If you had the OPS job....

[MongoLikeSox]

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.

[longgame]

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!

[Sea Dog 23]

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.

[MongoLikeSox]

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.

[Sea Dog 23]

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

[MongoLikeSox]

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.     

[Sea Dog 23]

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.

[elktonnick]

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. 

[MongoLikeSox]

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. 

[Sea Dog 23]

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.

[longgame]

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.

[MongoLikeSox]

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.

[MongoLikeSox]

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.)

[Sea Dog 23]

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.

[SeaBeachFred]

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.