What does 2023 look like?
- Thread starter moondog80
- Start date
They may or may not have any interest in moving Pivetta. But he is not a league average starter & any inning that goes to him over a better pitcher is a wasted inning.
I won't rehash my feelings on Pivetta for the 87th time this offseason, but his career best ERA is 4.53 (4.56 last season, 5.02 career). I haven't found the starter v reliever breakdown yet, but the MLB average ERA last year was 3.96.
Pivetta does not have positive splits that would indicate he would be a good once through the lineup guy. He walks too many people, allows too many homers, throws more pitches per inning than anyone in baseball, & is easy to steal against. Putting him in the bullpen would be foolish.
If he's not good enough to start for us, he should be traded to a team where consistently making 5 inning starts in a below average manner is above replacement level.
That roster would require 1 more available spot on the 40 man. Story off, 60 day dl, Alfaro and Goodrum on.
I’m sympathetic, but the average MLB pitcher doesn’t pitch in Fenway or face the AL East. Something with some adjustments for park and strength of schedule would make for a more credible case.
On one hand, he’s basically ≈40/45 qualifying starters in many statistical categories for 2022. On the other, he was Boston’s only qualifying starter. So…. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
He's top 10 in so many things, though...
4th highest ERA
4th highest xERA
5th highest FIP
7th highest xFIP
2nd highest BB/9
8th highest HR/9
4th highest WHIP
3rd lowest K/BB
5th lowest WPA
T3rd in WP
3rd highest steals allowed
1st highest pitches per inning
So much of this off season was spent bringing in guys who don't walk people & securing depth. Idk I just don't see it.
Another thing the Red Sox seemed to be targeting is players with lower exit velocities. Pivetta is the 2nd highest of current Red Sox based on '22 results.
Montas’ season may be over. This is why having Pivetta will be useful because we’ll inevitably get injuries to the starting rotation. The Yankees are one more starting pitcher injury away from needing to give significant innings to starters without major league experience. I’d rather have Pivetta and Houck as our number 6 and 7 starters.
Just to quibble with the specifics of the NY part, German is now #5, Schmidt is #6 and Ryan Weber is probably #7, Schmidt and Weber had 70 innings between them for NY last year. Brito is probably #8 and from there there's no major league experience.
Looking at baseball reference, Schmidt was good last year but only had 3 starts. Can he handle a starter’s workload, can he get hitters out third time through the order? It’s uncertain. Weber last started 3 years ago. I guess this is my point. I should have made it clearer that major league starting experience was what I was focusing on. The Yankees are one starting rotation injury away from being hit hard every 5th day (Weber) or needing lots of innings from the ‘pen if Schmidt is only effective 4-5 innings.
Back to the Sox, we have Pivetta, Houck and Crawford. Houck has been very good in his major league career, 146 innings with 2.95 FIP. He’s an elite pitcher. Pivetta is slightly below average which is fine for a #6 starter. Crawford had a very good stretch last year before an injury. Even including the bad start and bad finish due to the injury, he had a FIP of 4.34 over 77 innings. Pivetta’s FIP was 4.42. Basically we have two slightly below average starters ready to slot in for injuries. That seems like acceptable depth.
Pitching innings poorly literally is nothing, & he is absolutely not good enough to be anything more than a 5th starter unless he takes a big jump - he was roughly equivalent to, or worse, than every decent team's 5th starter last year, & every decent team had 4 starters with significantly better years.
If he significantly improves his walk rate, his fastball is back up to previous levels, & he stops having by far the hardest hit curveball of any qualifying pitcher? Then he could be a useful, but absent those things, the ability to take the ball every 5th day, but not pitch either well or deep into the game, does not help a team be good, & the Red Sox need to aspire to do better.
Pitching a lot of innings at a league average ERA is not “literally nothing”. There’s a reason why Pivetta’s bWAR was 3rd on the team. He’s fine as a back end of the rotation starter especially when there is so much uncertainty about the front of the rotation guys. If they dump him there shouldn’t be any complaints when we are watching guys like Murphy and Winckowski get lit up.
