They also cost themselves a WS last year with their slavish devotion to 3rd time through the lineup nonsense and haven’t won shit despite their regular season success.
Is there a middle ground between the 1st place / last place cycle and the Rays who are always good but have never actually won a World Series? Because that...being consistently good but not winning it all, feels like something Sox fans had plenty of time experiencing prior to 2004.
How dare they learn from a team that has massively outperformed its financial expectations year after year. Totally makes sense to judge if the rays entire strategy has been successful or not on a single game though, you should totally keep doing things like that.
The Rays have never won anything. If the goal is to win the payroll battle, by all means keep copying them. I would hope the Red Sox would be aiming higher.
So by your logic, if they'd won a close WS last year instead of losing it then they'd be successful and it would make sense to copy them? Do you see how little sense that makes? Playoff variance is pretty ridiculous, lots of great teams "never won anything", doesn't mean there aren't things to learn from the success they had.
The Sox sent Houck back to AAA after his game, maybe the idea was to have him start 1 and then make the move to have the extra player for Game 2.
Nope. The Dodgers spent a billion dollars and didn’t win anything, I would hope that no one would copy that model.
Legitimately insane take that completely ignores the randomness of sports short sample sizes, particularly baseball. Every team that can afford to do so should be attempting to copy what the dodgers from 2013-19 did, and every team in baseball should be trying to learn as much as they can from how teams like the rays and as find value without being able to afford big contracts.
He's trying to be like the Dodgers, who are led by a former Tampa man as well. But you don't just snap your fingers and make it happen. He's been here for a year and a half. We got off to a ridiculous start in 2021 that NO ONE saw coming and not shockingly we are starting to come back down to earth.
The fact that they're playing awful baseball and have shown zero improvement or ability to resolve their issues outside of playing awful teams? This is sports. It's not life or death but the product on the field is trash right now and people have a valid reason to be upset, annoyed, or whatever adjective is appropriate. Every team has its rough patches. We all know the 2004 team struggled with a much more talented roster. We'll know soon whether or not this is merely a rough patch or the beginning of a major slide.
Hmm. I wonder - how many of us feel the same about Cora Calm Eyes and his Manager Intangibles?
My recent observation: he's good for long view decisions for first few months. Not so hot when things get urgent. Same can be said for Bloom this year ...BUT ... this year IS a step forward AND a missed opportunity. Complex times for Cora, Bloom, Red Sox, and Red Sox fans ... lots of contradictions and conundrums
Schwarber apparently not able to play first base because of injury or ability is huge. Creates a logjam of DH types and puts JD in the field, corroding defense. That much is on Bloom.
I'd much prefer the team to win, Cornwalls. And if Cora actually leads them to that, I have zero problems with it.
But when we got off to the hot start he was willing to just let it slide instead of taking advantage of that good luck to put together a playoff team. That befuddles me. If you have a team projected for 81 wins and they play the first half at a 95 win pace, you don’t continue to project them to finish with 81 wins. You have to leverage that opportunity and I don’t think Bloom understands that. Or
I’ll say it again, if Houck is getting pulled before the 3rd time through the lineup because of lack of a third pitch or ineffectiveness at that point, then he really
Let’s not forget Playoff Cora, who utilized his starters on their off days during the 2018 playoffs to great effectiveness. THAT showed urgency and managerial creativity and huge stones.
I am in agreement with you here on this principle. But for me I’m ok with yanking a guy in this situation if he’s only pitching “ok”, because the numbers when facing the order a third time for starters across the board really are pretty striking.
Agreed. He's not going to show the ability to get through the order a 3rd time if he nevers get the opportunities in the first place.
First off, my response was partially tongue in cheek. I took zero offense at being tagged, just thought your post was a bit of premature touchdown dance, which struck me as a little funny for some reason. But to answer more seriously, I can’t say I’ve substantially changed my view of Cora yet. My pre-season pick was for a mid 80’s win season, maybe contending for a WC. That was based much more on roster construction, than anything to do with Cora, and it’s pretty much looking like that might be their ceiling. Like everyone else, I got very caught up in the first half. And this skid/regression has been no fun at all to watch unfold. But I honestly do think the team still plays hard, and seems to have a pretty cohesive, drama free clubhouse. At least from the outside. I will back track a bit on my comments about professionalism though. This team is very sloppy at times, particularly on the base paths. And I do think that’s something he has failed to reign in, and should answer for. Ultimately, I still think he’s a good fit for this ball club, at this point in time. If he’s handed more to work with next year, and the team doesn’t succeed, I’ll probably start heading over to your camp, and figure he was more of a bystander, and not a catalyst, in 2018. I’m just not there yet.
