If you think he hoped to get long-term value out of Bard-as-starter, does that mean you think it was part of a long-term plan (with obvious short-term implications)? Or are you still proclaiming it to be a short-term plan?

I'm looking at the Bard conversion as being as much of the 2012 plan as, say, the Gonzalez contract. That is, it was a long-term plan, but obviously 2012 is a subset of the long term. The first two months of 2012 have been a failure of the Gonzalez contract. They do not constitute a failure of the long-term plan the contract represents. Now, obviously, the Gonzalez contract is guaranteed, Bard's status in the rotation is not, so it's not quite the same thing. But the general idea is that it was a plan for the long term.

Glad to see Kalish starting again in CF tonight with Ross in LF and McDonald riding the pine, even against the LHP. Looks like Valentine is going to (correctly) use Kalish as his everyday CF for now.

If you think he hoped to get long-term value out of Bard-as-starter, does that mean you think it was part of a long-term plan (with obvious short-term implications)? Or are you still proclaiming it to be a short-term plan?

I don't understand. I thought I was quite clear in post #99, and I never said anything about the plan being exclusively short-term. I don't even know what that would mean.

All plans have long- and short-term components. Some of them sacrifice some value in the short-term for more in the long-term, and some do the opposite. Some seek a more equal balance. In this case, I see the long- and short-term components as follows.

The trades of good young position players for good young relievers were obviously done under a logic of sacrificing some future value to gain present value. Cherington thought his roster had extra talent at OF and MI, while it lacked relievers, so he traded two guys who are likely to have more out-year value than these relievers, in order to build the best roster for 2012.

The long-term value of the plan was mostly supposed to stem from the conversion of Daniel Bard to the starting rotation. This was the good in the short- and long-term which justified the trades of position players for relievers.

The problem is, the short-term half of the plan (position player for reliever trades) is looking like a failure now, precisely when it was supposed to returning the most value, and the long-term half of the plan (converting Dan Bard) not only isn't producing value now, but looks quite unlikely to produce value in the future, either. As I said, if Bard storms back into the rotation and wins ten games down the stretch, I'll take back most of my criticism here, I'll have been wrong about stuff, and I'll be a happy little boy.

My comment in 101 isn't questioning what you wrote in #99; it's noting that it took that long for you to clearly acknowledge the long-term components, or at least that you're declaring them as having failed after two months.

I still find it curious that you keep bundling the Lowrie and Reddick trades. I get that they served similar short term purposes. Still, when I emphasize one trades long term for short term and the other does the opposite, you've described the bundle both as equal temporal value and as greater short term temporal value. I think with Melancon that's not a fair assessment. Again, if all you want to say is that the plan has failed to address 2012 concerns, that's fine; future concerns are irrelevant to that conclusion. If you want to say the Lowrie/Melancon trade has failed, period, I think it's way too early to make that case, and you don't need to make that case for your 2012 conclusion to stand (at least, just as fine as any two-month conclusion would).

We're quickly approaching the halfway point of the season and our $154M first baseman is hitting .257/.314/.396, good for an 87 wRC+.

On a related note, entering tonight's game, the Red Sox had a .709 cumulative OPS out of the 3rd spot in the batting order this season.

BBPro has them with a W3 of .574, despite all that has gone wrong (TB is 3rd with .538, Yanks .586), they have a 5 game win streak, and are only 2 out of the 2nd wild card.

So Bard's going back to relief. That basically leaves Mark Melancon as the possible long-term gain from the offseason plan. I think it's hard to place all your hopes on a guy who wasn't particularly great in the minors, had one good run of 75 IP last year, and seems to have returned to being the replaceable middle reliever he was before 2011.

If you're looking for evidence that Melancon really did improve in 2011, he was damn good in Pawtucket. He's been ok since he's been back. So maybe he's pretty good.

Clay to the DL, Cook is pitching today. (Should he be mad at Sox for giving him the start?)

I'm sure my sarcasm detector is on the fritz but why would Cook be mad?

It's an Erik-smackdown, Jose. In another thread, I posited that Cook would prefer to be a fulltime starter rather than be a caddy when a regular Sox starter wants to take a golf vacation, and hilarity ensued.

It was explained to you that Cook had the right to refuse assignment back to the minors, and that he was never assured a spot in the starting rotation.

I had been mulling this post for a few days, and read the thread, and I knew that I felt something was wrong with it, but I couldn't tell exactly what it was. I think it comes back to this: http://xkcd.com/904/

Cherington inherited a team, and he made a number of moves. Essentially, each of these players is a stock in a portfolio. I'm not saying they're just commodities, etc., I'm just saying that generally we think about their projected value, what they cost, if that is a good value, and if you build a successful portfolio, it will include some winners and some losers, but the overall portfolio will give you a good return. On the previous page, Mikael said:

"The success of the bullpen has mostly been a function of excellent pitching from Atchison, Miller, and Albers. Aceves has not been good, in the aggregate, and neither has Padilla. Melancon has been worthless and has shown no real upside beyond "maybe he could be another Matt Albers". The fact that guys we already had in the organization have been effective relievers isn't evidence that the plan worked, it's evidence that the plan was even worse than we thought - trading good young talent for relievers should not have been necessary in the first place." He also said: "Cherington built good depth into the 40-man roster, and Bobby V has used his bench effectively, which has kept the club afloat."

I can't emphasize enough how much I think a) the former is the wrong way to think about things, and b) the latter is exactly why. A good GM puts together a portfolio, some will work out, and some will not. He also hires a manager that does a good job of figuring out which of those are working and puts them on the field, and which of those are not working, and takes them off the field. Ex ante, he did not know which of the relievers he gathered into the bullpen portfolio were going to work out, so he got a bunch of arms, and hoped that a good number would work out. The same thing with the starters: collect a bunch of arms that you think will work out in a certain way, some will work, some won't, and you hope you figure out which are working and aren't working as quickly as possible.

When the offseason started, these were the players that I would have thought we'd all agree were stars and penned into the lineup or rotation: Lester, Beckett, Ortiz, Pedroia, Youkilis, Gonzalez, and Ellsbury. You could argue with Youkilis bc of injury concerns, and throw Crawford and Buccholz into that list because they were 100% starters assuming health. They have given the Red Sox 7.3 fWAR and 3.8 bWAR from those players. Every other player on the roster, Cherington had some input on, whether they were in the rotation or bullpen, or in Pawtucket, or on the 40 man or cut, or traded, or whatever. Basically, everybody else on the roster could have been somewhere else or doing something else based on Cherington's decision making. Those players have put the Red Sox in the position they are, which is to say above .500 despite bad pythag luck and either complete injury disaster or underperformance from basically all of their stars. I think that that's how we have to evaluate a GM, especially a new one who inherited a constrained roster: "what did he have control over, and how did those players perform?" So I come out squarely on the other side.

On that note, I think it's time for a thank you Kevin Youkilis thread.

On that note, I think it's time for a thank you Kevin Youkilis thread.

Seconded.

Marlon Byrd suspended 50 games for PED usage. The outfield log jam begins to clear itself up.

Marlon Byrd suspended 50 games for PED usage.

So is that an unexpected windfall for the Cubs?

Wow, Byrd was waling that fine line for a looong time.

Marlon Byrd suspended 50 games for PED usage. The outfield log jam begins to clear itself up.

The Sox had already released him, no?