I'm probably in the minority, but I think Pivetta will take a significant step forward this season either for the Sox or another team and I'd rather have that happen on the Sox. Obviously it's mostly just gut feeling... but his stretch from late April until late June was pretty amazing, and facing less ALE competition will help (as it will the entire staff obviously). His durability and health is way underrated though and it's still something that needs to be more heavily considered here as mentioned in posts above and throughout this past offseason. Walking just one less batter per game isn't an impossible thing to overcome- it's been done by plenty of average pitchers around the same age- and that small change would be a significant improvement. Anyhow... just gut feeling but I'm bullish on him turning into a more consistent "no. 3" type of pitcher.
FanGraphs' depth chart projections are updated. Here's how the AL East looks:
Yankees: 91-71, 4.44 R/G, 3.86 RA/G
Rays: 88-74, 4.29 R/G, 3.88 RA/G
Blue Jays: 88-74, 4.69 R/G, 4.25 RA/G
Red Sox: 83-79, 4.55 R/G, 4.44 RA/G
Orioles: 78-84, 4.32 R/G, 4.51 RA/G
https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Standings
Not a huge gap between the Yankees and Orioles. Orioles are the only last place team projected for fewer than 90 losses.
Yankees: 91-71, 4.44 R/G, 3.86 RA/G
Rays: 88-74, 4.29 R/G, 3.88 RA/G
Blue Jays: 88-74, 4.69 R/G, 4.25 RA/G
Red Sox: 83-79, 4.55 R/G, 4.44 RA/G
Orioles: 78-84, 4.32 R/G, 4.51 RA/G
https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Standings
Not a huge gap between the Yankees and Orioles. Orioles are the only last place team projected for fewer than 90 losses.
The Cole contract is so huge for the Yankees and highlights what a disaster the Sale deal has been for the Sox. Because after Cole, the Yankees have Rodon, who averages 100 innings a season over the last 5 years (not counting 2020 when he threw 7 innings), Severino, who threw just over 100 innings last year (102) for the first time since 2018, Cortes, who has thrown more than 100 innings once in his career (last year at 158 innings) and is currently injured, and German, who has thrown 100 innings (143 in 2019) once in his career. As John Abbey pointed out, Schmidt and Weber had 70 innings between them for NY last year. With the Montas injury, I expect the Yankees will need a lot of innings from the 6th and maybe 7th guys in the rotation.
The Sox are in a similar situation, with Whitlock, Bello, and Houck never having thrown 100 innings in a season and Paxton as a completely unreliable wild card.
Cole putting up another 200 innings of near Cy Young level performance provides so much cover for the rest of the team. And I anticipate Rodon will be very good this year (and will likely miss a couple big chunks of time over the next 6 years).
If Sale could provide anything resembling his 2017-2018 performance over 150ish innings this year, I'd expect the Sox to be right in the mix in the AL East. But no one is banking on that happening.
His 179.2 IP in 2022 was 14th among AL starters, 4.1 innings behind Cease for 10th.
Pivetta is horrible and useless. That's why we need to trade him for something good!
There must be some team out there that has a lot of question marks and injury concerns in their rotation that needs a reliable innings eater. A team like that should value a guy like Pivetta.
This guy is nothing great but should be useful. He put up a 2.6 WAR last year and has had a 97 OPS+ in a tough division over the last 2 years. He only makes about $5 million this year and has another year of arbitration after this season. If the Red Sox threw in a C-level prospect, they could probably get him for Pivetta.
There must be some team out there that has a lot of question marks and injury concerns in their rotation that needs a reliable innings eater. A team like that should value a guy like Pivetta.
This guy is nothing great but should be useful. He put up a 2.6 WAR last year and has had a 97 OPS+ in a tough division over the last 2 years. He only makes about $5 million this year and has another year of arbitration after this season. If the Red Sox threw in a C-level prospect, they could probably get him for Pivetta.
