Coming out of the break
- Thread starter The Gray Eagle
- Start date
Victor Zambrano says hello, a middling pitcher who brought back a top pitching prospect in Scott Kasmir in 2004. But these types of trades are the exception and not the rule. The problem this year is that there are a few excellent starters available on the trade market, and so a pitcher like Miley isn't going to be heavily pursued when better pitchers are available.
How true! I'll also take Miley over Porcello in a big spot (right now). Does Miley have a reputation for being a big game pitcher? If he does, I must have missed it, all of those big games he pitched for the Arizona Diamondbacks. The biggest game Miley pitched in this year was the Yankees game right before the All Star break--a big game in that it meant 4 and 1/2 out versus 6 and 1/2 out--and Miley took a shit in his pants for that one.
Best deadline deals as sellers?
Andrew Miller for Edrod looks good so far
Mike Stanley for Tony Armas Jr got us half the Pedro package
Slocomb for Varitek and Lowe is just inexplicably good fortune
The Punto deal goes here somewhere.
Jamie Moyer for Darren Bragg got them a quality outfielder though Moyer went from having Clay Buchholz's durability with Craig Breslow's stuff and then became a near all star for a decade.
Mike Stanton for Mark Brandenburg and Kerry Lacy was a big miss as Stanton was a stud set up guy for years after that
The Leater and Lackey trades look awful right now.
Andrew Miller for Edrod looks good so far
Mike Stanley for Tony Armas Jr got us half the Pedro package
Slocomb for Varitek and Lowe is just inexplicably good fortune
The Punto deal goes here somewhere.
Jamie Moyer for Darren Bragg got them a quality outfielder though Moyer went from having Clay Buchholz's durability with Craig Breslow's stuff and then became a near all star for a decade.
Mike Stanton for Mark Brandenburg and Kerry Lacy was a big miss as Stanton was a stud set up guy for years after that
The Leater and Lackey trades look awful right now.
The rotation has already gotten a major upgrade.RedOctober3829 said:
Kelly and Masterson are out of the rotation and probably won't ever be back in. That leaves Porcello as the lone remaining guy who picked like utter crap and he's almost certainly going to be in the rotation come next April which means you better hope he goes back to what he was before this season.
I'm all for an ace, but a rotation of Buchholz, Rodriguez, Porcello, Miley, and whichever of Johnson, Owens, and Kelly survives probably wouldn't be terrible.
Rasputin said:
This seems awfully optimistic to me. As we've seen this year, the line between "not terrible" and "terrible" is quite fine. I'd hope that they'd aim higher than that. That rotation does need a major upgrade. Frankly, I'd give up on Buchholz and reallocate his money. It wouldn't be a terrible thing in the big picture if he did get TJS. To me, having to rely on Buchholz over the past 2 years has been one of this team's biggest, consistent, repeated failure. If we haven't learned that the guy is not durable by now, I'm not sure we'll ever learn.
I'd say you sign 1-2 pitchers from this year's crop. - Ace 1, Ace 2, Ed-Rod, Porcello, Miley. Johnson/Owens/Kelly/Reclamation project as your back-ups. Question then becomes how you get Ace 1 and Ace 2, but I think the overhaul is needed.
Snoop Soxy Dogg said:
Why stop there? Think we can trade for Trout? Harper? Kershaw?
This ownership group is not going to sign 2 of the high priced FA arms out there. I'm skeptical that they would even sign one. Can you imagine the PR hit if they sign a big pried FA arm 300+ days after letting Lester walk? "HOW CAN THE RED SOX SIGN CUETO NOW AND NOT LESTER LAST YEAR????"
NDame616 said:
A bit knee-jerk there, no? I didn't think my suggestion quite matched that level of hyperbole.
1)I said "sign 1-2" of the current crop. a)They're not all going to make Lester money b)You can sign only one and use your farm system to get another. Or whatever. You ignored my larger point, which is that they need two pitchers that are much better than what they've got.
