Will the real Red Sox please stand up? I repeat, will the real Red Sox please stand up?
- Thread starter soxhop411
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Spot on. And anyone arguing that the players aren't playing to their potential right now because Chaim didn't make a splash is just confirming his good judgment.
This is a mostly fun but flawed team that played out of their minds for a couple months, not one that was just a move or two short of seriously contending for a ring.
If Chaim thought the team had too many holes and wasn’t really a contender then he should have sold off whatever he could have. It is clear that the goal wasn’t to try and win this season, so why keep everyone on the team? I know that people will say that a first place team would never sell, but the Sox were not good enough to only trade for one impact player that was weeks away from being able to contribute. If the teams around you are getting better and you are not willing to do the same, ,then selling would have made more sense.
I suspect this is not right. I don’t think Bloom or any GM goes into the season with any set “plans.” I think they do what they do in the off-season and then see how the actual team plays.
I don’t think Bloom is sitting there going “damn, too bad this team wasn’t worse early in the year.” I think he is sitting there going “my analysis is that this team is good but not great, so we’ll look for reasonable deals at the deadline but I’m not going to go crazy, especially when it’s an obvious seller’s market.”
I think Our F'ingCity and Coachster have reasonable if unproveable ideas about this above. Personally, I wouldn't have been much upset by a sell-off if the returns were promising, but I assume I'm in the minority on that, and the reading here would have been highly entertaining if they moved JDM or Eovaldi out for anything short of a miracle haul.
When you're in first place at the deadline, with one of the best records in MLB (2 games behind SF, 0.5 games behind Houston on deadline day), you don't sell. Doesn't matter what your assessment of the team is, you do not sell. Period. If for no other reason than if you fall out of contention (as expected), the sell off will get all the blame. That's a good way for a GM to get himself fired. The team's in a position to play .500 ball and get a wildcard, you don't tank. THAT, more than not making "enough" moves or the "right" moves, is how you lose the clubhouse as well as the fanbase.
I'm also not sure who they sell at the deadline that might yield a prospect haul that justifies tanking and losing that player. Renfroe and Kike are the only ones I think fit the bill. Everyone else is either too expensive (JD, Eovaldi) to yield much of a return, too tied to the future of the club and/or the fanbase (X, Devers, Verdugo, Barnes), or is playing too shitty to be attractive to contenders (everyone else).
Standing pat or making marginal deals like they did is arguably the best path forward if you think this team is over-achieving.
I agree that you don't sell when you're in first. But I will repeat what I've said for a while(and am comfortable being on an island with this opinion) that Barnes would have been the one to look into trading. Perhaps at 30-31 he has finally figured it all out, but I would have explored selling high and getting a haul. I just don't see anything in his career performance that suggests that this is truly who he is any more than the former version is who he truly is.
So I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, but I do disagree that Barnes should be lumped in with X, Devers, and Verdugo as guys you wouldn't have considered trading, under different circumstances.
Look no further than this year’s Mariners for a perfect example of a GM selling off a key piece to a winning team playing above its head and losing the clubhouse in the process.
Honestly, I only lumped Barnes in with them because of the recent extension he signed. Without that, as a free agent to be, I'd have listed him with Renfroe and Kike as eminently tradable. Instead, the team's commitment to him warrants inclusion with the younger guys. Trading him at the deadline, just three weeks after signing the extension, would have been cruel and probably would impact future extensions (such as to Devers or Verdugo). Maybe I'm overrating it, but I still count trading Bronson Arroyo for Wily Mo Pena as one of the top five mistakes Theo ever made, and not because of Wily Mo. Because Arroyo had just signed a 3-year deal at a very team-friendly rate.
That's totally fair. But my cutthroat side tells me that the contract extension would have made the haul for him incredible appealing.
Well. This explain why Xander has fallen off a cliff offensively
View: https://twitter.com/SmittyOnMLB/status/1423842668229038082
View: https://twitter.com/SmittyOnMLB/status/1423842668229038082
The reading in here if they did that would have been totally justified if they sold off big pieces in the middle of a pennant race. This isn’t some small market.
View: https://twitter.com/PeteAbe/status/1424478648430645257?
The Sox were starting to fall back to early way before the trade deadline.
when our staters consistently fail to give you length the BP gets overtaxed. And other than today’s “offensive”. Breakout by the Sox we are 28th in Runs per game since the ASB. Trading for a 1B would not solve that when there are 7 more anchors that are struggling at the plate for the Sox.
