Right. Having a system where you always take out a guy after 4 innings even if he's dealing breaks down as soon as he gets his lunch handed to him in the next start and you have to pull him after 1.
Excellent analysis, but where's Whitlock? And before you say "the bullpen," that is not the plan right now.
Those were average outting lengths, not rigid caps (except the openers). But yeah, that's why the rules aren't designed to optimize pitching further.
Assigning any weight at all to a projection that's clearly wrong doesn't do you any good. Those things aren't hand adjusted based on circumstances. Sale's injuries last year weren't in any way predictive, and there's similarly no reason to assume Paxton hasn't recovered from his lat strain. Bello pitched more innings than that just in the minors this year, before making 11 starts for Boston.
So if Whitlock is in the rotation, either they're going with a six-man rotation or Bello is starting in the minors. No other real options.
We don't know it's clearly wrong yet. We also don't know it's clearly right (I'm not arguing it is). I'm simply arguing that it's another projection system, published on what I think we all accept as a reputable baseball site (BBRef), based on data points I like more.
There certainly is. The fact that Paxton picked up his $4 million player option suggests he doesn't think he'd be healthy enough to get a bigger deal in FA.
Plus there's the issue that most of our pitchers are worse 2nd time through the lineup & bad 3rd time through.
I'm not saying just Marcel is bad, every projection system is flawed and sometimes it's immediately obvious. Certainly nobody expected 17 starts from Paxton this year, he was going to be arriving fall or late summer at best. I believe the same is true of Sale's 2021.
I don't think that's the only possibility it suggests. He could have taken the option because he liked working with the Sox staff and didn't want to risk a different one. It could be that he's perfectly healthy but has no way to prove that to other teams over the winter. The Sox have access to his medical information and have followed his rehab/recovery from both the TJS and the lat strain. If they didn't think he could pitch at all, $4M wouldn't stop them from cutting him right now and signing someone else. As long as he's on the roster, the assumption has to be he will be healthy enough to pitch.
If starters are pitching fewer innings per start, why can't they pitch more frequently? If someone only goes 1 inning, you bring him back on one day's rest to be the first guy out of the bullpen.
Possible, but Paxton said that his comfort with the Red Sox training staff outweighed his desire to maximize value on the market. And Boras said that "the consideration really wasn't economic. Sometimes it's better to take the six-pack than it is to search for the champagne."
So (and I'm asking this genuinely), we're accepting Steamer as an adequate projection system to cite, are we not. I've seen it referenced dozens of times. Does anyone know of how to go look back at their historic projections to see how close they were, I can't find them.
On Paxton, I think it bears noting that he tore his UCL on April 6, 2021. So a late season return for him last year was on the normal timeline for such things. He actually rehabbed and there seemed (AFAIK) to be no red flags on the elbow itself, given that "Speier reported earlier this month Paxton reached 95 mph with his fastball and "threw his entire pitch mix" during a sim game in Fort Myers, Fla."
Which is why I basically look at him as the Rich Hill of 2023. Not likely to be in the starting five, available to fill in if (when) someone gets hurt, but not someone you expect to last all year.
I think the fangraphs projections are generally the most respected, but all of them are just algorithms that completely miss on critical aspects of the game, especially wrt injuries and rookies. Even fangraphs only sees Bello as pitching 98 innings this year, when anyone who follows the Sox would tell you that only happens if he gets injured (nobody who actually watched him play this year would project a performance drop-off so severe as to land him back in the minors for a third of the season, and the Sox very obviously want him starting, not in the pen). But his algorithm probably has a bunch of bad data from up and down rookies in their early career that just doesn't apply to him.
Then you're pitching him on short rest the next time it's his turn to "start" again. A rigid system with artificial innings limits doesn't work unless you have a large supply of backup relief pitchers to fill in the gaps. And then you're never going to hit the innings pitched total that you're looking for with those "starters."
