Sox Therapy

Offseason Minor League Thread

Because the Red Sox system is so thin in the high minors, and because their low-minors strength doesn’t feature any single obvious superstar, the prospect ratings have been a bit all over the place. John Sickels’ top five only shared two names with Jim Callis’ top five, and Keith Law didn’t rank Callis’ #1 in his top 100, but he did put Sickels’ #7 in his 100th spot (only the second Red Sox to make the list). Since I don’t actually watch minor league games, I tend to count on the experts and the aggregators of expert opinion in forming my opinions, particularly of players in the low minors. So I really have no idea how to rate most of the players in the Sox system.

These are the Callis (BA), Sickels and Law (ESPN) top tens:
1) Middlebrooks 1) Bogaerts 1) Bogaerts (62) 2) Bogaerts 2) Barnes 2) Swihart (100) 3) Swihart 3) Middlebrooks 3) Middlebrooks 4) Ranaudo 4) Lavarnway 4) Lavarnway 5) Brentz 5) Cecchini 5) Barnes 6) Jacobs 6) Jacobs 6) Ranaudo 7) Cecchini 7) Swihart 7) Jacobs 8) Barnes 8) Coyle 8) Brentz 9) Lavarnway 9) Brentz 9) Cecchini 10) Bradley, Jr 10) Ranaudo 10) Britton
My tendencies, just looking at the numbers, are to be skeptical of Middlebrooks (too many Ks for a guy without great on-contact numbers) and very skeptical of Brentz (too many Ks and way too old for the only level he performed well at). One thing that I think has been under-reported, just a little, is what a huge breakout last year was for Lavarnway. There’s no assurance that a guy who puts up a 900 OPS in the Carolina League will be able to do the same in the Eastern and International Leagues, and and the latter performances are far, far better than the former. Lavarnway’s 2010 was nice, but his 2011 MLE would have made him an above average MLB designated hitter (330/450). The projection systems take into account that this was a spike in the numbers and downgrade him significantly, but if his 2011 was a real qualitative improvement, then the boorish one is probably the best player in the system.

I’m also vaguely optimistic about Garin Cecchini, the lone low-minors prospect in the Red Sox system who doesn’t strike out every third time he comes to the plate.

One thing I can basically agree with is Keith Law’s ranking and evaluation of the Sox system. He puts them #18, a bit below average but by no means barren of talent, and says:

This system is terribly thin up top given the money the Red Sox have spent in the past few years on amateur players. I do see a large group of prospects from low Class A and below that should produce a couple of breakout prospects in 2012, including Brandon Jacobs, Garin Cecchini, Henry Owens, Matt Barnes and Sean Coyle.

The Sox have gotten poor results from their drafting and development in the last few years, and what talent they did produce they’ve traded away, but given the ridiculous performance of the system up through 2008 or so, it’s hard to complain. There’s so much talent in the low minors now that, just with normal luck and normal development, next year really should be a good year for the minors. Which would be nice.

You’re telling me there’s a salary cap in the new CBA?

I’ve complained in a few places about the Red Sox ownership not being willing to spend a little over the luxury tax threshold to complete this roster. I could rehearse here how offering David Ortiz arbitration is a very questionable decision if you’re treating the luxury tax threshold as a hard cap, but I’d rather talk about that hard cap in the first place. Why are the Sox, who have previously treated the luxury tax threshold as a guideline, now acting as if their payroll is non-negotiably limited?

Longtime poster and minor league expert Temple U Sox argued that the reason is simple: under the new CBA, baseball basically has a salary cap. The reports on this came out in December, but I missed them and I think most other folks did too. The official Collective Bargaining Agreement still hasn’t been released, so it’s possible that these reports are incorrect or incomplete. I’m having trouble parsing the information, so I’m hoping that writing a blog post will get some people in here who understand the issues better than I do.

The initial report came from Darren Rovell at CNBC, and it was picked up (or reported independently) by Christopher Gasper at the Globe. This is Gasper’s explanation:

The new CBA decrees that 15 large-market teams, including the Sox, are prohibited from receiving initial revenue sharing dollars—MLB teams must put a percentage of their local revenue (it was 31 percent under the old CBA) into a pool that is distributed evenly to all 30 MLB clubs. Beginning in 2013 the large-market clubs that don’t exceed the luxury tax threshold will be “rebated” some percentage of their revenue sharing contribution, with the percentage rising to a 100 percent in 2016.

