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Sox Therapy — Where Thinking Red Sox Fans Obsess about the Sox Monday, February 20, 2023The RostahWell, baseball is back soon and it is time to start trying to figure out who the 2023 Boston Red Sox will be. To say this team is a bit unsettled is an understatement but moves and options should help us pull things together a bit. Of course a lot of unknowns remain. There will be injuries and someone will show up at camp and dazzle us then go 1 for 19 and never be heard from again. Let’s take a look at our expectations for the March 30th team; INFIELD: Triston Casas, Christian Arroyo, Kiké Hernandez, Rafael Devers, Niko Goodrum, Yu Chang With Mondesi likely to start the year on the IL I think Chang has the inside track as a glove first defender with Goodrum providing some necessary versatility. OUTFIELD: Masataka Yoshida, Adam Duvall, Alex Verdugo, Rob Refsnyder, Raimel Tapia Tapia, Refsnyder and Duran are three guys for two spots probably. It’s not out of the question that the Sox go with thirteen position players and thirteen pitchers (ugh) which puts Goodrum and Chang into the mix with it being a five for three situation. Rafaela seems to be on people’s wishlist as a dream player to start the year but he’s not ready. As good as he was in the minors last year he’s a guy with dicey plate discipline who needs at bats. Right now he looks like a potential JBJ type with elite speed but the Sox will do well to see if he can develop as a hitter. CATCHER: Reese McGuire, Jorge Alfaro Wong probably gets the boot by virtue of having an option remaining with Alfaro the likeliest guy to meet the “1 for 19 then never heard from again” qualification. I assume Wong will get some work at other spots as the Sox try to make him a Swihart style utility player that could put him into that mix with everyone else. DH: Justin Turner Just like the David Ortiz and JD Martinez days DH is settled! OK, not quite like those guys but Turner is the DH and could see time at first and/or third base as the year progresses. Side note: the Sox again are making a mistake on the their numbering. Turner should not be wearing number 2 nor should anyone else ever again. It’s shades of Terry Francona’s 47, that’s two numbers that need to be on the right field facade. OK, everyone breathe cause now it gets tricky; STARTERS: Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, Brayan Bello, Nick Pivetta, Garrett Whitlock I read a preview that had Paxton ahead of Pivetta and he probably is. The likelihood of Paxton and Sale being healthy at the same time just feels remote. Someone from that group of six guys will be on the IL, I’d be shocked if that wasn’t the case. If everyone is healthy that’s a good problem and Pivetta probably goes to the bullpen. RELIEVERS: Kelley Jansen, Chris Martin, John Schreiber, Tanner Houck, Ryan Brasier, Richard Bleier, Joely Rodriguez Look, this is a huge shrug here. Kelly probably has the inside track on being the 8th reliever if the Sox go 13/13. I think the bullpen improvement is under appreciated. The Sox had a bunch of costly losses in the early part of 2022 that sunk the season (seemed like in Toronto especially). If Jansen and Martin in particular are as good as expected Lots has been made about Jansen dealing with the pitch clock. Trying to guess at what impact that will have is a virtual impossibility. Obviously he is very good and the Sox need him to adjust. Apparently his desire to work on that is why he is skipping the clock-free World Baseball Classic. A lot will change between now and Opening Day. I would be surprised if the Sox made any meaningful moves. Bobby Dalbec and/or Jarren Duran getting moved seems like a possibility to me. I read somewhere the Sox were going to work Duran at second base a bit (his original position). I think this can be an interesting if not particularly successful season. It will be interesting to see how the roster shakes out between now and Opening Day. As always it should be fun to see what obvious guy I left out. Jose is an Absurd Sultan
Posted: February 20, 2023 at 04:03 PM | 171 comment(s)
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Didn't Durran play on the US Olympic qualifying team?
1. San Diego agreed to pay *all* of Hosmer's salary at the time of the trade.
Per the CBA and the uniform player contract (UPC) a player on a team's roster must be paid at least the major-league minimum by that team. So even if SD agreed to pay all of it, in late 2022 Boston would still have owed Hosmer the minimum, and SD would have owed the balance of his contract. It's effectively the same, except it isn't, for reasons that will be clearer below.
2. Boston *terminated* Hosmer's contract.
If Boston felt Hosmer was not capable of performing well enough for them, they can terminate the contract provided (a) they put him on release waivers and (b) nobody claims him in the waiver period. There are other details - they need to inform him of the intent to terminate the contract, for example - but for the sake of this discussion the important elements are irrevocable release waivers and no claim. We know those happened, because a player can't be released without first passing through release waivers.
