And I think we’re in real danger of letting Duran and Dalbec fall into the same kind of prospect rot that claimed Chavis, Swihart and Benintendi, and should have traded each when they were valuable (last summer and this past offseason, respectively).
 
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Cesar Crespo

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The season will be pretty much over if changes aren't made.

As for the future, Dalbec is pretty obviously not the future. Neither is JBJ, much as I love him. Casas and Duran are the future. Getting them up to Boston in place of Dalbec and JBJ will sacrifice nothing. You'll get the guys for the future acclimated now and as a bonus they couldn't possibly perform worse than the guys on the team now.
Yeah, rushing them before they are ready definitely would cost nothing and have no negative impact on the future. Clearly, player development doesn't actually matter so we could have just called Casas up last year and let him learn on the job and all.

Rushing guys to the bigs involves no sacrafice. Yeah, ok.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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However I disagree there wasn't a backup plan - in the sense a backup plan is only assessable relative to the risk. To the extent they thought Dalbec a low risk to underperform, with Casas in the wings, you really just want a Shaw type on the roster. An early 30s type who won't embarass themselves. You might also pick up a few high-upside AAAA bats and hope one gets lucky.
I vehemently disagree that Travis Shaw should be considered a backup plan. And it's not based on his performance this year, Shaw has't had a decent year since 2018 when he hit 32 home runs. The last three years he's batted:

.157/.281/.270
.239/.306/.411
.200/.286/.373 (and he had some big hits for us last year)

I'm trying to find the logic here in Bloom's thinking. Shaw hasn't hit well since 2018, did he think that he's going to revert back to that production at age 32? I mean, these numbers over the last three seasons are pretty bad. I don't understand what Bloom was thinking here.

I find the notion of blaming Bloom for what’s going on so far a little silly. My guess is that he was hired to build up a farm system while still keeping the team competitive, something he certainly achieved last year and not so far this year. If that continues for another few years, maybe he’ll deserve more blame I guess. But I don’t think there is anything he could do now or could have done to make this team as good as Toronto or the Yankees this year.
This is Bloom's third season in Boston. When does he get blame? I mean, he was getting a ton of credit last year (and deservedly so, especially in the first half of the season and October); why does he get to skate when things go poorly?

FEW YEARS? Like three more years, we have to wait before we criticize Chaim Bloom? And then "maybe" he'll deserve blame? You guess? Wow. Okay. So much for the toughest fanbase in baseball. You get six years AND then we can start thinking about whether we should debate about whether this is the Head of Baseball Ops fault that the team is bad. I mean, his hands are tied! How can he compete with the Yankees AND the Blue Jays? Nothing could be done! Wow.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Yeah, rushing them before they are ready definitely would cost nothing and have no negative impact on the future. Clearly, player development doesn't actually matter so we could have just called Casas up last year and let him learn on the job and all.

Rushing guys to the bigs involves no sacrafice. Yeah, ok.
If they're ready they're ready. They cannot possibly hurt the team worse than the guys already here. Bringing them up to play them won't stunt their development, it's bringing them up and then playing them sporadically (like Swihart) that hurts players. The team is terrible, and Dalbec and JBJ aren't hitting at all. Plugging in Casas and Duran couldn't possibly hurt the team and by playing every day their development would continue.
 

Cesar Crespo

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I vehemently disagree that Travis Shaw should be considered a backup plan. And it's not based on his performance this year, Shaw has't had a decent year since 2018 when he hit 32 home runs. The last three years he's batted:

.157/.281/.270
.239/.306/.411
.200/.286/.373 (and he had some big hits for us last year)

I'm trying to find the logic here in Bloom's thinking. Shaw hasn't hit well since 2018, did he think that he's going to revert back to that production at age 32? I mean, these numbers over the last three seasons are pretty bad. I don't understand what Bloom was thinking here.



This is Bloom's third season in Boston. When does he get blame? I mean, he was getting a ton of credit last year (and deservedly so, especially in the first half of the season and October); why does he get to skate when things go poorly?

FEW YEARS? Like three more years, we have to wait before we criticize Chaim Bloom? And then "maybe" he'll deserve blame? You guess? Wow. Okay. So much for the toughest fanbase in baseball. You get six years AND then we can start thinking about whether we should debate about whether this is the Head of Baseball Ops fault that the team is bad. I mean, his hands are tied! How can he compete with the Yankees AND the Blue Jays? Nothing could be done! Wow.
The last 2 GMs got less than 5 years and they both won WS. Lucky for us, if Bloom sucks, it won't be a 6 year wait.
 

Cesar Crespo

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If they're ready they're ready. They cannot possibly hurt the team worse than the guys already here. Bringing them up to play them won't stunt their development, it's bringing them up and then playing them sporadically (like Swihart) that hurts players.
If they are ready. What if they are not ready? It will hurt their future development. It's not rocket science, dude. Rushing players can have a negative impact.
 

sean1562

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Mark Canha has a .345/.429/.364/.792 line with a BABIP of .452. He had an OPS of .746 last year. I am not sure he would be doing a ton for this team even if he was here. Beating the Mets offer of 2/26.5 would look like what, 2/30? 3/40? He is an alright player but doesn't really fit long term plans on this team.

