2023 Starting Rotation
- Thread starter Rovin Romine
- Start date
Opponents have been aggressive against Sox starters in the zone all year long- and it’s shown up in the incredible # of home runs Sox starters have given up. 1.53/9, which is better than only Colorado, Oakland, and Cincinnati. Sox starters have the sixth lowest BB rate and 7th best K rate. 7th best xFIP, but the 5th worst ERA.
So, why are they giving up so many homers? Bad luck? Too predictable? Throwing too many over the heart of the plate? It’s kind of odd; the peripherals suggest the starters should be good but the results haven’t matched.
So, why are they giving up so many homers? Bad luck? Too predictable? Throwing too many over the heart of the plate? It’s kind of odd; the peripherals suggest the starters should be good but the results haven’t matched.
Yup, it's hard to believe it's all luck. Bello and Crawford have been pretty good.
I set the minimum to fifty innings pitched, which is why you don't see Paxton there, but he's at Pivetta levels.
The times I have seen Whitlock in person his stuff has looked really good - particularly the change.
Since May 26th Boston Starters are 8th in ERA and SECOND in xFIP. No team over that time has as large a differential. It's actually shocking how good the starting pitching has been.
The biggest surprise to me is how quiet the bats have gotten.
Since May 26th Boston Starters are 8th in ERA and SECOND in xFIP. No team over that time has as large a differential. It's actually shocking how good the starting pitching has been.
The biggest surprise to me is how quiet the bats have gotten.
Last year their walk rate was very bad. They announced publicly (IIRC) that their goal was to throw more strikes, get ahead in the count, etc.
Now they've kind of overcompensated, I think. Regardless of the individual HRs, that many means there are just too many HR-able pitches being thrown in or out of the zone.
Might not need a real 5th starter for a while...
View: https://twitter.com/SPChrisHatfield/status/1674888373318701056
View: https://twitter.com/SPChrisHatfield/status/1674888373318701056
Sale might be eligible but it remains to be seen if he'll be ready to go on 8/1. Regardless, it's probably a good thing to minimize exposure of a 5th starter who was at best 9th or 10th on the depth chart at the start of the season. Not to mention avoiding more bullpen games.
Well, he started throwing this week, and normal Spring Training workup is what, 6 weeks? So he may be ready in 5 weeks to go 5 innings. We shall see.
Sale-Paxton-Bello would be championship front-end rotation if they were ever all healthy at the same time.
Agree. But you can also easily see a scenario where this team gets on a postseason roll, right? Just gotta get in the tournament somehow.
If Story and Sale come back, and the rest of the team gets healthy, you can see a team capable of being a dark horse candidate to win it all. We could have Whitlock and Houck as our 4 and 5, then push them to the bullpen in the playoffs. Our staff could be Really Good come the playoffs.
So many "if" scenarios.
The opposite could be true as well.
I agree - there's a lot of volatility here in terms of possible outcomes.
As far as the rotation goes, we might consider grouping pitchers into "effective stuff" categories. Sale, Paxton, Bello have shown the ability to go deep into a game with ++ stuff. Houck (and to an extent Whitlock) have shown the ability to go twice through the order with ++ stuff. That bodes very well for a short series, with aggressive bullpen managing, which Cora has shown he can do when needed.
Health, and replicability in Sept/October is the unknown. (And squeezing the occasional extra win to get there, of course.)
This team feels like it’s a year away, but I agree they have some real talent if they can find a way in. I was actually surprised to see they only have two teams to leap to get the last WC (TOR and LAA). I was expecting it to be more after the recent losing streak. Still an improbable uphill climb though. They can’t really afford any more bad stretches between now and the trade deadline.
But man, still fun to dream how they might do with a healthy Sale/Paxton/Bello in the postseason.
Red Sox starting pitching in June: 3.7 ERA, xFIP 3.7. Both are 4th best in baseball.
If the offense wakes up this is a playoff team. I suspect it won't happen fast enough and we will sell Paxton (who will be worth a lot)
If the offense wakes up this is a playoff team. I suspect it won't happen fast enough and we will sell Paxton (who will be worth a lot)
If “roll” means a week, then yes. And that can make for a fun postseason, as we saw in 2021. That was an 8 game roll where they went 6-2, before the bottom fell out.
Unfortunately I’m struggling more and more to see how we can get into the dance if all we can do is roll for a week at a time. 10 excellent starts between Bello and Paxton in the month of June… and we go 13-15. Ugh.
I agree. I'm cross posting something I wrote in the trade deadline thread because I think there really is a good core here heading into next season.
