Miley's IP numbers at his contract are worth more than a good reliever, even in this market. I bet we could get an interesting A ball SP as well, or something like that.
Dombrowski: SP likely from FA. Which should we sign?
- Thread starter nvalvo
- Start date
If signing Price is bumping anybody, it's Kelly.
Maybe DD isn't as high on Miley as Ben was, which I guess could enter a better possibility that he gets dealt. But the same could be said for Kelly as well, and I still have a hard time seeing the sacrifice of Miley's 200IP potential atm. At least in a rotation that includes Buchholz/Edro (the latter who certainly isn't getting stashed in AAA btw)
Jared Carrabis @Jared_Carrabis 9m9 minutes ago
The Blue Jays are so cute, pretending they have the money to sign David Price.
Virtually every piece of available evidence points the Red Sox in the direction of the top of the free-agent market – David Price, Zack Greinke, maybe Johnny Cueto even as every mention of him to Red Sox officials elicits disbelief at how much money he’ll make, maybe Jordan Zimmermann even though, as Dave Cameron of Fangraphs notes, the righthander could represent one of the most overpriced free agents of this offseason.
In short, there will be no comfortable answers for the Red Sox as they move forward – and certainly no answers that come without their own host of questions.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2015/11/23/free-agency-likely-avenue-for-red-sox-address-rotation/Yvtzs8dCZ5oaGOntc5KnGK/story.html
In short, there will be no comfortable answers for the Red Sox as they move forward – and certainly no answers that come without their own host of questions.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2015/11/23/free-agency-likely-avenue-for-red-sox-address-rotation/Yvtzs8dCZ5oaGOntc5KnGK/story.html
Is this Backwards Day or something?
There is nowhere Eduardo Rodriguez belongs next year except a major league rotation (hopefully ours). There is nowhere Brian Johnson belongs (to start the year at any rate) except a AAA rotation. Either destination would make sense for Owens, though if we sign a big-ticket FA he's more likely to wind up in AAA or traded.
Normally I don't care about apparent assholeishness of players, but starting a feud with a guy who seems to be about the most likable player in baseball amongst his peers seems like a different level. So put me in the "meh" column.
I wonder why we haven't heard more about Kenta Maeda. Last I heard, he was set to be posted this winter. In Dave Cameron's last Fangraphs chat, he mentioned the Diamondbacks and Astros as candidates to sign him, but I'm sort of surprised the Red Sox haven't been mentioned at all (and that we haven't done some of the mentioning ourselves).
In addition, this "not a nice guy" persona has always been in the heat of battle. He's an incredibly competitive guy.
It's pretty understandable why an opposing pitcher on a division rival would hate the other teams best hitter. Papi's tendency to watch hr's just adds more fuel. Price is a competitive person, a good trait for a leader of a rotation. Ortiz would probably look like an asshole if the uniforms were switched.
Truly. Johnson showed nothing during his brief major-league stint, other than that he needs to recover from injury. He's deep depth and nothing more: he may never make it back out of AAA. Owens will probably start out in AAA, because fastball command is the easiest element to work on quickly, and there's no doubt that he still needs work. Edro was the best starting pitcher the team had last year, discounting Buchholz' pre-annual-injury cameo.
Price is an interesting comp and model for Rodriguez, because both started out as fastball pitchers with questionable offspeed stuff: Price threw 71% 4-seam fastballs during his first full major-league season. In the last three years, he has evolved to throw five legitimate pitches, all of them grading above average (although the data on his cutter are not so clearcut). Price is what Rodriguez needs to turn into to become a star. It couldn't hurt to have a model to work from.
Also: Price would be OUR asshole, it's not my money, and we keep the draft pick.
These eight words are important, I think. The danger in a 7-year contract isn't even that years 6 and 7 will be garbage, because of course they will and you know that going in -- it's that years 5 and 4 and even 3 and 2 will be far worse than year 0, because the pitcher's decline has already begun by the time he hits 30 and the market. Price has shown that he's capable of adapting both his pitch mix and his approach, which makes him a better bet to find a way to succeed even in the decline phase we seem interested in hiring him for.
Don't sure how much stock you can put in Baseball Essential but if they know what they are talking about if the Jays pony up he wants to stay in TO.
http://www.baseballessential.com/news/2015/11/23/source-toronto-far-and-away-david-prices-first-choice/
http://www.baseballessential.com/news/2015/11/23/source-toronto-far-and-away-david-prices-first-choice/
Maeda is in the midst of a "Super 12" tournament right now, and it is still uncertain that he would be posted after the ending of the tournament. I am by no means a scout of any sort, but the consensus according to FanGraphs and MinorLeagueBall is that he has good consistent pitch mix, but he does not have an elite pitch like Yu Darvish's slider or Masahiro Tanaka's forkball/splitter. Can he still be solid with a mix of above-average, but not elite, pitches?
