The Fallacy of the Anthony/Mayer/Teel "Window"
- Thread starter TomRicardo
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Putting this here for lack of a better place. Masslive has yet another joint out today that seems written solely from the point of pessimism.
https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2024/01/red-soxs-tom-werner-looking-forward-to-rookie-having-400-at-bats.html
I suppose he's assuming that Yoshida is our full-time DH (something Breslow has stated he doesn't see happening) and the outfield configuration is O'Neill in left, Duran in center, and Abreu in right field. But Breslow has said at every turn that we are planning to acquire a right-handed hitter, who presumably would see or share time at DH.
https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2024/01/red-soxs-tom-werner-looking-forward-to-rookie-having-400-at-bats.html
Christopher Smith is usually pretty measured but I don't why we need to view everything through a lens of catastrophe and mismanagement. Is it so outlandish that a promising rookie outfielder collects 400 PAs in his first full season? Why am I being asked to gnash my teeth about this?
I suppose he's assuming that Yoshida is our full-time DH (something Breslow has stated he doesn't see happening) and the outfield configuration is O'Neill in left, Duran in center, and Abreu in right field. But Breslow has said at every turn that we are planning to acquire a right-handed hitter, who presumably would see or share time at DH.
He seems to be just posing a question about relying on young players with small sample sizes, which seems to me like a valid baseball question. It was Werner who threw out the 400 ABs number.
An OF of Duran-O’Neill-Abreu with Yoshida at DH is..ok, I guess. But what happens when someone gets hurt or there’s underperformance? Refsnyder? Rafaela? The team desperately needs another OF/DH bat, i think that’s kind of clear. This offense could be pretty mediocre.
Yeah, I'm excited to see Abreu too, love his swing and am pretty bullish on him. I'm not quite sold on 400 AB's, though, and it certainly is a valid baseball question. I take in the writer's tone in every story, but he/she is entitled to write with the slant they see fit. That doesn't change the underlying facts, and thankfully now we have some of those to operate with. And nothing will change the fact that this kind of thing (Abreu) would have been an easier sell when some people still actually believed a word that came out of their mouths.
Sounds very much like valid questions that we’ve all had productive conversations about here. Sometimes a windmill is just a windmill.
If you truly think the writer is measured, then why not accept that he’s asking legitimate, good faith questions? I don’t read those questions as pessimism at all. They are the kinds of questions that this club must answer in the affirmative so we don’t post a third straight sub-500, last place finish.
And this brings me right back to the point I’ve been making today… we have precious few reliable batters in this lineup. Two. The rest all have some range of questions, from minor to gigantic. If even half of them underperform we’re probably screwed.
And also seem to be perfectly content to hand the kid the job at second base barring a spring training nightmare (please God no), so I'd say the answer to the question above is easily yes. Not to mention if Grissom struggles and Sale thrives, God help us all.... It's a damn big bet.
Yes Anthony’s “ascent” seems fast but I think some context is needed on why it appears as if he started from a lower place (you can’t have ascent if your prospect balloon is already in the stratosphere).
He was a late riser in *high school* that turned a lot of heads when he hit a ball 106 MPH a month before the draft and followed it up with a 450 foot HR a week before the draft (video here). Both with a wood bat. Players that rise late in HS can be tricky because teams generally will not draft a guy in the 1st-2nd when they haven’t already worked out a deal with their agent and he was committed to Ole Miss. So only a team willing to give him first round money to buy him out of that commitment would draft him, and the Sox decided to draft underslot in round 1 (with a prenegotiated deal of course) as well as in rounds 3-8 (see contracts here) to give him $2.5m after picking him 79th. Which is a long-winded way of saying he was a first round talent that might have gone early 1st if teams had more time to assess his wood bat numbers. While COVID was “over” in 2022 I wonder if there was still some effect on him being underscouted a la Evan Carter.
That's more than a fair (and yeah, sad) point, particularly if things stay absolutely static. I'm just trying not to let myself get caught up in my anger right now, and it's not easy.
If I squint a little I can still see some lower-key moves pretty easily. Parsing out exactly what Kennedy said, it didn't seem to me he was saying payroll would necessarily be excessively lower, and kind of hinted that it may not be by saying he "wasn't sure". I think he'd be damn sure if it were going to be drastic.