2)I'd hope that they learn from what hasn't worked and make adjustments to their approach. And "adjustments" doesn't have to mean necessarily spending big money on a pitcher (though I happen to think it does). It means a half-assed rotation isn't going to work in the AL East. And I'm sorry, to me a Buchholz-Porcello-Miley-EdRod-Johnson rotation sounds asinine after the past couple of years, and really what we're currently witnessing this year. If they go with that again, well - not looking forward to it.
3)Who cares about the PR? They shouldn't. If they really think the above rotation is the way to go, they should go with it. I think they'd be wrong, but they should do it. If they think they need to pay a frontline starter, they should do it. Ignore the inevitable whining about Lester. I mean, people are going to whine about Lester anyway, that's one thing we're quite good at.
The larger issue of what I'm suggesting isn't the Lester whine-fest, it's what your payroll looks like once you've made those adjustments. I'm not quite sure they can afford to have 3 $20m+ pitchers.
FanSinceBoggs said:
The other thing to consider is that there is an unusually large number of decent pitchers expected to hit FA this year. They're not all going to be demanding Scherzer-type deals. My hope is that a few them will only end up with 2-3 year deals, which is exactly what would convince the FO to spend some big bucks. The downside is that they've already pre-spent 4x$20m on Porcello before he even hit the market at all, which really kills a lot of the payroll flexibility they would have had otherwise.
In any case, getting back to the thread at hand, I think the most important thing for the second half is to see exactly what we have with the current starting rotation:
1) Can EdRo be a consistent top-of-rotation guy?
2) Does Buchholz finish the year healthy?
3) Does Porcello show any real improvement pitching to an experienced catcher?
4) Does BJohnson look ready?
That more than anything else will guide the offseason decisions.
moondog80 said:
I don't think the Cespedes for Porcello swap is something that deserves to be panned either. Cespedes carried a 102 wRC+ in 2013 and 109 wRC+ overall, with the bad half of his year coming in Fenway. There was innuendo that he didn't get along with coaches and he refused to play in right field. He could easily have been what he was in the second half, given us another 96 wRC+ campaign, and walked in FA.
Ultimately, the problem is that the Red Sox extended Porcello without him throwing a pitch, despite the fact that he was ticketed to hit free agency with Cueto, Price, Zimmerman, Grienke (if he opts out), Fister, and a gaggle of mid rotation type pitchers. Porcello was a good name to ticket as a potential breakout guy. But to sign the breakout guy without waiting to see if that breakout will actually happen is looking disastrous right now.
Snoop Soxy Dogg said:
I guess it depends on what you meant "by the current crop". I assumed you were referencing guys like Cueto/Grienke/Zimmerman, I'd put the chances of them signing 2 big name FA pitchers (eg, a guy commanding 20+M a year) slightly below 1%.
And who cares about the PR? The Red Sox do, that who. As they should, just like any multi-billion dollar company.
RedOctober3829 said:
Devers is a third baseman and there aren't any indications that he's going to move off of the position in the short term. Also, this is too much to pay for Hamels. Devers is currently the number 15 prospect in all of baseball and Margot is 24th on that list, according to Baseball America. Oh, and Brian Johnson is number 38.
Snodgrass'Muff said:
Not to mention that their ages dovetail with the core of the Red Sox roster. Right now, the best/most reliable pitcher on the team is a 22 year old. 2 out of the 3 best position players on the team are 22 year olds. Why trade top prospects, who can contribute alongside the core of the team, for a pitcher who by that time will be well past their prime?
If nothing else the Red Sox are victims of their big market status and promises. You can't tell the fans that they're targeting 2017, because "WE'RE THE RED SOX AND WE DON'T DO THAT!" But it's the rational play. Stand pat with the roster, sell what you can to roll value into the future, let Hanley take his lumps in LF and learn it, and play for 2017.
The X Man Cometh said:
By 2017 ---- Hanley is almost sure to be DH with a better chance to be playing 1B than LF.