JBJ has been terrible this month but we have seen this play out many times before. He will be good defensively all year and have ridiculous hot streaks that pull up his OPS to a serviceable level. It is fair to wonder if those hot streaks won't be as good as they had previously been but he has a career OPS of .593 in the months of March/April.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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If they are ready. What if they are not ready? It will hurt their future development. It's not rocket science, dude. Rushing players can have a negative impact.
Casas is already 22, has been in the org four years and is OPSing 800 this season. He's not some 18 year old coming up from Salem.

Duran is already 25 and is OPSing 1.018 in AAA. How much longer do you want to wait on him? This is the year, there will be not future development for him. He's got to either come up now or go out. He's on the verge of losing his prospect status, get him up here, play him every day and determine once and for all if he's got a future as an MLB player.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Mark Canha has a .345/.429/.364/.792 line with a BABIP of .452. He had an OPS of .746 last year. I am not sure he would be doing a ton for this team even if he was here. Beating the Mets offer of 2/26.5 would look like what, 2/30? 3/40? He is an alright player but doesn't really fit long term plans on this team.

JBJ has been terrible this month but we have seen this play out many times before. He will be good defensively all year and have ridiculous hot streaks that pull up his OPS to a serviceable level. It is fair to wonder if those hot streaks won't be as good as they had previously been but he has a career OPS of .593 in the months of March/April.
And he had an OPS of .497 for the entire year last year. Worse than his career OPS in March/April.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Casas is already 22, has been in the org four years and is OPSing 800 this season. He's not some 18 year old coming up from Salem.

Duran is already 25 and is OPSing 1.018 in AAA. How much longer do you want to wait on him? This is the year, there will be not future development for him. He's got to either come up now or go out.
If you want to call Duran up, whatever. He's going to suck out loud though. They should have cashed in on him. Casas I'd wait until at least June.
 

Zupcic Fan

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I vehemently disagree that Travis Shaw should be considered a backup plan. And it's not based on his performance this year, Shaw has't had a decent year since 2018 when he hit 32 home runs. The last three years he's batted:

.157/.281/.270
.239/.306/.411
.200/.286/.373 (and he had some big hits for us last year)

I'm trying to find the logic here in Bloom's thinking. Shaw hasn't hit well since 2018, did he think that he's going to revert back to that production at age 32? I mean, these numbers over the last three seasons are pretty bad. I don't understand what Bloom was thinking here.



This is Bloom's third season in Boston. When does he get blame? I mean, he was getting a ton of credit last year (and deservedly so, especially in the first half of the season and October); why does he get to skate when things go poorly?

FEW YEARS? Like three more years, we have to wait before we criticize Chaim Bloom? And then "maybe" he'll deserve blame? You guess? Wow. Okay. So much for the toughest fanbase in baseball. You get six years AND then we can start thinking about whether we should debate about whether this is the Head of Baseball Ops fault that the team is bad. I mean, his hands are tied! How can he compete with the Yankees AND the Blue Jays? Nothing could be done! Wow.

sorry JMOC. Of course you or anyone else can criticize Blooom or Cora as much as you want. But to me it would be like criticizing Mookie Betts because he is only hitting like 220 or Schwarber for barely being over 200 I don’t think now is the time to do it. Bloom clearly did well last year. He is the same Bloom now as he was then. If you want to blame him for not knowing Pavetta would look this bad, or Houck would not get the vaccine, or Barnes would lose his fastball or that they all would forget what the strike zone looks like, that’s fine. But the bottom line is that they are not going to fire Bloom. It would be silly to fire Bloom or Cora for whatever happens this year. It would be like all those people going crazy because they didn‘t like the substitution patterns of the new Celtics coach over the first 20 games. When a baseball team is playing poorly, that doesn’t mean that by definition someone must be blamed.
 

chawson

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The big test on Bloom will be how he reallocates the money he’s waiting so patiently to come off the books. There’s an awful lot of faith that the coming mL system will form the core of the next contender, and it’s hard to see which complementary players will be available.

Mark Canha has a .345/.429/.364/.792 line with a BABIP of .452. He had an OPS of .746 last year. I am not sure he would be doing a ton for this team even if he was here. Beating the Mets offer of 2/26.5 would look like what, 2/30? 3/40? He is an alright player but doesn't really fit long term plans on this team.
Mark Canha has been more valuable per fWAR from 2019-21 than Kris Bryant, Whit Merrifield and Teoscar Hernández. He’s absolutely worth 2/$30 for a team with playoff hopes that’s currently playing JBJ.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Why is he going to suck out loud? He has 73 games at the AAA level with an .842 OPS and 17 home runs. Those are good numbers.
His power isn't going to translate to the bigs and his strike zone judgement isn't that great. He's also not a good defender. Of course, sucking out loud is better than JBJ so there's that.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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His power isn't going to translate to the bigs and his strike zone judgement isn't that great. He's also not a good defender. Of course, sucking out loud is better than JBJ so there's that.
Citation needed.

