What would you do in short and long terms? Tons of decisions to be made. Where is the team? What does it need? How do we get there?
Let's face it. The future may hold some hope, but it was some serious flaws on a few fronts. I don't think it's gonna be as easy as some think.
First thing is I’d make it clear that I’m in charge and any doing anything related to how the team is run on the field reports to me. That would be a condition of employment. Second, I’d say I need to decide who that team is, I don’t want any leftovers from the last few years as they clearly don’t understand how to win.
Then the tough stuff starts. Key weaknesses are defense, offense and pitching, lol. Start anywhere. Make some targets in each area. Decide what you’re going to do with poor defenders like Devers and Yoshida. Decide if you need to cut bait on Story (may just need to keep him to hold the position because there is so much work).
Speifically, get a 2B with a hot glove. Second, get a stud outfielder of the type that Boston was once famous for. You need at least two top of the rotation pitchers.
You’ve got some trade assets in Verdugo, Yoshida, and a host of young guys who aren’t going to be stars like the rotation of infielders we had. Sale may fetch a price.
That’s just week one!
Quote from: longgame on October 09, 2023, 07:44:30 AM
First thing is I’d make it clear that I’m in charge and any doing anything related to how the team is run on the field reports to me. That would be a condition of employment. Second, I’d say I need to decide who that team is, I don’t want any leftovers from the last few years as they clearly don’t understand how to win.
Then the tough stuff starts. Key weaknesses are defense, offense and pitching, lol. Start anywhere. Make some targets in each area. Decide what you’re going to do with poor defenders like Devers and Yoshida. Decide if you need to cut bait on Story (may just need to keep him to hold the position because there is so much work).
Speifically, get a 2B with a hot glove. Second, get a stud outfielder of the type that Boston was once famous for. You need at least two top of the rotation pitchers.
You’ve got some trade assets in Verdugo, Yoshida, and a host of young guys who aren’t going to be stars like the rotation of infielders we had. Sale may fetch a price.
That’s just week one!
Looking at the youngsters coming up for the Orioles, I think the next OPS guy has a good fall-back for some key positions. The free-agents leaving, Turner and Duvall, can be replaced by Abreu (LH) and Duran (LH). But we need another righty power bat to complement Devers and Casas. Ceddanne offers a righty bat at either CF or 2B, but he could offer just defense only at his experience. Story and 2B have fall backs in Mayer and Yorke (2025). But as Ted pointed oiut, we need lots of pitching, a catcher, and a spring trying to figure out who can play defense.
I see they are exploring keeping E.Valdez in the INF mix by putting him in the PR league this winter.
Just some detail on the Justin Turner Contract. Turner has a player option for $13.4M and the Red Sox have a $6.7M buyout. I think most contracts have 3-5 days after the day following the completion of the World Series.
One can only guess what his plans are for next season. Fenway is definitely a good fit for him. I THINK he likes Cora. The rest, I have no idea.
Getting to FA pitchers, the following are available with notes on fangraph's fWAR factored over the last few years (#1,2,3 are not in FA)
4 Aaron Nola - 14.6 WAR
16 Jordan Montgomery - 10.2 WAR
17 Sonny Gray - 10.1 WAR
18 Blake Snell - 9.8 WAR
21 Clayton Kershaw - 9.6 WAR
33 Marcus Stroman - 8.1 WAR
39 Kyle Gibson - 7.7 WAR
40 E-Rod - 7.5 WAR
45 - Lucas Giolito - 6.9 WAR
Starting Pitching has been a real puzzle over the past few years. The number of starts a team can hope for and reasonably expect has plummeted. I think the number of starters clearing 30 starts went from the mid-70's to the mid-40's 10 years' time. Pitchers with 20+ starts have only decreased 8%, and that's just a two year(2013 and 2023) sampling.
So does that mean 24 is the new 30 in terms of a good number of starts? There's no way to plan for this needs anymore. We've seen that spreading out $$ budgeted for 5 good starters into a budget for 10 iffy starters doesn't work. We've tried staggering with injury returns, but that's never going to be anything more than many rolls of the dice.
