Saturday, May 18, 2013
Bradford: Could this be the smartest Red Sox team since ‘07?
(www.weei.com)
Using the Bradford–Binet Intelligence Test…uhh, no.
Read More...The Gomes persona might offer the best evidence of an ‘07 dynamic within these Red Sox.
There might be some frustration for fans who choose to define success and failure by pure numbers with the outfielder hitting .183 with a .643 OPS. Intangibles aside, it certainly would behoove the Red Sox to get Gomes’ digits up a bit. But something as simple of managing to hit a ball in the air when his team needed it the most, as was the case in 10th ...
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1 2 3 4 5 >Given Ross, Salty and Lavarnway all in-house already, this was rather obvious.
Napoli thus becomes the third signing by the Red Sox this winter who fits the profile of a power hitter who exhausts pitchers with tenacious at-bats.
Sorry, I've been sleeping. There's Napoli and Ross and?
Probably Gomes.
On a related note the Red Sox "active roster" currently contains five catchers, none of them Mike Napoli. Are they that worried about losing Christian Vazquez in the Rule 5 draft? Who is Dan Butler?
Except maybe a 15-pitch walk.
The Sox are supposedly pretty high on Vazquez. He's not a future star or anything but he had a good year at Hi A Salem.
Catching is at such a premium around the game there really is no reason to give up on it if you don't have to. My guess is that either Saltalamacchia or Lavarnway is gone before Spring Training. They seem like useful enough trade pieces to generate some return.
I've been surprised by a number of those choices. No offer to Edwin Jackson from the Nats, for instance.
Hey, I made that post on the Gomes signing topic. Now how am I supposed to have a shtick?
Which potentially core players do they have? Pedroia, Ellsbury, Ortiz, Lester. I don't really think Middlebrooks fits. But this team sucks right now, and they need to blow it up all the way and start over, not sign part-time platoon first basemen to $40 million contracts.
They are waiting for the rules change forcing teams to only use left-handed pitching against them.
I'm probably dating myself by admitting that when I hear the word "tenacious", the first person I think of is not Jack Black, but Clyde Frazier.
They already did that.
That's not exactly agreeing with him considering that Napoli is under 32 and does have actual upside.
He's one of the five catchers on the active roster.
Jerry Sands is also on the active roster, but James Loney is gone already and Ivan De Jesus is off the 40-man, if we're keeping track of those guys.
Couple weeks ago it looks like. The deal was originally announced on the 10th and apparently signed on the 15th.
EDIT: Never mind.
David, not Cody.
Napoli has no upside, especially not at first base. What are you talking about? We can pray that he repeats his career year, but that is not "upside." Prospects have upside. Napoli is not a prospect.
Napoli is a good signing *as a catcher*. Once you plan to overplay him at first base, you strip him of much of his value and his edge as a player. The drop from C to 1B is huge.
What the hell is the difference?
He might have an OBP/SLG of .370/.580 - that is his upside. If you want to call it a different name go right ahead but it makes no actual difference. Furthermore, he has upside in the sense that his level of hitting might improve without the physical demands of catching.
If you want a prospect with a lower upside than .370/.580 just because he is a prospect and you can use the word 'upside' with purity than you have strange priorities.
There's some disconnect in people, where they hear statheads say for years that Player X is underappreciated, and they become excited about Player X signing with their team, without stopping to realize that this isn't Player X. It's Player X'. The edge to Napoli was the fact that he *played catcher*.
It's huge in theory, but if you have catchers who can hit at least as well as your previous 1B options, and then add Napoli, it doesn't matter where the heck any of them play, in practical terms; the team will improve. The better receivers should catch. Of course they expect Napoli to be a 30+ HR, >>.500 SLG kind of guy, and of course that could blow up on them. But if he does hit that well, 1B is as good a place as any; it's not like that kind of hitter is thick on the ground.
I would agree with Ray that "upside" doesn't really exist for Napoli but I think the "downside" is also relatively low. Even his bad year in 2012 wasn't horrible though of course it would not be ideal.
That should go down a little if he plays full time. He's faced lefties almost 1/3 of the time, while full-timers Konerko and Pujols faced them only 1/4 of the time last year.
