Cora, Cora, Cora!
- Thread starter dhappy42
- Start date
Well. Here is where the reporters earn their keep.
Cora has been around a lot here. For him to be this enraged at Verdugo Has to mean he crossed some line.
Wonder if we ever find out what he did.
View: https://twitter.com/bostonstrong_34/status/1687970423055486976?s=46
and we have the answer
View: https://twitter.com/ianmbrowne/status/1687970964519157760?s=46
Source: Verdugo arrived roughly two hours before the game started today. Verdugo was asked if he was on time today. He said yes.
I have to ask, whose decision was it to start Schreiber? Keep using good pitchers as openers, and you are inevitably going to end up with crappy ones pitching big innings late in games.
I am not a bloom hater but isn't not having starters, even after all the injuries, isn't that by definition on the GM?
As others have said if you need everyone to pitch to just piece together nine innings every day, and you're in day two of a key ten day stretch, that's not putting Cora in a position to win.
Not every bullpen arm is feeling it every day and people give up runs.
As others have said if you need everyone to pitch to just piece together nine innings every day, and you're in day two of a key ten day stretch, that's not putting Cora in a position to win.
Not every bullpen arm is feeling it every day and people give up runs.
There’s no real good answer here. If they start Jacques and he gives up 3 runs, then you’re in the hole to start. They just don’t have enough goos pitchers to survive all these short starts (either by design with the openers, or due to poor performance). Could have gone to Jansen for the 9th, but he hasn’t been great in non save situations and then there’s the risk of using all of Martin, Winckowski, and Jansen in a loss….compounded by the fact that you’ve got yet another bullpen game tomorrow.
There’s only so long you can get by with a pitching staff where hardly anybody is giving innings. Probably a miracle they held it together as long as they did.
(Add in the fact that this team isn’t really hitting, which has meant closer games which makes this problem even worse).
There’s only so long you can get by with a pitching staff where hardly anybody is giving innings. Probably a miracle they held it together as long as they did.
(Add in the fact that this team isn’t really hitting, which has meant closer games which makes this problem even worse).
Forgive me if this reads like game threading. It's been brutal watching this team's base running ineptness for the past few years now and I feel at least some of the has to fall on Cora and the coaching staff and I've mentioned so in the past. From Marwin Gonzales, to Franchy Cordero, to Christian Vazquez to Jarren Duran in the past few years to what we've been seeing this season. If Verdugo is a fuck up who needs to be benched, fine I'm with you 100%. Guy's continually fucking up on the base paths deserves similar treatment. Substitute base running practice for batting practice for a few consecutive days in front of whoever happens to be in the park early enough to watch. Humble these fuckers, get their attention, yank someone out of the game and make them sit the next day. Send the message!!!
Four of their starters are on the IL.
People can be objective about it or not but it’s been a very horrible sequence of outcomes from a starter standpoint.
I understand that but the best plans of the offseason sometimes don't work out and its not like any of these starters have gotten hurt/ineffective in about the last two months.
Its been a known issue and Bloom hasn't addressed it, and so Cora is playing this bullpen game. Hopefully some starters come back but being as this is the Cora thread, it needs to be pointed out that Cora not having a great arm to put in the game at his every whim is not entirely his fault.
edit: apparently whitlock was only a month ago.
Forgive me if this is no longer a trait, but I remember back in the day....starters would do a little throwing between starts. I don't know how many pitches they'd through but why Mike Boddeker's name rings a bell to me. A MFY starting pitcher said he could throw an inning if needed.
I wonder if he was making comments about being pinch hit for the day before.....mumbling something.....
None of the players I listed are Reggie Jackson (most of them weren't even Verdugo level) and at the time some were lucky to be wearing the uniform. Nipping this shit in the bud sends a message. That said it's been allowed to happen for too long that I don't know that Cor'as the guy to send the message.
Sale, Whitlock, Houck and ???
Kluber? Hadn't he already been exiled to the bullpen?
We heard the same injury excuses last season. Building a rotation around injury prone pitchers like Sale, Paxton and Whitlock means you need to expect your top 5 to miss some reasonable time of the season. I know Bloom didn't sign Sale to his contract, and Houck's injury was a fluke, but it's the GM's responsibility to build depth with an expected roster like this, and this year's team doesn't have it. Giving $10 million to old, injury prone and ineffective Kluber seems like a particularly bad use of resources.
But three of those four injuries was pretty predictable and Houck got hurt last year too. If you build your rotation with guys that are always getting hurt, you have to be prepared when it happens.
It’s extremely frustrating but I’m not sure what else they could have done.
We began the season with eight viable starting pitchers, excluding Murphy, Walter and Mata as 40-man depth. Question marks around most of them, but still. I don’t know how else they could have planned it. You can’t convince many FA starters to sign when your staff is already full, and it doesn’t make sense to trade resources for a ninth starter.