This team has never been good and its surprising it took this long for this to revert to their actual mean
Since June the number of times our SP went at least 6
Richards 1! out of 11 starts (June 1st) (6.66 ERA in that span) (2-4)
E-rod 3 out of 11 starts (5 ERA during that span) (3-2)
Perez 2/12 starts (6.08 ERA in that span) (4-6)
Nate 5/11 starts (3-5 with a 4.13 ERA)
Nick Pivetta 5/12 starts 2-5 w/ a 4.73 ERA)
The Sox were starting to fall back to early way before the trade deadline.
when our staters consistently fail to give you length the BP gets overtaxed. And other than today’s “offensive”. Breakout by the Sox we are 28th in Runs per game since the ASB. Trading for a 1B would not solve that when there are 7 more anchors that are struggling at the plate for the Sox.
This team has never been good and its surprising it took this long for this to revert to their actual mean
Since June the number of times our SP went at least 6
Richards 1! out of 11 starts (June 1st) (6.66 ERA in that span) (2-4)
E-rod 3 out of 11 starts (5 ERA during that span) (3-2)
Perez 2/12 starts (6.08 ERA in that span) (4-6)
Nate 5/11 starts (3-5 with a 4.13 ERA)
Nick Pivetta 5/12 starts 2-5 w/ a 4.73 ERA)
I had some time to kill today, so here is the Red Sox lineup stats (individual stats) from June 1st to 8/7, decide for yourself if this team was really "one or two pieces away from winning it all"
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1crB2onPE0zRC-3AsKQKq7ZGHHwii2_9K6YKPb7hVLY0/edit?usp=sharing
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1crB2onPE0zRC-3AsKQKq7ZGHHwii2_9K6YKPb7hVLY0/edit?usp=sharing
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And here are the SP stats (More than just W-L) over that same time frame
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s80jUjXDH6td2A3GeSyOq-eDXB_KW58-oipks3d04jA/edit?usp=sharing
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s80jUjXDH6td2A3GeSyOq-eDXB_KW58-oipks3d04jA/edit?usp=sharing
This stretch is reminding me of a similar one for the '78 team. No, I'm not talking about the infamous early September collapse. I'm referring to the 2nd half of July that season, when they went 3-10 from July 20th-July 31st, almost all of that on one disastrous road trip where they were swept in KC and Texas and lost 2-3 in Minnesota. That one win against the Twins came in the 2nd game of a doubleheader; I was reminded of it yesterday when the Sox pulled out the nightcap in Toronto. In both cases it felt like just a temporary reprieve. The '78 Sox limped to the end of July with a 13-15 record for the month, and while they still had a 5.5 game lead, it felt like the wheels were completely coming off.
But that team came back and swept two games in Yankee Stadium to start August (the first went 17 innings and was suspended in 15th inning because of the then-American League curfew; I was in attendance and made my father stay for all 15 innings). They went 19-10 in August to right the ship, at least temporarily. And then the whole pattern played out again in September: catastrophe in the first half, furious comeback in the 2nd half. So I guess my point, to the extent I have one, is that the old bromide is true; you're not as good as you look when everything's firing on all cylinders, and you're not nearly as bad as you look on your worst stretches. This team clearly has flaws that were very much in focus on this road trip, but it also has a lot of strengths. They're getting a big bolster from the return of Sale, and getting back to Fenway should also help.
They've dug a hole for themselves, but let's see how this plays out. There should be better days ahead.
But that team came back and swept two games in Yankee Stadium to start August (the first went 17 innings and was suspended in 15th inning because of the then-American League curfew; I was in attendance and made my father stay for all 15 innings). They went 19-10 in August to right the ship, at least temporarily. And then the whole pattern played out again in September: catastrophe in the first half, furious comeback in the 2nd half. So I guess my point, to the extent I have one, is that the old bromide is true; you're not as good as you look when everything's firing on all cylinders, and you're not nearly as bad as you look on your worst stretches. This team clearly has flaws that were very much in focus on this road trip, but it also has a lot of strengths. They're getting a big bolster from the return of Sale, and getting back to Fenway should also help.
They've dug a hole for themselves, but let's see how this plays out. There should be better days ahead.
It speaks less to the team giving too long a leash to major league duds and more to the lack of upper-minors depth. Can’t DFA Danny Santana at the first sign of trouble when the replacement would be Michael Gettys. You can see the FO working to build it in the low minors, but it’ll be another couple years before it impacts the big club.
The guy was so sick on Tuesday, they thought he had COVID. Maybe he's reverting to the mean, or maybe he's trying his best while still recovering from something because his team needs him.
He's reverting to his mean. He was bad last year, if people have forgotten already. His WHIP before this year was 1.3, it's insane to think he could have maintained a 0.8 WHIP this year.
