This seems more in character for Cora, and what I agree was likely happening on that mound.
Martin may be back Wednesday, but I'm not sure it's wise to rely on him to be his regular shutdown self the very first time out after an IL stint. Ideally if he gets into the game Wednesday, it'll be in a lower leverage situation so he can ease himself back. Also ideally, neither Sims or Garcia (or Jansen for that matter) is needed tonight.
I suggested in the game thread that with an 8-2 lead and several other options in case he failed, Cora wanted to see how Criswell would bounce back after a 2-inning appearance and one day of rest. He went 1 inning, then 3 against NYY and Sea last week with a day in between, but otherwise, this is a new role for him.
Keller was scheduled to start tonight for Worcester (rained out anyway) so he seems like the most obvious choice.
It might have something to do with the weather, as the performance of the offense seems a direct inverse.
MLB OPS by month
Mostly seems like it's cutters and fastballs getting crushed, even though they're throwing fewer of them.
Indeed. There were a ton of stories about it. Other teams didn't even have to do a deep dive into the pitch data, all they had to was follow Boston media and bloggers...
So two new pitchers getting the call for tomorrow (with Paxton to the IL). Presumably it will be Weissert and Horn. The only other options on the 40-man are Priester and Gonzalez.
I had the same theory, thanks for pulling the actual data @simplicio. Don't think there's any doubt that the sweeper puts outsized pressure on some guy's elbows, also not surprised to see he's still throwing a ton of them given how good it's been for him.
I think the pitch mix is probably also highly dependent on the lineups he's facing,
I wonder if the inconsistent usage is partly a "how am I feeling today?" thing.
Yeah, the team came to Whitlock and Giolito and everybody and was like "throw a sweeper!" and pretty much immediately two of their arms fell off. It makes sense to be super careful with these guys.
Raises a philosophical question: What if the sweeper makes 8 pitchers significantly more effective for every two careers it ends or interrupts (the numbers are invented)?
Don't try to sneak a trolley problem into this bullpen thread. I had enough trolley problems for my life in my undergraduate degree
Feels like you're forgetting how quickly some of our starters can come apart. Cora has to have a quick hook for some of these guys, and on top of that he's trying to shepherd them through the rest of the season way above previous innings totals and down a starter again.
I have a feeling the Red Sox (and other teams) are managing games like this because the overall major league pitching talent of these teams are not so good. Hitters are better than ever and so few starters are good matchups third time through the order, you get all these starts between 4 and 6 innings.
Yup. Every team has pitching injuries but losing Giolito was especially painful for this team since he was, at a minimum, an innings eater. They really need to find some bankable starters this offseason.
there is no such thing as the bolded.
I meant guys who have demonstrated that they can pitch a lot of innings absent some kind of elbow injury, which obviously nobody can predict.
Well, that equivalent is going to have to be Sims or Garcia. Robles, like them, was a deadline acquisition. Also worth nothing that Robles didn't get off to that great of a start in August before becoming the go-to guy in September. So it's conceivable that anyone on the roster could step up in a Robles-like way for this team, not just an acquisition.
So we have the balance of over exposing starters or over exposing relievers. I think the trend of not getting 18 outs from a starter has swung as far as it should, and openers and bullpen games have likely peaked. I think some of the new any-pitch pitching machines (which I had spent years saying "why doesn't some engineering team at MIT build that for the Red Sox so they go hit Rivera cutters for ten minutes before the ninth inning AB) reduces some of the third time through issues.
Are we allowed to use this thread for offseason pitching options? I don't see another existing thread on the subject, so I'll add some stuff here.
The counterpoint to this is that there's a chance that 2024 is an outlier and Duran won't come close to replicating this kind of success in the future, so now's the time to cash in and acquire something the team desperately needs (cost-controlled #1/2 starting pitcher).
I mean, nothing is guaranteed, but an athletic outfielder who's durable and had outstanding peripherals as a hitter for nearly two hundred games in a row, who's worked himself up to becoming a good defender, who steals a ton of bases, who's also cost-controlled for his prime - that kind of player is generally a better bet than ANY pitcher, whose arm could fall off at any moment. Look at all the arms we pined after this past year! Half of them are injured or performing horribly. We need pitching, but we don't need to send our very best player off to get it.