The list Sea Dog posted - kind of scary for the most part unless we know how to make 24 starts for 5 out of 6 guys work. Only one's gonna make 30+ starts.
The Orioles finished their season last night. They have the bats in abundance and some great minor leaguers getting ready. Their depth of pitching was exposed against Rangers. It looks like the Sox will be competing against the O's for the best pitching free-agents, and O's might have more to offer in trades with some of their AA and AAA gems.
Quote from: Sea Dog 23 on October 11, 2023, 12:36:26 PM
The Orioles finished their season last night. They have the bats in abundance and some great minor leaguers getting ready. Their depth of pitching was exposed against Rangers. It looks like the Sox will be competing against the O's for the best pitching free-agents, and O's might have more to offer in trades with some of their AA and AAA gems.
Angelos will not spend big money for free agents. The Orioles minor leagues are well stocked. I do not see Baltimore being a factor competing with Boston for free agent pitching.
I threw out this question/thread a few weeks ago because something has been nagging me about the whole collective mindset we have about the Red Sox and where we are. I think the bulk of the press and the fans think that we are far enough along into our rebuilding process that we have gotten to that point where we start trading young talent to fill in the gaps.
Personally, I think it's the opposite. I think the team itself is a gap. We built up a team of value, not ball players. Look at the position players we have and look at the position players on teams still in the playoffs. Where we have value, they have studs that play on BOTH SIDES of the run scoring and run prevention equation. Call them weapons, if you prefer.
Duran(CF) and Yoshida(LF) can't go back on balls nor throw people out. If that's 2/3rds your OF, you are not playing championship 2-way baseball. The Wong/McGuire combination is OK at best. Anything we have at 2b are far from 2-way studs. Those 4 positions alone are 3 too many weaknesses on the defensive side.
Look, I am a HUGE Duran fan. He could be our single LF miscreant with some more work on going back on the ball. As it stands now, he's not that player yet. What a tough job this OPS gig is, right?
The rest can do for now. That's 4 positions that cannot play both sides of the ball at a championship caliber. So that's my first step, short term positional player rebuild. I would prefer we trade Turner if he opts back in and keep Yoshida as a DH just because of the whole 4 years of big money we'll owe him. However, if someone wants to eat that, dig in. I'll take another good year of Turner any day of the week.
Pitching, yeah, Eovaldi sized deals until the rest are ready to sling some banners up.
Once Craig Breslow's hiring is finalized, he will have plenty of work to do. There are a wide range of roster decisions that need to be made but also on the coaching staff, as well. Boston has been linked to San Francisco Giants pitching coach Andrew Bailey as a possibility to take over the vacant pitching coach spot and the chances of landing him are even higher now, according to MassLive.com's Chris Cotillo.
Bailey is a former teammate of Breslow at Boston, and they work together in an off-season group, the Strike Three Foundation that is a charitable group assisting young people in afflictions like cancer. They grew up togehter in Connecticut.
So many gaps to fill. Like we said, on the surface you have to have some sort of depth plan going out a few years which should highlight the gaps. It's not hard. You're committed in few places and have projected guys coming up, it's just a matter of when. When I look at some of these playoff teams I'm reminded of how the Sox had guys like that from Kevin Millar who got more on guts than talent or Nixon who just worked hard, or Steve Pearce who came up big in the postseason, or Shane Victorino, etc. just to name a few. The Sox have nobody like that on the team. They don't have a core power duo. Devers is part of that but oh that defense. Sox need another heavy hitter in that lineup and it can't be one of the guys like Casas who are already in the lineup. He's still young and time will tell if he adjusts as the league adjusts to him now that he's a known threat.
Of course they need reliable starting pitching. I still think there has to be some sort of reconciliation of the smaller number of innings and starts and the amount of money they pay starters. Cole led AL starters with 209 innings. It just seems hard to believe that guys could throw complete games regularly not too long ago and now the average start I believe is under 5 innings.
