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1. John DiFool2 Posted: May 10, 2008 at 02:40 AM (#2775489)But I dunno how that would affect the bench. I do know this: I don't want Jake to suffer from Andy Van Slyke syndrome (platooned young LH hitting OF who never really learned how to hit lefties).
Free Jed Lowrie? Yes.
(Obviously he wouldn't literally replace Ortiz; he could play CF or LF, wherever Ellsbury wasn't, while Manny played DH.)
Moss can't hit
I'm sorta surprised anyone's that impressed with Moss - yes, he's got some hits in his 21 games, but his swing is not particularly impressive, his plate discipline is eh, and his power is eh. I don't see a big leaguer, numbers or no.
He's young enough that I could see him developing into a nice, even above-average player by 28, but he's not valuable to the Red Sox right now except as a third option stashed in Rhode Island.
I don't see a lot of difference in Youkilis this year - he seems to have added a bit of power, as he's been able to hit for power to right-center on occasion and muscled a couple of his homers just over the fence when in the past they might have been just short, but I think his current .600 SLG is mainly an aberration. that said, if Youkilis could hit 20 HRs instead of 15, and hit .300 instead of .285, he'd be a borderline all-star, and I think that's a reasonable hope.
1) I made my analysis. I can blow off whomever I want.
2) Anyone can hit in 50 PAs. That's just a fact of baseball. What you need to do, to determine if someone ought to keep playing, is to analyze their past performance and their current abilities. In both areas, I think Brandon Moss falls short of deserving Coco Crisp's playing time. It appears that the Red Sox agree with me.
Erroneous. 51 plate appearances of his are a 122 OPS. He's got 2443 other plate appearances as well, including 82 other very mediocre ones this year at AAA.
If we're going to play the "lets throw away all prior years" game, can we at least consider his entire body of performance this year? Not that that game is appropriate to play in the first place.
monster 1st halves of the season are the standard for youks. he seems to wear himself out by the time summer comes around.
Wasn't Bill James able to demonstrate that if you looked at his minor league/major leauge park factors, you'd be able to see that didn't really exceed offensive expectations after he got to Boston?
Even more likely is that the Sox are aware of Kielty being out with a broken hand and Moss needing more time to recover from his apendectomy. At this point Crisp leaving means Jon Van Avery is your 4th OF.
I've given my reasoning, though. First, I use Moss' minor league career to project him as a below-average hitter. Second, I use my observation of Moss, his unimpressive power, contact ability, and plate discipline, to argue that I don't think his "true talent" is reflected in his 50 major league PA. What's your reasoning?
Pedroia
age 21, AA: .324 AVG, .409 OBP, .508 SLG (66 games, 256 ABs)
age 21-22, AAA: .289 AVG, .375 OBP, .411 SLG (162 games, 627 ABs)
age 22-24, MLB: .301 AVG, .358 OBP, .420 SLG (209 games, 772 ABs)
Ramirez
age 20-21, AA: .279 AVG, .340 OBP, .412 SLG (154 games, 594 ABs)
age 22, MLB: .292 AVG, .353 OBP, .480 SLG (158 games, 633 ABs)
Ellsbury
age 22-23, AA: .347 AVG, .422 OBP, .491 SLG (67 games, 271 ABs)
age 23, AAA: .298 AVG, .360 OBP, .380 SLG (87 games, 363 ABs)
age 23-24, MLB: .317 AVG, .389 OBP, .455 SLG (67 games, 224 ABs)
These are (three of) the top position prospects the Sox have had over the last few years. I submit that all three (to this point, though it's perhaps still early to speak too certainly about Pedroia's and Ellsbury's keeping things up) have hit better in the majors than one might immediately guess from simply taking their minor league numbers and multiplying them by .82 for each promotion to a new level. I'm not saying that their major league numbers are completely out of line with their minor league numbers, but I'd say that all three have hit (at worst) as well as could be reasonably hoped (that they hit closer to their optimstic projections than their average or pessimistic projections).
My question is this: at what point do we start to suspect that rough minor league translations are underestimating the Sox minor league hitters? These three players provide far too few data points, obviously, but with Lowrie and Moss off to strong (fortunate?) starts, the question deserves raising, yes? How many minor leaguers would have to come up and hit better (or no worse) than their minor league numbers before we start thinking that the minors are providing more of a challenge to the young Sox hitters than previously thought (with their numbers adjusted accordingly)?
Thoughts?
