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Sox Therapy — Where Thinking Red Sox Fans Obsess about the Sox Friday, July 29, 2022Dead LineAs of this moment Boston is in last place, and not playing well. They are also, with a solidly mediocre 50-50 record, 3.5 games out of a playoff spot. They are Schrödinger’s Baseball Team. They are simultaneously dead and alive. The trade deadline is 6 PM on Tuesday 8/2. Between now and then they need to choose which side of the line they’re on, and act accordingly. I mean, in reality they can make choices well after that deadline. Mike Myers, Bobby Kielty, and Dave Henderson were all post-deadline acquisitions that contributed to pennant-winning teams. However, to be fair those teams were not in last place at the deadline, with several teams ahead of them in the playoff hunt. Regardless, at some point they need to make a decision about the season, and I suspect they made that decision months ago: we’re building toward 2023 and beyond, and if we have success before then we can count ourselves lucky. In that sense, 2022 is already dead. One of the things that caught my eye when visiting the Fangraphs articles on the top 50 players in terms of trade value (thread here) was that Boston has exactly zero players on the list. Granted, part of that is they traded away one of the people on the list a few years ago. But even setting that aside, they don’t have anyone on the roster who provides that level of trade value. Nobody worth a damn is locked up long-term except Story (who has started off slow/injured) and Whitlock (who isn’t going to provide huge trade value unless he’s a starter). Devers and Bogaerts have value as players, but they’re potentially free agents relatively soon. If they’re setting up for the future can they make a deadline deal that helps accomplish that, given what they have to trade? I’m going on the record as saying (checks online to see if any Red Sox players have been traded while typing this paragraph) Bogaerts and Devers will still be here after the deadline. So will nearly everyone else. Bloom wants value, and with many teams in the hunt value is not as likely to be attainable at the trade deadline. At least that’s my guess. Like, I totally see Bloom upgrading on backup catcher at the deadline. I don’t see him winning the Soto sweepstakes let alone entering the Soto sweepstakes. So let’s talk trade deadline. Who do you think is going? Where will they try to improve? |
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1. Steve Balboni's Personal Trainer Posted: July 29, 2022 at 01:55 PM (#6088888)Unlike the last few years, Bloom is not looking to take many more "fliers" on AA prospects with some upside, from teams facing a 40-man crunch, because unlike the last two years, the Red Sox are now the team facing the 40-man crunch. (Think of the 2020 trade where Moreland went to San Diego for Hudson Potts and Jeisson Rosario; or the Mazza/Springs trade with Tampa for Ronaldo Hernandez; or even the Binelas/Hamilton deal involving JBJ.)
Now, the team needs to be thinking about quality over quantity - they simply will not be able to put a bunch of "eh" prospects on the 40-man. And I'm not sure anybody they could trade except for Bogaerts, and maybe Eovaldi, could net them a prospect worth the trouble.
This year I think they will generally be neither buyers or sellers. They might add some kind of first-baseman. Or maybe if some team bowls them over with an offer for JD Martinez, they'd trade him.
The two moves I think would be addition by subtraction would be Plawecki and Cordero. I've grumbled about Cordero before: I just don't trust him in the field, especially at 1B. The other night he did the Millar Play again: range off first base, cut in front of the 2B to field a grounder, then throw wildly behind him to the pitcher covering first. He excels at turning a routine 4-3 grounder into a 2-base error. I imagine defensive stats don't penalize that much, since any 1B fielding that ball is likely to allow a 2-base error or at least an infield hit. I suppose it's possible he's worse than the stats indicate. Meanwhile Plawecki is the reason Boston is getting so little value out of C. In half the playing time he negates whatever Vazquez is still able to accomplish. EDIT: One could easily argue addition by subtraction regarding members of the pitching staff, but I suspect anyone they could get as a replacement would be roughly as bad as whoever they drop.
I think Bello will be good. I remember Tom Glavine got hit hard in his first couple years in the big leagues. It didn't scar him for life. I'd keep sending Bello out there. Let him learn.
This team is very much in rebuilding mode, and the sooner Boston can figure out which young guys are a part of their future, the sooner they can figure out where the holes are - and where they will have cheap solutions that allow them to spend legit FA money to solve other problems.
It is entirely possible they go into 2023 with a rotation something like:
Sale (at least until he gets hurt tying his shoe or whatever)
Paxson
Whitlock
Crawford
Bello
Or maybe not - but you don't know unless you let those young guys pitch.
As Tom Petty said, "Let Me Up (I've had Enough)": Downs, Cordero, Ort, Bradley
In July, per BB-Ref:
Starters: 7.09 ERA / 93 K / 47 BB / 17 HR / 118 IP
Relievers 5.53 ERA / 131 K / 65 BB / 14 HR / 122 IP
Batters: .288 OBP / .389 SLG / 677 OPS
There was some talk last year about the Red Sox coming very close to dealing Vazquez while in the thick of a pennant race. I get the sense that they don't really like him that much.
So far Boston has given up:
2 months of Vazquez
1 year + 2 months of Jake Diekman
PTBNL or cash
...and have received:
2 months of Tommy Pham
3 years + 2 months of Reese McGuire
6 years of Enmanuel Valdez
6 years of Wilyer Abreu
Valdez and Abreu are not top prospects, but they are both 23 and in at least AA ball, so that's a good start. Valdez is in AAA - same age/level as Downs, for reference. One of them should prove at least marginally useful at some point.
McGuire is not the solution behind the plate, but he's a better defender than Plawecki. He's not Vazquez's replacement in 2022 as much as he's probably Plawecki's replacement in 2023.
Pham will cost them $2m for the rest of this year, and another $1.5m to buy out his 2024 season (he has a $6m mutual option that I'm assuming won't be exercised). They save that (and then some) by getting rid of Diekman, who started well and then became less reliable than Robles.
I really do think that non-baseball-related reasons had to be a part of trading Renfroe. No idea what they may have been, but the trade didn't make much sense at the time, even if the prospects they got were also highly valued by Bloom.
But in any event the last of the OF B's from 2018 exits Fenway. And to think in 2018 it was reasonable to think all 3 might still be with the Red Sox in 2022.
Maybe once he gets the organizational talent up to a certain level, he switches to Dombrowski-mode.
Have you paid any attention to how the Rays run things?
But one thing I would say is that this is already starting to pay some dividends. If this had been 2019 or 2020 and they had 4/5 of their rotation go on the DL, they'd be claiming guys off waivers to then start games at Fenway. I'm not saying Crawford, Winckowski, and Bello have been lights-out or anything (though all have shown flashes, and I'd say Crawford looks pretty good), but again the absolute dreck we had as our #6/7/8 starter options in the past have been terrible, and they've at least either been serviceable or shown flashes of what they might be able to do once they adjust to the majors. (Of course, the other aspect of having to start those 3 guys has also meant they're not available as tandem starters or as multi-inning guys, which would have helped take some strain off the bullpen.)
But I think some Red Sox fans are forgetting how indescribably bad the team was in 2020 - less than two years ago. (This may be, in part, because it was the 60-game COVID year). 30 of their 60-game season was started by one of: Zack Godley, Chris Mazza, Austin Brice, Colten Brewer, Josh Osich, Mike Kickham, Kyle Hart, Matt Hall, Andrew Triggs, and Robinson Leyer. That is remarkable.
The next year, they get to Game 6 of the ALCS. That is pretty remarkable, too.
And in 2022, people are pointing to the ~$210m payroll and asking where the championship team is. The answer: Not playing. $16m is David Price. $30m is Chris Sale. That's more than a fifth of the entire payroll - neither of them a contract Bloom signed.
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