Thursday, May 23, 2013
Demystifying Red Sox Ownership - What Do They Do? (WEEI)
(www.weei.com)
Read More...“I have [former Red Sox CEO] John Harrington’s old office. The day he turned over the reins, he was sitting at the desk and handed me his pen with a warm smile,” Henry wrote in an email.“I still have it. Red ink. I work more of my hours though in my home offices in Florida and in Brookline. But there is nothing like driving into Fenway Park to go to work. I am thankful every day that I get to do that. It’s one big reason why these rumors of a potential sale of the Red Sox are so ...
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< 1 2 3 4 >Pitching depth and age I am ok with, I should have clarified that better in my post. Middlebrooks, Bogaerts and JBJ could be fun, I am just not sold on Lavarnway at all. Big, slow, not good at defense = Napoli upside. Decent I guess, but in no way a team anchor, a caddy is required (in this case, someone who can actually play defense at C).
Other than Bogaerts and maybe Middlebrooks, I don't see anybody all that young who's a particularly good bet to be an impact player for the next good Sox team. The strength of the farm and the young players on the Major league roster is in complementary guys.
This makes the offseason so far rather disappointing to me. They've gone out and signed ... more complementary guys.
If 2014 is the target, then why Gomes? Surely either the system can pump out a Gomes-level player by then or we can grab one in 2014. Why sign a Victorino now? Did we really need to lock in his 2014 age-33 season now?
With so much money available, this is/was a good offseason for something creative. Hamilton on a highly frontloaded deal? A creative salary dump deal involving a real pony? I'd rather go into 2013 with a roster with added impact talent + a few holes than with balanced mediocrity.
I think you're missing Bradley and the pitchers. Bradley (I love this kid) isn't going to be a slugger but looks like a guy who could be a real asset at the top of a lineup and defensively in center. Also, the Sox have some nice young pitching with DLR, Barnes and Webster. What I like is that while I don't expect all of those guys to work out they have enough of those types that they should feel confident that one of their young pitchers will become very good.
I dunno, other than "sign Josh Hamilton for 5/130", I'm not really seeing a plan here. I would have been in favor of a creative trade that nets us an impact player without too high a cost in talent. I remain in favor of a creative trade that nets us an impact player without too high a cost in talent. It's hard for me to criticize the Sox for not doing that, especially given the cost in talent for James Shields and Shin-Soo Choo.
No, I mean in terms of how the 125 is broken up. e.g. 53, 18, 18, 18, 18 instead of 25 each year. If the goal is not to hamstring 2014+, that's one way to do it and still bid on top notch guys.
Well, it's hard to speculate on salary dump trades without knowing what other teams are asking for. If a full plan is required for a critique of the offseason then you're only going to get "sign free agent who fills obvious hole" sorts of things.
There is an interesting question, though, about the Marlins salary dump. Would the Sox be better off if they'd taken on the Blue Jays position? I don't think it's reasonable to think a non-Marlins team will go for a similar salary dump, but there's a fair case the Sox could have gotten Reyes, Buehrle, and Johnson at a price of maybe Doubront and De La Rosa. Do you do that?
I don't think that really fixes the issue. The Sox' don't appear to have a cash flow issue but are concerned about luxury tax. LT is calculated on Annual Average Value of the contract, not on actual payments.
I can buy the pitchers argument, at least in the bulk sense. What I've read about JBJ makes me think more "likely decent MLB contributor" than "big upside guy", although I'll own up to not being a prospects maven.
In that case I really don't understand the "avoid long-term deals" strategy. Shorter deals should be worse on AAV, no?
2) The Sox are relatively safe from the luxury tax threshold in 2013 or 2014, so deals which impact those two seasons primarily don't constrain the Sox from going after other talent that happens to come available.
Isn't his upside basically a healthy Ellsbury?
If you really want me to speculate: the Marlins just dumped a ton of salary and were willing to deal Reyes and Johnson. I know the rumor was that they asked for the sun and moon from the Sox, but we don't actually know what offers and counteroffers were made. The Mets ate most of Bay's contract and were rumored to be shopping Ike Davis. Arizona is perpetually talking about trading Upton the Younger, one can concoct deals to parlay $ into something the D-Backs would want. I'll bet the Angels would deal something decent to get Vernon Wells's contract off their hands.
This is all speculation for us, but not for the actual GM.
I don't think it's correct at all to take as a premise of offseason critique that no impact players are available except through free agency.
My thought today was that Trumbo might be available. With Pujols, Morales, Hamilton, Trout and Bourjos I would at least see what it might take to pry loose Trumbo. If you enticed them with unloading Wells' deal and some kind of minor league piece it might be doable. Maybe that wouldn't have any appeal but I'd at least explore that one. This is particularly true if Napoli's deal falls through.
