Red Sox Offseason News and Notes
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
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Homer prone though. 2.0/9 last year, and 1.4 vs LHP. And it wasn't a fluke.
EDIT: What SJH said.
This is great. There’s something to be said for making a volume of churnable bullpen acquisitions, which I was annoyed DD didn’t really do.
Osich had a pretty lovely 22.6 K-BB% vs. LHH last year. Here’s the full sum of guys who posted better than that (min 30 IP).
Pretty good company for a guy no one’s ever heard of.
Probably not worth divining anything from it, but adding a third power lefty arm in the bullpen — on top of a 60 percent lefty rotation — may mean they’re comfortable handing Darwinzon the full-time closer job, which in turn means Workman is trade bait (which is smart, imo).
Osich had a pretty lovely 22.6 K-BB% vs. LHH last year. Here’s the full sum of guys who posted better than that (min 30 IP).
Cole, Yates, Verlander, Green, Corbin, Kahnle, L. Jackson, Drake, Pomeranz, Gallegos, Hendriks, Morton, Bieber, Robles, Boyd, Lugo, Bumgarner, Harris, Ray, Scherzer, Paxton, Giolito, Osuna, Montas, Chafin, May, Lamet, and Osich.
Pretty good company for a guy no one’s ever heard of.
Probably not worth divining anything from it, but adding a third power lefty arm in the bullpen — on top of a 60 percent lefty rotation — may mean they’re comfortable handing Darwinzon the full-time closer job, which in turn means Workman is trade bait (which is smart, imo).
One tidbit about Osich: the Chisox messed with his pitch mix this past year, ramping his cutter use way up at the expense of his 4-seamer and changeup. This corresponded with much better control (walk rate dropped from the 5s to 2.0) but more FB and more HR.
But they dumped his 4-seam FB rate to 0% in August and September and he pitched great.
Yeah, good call, the data looks much more interesting when you break it down by month. The highest uptick in cutter usage was actually early in the year, and at that point his 4-seamer usage was around 20%, with his other pitches pretty much off the table. He was getting knocked around hard May through July. Things changed when they ditched the 4-seamer, decreased his cutter usage somewhat (though it was still the dominant pitch in the mix), and increased his use of the slider and changeup. From August 17 through the end of the season, he allowed just a .465 OPS, with a 2.41 ERA, 20 K, 4 BB and just 1 HR in 18.2 innings.
If that last six weeks is something he can build on, and not just a SSS blip, he could be a good dark horse pickup.
What I see in Osich's Brooksbaseball card is a pitcher with good stuff (two-seamers with decent movement at 96!) but no clear approach or consistent repertoire. His teams have tried a lot of things with him, and nothing's stuck. That seems like an interesting guy to bring to Spring Training and tinker with.
I was surprised to learn Osich made 14 appearances of two or more innings last year. He gave up two runs, total, across all those appearances. I’m sure the leverage was very low in these kinds of appearances, but it would still suggest he isn’t completely hopeless against RHB, despite his awful YTD splits against RHB.
He has an option left, as well, per Fangraphs.
Smart money says this is a AAAA arm who gets some Josh Smith type run, but at a cost of nothing but a 40-man roster spot, I can’t complain about it.
That good side-topic fits here:
https://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/hangover-seasons.27933/#post-3503198
True but Workman is injury prone. The reason why he's still under team control is because of this. I like him but if someone is willing to give up assets then you think about it.
On the other hand...you can roll the dice and give him the job for the full season and if you're out of it and he's pitching well then you could seek a pretty damn good return. I'd keep him until July but I can certainly see why you would trade him.
He had one major injury, which was successfully treated with surgery. Prior to that year, he had seasons of 131, 138, 141, and 148 innings as a starter/swingman. Since he came back, he's thrown 68, 71, and 71 innings as a full-time reliever. How is that "injury prone"?
He's had one injury, period. At least, one injury that was worthy of a trip to the IL. He's been under team control for so long not because of injury (he accrued service time while on the IL for Tommy John surgery) but because they maximized his time on the Pawtucket shuttle (no service time accrued while in the minors). Since returning from TJS, he's been one of the most durable relievers on the roster, as his innings/appearances totals demonstrate. Far from injury prone at all.
I wonder what's taking Martinez so long to make a decision? Seems like he knew everything he needed to know six weeks ago. Is it possible he's talking to the Sox about an extension? Or at least is this a Boras move where you wait as long as you can to see if the team will panic?
