Why is the pitching so horrible?

The Gray Eagle

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So the pitching, huh?

Here are some issues:
The pitching has been beyond horrific on the recent road trip: 7, 10, 6 and 13 runs allowed in the 4 games so far.
The pitching has been bad for the whole month of June. Last 28 days: 9-15, 5.02 in 213 IP with 40 HRs allowed, and 17 unearned runs also allowed.
2 or 3 of the 5 rotation spots have been godawful all year, no matter who they try in them. Price, brought in to be the ace, has a 4.68 ERA.
The back end has been insanely bad: Buchholz 5.90 ERA in 12 starts. Eduardo Rodriguez: 8.59 in 6 starts. Kelly: 8.46 in 6 starts. O'Sullivan: 7.94 in 2 starts. Owens: 5.11 in 3 starts. Elias: 15.88 in 1 start.
The only other in-house options are unappealing.
The bullpen has been overworked, which usually means it is going to get worse as the season goes on. Koji lately has looked like a 41-year-old at the end of his rope, as his ERA has soared over 5. Smith is out for another year, and hasn't been replaced.
The team ERA is 10th in the AL this year, after being 14th last year and 10th the year before.
The team has really struggled to develop any young starting pitchers for almost a decade now, despite spending a lot of high picks on pitchers.
That has led to going outside the organization to try to bring in starting pitchers. Most of those who have been brought in have failed or underperformed.

Why is the pitching so bad, and why haven't they been able to fix it, despite throwing loads of resources at it for a long time?

From Bradford on WEEI.com:

“The Red Sox have failed to either evaluate a good chunk of their starting pitching candidates, or fallen short when it comes to getting the most out of them. Either way, this is an enormous piece of the blame pie.

They thought the eight-start Joe Kelly of late last season was going to carry over. For whatever reason, it didn't. They thought Roenis Elias' stuff would play in some capacity, particularly since he already had 49 major league starts under his belt. Those hopes have disappeared.

The optimism hovering around Henry Owens after some signs of promise a year ago isn't anywhere to be found, with the lefty giving up five runs over four innings Sunday after a solid previous start with Triple-A Pawtucket.

Buchholz can't find any sort of consistency, and seems desperate for direction. And then there is Rodriguez, whose constant need to fix different aspects of his delivery reached the point of ultimate frustration in his 2 1/3-inning, nine-run, 11-hit disaster at Tropicana Field.

Sure, Steven Wright has worked out. But let's be honest, other than the continued belief from Red Sox manager John Farrell there hasn't been a need for any dramatic guidance.David Price? The guess here is that he will be OK, but what isn't acceptable is a 4.68 ERA in his first 16 Red Sox starts. And the Red Sox are 10-5 in Rick Porcello starts. That's good enough.

But something hasn't been right. The Red Sox starters have virtually the same ERA then they did at this time a year go. Consider the financial commitment, the offseason approach, and preseason predictions, that is pretty damning.

This month the Red Sox starters are 5-10 with a 5.39 ERA. The relievers, meanwhile, have been trying to hold down the fort, but are slowly wearing out. On this current road trip the bullpen has pitched more innings than the starting pitchers. That's not going to work.”

From Speier in 108 Stitches on how bad the pitching has been:

“For the first time since the disastrous month of September 2011, the Red Sox have allowed six or more runs in six straight games. In the past 100 years, they’d had 15 such streaks. They didn’t reach the postseason in any season where they endured such a run-prevention rut.

Sox have now been outscored 22-0 in the first inning dating to June 12 and 29-6 in the first inning in the month of June."

Rodriguez was sent down, and Buchholz will get another start. At some point soon they will need a 5th starter. Speier on the in-house rotation options for now:

"Righthander Aaron Wilkerson, a 27-year-old former indy leaguer, may have positioned himself as the leading candidate for the spot. He allowed two runs (both on solo homers) in seven innings while striking out eight and walking none on Monday for Triple A Pawtucket. In seven starts with the PawSox, he has a 2.25 ERA with 47 strikeouts and 10 walks in 40 innings (though the five homers he’s permitted in that span underscore some of the questions about whether he has the stuff to beat big league hitters.)