I'm on board with extending Verdugo and while Duran seems much improved, but I'm not quite ready to say that he's good now. I'd like to see this level sustained for a bit as he does seem to regress at times. If Duran is the player that he seems to be developing into I'd like to see him slide into the Duvall role next season and Rafaela slide into the Kike' role. RFsnyder is the 5th OF and along with Yoshida in LF I think it's a slightly better OF than this season. Masa/Duran/RFsnyder in LF, Duran/Rafaela in CF, Verdugo/RFsnyder in RF. While Story prefers to play SS, I would like to see a MI rotation of Story at both SS and 2B with Rafaela at SS and Arroyo (or replacement) at 2nd. I've gone on record as saying I prefer the DH slot being cycled through the lineup, but Turner has a player option for next season so we'll see how that all plays out. If he's back and seems able to back up the corners again then that's what's likely to happen. Devers is locked up, Casas is the first baseman and Wongers should be part of a platoon behind the plate. Obviously there may be a move or two that alters things a bit, but I think that is a pretty decent jumping off point for '24. Health is always a wild card, but a line up featuring Story, Rafaela and an improved Duran should improve the middle of the field defense immensely. I think Bloom looks to get whatever he might for Kike' and Duvall. It won't be a helluva a lot, but you need filler in the minors or might find a pen guy who benefits from a change in scenery. I'm not big into my team losing games, but a bad showing in the next 10 games or so will pretty much dictate what happens with Paxton.
For some reason this friendship makes me happy.
View: https://twitter.com/jcmccaffrey/status/1675113402073489408
View: https://twitter.com/jcmccaffrey/status/1675113402073489408
View: https://twitter.com/smittyonmlb/status/1675568394601472001?s=46
Right elbow tightness for Whitlock
Right elbow tightness for Whitlock
Oh good. Definitely nothing to be concerned about for a guy who’s got a UCL under his belt already…
Whenever he comes back just have him relieve. Starting pitching just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for him.
That’s Whitlock’s third injury since being moved to the rotation. He simply can’t start and stay healthy.
Enough already. Get him back to the pen where he was dominant.
Enough already. Get him back to the pen where he was dominant.
Yeah, he definitely wouldn't have gotten injured if he hadn't stretched himself to pitch [checks notes...] one inning today.
Sure, it couldn’t possibly be the accumulation of innings as a starter, as he’s gotten more ineffective as time goes on.
Common sense must always take precedence. This player gets injured as a starting pitcher. Perhaps the organization can set aside their asinine focus on “efficiency” and start paying attention to the reality in front of them.
So Pivetta is probably the most obvious transition into the rotation if Whitlock is out?
6/18 - 43 pitches
6/23 - 6 pitches
6/28 - 56 pitches
7/2 - ? ptiches
6/18 - 43 pitches
6/23 - 6 pitches
6/28 - 56 pitches
7/2 - ? ptiches
Fair, but he did have a 1.86 ERA across 3 levels in '18 & was pitching pretty well at Trenton in '19 (3.07 ERA over 14 starts) when he was lost to TJ in July & missed all of '20 before being drafted in the Rule V in December '20.
Maybe not due to being injury prone per se, but likely due in significant part to that injury.
I thought they protected Brooks Kriske over him but I suspect it wasn’t quite that simple or ironic.
Kriske was a reliever and Whitlock was a starter, obviously Kriske didn’t work out but I don’t think they considered them interchangeable at that point.
https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-rule-5-draft-protection-2020#:~:text=NEW YORK -- The Yankees,from the Rule 5 Draft.
Roansy Contreras (traded with others for 2 years of
Oswald Peraza (middle infielder - played this year and last, still young, seems legit.)
Yoendrys Gomez (pitching well as a 23 yr old in AA this year.)
Alexander Vizcaíno (done in 2021.)
That’s just the guys they added then, there were other prospects like Medina on there already too.
Vizcaino is an interesting one, he supposedly had a dominant changeup from early on, as good as the best MLB ones, but after NY traded him for Rizzo, he quit baseball soon after, just never showing up to camp (in 2022, I think).
Here is my post from April 2021 about this, NY had 9 very young SPs on the 40 man already:
https://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/garrett-whitlock.33279/#post-4380369
https://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/garrett-whitlock.33279/#post-4380369
Until Sale/Houck come back I'm not sure there are five other starters on the 40-man roster. Unless Kluber has figured something out.
They could be completely out of starters and SJH would still be beating the drum of moving Whitlock back to the bullpen.
He got injured in September last year after 2 months of being a.... reliever
I’m all for giving a guy a shot to start but I just think at this point he’s proven he may not be able to carry a starters workload. So what’s wrong with eventually putting him back where he was dominant
BECAUSE I’M RIGHT.
FFS.
The team stepped on a rake when they initially removed him from the bullpen. In the time since they’ve stepped on more rakes by keeping him there despite increasing evidence that it does neither him nor the team any good.
If by some grace he manages to come back from this latest injury and they put him back into the rotation again, they’ll have stepped on more rakes than Sideshow Bob.
Pretty much every pitcher is more effective as a reliever! But you do need starters. Personally, I think Whitlock was great as a reliever but the restrictions in his usage (no back to back, etc.) made it really difficult to use him optimally. It was certainly worth a shot to see if he could be an effective starter, given the teams lack of effective starters. It may not work out.
I think it tends to be smart to give a guy every last shot at sticking as a starter before he gets moved permanently to the pen. Even slightly-below league average starters are more valuable than middle relief, IMHO. Particularly when a team has an an above average offense (fingers crossed).
So I’d keep Whitlock in the rotation when he’s healthy again.
Meanwhile, seems like a no brainer to give Pivetta another chance to start.
So I’d keep Whitlock in the rotation when he’s healthy again.
Meanwhile, seems like a no brainer to give Pivetta another chance to start.
I can't find the quote, but I believe Cora said after the game he likes Pivetta in his current (bullpen) role. Walter seems to be the next man up.