Yes, if the only thing you care about is WAR. It's not the only thing *I* care about, but if that's all you care about, okay.
Mookie details Boston exit
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Jay and O's were also punching bags in 2019. With the same strength of division, the records of the two teams would probably be very close.
WAR is the reflection of how players contribute to winning baseball games. More WAR is always better. A nearly 2 WAR difference between players is enormous.
No, it isn't. WAR theoretical wins without regard to game context in a world where you can measure defense as accurately as offense. The people who came up with it will tell you differences of 1-2 WAR per year are within the margin of error.
The WAR formula loves Mookie's defense, so he always has a much higher number than any other right fielder with a similar offensive profile. According to Baseball-Reference's WAR, he's by far the best right fielder in baseball history, having already surpassed Roberto Clemente's career value.
I don't really have a problem with that conclusion, he's played RF the vast majority of his career and he's played it at an outstanding level. Bill James has written that when Clemente was still playing he was reknown for his OF arm but committed a lot of errors and overthrew the ball a lot as well.
Also on the B-Ref website, their tooltip for WAR contradicts what you are saying: single season scale for WAR: 8+ MVP quality. 5+ All Star. 2+ Starter. 0-2 Reserve. <0 Replacement level.
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It's *A* reflection of how players contribute to winning baseball games. Not *THE*.
Swell. Now tell me where you were going to cut 42 million form the 2021 payroll to account for the difference in salary (using Mookie's AAV with the Dodgers and the amount the Sox were on the hook for David Price) and still field a contending team. And you don't get to undo any deals done before the Mookie trade (i.e., you still have to pay Chris Sale).
Ok so by this scale, both Renfroe (2.3) and Mookie (4.2) fit the "starter" category. Neither fits the "all star" category. (in 2021, of course)
I've been on record from the beginning that I wouldn't be cutting payroll since a team like the Red Sox with enormous pockets and billionaire owners can field a payroll as large as anyone.
By this scale Mookie is a much better player than Renfroe. I'm not sure what the argument is here. The difference between them is a starting player's worth of value.
Because it fits your argument that everyone in the current organization is the worst. They could have easily won a world series last year, and it wouldn't have changed anything about how 2022 went or how big a drop off it was from last year's team.
And they have. Can you list the teams that are over the luxury tax year after year, which is what you're suggesting the Sox should have done?
But they didn't. And they've sucked badly this year. And they don't have a flag to show for it to make up for the lack of building on a positive season. had they won the WS last year (note: they didn't) it would obviously make people feel differently about this year.
This season stinks. That's really not any kind of debatable. Being disappointed and noting the mistakes and misfortunes they've had in building the 2022 team shouldn't be contentious and doesn't make anyone less of a fan; the season has been extremely unpleasant to watch.
No, as another poster pointed out it's Verdugo that wouldn't be here. Lots of parts would have moved around.
Just curious.... Let's say the Sox didn't extend Sale when they did, and instead they let him play out 2019, and he put up the same numbers as he actually did.
Now the Sox are left with this decision: Do you sign the newly free-agent Chris Sale (or do you extend him before he hits free agency)? He would have done this in his three seasons with Boston:
2017: 214.1 ip, 17-8, 2.90 era, 157 era+, 0.97 whip, 12.9 k/9
2018: 158.0 ip, 12-4, 2.11 era, 209 era+, 0.86 whip, 13.5 k/9
2019: 147.1 ip, 6-11, 4.40 era, 110 era+, 1.09 whip, 13.3 k/9
Would you even bother signing that guy? Injury issues would definitely be concerning. Also, he would have been on the shelf for all of 2020 due to the TJ he suffered at the end of 2019. So you know you're signing a damaged pitcher, but one who, when healthy, is DOMINANT.
What would a likely contract have been for Sale at that point? No contract at all? SOMEONE would sign him, and probably be willing to take a chance on a decent-sized amount as well. Maybe Boston would still have ended up paying him decent money, even knowing he'd miss all of 2020, but with the assumption (hope? worth the risk?) that he'd be fully healthy in 2021 and back to being CHRIS SALE.
We'll never know of course.
Right. Nobody is arguing that Mookie isn't a much better player than Renfroe.
I think his health questions by the end of 2019 would have precluded giving him a large contract. And he likely wouldn't have been re-signed by the Sox. Someone would have signed him of course, but there would be no way he'd get $168 million. Maybe he gets a Paxton deal (2/20). Maybe a bit more, but nothing big.
Play along anyway. Given that you have payroll constraints (in this case the 210 million tax number), a fact of life for every single team ever in every single sport, keep Mookie and Price on the team and tell me how you are replicating 2021. If you can do without massive cherry-picking and hindsight, I'll be very impressed.
