Hector Velazquez. Well, well, well.... What do we have here???

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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Doesn't even have a page up at baseball-reference.com yet!!!


Combining the strength and power of the Trojans greatest warrior and the most amazing Western painter who ever lived..... Hector Valazquez is on my mind.
Anyhow..... appearing in 4 games so far. 2-0 record. 11K's and 3BB's in 13.1 IP. 1.24 WHIP in 2017.
Last season after some early horrid appearances he really began to show some promise. Signed for a pittance. VALUABLE!!!!! What do we do with this guy?
Thinking about some options.... if he continues to ride the AAAA shuttle for the year, picking up occasional spot starts for the ML Club and putting together similar numbers at Pawtucket- he'd be a very valuable addition after this season... or also as very valuable trade bait.
I'm loving the guy so far and hope to see him as a full time rotation guy next season. But any of you more baseball-wise fellas want to chime in here?
 

E5 Yaz

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Watching Colon throw seven perfect innings the other night caused me to think of Velazquez
 

pokey_reese

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He's definitely valuable as a 5th/6th starter who has options, but I'm not sure that his peripherals tell us that he is much more than that. Low k-rate and some luck makes me think that using him as an extra starter is probably better than moving him to the bullpen once Pom is ready.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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All very SSS obviously, but he does have a pretty good first-pitch strike rate. He's over 65 percent (100/153). You worry that hitters are going to get more aggressive as this news gets out there, but he actually does induce a lot of first-pitch swings already. Close to 30 percent. (I don't know the league average but I think it's a bit lower than that. Porcello, for example, is around 26 percent.) Guys putting the ball in play on pitch 1 are not hitting him all that well either. Again, SSS, but good start.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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Probably misspelled. Right now his K rate is slightly less than 1 per inning.... that’s pretty good, no?
He's actually a bit below that. K/9 is about 7.0. That ends up below average, especially taking into account that he's pitched some out of the bullpen and reliever K rates should be a little higher. Still early though and all very SSS.

https://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/rate-stats/
 

Devizier

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He throws strikes and his flyball tendencies haven't hurt him (yet). To some extent the Red Sox outfield defense probably helps him but the park works the other way.
 

tonyarmasjr

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He's actually a bit below that. K/9 is about 7.0. That ends up below average, especially taking into account that he's pitched some out of the bullpen and reliever K rates should be a little higher. Still early though and all very SSS.

https://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/rate-stats/
The lower K rate isn't a death sentence, though. I was curious how many guys are successful in today's game with a similar rate. Last year, of the 33 starters with an ERA under 4.00 (min. 150 IP), 10 had a K/9 under 8.0 (7.69 being the highest and highlighted by Cashner's 4.64!), and 6 of those were under 7.0. in 2016, it was 23 of 45 guys, with only 2 under 7.0. More than I would have thought.
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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The Sox should not send this kid back down. If they want to maximize the teams strengths and not just horde assets, it’s a no-brained.
 

AB in DC

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Are we really that sure? His ERA is outpacing his peripherals by a huge margin. His K/9 is about 6.3, which is the lowest on the team by far. He's not missing very many bats (SwSt% was 8.6% before today). Is this sustainable?
 

Cesar Crespo

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Are we really that sure? His ERA is outpacing his peripherals by a huge margin. His K/9 is about 6.3, which is the lowest on the team by far. He's not missing very many bats (SwSt% was 8.6% before today). Is this sustainable?
What are his groundball rates?
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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He's inducing groundballs 44.7% of the time (prior to today), which puts him 7th of 14 pitchers who've toed the rubber for the Sox this year, right behind Porcello (49.3%) and just ahead of Sale (42.7%).

I agree with AB in DC in that I'm not sure his success is sustainable. Yes, he's been effective but his best role for the team is as the 6th starter. He can't be that if he's the seventh man in the bullpen. Given the roster situation, he needs to go down when Wright is activated. It's not as though what he's been doing can't be done by Wright or Johnson in the short term.
 

Byrdbrain

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Johnson???????? LOL
Wright?????? Te base stealer or the macho man?
Do better.

I expect Velazquez will go down for Wright as well even though it clearly isn't due to performance. At least in AAA he can pitch every 5th day and he can stay stretched out.
 

patoaflac

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Well, I expect the Sox to DFA Johnson (he hasn’t proven anything at ML level) and he is not so young. Good long releivers (I remember Moret), are very important for a good ball club. And about “doing better”, it makes me laugh to consider wasting a spot with a AAA guy like Johnson, because he has no options, that’s not what you do when you want to win.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Johnson and Velazquez have very very similar FIP and xFIP. They aren't all that dissimilar so far this year except Velazquez has pitched with some better luck. I don't think either is a lock to continue performing as they have so far.