Sean O’Sullivan, who allowed one run in 15 innings while striking out 10 and walking none in his most recent two starts, was named International League Pitcher of the Week."

Speier on developing young pitching:
“The Red Sox are in a years-long cycle of failure when it comes to developing young starters, one that has thrown them time and again into the free agent market where risk is enormous and rewards are fleeting yet still come at a considerable cost. At some point, if the Red Sox want to position themselves to fulfill their ambitions of sustainable success, they need to become an organization that cultivates young pitchers, develops them through the minors, and graduates them to the big leagues to stay.

In retrospect, it appears the Red Sox were so eager to get Rodriguez in their leaking rotation that they rushed him back before he was ready, at a time when he was experimenting with his delivery in an effort to reclaim the missing power to his stuff. He was left to try to find solutions on the fly in the big leagues, an imposing – and sometimes impossible – task for a 23-year-old with limited big league experience, even one who seemed to lay a significant career foundation last year.

Fairly or not, Rodriguez is now at something of a fork in the road, and the Sox are next to him at that same crossroads. He is the most promising young Sox starting pitcher to arrive in the big leagues since Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz almost a decade ago."

Drafting and developing pitchers:

"Here’s a list of the pitchers taken by the Sox in the top two rounds of the draft starting in 2007:

2007: Nick Hagadone– supplemental first (No. 55 overall): -0.2 career WAR
2008: Casey Kelly– first round (No. 30 overall) -1.5 career WAR
2009: Alex Wilson– second round (No. 77 overall): 2.5 career WAR
2010: Anthony Ranaudo– supplemental first (No. 39 overall): -1.0 career WAR
2010: Brandon Workman– second round (No. 57 overall): -1.2 career WAR
2011: Matt Barnes – first round (No. 18 overall): 0.2 career WAR
2011: Henry Owens– supplemental first (No. 36 overall): 0.5 career WAR
2012: Brian Johnson– first round (No. 31 overall): -0.1 career WAR
2012: Pat Light– supplemental first (No. 37 overall): -0.1 career WAR
2012: Jamie Callahan– second round (No. 87 overall): In High A Salem
2013: Trey Ball– first round (No. 7 overall): In High A Salem
2013: Teddy Stankiewicz– second round (No. 45 overall): In Double A Portland
2014: Michael Kopech– first round (No. 33 overall): In High A Salem
 

joe dokes

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It;'s a good question, but like everything else, how relatively shitty is it?
I'd guess of the top of my head that St.Louis probably has a large number of homegrown pitchers. Tampa seems to develop pitchers. But how many other teams staffs have multiple top draft picks from the last 10 years?
 

O Captain! My Captain!

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Out of that list of pitching draft picks, Hagadone was part of the Victor Martinez trade, Kelly was a major piece of the Adrian Gonzalez trade, and Alex Wilson was part of the Porcello trade. Ranaudo seemed to turn into nothing at all before being traded for Robbie Ross. So I wouldn't say the Sox got absolutely nothing out of those guys, though none of them have been the success their draft position would lead you to hope they would be.

After that we're into the Brandon Workmans/Brian Johnsons/Henry Owenses of the world, who are probably still too young to assess.

Along with that list, I'd say that we could probably call Rubby de la Rosa and Allen Webster failures of either scouting or development, since they were relatively well-regarded pieces received in the Punto trade who turned into sort of nothing as major leaguers, but they got flipped for Wade Miley, who became Carson Smith, so not a complete nothing there either.
 

simplicio

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It;'s a good question, but like everything else, how relatively shitty is it?
I'd guess of the top of my head that St.Louis probably has a large number of homegrown pitchers. Tampa seems to develop pitchers. But how many other teams staffs have multiple top draft picks from the last 10 years?
Yeah, outside of Ball we haven't spent any high first round draft picks on pitching. We haven't had much success with development obviously, but it's not like we had great materials to work with, and none of the guys who have left have gone on to perform any better elsewhere.

That said, given the talent we have coming up through the system now, I'd much prefer to stay off the free agent market this winter and instead use some good money to go see what types of coaches we might be able to pry loose from other organizations.
 