It's obviously a mere exercise, but right away with Mookie and Price, you don't need Richards ($9.5 plus 1.5 for 2022), Perez (6.0 + 4.5), Renfroe (3.1), Marwin (3.0) or Verdugo (500K or so). That's 21.6 right there. For payroll reasons they probably wouldn't have signed Ottavino at 7.25 either. That brings you up to 28.8 pretty easily. Maybe they'd make a couple of different trades as well. There's a lot of moving parts but they would have forgone some of these flyers on guys if payroll was already locked up.
The problem with these exercises from both sides is that everything looks inevitable with hindsight. It's easy for me to say signing Perez was a bad move, but it's also easy for someone else to say "without getting rid of Mookie and Price the 2021 season wouldn't have happened exactly how it happened." Which of course is rather obvious.
David Price threw a grand total of 74 mediocre innings last year, and you just took away about 310 similarly mediocre innings, and you still aren't even really that close to the number they needed to reach. Saying they wouldn't have needed those guys because they had Price is an interesting argument.
The obvious conclusion to draw would be that Price would be in the starting rotation in Boston as opposed to the bullpen in LA. Not 300 innings' worth but certainly more than 74.
What about anything we've seen from David Price in the last 2 years makes you think he could have been an effective healthy starter? He isn't just in LA's bullpen, he's essentially been a mop up guy for 2 years now.
He's been in their pen after taking 2020 off from COVID with a new team with greater pitching depth; I don't think it's a stretch at all to think that on the original contract he signed here he'd be a starting pitcher. I mean, we signed Richards and Perez for the rotation after he was gone, he's at least as mediocre as those guys.
My original point remains that there are far too many moving parts and hypotheticals to try to plug and play players into a mythical 2021 Red Sox team. Maybe with Mookie and Price the park gets hit by a meteor, who knows? We only know what actually happened, but it wasn't pro-ordained.
He isn't just in the pen, he's nearly the last guy in the pen, and he still would have taken 2020 off with Boston. And sure, if he can stay healthy he's as mediocre as those guys, 2 guys who lost their rotation spots last season because of said mediocrity. He's been hurt both seasons since then so good luck with that.
Ask yourself, what if the Sox had traded David Ortiz for Carlos Beltran? Or let Ortiz walk and used the money to sign Beltran? Beltran had a statistically superior career, could play in the field, etc. Shouldn't the team have valued Beltran higher at some point and tried to make that swap?
Betts isn't Ortiz exactly, but in his own way he was the heart of the 2018 team and is the heart of the Dodgers. They have a heart. The Sox don't. I don't know how you price that in, but it comes along very rarely so I wouldn't be too worried about the precedent.
What is the bigger factor in the Sox' issues in 2022?
1. The Mookie Betts trade
2. The minor league system producing virtually no cost controlled talent since Devers was called up in in 2017?
This is not to say these are the only factors. But of these two, what is more of a problem?
1. The Mookie Betts trade
2. The minor league system producing virtually no cost controlled talent since Devers was called up in in 2017?
This is not to say these are the only factors. But of these two, what is more of a problem?
This states how I feel about it really well too. I want to win championships, but baseball is a 162 game a year grind. I want to tune in to players I care about. I do not care about watching Alex Verdugo Franchy Cordero and Tommy Pham.
The answer (IMO) is #2, since Mookie is just one player, though I can't really talk about this season without going to how everyone was injured all the time.
I just watched a highlight reel of Mookie gunning fools down at 3rd and home plate from this year. It was more fun than I've had watching any Red Sox game, though I'm looking forward to Bello's next start.
These guys aren't Mookie. But with the comparison, do I want them paying Devers $40m a year? No. But I want to know that if he leaves that they at least put forth a good faith effort. I think at this point it's obvious that that is not the case and hasn't been the case in the past.
The real problem I have is that I see various franchises around the league extend their stars. If the Rays, Mariners, Pirates, Padres, Brewers -- all team without the financial capability of the Red Sox, can extend their stars, why can the Red Sox not do it? I don't want to root for another team's mercenaries. I have no interest whatsoever in seeing another John Lackey or Carl Crawford or David Price -- guys who I hated for years before coming here, on this team, but especially when it makes it so that the team is reluctant to give competitive offers for their own players.
The FO is way too risk averse with their own players, and way too risk taking with players who have never played in Boston.
We're all going to have this same conversation in a year when Devers leaves for a contract that the Red Sox very easily could have handled, and it'll be rationalized by saying well his obp could be better, or his defense is only average or something else. Or maybe they'll be a 35 win team at the all star break and trade him for a dime and two nickles like they did with Betts. But the reality is that Devers, like Mookie, like Lester, should have never made it to their arbitration years in the first place.
To your last point, it takes two sides to make a deal. Mookie famously bet on himself from and early point in time.
Aaron Judge made to his arbitration years and is about to be a free agent. Are the Yankees not committed to winning? Were the Braves being cheap when the left Freddie Freeman unsigned through arbitration and then let him walk? How about the Astros with Gerrit Cole and George Springer? Or the Cardinals with Albert Pujols?