The “durable” starter is rarer than ever. There were 45 pitchers to throw at least 164 innings last year (the “qualified” mark). This year, 16 have had serious injuries this season (Bieber, Wainwright, McKenzie, Ray, Quantrill, Fried, Gonzales, Márquez, Musgrove, Wright, Rodón, Verlander, Urias, McClanahan, Quintana, Urquidy). 11 others of that group have pitched substantially worse than last year (Alcantara, Nola, Manoah, Pérez, Bassitt, Irvin, Lyles, Tyler Anderson, Taillon, Freeland and Kluber).
Two bullpen games every five days and other starters not going deep leads to suboptimal options. Even if Cora pitched Jansen, if it went to extras he likely goes to Jacques.
The Yankees were #1 in FanGraphs’ 2023 starting rotation power rankings (as of 3/28/23). Yankees starters are currently 25th in MLB in fWAR.
Houck got a come backer on the face, can’t blame anyone there.
The rest were predictable I think though - Sale’s body not holding up anymore now with the shoulder, Whitlock not able to handle a starter’s workload either, Kluber sucking ass
The rest were predictable I think though - Sale’s body not holding up anymore now with the shoulder, Whitlock not able to handle a starter’s workload either, Kluber sucking ass
Begs the question, why have starting pitchers in the first place? Can a staff be constructed of 10 general reliever types with a dedicated 7th , 8th and 9th innings guy? Is it possible to have every start begin with a 3 inning opener type? Then 1-2 more pitchers to get you to your three headed monster? As pitchers tire from this, option them to AAA and bring in another ? Or maybe you have 2 boba fife starters and after them, bull pen games?
I don’t know. Maybe I am just spit balling here (pun intended) and probably someone has given this more thought than I, but there has to be a better way . If the Sox truly did start SP with 8 legit “starters” and wound up where they are today anyway, why bother to try to have SP?
Just frustrated I guess.
I don’t know. Maybe I am just spit balling here (pun intended) and probably someone has given this more thought than I, but there has to be a better way . If the Sox truly did start SP with 8 legit “starters” and wound up where they are today anyway, why bother to try to have SP?
Just frustrated I guess.
Other teams have had tons of SP injuries also, I am not doing the research but TB seems to have had a full staff go down this year and I know NY needed to go to their emergency #8 guy (Brito) in game 3 on April 2, he started 12 games for NY so far and the trio of Rodon/Cortes/Montas have just 17 combined.
If it helps at all from the other side of the fence, I am pretty irritated how many more pieces Bloom seems to have in place now as opposed to how it seemed even six months ago. I would have given him maybe a C- for his tenure if you asked me in Feb and now I think he is more like a B.
That's complete hindsight on your part. AT THE TIME signing Kluber made all the sense in the world. In '22 he pitched 160+ innings, led the AL in bb/9, and had more quality starts than anyone on the Red Sox staff. It was perfectly reasonable to assume that he'd be a one year stopgap/innings eater while the Bello/Paxton/Whitlock/Houck/Winckowski derby for the rotation sorted itself out. I know you're a Bloom hater, but blaming him because the Kluber signing simply didn't work out is extremely far-fetched.
Sorry, but that's completely wrong. I was not a fan of this deal from the get go. Signing an injury prone 37 year old off his first "good year" in four (ERA+ of 85, so how good was it anyway?) to a $10 million contract was never a good idea. I suppose there was some chance it would work out, but it certainly has it.
Wasting money on players like Kluber is a big part of why I am a Bloom hater.
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""Some chance"? Take a look at the starting pitchers who signed one year deals. The only one who had a better '22 was Cueto, and he's made all of four starts this year. For a stopgap guy Kluber was as reasonable a gamble as anyone else. Again, there was no indication he'd completely fall off a cliff. Who else did you have in mind for a one year deal?
The suboptimal part was Pivetta only going 4 innings and 66 pitches. i don't care if you're a starter or a "bulk" guy, you've gotta go longer than that.
Careful, you are asking someone to do some actual research. That kind of stuff is frowned upon in these parts.
You're begging the question by limiting the pool to pitchers who were so mediocre and flawed that they could be gotten on a one-year deal. Perhaps a part of his point is that the Sox shouldn't have limited themselves to dumpster diving. And since we were told at the beginning of the offseason that the front office was looking for "multiple #2 types," it seems like "how did they end up with only Corey Kluber?" is an extremely reasonable question; they failed by the standard they set for themselves, so I don't know why so many fans are eager to let them off the hook.
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Okay, expand the pool to any of the free agent starters who signed multi-year contracts. Here's the list from shortest/cheapest to longest:
Seth Lugo (2/15)
Jordan Lyles (2/17)
Drew Smyly (2/19)
Andrew Heaney (2/25)
Sean Manaea (2/25)
Ross Stripling (2/25)
Jose Quintana (2/26)
Nathan Eovaldi (2/34)
Justin Verlander (2/86.6)
Tyler Anderson (3/39)
Zach Eflin (3/40)
Chris Bassitt (3/63)
Michael Wacha (4/26)
Jameson Taillon (4/68)
Taijuan Walker (4/72)
Kodai Senga (5/75)
Jacob deGrom (5/185)
Carlos Rodon (6/162)
Who ya want? Two of those guys are currently under the age of 30. One is Eflin (28) to whom the Sox reportedly made a strong competitive offer, but he chose Tampa for similar money. The other is Senga (29).
