I read an interview with Price where he cited the forecast for Monday as one of the reasons they were pushing him back to Tuesday in Anaheim. Makes sense, if there's any chance that his hand "sensations" (or lack thereof) were related to the cold weather.
Well, clearly. But I got the sense the pre-season prognosticators rated the starting rotations of the Sox and Yankees as close to a push, which is odd given that the MFY rotation appears to be comprised of a 24-year old coming off one great season plus a bunch of guys. Even given the tiny sample we have to work with, it seems like the Sox advantage in that area was underplayed.
So Porcello never makes another start?
To me the key is Porcello, who toggles back and forth between 4-5 WAR seasons and replacement-level ones. The prognosticators tend toward splitting the baby or assuming the most recent results will continue. In reality, Porcello will most likely either make a huge contribution to this team and giving us the best rotation around, or will be a drag on the rest of the team who will try to minimize their reliance on him. He's never had a season where his production is somewhere in the middle of his range.
Ryan Hannable: "Drew Pomeranz will start Friday in Oakland, per @bradfo. It will be his first start this season."
It probably makes more sense to keep Hector — who’s been great! — stretched out in Pawtucket, and use the unoptionable Brian Johnson as the long reliever.
I would guess the high likelihood of a rainout or a rain shortened outing on Monday would be the reason he would be getting pushed back rather than the sensational thing.
I'd expect Walden to get some consideration for going back down, at least briefly, and keep Velazquez up in case they need to piggyback Pomeranz
ALL of our starters have trouble going ‘deep’ into games but that is more due to Cora’s managing than anything else. If Sale can only get us 5, Drew might be a 4 inning pitcher with Cora.
They lead the majors in quality starts with 8. You need to go at least 6 for a quality start so that just isn't accurate. Unless you want their starters to get exposed to lineups the 4th time around, I'm fine with this approach in the early going.This isn't 1911 anymore where pitchers throw until their arms fall off.
I’m definitely a little concerned about Sale’s velocity but I’ll give it another month before I panic. He’s throwing over 2 mph slower on average than last year and can’t get his fastball into the upper 90’s at all, while he routinely did that all of last year, even in cold weather starts. his fastball was so slow yesterday (86-88) that it was registering as changeups on nesn and he only had 9 swing and misses all game.
Who cares? It wasn't THAT long ago that LaRussa launched the bullpen revolution, giving relievers specialized roles. Who wants to watch that? Well....a lot of people apparently.
THAT is a fine topic for discussion. Going on and on about Sale and Cora in particular is less than that.
And yet he's still 5th in all of baseball in that category. Sounds like you need to step away from the ledge.
Sounds like we have our first BABIP sacrifice candidate, hopefully not needed for a while, but in the bank nevertheless.
Sale’s peripheral stats are still really good in August and September so I’m not sure we should make much of it to be honest. People act like he was absolutely horrible post ASB, when in fact 7 of his 10 scoreless outings came after it. And people forget that Sale’s ERA prior to his last start against Toronto (where he got touched up for 5 runs and 4 homers) was 2.75, exactly what it was at the all star break. The second half demise of Chris Sale last year, and throughout his career, is greatly exaggerated.
And if he wasn't worn down, you'd think Sale would know that, right? That he'd say all was well and he wanted the same heavy workload that he took on last year (he exceeded 100 pitches in his first 9 starts and in 26 of 32 total starts). Yet he has seemed perfectly fine going along with the plan of a slow ramp up and a generally lighter load since spring training. Maybe that means something.
I'm not sure I agree with that. His K rate has stayed pretty good, but hits and walks have been way up (his Sep/Oct WHIP is almost 0.2 higher than earlier months. His HR/9 jumps from 0.08 in Apr-Jul to 0.14 in Aug-Oct (edit: those are hr/ip; hr/9 jumps from .73->1.28). They're not awful numbers, but the Chris Sale we're used to is definitely the Apr-Jul version, not the Aug-Oct one.
I think the problem with you focusing on Sale is that he has a narrative about how he gets tired late in the season. As someone who lived in Chicago while he was there, it started around 2015, when he had noticeably worse results as the season progressed, especially in September (though, oddly enough, his ERA was really the only stat that looked noticeably worse, not his FIP stats). That lead to him trying to throw less hard in 2016 to "save some bullets" only for him to be less effective. Then he got traded to the Sox and went back to his old approach---and it worked! Only for him to again, be less effective in September and October. So while his struggles may be overstated (although breaking things down to pre-ASB and post-ASB is a little disingenuous, because I think people are specifically concerned about September and October), its long been a part of his story: "How do you keep Sale fresh for the playoffs?" For the past 3 years, its something that people have discussed and last season there was a certain amount of handwringing about him going deep in so many starts and in his pitch counts and, as the narrative would have it, he struggled down the stretch and in the playoffs. So I think now the goal is to try to give him an extra inning off here or there, especially when its a. early in the season b. the team is up big or c. the weather is horrible. Its worth a shot for a team with playoff aspirations and who has thus far not suffered from abbreviating his outings.
The problem with that math is that most teams have had a couple of clunker starts by now, games where SP's would be pulled early due to ineffectiveness, thereby reducing the avg IP per start. In the Sox's case, only Price's tingling start has fallen into that category.
What's the league average when you take out all the starts which were ended early due to suckage? Probably pretty close to 5.8. Cora might just be the fortunate beneficiary of starts that give him the chance to leave his starters in.
What are those numbers when you remove the two Cleveland starts though? Let’s face it they have always had Chris’ number. When Sale started the season 9-0 with a 1.58 era in 2016, guess who the first team was to hand Sale a loss? The Indians roughed him up, and that was early in the year. I’d like to throw those two out since it doesn’t seem to matter how well Sale is pitching, they just crush him. Sale had a pretty long scoreless streak going last year too before his first start against them. It’s like Price against the Yankees, they just own him.
Please post better - I've won my share of Beating a Dead Horse awards but for someone with 20 something posts.....
As long as the Sox keep winning and Sale gives them quality starts, I could care less.
I don't know. Figure them out.