Yeah, I agree that reduced innings thing for starters is here to stay. 7 innings feels like a complete game as far as watching games and feeling that sense of accomplishment.
On the pitching front, I imagine a very pressing matter is the pitching coach. Having one before FA starts is probably a must.
Lots of article from the Athletic's Red Sox beat writers. Jen McCaffrey wrote an article about Breslow winning his new job because Kennedy and FSG were thoroughly impressed that he had a thought out plan regarding how to revamp the Red Sox pitching system as an organization.
So, um, yeah. Wasn't building pitching sustainability supposed to be the top large-scale organizational priority for the past 4 years? Right, I thought so. What on Earth did they do to that end aside from dumpster-diving? Anyone know of anything? We kept the same AAA pitching coach, but I think he might have been a level lower before 2020. Maybe we hired a roving pitching instructor? I think they had everyone learn how to pitch high in the zone and throw a slurve.
We can blame Bloom all we want, but there should have been conference room table fist beatings by Kennedy at the behest of the FSGeezers to get it done. A direct order - "you will build me a pitching organization, and you will build it now!" Maybe they did and assigned a $50k budget, and then took that budget away in order to get Noah Song back. (OK, now I'm getting sarcastic.)
Quote from: MongoLikeSox on November 08, 2023, 09:25:40 AM
Lots of article from the Athletic's Red Sox beat writers. Jen McCaffrey wrote an article about Breslow winning his new job because Kennedy and FSG were thoroughly impressed that he had a thought out plan regarding how to revamp the Red Sox pitching system as an organization.
So, um, yeah. Wasn't building pitching sustainability supposed to be the top large-scale organizational priority for the past 4 years? Right, I thought so. What on Earth did they do to that end aside from dumpster-diving? Anyone know of anything? We kept the same AAA pitching coach, but I think he might have been a level lower before 2020. Maybe we hired a roving pitching instructor? I think they had everyone learn how to pitch high in the zone and throw a slurve.
We can blame Bloom all we want, but there should have been conference room table fist beatings by Kennedy at the behest of the FSGeezers to get it done. A direct order - "you will build me a pitching organization, and you will build it now!" Maybe they did and assigned a $50k budget, and then took that budget away in order to get Noah Song back. (OK, now I'm getting sarcastic.)
The only thing I saw last year was the Sox hired an analyst from the DriveLine group to work their minor leagues. The DriveLine guys are marketed to assist ncaa college age pitchers increase their velo and spin rates. The are 'data-driven' people! I see the Cubs have also hired one or two of their people FWIW.
Quote from: MongoLikeSox on November 08, 2023, 09:25:40 AM
Lots of article from the Athletic's Red Sox beat writers. Jen McCaffrey wrote an article about Breslow winning his new job because Kennedy and FSG were thoroughly impressed that he had a thought out plan regarding how to revamp the Red Sox pitching system as an organization.
So, um, yeah. Wasn't building pitching sustainability supposed to be the top large-scale organizational priority for the past 4 years? Right, I thought so. What on Earth did they do to that end aside from dumpster-diving? Anyone know of anything? We kept the same AAA pitching coach, but I think he might have been a level lower before 2020. Maybe we hired a roving pitching instructor? I think they had everyone learn how to pitch high in the zone and throw a slurve.
We can blame Bloom all we want, but there should have been conference room table fist beatings by Kennedy at the behest of the FSGeezers to get it done. A direct order - "you will build me a pitching organization, and you will build it now!" Maybe they did and assigned a $50k budget, and then took that budget away in order to get Noah Song back. (OK, now I'm getting sarcastic.)