His K rate at AAA is 23%. I could be wrong, that doesn't strike me as awful. BB rate of 11% which could be better, but he's not a K machine.
 

CoffeeNerdness

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The teams the Sox have faced have a good record PRECISELY BECAUSE THE SOX HAVE BEEN HORSESHIT THIS YEAR.

Oh no, our $200 million payroll has a .391 winning percentage because they've had to play teams a little bit over .500! Woe is us!

JFC. Stop making excuses. The team has grossly underperformed and the circumstances don't matter in the slightest. "It's been cold." You've got to be effing kidding me.
So the Twins are good because they split a four-game series against the lowly Sox? By this sterling logic, they should have swept those bums!!! Their combined records of teams they've faced sans Sox is 60-67 (I mixed up the Mets/Twins records above and edited accordingly). Still a much softer schedule than Boston. Are you going to claim that the consensus hyper-competitive AL East is soft now because the 90's Tampa Bay Devil Rays(THE RAYS!!!??!!!) really sucked? The Sox are 5-11 versus what most would say is the toughest division in baseball.

And I didn't say it was just the weather. I said it was the weather + the new baseball + playing the most road games in the MLB + playing quality teams = suboptimal start to the year. It's May 2nd, wtf. Interesting you'd only focus on one of the "excuses".
 

moondog80

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With the benefit of hindsight, the offseason’s big whiffs were Suzuki and Carlos Rodón, who is an absurd deal at 2/$44M. Mark Canha at 2/$26.5M seems like a ridiculous no-brainer for this team given our current right field disaster. I don’t see the problem with “overpaying” Collin McHugh to beat the 2/$10M he got from the Braves. I would have signed Schwarber, who I think is far better than whoever next year’s DH will be. And I think we’re in real danger of letting Duran and Dalbec fall into the same kind of prospect rot that claimed Chavis, Swihart and Benintendi, and should have traded each when they were valuable (last summer and this past offseason, respectively).

Yeah, I thought "opportunity missed" the second Rodon signed. But worth noting that Hill and Wacha have a combined ERA of 2.65 with James Paxton in waiting. Staff ERA+ is 114. Pitching isn't the problem, starting pitching anyway.

And I also thought Suzuki was a good fit in the "long term but not crazy" slot that Story filled. Not sure what happened there -- they must have felt differently.

And of course, for all of these guys...it's May 2.
 

Petagine in a Bottle

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His power isn't going to translate to the bigs and his strike zone judgement isn't that great. He's also not a good defender. Of course, sucking out loud is better than JBJ so there's that.
If one of our best prospects is going to suck out loud in the majors, why do we have so much faith in the system?
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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So the Twins are good because they split a four-game series against the lowly Sox? By this sterling logic, they should have swept those bums!!! Their combined records of teams they've faced sans Sox is 60-67 (I mixed up the Mets/Twins records above and edited accordingly). Still a much softer schedule than Boston. Are you going to claim that the consensus hyper-competitive AL East is soft now because the 90's Tampa Bay Devil Rays(THE RAYS!!!??!!!) really sucked? The Sox are 5-11 versus what most would say is the toughest division in baseball.

And I didn't say it was just the weather. I said it was the weather + the new baseball + playing the most road games in the MLB + playing quality teams = suboptimal start to the year. It's May 2nd, wtf. Interesting you'd only focus on one of the "excuses".
None of the excuses were valid, I focused on the most ridiculous one for effect.

Playing quality teams is a joke of an excuse, again, the Sox are supposed to be a quality team. New baseballs are a joke of an excuse, Rizzo has nearly outhomered this entire team by himself, he doesn't seem to have a problem with the baseballs (Rizzo has 9, Sox as a team have 13).

The Sox are supposed to be one of the tough teams playing in the toughest division in baseball. Going 5-11 in the division shows they're just another more northerly version of the Orioles, who took the series from them.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Citation needed.

His K rate at AAA is 23%. I could be wrong, that doesn't strike me as awful. BB rate of 11% which could be better, but he's not a K machine.
I need a citation on my opinion? It's clearly my evaluation of Jarren Duran. I'd be glad to be wrong.

You also mentioned his 17 HR in AAA. 15 of those came in the first 37 games, 180 PA. Over this last 162 PA at the level, he has 2 HR. Look at the rest of his career, too. Completely devoid of any power. But yeah. We shall see.

edit: Add in his time with Boston, and over his last 278 PA, he has 4 HR.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Yeah, I thought "opportunity missed" the second Rodon signed. But worth noting that Hill and Wacha have a combined ERA of 2.65 with James Paxton in waiting. Staff ERA+ is 114. Pitching isn't the problem, starting pitching anyway.

And I also thought Suzuki was a good fit in the "long term but not crazy" slot that Story filled. Not sure what happened there -- they must have felt differently.

And of course, for all of these guys...it's May 2.
"They" as in the Red Sox front office or "they" as in Suzuki's representatives? Because I think it's short-sighted to assume that he signed with the Cubs because the Red Sox didn't make enough effort. They may have made plenty of effort and he still preferred to sign with Chicago.