Under the UPC a player whose contract is terminated in that way (i.e. team decides he can't perform well enough) is still owed the remaining salary from that contract. As Boston's salary obligation per 1 above was only contingent on Hosmer being on their roster, they no longer owe him anything, and San Diego was again on the hook for the whole salary (until the Cubs signed him). Had Boston instead formally agreed that they would take responsibility for the minimum salary for each year of Hosmer's remaining contract as a condition of the trade, then I think Boston would still owe the minimum going forward.
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I don't see a path where Spotrac can be correct.
As part of Tuesday's trade, San Diego agreed to pay Boston up to $43,566,713, according to details of the agreement obtained by The Associated Press...San Diego will pay $6,786,813 this year...The trade includes $36.78 million in conditional cash if he keeps the contract: $12.28 million in 2023, $12.26 million in 2024 and $12.24 million in 2025.
That reads to me like Boston 'owns' Hosmer's contract in full, minus a set amount of cash from SD that does not fully cover his contract obligations. Obviously similar to what you are saying in #1 - but not the same.
Reading a different article, Hosmer exercised his '23 & 24' options - so I'd assume the Sox are on the hook for '24. Since they released him, what is the status of his '25 option? Can he still exercise it? And would the Sox have to pay the minimum?
I'm on pins and needles waiting to hear about Kluber's spin rate!!
Who did he hit them off of?
1) For Bloom's 2023 "plan" (I still don't really know what it is, except to bet that the team will have very good luck with health) to hit this year, Arroyo panning out is an important part of it. Having Arroyo healthy and playing at the top of his game everyday at 2B would go a long way to stabilizing the lineup and the 26-man roster. I thought it was baseball malpractice for the team to think they could put Arroyo in RF last year as part of a platoon or something - so obviously a terrible decision as it was happening, that simply underscored the ineptitude of the Renfroe-for-JBJ/middling prospects trade that left the team with no answers in RF.
2) When I think about the differences in the Moneyball-type approach of somebody like Epstein vs Bloom, they include:
- Timing. In 2002-2004, the Red Sox could look at a guy like, say, Mark Bellhorn, to play 2B, and easily acquire him, because most teams thought Bellhorn had no value. Epstein saw a guy who hit home runs, took a ton of walks, and played good enough 2B to make it work. Other teams saw the low batting average, high strikeouts, and terrible small sample sizes early in his career, and saw no value. That sort of thing is much, much less likely to happen now. That is a credit to Epstein, and I do not ding Bloom for that.
- What I do ding Bloom on, though, is that he generally looks for value based on what he perceives as injury-based high-risk, high-reward. Epstein looked for market inefficiencies in talent evaluation - David Ortiz, Jeremy Giambi, Bellhorn, Mueller, etc. Bloom seems to go for guys who are available on short-term deals, and/or incentive-laden contracts, because of their injury history or age. James Paxton is such an example. Everybody knew he wasn't going to pitch much, if at all, in 2022. It is far from certain he'll pitch a lot in 2023. But they basically gave him $10m in 2022 as an advance on his 2023 salary ($4m), in the hopes that they'll get a really good one-year, $14m season out of Paxton this year. But that $10m singlehandedly put them over the luxury tax last year, which is restraining them this year...and it is not like Paxton was Pedro Martinez before he got hurt. And if he is awesome this year, he's a free agent at the end of the season. Justin Turner is available because he is old, not because people undervalued his skills. Arroyo is injured all the time. Kluber is old and has suffered major injuries in the past. Wacha was available because he had an injury history.
Virtually none of Bloom's moves involve finding underappreciated talent, or exploiting market inefficiencies...unless he believes players with injury histories are being so undervalued in the market that this is a market inefficiency.
When I see Arroyo, this is what I think of - a guy that was a first-round draft pick, was highly-regarded, but was available because he just can't stay on the field. You can't build a consistent World Series contender like that. At least it gives Sale people to hang out with at rehab sessions...
The Phillies.
I think you hit on the main difference between Bloom and Theo's strategies here: "Timing. In 2002-2004, the Red Sox could look at a guy like, say, Mark Bellhorn, to play 2B, and easily acquire him, because most teams thought Bellhorn had no value." There's just not that kind of talent being ignored anymore. Later in Theo's time with the Sox he had started trying to find value in injury-risk players, such as Penny, Smoltz, Lackey (with his weird incentive clause), etc. And I'm not sure the short deals is a strategy so much as a mandate from the ownership.