Over his career he has struggled in August, always (7.57 ERA lifetime in August). His fastball is as straight as a string and he's pumping it right down the middle of the plate.
The team doesn't need that. If he's sick or pitching like he's sick, IL him. If this is who he really is, get him out of high-lev situations ASAP. He cost them two games in Toronto, two games they COULD NOT afford to lose if they wanted to salvage the season.
There is nothing more demoralizing than seeing one guy ruin the rest of the team's efforts. Barnes did that TWICE this weekend. He shouldn't get a third chance.
It's been incredibly frustrating seeing this organization continually step on multiple rakes this season. I can't fathom the utter lack of urgency shown at every level of the organization. No rush to get Richards and Perez out of the rotation; letting Sale make that start on Saturday for Worcester was insane. I was at his start for Portland two weeks ago, he was ready to come up after that, because his stuff was sharp. No effort to upgrade the useless first base rotation, because they traded for an injured guy who doesn't play 1B. No effort to improve baserunning or situation late-inning pitching, multiple outs on the basepaths in Toronto and two Barnes specials. No concern expressed by the manager or GM about the endemic issues facing the club, Cora didn't want to address the poor baserunning after Saturday and Bloom hasn't done a thing to get the dead husks off the roster. And seemingly no concern about a slump as bad as anything experienced in Sept. 2011. Cora spent all of 2019 claiming everything was fine, when in fact it wasn't fine. Looks like he's doing that again.
It's utterly baffling. I understand the need to build up the farm system after years of neglect but you shouldn't be doing that at the cost of letting a team comfortably in first place crash and burn because you refuse to provide help where needed.
Also while I fully buy into and understand the analytic approach to team building and winning, it must be remembered that the players are still human and it would be very reasonable for them to get discouraged and/or to start pressing when things go south and no help or support is forthcoming.
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The roster construction issues have been debated plenty, but I thought it was interesting that you called out a lack of urgency. To me, running into all those outs is a sign that the team is playing with too much urgency, rather than not enough. I got the same impression watching Bogaerts and Devers exhibit frustration on the field. I'm not in the locker room, but I can imagine why Cora feels like the best move with this team is to try to keep everybody's blood pressure relatively low. That's especially true if you're right and players are feeling discouraged because Bloom didn't trade for Anthony Rizzo or Max Scherzer, which I assume are the "urgent" moves you wish they'd made?
No, I mean the lack of urgency by Cora in correctly/stopping the baserunning and poor AB issues. He's being far too laissez-faire. He needs to be addressing and stopping those errors, and that includes benching players if they continue to mess up. His lack of concern after Saturday's game was shocking to me.
I mean, I hope he's addressing those errors in the clubhouse, but I guess I just feel like, if Cora were publicly ranting and raving and threatening to bench anyone who gets thrown out on the bases, it would not necessarily lead to calmer, more rational in-the-moment decision-making.
This is not the time for being calm. This is the time for stopping the bleeding by all means necessary.
At what point does Franchy belong in the same category? He's 27 next month and has 442 career PA. What is a "chance?"
He has more careeer PA than Bobby Dalbec. I know they are spread out over a larger period of time but he has gotten a chance.
In the middle of a miserable slog of a roadtrip and a long day at the dome for the double-header, Saturday night after the Sox has scratched out the vitally needed win in extra innings was decidedly not the time for Cora to go off on the utterly crap base-running. The offensive attack seen vs. Ryu on Sunday supports not focusing on the negative the night before.
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Was he sick? Or did he have a symptom, like sniffles, that puts you on the list.?
Neither Vazquez nor Gonzalez was in the following day's line-up.
Also, can you provide examples of a manager getting good results from calling out his players publicly? I guess they exist, but I need someone else to provide them for me.
Franchy's about 10 months older than Dalbec.
Dalbec is the classic hot rookie hitter who the league adjusts against. His 2021 LHP numbers remain passable, but his RHP efforts are terrible. He showed signs of life in June 107 OPS+, but has otherwise not been good. He's had most of a half season to work on things, but. . .
Franchy's book has been out there longer. His ABs have really been scattered due to injury, then 2020. Up until this year his OPS+ has been close to league average or above. Some of that was SSS, but I think there was more reason to believe Franchy might put things together and take the next step, or settle in as an everyday averageish hitter with splits. For whatever reason he tanked earlier this year, was hot in AAA, and now is being used very tentatively in the majors.
I believe Smiling Joe was saying the organization was operating with a lack of urgency, rather than the players.