Except that this strategy is not at all unique to Cora or Houck. Nearly every manager uses it with most of their starting pitching staff. It reached the absurd when Blake Snell was pulled from Game 6 of the World Series solely because he was about to face the top of the Dodgers' order for the 3rd time.
If everyone is doing it, seems to me there's an opportunity to zig instead of zag and do something different in order to take advantage of the competitive inefficiency there.
He's acting like the bullpen is going to perform successfully game after game when in reality they (a) overperformed a bit and (b) were most certainly overused. The 1 or 2 extra innings he can get out of each turn of his rotation are needed at this point and might help get the bullpen back on track.
The whole situation is more like a fork in my eye - there's no cause for celebration, even if it gets removed.
This is an eminently rational take. I guess my question is whether, absent something catastrophic, we could more quickly assess his pros and cons as they might impacting his continued tenure.
FYI, I'm on the other side of the planet and it's my tomorrow and your today. Sorry to confuse ya. I'm talking bout the MFY game they need to stand up!
He's faced 8 total batters a third time this year. It seems like a small sample size from which to draw conclusions about a guy who has pitched really well overall.
Per the bolded, I guess my take is he will have managed 3 full seasons after this year. For 2 of those, he had a very good/contending roster to work with. 2018 was obviously a huge success, and I would call 2019, ultimately, a failure. Despite Sale's injury. So this year, with a borderline roster, we'll see how it plays out from here. I'm (maybe incorrectly) assuming Bloom will have a mandate to spend more for 2022, and consequently deliver another legit contending roster. 4 full seasons, 3 built to win rosters, one borderline. That feels like a fair sample size to evaluate on to me.
Call me kookie if ya want to but it's the MFY. If you can't get pumped playing against them and it seemed like he was doing a good job, you give'm 1-2 batters in and have the pen ready just in case. I agree with you on this btw. 8 batters is way to small of a sample size.
It's a league-wide trend though. MLB-wide, OPS rises from .701 the first time through an order to .774 the third time. In 2019 (ignoring 2020 due to COVID), it was .730 to .803. Hopefully I captured those correctly and I realize it's not new or exciting, but it is what it is cumulatively across the MLB in a large sample.
I'm not the big numbers guy but I do agree that numbers don't lie. I was always extremely competitive in sports when I was.......younger. I knew how to get that little extra when I needed it. It didn't always work mind ya but. That's a fairly good jump (OPS) and from reading other posters TH had gotten lit up pretty good in that small sample. Cora thought he was doing the right thing based on numbers.
The fact that pitchers generally become less effective as they tire is not a new thing. But your staff still has to get through about 1500 collective innings in a season, so there are serious downsteam effects to pulling guys who are rolling just because they're about to hit the magic 3rd at-bat marker. In my mind, if you have a young, healthy guy like Houck, and he's dealing, you let him go further in that game. Not only is slightly tiring Houck probably better than whoever you're bringing in, but you also avoid burning innings from a middle reliever who you may need two more times before Houck makes another start. This feels like an analytics fad that in practice is too clever by half.
I can't put Cora in that "great" category. Yes he has to play the cards that he's been dealt and it's been far from a dominant hand, but the team is chasing so many bad pitches and the base running fundamentals are sorely lacking. Those are things that can be addressed. His recent handling of the bullpen comes as a result of overuse which not entirely his fault, but there are times now when he seems to be contributing to that.
Here's another thing about the Houk usage that's frustrating to me. At this point of the season the kid has a fresh arm. He's pitched fewer innings (just 34.2) than many of the guys in the pen. This may be a slight case of apples to oranges given their positions, but when Duran starts he's mostly going out there and getting his 3-4 AB's without getting pulled and he's been less than stellar at the plate. He's allowed (for lack of a better word) to fail while Houck has pitched better than most of the guys the Sox have used in the rotation and routinely gets "pinch hit" for.