I guess what I'm saying is that by telling us not to expect anything earth shattering with the big names does not necessarily tell me for sure they won't be making a move or two (Paxton? Duvall? Turner?) to improve on the margins, and I haven't written that 10 mil off just yet.
But yeah, it would really ice the cake if it ends up in their pocket.
And it sure sounds like they'll add one, from Breslow saying it again and again and again and again.
I mean, sure, but isn't it fairly standard in the history of the game of baseball for young players with small sample sizes to grow into significant roles at the major league level?
There is never certainty — it's baseball — but why the handwringing? You all know as well as I do what the subtext of this article is. It's amplifying concern, alarm, jeopardy, or if you like, the specter of mismanagement, foolishness, villainy.
It also insults the reader with a lack of context. It's a concern because it feels like it should be, because we're the team that traded Mookie Betts, because Bloom traded Vazquez for this guy. We get a line about Abreu's advanced plate discipline, but there's nothing about his 97% arm strength, his well above average quality of contact, etc. And there's no context about how this routinely happens around the league. Josh Jung was the Rangers' starting 3B after putting up 100 PAs in 2022 with a 38% K rate that was ten times his walk rate. James Outman, a guy who never cracked a Top 100 prospect list and was the team's like #17-25 prospect, was their starting center fielder last year. Jeremy Peña was a low top 100 guy when he took over their starting SS job.
Abreu has mashed right-handed pitching, and what Werner said is that he's excited for him to handle the strong side of a platoon. Sounds great, I'd like it too. Will it happen? Only one way to find out, right? Abreu was better in his call-up last year than Benintendi was in 2016 before he was handed the job the next year. Obviously he was a higher ranked prospect, but was there widespread concern there?
I ask this in all honesty as I'm not attuned to the reality of the other 29 teams so I could be wrong, but isn't this the situation for most teams? I look at the Rangers and they hit very well but almost all those guys over performed and would we say that anyone but Seager, Lowe, and maybe Adolis qualify? Yankees have Judge and Soto for sure, Gleyber as well id say? The Diamondbacks only have a few.
This isn't on any larger point than this to be clear, I just find that reliable, above average bats feel difficult to get without some catch.
Or maybe the writer didn't intend it as such, but virtually anything that gets questioned about Red Sox roster management right now will have that subtext.
Problem as I see it is that the Sox have a few impact bats (Devers and Casas) and then a bunch of guys who look like 1-2 win players at best. The Rangers had two 6 win hitters (Semien and Seager), two more who were 4+ in Garcia and Heim, and 4 others (Jung, Taveras, Garver, and Lowe) who were 2 or better. So that’s 8 hitters worth more than 2 wins.
Sox had Devers at 3.1 fWAR, and then Duran at 2.4 and Verdguo at 2.0.
Rangers had four hitters better than our best guy, by a pretty huge margin.
(Obviously, defense is playing a factor here in fWAR and it’s not in the Sox favor. But fact is that our offense really isn’t looking that great).
That may be fair, but we now have fewer reliable bats than last year. When we went 78-84. I’m not sure why this FO is content with going backwards.
Look, I hope everyone overperforms and we win 88+ games.
Im guessing you mean Duvall and Turner. Duvall has an almost identical career wrc+ to O'Neill. Hes never been reliable in his career.
Turner is tougher to replace, but I think Grissom and Story at SS and 2B will be major improvements over what we trotted out there last year. Abreu also has the upside to be a better hitter than Verdugo. If we add one more hitter of Turner's quality, I think the team will actually have a better offense.
Are there a lot of question marks? Yes. Potential volatility? Yes. But there's tremendous upside as well.
I personally am happy to watch the kids. I also think theres still room to add. They said they'd probably stay below last years payroll, but if Spotrac is right that should mean theres still 15-20 mill to spend, and more if they dump some of the dead weight. Ymmv!
Turner and Verdugo. Not that Verdugo is great, but you know where the floor is.
I’m not saying there isn’t upside. There’s always upside in every MLB lineup. But at this point it’s not really debatable that there are more question marks heading into 2024 than there were in 2023. That’s disconcerting.
Did any player have a better 45 PA than Roman Anthony did at 19? Lars Anderson was better at 20 and was better a Single A at 19. Xander was better in AA for a more PAs at 19. Kind of hard to find many American player playing AA that young before the contraction of the minors in 2021.