Which is the exact opposite of what kevin argued in the Hanley thread. Reason number 842 that it's pointless to argue with kevin.
This is because multiplying .82 is an extremely rough form of MLE. Two of these players had extremely good K rates in the minors, which suggested they would do far better than a .82. Lowrie does as well. And both Pedroia and Lowrie had temporary injuries that severely lowered their numbers in the minors. Moss, on the other hand, has extremely awful K rates in the minors, which suggest that he'll do considerably worse than a raw MLE would suggest.
One other player in favor your theory would be David Murphy. His mL stats suggested he'd be a 4th OF, but he looks better than that now. He's player #554 to leave the Sox and immediately put everything together.
I'm pretty sure PECOTA had Pedroia hitting almost exactly what he hit last year. Hanley was a sleeping tools giant who apparently seemed to wake up once he made the bigs. Ellsbury has overperformed, but it's been 224 ABs (consider Pedroia's first 224 ABs), as you note, and his line this year isn't really out of line with his minor league numbers, just a bit over what you would have expected so far. I think the Red Sox biggest strength with their guys now is that they don't rush them, like the Mets do (just for the hell of it apparently) or the Yanks do (poor planning), and bring them up when they're both mentally and physically ready for the bigs (23-24 for all these Red Sox guys except Pedroia).
The Sox have been good about not rushing guys in general, I guess. But they rushed the hell out of Meredith and gave up on him waaayy too quickly. They also kept sending mediocre pitchers to the hill last year while Buchholz used up his innings in AAA.
Hellz jeah.
Also, who's going to be better, Moss or Murphy?
Edit: Maybe Moss doesn't deserve to take Coco's playing time now (factoring defense, I do sort of agree)< but there was no way Brandon Moss didn't deserve to take Erik hinske's playing time last year.
1. I don't know why it's called a fielder's choice when the fielder had no choice.
2. From what I could tell, when the ball bounced off Nathan it went pretty much right toward Drew. Had it been at an angle relative to Drew, he would've had a better sense of how far away from Nathan it was going, and probably wouldn't have hesitated. But, yeah, once he hesitated he should've taken the safe way and stayed at second.
3. Had Drew stayed at second, Manny's grounder to SS would've been a DP.
Yeah, considering they had the best pitching in baseball last year, and won the world series to boot, clearly they need to turn to the internet to learn how to run a pitching staff. I like you guys, but you're all nuts sometimes.
(Edit: I know that doesn't mean you can't offer criticism, but...)
So, given #42, should we revise #36 as:
I assume not.
And Tito. He had to be responsible for at least half of them.
Do you really believe that the Red Sox "clearly didn't need" Buchholz, simply because they won the World Series? That's an ends-justify-the-means argument that I don't agree with.
Tito actually cost them 36 games but Pedroia's guttiness recouped 12 of those games.
Considering we were conditioned by the team and media to praise Cash if he hit .185 and prevented at least 50% of Wake's knuckleballs from rolling to the backstop, I have to say this early season performance is encouraging. Has he been smoking the ball or dropping in bloopers?
EDIT: PS I can't actually believe he is "smoking the ball" considering I remember him having about the worst major league swing around last year. On the other hand, I can't imagine someone hitting .375 without blasting some good looking drives.
Someone posted in another thread that Cash and Magadan reworked the former's swing over the winter. He's looked great at the plate, mostly. He missed about 20 knucklers last night, though.
And there was much rejoicing! Now if only we could dump Timlin too...
I'm sure there were some people who were pissing their pants in the middle of last year who look back now and see the team as having been incredibly lucky to have made the playoffs without having called up Buchholz back in June or July. I'm assuming you're not one of them, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I have no idea where they got these names from, but they are mildly interesting.
EDIT: I like the looks of Seth Smith, but I can't remember how much PCL stats tend to be inflated.
This is an argument that the Red Sox were good at building a pitching staff in 2007. It's only tangentially related to what I was saying, which was that the Sox had kept Buchholz in the minors in favor of inferior and less ready pitchers. It was one example and it is certainly open to debate.
Oh, there's no debate that they kept Buchholz in the minors in favor of inferior and less ready pitchers. Other than a few people taking the Meredith Defense, I think we all agreed that Buchholz was likely better than some of the pitchers on the staff at that time. (IIRC I'd suggested mid-year that I didn't think Buchholz was ready to start shouldering a large IP load, and that it could cause a strain on the bullpen that could affect his and others' starts.)
