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1. baudib Posted: June 28, 2007 at 10:58 PM (#2421599)Seriously, I don't know what to say. Lugo has typically been a slow starter the last few years, but not this slow. IMO Lugo has been a bigger disappointment than Renteria ever was, but we sold low on Renteria after one year. I don't like selling low, but I also don't like keeping crap, either.
With over 3/30 left, go where?
If they try another Renteria trade - at this rate, the Red Sox will be paying more money to other teams for their shortstops, than most teams pay for their own starting SS.
Lugo togo. It sorta rhymes.
I didn't even know why we signed that guy to tell you the truth. He simply wasn't that good. Wasn't there any RHB cheap defensive wizard we coudl have platooned with Cora at SS?
They could have gone cheaper and platooned with Cora, but Cora actually hits lefties better.
There really aren't any options here. A DL stint just delays the inevitable, and the inevitable is they need him to not suck for about 2-3 weeks to have any hope of brokering a deal where they don't pay full frieght.
Edgar I and Edgar II are really good examples of why you need to be a $150 million dollar development machine, because otherise you wind up sinking $60 million into 2 shortstops who can't play. Ugh. What a fiasco this Curse of Cabrera is...
His line by age:
24-283/346/431
25-263/326/372
26-261/322/388
27-271/333/410
28-275/338/396
29-295/362/403
30-278/341/421
Looking at his stat lines for each year, it was fair to say that the Red Sox were getting a 270/330/400 hitter. That's what Renteria gave them in 2005, and that wasn't good enough. What lead Theo et al to believe that Lugo was a better buy?
If they try another Renteria trade - at this rate, the Red Sox will be paying more money to other teams for their shortstops, than most teams pay for their own starting SS.
San Francisco.
Vizquel is having a terrible year and he's a FA, Feliz's contract will also be up. There isn't a really great internal option to take over at either position next year. The Giants have enough money to absorb all of the contract (though I'm sure they'll ask for Boston to cover, at the least, the remainder of this season's salary), and at 31 Lugo is just nearly old enough to tickle Sabean's veteran fetish.
I don't like the idea of eating Lugo's contract in an vacuum, and when you add up what we are paying ATL for Renteria, yes, obviously the team hasn't "dealt" (pun intended) with the SS position very well since '04.
But... I think the Sox have a great window, not just this year but in '08 as well, to be the best team in baseball and make a serious WS run. Lugo has been awful for basically an entire calendar year at this point. Nothing personal, but eating the contract in return for slightly above replacement production just makes sense to me. Our young cheap pitching is coming along, that should free up the payroll significantly going forward -- and SS is clearly our #1 problem today.
The problem for the Red Sox is that Alex Cora is not a solution. He's not as good a fielder, and is he really much better of a hitter? I figure that, like with the Pedroia situation, Cora will take an extra start or two a week against RHP until Lugo starts to hit a little. The only internal option is Jed Lowrie, and there are more than enough questions about his glove that I wouldn't fault the Red Sox for holding off.
he has an ops+ of 42. there are pitchers in the NL with a higher ops+. i mean, jed lowrie could put up a 42 today =P of course, i'm not advocating bring him up just yet, but seriously...
i never understood the facination with lugo, let alone to the tune of 4/36.
for all the good moves theo makes, he certainly makes his fair share of boneheaded ones.
Julio Lugo's epic slump shows no signs of abating. It's 0 for 31 and counting, he's batting a major league-low .190, and he told the Globe's Amalie Benjamin he can't sleep at night.
"I don't sleep, either," he said. "I don't see anyone worried about me."
Someone asked Francona if he'd ever experienced a similar slump. "Yeah," he cracked, "from 1981 to 1990."
The Sox are far from making a permanent place on the bench for Lugo, who is signed for another three seasons, but just as when Pedroia was struggling, Alex Cora will play more until (if?) Lugo gets on track.
that's the question. most people think he's destined for 2b, i think, but if he can manage to keep sticking at short, then he's a good prospect.
According to BA, Lowrie's arm is good enough for SS, so I guess it's not totally insane to imagine him moving to his right rather than his left, but he'll need to keep up this level of hitting for a little while to be respected as a possible 3B.
Either way, I think that the Sox just don't really have any plausible options at SS. They could go the full Cyprian route and just give up on a guy they liked enough several months ago to invest $36M in, but they'd still need to trade for a SS, which would most likely cost one of the top prospects. I think any solution that requires the Red Sox to make a deadline deal is no solution at all - it just sloughs the problem off until the next day. As such, I don't see any solution other than mixing and matching Lugo and Cora, hoping that Lugo finds himself.
One thing in particular sticks out like a sore thumb, in regard to his 2007 "fancy" stats line. Anybody want to guess what it is? Because if you normalize it, there's the whole problem, more or less, with Julio Lugo, 2007.
I guessed BABIP, and was right. Then I checked and saw that he has the lowest BABIP in the majors (.209); but, there are a couple of other figures on that Fangraphs page that caught my eye. Lugo is hitting fewer line drives and more ground balls than in any previous season. These facts go part of the way in explaining his low BABIP and lead me to think that he's just not making the same kind of solid contact that he has in the past.