Now tell me what those teams have in common right now.
Like t4w says, it takes two to make a deal, something that is conveniently overlooked every single time a discussion comes up about extending a player (homegrown or not). Perhaps what it would take to have extended Betts or Devers was an offer beyond what they might realistically predict to be available in free agency (a.k.a. a significant overpay). We don't know, but we really need to stop ignoring the player's autonomy in this.
Also, Lester was extended prior to his arbitration years. When he was traded in 2014 prior to becoming a free agent, it was a pre-arb extenstion contract (5/$30M signed in 2009) that was on the verge of expiring. He was signed in the same manner that Dustin Pedroia and Clay Buchholz were around the same time. Which just goes to show that it's not like the Sox don't try to lock up their young talent (they exended a arb-eligible Bogaerts too). Not every player is keen to agree to deals like that.
Obviously both parties need to agree, but how much of this on management being unnecessarily risk averse? Everything that came out last offseason for both Xander and Devers all indicated that any long term deals were only going to be done on incredibly team/management friendly deals (4/90 for Xander and under $200M for Devers). Given market indicators (e.g., Riley getting $215M 3.5 years from FA), it seems a lot more that they are only going to do these on their terms.
That is fine, but that isnt you need a two parties situation - theres a clear party that isnt being reasonable and isnt the players. That is if they even really want to make a deal or just make it seem like they do to do the typical Red Sox tear your stars on the way out method.
I know we’ve hashed this out over and over but they offered Mookie 8/$200 when he still had multiple arb years left. That wasn’t an unreasonable lowball offer
I wasnt commenting on Mookie. He clearly wasnt signing an early year offer and made that clear.
No problem. I think the big concern is that they are missing the trend in valuations in early deals and/or arent comfortable going to those numbers. These deals are no longer sub $100-$150M commitments for stars/potential stars. Either you pay the going rate or you don't - no one is going to love Boston so much to sign at 40 cents on the dollar.
Once Bloom's got us a team full of young home grown all stars, they should fire him and poach whoever's responsible for getting all these Atlanta guys to sign bargain extensions.
agree to disagree. A guy who put up 22 WAR in 3 years, coming in 2nd in MVP voting one year and 6th another, with only two arb years left, that's an unreasonable offer, both in terms of length and average yearly salary. This is exactly what they've done repeatedly - they have a clear line in the sand that is probably based on some outdated Bill James shit from 10-15 years prior. That's essentially the same contract Jason Heyward got. That's the kind of contract you offer a guy if you want to make him consider free agency.
He had 3 arb years left when they offered that. the 10-300 came with 2 arb years left.
This is beautifully put. And honestly it's so frustrating. I don't understand why the FO is like this. I suppose familiarity breeds contempt and they know all the weaknesses of their own players and not those of other players, but still.
Agree no discount was available, but I may have a different take on why I would have signed Mookie, but which may not hold up to analytics.
I didn’t see the Sox realistically producing a juggernaut winner with or without him in years 1-3. However, given the Sox resources they could have planned around this ‘sunk cost’ and built a winner around him going forward. I would’ve preferred to sign Mookie even if had a slightly negative impact on winning chances first couple years, because I would have had Mookie for years 4-10 in a rebuilt and winning environment. I do recognize the last couple could be shiite.
Sure it would have delayed some moves, and maybe pushed ‘sustained success (tm)’ back a year, but they still might have been competitive and I’d get to watch him.
They also seem penny foolish and pound wise sometimes. Let's spend $33 million this season on the combo of Bradley, Paxton and Barnes, but we couldn't possibly commit that amount of money to somebody like Mookie! Yes, yes, flexibility and aging players and all that, but this franchise needs to spend some of its enormous revenue if its going to compete an satisfy its customer base. Letting a generational player go in the name of having the flexibility to sign expensive, unproductive scrap heap refugees seems like the definition of foolishness.
They have become very boom or bust. Since 2011 they've won 2 WS and finished in last place 5 times.
That's a strange dichotomy.
The development of their cost-controlled talent has been boom or bust. That's why. Without a pipeline they've been forced to buy other people's talent at a premium, and often using what (already) limited resources exist down there. All the while having that premium-priced talent taking us over what was historically a soft cap that, when exceeded, would make it even harder to regrow the recently-depleted.
I'm not shitting on it, it's better winning two titles than no titles. There are certainly worse methods out there.
All of the teams who have had sustained success have understood this. Hell, the Astros took those five last place seasons to historic levels and did them sequentially. It's a really good thing that those drafts worked out for them.
I'm not shitting on it, it's better winning two titles than no titles. There are certainly worse methods out there.
All of the teams who have had sustained success have understood this. Hell, the Astros took those five last place seasons to historic levels and did them sequentially. It's a really good thing that those drafts worked out for them.