And I agree. I think the lack of urgency, along with some other points Romine and other folks have made, point to what I see as the Bloom/Cora era being one that maybe overvalues the long view. Almost fetishizes it. Yes, yes, in this game you gotta have the long view in mind, both within a season and from season to season. But there come moments you gotta act, make some bold and decisive moves, and hit the gas. The FO/Bloom had a moment here to act decisively, and didn't, given how they handled Sale's rehab, Houck, the deadline, and bench ...
I think the decisions in this period of the season indeed lacked urgency, creativity, a willingness to adapt, and a willingness to be bold. Very very cautious and this might be who Bloom is (we all pine for Theo, who seemed to have the ideal balance as a GM, but alas, nobody's perfect!) ... we'll see I guess, eventually.
Meanwhile - tangentially - it's possible for the players to play with both urgency and relaxation. That might seem like an oxymoron, but I think it's the "dialectical" state of all high level performance (I am in the performance biz FWIW, maybe not much). Overly energized or pushing and yes, you can force things, get tight. Overly relaxed or casual, and you can get sloppy, unfocused. Ideally, the players are playing with an energized relaxation, loose but driven and super concentrated.
EDIT: Sale himself said in interview after his start Saturday in Worcester that he was ready after his previous start and could have thrown the game he threw at Worcester for Boston.
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If Bloom fetishized the long view over short-term success, he could have followed Theo's lead from his early Cubs days, traded off every veteran player with a smidgen of value, and rebuilt the major-league team from the ground up. Make everyone available for the right price, even Raffy.
We're going to disagree, and completely. I can accept errors of execution, or an opponent's good performance. I cannot ever accept unforced mental mistakes, and particularly repeated mental mistakes. Baserunning errors should never happen and if they do then there should be consequences.
Cora IMO should have been blunt about the inexcusable mental errors on the basepaths, even after a win. That he laughed them off after Johnny Miller's question was a really discouraging sign. Barnes' mental mistake in throwing Springer ANOTHER fastball and leaving it over the heart of the plate at the perfect time to lose the ballgame can go into that pile as well.
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I'm not even asking him to name names. All he had to do was to acknowledge the seriousness of the blunders and lay out to the players the consequences for doing so. All he had to say to Johnny was that he was aware of the mistakes, that he was concerned about them, that they could never happen again, and then reinforce to the players the consequences for more basepath mistakes.
He didn't even take the question seriously enough to admit it was a problem. That's unacceptable. The results lately are pretty much proof that this approach is not working.
I haven't been this discouraged about the state of the team since September 2011. After blowing all their goodwill from winning the 2018 WS, then from an excreable 2020 season that started with them dumping their superstar and admitting they only cared about financials, the start of this season had gone a long way to healing those wounds. They've blown that grace in a month. Just awful. And neither Cora nor Bloom seem to have any answers.
The entire investment in Sale is wasted if he over-extended himself on the mound in a regular season game in the midst of a pennant race for a reeling team really needing wins. Yes, that could still happen even with the slower ramp-up, but his comments are not the last word on this.
While I've not fully agreed with most of what you've written the past couple of days, I fully endorse this. If Cora's unable to find a way to express gratitude for winning that game and point out whatever positives were to be taken from both games while being extremely candid in pointing out all of the shit that needs to be addressed by this team and coaching staff then he's not the genius manager that many here think him to be. Does he need to stand there and point fingers at individual players? Nope, a simple "You all saw what happened out there, it was horseshit. And it's not just tonight. Players and coaches alike need to be more aware of what is happening and tomorrow we get back to basics because this team's going nowhere if we don't get fundamentally better at playing this game." IMO, any player who can't get behind a statement like that doesn't deserve to wear the uniform. Consequences... I mentioned in the game thread that I thought Vaz needs a few days off. Not only because of the shitty base running, but right now he's lost at the plate. Plawecki was going to start yesterday regardless. Day after night game, Vaz DHed the first and caught the second game of Saturday's double header. Day off today, I easily start Plawecki again tomorrow or Wong if he's still up from Wooster. I mean if you're carrying three catchers this might be the time to give #3 a day behind the plate. As for Marwin... I've said over and over again, his flexibilty keeps him here. At a time when he should be either DFAed or the absolute last option off the bench he's getting getting multiple starts due to injury and covid.
Also, FWIW I don't see the offensive attack on Ryu as any sort of support as to how Cora may or may not have reacted. Great as it was to see, Ryu flat out sucked yesterday.
Everyone can catch the postgame here and reach their own conclusions as to how accurate your account is.
I'd rather have a manager that laughs things off in the press, and chews them out behind closed doors, than one who publicly airs dirty laundry. I suspect that, had they lost the base running game, he would have said something along the lines of "we can't be making those kind of mistakes, especially in close games."