Sampo Gida

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What strikes me is that the Red Sox have not successfully tapped into the amateur international free agent market for young pitching, except for Tazawa and Felix Doubront. Almost nothing else from Latin America, except Eduardo who was a product of the Orioles system, and Rubby who came from the Dodgers system. I suppose they signed a bunch of guys but certainly have not developed any notable Latino pitchers in recent memory. All of their recent top homegrown guys are good old boys like Lester, Buchholz, Bard, Papelbon, etc. Not a very diverse group. I am sure there is an reasonable explanation, perhaps a flaw in the development program for pitching south of the border, poor scouting, or just bad luck. Something
 

Max Venerable

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In the 12 years (1998-2009) that Jason Varitek was the Red Sox primary catcher, the team's average ranking in ERA was between 4th and 5th in the AL. In the 7 years since, it has been above 10th.

Sure, there are other factors at play, but Varitek was always said to be superlative at working with pitching staffs, and calling games. Not a classically great, athletic defender, but a guy that could manage the game.

The revolving door behind the plate since Tek retired has perhaps been part of the problem.
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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What's Joe Kerrigan doing? Not a good manager, but I always felt like he was a great pitching coach and could get above average performances from replacement level pitchers.
.... and that's my issue here. I understand that we don't have the staff to compete with the best teams, but we have a legit no. 1 who is underperforming, and a bunch of guys who I feel could be at least doing... just better!... if they had a better pitching coach. (always excluding Wright from this discussion)
 

Savin Hillbilly

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The wrong side of the bridge....
Here's something to chew on: of the current top 30 pitchers in MLB by fWAR, here's how many were top-10 overall picks:

7

I think most people would agree that the Mets have the best starting rotation in baseball--certainly the best mostly-homegrown rotation. Of their five starters, here's how many were top-10 overall picks:

1 (Harvey)

Here's the mean overall draft position of the four Mets starters who were drafted:

97.25 (Harvey: 7, Syndergaard: 38, Matz: 72, DeGrom: 272

It's really not about what we've done with our top picks. It's about scouting and development of pitching all the way through the draft and the system. Some organizations seem to be really good at this. We do not.
 
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reggiecleveland

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The fact 7 of 30 fWAR are top ten shows a lot of success. Very few players are top ten picks. It would not be reasonable to expect most of any group to be top ten picks.
 

Philip Jeff Frye

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To reopen an old wound, maybe the pitching would look a little better if we had spent some money on Jon Lester?
 

Larry Gardner

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It's really not about what we've done with our top picks. It's about scouting and development of pitching all the way through the draft and the system. Some organizations seem to be really good at this. We do not.
I'm not a minor league expert at all, but my guess is that power arms should at all levels average at the minimum a K/inning, and I'd hope that their WHIP isn't 1.5. I took a look at baseball reference.com a bit ago, and not crazy about what I'm seeing:

AAA- only starter who hasn't been a major leaguer with a K/9 over 9 and a decent WHIP is Aaron Wilkerson who is what, 27? (10.8 and 1.073)
AA- only starter with a K/9 over 9 and a decent WHIP is also Aaron Wilkerson (9.7 and 0.947). Justin Haley is just under 9 with a K/9 of 8.7.
A+- Only starter with a K/9 at 9 is Travis Lakins but he's allowing tons of base runners (9.0 and 1.624)
A - only starter with a K/9 at 9 is Marc Brakeman with tons of base runners (9.4 and 1.48)
A - our untouchable Anderson Espinoza is at 8.5 and a 1.267 WHIP

I realize that these guys are all in different phases of development, and aren't MLB-ready in any way (except hopefully Wilkerson), but Savin made a good point when he said that we don't do a good job of developing our starters. It doesn't look like help is on the way from the organization at any time soon-- I would think that in other orgs (and I haven't looked) would have power arms somewhere, who are dominating at their level. It doesn't appear that we have any starter, anywhere, who is young and dominant (striking out hitters and allowing few base runners).
 

simplicio

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To reopen an old wound, maybe the pitching would look a little better if we had spent some money on Jon Lester?
Maybe, but maybe he'd also look worse in the AL than he has in the NL. Maybe he's having a great year. Maybe Price is having a bad year. Maybe that's one year for both of them out of 7 year contracts and it doesn't have much to do with the discussion at hand.
 

