Some of it HAS to be random. I mean, Springs was pretty terrible until he went to Tampa. But then...Wacha was pretty bad until he came to Boston. So who the heck knows? They must do SOMETHING right to get the most out of their players. Again, even offensively....they don't have an impressive offensive roster at all, but somehow they manage to score about an average number of runs per game. Their whole just always seems to be greater than the sum of their parts.
What the Braves figured out was mainly having three Hall of Fame pitchers in their starting rotation at the same time. Two of whom were home grown, and one they acquired.
None of those three were hall of famers. The Braves had THREE at the same time.
Technically, though, only Glavine was homegrown. Smoltz was only in the Atlanta for a year after the trade from Detroit
Yeah, that sort of helps. One of those they also acquired through a trade early in his career, Smoltz. They also developed some other pretty good players and made good trades.
Right - point was that if those 3 guys had continued their success in Oakland, they’d all be in the HoF and Oakland would have had similar hardware over a 10-12 year period. But they all regressed for various reasons and the A’s kind of crumbled.
And they benefited from being terrible in the late 80s, which allowed them to draft 1st and pick Chipper Jones, the Hall of Fame anchor for their offense for most of that run. It's never going to be as simple as just one thing that leads to a run like that. Hard to conclude anything other than that they were a very well run organization from top to bottom.
Well said. The only disagreement from me personally is that I don’t ever see myself going back to the 2004-2008 days of watching 140+ games a year. Maybe that changes when I become an empty nester, who knows. But the fair weather fan comment hits close to home for me. I still pay attention at a general level, check the box scores each day, etc. But I certainly don’t watch often, nor do I care as much. It will never matter as much as it did 15-20 years ago. The four titles have made it that way. And that’s a great thing!
This comparison is probably closer than we think:
I know you're both probably not losing sleep over this, but the term fair-weather fan is a loaded one. You can still love your team but not watch all 162 games of it. You can still love your team and be angry at the way it's currently being run.
It's more than just shitty defense and not giving up homeruns. From Peter Abraham today:
Oh I completely agree with all of this. I don't take fair weather fan as a derogatory term any more. To me all it implies is that I'm not going to watch them if they suck. I still pay attention plenty.
I came to a conclusion sort of like this at one point. It was sort of a letting go.
But Brasier mostly has been effective. At least until his string of meltdowns on August 19, 26 and 30th. He has one of the best K/BB rates among relievers and an elite chase rate. He's not an elite guy, but he's a perfectly acceptable middle-reliever. In the Dodgers' pen, he's Phil Bickford. In the Mets', he's Seth Lugo. In Houston's, he's Phil Maton. Barnes will probably be fine now that pitchers have figured out how to use sticky stuff again. (Honestly, we should be talking about this more -- it picked up again in July, corresponding with our swoon). Diekman was a mistake.
Agree that it's not healthy not to be able to sleep just because one of your teams lost a game.
It's all about balance. Yet you are a passionate fan and an accomplished author of a great book on the Sox! We invest emotionally in our sports passions. It's the separating from that to reality.
Uhh, in addition to the $50m, we got several years of a starting outfielder, a guy who might be our starting catcher starting next year, and an infield prospect who hasn’t panned out thus far but is still young for AAA.
Yep. They had that for one year - 1966 - and lost in the World Series. Koufax was 30 and in his last year and Sutton was a 21 year old rookie (still he was terrific).
Boston literally just traded one to Milwaukee less than a year ago. He’s an average hitting OF that can only play LF, which is not a very valuable skill set.
A guy from the scrap heap isn't going to cost you 7.7 million dollars. The notion you can just find average left field production when you need it is false. And he is fine in right field which is not an easy position to play in Fenway. He'd probably be at least average in most other ball parks.
In addition to Garcia, Matt Carpenter, Brandon Drury, Oscar Gonzalez, Jose Siri, and Trayce Thompson were signed by their initial 2022 teams to minor-league contracts. Harold Ramirez and Sam Haggerty were both available on waivers within the past calendar year.
Per fangraphs he's been worth about $45m in value to the Sox while being paid around $5m, and they get him for 3 more team controlled years. Seems pretty valuable.
Matt Carpenter and Brandon Drury don't play the outfield and Oscar Gonzalez came up through the Guardians system.
Fully agreed with the last two sentences, but Matt Carpenter did play 106 innings in LF and RF for NY before getting hurt, with a 0 DRS so he was adequate. He hadn't played there before that in a long time, though, and I completely agree with the gist of your post.
Brandon Drury has played more than 965 major-league innings as a corner outfielder, almost 30% more MLB innings than Rob Refsnyder has played as a corner outfielder.
Verdugo is a free agent after 2024; not 2025 - only two more team controlled years.
Yep, even 60-game empty stadium season flags fly forever.
They got that one. We didn’t. Of course it isn’t as good as a 162 game flag. But they do have it.
He was almost exactly as good in 2022 as he was in 2019. I agree that they made the right (albeit painful) move trading him, but I don't think Dodger fans should worry that he's not providing value.