Sarcasm at least can help rid some of the frustration so many Red Sox fans have had since the end of the 2018 season.. That doesn't even call in those last place finishes of 2012, 2014 and 2015. It all starts at the top and owner Prune Face Henry stands convicted for tearing his best team apart starting the season after their greatest triumph; his hiring of a total incompetent in Chaim Bloom whose specialty was trying to dumpster dump and perhaps finding a gem in the trash bin. He failed miserably. And let's not leave out Alex Cora who has been a ten pound bag of poop squired in a one pound bag. He should not be managing this team and we might regret it next season unless he suddenly gets his shit together. One thing must be done, though. Breslow must be given the funds, coaches, and ins tructors needed to turn this shithole franchise around. Can he do it? Well first Henry, if you can hear this, is to give him the money to get the talent we need and to let him get the coaches and instructors needed in order to build a good pitching factory without any interference from those leftovers in the front office who don't know barf from branola even if he tasted both.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that analyst spot dedicated for pitching. Analysts we certainly have. There is a huge list of upper level employees listed on the 'Sox MLB site. We have 34 names on that list for Baseball Research & Development department. Imagine if we had that many baseball people on staff to coach these kids?
Fred, while I do care that Henry spends some more money on players, I would much rather see a lot of money spent on training and coaching these kids on the traditional game of baseball so that they arrive here ready to rock and roll. Maybe that's what he was trying to do with that baseball R&D department, but he maybe drank up way too much of the analytics first Kool Aide. That's what I think when I see the defensive disaster we had backing up our pitchers last year. It's like we had Maple gloves and leather bats last year.
Interesting to see the Jays hiring Carlos Febeles (our 3B coach and INF coach).
Cora's brother got hired by the Tigers for 3B coach.
Justin Horowitz, who had been with Boston for over 10 years in scouting, has been hired an Director of Amateur Scouting for the Pirates.
Horowitz has been a critical member of the Red Sox scouting team for years. He tabbed Jarren Duran as a 7th rounder in 2018, and was a significant part of the team’s process with first rounders Marcelo Mayer and Mikey Romero, among others.
Andrew Bailey, Breslow's old friend who was supposedly a fovorite to be Sox new pitching coach, is interviewing for the NYY bench coach job today. Maybe Breslow is going in a different direction, or Bailey is going for the paycheck.
Sheeesh! The hits keep coming.
An update from Rosenthal, that Boston is near to signing Andrew Bailey as the pitching coach. Apparently he was not impressed with working for Boone and the other A-holes at NY. Bailey pitched for the Sox, and was a teammate of Breslow for five years in the bullpen.
The deal is not finalized, maybe they still have to run it by Cora and Henry, who is exploring the eastern Antilles.
Quote from: Sea Dog 23 on November 15, 2023, 04:58:30 AM
An update from Rosenthal, that Boston is near to signing Andrew Bailey as the pitching coach. Apparently he was not impressed with working for Boone and the other A-holes at NY. Bailey pitched for the Sox, and was a teammate of Breslow for five years in the bullpen.
The deal is not finalized, maybe they still have to run it by Cora and Henry, who is exploring the eastern Antilles.
I was just reading KR's article to that end in the Athletic. I've seen this before, but it's music to my ears(eyes) to read it again. "At baseball’s general managers’ meetings last week, Breslow said the team was in the process of finding a new pitching coach and recognized “the opportunity cost of waiting†to hire someone."
"The opportunity cost of waiting." I will never understand Bloom's disregard, maybe even opposition to that concept. It makes the Yoshida signing even more surprising than it was, though I think we all know why the timing was crucial in that one.
Anyhow, I've seen this quote now a few times and each time I get into a better mood about the situation.
EDIT
The potential pitching coach while in San Francisco talking about the Giant's main pitching department.
Quote“Myself, Brian Bannister and J.P. Martinez, we don’t have any egos and we’re able to work together,†Bailey told the San Francisco Examiner. “Our coordinators like Justin Lehr, Matt Daniels, Clay Rapada and those guys down the minor league system really value and look at a guy’s arsenal and see trends in his shapes and usages, and our analytics department does a lot of that work as well.â€
Very refreshing to see Analytics mentioned as additional help, weighing in after the hands-on approaches and eye tests that result from a system with baseball people leading the way.