Of the 97 qualified starters in the majors, AL East teams have the following ranks in FIP:Snoop Soxy Dogg said:
Yankees: #18 (Pineda), #42 (Eovaldi), #79 (Sabathia)
Orioles: #38 (Ubaldo), #72 (Tillman), #94 (Gonzalez)
Blue Jays: #52 (Hutchison), #56 (Estrada), #58 (Buehrle), #96 (Dickey)
Rays: #10 (Archer), #50 (Karns)
Red Sox: #7 (Buchholz), #54 (Miley), #87 (Porcello)
The Orioles have been competitive with a half-assed rotation. The Yankees have Pineda and a bunch of questions. The Blue Jays aren't particularly great especially with Dickey struggling. The Rays have Archer and mediocre pitchers.
The difference is that the Orioles have had fantastic defense, the Yankees have an incredible bullpen, and the Jays have the best offense in the majors (The Rays, I dunno). There are lots of ways to win.
Next year's Sox should have a strong offense and some decent innings-eaters (and some young starting depth with upside). I think the shortest path to being competitive is to improve the bullpen. It's also maybe the most difficult given relievers' volatility, but if the guys they acquire fail it's usually easy to move on from them, which isn't the case when you guarantee $100m+ to a starter.
I would convert Kelly to a reliever right now and try to groom him as a "relief ace" who can go multiple innings anywhere from the 5th-8th. In his career as a reliever he has nearly a K per inning and his K:BB ratio improves to a very respectable 3.5:1. Who knows if he improves more by not having to worry about "pitching."
I would also see what it would cost for Chapman and not Cueto. Chapman, Koji, Taz, Layne and Kelly is a nice start to a pen, and then you can look for high-upside arms elsewhere.
Might not get you to the playoffs but I like that strategy a lot more than overpaying for a starter.
Defense has been poor, they have been "unlucky" in terms of bunching hits, Fenway may have an impact.Rudy Pemberton said:
But mostly the defense I'd say: they are near the bottom in team defensive efficiency, both raw and park-adjusted: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=1822296
Average in UZR and 7 runs below average in DRS: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=0&type=1&season=2015&month=0&season1=2015&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=8,d
As we know Hanley and Sandoval are the main culprits; everyone else is basically fine or good.
This may or may not regress / improve but they're not doing a good job turning balls in play into outs on a team level.
They're also 19th in K%, so they are allowing more balls in play than the average team. Not a good combo.
Rasputin said:
Particularly if they have faith that what we've seen thus far from Rodriguez is only going to continue and get better. I think the wildcard in all of this is Buchholz. When he's healthy, he's a capable top of the rotation pitcher. If the front office still believes in Buchholz and feels his various ailments are flukes and happenstance and not in any way chronic or predictive (whether we the fans feel the same or not), they're more likely to roll the dice with him a year at a time for $13M than go after a top of the market "ace" they have to commit to through age 36-37+.
Maybe. But by this offseason, Cole Hamels at 3 years, $67.5 million (with a club option for year 4 at $20) is not going to be a market-value deal, it's going to be a significantly under market deal.Rudy Pemberton said:
I think people who are expecting the market to settle down or think that the surplus of high quality pitching will drive down prices are fooling themselves. Teams are flush with cash and every ace-quality pitcher who is leaving a team leaves behind an ace-sized hole to fill. The market is only going in one direction.
If Cole Hamels were an FA, I think he gets at least Lester money and probably more. If you assume that Price, Greinke, Cueto and Zimmerman all get above Scherzer levels, and that the market for the next set of guys is in the 6 year, $150m range of Lester, then doesn't spending a couple of chips for Hamels start to look pretty attractive?
I think I remember saying they don't need two starters which is different than they won't get two starters. I don't remember at which point of the off season I might have said that.Rudy Pemberton said:
Which is largely irrelevant when arguing that the team that wouldn't go spend the money on an ace last year is suddenly going to go spend on two.