I'm going to disagree on this a bit. It would help A LOT if he was healthy and good, playing 130 games at 2B and putting up 3.0 WAR. But things can still go well if Mondesi is mostly healthy and Hernandez shifts to 2B. Or if Rafaela is ready to contribute this year. Or if Valdez is as good as projections think he is. They have a lot of depth that consists of question marks.
What we're seeing is a mix of all three solutions, except with a prospect pipeline that isn't good enough to overcome the problem on its own.
We live in an era of fraud in America. Not just in banking, but in government, education, religion, food, even baseball... What bothers me isn't that fraud is not nice. Or that fraud is mean. For fifteen thousand years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never, ever worked. Not once. Eventually you get caught, things go south. When the hell did we forget all that? I thought we were better than this, I really did.
But no. Every year, you people prove that we are not better than this. I grew up in an era that dictated that the Red Sox would lose, either by being lousy, or by choking. I never agreed with the latter. They lost because of bad fortune (when they were actually a good team). People had a fatalistic view of the Red Sox: They will lose, because they always do.
Nowadays, it's the opposite: They will win, because they've won 4 times since 2004!
The truth is that when they are good, they have a chance to win. To hold, on faith, that they will be good in any given year based on the past 20 years is nonsense. Every year, slight roster changes mean differences in results. Last year, they stunk, no question, and they haven't shown that the additions/subtractions they've made will be for the better.
I'm always here to tell it like I see it. This team will be mediocre this year, at best.
Minor leaguers. Or, soon to be minor leaguers.
I like Arroyo. He's an adequate starter. I hope he plays 130+ games for them this year.
Or, if you will, the 1-man wave.
Not that it matters, this is spring training, so he could have hit them off Steve Carleton and Cliff Lee and it wouldn't matter, but wrong.
Or: this just means his arm will stay healthy longer into the season so it's actually a blessing in disguise. After all, he was pitching well so we know his arm is healed! This way he'll be ready for the playoffs.
Pulling a hammy in spring training is the new "starting the season in June" like Clemens used to do. Yeah, that's the ticket.
I'll take it! Someone prepare me a bubble bath. I'll be sending you all a video.
Just kidding. 124-0-38 is more realistic.
The Boston Globe (Pete Abraham) wrote a column over the weekend projecting the most likely Red Sox Opening Day roster, updating it based on performance and injuries.
For all those wondering how we'd get all six of our best starters into the rotation to start the season, your worries are over! Three of the them (Paxton, Bello, and Whitlock) won't be ready to start the season, anyway.
His current projected pitching staff:
Sale
Kluber
Pivetta
Houck
Crawford
This has the effect of opening up a few bullpen spots, causing Abraham to currently project:
Jansen
Chris Martin
Schreiber
Brasier
Wyatt Mills
Bleier
Zach Kelly
Joely Rodriguez
The starter who will replace Chris Sale in late April when he injures his [select random body part] while [select seemingly innocuous activity that I guess is more dangerous than any of us thought]) would be Josh Winckowski.
...
The starter who will replace Chris Sale in late April when he injures his SPLEEN while DANCING THE CAN CAN IN A CATCHER'S MASK AND A GREEN SWEATSHIRT would be Josh Winckowski.
The starter who will replace Chris Sale in late April when he injures his CORNEA while WATCHING VIDEO OF GUNNAR HENDERSON PRIOR TO OPENING DAY would be Josh Winckowski.
The starter who will replace Chris Sale in late April when he injures his LEFT ARM while THROWING A PITCH would be Josh Winckowski.
Other than Turner leaving the game after taking a pitch to the face...
Just saw it. Ouch. He turned into it.
Just post that 60 more times and we'll be able to move on.
This is what happens. You get lured into this false sense of positivity...then BOOM, Sale steps on crack and breaks his back whilst strolling on a sidewalk somewhere in the world.
"FanDuel Group and NESN today announced a multi-year sponsorship, designating FanDuel as the premiere sportsbook partner of NESN’s Red Sox and Bruins game day coverage.
The sponsorship marries the country’s preeminent gaming destination with New England’s top-rated sports network and home of the Bruins and Red Sox broadcasts. The deal includes commercials, in-game sponsorship integrations, and pre-game features highlighting FanDuel, bringing the sportsbook’s odds, insights and content directly to homes of New England’s biggest sports fans.
In addition to the broadcast integrations, NESN and FanDuel will partner on NESN’s sports betting site NESNBets.com. FanDuel will have prominent placement on the site."
But I will never use the platforms again.
Awesome, more good stuff brought into the family home.
Can I have asbestos and mould included also as I need more useless sh*t coming into the family home.
there may be a misconception that the most diehard fans can be incentivized to gamble as well.
huge backlashes on this issue in Europe have led to all sorts of limitations on the ads. we may be headed down that path as well.