I like the attitude that we're seeing, and like you, I was always frustrated with Bloom's deliberation and inability to pull the trigger on anything. Those analytics work against building a team in two ways - not valuing what you see with your eyes and also on the financial side in determining a value for a player which for whatever reason never seems to account for the market. When you get the guy whose price matches the skills he brings it's because he doesn't have those intangibles which make for star players. The computer can't value that.
Of course we'll have to see where we end up.
On a related note, I've seen a couple of items about how the Winter Meetings aren't the Winter Meetings of old. I think there's a good reason for that. 20 years ago every team had a GM. They didn't have 3 Presidents, a GM, Multiple assistants, etc. Two guys at a table can get a deal done. 25 people crunching numbers will keep people from striking deals until all the analytics can be run. We'll see what happens this year. One thing that always struck me about Bloom was he lacked charisma. Breslow appears to be brighter and more personable. That goes a long way in any personal interaction.
Breslo is also bringing over Mason Macrae an amateur scout from the Cubs. He is really steeped in analytics as well. Here is an article Mccrae wrote on pitching. It is really deep, well as Breslow is!
"About a year ago I started learning how to code at Tread. None of this would be possible without the brains of Cam (@k_camden) and Rylan (@RylanDomingues). Making this blog forced me to go back and clean up the code, but some of it is still a mess since it’s from the end of the summer when I started working on it. I’ve removed most of the code that involves stuff +, but I might’ve left some in. You’ll have to remove that.
"This is where we take the data from our two files and combine it so we’re able to get an xwOBAcon value for batted balls and a called strike probability value for every pitcher. Whenever a ball is hit with a 90 EV and 20 LA, the value from the BACON dataset will be inputed."
Quote from: longgame on November 15, 2023, 10:12:35 AM
I like the attitude that we're seeing, and like you, I was always frustrated with Bloom's deliberation and inability to pull the trigger on anything. Those analytics work against building a team in two ways - not valuing what you see with your eyes and also on the financial side in determining a value for a player which for whatever reason never seems to account for the market. When you get the guy whose price matches the skills he brings it's because he doesn't have those intangibles which make for star players. The computer can't value that.
Of course we'll have to see where we end up.
On a related note, I've seen a couple of items about how the Winter Meetings aren't the Winter Meetings of old. I think there's a good reason for that. 20 years ago every team had a GM. They didn't have 3 Presidents, a GM, Multiple assistants, etc. Two guys at a table can get a deal done. 25 people crunching numbers will keep people from striking deals until all the analytics can be run. We'll see what happens this year. One thing that always struck me about Bloom was he lacked charisma. Breslow appears to be brighter and more personable. That goes a long way in any personal interaction.
Great post Ted!!!!!!! You hit all the right points of what we need to do and what we have failed to do under Bloom. However, while I hope you are right and those in charge pay heed to what you said, the Red Sox have been in a funk for a few year now and we don't know how much money is going to be expended to get the right players because good talent does not come cheaply. We saw how penny pinching and dumpster diving have resulted in three last place finishes in the past four seasons. It is up to Henry to start putting some mo ney where his mealy mouth is. Until then I will remain a doubting Thomas until I see actions speaking louder than words. We've been burned enough by incompetence the past five seasons.
A VERY interesting situation in Cleveland. They DFA'd Cal Quantrill. He had shoulder inflammation this year, but recovered well with a 2.76 ERA upon his return in September, including 3 Quality Starts that gave him 8 on the season out of 19 total starts. He made 32 starts with a 3.38 ERA in 2022 and split time between the 'pen and rotation with a 2.89 ERA including 22 starts out of 40 appearances.
The big beef for Cleveland are the two years of arbitration left. He made $5.5M last year. The unofficial beef would be the shoulder inflammation thing and if it is healed. The Friday non-tender deadline roster set takes precedent, I think. They say they've been in trade talks with other clubs, but nothing so far, obviously.