What I'm concerned about is that I am not exactly sure this pitching rotation will be successful either:
Price/Greinke/Cueto/Zimmermann
Buchholz
Porcello
Rodríguez
Miley
I know Porcello had injury issues and was supposed to be a groundball pitcher. Will we see his past performance splits this year? Was his injury the result of so many fly balls? Buchholz is very good when healthy, but we know he has the injury bug. Rodríguez will be a sophomore, although I'm high on him. Miley will give us ~200IP of ~95 ERA+ which could be valuable in the 5th spot. I'd like to see Joe Kelly move to the bullpen. In light of all the circumstances, do we see DD acquire 2 FA starters? The "Big 4" all have their issues projecting forward, so this seems like a bit of money to invest. But we do need pitching...
I believe some folks on this board said the same thing about AJP.
Even if you can't measure it, chemistry matters. The rollercoaster fortunes of this franchise over the past five seasons bear witness to this fact.
I'm heartened to hear that Price's teammates seem to like him. His Twitter meltdown a few seasons back suggested to me a lack of maturity and/or character. Maybe he's grown up since?
Net-net, I don't think this is a factor that can simply be dismissed.
Price is a competitive athlete who wears his emotions on his sleeve. I don't find that as a negative. Sure we were pissed at him with the Ortiz incident but if he was on our team we'd have loved his "fight".
... another teenage baseball writer with "sources," so I wouldn't read too much into it.
I think DD has had a good opportunity to learn what type of teammate Price is. If he is comfortable with Price, that's good enough for me.
***DISCLAIMER*** I am NOT making any comparisons to their dominance or abilities. Praise be Pedro. ***END DISCLAIMER***
I'd imagine it would be hard to find a Yankee fan who wouldn't have wanted Pedro. I don't see how Price even comes close to garnering the animosity from other fan bases that he did over his actions and sound bites.
Regarding Price, I'm not worried about his postseason issues. Throw that 1.16 postseason WHIP for the Sox and his reputation could be quickly improved.
Game 163 2013 is linked below, it didn't count but it is what you can get from David Price. Price & Kimbrel. Talk about an upgrade. Yeah, I'm in.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=330930113
Game 163 2013 is linked below, it didn't count but it is what you can get from David Price. Price & Kimbrel. Talk about an upgrade. Yeah, I'm in.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=330930113
You tolerate different levels of asshole when one guy hits .250/.280/.350 and the other finishes in the top 6 of the Cy Young 4 times in the last 6 years.
And I think Pierzynski is really a whole different class of jerk. I mean, plenty of Pierzynski's own teammates have hated him. He's pretty widely regarded as one of the bigger jerks in MLB. As far as I know, Price is a decent enough teammate.
Right, I have seen nothing whatsoever to suggest that Price is remotely like AJP, or even that he's generally seen as a bad guy around the league, whether by players or fans. I think it's a Sox-specific thing, and related to our whole grouchy history with TB (same thing that makes many Sox fans hate Maddon somewhat irrationally--and I can't wait for all the posts confirming that adverb in the act of objecting to it).
Price garnered nothing but praise for being a great teammate in Toronto .. From both his fellow players and from the media. And I can recall similar sentiment when he was with the Rays. I really don't think it will be an issue at all.
Really off topic, but at what point and at what cost? His stretch of otherworldly dominance was basically 1997-2003, and NY couldn't have been much more successful in that period than they actually were without him (3 WS wins, 2 WS losses, 6 division titles and a wild card, 13-4 in playoff series). I certainly wasn't pushing for him when he went to the Mets as a FA a couple of years later.
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Any FA pitcher considering Boston has to be jazzed about the pickup of Kimbrel. Tazawa-Uehara-Kimbrel could be Yankee-like/Royal-like in its ability to close out wins for a 7 inning starter. The Yankees don't seem to be in the FA pitching market (for now).
It always comes down to money, but all other things being equal, a good offense, defense and particularly bullpen can persuade a FA to push his agent. Then again, maybe it's all about the endorsements.
It always comes down to money, but all other things being equal, a good offense, defense and particularly bullpen can persuade a FA to push his agent. Then again, maybe it's all about the endorsements.
The fact that Price would go after the "nicest guy in baseball" makes me want him on our team even more.
Others can correct me if my recollection is incorrect, but I disagree with the use of "always". As I previously mentioned, I typically don't care about perceived assholery or lack of niceness for multiple reasons. Many sports writers have agendas, or aren't exactly competent, so who knows what these guys are really like. Being an asshole in the "heat of the battle" is understandable, emotions run high. Really, just about everybody is an asshole sometimes. But Price's feud with Ortiz was not only in the "heat of the battle". He had ample opportunity to cool down and acknowledge that he went a bit too far. But instead he doubled down with the weird justification that Ortiz think's he's bigger than the game and needed to be put in his place, as though he's the policeman of such things. WTF?