NDame616 said:
The Sox are currently a last place team with mediocre pitching, and people love shiny upgrades when things are down. A select few will probably point out that side factor to start, and i'm sure the hindsight game will be played out on a larger scale latter in the event the new guy doesn't end up pitching as well as Lester does in Chicago....but let's not get carried away there. After coming up fairly small last winter and not even making a serious effort to sign a Lester replacement, we'll be seeing infinitely more outrage in the event we *don't* go out and sign a SP upgrade this upcoming off season.
I do agree that we likely don't go out and sign 2 though. Heck, even that one could be somebody like a Matt Latos, who ends up looking great in the second half but still gets somewhat lost in next winter's game of musical chairs. But minus the miracle bail out trade we WILL sign at least one free agent starter. Book that.
There is so much of the season remaining to be discussing next years rotation and have a clue to the direction.
Rodriguez is a keeper as is Miley with how he has adapted to Boston. From there you have a ton of questions that only the final 10 weeks of the season can tell us. Will Buchholz return healthy and effective? Will Brian Johnson continue owning each level he jumps? Will Porcello revert back to the pitcher he has a history of being rather than the one we saw the first half of year? Will Joe Kelly show the promise he did prior to this year and/or does he crush it out of the bullpen?
Either way I don't see us adding two #1's.....very likely we don't add 1. Eddie, Miley, Buchholz, and the 2012-14 version of Porcello is a very solid top 4. The rest of the season will go a long way toward knowing if Buchholz and Porcello figure in this.
Rodriguez is a keeper as is Miley with how he has adapted to Boston. From there you have a ton of questions that only the final 10 weeks of the season can tell us. Will Buchholz return healthy and effective? Will Brian Johnson continue owning each level he jumps? Will Porcello revert back to the pitcher he has a history of being rather than the one we saw the first half of year? Will Joe Kelly show the promise he did prior to this year and/or does he crush it out of the bullpen?
Either way I don't see us adding two #1's.....very likely we don't add 1. Eddie, Miley, Buchholz, and the 2012-14 version of Porcello is a very solid top 4. The rest of the season will go a long way toward knowing if Buchholz and Porcello figure in this.
I'm with you on the two aces. Fuck this whole "lets figure out some way to get our rotation good enough to be sort of average" attitude. We've got $45.5m coming off the books between Napoli, Victorino, Masterson, De Aza and Breslow and all of those guys can be replaced internally for no added money. Trade for Hamels now and give this team some kind of chance to compete for 2015 (I'd trade Swihart for reasons I've already expressed elsewhere but YMMV), then sign Price for Scherzer money in the offseason. Price-Hamels-Edro-Buchholz-Porcello, with Miley as quality long man depth, is a rotation built to win a goddamn championship. We will still have a very deep farm system and tons of young talent at the core of our roster and if Price sucks in 2019 we can deal with that problem then.RedOctober3829 said:
I assume at some point we want to extend Bogaerts and Betts...I'm not sure it's as simple as "$45m is coming off the books, let's spend!" You're advocating something like the following for next year:PrometheusWakefield said:
Hamels 23
Cueto ~22
Rodriguez .5
Buchholz 13
Porcello 20
Miley 6
Koji 9
Taz ~4
Other RP 2-5
Vazquez .5
1Bman (Holt?) .5
Pedroia 13
Bogaerts .5, will enter arb in 2017
Sandoval 17.5
Hanley 20
Betts .5
Castillo 11.5
Ortiz 10+
Plus a bench, so figure 5m...That's $181m if you don't spend very much on a bench or filling out the pen, which isn't too crazy, but it's a lot of guys tied up long-term. For 2017 you'd only clear Koji and Papi (maybe) and Xander is going to get expensive whether or not you buy out his arb years in a long-term deal.
I guess you could look to dump a Porcello or blow past the luxury tax but you're just not leaving much flexibility which is kind of the point of having young stars.
