“One more weight for Red Sox fans to bear”?????????????
Hey, it's not like they were up 3-0 in a seven game playoff series and lost.
The Red Sox have won four World Series since 2004, but every time they're on ESPN or Fox playing a late season series we can count on seeing Bucky Dent , Bill Buckner and Aaron Boone. And 2011 is sure to come up in the conversation. It is REALLY nice to counter with Papi, Pedro and 2018, but you know that, even if this team was overachieving and it isn't fair, this season will be constantly brought up.
Schwarber Robles and Davis have the same WAR for the Sox as Rizzo Gallo and Heaney have for the Yankees. The moves they made aren't the reason they've been better.
By my eye test, his pitch recognition has been better later, and no surprise has corresponded to his improved numbers ... my anecdotal sense (I watch almost every game) is that he's swinging out of the zone a lot less ...
Well you know better than this. It’s been too short a time to evaluate them based on WAR with their new teams. Rizzo was hugely impactful right off the bat (no pun intended) for New York. But he hasn’t accumulated enough ABs to really register in terms of WAR.
Fair enough, we can look at win probability added, which shows the game by game impact relative to the scoreboard, and the 3 Yankees are a combined 0.1 WPA, .5 for Rizzo, .5 for Gallo, and -.9 for Heaney, compared to .2 for Schwarber -.1 for Robles and 0 for Davis. So again, no real difference, slight edge to the Yankees because WPA ignores defense.
Rizzo, in his first 6 games for the Yankees, went 8-20 with 8 runs, 3 hr, and 6 rbi, slashing .400/.519/.850/1.369. In those 6 games, the Yankees went 5-1. In his first two games, the Yanks won both, scoring 7 total runs. Rizzo scored 5 of their 7 and drove in 2 himself. He got on base 7 of his 9 plate appearances in those two games.
And Heaney has given up 15 runs in 15 innings, which is an even more enormous impact, just in the other direction. .5 WPA in 9 games is a ton.
1-2 actually, but if you want to play that game they probably would have won Rizzo's first 3 games that he homered in anyway because they only gave up 4 runs in 27 innings so those didn't "really matter". The point was that they aren't doing well and the sox aren't doing badly because of the trades or lack of trades. Give the Sox Rizzo and give the Yankees not Rizzo and they'd have about the same records they do now.
Right. I got the Chicago games mixed up. Thought he pitched one of the two that they should have pissed away but didn't.
Question, when the Sox were winning games that Richards, Perez and Rodriguez pitched with a great deal of suckatude did it not matter? Maybe if you isolate that game you can say it didn't matter, but in total it certainly mattered.
WAR has its place but team construction is important too. Schwarber is a good hitter and an on base guy, skills the Sox can always use, but the construction of this team desperately called for a productive first baseman who can hit right handed pitching and a starting pitching capable of going 6-7 innings regularly. With the bullpen stressed from overwork we needed productive arms there too. That is a big shopping list for sure, Glad to see the farm headed in the correct direction. My thought was adding Rizzo and signing him to play first next year and DH when Casas is ready add/or Dalbec improves his splits seemed like a great move. I think the Yankees not only added him bit he Cubbies are paying his salary. As for the starter I know we did not have enough to offer the packages for Berrios and Scherzer but I would have loved it if we could have added one of those pitchers. On the positive side of the coin I did not think the Sox were more than an average team when the season started so I got 4 plus months of maybe we are good enough to make a deep run which is a big bonus in my opinion. It's just that it sucks to see the Yankees get so much help from the one bat that we really should have gotten and to now be behind them is painful. Reminds me of all the years from 60's going forward until 2004. Hopefully the f/o team can do enough to make the Sox great year in and year out, not just be good enough to get into the playoffs. After all the Sox are not the Rays, Boston is the City of Champions.
Rizzo has a .914 ops since he's been traded, Dalbec has an ops of .1080 this month, it's unlikely replacing Dalbec with Rizzo would have done much of anything.
Exactly! The shitty performance is exclusively based on shitty performances by players that were performing way better prior to the AS Break (for whatever reasons... BABiP or regression or a bad stomach), along with a few boneheaded managerial moves. But what Bloom "could" have done wouldn't have made a difference
You can do the exact same thing with Rizzo, he was 4/9 with 2 HRs in his first 2 games with the Yankees and 6/31 with 1 XBH and 1 case of COVID since then.
Rizzo’s production was much more useful to his team though; a 2 run single in a one run game like last night is worth more than a 3 run shot when you’re up 14-0. Bobby’s production was completely done in garbage time.
It's really hard for a guy that has a .547 OPS this month and missed half his team's games due to covid to have contributed a lot more positively than anyone. He contributed a lot in 2 games and has been terrible since. Yes that will probably change, but it wouldn't have helped so far.
Rizzo is also a gold glove first baseman. See: yesterday's game - Dalbec botches a very playable ball and two runs scored ... the ball hit, ironically, by Rizzo.
Why?
Because 4 titles in the past 18 years is why.
Good cop here: after a 10 second count, eat a banana (enjoy the potassium) do some deep breaths, and as you eat maybe do some visualization of ballplayers in banana uniforms celebrating their 7th straight win in the Toilet....you're going to be just fine.
I do and I am. But as an old ballplayer, I can't have my superstitions leave me. Then I'm just an old guy at that point
I love this. As someone who is very much outside the Boston media bubble I appreciate the insight into what some of the motivations behind the sports radio negativity might be. I am enjoying this season greatly, even though the team itself is pretty far down the list of my favorite teams, behind the WS teams and the '03 team by a margin. For me, I just really value baseball this year. After last year's non-season and continued COVID doldrums, having baseball on in the background most evenings when the kids get home from preschool (West Coast) is a pleasure. I was ready to struggle through a mediocre seasons just for the sheer joy of having baseball to watch at all. But mediocrity is not what we've gotten. This team has been very frustrating to watch at times. The defense has been infuriating, and there have been more than a few games where it felt like the offense just didn't show up at all against a poor quality pitcher. But despite all that there have been some incredible success stories and a tenacious team where there is always someone carrying the load. The team has been competitive basically wire to wire and even if they don't go deep into the playoffs that in itself is so much more than I expected.
And conversely, they absolutely could win the whole thing. Clear the wildcard game and it’s on. No one scares me.
For sure, although I think it's a little foolish to not be afraid of the Giants, Dodgers, Astros and Rays. That said, afraid in baseball means 70-30 odds at worst.