The whole reason this came up was on the subject of Boston not rushing players being a strength of the team. Meredith is a fine counterexample (as is Hansen, BTW). Bringing up "sending mediocre pitchers to the hill last year while Buchholz used up his innings in AAA" alongside that as an example of a failing seems illogical given that they were already staffed for success in 2007 without him.
Given that Johan was 28, and had already spent several seasons demonstrating he could pitch both quality and quantity innings at the big-league level, and was a better option than some on the major-league staff, it would be an example of a failing of a "let's not rush him" approach. By that standard, however, the major-league staff would've consisted of Schilling, Wakefield, Timlin, Dennis Eckersley, Jim Lonborg, Bob Feller, Cy Young, and David.
Maybe you can explain to me how calling up Cla Meredith was rushing the hell out of him, but the prospect of Clay Buchholz being called up midseason last year would not have been rushing at all. They were both in their age-22 season, their second season of pro ball, facing AA hitters for the first time and doing well. Is it the one- or two-month difference in timing? Or is it the end result? That's an ends-justify-the-means argument that I don't agree with.
Would the Red Sox have been better off with Buchholz replacing 42 innings of Gabbard (2007 Sox ERA: 3.73), Lester (4.57), Hansack (4.70), and Tavarez (5.15)? Not if Buchholz supplied a 5.53 ERA, they wouldn't.
You've already said that there's no debate about whether Buc was better than some of the pitchers on the ML team. I've substituted Johan as an extreme example in order to make the point more clear. Keeping Buc was like keeping Johan in the minors, but to a far lesser degree. I'm not sure what your list of pitchers is supposed to show.
This is an easy one. In no particular order:
--Meredith had thrown 15 very good relief innings in AA. Buc had dominated AA as a starter (and some in AAA depending on your timeframe) for a much longer period.
--Buc was widely considered one of the top couple pitching prospects in baseball. Meredith was not anywhere close to this.
--The results once they reached the Majors tell us a lot about whether it was a good decision. Buc pitched great in the Majors and Meredith didn't.
Why would you only include Buchholz's ERA from this year. He's at 4.15 in his career, with excellent peripherals. It was 1.59 before being shut down with a tired arm last year.
This doesn't make any sense. If you want to guess at what he would have done in the Majors, you might look at what he did in the minors at the time. There's no reason to substitute in innings from this year.
Edit: In addition, even if we use your odd way of thinking about it, we're not talking about 'innings he would have pitched but didn't.' We're talking about innings that he threw in the minors rather than the Majors.
I can understand objecting to Buchholz's not being called up earlier. I just don't understand your "strenuous" objection. The Sox may have thought he wasn't ready. His ERA in AAA was unremarkable. He pitched very well in very limited innings in the majors last year, but has not pitched especally well (by ERA) in slightly less limited innings so far this year. Why not acknowledge that the Sox may have been right to go slowly? If Buchholz had pitched these 42 innings last year, the Sox would have been worse off. If he'd pitched as well as he'd pitched in AAA, but translated to the majors, the Sox might have been worse off. And the Sox were apparently worried enough about his health as to shut him down after he'd (in limited innings) been their best pitcher in the majors. Perhaps they were right to pitch mediocrities, risking only the team's chance to win it all (which they did anyway), rather than risk the development and health of a pitcher on whom they're counting heavily for the next 6 years.
But your honor, I strenuously object!
I started addressing this point by point, but I don't think there's any point. I don't keeping him down as preserving his health, as he was still pitching in the minors. I don't think they would have hurt his development, as he was excellent in the minors, and looked to me to be ready. They may have been right (obviously), but I think they were wrong. In the same way, they may be generally bad at developing players, but I think they are generally good at it.
Ha! We can use the pitcher's after-the-fact results to determine if it was a good decision, but not the team's after-the-fact performance? Brilliant! Why didn't I think of dismissing points that don't support my argument?
If you're evaluating the decision based on what came after, then it's ABSOLUTELY clear they didn't need to bring him up; the team did well AND they had to shut him down for part of September and all of October for health reasons. The no-hitter against a Baltimore team that was 20 GB with 29 to play, losers of 9 out of their last 10, was an impressive accomplishment and a lot of fun. Outside of that one game, he's compiled a 4.82 ERA in the majors, 3.96 in AAA. Maybe both of us read too much into his AA and A numbers.