Quote from: MongoLikeSox on November 15, 2023, 12:58:03 PM
A VERY interesting situation in Cleveland. They DFA'd Cal Quantrill. He had shoulder inflammation this year, but recovered well with a 2.76 ERA upon his return in September, including 3 Quality Starts that gave him 8 on the season out of 19 total starts. He made 32 starts with a 3.38 ERA in 2022 and split time between the 'pen and rotation with a 2.89 ERA including 22 starts out of 40 appearances.
The big beef for Cleveland are the two years of arbitration left. He made $5.5M last year. The unofficial beef would be the shoulder inflammation thing and if it is healed. The Friday non-tender deadline roster set takes precedent, I think. They say they've been in trade talks with other clubs, but nothing so far, obviously.
Holy smokes. Where has time gone? I can remember when Quantrill was one of the trade pieces folks talked about for Mookie. I think it was Mookie to San Diego for Will Myers, Quantrill and or a SD catcher.
What is going to be fascinating, from a pitching reset perspective, is to follow all of our AA/AAA pitchers as they go through the analytics grist mill of Breslow and Bailey (?), and which ones emerge in their standard of having the new upside of how values of pitchers will be the new Sox arms coming up from our system. The Rule 5 and 40 man will tell a lot about which pitchers they value.
We saw a trade last night between Atlanta and the Chicago White Sox that's typical for what we'd be likely to see this week with the non-tender deadline looming at the end of today. Dumpster diving by both clubs.
Chicago sends Aaron Bummer to Atlanta for a veteran lefty coming off a 6.74 ERA. He was good before this past season.
In return, Chicago get
1: Former Royals light hitting middle infielder Nicky Lopez.
2: Michael Soroka, SP splitting 23 in AAA and MLB with both ERA's over 5.00. He got off to a great MLB start in 2019, but suffered an achilles heal injury that kept him out for 2021 and 2022.
3: Jared Shuster, SP and 2020 1st round pick out of college with a decent enough minor league career who also got a few starts in for Atlanta
4: Riley Gowns - SP who was a 2023 9th round draft pick
5: Braden Shewmake - SS - A former 2019 1st round pick at SS pick that didn't work out for them. A brief call up for the Braves.
So Chicago trades a veteran player who bombed last year. Atlanta trades 4 bottom of the roster types and a 1st year prospect. A very good house cleaning trade.
It's the kind of trade I thought Bloomer would have done if I think back 4 years. In a sense, he did, but his house cleaning was not failing veterans. Bloom traded valuable MLB talent for other teams cast offs and spare parts. Specifically, the Benny, Renfroe and Vasquez trades. (We got Downs as the premier prospect in the Betts deal, but he did not work out at all, obviously.) Not trying to beat up on Bloom anymore, but I thought i"d point it out as a frame of reference and comparison in the event Breslow pulls off today before the non-tender deadline.
Breslow, surrounded by the usual cast of FSG, could easily find himself caught up in the Dollar Store type signings. However with the history of last place division finishes, I think the execs will pump some life in the Sox transactions and marketing this year. lord knows they've reached a level of irrelevance that something is sure to happen.
My guess, they'll make a splash for one marquis player, like Devers last year, then coast into Spring. My guess, sitting here today is putting big money on Aaron Nola. Early speculation, he is looking for as much as a six year contract.
Just a follow up. Quantrill went to the Rockies via trade for a 2 year Minor League Catcher. The article said the Rockies were high on him for his catching skills is about all it said. An affordable "get" for the Rockies and they'll look good if his shoulder issue last year was a one time thing.
EDIT:
I forgot about the actual non-tendered pitcher yesterday - Wyatt Mills. The 2nd/3rd year reliever with good Minor League K-rates. I never saw him pitch, but I think he was supposed to have a live arm. I also think he was supposed to be out most of 2024, so they decided it made little sense keeping him on the 40-man all winter.
If I'm not mistaken, this brings us down to 37 players on the 40-man roster. MLB should start seeing bigger trades and actual FA signings now.