I hadn't heard about his ST weight loss (was he ill?), but if he's lost strength, that might explain his struggles with hitting the ball hard.
As for the question posed in the intro: no, it isn't time for him to go. The Sox are in first place with Lugo stinking and he's stunk so bad that one would think that he could only improve. He's untradable, the Sox have no real in-house replacements and anyone they would trade for would be a marginal and short-term improvement.
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=565&position=SS
One thing in particular sticks out like a sore thumb, in regard to his 2007 "fancy" stats line. Anybody want to guess what it is? Because if you normalize it, there's the whole problem, more or less, with Julio Lugo, 2007.
Ooh ooh, I know, BABIP! Though, how much of that is variance and how much is that his LD% is down? He's swinging and missing a ton and hitting GBs at a higher rate when he does make contact.
He'd be having a bad year even with better luck, but it wouldn't be mind-numbingly awful. Also, some of that bad luck may have gotten into his head a bit, causing him to press, etc.
There's not much the Sox can do about it, except play Cora some more and hope Lugo snaps out of it. His defense has been decent, at least, save for a few mental lapses leading to errors.
You can justify both contracts by saying the Sox are playing to win NOW before Ortiz, Ramirez, Varitek, etc. decline significantly, but it's not going to be pretty when they do and you're saddled with Drew and Lugo who'll be even worse.
The Sox can eat that money, but it will hurt them somewhere down the line when they go to make a more legit big-money signing.
The bigger question is -- do Epstein and Co. know what a legit signing is?
This is a weird question to ask of a team with the best record in the majors.
When you include the posting fee, Matsuzaka is the biggest deal the Epstein FO has shelled out, and it looks good. Of the mid-range signings, Varitek's deal has actually been ok, I think, and Beckett's extension is looking brilliant.
It's quite possible the big mistake with Renteria was to give up so quickly (though Coco's rebound may make even that move look sort of okay, or at least not a total disaster).
It seems a tad early to judge the Drew signing. He's put up a .935 OPS in June, which is nearer his career numbers than the .768 he put up in April and the .552 in May.
The Sox seem to have made the right decisions on both Pedro and Damon, so they appear to have recognized what might not be "legit" signings (I'm not really sure what that term means), at least in two high-profile cases.
Keith Foulke.
The guy has a great track record, has been healthy for a while, has sustained a reasonable work load (70IP a year for the last 4 years), and has ridiculous peripherals.
I'd give him Keith Foulke money.
Man, imagine the bullpen next year if we got him: Papelbon, Nathan, a not as good Okajima, Delcarmen, and whatever good reliever we traded for thsi deadline. Add a Breslow/Snyder/Another FA find from Japan, it would be the best Red Sox bullpen to be ever assembled.
-- MWE
Heh, what is that, 2/17? Nathan is going to get 4/48.
He retired in the spring after signing with Cleveland.
/sniff-sniff
/head jerks upward
A-roo???
The Lugo, the.
SUMMON HIM THEO
They've been saying recently that Lugo hasn't been able to sleep and that he lost 15 pounds in the offseason that he hasn't put back on. Maybe he's depressed. I'm at a loss.
That would explain his play with the Dodgers, as well.
If I didn't hate Lugo with the burning fire of a thousand of Scott Proctor's jockstraps, I'd almost feel sorry for the guy. but I do, so I don't.
Those groupies that you saw Lugo with, it was DUSTIN that was supposed to score with them, but then Pedroia was summoned by Francona to do have some meeting, and then Lugo took his place (after Pedroia had already gotten the groupies hot and to second base).
Lugo of course, was a little too aggressive, tried to get to third base with the groupies, but Red Sox groupies, being BETTER than the other team's groupies, checked B-ref and BP for Lugo's stats, and foudn he was hitting 10 runs below replacement level, so they busted him and rejected third base with him. Then Lugo slapped the groupies and slammed their heads into a car hood.
Pedroia, after meeting with Francona, then could only schtup MCOA's wife. It was still beautiful though.
The question is, who is the Red Sox's Moe Green? And will this Moe get a bullet in the eye for slapping Lugo-Fredo around because he's banging the cocktail waitresses two at a time, and the high rollers can't get their drinks?
[Lugo-Fredo is not to be confused with Alberto-Fredo.]
Turns out Woolmer died naturally.
Or the police say.
Seriously though, other than that lady that got shot for no reason by the cops in 2004, nobody has ever DIED because of the Red Sox. I vote we start with Jimmy Fallon and work our way down.
I wish, but I'm not exactly much of a ladies man.
If the guy's problem was BABIP, you ride it out. If the suckiness is now affecting his state of mind, benching him for extended periods of time isn't going to help. It's the kind of thing he has to play his way out of. It's a good opportunity to get Cora some playing time, but otherwise with a 10 game lead or so they can afford to let him play his way out of it.
My plan, as with most situations like this, is to give the benefit of the doubt to those who actually talk to Lugo and manage him, and evaluate later on. I will say that the Red Sox tried for the month of June to let Lugo play through his problems, and it only exacerbated them. Changing course makes sense enough, but we'll see if there are any fixes forthcoming - even if those fixes can be read statistically as a random return to mean performance.
That said, Orsillo is worse.
With cancer falling somewhere in the middle...
Is Andruw Jones still under .200?
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