If you're evaluating it based on what was known at the time, you had someone who had done well against AA competition, appeared to be ready for MLB-caliber pitching to both of us and several other observers, and hadn't borne a large workload at that point in his career. When you put him on the MLB roster, his usage is no longer in the best interests of his development, but in whatever Terry Francona thinks the team's best interests are. You also had a MLB staff that was doing very well.
You've make the insinuation that not rushing Clay Buchholz last year was a negative, either in the development of Clay Buchholz or the team's performance. Hindsight hurts your argument a lot. Using only foresight, at the time given how the starters had performed, there was no pressing need for him.
There's a fairly simple distinction here that you're (intentionally?) missing. You can use after-the-fact results as ONE factor in determining whether a certain decision was a good one. You shouldn't use after-the-fact results achieved by a whole team as evidence that a single decision was a good one. It is very easy for a team to make a really lousy decision and still win the World Series. See Gagne, Eric.
What does shutting him down have to do with when they brought him up? The argument is whether he should have been pitching in the minors or the majors--not how much he should have been pitching. These repeated references to his health are complete nonsequitors.
Wait, if you throw out his best 9 IP, is record doesn't look as good? What if we throw out all of his good appearances? I bet it looks horrible.
We do? I don't. Take a look at the difference in how AA and AAA numbers translate to the Majors. They're very, very close. His record in the high minors, AA and AAA, was dominant.
I it doesn't hurt my argument because I haven't made either argument. I've argued that it was the wrong decision and that it didn't hurt his development. I think it was the wrong decision because it put inferior players in the majors without any benefit to the team. For the 1,000th time, I REALIZE THIS DID NOT PREVENT THEM FROM WINNING THE WORLD SERIES.
So, then, really we're talking about the difference between getting called up on August 17th or July 17th. That seems like a distinction without much difference.
I agree, though, that August 17 and July 17 aren't MUCH different.
As for the Buccholz debate, why would you have called him up? Because your 5th starter is a little worse than league average? That seems like a pretty silly reason to call him up in July, have him make 6 or 7 starts and then have to shut him down before September because he reached his innings limit. If he's in the minors, he can be kept to 5 innings every outing, no biggie. If you're in the majors, you need to go as deep into the game as you can everytime out or else you're more of a hindrance on the bullpen than you are any kind of help. And the comparison to how Hughes and Joba helped the Yankees last year? Hughes was exactly league average least year. The only reason he was a boost to the Yankees was because Mussina was getting lit up as bad as Jeff Weaver. Replacing Tavarez/Lester with a league average pitcher would probably been about a one win difference. And yes, I'm going to use hind-sight to say whoopdie-doo. We only tied for the best record in the league, where's the bragging rights in that? And if you wanted to put Buccholz in the pen, would he have made much of a diffrence there? He wasn't going to displace the trifecta of MDC/Oki/Papelbon, so he would have been working in middle relief, replacing one of Corey/Timlin/Snyder. It would have been an upgrade, but it also would have killed his innings limit for THIS year so it would have been pretty short sighted to do that.
Also, for Sox hitters doing as well in MLB as they did in AAA, how much of that is age? If a player hits .290 in AAA one year say, and he makes the major league team the next year, what would we expect? It's the sum of the MLE + the age advance, and I have no idea what that works out to.
So the better choice was to wait until August, have him make 2-3 starts, and then shut him down? Okay.
Yeah, they needed guys like Julian Tavarez and Jon Lester soaking up innings.
I'm looking at Meredith's stats in the majors, and I'm not seeing how anyone would classify them as not great.
The argument is whether keeping him in the minors was a failing of the "not rushing their prospects" strength. There are all kinds of factors in that: his "stuff", his emotional readiness, his physical readiness (of which health is a big part).
You seem to think that a policy of "not rushing prospects" is contingent on what's going on with the major-league club. Am I misreading that?
I haven't seen any sort of study showing that pitching in the majors is more likely to cause injuries than pitching in the minors. Is there some sort of study or data that shows this? Is there even some sort of conventional scout wisdom about this? If such data/scouting wisdom doesn't exist, there's no reason to think his injury is relevant to this conversation. If it does exist, then we can Buc out of the 'possibly held back' category... and put him in the 'possibly rushed' category.
Meredith did pitch well when he was called up A FULL YEAR LATER. This after getting completely destroyed in his brief call-up in Boston. How does that show him to have been ready? Isn't it, if anything, rather persuasive evidence that he was not ready?
I feel like Col. Jessup being questioned by Lt. Kaffee. So, just so we're clear, yes, I think just about every decision should be made in context of the situation. Are we clear? ARE WE CLEAR?
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