Bogey is represented by Boras, so an extension for him might not be realistic. Erod and Betts on the other hand can be very realistic.Toe Nash said:
I would like to not give up both. Operating on the assumption that Betts, Xander, Swihart, and ERod are off the table my first thought was that either one of Margot or Devers plus Johnson would get them in the ballpark. Then I thought someone like Jackie Bradley, Marco Hernandez, or say Deven Marrero would be a 3rd prospect in a deal. Eventually I did overestimate how much it could take to get Hamels but knowing Amaro and also that Hamels doesn't have to be dealt now makes me think it would take a lot.Snodgrass'Muff said:
Toe Nash said:
I would think part of the flexibility of having young stars is being able to surround them with expensive FAs, right? Or preferrably inexpensive ones, but those guys are usually less expensive because they have more warts/risk. I mean, you lose the flexibility once you sign the expensive FA, but ultimately flexibility is just a tool to use to get better players, not an end in itself. You just hope they make the right choices on getting better players.
It'll be interesting to see what the Red Sox do before the deadline. They're really on the outer fringes of contention (if at all), but other than the odd reliever it doesn't seem like they have the kind of pieces that they'd get enough value for to trade to a contender. RF, 1B and SP seem like the most obvious offseason places to upgrade, but they seem pretty set with internal options coming out of the break. I would guess they don't do very much. Maybe send out De Aza/Victorino/Nava/Napoli/Masterson in a waiver deal if anyone's desperate enough to offer something interesting.
RedOctober3829 said:
Amaro may ask for that much, but if he does it would be a mistake to acquiesce.
Toe Nash said:
You forgot the benefits number of ~13M. So that puts the RS easily over the luxury tax with the increased 2nd year %, unless they dump players this year to get under.
I would be delighted to add one top of the rotation guys, I think getting 2 at a long term cost of 45+M/yr is a pipe dream.
Right, and so signing three players to $20 million-ish deals has significantly limited their flexibility, compounded by the fact that two of those guys have been disappointing. The Sox payroll situation is not pretty; they're going to need to get creative if they want to sign even one of the Cueto tier, let alone two as some have suggested. Assuming the $189 million LT line is still a hard cap for them.alwyn96 said:
Danny_Darwin said:
The tax threshhold has never been a hard cap for this team. I don't know if it's still the case, but a while ago the Sox were the team that had paid the second most in luxury tax money, very very very very very very far behind the Yankees.
Rasputin said:
Even then, one can make an argument that any perceived spending cap there was more a product of our (previously) consistent ability to field a fairly complete/competitive team while remaining at or near cap level. I mean getting it right or completely wrong, there always seems to be a greater supporting logic behind every move we make that i'm not sure has ever broken down into a simplified what we can or can't afford. Or at least i don't recall even one instance where the luxury cap played out to be *the* defining factor in why we didn't sign a player we'd otherwise want and had a strong need for.
If Henry feels we need to blow through the cap to field a competitive team, i'm taking him at his previous word last winter that he'll do exactly that.
Rasputin said:
Maybe "hard cap" wasn't the right wording, but they have tried to avoid paying that tax after 2011. I've found various reports suggesting that it was on their minds in the 2012 offseason at the least - hence why they traded Marco Scutaro for a guy whose name I had forgotten until just now. Henry's precise quote that "we can blow through one year" suggests that he's mindful of it as well. Granted, he says he's willing to exceed it for a season, but there actually aren't many expensive contracts coming off the books after 2016 and, as alluded to earlier, Bogaerts and Holt will be arb eligible after that season.
Danny_Darwin said:
They absolutely were trying to get under the threshold in 2012 in order to reset the penalty to the lowest possible (and they barely squeaked under thanks to the Punto trade). Each consecutive year a team exceeds the cap, the penalty increases. There are also revenue sharing rebates available to the high revenue teams that remain below the luxury cap, increasing the longer the team stays under.
So Henry is clearly okay with occasionally blowing through the cap and paying the 17% penalty, probably because the expectation is the team can recover their losses with postseason revenues. But I also think he's not keen on paying any increased penalties (or losing the rebates) for being over for multiple years in a row, such as they did after the 2011 season.
So if we believe they're in line to exceed the threshold this year, it will probably take some convincing for Henry to okay acquisitions that could move the payroll over the limit again in 2016 with no assurances that it will subsequently drop below in 2017.