Maybe it's just lack of maturity from a pampered athlete and not that big a deal, but when combined with the years and dollars it will take to sign him ... well ... it gives me pause. Maybe his lack of success in the post-season is small sample size flukiness, (and I think that's the likely explanation), but maybe his nuttiness has been a contribution too.
Anyway, I agree with the posters who make the point that Dombrowski knows the guy much better than I do and if the reports are true that the Sox are targeting the guy, my doubts about Price are probably misplaced. Or maybe not.
Although Pedro ended up being a better deal than Pavano or Wright, who they did sign that year.
Red Sox Stats @redsoxstats 2m2 minutes ago
K. Law on TSN radio in Toronto today http://www.tsn.ca/radio/toronto-1050/law-hard-to-believe-jays-will-outbid-teams-for-price-1.399170…
He's been petty adamant since Price went to Toronto that it was purely a rental. The front office changes may alter that, but I got the sense he was speaking from info garnered from old
contacts when he worked there.
contacts when he worked there.
I'm curious why "Boston has an unbelievable amount of money to spend this offseason." Not questioning it so much as wondering what circumstances are driving it--Law sounds as if he means that the club has more money this year than they normally would. Why is that?
I wonder too, since I would say based on the AAV numbers that the Red Sox have less to spend this offseason than in previous years. Maybe he just doesn't follow the team's finances as closely as the people on this board?
Just for the sake of the argument, I'd really be interested in hearing your considered opinions if one reframes some of the considerations here. Thus, leave aside issues about whether Greinke wants to leave the pitching-friendly NL and his opportunities to hit. Also assume that you could get Price and Greinke for the same amount of money and reasonable years. Just to give some substance to "reasonable," assume a contract of 6 years, give or take. Also leave aside the fact that Greinke would cost a draft pick. You can consider the fact that Greinke is 22 months older than Price, but leave aside worries about whether he can psychologically handle Boston. Under these circumstances, would you rather have Greinke or Price?
Same price same years? Price, and it's not all that close. As good as Greinke is, Price is even better--and he's two years younger and he's pitched very successfully in our league for his whole career and our division for nearly all of it.
Of course it's a moot question because Price will not be available for the same price as Greinke; he'll cost more, as he should.
Of course it's a moot question because Price will not be available for the same price as Greinke; he'll cost more, as he should.
Well, the projected possibility we see a shift in the long standing philosophy and spend a ton of money on a starting pitcher does change things a bit. I mean for all the "we have X amount of dollars to spend on Y upgrades" budget crunching talk going on here coming in to the winter...that's really never been how this FO/ownership has gone about roster building. Or more specifically, it's not like we were going to have a plan to sign Price and then take a "we can't afford $10m+ on Kimbrel but can afford $5.5m on K-Rod because the latter will keep us under" stance when it came to adding the closer we wanted.
The LT has always been more of an accompanying consideration then a "cap" when it's comes to individual acquisitions. So if we are indeed planning to sign a FA starter, it never took much of a leap to project that we'd be spending above the threshold in 2016. Stretching that into a claim that we have "an unbelievable amount of money to spend this offseason" is probably taking it a bit too far though.
They can spend whatever they want. The assumption that they will not cross the luxury tax line is not necessarily a correct one and many people here that follow the teams finances closely believe they will, in fact, do that. Henry himself last offseason said he'd be willing to go over it to bring Lester back and that they would certainly consider crossing over it even if it was only for one season. If they sign a Price for $30, they can almost meet that alone with Ortiz, Hanigan and Koji coming off the books and that doesn't even consider Buchholz at another $13M option that he may or may not prove worth gambling on, the young SP making a Miley expendable and not many holes to fill going into 2017. Factor in that the luxury line will almost certainly be rising for 2017 and it's not hard to see that the Sox aren't nearly concerned as the $189M number as some here believe they are, since they almost certainly can get back under it a yer later.I wonder too, since I would say based on the AAV numbers that the Red Sox have less to spend this offseason than in previous years. Maybe he just doesn't follow the team's finances as closely as the people on this board?
I think HillBilly's antennae perked up because it's just strange wording. It's not like a family having more money to spend on Christmas this year because mom won the 50/50 at the church fundraiser. So to say they have a tremendous amount of money to spend this offseason seems odd or implies that he has some kind of insider knowledge that they are planning to go the route of LAD or NYY and completely blow through the cap line with no plans to pay it mind going forward, like they used to.