Every team in baseball would like to bring in more young stars.
Playing full time in the AL East means facing LHP about a third of the time:
The Yankees have Sabathia and Pettitte
The Blue Jays have Romero and Buerhle, maybe Cecil or Laffey as fifth starter too
The Orioles have Wada, maybe bring back Saunders, might start Matusz and/or Britton some
The Rays have Price and Moore
So that's ~40% LHSP over nearly half the schedule.
Expecting a prospect to reach a big upside is the exact same wishful thinking. For veterans, if you want to call it 'ceiling' or whatever word you choose, go ahead, but it makes no meaningful difference.
No one is counting on Napoli repeating his 170 OPS+. The upside I listed was well below that, and no one is banking on that (you can't sign FA's who are very likely to have a 150 OPS+ for $13 million - no matter what the position).
Okay, if the Sox play him at C, who do they play at 1B?
I presume you mean that his offense will play better as a RH hitter in Fenway with the wall. I am not dismissing this as a possibility; I am dismissing it as something to bank on when signing a player.
Come on. He was playing 70 games a year at catcher. This isn't Piazza or Biggio or Torre or Simmons moving out from behind the dish. He was a part-time player there, at best.
Exactly correct. We can adjust for park.
Or are you arguing that not only will he uniquely take advantage of Fenway given his skill set - above and beyond standard park adjustments - but also of NYS, Rogers, and Camden?
And Fenway is a _worse_ park for hitters than Arlington.
Given that, and given that Napoli projects as an above average hitter for a 1B, I think it makes the most sense to play Napoli at 1B full time. I think it's reasonable to hope that Napoli with fewer defensive responsibilities could play 140-150 games as a regular. Even if you don't project him to improve his hitting rates as a 1B, I think it's reasonable to expect him to improve his bulk games played at 1B.Tango's study found the greatest effect of moving out from behind the dish for part-time catchers.
Oh, interesting. Maybe the mental prep, knowing your pitchers and the opposing batters is a significant factor.
Many players resist moving down the defensive spectrum. Wonder what promises they made to him. Or perhaps he didn't ask for any.
Because park effects are one size fits all and don't depend on handed ness or batted ball profiles or spray charts, right?
Fenway is pretty much the best park in MLB for a right-handed dead pull fly ball hitter like Napoli. Or Cody Ross. Or Jonny Gomes.
You don't bank on this when signing a player.
Then why were you talking about NYS, Rogers, and Camden? I don't know how Rogers plays, but NYS and Camden don't favor RH pull hitters, from what I recall. And how many stadiums could a hitter possibly be uniquely suited for? Once you start to name half the stadiums in the league you might as well just go to park effects.
Also, was Arlington not a good park for RH pull hitters?
Why not? Napoli is a right-handed, fly-ball hitting pull hitter. Why would you expect that NOT to be useful at Fenway? Serious question here. It's not like bringing in a pull hitting lefty and thinking "with the Monster he'll be more inclined to go the other way," this is a case of asking a guy to keep being who he is.
There are counterarguments to be had. There is a fear that he'll go overboard looking to pull the ball and maybe the Sox could have gotten a less known RHB pull hitter (e.g. Cody Ross) for less money and similar production. But the Sox aren't asking Napoli to change anything so the move to Fenway should at least impact his numbers some.
I think Ray's point was that most of that impact is already accounted for by the park adjustments.
(the chance that fenway helps him much more than other righties is part of his upside, heh heh. His career numbers at Fenway are amazing, but I assume that shouldn't be a factor in evaluating the signing considering the sample is so tiny.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but park adjustment only adjusts rather crudely for run environment, right? In my understanding, they aren't adjusted for handedness or any individual hitter characteristics. It may not be a huge factor, but one might predict players with a certain batted ball profile to do better or worse in a given park beyond what park adjustments can tell us. It's probably a little more speculative, but it seems like a reasonable assumption.
EDIT: Or what Jose and Nate said.
For this money and this number of years, I'm cool with it. It's not like Napoli blocks any 1B superprospects or anything. Even if someone does rocket through the system, this is a short and cheap enough deal to trade or just eat.
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