This is true. But a lot of the flexibility disappeared when they signed Sandoval, Hanley and Porcello. Adding two more pitchers for $45m gets rid of the rest of it and reduces your ability to extend someone like Betts or add someone like Victorino on a shorter, mid-range contract, or take on someone with a high salary to push you over the top, or any number of things.alwyn96 said:
Toe Nash said:
Sure. It's definitely a balance. You don't want to spend yourself into a corner where you have a crappy team full of overpriced players that you can't get rid of. On the other hand, you don't want a crappy team full of mediocrities because you're afraid to spend to lock down a star player for fear of losing flexibility. Ultimately you've got to hope the talent evaluation and development people know what the hell they're doing or you're screwed either way.
I believe the CBA expires at the end of 2016, or at least the luxury tax portion of it. So for 2017 the luxury tax level has yet to be determined, and I've got to think the players' union will be pushing hard to get that as high as possible. So I would guess we'll see a significant increase in the luxury tax level, which would certainly have implications for contracts right now if there were no penalties for having a payroll ~$200M or so in 2017. That's speculation of course, but given that the luxury tax will have stayed at $189M for 3 years and there's more money in baseball than ever, it seems fairly likely to me.
And from the Red Sox point of view, at some point there might be some revenue implications for having underperforming teams. They're going to lose out on tickets/concessions and jersey sales/licensing/NESN ad sales if people aren't excited about the team. An expensive, successful team might bring in more revenue such that it would outweigh the cost of a luxury tax hit. Kind of like the Yankees model of the last few years.
....or maybe it wouldn't make that much difference. The accounting process for calculating team revenues is pretty weird. At any rate, a lot can happen between now and the beginning of next season.
[QUOTE="Hriniak]
Ortiz's 2017 option vests with 425 PA's in 2016.
[/QUOTE]
I don't want to say anything fishy is going on but Ortiz is in CF for the nightcap.
He's no fool.....he is very motivated to NOT play 1B again this season. If only we could be a fly on the wall behind the scenes during these "conversations."
Ortiz's 2017 option vests with 425 PA's in 2016.
[/QUOTE]
I don't want to say anything fishy is going on but Ortiz is in CF for the nightcap.
He's no fool.....he is very motivated to NOT play 1B again this season. If only we could be a fly on the wall behind the scenes during these "conversations."
The problems of this team extends to the Theo Era. Cherington seems to be a Theo disciple and the front office is filled with like minded individuals. I think it might be time to purge the front office and get a new perspective in there.
You mean the Era that produced three championships in ten years? Throw the bums out.Thelobsterroll said:
The same Theo Era that built 3 World Championships and who has turned the bottom feeding Cubs into what looks like a force to be reckoned with for the next decade? Oh how I long for the Lou Gorman days, you?Thelobsterroll said:
Yeah and while Theo at times would be clever in the name of avoiding risk, he would make a splash often. Cherington built a championship team, so hard to fault him in an extreme manner, but his track record acquiring talent from outside the organization looks poor right now, Uehara and Holt are the only big success stories on the roster right now, and Uehara emerged largely because Hanrahan was a complete disaster.
jtn46 said:
I don't think because they've fallen off now that we can't credit Cherington for Victorino and Napoli's contributions in 2013. Ditto for Jonny Gomes and even Ryan Dempster. Neither of them were abject failures and did contribute to a championship team. What and who have come since then, though...fair game for criticism IMO.
Sure but Victorino has been a bad acquisition overall, and the Napoli extension appears to have been a mistake. I'm thrilled at the result of 2013 and certainly there is more to being a GM than acquiring players from outside the organization, the Sox are loaded with young talent, and Cherington will likely one day look smart for not giving up that talent to GFIN. Still, I'm salty over letting Lester walk and then giving a contract not far off of Lester's to a guy that's currently one of the worst starters in the league. I don't want Cherington fired, he's good at enough to make him better than a lot of GM's, but Cherington seems to learn slowly that these risk averse moves still carry plenty of risk.Red(s)HawksFan said: