Given our early season fixture congestion and our starters aren’t stretched out yet, i imagine we’ll have several long men on the Pawtucket shuttle aka nominally on the minor league roster, but soon swapped up to the bigs to extend the staff.
I agree, but he's also got a weird profile so I could see the new pitching group deciding to use an option.
Maybe you’re playing chess and I’m playing checkers with bullpen construction, but Bernardino looks nasty, especially against lefties. We shall see.
I think the metaphor to use is that this season is going to be a marathon and not a sprint. With the amount of innings they need to fill and cost of pitching ($ or talent) they need to keep everyone they can in the system.
I agree with you, he was one of our best relievers last year, but the how of it is a little mysterious. He doesn't have velocity, he doesn't have a ton of movement, his extension sucks, yet it all still works somehow.
Who would have thunk that both the Lucases would not make the opening roster ?!!
Where do we think the innings are going to come from? I noted earlier that there are ~1400 innings a season. Averaging 140 innings per 5 starters (which would be a huge success) is only 700 innings. Said another way, if all 5 starters make 25 starts and average 5 innings per start (which would also qualify as a huge success), that leaves 37 games that need a starter. And 775 innings that someone needs to throw.
I think we've touched on this before, but it's a good question to ask, and I don't think anyone has provided a range of bullpen-inning numbers as you have.
I think the general consensus is that a pitcher should add 25-30 innings year to year.
Yeah, I think B&B are counting a big uptick in innings for starters this year, at least until health or effectiveness get in the way, and hopefully injury luck won't be so catastrophic again.
Bello threw 153 innings in 28 ML/MiL starts in 22. Then he threw 162 innings in ML/MIL last year over 29 starts - and that includes a 15 day IL stint for elbow inflammation.
I agree with you about Pivetta and hope he can get to 180 innings. Bello seems like a different story in that he really faded down the stretch last year, pitching poorly over his last 5 or 6 starts. He looked worn out (that was reported as well). I hope he can get to 170 innings but that brings up the next question: how much should the Sox push their 4 young starters beyond the customary year-to-year increase in innings totals? I just don't see any way those five pitchers get much beyond 775 innings and there are no obvious answers for how the Sox are going to fill the remaining 625 innings.
What choice is there though? Lack of starter depth was catastrophic the last two seasons.
I hear you on the general issue, but I'm not sure I frame it exactly the same way. I think in terms of starts. Somebody has to start the 162 games. That works out to 32.5 starts for a 5 man rotation. But only 9 guys in MLB started 33 games or more last year. (Giolito was one.)
Well, presumably the bullpen will cover most of that 625. Last year, relievers accounted for ~42% of innings pitched, so roughly 600 innings per team.
Stathead can do that. That's the subscription side of B-Ref. You need a sub to use the tools and see the full results. But you don't need a sub to see the results of a search shared by a subscriber (which I am). So here's the Red Sox starting pitchers for all of 2023.
I don't disagree with your math but I am concerned that there is essentially no room for injuries or poor performance from the five starters. I can see plausible upside for each of them. But I think it is really unlikely that all five achieve those improvements in both performance and durability. Maybe 3 of the 5 can hit those goals? But then the team is needing to fill ~50+ starts, which melts down the bullpen, both because one of those relievers is often the spot starter and those games tend to lean more heavily on the relief crew.
This is great! Sox pitchers threw more than 5 innings 62 times last year, winning 41 of those games. And they threw less 5 innings 63 times, and won only 20 of those games.
Generally agree. Criswell, Jacques, Kelly and Walter are the next men up. Breslow will have to be on his toes from tomorrow through the trade deadline. We are due some better luck, but that doesn't mean it will happen.
That's the risk here, I absolutely agree. But they're all young arms and apparently healthy. . .and we already got our catastrophic injuries for this season - no more I hope! So Giolito's loss pulls Houck/Whitlock into the rotation, and Murphy's loss weakens AAA (or the pen - he was essentially replaced by Anderson, perhaps.)
Could be a little chicken-egg there with starters going longer against poor lineups, and shorter v better ones? There's also a bunch of those Someone-opens-for-Pivetta games.
Actually I believe the 'assignment clause' means that he makes the BOS 26 man roster.
It does not. He was on a minor league deal with the Rays (same as Cron and Joely with the Sox). All the assignment clause does is allow him to ask/opt out of the Rays organization. Presumably he has another opt-out around the end of April that he can exercise on the Red Sox.
If that's the case, it makes sense. I couldn't see the Sox acquiring him if they were forced to add him to the 26-man. But they do have 40-man spots to spare since they can still move Hendriks or Murphy to the 60-day IL. I still think he's Worcester rotation filler for the time being though.