Adrian's Dome

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Maybe, but maybe he'd also look worse in the AL than he has in the NL. Maybe he's having a great year. Maybe Price is having a bad year. Maybe that's one year for both of them out of 7 year contracts and it doesn't have much to do with the discussion at hand.
I think what he was getting at wasn't choosing between Price and Lester. With a little better resource allocation, they could've had both of them.
 

simplicio

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I think what he was getting at wasn't choosing between Price and Lester. With a little better resource allocation, they could've had both of them.
You consider spending $50 million per year to take a couple starters into their late 30s to be a good allocation of resources?
 

geoduck no quahog

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So, prior to Spring Training the Red Sox starters shook out like this: Price, Buchholz, Porcello, Rodriguez, Kelly...which sounded pretty good.

Then it quickly developed into: Price, Porcello, Buchholz, Kelly, Wright

Now it's: Wright, Porcello, Price, Buchholz, Bar of Soap

The AL average starter's WHIP is 1.36

Porcello and Wright are well under that at a very good 1.14
Price is at 1.24 (excluding today)
Buchholz: 1.47

(Team: 1.36 which shows how bad the #5's have been for Boston)

Can the season be saved? It appears so.
 

moondog80

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I think what he was getting at wasn't choosing between Price and Lester. With a little better resource allocation, they could've had both of them.
In 2010 they drafted Bryce Brentz 2 picks ahead of Noah Syndergaard. Obviously, they suck at drafting.

See how easy it is to do this with hindsight?
 

Hagios

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You consider spending $50 million per year to take a couple starters into their late 30s to be a good allocation of resources?
That's the modern market. You either have a stable of young pitchers under team control, or you pay 25 million dollars per year to take starters into their late 30's. Good GM's can distinguish themselves by drafting well*, but there isn't much a GM can do to get an above average pitching staff on below market dollars by going through the free agent market.

*Is being a good GM even a repeatable skill? If 30 guys each flip a coin ten times, some are going to get heads 6 or 7 times through luck. It doesn't mean that they're good at flipping coins. Are any GM's beating publicly available information in a way that is consistent with a p value of less than 1/30?
 

Savin Hillbilly

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The wrong side of the bridge....
Not exactly comparable, but sure. Great point.
Point: missed.

Here are some more ghastly errors in that draft: Chris Sale lasted to #13. Some of the guys drafted ahead of him include utility infielder Christian Colon and total washouts Deck McGuire, Michael Choice, Barret Loux and Karsten Whitson. After that, a bunch of other losers were drafted before Christian Yelich, and a bunch more before Aaron Sanchez, and, a few picks later, Syndegaard, Taijuan Walker and Nick Castellanos.

A holy crapload of picks further down--after, among others, Ryan LaMarre and Garin Cecchini--were Kole Calhoun (264) and Jacob DeGrom (272--the Mets got Harvey, Syndegaard and DeGrom all in the 2010 draft).

Point: drafting is a highly inexact science because development is a long and winding road and it's impossible to predict with any certainty who's going to navigate it successfully. We can say, based on the overall record, that the Sox have been poor at drafting and developing pitching; but critiquing individual picks is easy in hindsight, and pretty close to meaningless.
 

Eck'sSneakyCheese

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I've heard rumblings for a few years now about the Sox system being too reliant on pitchers adding a cutter to their repertoire. For instance looking quickly at Brooks, Price threw 1060 four seamers and 602 cutters last year. So far this year he's thrown 280 four seamers to 344 cutters. His numbers were pretty static before this year. Porcello threw a cutter 0.8% of the time prior to 2015. It jumped to 8.5% last year and has come down a little this year at 7.8%. I did a little more digging into this year with Porcello. In the 10 starts he threw 6 cutters or less he's 7-1 with a 3.08 ERA. In his 6 starts throwing 12 or more he's 2-1 with a 5.24 ERA. Could it be as simple as telling Farrell and Willis to cut the cutter?
 