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People make too much of a team's prospect rankings. There are 30 teams in the majors and if you rank each one's #1 prospect against each of the other teams', one will be ranked number 30. However, one or more teams could have a #2, 3 pick who would rate higher than that #30 prospect.
Look at JBJ: he was the Sox 2nd ranked prospect in 2013 and 3rd the next season but he only had three seasons at the plate with an OPS above .800 (2 in seasons of 55 and 74 games). He also had 4 seasons when his OPS was .566 or lower (3 seasons of 127 to 134 games and 1 of 43 games--.397). And there are other highly ranked Sox prospects who either didn't make the majors or had very short careers. Then there is Marcelo Mayer, who has suffered a wrist injury and shoulder inflammation since beginning in milb.
I agree - for sure - but take a look at the 2022 Rangers which are pretty much all the same guys as 2023 except for Josh Jung, just to look at year over year change. I say this because reliable impact bats would hypothetically mean year over year. Only four hitters with 100+ PA had an OPS+ over 100. Only one of those had an OPS over .800 (Lowe). Those four, Heim, and the anemic Kole Calhoun played in over 100 games. Only those five were above 1 bWAR and only Semien was above 4. Same names, different results.
It's to say that even year over year getting a team full of those guys is really tough. Texas was likely unfortunate in 22 and fortunate in 23, Boston doesnt have a Semien, but it's not unrealistic IMO to hope the Sox have guys that can go from 1-2 to 2-4 WAR guys either.
FWIW I agree with you and 8slim on the conclusion that the Sox could really use a 4-6 WAR bat or three and/or more reliability in certain spots... And that I think this is a 75-80 win team. I just don't think most teams have the kind of lineup full of above average bats year after year.
https://theathletic.com/5220049/2024/01/23/red-sox-marcelo-mayer-roman-anthony-kyle-teel-expectations/
Good article on Mayer, Anthony and Teel for those with subscription. I don't know how much I can cut and paste here without raising the ire.
Good article on Mayer, Anthony and Teel for those with subscription. I don't know how much I can cut and paste here without raising the ire.
Only direct quotes....the article doesn't say anything we don't already know / haven't discussed. Zero discussion of others.
“We’ve been ferociously protecting prospects in our minor-league system for a long time, going back to 2020, 2021,” Kennedy said. “And I think we’re at the stage now where you’re starting to see the results of holding on to young, talented players. We’re hoping we’re going to be competitive in 2024. That’s always the goal. I don’t think it’d be appropriate to offer a timetable on anything at this point.”
“We need to have a robust group of core, homegrown, talented players,” Kennedy said. “And there will be a day when we match up again, on a high-profile free-agent deal, but it hasn’t happened this offseason.”
“I think it’s unfair, it’s unrealistic to expect that every prospect we have becomes a major-league superstar,” Breslow said. “There’s a variety of outcomes that we need to be honest about. But I think the model, the blueprint for success here for a really long time has been developing stars internally, and also supplementing them with impact players either through trades or free agency. I think that’s the model that we intend to replicate.”
“We’ve been ferociously protecting prospects in our minor-league system for a long time, going back to 2020, 2021,” Kennedy said. “And I think we’re at the stage now where you’re starting to see the results of holding on to young, talented players. We’re hoping we’re going to be competitive in 2024. That’s always the goal. I don’t think it’d be appropriate to offer a timetable on anything at this point.”
“We need to have a robust group of core, homegrown, talented players,” Kennedy said. “And there will be a day when we match up again, on a high-profile free-agent deal, but it hasn’t happened this offseason.”
“I think it’s unfair, it’s unrealistic to expect that every prospect we have becomes a major-league superstar,” Breslow said. “There’s a variety of outcomes that we need to be honest about. But I think the model, the blueprint for success here for a really long time has been developing stars internally, and also supplementing them with impact players either through trades or free agency. I think that’s the model that we intend to replicate.”
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In the latest Substack from Red Sox Stats, he talks about how over the past few years he has heard/been told that the Red Sox org wasn't thrilled with the level of attention the prospects were getting and the scrutiny they were under for their nightly performances on social media...
My lord has that changed. They are putting a hell of a lot of pressure on these prospects to hit
I really liked McCaffrey's piece. I am all for prospects but she sums up the concern I have had counting too much on them at the same time and what then happens if they falter.