I give the Sox about an 8% of making the playoffs, and that's only based on the premise here about the rest of the AL East.
Also have the Rays become better today with the Shields trade or worse? And they arn't really going to just stick the Shields/Pena money in their pockets are they?
I'll say 78 wins for the Sox. That's based on pitcher bounceback also and a normal year for injuries.
Not sure it would work but Ellsbury + to Texas, Andrus to Arizona and Upton to Boston seems like a framework at least. I imagine the D-Backs would need more but again I think there are the basic pieces to a deal there.
Well, it never is. And with the savings from the Punto trade, the Sox don't need to find a bargain, they just need to find a better deal than the combined Crawford/Gonzo/Beckett contracts.
Now, maybe this offseason is not the time to do it, maybe midseason is better or next offseason. Or maybe even this $13 million player strategy will work and the Sox will win in 2013. But I understand the frustration.
Adding to that, has there been any study on the issue of whether it matters how you get there. In other words does 10 WAR player + 1 WAR player = Two 5.5 WAR players?
Obviously. But that's a problem w.r.t. to cash flow. Either cash flow is a constraint or not. I'm willing to work under either premise.
Then I guess I don't understand the current plan at all.
--Is it to not sign any long-term contracts for free agents ever again?
--Is it to only sign big free agent contracts in 2015 and thereafter?
The Sox have definitely had a boring offseason. They've purchased wins at market rates. They've improved from a very bad team all the way up to fringe contention. I'm not inspired either. But it's hard for me to see this as a bad offseason. Given what we've been through recently, "not bad" is ok by me.
I don't mean to say I trust the scouts and evaluators. They've not done well recently. But with only two big free agents on the market, and with both having risks making a below-market evaluation entirely reasonable, it's hard for me to extrapolate to any major strategy.
So, you think they'll be significant worse than they were projected before signing Dempster, but it won't be injuries and the pitching will be better?
Lana: "Yyyyyup."
How many teams are they better than right this very second? 4? I think 78 is optimistic.
It may be that he doesn't see this projection as an incontestable fact.
Take on both Nolasco and Buehrle? Some other schlubs who are making more than the minimum? Involve a third team and take on another somewhat overpriced contract? I'm sure there are ways.
In a vacuum, sure. But Bay would be off the books by the time the Sox contend, and Davis is under control until about 2017. Meanwhile Napoli and Victorino will be, respectively, 33 and 34 during this 2015 season whose luxury tax threshold we're working around.
They also get an extra year of whoever they signed, meaning they don't have to pay someone else.
My impression, and it may be wrong, is that generally good free agents would rather sign long term, and that to get a shorter deal a team has to pay a premium. e.g. If Hamilton projects to be worth, in wins, 5, 4.5, 4, 3.5, 3, 2.5, 2 over the next 7 years, he'd rather take the 7 year 147M deal (6M per win) than the 5 year 120M deal (6M per win).
To get the 5 year deal you may have to pay, say, 125 or 130* So the team that signs a 5-year deal pays a higher AAV (EDIT and $/W) in exchange for the safety/flexibility of the shorter deal. They also have 2 more years worth of outfielder to sign. On the whole that's good for flexibility but bad for luxury tax purposes.
*I neglected inflation in all this. Oops. It's just for illustration's sake anyway.
That's not the only info we have about the offseason. They've also signed some 30+ year old slightly above average players to 2 and 3 year deals in lieu of using their $ to acquire an impact player in some other way. That's at least some signal that they think they can be conservative in the short term and still compete -- otherwise why sign a Dempster and a Gomes?
The biggest sale was the Marlins-Jays, and I think that was good for the Jays. I wouldn't exactly call TB the sellers in the Shields trade, they got ML or near-ML talent in return. That's another one where I would have hoped the Sox could beat the offer on the table, especially if it involved taking on contracts (e.g. Bruce Chen) rather than dealing from the minors. Ditto w.r.t. to Bauer in the Indians-Reds-DBacks three-way. The buyers of young talent have fared pretty well this offseason, and the Sox could have gotten in on that.
The point being made is that "some other way" is a trade, and the cost of acquiring major league ready impact players via trade this winter has been extraordinarily high in terms of the prospects going the other way. And that's for guys who are 30+. It would seem that landing a Justin Upton or similar impact player who's still on the young side of his peak would mean shipping out at least two of Boston's top three prospects, as a start.
Money doesn't really come into it unless there's another team out there that wants to jettison a bunch of expensive players like the Marlins did. I'll go on the record as being a little relieved the Sox didn't do that specific deal. If the risks associated with Hamilton and Greinke (from a performance standpoint) scared them off, the risks associated with Johnson and Reyes are pretty scary too. It was a great move for the Jays because they needed a big splash like that to catapult them into any sort of serious postseason relevance. The Sox didn't need to extend themselves that much to have an equally respectable shot at sneaking into the playoffs, I don't think.