Thank you. I didn't know of anything, but I wanted to ask. I've missed plenty of things in the past and will assuredly in the future as well, so figured it best to check.
As far as the numbers go, sure. But I'd suspect Paxton would have more grievance than Hill if he weren't used as a full-time starter, if healthy. No one is going to give Hill a multi-year deal at age 42, but Paxton could conceivably get a multi-year deal in next year's offseason, just as rehabilitated thirtysomethings like Alex Cobb, Drew Smyly, Chris Bassitt and others have.
YMMV who "gets to have grievances," but he's a well respected 10-year MLB veteran with whom our FO took the time to negotiate a complicated contract, so I'd assume there's a matter of mutual respect and good faith between both parties.
Sure, the IL scenario is a different situation. I took the bit that I quoted to mean that the "shuttle" can be utilized as a way to bring up other pitchers and in effect stretch out the 13 pitcher limit. My point was that the guys who look to be on the 26 man roster with remaining options are not the typical candidates to be moving back and forth due to the importance of their roles in Boston and the consequential mandated stay in the minors before being recalled.
In a sense, this applies to everyone. But I think some vets rather naturally have the expectation of being starters due to their pitches, history, and capability. I'd expect Paxton to be in that boat if he shows up to spring training with his full compliment of pitches at more or less their career velocity.
We've got the bullpen thread as well. But wherever we discuss it, I'm curious to know who people think the optimal bounce-up/down candidates for 2023.
My usual go-to for injury stuff is thebaseballcube.com (James Paxton's page, for example). The transactions tab on any player's profile will show IL stays, rehab assignments and call up/send down dates for optionable players. Unfortunately, it doesn't track day to day type stuff. I don't think any place does. I imagine it's hard to track stuff that might only get recorded if a manager or player happens to mention it to the media.
Second the plug for BB Cube, that is my go to as well when talking about concern on a player's projections / durability in terms of contract discussions and the like, they're great on that.
Let me preface this by saying that all of us can only speculate with what is currently on the roster and there is a chance that one or more of the guys listed isn't part of the equation at the start of the season. Soooo...working with players that are currently under contract, Sale, Bello, Whitlock, Pivetta, Kluber, Paxton, Jansen, Houck, Schreiber, Barnes, Martin and Rodriquez would seem to be the favorites to occupy 12 of the 13 slots on opening day. Of those, just Whitlock, Houck and Schreiber have options, but I can't see any of those riding the shuttle unless there is a big regression in performance. Crawford has options, but I think I might rather see him start the season as a starter in Woostah and be ready to fill in when injury hits. I believe that Josh Taylor has options left. If healthy he might be a candidate for that 13th slot, especially considering that ATM Rodriguez (possibly Paxton) is the only lefty pen option mentioned above.
Taylor made $1.025M last year. He has yet to sign a contract for the 2023 season. He's arbitration eligible so will probably get a slight raise even with the lost season.
Tendered just means they didn't cut him and intend to at least go to arbitration with him if they don't agree to something beforehand. He's under team control regardless, we just don't know what they're paying him yet.
Also Seabold's release never made it to the thread.
Anyone expecting or hoping for a rotation where 5 guys make 90-something percent of the starts is going to be disappointed. That doesn't mean the starting pitching is going to be bad, though. There are a lot of options, and some will get hurt or fail. But if they can juggle them the right way, they could have a rotation that is effective overall. I'm sure everyone is having flashbacks to the year of "He's the Ace" t-shirts, where we had 5 question marks in the rotation, and not enough answers.
Houck and Crawford are perfect compliments to Sale and Paxton. I expect those two to pitch very significant innings in that 4-5-6-7 inning slot.
At least with Sale and Paxton, *if* they're right, they're both really good. It's gives me a bit more optimism than if I was hoping that some league average pitcher stays healthy.
It's not a crazy thing to think. Personally I think he'll be good for 100-120 innings but I'm optiistic about the team in '23.