For the sake of maintaining as many resources for as long as possible, I believe Velazquez goes down for Wright. Johnson may not last all that much longer anyway if Thornburg is ready to go soon too. But I think Johnson sticks until then.
 

teddywingman

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And about “doing better”, it makes me laugh to consider wasting a spot with a AAA guy like Johnson, because he has no options, that’s not what you do when you want to win.
When Byrdbrain said "Do better," he meant you might want to put some effort into your writing here.

LOLs and ???????? are worse than lazy.

Do better.
 

Byrdbrain

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Johnson and Velazquez have very very similar FIP and xFIP. They aren't all that dissimilar so far this year except Velazquez has pitched with some better luck. I don't think either is a lock to continue performing as they have so far.

For the sake of maintaining as many resources for as long as possible, I believe Velazquez goes down for Wright. Johnson may not last all that much longer anyway if Thornburg is ready to go soon too. But I think Johnson sticks until then.
If there were one move to make then it might be just to DFA Johnson but yeah since there are likely two I think this is what will happen.
That is unless Johnson or Wright conveniently get hurt and have to go to the DL.
 

shaggydog2000

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If there were one move to make then it might be just to DFA Johnson but yeah since there are likely two I think this is what will happen.
That is unless Johnson or Wright conveniently get hurt and have to go to the DL.
 

AB in DC

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If there were one move to make then it might be just to DFA Johnson but yeah since there are likely two I think this is what will happen.
That is unless Johnson or Wright conveniently get hurt and have to go to the DL.
Or anyone else, for that matter. As people say around here, when we think there's going to be a roster crunch in the near future, things have a way of working out otherwise.
 

Plympton91

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They seem to be doing Velazquez a solid here. They could have sent him down and he'd probably return to making the chicken feed MLB allows teams to exploit minor leaguers with ( I assume he's on a split contract). By placing him on the DL, he keeps his major league paycheck. Then, after about 5 days here, they can send him to Pawtucket on a rehab assignment, still with major league pay, and that will allow them to stretch him out again for a couple starts, keeping him ready to replace Pomeranz who looks closer to Tommy John surgery every week. But, if Pomeranz turns it around, they can return Velazquez to the major league bullpen, where he's been the second most effective pitcher thus far. I hope this little experiment with Wright doesn't cost them a game or two in the process.
 

pinkunicornsox

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They seem to be doing Velazquez a solid here. They could have sent him down and he'd probably return to making the chicken feed MLB allows teams to exploit minor leaguers with ( I assume he's on a split contract). By placing him on the DL, he keeps his major league paycheck. Then, after about 5 days here, they can send him to Pawtucket on a rehab assignment, still with major league pay, and that will allow them to stretch him out again for a couple starts, keeping him ready to replace Pomeranz who looks closer to Tommy John surgery every week. But, if Pomeranz turns it around, they can return Velazquez to the major league bullpen, where he's been the second most effective pitcher thus far. I hope this little experiment with Wright doesn't cost them a game or two in the process.
Do you have some information that we don't have in regards to Pom's elbow? Are you his personal physician? I think it is a little premature to assume he is headed for tommy john.
 

joe dokes

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Or maybe its a real thing.....

Velazquez goes on DL
Righthander Hector Velazquez was placed on the 10-day disabled list with a lower back strain.
The injury originated at the start of the month when the Red Sox were in Texas, and Cora hadn’t called on Velazquez since May 3 until he was used Saturday and Sunday in Toronto.
Velazquez threw two scoreless innings in Sunday’s 5-3 win. Cora had hoped to have him throw three innings but said Velazquez alerted him to the pain.
“It’s been going for a while,” Cora said. “That’s why we kind of stayed away from him since Texas. Yesterday, actually after his second inning, he came in, talked to me about it, and actually I wanted him to get three more [outs] when we were in the bullpen, but he was honest, which is great. We need him to be healthy, obviously.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2018/05/14/steven-wright-added-red-sox-roster-hector-velazquez-sent/lgrf7MskcQKOciBFC2GImM/story.html
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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I don't understand why anyone suspected it wasn't legit. He can be optioned so there's no reason for faking anything for a DL trip to get him off the roster. If it had been Johnson DLed, then maybe we could scratch our heads.
 

joe dokes

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I don't understand why anyone suspected it wasn't legit. He can be optioned so there's no reason for faking anything for a DL trip to get him off the roster. If it had been Johnson DLed, then maybe we could scratch our heads.
Because things would be boring without presumed incompetence or skullduggery.