The one plausible idea bandied about with respect to Boston using more or less straight-up cash to acquire impact talent was taking Cliff Lee's contract from the Phillies. They could probably still do that, but it's not clear that Amaro views Lee as an albatross at this point. My guess is that if he thinks Mike Young is worth having around--even at a heavily subsidized $6M--then he probably thinks Lee is worth every penny.
If true, the Sox could have played it the other way and used their 2013 $ for potential future impact. For example:
--They could have sweetened the Lester+ deal for Myers, gaining a high upside outfielder
--They could have used Ellsbury and played the role of the Indians in the CIN-CLE-ARI 3-way, gaining a high upside arm
--They could take on some portion of Vernon Wells' contract in exchange for whichever OF the Angels won't be starting, gaining a young OF with some upside
--They could have made a deal based around taking on Bay's contract in exchange for Ike Davis, gaining a young 1B with some upside
These are off the top of my head, and maybe these particular cases wouldn't happen.
The point is, even if they couldn't convert their 2013 payroll flexibility into MLB-level impact talent -- a premise which I dispute -- they could have used their 2013 payroll flexibility to gain potential 2014+ impact talent.
Instead they used a strategy which does neither. By the time the kids are ready the current contracts will be either expired on in the crappy years. In which case they've used their near-term payroll flexibility to be mediocre while waiting. That's much too conservative for my tastes.
If the Sox are out of it near the trade deadline I expect they'll get some calls about Uehara and Dempster, and maybe Gomes if he's pulling a 2012 Cody Ross.
With 2 wildcards, being within 3-4 games of a playoff spot and being mediocre are not mutually exclusive. If that's where the Sox end up, I'll be pretty disappointed with the front office.
Well, how would you define contending? Mediocre teams can contend now. It's a whole new world out there! It sounds like you will only be satisfied with a team that is projected to make the playoffs though, which is a different thing entirely.
I mean, if it's the last week of the season and your team could still feasibly make the playoffs, I'd say you're in contention.
I am growing concerned, a little, about how much room the Sox have to improve for 2014. The team is locked in at most positions, and while there are young guys to integrate, there are also a fair number of 32-year-olds who will project to be 33 years old. It's too early to say the Sox can't win 92 games in 2014 - I mean, they could win 92 games next year if #### breaks the right way - but the signings they've made so far have locked in a lot of money for 2014 without leaving a ton of room to improve that next set of 5-8 games.
This is misleading. They didn't win 69 games and then trade their star 1B. With him, they were on pace for 76 wins... which is also bad.
That's true but I would feel better with Adrian Gonzalez than without him. Obviously he had a terrible year last year but I expect him to bounce back much the same way I expect Lester and Buchholz to bounce back.
I don't think they are that locked in. LF, CF and SS are all likely to be open next winter. That's not exactly a great thing but they are going to have room to make improvements and they should have some decent money to make that happen.
--They could have sweetened the Lester+ deal for Myers, gaining a high upside outfielder
--They could have used Ellsbury and played the role of the Indians in the CIN-CLE-ARI 3-way, gaining a high upside arm
--They could take on some portion of Vernon Wells' contract in exchange for whichever OF the Angels won't be starting, gaining a young OF with some upside
--They could have made a deal based around taking on Bay's contract in exchange for Ike Davis, gaining a young 1B with some upside
These are off the top of my head, and maybe these particular cases wouldn't happen.
Those first two deals involve selling low on guys who could be expected to help the team contend this season (and 2014 in Lester's case). If those guys rebound but the Sox are lousy again, then they could be dealt mid-season for presumably a similar return.
I don't think saddling yourself with Wells is worth Trumbo or Bourjos. Trumbo's power is nice, but he's never demonstrated any ability to consistently get on base. I don't understand the fuss over Bourjos at all. Is he that much more exciting than Iglesias that he's worth handcuffing the team to $42M of deadweight? And why would the Angels be looking to trade away their fourth and fifth outfielders in the first place? They're trying to win now.
On a similar note, why would the Mets have been looking to move Davis just to get rid of the last year of Jason Bay's contract? I don't remember anything more than one or two offhand bits speculation about this.
I appreciate your caveat about "these specific cases", but I don't think deals of that sort really help the Sox all that much. Everybody wants a pony, and I'm sure the Sox have been and are doing their best to get one, but it's hard to criticize them for not producing some magic when the trade market is fairly opaque to us as fans.
Justin Upton was the one guy I thought might work along those lines, but we've seemingly been thwarted by the knock-on effects of Towers' obsession with finding a shortstop worse than the one he was forced to trade away this past summer. And, as mentioned above, the cost of acquiring Upton in this market may have been exceedingly steep.
Fwiw..which is nothing...I had them on pace for 72 wins right before the trade and 70 after.
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