With two last place finishes in a row, I don`t expect them to be that concerned about the luxury tax. The extra tickets and TV ratings would make up for a small penalty tax. Signing an ace would really fire up the fans. I voted Cueto mainly because he`s a RHP and has no draft pick attached to him. If the front office is not concerned about the luxury tax, I`d like to see Price. I`m amazed at how some fans think we can just get who we want, when we want, like going grocery shopping and just get whatever we need. I`m not pointing the finger at anyone. It seems pretty mellow on here this winter.
Last season was great to me in that I like watching the kids come up to the show. Of course winning is better, but watching kids develop is pretty cool too. Free agency keeps the winter more exciting but it was nice to see teams of mainly homegrown players. As a player it had to really suck.
I`d like to add a couple things about the knew format on here (don`t know where to do this). I miss the "read next unread post button" I thought when this 1st came out I saw a "like" button on each post. That would be cool if we had one. I read this site multiple times everyday and really just want to say great post but don`t want to clutter threads. Anyways you guys do a great job on here and it`s much appreciated to a life long Sox fan who moved to the south.
Last season was great to me in that I like watching the kids come up to the show. Of course winning is better, but watching kids develop is pretty cool too. Free agency keeps the winter more exciting but it was nice to see teams of mainly homegrown players. As a player it had to really suck.
I`d like to add a couple things about the knew format on here (don`t know where to do this). I miss the "read next unread post button" I thought when this 1st came out I saw a "like" button on each post. That would be cool if we had one. I read this site multiple times everyday and really just want to say great post but don`t want to clutter threads. Anyways you guys do a great job on here and it`s much appreciated to a life long Sox fan who moved to the south.
@Buster_ESPN: There's a high expectation among execs involved in David Price bidding that Boston will generate highest offer. But as w/ Lester, (more)
@Buster_ESPN: … the next question will be: Where does Price really want to go? Lester turned down higher offer from SF to sign with the Cubs.
@Buster_ESPN: … the next question will be: Where does Price really want to go? Lester turned down higher offer from SF to sign with the Cubs.
If its close I could see Price head to Chicago. Despite his public denials I think having DD in the front office does actually help with Price. Price also seems to have some type of respect for JF considering the tweet about the diagnosis. I expect that Boston could have the highest offer but as we have seen before with this stuff anything can happen. At least George Steinbrenner isn't around anymore so no one has to worry about the Yankees making multiple 10 year 350 million dollar commitments to both Price and Greinke. I see the Sox coming away with Price just like I don't see Greinke leaving LA despite the club house stories.
Obviously this is just a guess, but my sense is that he goes to the Cubs. The money is likely to be comparable -- after $200 million, is there real meaning in even $20 million difference in offers? -- Price is reunited with Maddon, the Cubs are entering what's likely to be a competitive window, and he gets to pitch in the NL, which could boost his numbers and potential HoF consideration down the road. All we know about Price and the Sox is he has some relationship with DD, which is believed to be a positive, but his view of the "Boston baseball experience" is seemingly negative based on his comments about not-so-friendly tweets he's received from Boston fans.
I hope he's a mercenary and just goes to the highest bidder, assuming that's us. But based at least on what's known publicly, the stars seem better aligned for the Cubs. But who knows what his priorities are?
I hope he's a mercenary and just goes to the highest bidder, assuming that's us. But based at least on what's known publicly, the stars seem better aligned for the Cubs. But who knows what his priorities are?
What kind of offer will it take to be the high bid on Price? I mean, is it worth luring him to Boston if it takes 8 years and $250 million? Is there anyone who believes that the high bid will be less than or even equal to what Scherzer got (7/$210 million)?
Keep in mind that Scherzer's deal had a lot of deferred money. The same parameters without the deferral would represent a pretty extraordinary offer.
Great point, though I imagine Price's agent will use it as a floor, not a ceiling. And with the number of big spenders involved, I have a hard time believing that Price's deal will come in at the low end of expectations.
Boston spent close to $70M on international free agents in 2015 (including $63M for Moncada) which didn't count towards the luxury cap. This year they are only going to be able to spend $5M or so, given the constraints of going over in 2015, so there is no reason to believe they cant spend, say, $65M more on the major league payroll (inclusive of the luxury tax penalty) and still spend the same total amount as in 2015.I wonder too, since I would say based on the AAV numbers that the Red Sox have less to spend this offseason than in previous years. Maybe he just doesn't follow the team's finances as closely as the people on this board?
I'm not convinced that the Sox FO is committed to staying under the luxury tax this year. Two last place finishes seem to tell me this. More money coming off the books next year as well....Ortiz, Kojji, Buch, That's approx. 39 mil albeit we need replacements but they could come from youngsters (i.e. Shaw, Light, Johnson, etc.)