I'm guessing that at least some part of this is that is that during that six week period the Sox have had a huge hole in the front office. I'd think Martinez might like to see that situation settled before playing his hand.
Guys generally take the full window here, it's only 3-5 days. Strasburg and Chapman are the other two big names who can opt out and neither of them have announced yet either, all will have to do so very soon.
I mean on the surface you're correct. However he did have set backs on the road back which kept him from contributing. So thats why I feel he's kind of injury prone. Not the Rich Harden way mind you. But yeah he's still a higher risk than normal to get hurt again.
I think in this case “Who the GM is” was highly correlated with “Are they freaking for real with this $208 million cap crap?”
If it’s $208 or bust, then I imagine playing for a team whose success is beholden to whether God smiles upon the aging and creaky left arms of Sale and Peice over the next 3 years is less fun than signing a similarly priced deal with one more likely to be a real contender.
He has had ONE injury and the rehab/recovery wasn't perfectly smooth or on the speedy side. Since he fully returned from it (e.g. activated from the IL stint), he's had zero set backs and zero further injuries. He's no higher a risk to injure himself moving forward than most any other pitcher. One can argue that his success this year or his curve-heavy approach isn't sustainable, but injury concern should not even be mentioned as a reason to try to "sell high" on him.
Perhaps splitting hairs, but it wasn't just the GM position that was vacant. If JD has any interest at all in renegotiating he might need someone in place with whom to do so.
Hello, Dr Make-Some-Shit-Up.
He isn't injury prone, and nothing in his history points to him being a higher risk than normal to get hurt again.
Regardless of how serious the Sox are about $208m, I doubt that they have any real interest in renegotiating to give JDM more than what's provided under the current contract. They probably think that it's still a pretty fair deal, and therefore won't consider going higher unless and until there's some indication that some other team is willing to pay more. I think JH's comment's the other day reflect this.
So I think JimD is probably right, at least that this is the single most important factor in whether to opt in or out.
Next season seems much more likely for him to opt out, the contract is front-loaded so he'll make $23.5M this year. Assuming he kicks ass again, it seems a lot more likely that he'd opt out of 2/39 as opposed to the current 3/62.
We can agree to disagree about feeling that the guy is an injury risk but he did pretty much miss almost 3 seasons. Anytime that happens you need to be cautious. I'm not advocating trading the guy but that's got to be a red flag going forward.
We can agree to disagree about the color of the sky, too, but it's been blue the past 3 years and pretty darn consistently, too. I'm going to guess it will remain Blue for the next couple of years, but you have the right to disagree
He missed TWO seasons to one injury, but hey, it's not like that stuff can't be researched online or anything.
He got a PRP injection in April of 2015, then when that proved ineffective, he had Tommy John Surgery in June. He did a rehab assignment in 2016 (20 innings) but basically ran out of time before the season ended (plus he pitched like shit in those rehab assignments). He spent 2017 and 2018 on the Pawtucket shuttle, a victim of having options more than anything else as he was healthy (68 IP and 71 IP respectively, all in relief).
Right. However, if he was able to help the team he wouldn't have been on the shuttle. He was for what its worth effective in 2017. At one point he was really primed for a big role in the pen after failing as a starter. His injury issues probably started at the end of 2014 but who knows.
He was essentially the exact same pitcher in 2017 and 2018, at least while on the big league roster. He was plenty effective, the team was short on option-able pitchers, so he spent time in Pawtucket.
2017: 3.18 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 39.1 IP, 37 K
2018: 3.27 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 41.1 IP, 37 K
Keep digging though. You've almost got no one convinced he's injury prone.
I believe I said he was effective in 2017...so not sure how you posting his numbers from 2017 counters an argument. The shuttle probably had as much to do with workload management as it did with option years. Anyways...Point is that if you miss multiple years from TJ there's going to be a risk involved. Thats all I was saying. I never even advocated trading the guy I just simply said that if you were to trade him now thats a possible reason to do so.
Right. Did his elbow start hurting right on April 13th? I'd probably guess that it happened before that and the guy probably just thought it was normal wear and tear until then. And before anyone asks yes I have torn elbow ligaments before but I'm also not a professional athlete so its not really applicable here. Again this has kind of hijacked this thread. Like I said I have my opinion about TJ being a medical red flag and you have yours.
It is long past time for Ned Martin. can't understand why he has not received that honour yet.