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  1. Vermonter At Large

    What does Red Sox starting pitching look like in 2024?

    Yeah, this stat has to be considered really, really dodgy. It may also be skewed by the ridiculously small number of innings pitched by SPs, which I believe is last in MLB.
  2. Vermonter At Large

    What does Red Sox starting pitching look like in 2024?

    I extracted this from an article on MLB.com by the Brewers' beat writer: "Lowest xwOBA allowed, SP, since All-Star break: 1. Brewers: .287 2. Rays: .300 3. Twins: .302 4. Red Sox: .306 5. Blue Jays: .307" Discuss.
  3. Vermonter At Large

    Producing Relief Pitchers

    Lots of folks who know way more about the prospects than I do have been throwing a few names around suggesting that the organization is doing better in recent years. That may well be, but I wanted to add this blurb from the most recent MLB Pipeline midseason organizational rankings (Sox were...
  4. Vermonter At Large

    Producing Relief Pitchers

    Bello certainly is a success story, but I'm not quite as sold on Winckowski and Kutter as some folks seem to be. Otherwise, we will have to wait and see. We've collectively found ourselves drooling over prospect reports many times during the past decade, with very little to show. Overall, I...
  5. Vermonter At Large

    Producing Relief Pitchers

    To the arguments about whether or not guys like Crawford, Winckowski and Whitlock should be included under the subset of "development," it should be pointed out that none of them have more than a few months of decent performance out of the bullpen. Whitlock in particular hasn't even been...
  6. Vermonter At Large

    Producing Relief Pitchers

    You're being deliberately obtuse, which is why a lot of folks stopped posting here. I'm old and cranky and have zero tolerance for dicks. Of course, a guy can always learn how to throw a new pitch, or modify his delivery to not tip pitches, etc. The whole theme of this thread, however, is...
  7. Vermonter At Large

    Producing Relief Pitchers

    Drafting or signing a guy as a minor league free agent, instructing them and carefully nurturing them for a few years across multiple levels of the organization, guiding them and enabling them to get the most out of their natural talent. Dumpster-diving for other organizations' rejects is not...
  8. Vermonter At Large

    Producing Relief Pitchers

    If that is, in fact, the case then I will applaud Chaim Bloom for his genius. I eagerly await their arrival ...
  9. Vermonter At Large

    Producing Relief Pitchers

    Whitlock and Winckowski came from other organizations. Houck was a first-round pick from 2017. I'm not getting a "development" vibe here.
  10. Vermonter At Large

    Producing Relief Pitchers

    Good responses here, but at any given time there are 200+ relief pitchers on major league rosters, with perhaps 50 of them being quality late-innings guys so they're coming from somewhere. You'd think that even with ZERO intentional organizational effort, that the law of averages would work...
  11. Vermonter At Large

    Producing Relief Pitchers

    It has to be organizational DNA, and frankly it's ugly. Changing the top echelons of Baseball Operations rarely effects much change at all to day-to-day operations. They aren't drafting pitchers well, and they certainly aren't developing them. It's hard to blame Cora for mishandling a bunch...
  12. Vermonter At Large

    Producing Relief Pitchers

    There are already bullpen threads floating around that discuss usage and/or in-game management, but the Sox organization hasn't produced a single quality relief pitcher from their farm system since Matt Barnes, nearly a decade ago. Seriously, that is incomprehensible - heck, they've probably...
  13. Vermonter At Large

    USMNT: Hold My Beer

    Bingo. Wales made the tiniest of adjustments during half-time, adding one tall striker and pumping the ball into the penalty area. All of the skill, speed and depth advantage this team displayed during the first half just went, "poof." All of the talent in the world (and this team could be on...
  14. Vermonter At Large

    The 2023 Rotation

    Do you watch the games?
  15. Vermonter At Large

    The 2023 Rotation

    Most elite relievers pitch single-innings 2 or 3 times per week, and rarely pitch more than that single inning. He pitched multiple innings 63 percent of the time. That usage is abnormal. I'm not saying it was bad, just countering the original statement that he seemed to need more rest than...
  16. Vermonter At Large

    The 2023 Rotation

    22 late inning relief appearances, 26.1 innings, 22 hits. 4 clean innings. He didn't break often (only 5 earned runs) but it usually wasn't pretty and didn't inspire a whole lot of confidence to those of us who watch the games.
  17. Vermonter At Large

    The 2023 Rotation

    Well, to be fair they were using him in that awkward multi-inning stopper role, so had to give him a couple of games to recuperate. Even then, his effectiveness seemed to wane down the stretch. If they only used him for single innings, we should assume he could make more appearances. However...
  18. Vermonter At Large

    The 2023 Rotation

    I don't know, honestly. He wasn't consistent enough out of the pen last year. He seemed to be sulking about being moved out of the rotation, so it's difficult to say. He needs to learn to pitch to contact, which he seemed really unwilling to do. It's impossible to say whether or not the back...
  19. Vermonter At Large

    What does 2023 look like?

    Scroll past if you don't want a healthy dose of doom and gloom ... I can see no path to success with the 2023 Red Sox, primarily because they have ZERO bullpen arms. It is completely unreasonable to expect Bloom to "find" four or five quality bullpen arms amidst the flotsam and jetsam of free...
  20. Vermonter At Large

    The 2023 Rotation

    They've already got nine starters on the 40-man roster, and ZERO relievers above replacement value (counting Houck and Whitlock as SPs). Adding more back of the rotation starters does not make this team better, especially adding older fragile reclamation projects. The assumption that you can...
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