I'm not sure it's only Sale, per se. Per savant data, his two main pitches are far from bad. However his changeup is just getting teed off on, and is significantly worse in term of movement than it has been in previous years.
This isn't meant to point fingers because I honestly don't fully understand the man's role, but this is the sort of thing that I thought Varitek might be on staff to help with.
Whatever they're doing, it's clearly not working.
Yeah, he's at the point in his career where, through injuries, age and mileage, he can't pitch the way he could when he was 24. He needs to adjust to become a wily veteran instead of a stud. Can he do it? We might as well see while we're paying him.
Just get some outs! So obvious! How could he not have thought of that already? Have you cabled the front office yet to give them the benefit of your insight?
The downside is that our pen is likely to be loaded. And our rotation might be Bello and a bunch of guys.
Yeah, I was thinking on this the other day and came to the same conclusion. Having your #5 be Sale as opener to Pivetta would let you put Houck at #4 and then have Whitlock and Crawford in the pen to help nail that down. And if/when the inevitable starting injuries occur you have a little more flexibility to mix and match all those guys as needed. I'm a little skeptical Sale can just go to the pen at this stage of his career and given the total lack of durability he seems to have. This seems like a least-bad way to extract some remaining value out of him without counting on him to give you more than a very limited number of innings.
Disaster might be strong, if Yamamoto truly is all that. Hopefully a moot point as I expect them to acquire more than 1 starter.
Two thoughts...Spending what it takes to get Yamamoto seems a waste to me if you don't bring in a #2 or #3 type to go along with him and Bello. And while I'm not exactly sure how next year's manager might utilize the pen, having 3 of your 8 guys limited to pitching twice a week seems less than ideal especially when 2 of the remaining 5 guys will have pretty specific usage.
If he excels in the role it might present his best earning opportunity for '25, but I think he gets the opportunity to start.
There is also a chance that he buys in. He’s not failing for lack of effort and he is frustrated as hell with what he’s been doing. He’s a very competitive guy. Maybe he sees a different role as an opportunity to contribute and succeed, and he embraces it.
I suspect we’ll burn out that bullpen by August if we roll with that rotation. Sound familiar?
Well, I think they acquire at least 2 starters this offseason. Maybe 3. So that changes things. And if it comes down to it, I'd rather roll Pivetta/Houck out there than Sale, as they *might* click and develop into the role as back end guy, whereas the evidence that Sale simply can't handle it is overwhelming. Putting him into the rotation creates a guaranteed stress point when he inevitably breaks down and he needs to be replaced.
There are major questions about pretty much every pitcher, full stop.
Sure- but that 1.7 fWAR is tied with Bello for first on the Sox. So, moving him to the bullpen makes sense only if there are better, more reliable options- I don’t think Whitlock, Houck, Crawford, or Pivetta (never mind all of them) currently fit the bill.
For me, the issue is that the pre-injury Sale and the post-injury Sale have been very different pitchers. First half Sale had a run where he was really good, at times approaching Chris Fucking Sale territory. But since he’s been back, his velocity is down, his control is down, he’s just not very good. The first half guy is a pretty solid 2/3. The recent guy is someone you stick in the pen and hope lightening strikes.
fWAR is pretty terrible for pitchers. Like I've said, I find Baseball Prospectus's WARP a better tool for pitchers.
Whether Sale is part of the Houck/Whitlock/Crawford/Pivetta group or assigned to the bullpen has nothing to do with the advisability of picking up 2 definite starters.
I suggested this about a week ago and someone shot it down with the (IIRC) justification that a vet on a last year of a deal wouldn’t be willing to downgrade his role. I wouldn’t care about that if I’m the brass. Take your paycheck and do the job that we think you can for a winning team. Or quit if you disagree.
It doesn't? I mean, we're deploying finite resources and bound by the market and what's available, with many needs. It's one thing to say in the abstract that we need 2 starters, but as the off season goes on, the rubber is going to meet the road and the team is going to need to make hard choices, because that's always what happens. I don't see any way that the team can go into the off season without penciling out its view of what it can reasonably expect out of Sale and what the options might be. It's unknowable, but so is every "big white board" question that comes up in the off season.
I guess it depends on whether the Sox want to re-sign him or not. Please, no!
You have a certain # of definite starters & you have a certain # of depth guys fighting for roles. You gain literally nothing by assuming Sale into the bullpen & not stretching him out in spring training.
It does matter. The Corey Kluber of 8 months ago (when he was a better bet than Sale will be for next year) is not going to sign here to be one of a bunch of guys competing for a spot in the rotation. He will need a guaranteed (more or less) spot. If, going into spring training, Sale has a reasonable shot being the 4th best starter, the offseason has gone wrong. They need 4 guys with a higher chance of success than Chris Sale. Maybe 5. The assumption needs to be that he won't be in the rotation.
Idk. I'll just drop out of this discussion after I say the same thing in a slightly different way for the 15th time.
I believe you're overthinking this one. The point that "The Corey Kluber of 8 months ago (when he was a better bet than Sale will be for next year) is not going to sign here to be one of a bunch of guys competing for a spot in the rotation" is of little relevance. The Sox need two guys to put into spots 1, 2, or 3. They already have one guy in Bello. They need to pick up the other two in trade or free agency, and the guys they get had better be good enough that they have a slot in the top three locked up.
Bingo. This front office put too much stock in Sale this season. Yes, they were 9-ish deep for starters as the year began, but they clearly planned on Sale being in the top third of that and throwing a healthy amount of innings. And of course they said that getting him back from injury was better than any deadline trade they could make. It's not a crime, but it didn't work.
I don't think there's anyone who is going to be available for 1/$12m that would be more deserving of a job than the best 2 from SWHCMP.
Why can they not acquire three starters? Sign Yamamoto, sign another Kluber, trade Yorke/Abreu/Drohan for two or three years of someone in between those two. Done, and you still have more money to play with.
How many "sure things" do other teams start the year with in their rotations? And how many of them actually put up solid numbers for a whole season?
Because they only have so many roster spots? They might have money left after those signings, but they're going to have dead money on the books because they'll have to get rid of some of the guys they currently have. Sale, Pivetta, Whitlock, Houck, and Crawford don't all fit in the bullpen. Not when they've got at least five other guys out there who you likely want to keep around too.
What you say about guys not wanting to sign here for the opportunity to be one of several competing for a spot has some merit. But I also think that the top targets (hopefully there will be a minimum of two) aren't going to have concerns over whether or not they have a slot in the rotation. So, ?,?, Bello, Crawford, Sale, Houck, Pivetta. If those top three can be solidified there's potentially enough in house to cull from to round things out or there's the possibility of using some chips to trade for a decent 3-5 type which would lessen the concern for scraping the bottom of the FA barrel in hope of finding a guy who's willing to audition for a rotation spot.