Adrian's Dome

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Point: missed.

Here are some more ghastly errors in that draft: Chris Sale lasted to #13. Some of the guys drafted ahead of him include utility infielder Christian Colon and total washouts Deck McGuire, Michael Choice, Barret Loux and Karsten Whitson. After that, a bunch of other losers were drafted before Christian Yelich, and a bunch more before Aaron Sanchez, and, a few picks later, Syndegaard, Taijuan Walker and Nick Castellanos.

A holy crapload of picks further down--after, among others, Ryan LaMarre and Garin Cecchini--were Kole Calhoun (264) and Jacob DeGrom (272--the Mets got Harvey, Syndegaard and DeGrom all in the 2010 draft).

Point: drafting is a highly inexact science because development is a long and winding road and it's impossible to predict with any certainty who's going to navigate it successfully. We can say, based on the overall record, that the Sox have been poor at drafting and developing pitching; but critiquing individual picks is easy in hindsight, and pretty close to meaningless.
Point: missed.

I never said anything about the draft. I was talking only about major-league acquisitions and misuse of payroll, but again, thanks.
 

simplicio

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I've heard rumblings for a few years now about the Sox system being too reliant on pitchers adding a cutter to their repertoire. For instance looking quickly at Brooks, Price threw 1060 four seamers and 602 cutters last year. So far this year he's thrown 280 four seamers to 344 cutters. His numbers were pretty static before this year. Porcello threw a cutter 0.8% of the time prior to 2015. It jumped to 8.5% last year and has come down a little this year at 7.8%. I did a little more digging into this year with Porcello. In the 10 starts he threw 6 cutters or less he's 7-1 with a 3.08 ERA. In his 6 starts throwing 12 or more he's 2-1 with a 5.24 ERA. Could it be as simple as telling Farrell and Willis to cut the cutter?
Interesting. Is it the cutters that are getting hit, or is it that he's going to them when nothing else is working for him? And is Price using them regardless of where his four seam velocity is on any given night?
 

Schadenfreude

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From the perspective of winning championships, I find it impressive that in each of the 2010, 2012, and 2014 seasons, of the Giants' predominant starting five, four were drafted by the Giants. For the Red Sox in 2004 and 2007, Schilling was the only pitcher of the predominant rotation who was drafted by the Sox (in 1986; he was traded in '88 before pitching at the MLB level.) In 2013 the Red Sox rotation of course featured 'Sox draft-picks Lester and Buccholz. Success can be had either way, developing it in-house or by trade/FA acquisition: I'm good with either approach so long as the Red Sox put together a plan for success and execute it.

Just my own $0.02 worth, with Lucchino gone and Dombrowski in charge of baseball operations, I have less uncertainty about who is commanding the ship and the direction it is taking.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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*Is being a good GM even a repeatable skill? If 30 guys each flip a coin ten times, some are going to get heads 6 or 7 times through luck. It doesn't mean that they're good at flipping coins. Are any GM's beating publicly available information in a way that is consistent with a p value of less than 1/30?
Of your question is whether drafting is a repeatable skill, I believe it is not. In all sports. The more chances you have, the better the outcomes but except foe the one or two outliers, drafting is just luck.
 

Plympton91

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You consider spending $50 million per year to take a couple starters into their late 30s to be a good allocation of resources?
Would you trade Pablo Sandoval, Allen Craig, and Rusnay Castillo for Lester? There's your allocation of resources. Basically getting Lester for free, and maybe throw in the $10 million they flushed down the toilet on Justin Masterson, who was the worst pitcher in baseball before "earning" that contract, just to make sure he resigned.

To tie it into the thread title, maybe the Red Sox pitching sucks partly due to their "grass is always greener" approach to building a staff. Maybe they should use a MoneyBall technique and recognize that having prior success in a Boston uniform is something they should be willing to pay a significant premium to retain, rather than looking for players to take hometown discounts. There is not a single major free agent pitcher who left this team or pitcher traded at the deadline since 2011 that they haven't spent more money to replace and gotten less production. Maybe they should have offered Lester $110 million in the spring of 2014, and maybe they should have sat down with Lackey and renegotiated that minimum salary option, and maybe they should have told Andrew Miller they are a progressive organization that would pay a relief ace a closer's contract even if he wasn't going to get to pitch the 9th inning up by 3 runs all the time. But what do I know.
 

Rasputin

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Of your question is whether drafting is a repeatable skill, I believe it is not. In all sports. The more chances you have, the better the outcomes but except foe the one or two outliers, drafting is just luck.
I believe it's only like 85% luck. It's like blackjack. The very best you can do is just barely beating the house and can easily get swamped by a little bad luck in big spots. It takes a very long time for draft and develop strategies show they're any different than any other and most front offices don't last long enough to really know the difference.

The thing is, with something like this where the vast majority of picks fail, the difference between a tremendous class and a crappy one is luck with one or two guys.
 

jimbobim

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Shoot me if they trade these two.

Dombrowski has been given carte blanche by Boston ownership to do what he needs to do to win now and has high-end prospects to deal, such as Yoan Moncada and Andrew Benintendi.

That high caliber of assets will give the Red Sox an opportunity to discuss players who might be off-limits to other teams, the evaluator said. "It's like the Red Sox will be able to buy from The Special Reserve," he joked, comparing Dombrowski to someone who is taken into an exclusive part of a wine cellar.

http://espn.go.com/blog/buster-olney/insider/post?id=13343
 

nvalvo

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Well, I really hope that "evaluator" is right about the "special reserve" part, but I don't see it. As I said in another thread, I don't mind dealing premium prospects if we have premium talent coming back, but I don't see a lot of elite young pitching on teams that aren't expecting to contend now or soon.
 

Snodgrass'Muff

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What's Joe Kerrigan doing? Not a good manager, but I always felt like he was a great pitching coach and could get above average performances from replacement level pitchers.
.... and that's my issue here. I understand that we don't have the staff to compete with the best teams, but we have a legit no. 1 who is underperforming, and a bunch of guys who I feel could be at least doing... just better!... if they had a better pitching coach. (always excluding Wright from this discussion)
You can't just exclude Wright from the discussion because he doesn't fit neatly into your narrative. He's performing significantly better than expected. And Porcello has seen significantly better results than last year. Kelly has done more of what he's done since the moment he set foot in Boston, so nothing unexpected there. Eduardo Rodriguez has been exposed as having a serious lack of secondary offerings, which has been the issue with him since he was in Baltimore. Buchholz has sucked, but he was teetering back and forth between brilliant and awful long before Willis was the pitching coach.

I'm not above criticizing Willis, but if you're going to criticize him, at least be consistent about how you are going about it. If Kelly, Rodriguez, Price and Buccholz are on him, then Wright and Porcello should be in the "pro" column. Same thing goes for Farrell. Criticizing him is fine, but attributing failures to him while dismissing successes is just blowing hot air. That also applies to dismissing all of his failures while pointing to the successes, of course. I know you aren't talking about Farrell here... just making a general observation.
 

Soxfan in Fla

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You can't just exclude Wright from the discussion because he doesn't fit neatly into your narrative. He's performing significantly better than expected. And Porcello has seen significantly better results than last year. Kelly has done more of what he's done since the moment he set foot in Boston, so nothing unexpected there. Eduardo Rodriguez has been exposed as having a serious lack of secondary offerings, which has been the issue with him since he was in Baltimore. Buchholz has sucked, but he was teetering back and forth between brilliant and awful long before Willis was the pitching coach.

I'm not above criticizing Willis, but if you're going to criticize him, at least be consistent about how you are going about it. If Kelly, Rodriguez, Price and Buccholz are on him, then Wright and Porcello should be in the "pro" column. Same thing goes for Farrell. Criticizing him is fine, but attributing failures to him while dismissing successes is just blowing hot air. That also applies to dismissing all of his failures while pointing to the successes, of course. I know you aren't talking about Farrell here... just making a general observation.
Fair enough. It's safe to say that more are underperforming than over performing or performing to expectations.