It’s hard to get a good estimate of how much the Red Sox receive in initial revenue sharing, but according to Maury Brown writing at BA, revenue sharing re-distributed $433M from big-market teams to small-market teams in 2009. Gasper explains that revenue sharing works by pooling a share of all clubs’ local revenue and then dividing it evenly, so if $433M is being re-distributed, then the total payouts to all clubs must be larger than $433M. That gives us, at least, a hard floor - initial revenue sharing receipts are at minimum $15M for each club. Being even a single dollar over the luxury tax threshold would cost a team more than $15M in revenue, probably much more. That would function as a de facto hard cap, an effective fine of tens of millions of dollars for any team with a payroll over the luxury tax threshold.

As I said, I’m struggling to parse this all out, and on a number of points I’m skeptical that this explanation is correct. The first issue with this explanation is that Rovell and Gasper say that the “rebate” rule doesn’t kick in until 2013. So, then, why would the Red Sox be acting as if they have a hard cap for the 2012 season? The Red Sox can’t take on any added salary for 2013, because they have very few contracts coming off the books next year, but if there’s no hard cap yet, they should have the money for one-year deals for folks like Scutaro or Oswalt. Perhaps this means the Sox will have another contract to add even if it takes them over the threshold, though then the Scutaro dump is even less explicable. Perhaps the rebate rule or some approximation of it comes into effect in 2012. I can’t quite make all the pieces of the story line up.

Further, as I’ll outline in the comments, this system looks like a terrible deal for competitive balance, a salary cap at the cost of revenue sharing, a salary cap that enriches the wealthiest owners while hurting the smallest markets. I really hope that this report is incorrect or at least significantly incomplete.

The Plan and the Payroll

The Red Sox luxury tax payroll currently stands at about $130M. When you add in projected arbitration awards for Ortiz, Ellsbury, Saltalamacchia, Bard, Bailey, and the bench players, that leaves the Red Sox with little to no room remaining under the luxury tax threshold. As I’ve argued, the Red Sox offseason should be understood as a specifically structured and cleverly executed plan. They bolstered the rotation by emptying the bullpen, and then they filled the bullpen by trading MLB-ready semi-prospects for young, cheap relievers. This accomplished two goals. First, it enabled the club from to avoid the free agent market, thus making the roster younger and preventing another winner’s curse contract. Second, it kept the club’s payroll under or almost under the luxury tax threshold. It’s possible that Cherington still has another big acquisition coming up, and owners are planning to pay a bit of tax, but it’s growing more and more likely that Henry and co imposed a strict spending limit on Cherington.

A couple years ago I’d probably have been annoyed about a turn of events like this. But the 2009 and 2010 offseasons have left me wondering, a little bit, to what degree it’s a good thing to have a ton of money that you have to spend. Having John Lackey on the roster wasn’t just a waste of money – he actively made the club worse. The out-years in the Crawford contract are a big problem even if you think he’s going to suck less next year. At some point, the club can’t keep adding more payroll in the out years, and at some point you have to wonder if giving a GM too much money to spend limits his effectiveness.

Whatever you think of the Sox offseason plan, there’s no question it was creative. For a fan, that’s pretty fun. I don’t want to just sing the praises of creativity here – in generally, give me lots more money and give you creativity and I’ll come out ahead – but it’s certainly been enjoyable to watch the Sox treat the offseason as a complex problem requiring a complex solution. Throwing money at a problem is usually a good way to solve a problem, but it’s not terribly fun to watch. I don’t know if my doubts about “just throw some money at it”, as articulated in the paragraph above come from a fully reasoned place. I know I’m annoyed that this club is coming off two 3rd place finishes, I know I’m annoyed about Lackey and Crawford, and I know I’m appreciating the offseason plan aesthetically regardless of whether a bigger budget could have resulted in more wins in 2012. But I’ll close with Andere Richtingen’s line from his latest Gonfalon Cubs blog. It appears that I’m fine with this.

