Man, I don't want anything to do with Hellickson. I've watched him pitch for the Phils a few times this season, and he reminds me an awful lot of Porcello LAST season, except he's pitching in the NL. We don't need that right now.
True, and he would be starting three times even before that arbitrary deadline, so the sooner they get someone the better
He is interesting for sure but I wonder how his stuff translates to the AL. More to the point, why would Milwaukee deal him when he is effective and cost controlled unless they think they are seeing lightening in a 30 year old bottle and use a deal as a chance to sell high.
I think DD could acquire someone over the ASB. Also, I think the schedule is NYY, off day, SF (2), MIN (4), DET, so we'd need a 5th starter for MIN (good entry test lol)
I just don't Pomeranz comes without losing one of the 4. He's pretty darn good right now, and pretty darn young. And Ross is about done this season. Which leaves a bunch of "who's that?" and Andrew Cashner. They'd need something beyond Shaw and Chavis or whoever else. Or I would if I were running that team.
I trade Devers in a heartbeat for Pomeranz. I like Devers, but of the 4 of them, he seems the least likely to be freaking awesome. Which is obviously a technical term.
If I'm San Diego I'd be fine with Shaw, Owens and Light for Pomeranz
No way Beane sells low on Gray unless there's really something seriously wrong there, in which case we don't want to buy.
Jesus, how long are we going to do this? The trade was hedging Donaldson (who was a late bloomer and potentially selling high) and buying low on Lawrie (who had been a highly touted guy for years and had more control left). Not to mention there was serious clubhouse concerns with Donaldson. It didn't work out for Beane, but it wasn't as crazy of a deal as people made it out to be and people need to stop harping on it.
Calm down Francis. It's just an example of Beane getting it wrong (spectacularly wrong as it turned out) when the previous widely held belief was that such a thing was not possible. No-one is harping on anything.
And Lawrie had just finished a season where he looked like he might just be putting it together. Also, people keep ignoring Barreto, who was (and is) a legit top prospect. What the A's got for Donaldson would be something like the Sox last fall trading JBJ, Devers, Joe Kelly and Brian Johnson. That's a pretty good haul. Whether it was the right move to cash in a talent of Donaldson's caliber at that point can be debated, but "selling low" doesn't seem like quite the right frame for it.
What about Gray's season makes you feel like he's the right move? I'm not seeing a ton of reasons we would think he'd improve heading from a pitchers' park to a hitters' park. Gray has given up 1, 3, 1, 3, 4, 7, 7, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 7, and 1 ER in his starts this season. The peripherals I'm looking at don't suggest he's much been much better than his 5-ish ERA. He's walked 34 and struck out 72 in 90.6 IP. He's given up 12 HR pitching in Oakland. He has a .799 OPS against, including an .878 by RHH. His hard contact allowed is up sharply, as is his HR/FB ratio. His K rate is down, his walk rate is up. Batters are making more contact in the zone, and swinging less out of the zone.
Well shit, he'd better be. If the Sox trade Devers for a half season of Hellickson, I'll start the Fire DDski thread myself.
This board most certainly harps on the Donaldson trade. Maybe not you specifically, but there has always been a permeating "why didn't we get him" vein that is completely ignorant of what Beane was looking for and the Sox ability to match that package.
Perhaps find one of those posts and jump all over that one then because that was clearly not what I was talking about.
You made the argument better than I could. I'd add that Gray has historically pitched above his peripherals and is likely to regress back to those levels rather than remain a 5 ERA guy. Especially with better D and run support. Plus he's still cheap and controllable.
Seems to me it's actually the opposite. It's anathema to say anything bad about Billy Beane, not just on this site, but on any site with a saber slant. It's like going after saber baby Jesus or something, so swift and brutal is the reaction. I find Beane to be overrated, always well protected by the curse (blessing, in this case) of low expectations. When his teams are terrible (which happens frequently), it's "well, look at their payroll"; when they do well, it's "that Billy, he's such a genius, doing it with a low payroll".
By recent performance, do you mean "the last season and a half," because they did make the playoffs the 3 years before that with 94, 96, and 88 wins.
It may happen "frequently," but it has happened less frequesntly than the times they aren't terrible. Since failure is a common occurrence with teams near the bottom end of payroll, the team's performance in his time as GM suggests that, yes, he is really good at his job.
As you say, in his successful seasons, Gray has always pitched above his peripherals. His BABIPs between 2013-16 are .276, .277, .255, .311. Is that one year of flukey elevated BABIP or three years of flukey suppressed BABIP? His rate stats were elite in his half season in 2013, but have declined steadily ever since. He's also a guy who has pitched better in the majors than his minor league record suggested he would: the Travis Shaw of starting pitchers, maybe.
Watch the Marlins. They need back-end of the rotation help and are still in the wild card hunt. Buchholz would be an interesting fit there. Miami hired Jim Benedict away from Pittsburgh last offseason. Benedict has a track record of "fixing" pitchers.
Is that who he is now? Because his ERA+ in the last three seasons was terrible, is 107 this year, and the career number is heavily inflated by a few early seasons of quality.
What kind of player do you think they get back for Buchholz? He's worth something as an extra arm in the bullpen and an emergency starter in case of injury. They're noy likely to get anything back of value even if they eat the entire contract.
You'd get a AAAA replacement for Aaron Wilkerson; maybe a low minors guy if you pay most of Clay's contract
Again, the operating assumption is an imminent DFA. Clay sure might be a guy who'd show some decent results with a change of scenery. Sox can't showcase him by giving him starts this month, but a non-contender can. Adding a low-minors arm or a high-minors filler player could be useful as DD sends other parts out in a trade or two.