We know the story there, don't we? He turned down a competitive offer, shopped around, then came back but they'd already moved on. Can't really wait around for one guy to figure out his market isn't as robust as he'd hoped. He's also currently on the IL so would he really have solved the lack of healthy starters problem?
To be fair, the Red Sox 4th starter over the last month has been an opener and then Pivetta who has frequently gone 5+ innings. These have not been true bullpen games.
TODAY IS though.
The biggest miss this offseason was Efflin. Had he been signed the rotation would look completely different.
The case for not getting starting pitching at the deadline was:
1. Pivetta had evolved into what was really a starting role.
2. By August 15th the Red Sox would have THREE pitchers returning. Sale Starts for the Woosox today.
3. The prices for starting pitching were insane.
But honestly the Red Sox were rolling the dice with the rotation. No one knew what to expect from Bello, Whitlock or Houck. Sale was a question mark. Acquiring Kluber was defensible - but this was an uncertain rotation from the start of the season and the paying the price.
TODAY IS though.
The biggest miss this offseason was Efflin. Had he been signed the rotation would look completely different.
The case for not getting starting pitching at the deadline was:
1. Pivetta had evolved into what was really a starting role.
2. By August 15th the Red Sox would have THREE pitchers returning. Sale Starts for the Woosox today.
3. The prices for starting pitching were insane.
But honestly the Red Sox were rolling the dice with the rotation. No one knew what to expect from Bello, Whitlock or Houck. Sale was a question mark. Acquiring Kluber was defensible - but this was an uncertain rotation from the start of the season and the paying the price.
I was sick when the Sox let him go, but he's struggled lately and is currently on the IL with forearm strain. If two weeks is all it takes, good for him and Texas, but I think his struggles may have been a factor in Texas loading up at the trade deadline.
Add Eovaldi to the list of perfectly healthy starting pitchers… Currently on injury list.
Clearly Bloom should have spent FSG money to sign free agents DeGrom or Rodon instead of Kluber. Eovaldi and Wacha were safer bets to be healthy for a full season! (Both currently on IL with arm injuries… crazy).
Maybe draft and develop indestructible pitchers like the Dodgers (Kershae, May, Buehler) or the Rays (McClanahan, Rasmussen, Springs).
Pitchers get hurt. Timing is everything.
Yes timing is everything. That’s why when four starters or potential starters are on the IL (Houck, Sale, Kluber and Whitlock) you SELL at the deadline not try to patch together a bullpen rotation to support an undisciplined team that makes way to many mental mistakes in a very tough division.
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Yeah Eovaldi is injured right now, but if he was on the roster instead of Kluber, this team is probably 5 wins better right now.
If Zach Eflin was on the team they would be better right now.
The Sox made a real attempt to sign Eovaldi and he shopped it. I can’t fault him for going to Texas with all their current talent. Nobody can argue that Eovaldi wasn’t an injury risk. Eflin was a target and the Sox offered a nice contract and Eflin decided he wanted to be closer to family.
Houch taking a liner to the face is the definition of unlucky. He’s the real unexpected loss as he was good for health, 4-5 innings with some upside.
And we'd be stuck with always-injured Eovaldi for years to come. I generally like what this FO does, but I was disappointed to hear they'd offered him a sizable deal this winter to begin with.
I know that and that's why I deleted that part of your post. I agree with you whole heartedly that something needs to be done and I think that Cora is going about it the right way behind closed doors. Some of the players that you "did" mention are gone btw and Duran has picked it up this year. Bloom sent the message by moving them off the team (75%anyways)
Another major factor here is opportunity cost. If you believe that the team's best way forward is developing its own starting pitchers (and who wouldn't agree), you eventually need to give those pitchers a chance to succeed at the major league level. The more FA starters you sign, especially long-term, the more you block them, or at the very least, forestall the necessary information about how they'll adapt to starting in the majors.
The Sox reasonably had four prospective young starters to break in this season (Bello, Whitlock, Houck and Crawford), and three starting pitchers on expiring contracts, two of whom you can't not start if healthy. They also grabbed Kluber on a one-year deal. Anyone else they would have signed to pitch here essentially blocks the development of one of those four starters. If it's for more than one year, he may also block the development of someone like Drohan, Murphy, Mata or Walter in 2024.
I also wanted to bring back Eovaldi, but as tempting as it is to plug in his stats for Kluber's, the real calculation is more complex. Signing Eovaldi probably prevents us from witnessing Crawford's breakout.
This is one of the tougher things about a long-term transition. Similarly, it's a big part of the reason we traded Renfroe before the 2022 season. We needed to open up a lane for one of the young outfielders to break out. Ironically it was this year, even though we added an extra layer of outfield depth, that one did.