Satisfying the media's or the fan's need for displaying tough-guy stances in public should be exceptionally low on his priority list
Satisfying the media's or the fan's need for displaying tough-guy stances in public should be exceptionally low on his priority list
I get this sentiment and most often agree with it, but a few things if I may. I view dirty laundry more along the lines of things happening in the club house between players, staff, management, ownership, etc... What we've witnessed has been a very public pattern of bad hitting, bad base running and bad pitching for a while now. I don't see a post game statement such as, "You all saw what happened out there, it was horseshit. And it's not just tonight. Players and coaches alike need to be more aware of what is happening and tomorrow we get back to basics because this team's going nowhere if we don't get fundamentally better at playing this game." as a tough guy stance made in public. I also I think it's good for players to see that sort of measured honesty as their manager sits and has to answer for what's going on with this team. Remember these managers are required to sit there night after night and face reporters. Again they don't have to be tough guys, nor do they need to pacify the press by giving them more than they need, but I see nothing wrong with a well measured statement that both addresses the question and sends a message.
Honestly I would have preferred that to what he did .... I mean, I WISH he had spent a bit more to get better reinforcements. But short of that, shit, yeah, a bold tilling of the soil would be exciting at least (though admittedly that might be coming next year what with so many contracts running out) ...
I guess, he was caught betwixt and between, and in some ways I can see why. I don't think he anticipated being in first at the deadline. And he kinda froze, because it required a serious strategic adjustment. He made a token gesture at moves (flotsam and jetsam for the pen, and an injured slugger who he got cuz he didn't have to spend much to get him), but didn't really hit the gas to any real extent.
Suit yourself. This manager hasn't been able to figure out how to get the team to play better. It's up to you to decide if that's OK.
We all know what Belichick would have said after the second Saturday game. "Great win but have a lot of work to do to improve and stop making errors" etc.
SJH, there really is not much a manager or GM can do when 9+ of your regulars in the lineup have an OBP under .350 since June 1st.. Did we expect Bloom to trade literally everyone on the roster? because thats what he would have had to do to make this team a WS " contender"
When you have a team scuffling at the dish, you need to make sure they are taking full advantage of every meager chance they get. That means.....not running into stupid outs on the basepaths on those rare occasions when they reach base.
The manager is not a helpless bystander. Make it a point of emphasis, tell them mental mistakes will not be tolerated, and bench or demote players who commit them. Emphasize to them they cannot "make something happen" but instead have to let the game come to them. When you see Barnes throwing meatballs, maybe don't put him in a situation where a meatball costs you the game. Etc.
A GM seeing such a lineup could do something crazy like.....not trade for an injured player.
Just to be clear, by far the biggest of these sins is the completely unacceptable mental errors on the basepaths. I expect that shit in Portland or Salem. It's not acceptable at the major league level.
They're still exceeding expectations for this season, and unless you think this two-week swoon is going to continue through the end of September they'll finish the year above what people expected of them
Personally, I'm mostly indifferent to the PR aspect of the job. But should Cora fluff a player, or soft pedal something, if such staves off a performance slump, or negative media attention? Probably.
But the primary job of the manager is to make choices that win individual games while keeping the team competitive over a long season (which includes overseeing training and coaching, and having input into staffing.) The results speak for themselves, the early good and the recent bad.
And when Cora accepts personal responsibility for bad decision-making, someone can link that for me.
But the primary job of the manager is to make choices that win individual games while keeping the team competitive over a long season (which includes overseeing training and coaching, and having input into staffing.) The results speak for themselves, the early good and the recent bad.
And when Cora accepts personal responsibility for bad decision-making, someone can link that for me.
Most people had them around 84 wins IIRC. Their current slide is having them stare down that target perfectly. The were up 4 1/2 games on Tampa on July 5th and today they are 4 games back. They have 3 games with Tampa this week and are playing horrible baseball. So, no, I do not think they will be finishing above where people expected. Tampa could easily end their season this week.
Again, if you're fine with them leading the division, the GM not adding any help at the deadline and watching them crater horribly afterwards, by all means enjoy the season. We all enjoy baseball our own way. Me, I prefer when my team doesn't cry poverty, trade its best player, punt an entire season, then sit idly by as their overachieving team crashes hard to earth because the GM doesn't bother adding anything useful at the trade deadline.
Their pythag at the break showed they were playing above their real numbers. An org and GM actually committed to winning would recognize that and add to the team in a meaningful way in areas of need, in this case 1B and RP. Bloom picked up an injured non-1Bman and two lousy relievers. I'm waiting for the inevitable JWH/Werner presser where they claim satisfaction in the year because they did not exceed the penalty threshold, which as we all know is the real purpose of owning a baseball team.