Reddick / Bailey Trade: Rapid Reaction

This looks like a trade where both players involved may be significantly worse than they’re perceived. Josh Reddick was a useful regular last year, but his overall track record remains terrible, and ZiPS projects him as basically a replacement level RF with an 85 OPS+. Andrew Bailey is a fabulous pitcher when healthy (career 2.07 ERA and 2.74 FIP), but he’s pitched a full season of major league ball only once in three tries. Any projection that incorporates past playing time is going to see Bailey as maybe a 1-1.5 WAR pitcher, not a star.

I was a big fan of Reddick’s last year – I loved his glove and arm in right, the huge power potential in his bat, and having a potential star with five seasons of team control remaining. I have to face the fact that Reddick still doesn’t project as a good, or even useful player, and it may be the case that he still isn’t a good or useful player. Considering Reddick purely from a numbers standpoint, he’s not a terribly valuable piece. At the same time, considering Bailey purely from a numbers standpoint, he isn’t either.

The minor leaguers involved are a pair of lottery tickets – Miles Head looks like most likely organizational filler, but Raul Alcantara was an upside arm (still is, I guess) who appeared to be learning to pitch last year. He’s the sort of guy I’d rather not have given up, though again, projectible arms in short-season A-ball don’t have a ton of value compared to major league contributors.

They’re clearly committed to converting at least one of Bard and Aceves. They’ve saved money on relievers by spending talent instead – Bailey and Melancon should cost less than $4M combined. This leaves the Sox with something like $5-8M remaining under the salary cap. They have enough to acquire one more cromulent SP, and leave Bard and Aceves to fight for the #5 slot in the rotation. That would just about do it for the offseason – an RHB 4th OF and some back-end filler for the pitching staff and they’re done.

My main reaction to this trade is to say that it’s clear now that the Red Sox have been executing a plan from day one. They considered the free agent market, the luxury tax threshold, the club’s young talent, and opted for an unexpected, risky, high-upside offseason strategy. They decided to convert their best relievers into starting pitchers and to trade young near-regulars for young, underpriced relievers to replace them. The front office part of the plan is now almost done. Its success rests mostly, from this point forward, on Valentine and McClure to get the most out of Bard and Aceves. Hope it works.

I have no idea what the Sox are going to do next

The first round of the offseason is nearly over. For the Red Sox it is over – the one first tier FA left is Prince Fielder, and he’s obviously not headed our way. I had hoped the Red Sox would find the money to go after Darvish or Wilson, and Wilson’s below-market deal has left every team in need of pitching (read: every team) wishing they’d been involved. Darvish is looking at 6/110 or more, though, so I don’t have a problem with the Red Sox passing on him.

The second-tier FA market and the trade market always made more sense for the Red Sox. They need one more starter and one more reliever, and the depth on the market isn’t bad. They’ve been linked in rumors to Hiroki Kuroda and Roy Oswalt, both of whom would be fair acquisitions on short deals. Edwin Jackson would make a ton of sense, but he might as well be living in a cave on Mars for all the reporting that’s been done on him this offseason. Ryan Madson likewise fits this club’s needs very well, but ever since the Philly deal fell through, the wire has gone silent on him as well.

The Red Sox projected payroll remains the big question. Adding in expected arbitration awards to Ortiz, Ellsbury, Salty, Bard, Aceves, Aviles, and Morales puts the Sox at about $160M committed for 2012. Add in the ~$10M for extra fees, and the Sox are only $8M under the luxury tax threshold. The Sox could pay one more free agent without paying significant tax, but the second free agent would cost the team an added 40% on top of his actual salary. (This may explain their reluctance to get into the Wilson or Darvish bidding.)

The luxury tax situation, not unreasonably, has left the Sox exploring the trade market. They’ve been linked to the A’s, mostly, in talks about Andrew Bailey and Gio Gonzalez – who project to make several million apiece next year in arbitration. To acquire one of Bailey or Gonzalez will require moving Josh Reddick as well as some minor league talent, and this both may not project as a smart win/$$ move and creates a problem of moving pieces. Unless the Sox are willing to fully commit to Ryan Kalish as their starting RF coming off a lost season, trading Reddick would force the Sox to acquire a pretty good right fielder who could be trusted to play everyday if Kalish isn’t ready. The reason they went to the trade market in the first place was to save money, but in this scenario that money saved has to be plowed back into filling the hole the trade created. (And, as I mentioned, it’s hard to see how three years Andrew Bailey is a good return for five years of Josh Reddick, plus other talent – unless you think Reddick’s 2012 was a big fluke.)

The obvious solution, it seems to me, is to sign a second-tier FA starter and make Dan Bard your relief ace. Split 5th starter between Doubront and Aceves, and you got yourself a ballclub. I get that Bard has that five-win upside in the rotation, but the uncertainty of giving Bard a rotation slot creates holes on the roster that will be hard for the club to fill at a reasonable cost.

The Closing Window

The Red Sox entered the offseason with just three acceptable starting pitchers and two good relievers under contract. The primary goal of the offseason for Ben Cherington was to acquire pitching. It is now mid-December, and the most significant pitching acquisition by the Boston Red Sox has been the signing of Jesse Carlson to a non-guaranteed contract. Good free agent targets – starters like CJ Wilson and Mark Buehrle, relievers like Heath Bell, Latroy Hawkins, and Frank Francisco – have signed elsewhere, to not-unreasonable contracts. This closing window on the acquisition of pitching talent, I think, should be understood as the context for the discussion of Daniel Bard’s reported transition to the rotation.

I don’t have very much to say about Bard’s conversion because I think that almost all the important information is unavailable to me. If Bard’s conversion is a success, the Sox could turn a good reliever into a good starter at zero cost – in pure $$/win terms, that’s a possible 3 win or $15M upgrade. If Bard’s conversion is a failure, they could lose their best reliever, whether to injury or the return of the yips. The questions which are determinative for the decision – does Bard have the stuff, mindset, durability, mechanics, and health to be a good bet to convert to starting? – can only be answered based on particular expert, “scouty” knowledge that the Red Sox have and we don’t. I hope it’s a good idea, I think Bard’s three-pitch arsenal at least looks like a starter’s arsenal. I think the fact that the Sox are trying it is further mild evidence that it is a good idea, but I am not informed to make a judgment either way.

Converting Bard, though, would help the rotation at the expense of the bullpen. It wouldn’t solve the closing window problem. In fact, it would make it worse, since it would increase the risk that one of our five good pitchers is ineffective next year. Even if the Sox place Daniel Bard in the rotation, they would still need to acquire a pretty good 5th starter, due to the significant possibility that Bard would wash out in the rotation and leave the Sox with only three starters. If the Sox acquired a more reliable, if less upside-y 4th starter – say Edwin Jackson – they would have more room to open up the 5th stater job to Felix Doubront or, hell, Dan Bard. And if the Sox place Bard in the rotation, they would be left with Aceves, some averagish arms, and the lottery ticket that is Bobby Jenks in the pen. I think they would need to acquire an ace reliever along the lines of Andrew Bailey or Ryan Madson, and they’d need another arm or two beyond that.

My guess is opinions about Bard’s transition are significantly affected by one’s level of concern about the closing window. If we should be highly confident in Cherington’s ability to acquire the pitchers the club needs, or if we should judge the existing bullpen of Aceves/Jenks/Morales/Albers/minor leaguers to be significantly better than I have made it out to be, then converting Bard is much less of a risk. If we should consider the closing window on pitching acquisitions to be reaching a crisis point, then converting Bard could easily appear an unreasonable risk.

One option that does remain for the Red Sox, if they are going to go very cheap this offseason, is to plan on making Kyle Weiland and Alex Wilson into major league relievers. I think there’s a real chance this could work – both Wilson and Weiland have always been projected as relievers by outside observers, and as a starter last year, Weiland allowed a 229 OPS in his first inning and was terrible thereafter – but I have not heard a word of it from the Sox so far this offseason. I would expect, if they were thinking of making Weiland or Wilson a significant part of the bullpen plan, that the idea would be floated in the media relatively soon.

New Manager Likes to Do Stuff

Bobby Valentine is going to be the new Red Sox manager, pending agreement on a contract. I’m generally happy about this. It’s not just that Valentine has a good record as a manager, but more that he’s got upside. A manager like Valentine could win you a handful of games – and he’s going to try to win those games. Most statistically-inclined clubs have opted for managers who will carry out competently the directives of the front office. This option limits outcomes on both the upside and the downside. There are certain kinds of mistakes a Francona is unlikely to make, but he’s also unlikely to wring that many extra wins out of a roster tactically or strategically. By selecting Valentine, the Red Sox are opting for a risk that I’d like to see more ballclubs take. Interesting managers make the game more interesting.

Valentine is particularly inclined toward the interesting. Chris Jaffe’s Evaluating Baseball Managers has a good capsule description of Bobby Valentine which emphasizes what an active manager he is. He leads all managers of his era in the categories of pinch-hitters used and in-game substitutions for position players. Bench players on Bobby Valentine clubs get constant opportunities, and he likes job-sharing arrangements both between and within games. I would expect that Valentine will be much more willing than a typical manager to maximize the platoon potential of the Saltalamacchia/Lavarnway catching tandem. He’ll probably have both Mike Aviles and Jed Lowrie on his bench to mix and match for defense and pinch-hitting, and he may have some unorthodox platoons to work out with RF and DH.

Overall, Jaffe’s numbers show Valentine’s teams to have outperformed expectations by about 350 runs over 13.5 seasons. Most of that overperformance has come in the beating of Pythagorean win expectations. We can’t dismiss the possibility that this record could just be random variation, but it’s at least not crazy to imagine that a wildly active manager like Valentine could legitimately be finding tactical advantages that win a game or two per season.

What going on down Jersey St?

In the past two days, things seem to have gotten a bit weird. The managerial search had been progressing in its normal, boring way. Cherington had interviewed normal, boring candidates like Dale Sveum and Pete Mackanin and Torey Lovullo. They were looking for a Francona clone, a good company man who will carry out the directives of management, handle the media well, and keep the players happy.

Now it’s reported that Bobby Valentine is a leading candidate. There are conflicting reports as to whether Valentine has met only with ownership, or whether he also met with Cherington and the meeting went unreported for some reason. It’s possible to square the interest in Valentine with a narrative of front office cohesion on Jersey St - as an aside, I see no reason to honor the malignant Tom Yawkey with a street name, let alone one synecdochal for the Red Sox. Anyway, it’s possible that Valentine had been on the list from the beginning, but it’s unlikely that could have been kept from the press by the leaky Sox front office, and it’s odd that there would be one Valentine on the original list along with a half-dozen Francona clones. None of the other managerial candidates who’ve been reported resemble Valentine in resume, profile, or in expected demands of authority. The simplest explanation does appear to be that Cherington was overruled.

It’s not exactly world-historical news that a young manager was overruled by his bosses. And I don’t mean to suggest that this is necessarily bad in baseball terms - the last two years of front office harmony haven’t exactly produced results in which anyone takes pride. Hell, I think Bobby Valentine’s managerial resume is very impressive, and I’m excited about the possibility of his taking the reins in Fenway. I do think it’s fair to suggest that the front office harmony of the last several years was an aberration, and we’re heading back to a more complex and messy arrangement of power between management and ownership. We can expect more drama, more leaks, more silliness.

I originally had a way to tie this post to Craig Shipley’s dismissal, but I seem to have forgotten what it was. Anyway, the other front office news is that Craig Shipley, who has overseen the Sox underperforming international scouting and development system for the last several years, is going to be fired. Theo said in the post-collapse press conference that he wanted to run a full review of the entire organization to figure out what needed to be fixed. This seems like the sort of move that would arise from a full review – Shipley’s division has underperformed, so they’re looking for someone new. This dismissal doesn’t really fit with the “complex arrangement of power” narrative of the first three paragraphs, though. Shipley’s dismissal seems like exactly the sort of action we’d expect the new GM to take.

The Dumber-than-Marcels: Free Agent Starters

My first run-through of the dumber-than-Marcel projections for position players left me quite skeptical of the top-line free agents. Now I’ve done the pitchers, my sense is that once again it’s the middle-class free agents who will offer better value.

These projections are based on a 3/2/1/2 regressed weighted average of pitcher value stats, a 50-50 split of Fangraphs and CHONE numbers. It’s a half-FIP, half-RA projection. In the position player projections, I included a $ value based on the one-season projection, but most players want a multi-year contract. So, what I’ve included instead is a projected contract value over 1, 3, and 5 seasons for each pitcher. To the numbers:

+13 RAA +27 Rep = +41 RAR, 1/20, 3/54, 5/81 – Wilson
+5 RAA + 27 Rep = +32 RAR, 1/16, 3/42, 5/59 – Buehrle
+3 RAA + 26 Rep = +39 RAR, 1/14, 3/36, 5/50 – Jackson
-2 RAA + 23 Rep = +21 RAR, 1/10, 3/25, 5/30 – Vazquez

To compare to the existing Sox rotation:

+15 RAA +26 Rep = +41 RAR, 1/20, 3/55, 5/83 – Lester (actual 2/19)
+8 RAA + 24 Rep = +31 RAR, 1/15, 3/40, 5/56 – Beckett (actual 3/47)
+7 RAA + 16 Rep = +23 RAR, 1/11, 3/28, 5/35 – Buchholz (actual 4/30)

And to the recently signed CC Sabathia:

+21 RAA +29 Rep = +50 RAR, 1/25, 3/71, 5/109 (actual 5/122)

So, I’m finding at least by this method that Sabathia’s contract was close to a fair deal, just slightly weighted toward CC – as indeed are all things in this world, due to normal gravitation.

The main thing that stands out to me, looking at these pitchers, is that Buehrle and even Edwin Jackson look like valuable contributors. Heck, so does Javier Vazquez. I projected Wilson using only his two starting seasons, and he still came out well under the 5/100 I expect him to be looking for. My read on the market is that something like 4/52 would bring in Buerhle, and maybe 3/33 would work with Jackson. Those are pretty much fair-value contracts, compared to the $20M+ overpay that Wilson would want. Javier Vazquez, who reportedly is considering retirement and strongly prefers to stay on the East Coast, could probably be had on a one-year deal.

Those contracts are, in some ways, scary propositions. None of Buehrle, Jackson, or Vazquez is an ace, and that’s a lot of money to invest in someone who isn’t an ace. It’s possible that my (hardly comprehensive) projections don’t adequately account for the risk of implosion with slightly above-average starters. On the other hand, these guys have actually been valuable contributors over the last couple of seasons, and the Red Sox already have their front of the rotation in place. What the Sox need are innings-eaters who can keep the team in the game until the offense clubs the opposing pitcher to death in front of his weeping parents.

There is very little depth in this free agent class – if I’ve done it right, the next best projection after Vazquez goes to Aaron Harang, who is well below average. With all of the big-money clubs looking for pitching, it’s not terribly likely that the Red Sox will land two good free agents. They might be interested in risky choices like Harden, Colon, or Wang, or trying out Aceves or Bard in the rotation and spending the leftover cash on an ace reliever. The Marcel projections would be unable to really help out with that question, so the dumber-than-Marcels are entirely stumped.

If the Sox go just the free agent route, my preference right now is that they spend something like $12M on Beltran or $7M on Willingham for DH/RF. And then I like $13M for Buehrle or $11M for Jackson in the #4 starter slot. If Henry opens up just a tiny bit more more cash, the Sox would then have the money to take a flier on a high-risk 5th starter and add a non-elite reliever, to allow Aceves to shift to 5th starter if necessary. That is not an exciting offseason, but I think that unless the Sox want to go through the trade market or the posting system, it’s the best use of existing resources.

The above paragraph can also be taken, if you like it, as a desperate call for the Red Sox not to fill their needs merely through the free agent market.

You Will Never See Anything Like Him Again: Jonathan Papelbon

I’m not saying that the Red Sox cannot replace Jonathan Papelbon’s production going forward, but I am saying that what he did for them (us) was incredible. With a 197 ERA+ for his career, a 1.00 ERA in the playoffs, Paps was just about as close to perfect for the Sox as a closer can be. Add to that the fake intense face, the dancing, the goofy Ricky Bobby persona, and you’ve got one of the most memorable Red Sox ever. Thanks for the memories.