I know spring training win-loss records are meaningless.
I know spring training win-loss records are meaningless.
For the Red Sox, it's a sign that a team comprised of a bunch of B's is far better than a team of C's and A's.
and you're damn right that's a killer B's reference.
The homers that boom in the spring, tra-la,
Bring smiles to a green rookie's face.
But the homers that boom in the spring, alas,
Have nothing to do with the race.
The CFBPS relies heavily on selective use of Spring Training results, and that's never been anything but accurate. Some of the numbers it is looking at this year:
Duran: 2.033 OPS
Dalbec: 1.324 OPS
Arroyo: 80 HR pace
Paxton: 0.00 ERA
Sale: Very healthy
I know, I'm flip flopping a bit. I have no confidence in the offense. They'll be mediocre there. But the SP could be a real strength of the team, and by extension, the bullpen, not having to pitch as much as they did last year. I think they'll be ok, until they prove otherwise. :-)
I mean it. I'm not joking.
So, in that spirit, I wanted them to use the DH position to do a platoon of younger players who look like they can hit, but may not have an obvious position on the diamond. Specifically, I wanted to try an Enmanuel Valdez (getting most of the PAs as the LHH of the platoon) and Bobby Dalbec against lefties. It would be cheap, and would allow the team to see if either of these guys are worth keeping around in a platoon role. They also were both already on the 40-man.
Instead, the team signed Justin Turner, basically paying him $15m for one year (could be more like $22m for two years if Turner struggles in 2023, and accepts the player option for 2024). Presuming Turner comes back soon from his HBP injury, what's the upside to this signing? 2021-2022-ish JD Martinez, except three years older, but with some defensive value at the corners? What does this have to do with the team building a legit contender in the future?
I mention this because the reports on Valdez have been very good down in Florida, and he has not yet been sent down to the minor league camp. He has been playing a lot of second base so far, and could provide value as the 2B against tough righties (instead of Arroyo), and DH a few times a week. I still think Dalbec is good enough against lefties to provide some value in a platoon DH role, but we kind of know what he is, so whatever - Valdez is really the interesting bat.
I wish the Red Sox had either gone "all in" on getting long-term, premium-price talent, or had gone "all in" on using 2023 to figure out what they have in the organization. Instead, we're spending a lot of money on guys that, even if they are good this year, are neither getting Boston deep into the playoffs, nor likely to be a part of the next contending team (Duvall, Turner, Kluber, etc). What's the plan?
I think we will see plenty of Valdez this season without having left DH open for him.
I know you mention Kluber as not likely to be part of the next contending team, and you're probably right about that. But I fully expect the next contending team will have someone worse than him anyway.
The common thread with Kluber and Turner is that they are *plausibly* competitive acquisitions. They might not be actually competitive, but they are plausibly competitive. Those signings make it appear that Boston hasn't just tossed Bogaerts AND Martinez AND Eovaldi, and then sat on their hands. To you or me it might seem different than it would to fans in general, but fans in general buy tickets. For all the talk of Boston's offseason, people have noted Bogaerts' departure (and it's definitely noteworthy), but I haven't seen anyone lump in the lack of JDM or Eovaldi as problems. They were, at least on paper, replaced with name players, plausibly competitive players. The people who buy all the tickets would rather pay to see if Turner pans out in 2023 than pay to see if a Valdez/Dalbec DH platoon will bear fruit.
Jinx!
I might not be fair in my assessment, but in full disclosure I am not a fan of "let's put him out there and maybe he'll surprise us on the upside" because it almost never works.
And there definitely is risk. If they're looking to trade him, and he gets hurt (never mind if he hurts another player in the process) then he's not getting traded, and it's unlikely he can get traded until he's both healthy and has had a chance at enough playing time to demonstrate he's worth trading for. I think an excellent way of injuring him is for him to play a demanding and unfamiliar position, especially when it's been stated in the media that if he doesn't succeed he's out of a job.
VI, do you think he has any trade value? I hope he does, but I feel like maybe he doesn't.
He has trade value as soon as a team has an injury at 1B. The problem is that there are dozens of alternatives to him, so a team needs to be convinced of his development potential or some other reason why he should be the preferred alternative. That Boston is still trying to play him in different spots is potentially an indicator that they believe in his development potential, and their sensible preference of Devers and Casas in the two positions where Dalbec has the most experience makes it at least plausible that they would try to tap into his development potential elsewhere on the diamond. I don't know if this is an earnest effort or a sales job, but I don't see why it can't be both.
Introducing your 2023 Potemkin Red Stockings!!!!
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