If Pivetta can be a big piece of a package for something that really helps the roster (say, Ha-Seong Kim) or a legitimate prospect, then I'd be happy trying to see if Kutter Crawford can replicate his role.
But if we're just moving him to move him, I don't see it making sense basically for the reasons The Gray Eagle suggests. Hopefully we're about to get amazing bounceback seasons from Sale and Paxton and see younger pitchers like Bello and Whitlock progress. But if/when some of that doesn't happen, Pivetta will be important for us.
But if we're just moving him to move him, I don't see it making sense basically for the reasons The Gray Eagle suggests. Hopefully we're about to get amazing bounceback seasons from Sale and Paxton and see younger pitchers like Bello and Whitlock progress. But if/when some of that doesn't happen, Pivetta will be important for us.
I suspect that while Pivetta probably has some value to other teams, the Sox wont move him, if at all, until after they get some real-time info about the health questions in the rotation. Of course that's no guarantee going forward, but as ST goes on, other teams might need someone like him, and the Sox might feel they can get by without him.
bWAR for pitchers is kind of yikes imo. He was a 1.5 fWAR pitcher which I believe was 4th lowest among qualifying pitchers.
I think right now he is our 7th or 8th best starter so I don't want him starting the season as a starter because it makes our rotation worse by doing so.
I think he's approximately our 12th best reliever, so I don't want him in the bullpen because it makes our bullpen worse by doing so.
I think ERA+ overrates him because his primary issue - lack of control - is not as impacted by park effects so simply overlaying park effects isn't the solution.
If he can learn to pitch better? Great. If not, I'm not making my team actively worse by running him out over better starters because we might need him later if people get injured.
& I don't much care what the return is at that point. Whatever the highest bid it will be better than making the roster actively worse by having him be part of it.
But yeah, I completely agree with this, there is no rush. Maybe he's discovered something or someone else gets hurt/ isn't ready.
Like 6-7 things have to go right for Pivetta to be the teams 7-8th best starter. If that happens, the team will be fantastic and they can worry about what to do with Nick then. Having too many ok starters is rarely a problem. With Chang on board, it seems like the roster is pretty much set anyways; hard to picture what they’d even move him for and who would be interested.
Sure...
1) Sale not rebreaking himself.
2) Bello not breaking himself.
3) Whitlock not breaking himself.
4) Kluber not breaking himself.
5) Paxton not rebreaking himself.
6) Houck not breaking himself.
7) Crawford not mildly regressing or breaking himself.
But he could be our 12th best starter if...
8) Mata continues to improve.
9) Walter shows that he can put it together at a higher level.
10) Murphy shows that he can put it together at a higher level.
11) Winckowski improves in his age 25 season.
But, I'm officially done talking about it. I hope he gets better at pitching, & if he doesn't, I hope they don't waste a rotation spot on him or have multiple injuries to the better pitchers.
He has done this once in his career, 2021 when he produced a 103 ERA+ in 155 innings. Last year he was 92 in 179.2 innings. In his four major league seasons before 2021, he never topped 86.
He had an excellent run of starts from May 7 to July 29. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=pivetni01&t=p&year=2022
You can sort pitch types by start for 2022 on Savant: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/nick-pivetta-601713?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb
In the good stretch the first thing I notice is a far more effective fastball and curveball. There seems to be a slight bump on spin rate there when you sort for that. (Not that pitching well is absolutely correlated to a single quality of the pitches thrown (spin, mph, movement.))
Perhaps a closer look would reveal something else.
I agree that if he turns 26 again, or pitches for Philly, that's gonna be a real problem for us next year.
But you think that if 2001 turns out to be a fluke, that will be just fine for us next year?
He's in his arb year and relatively cheap. If 2021 turns out to be a fluke, they non-tender him and it isn't an issue for them next year.
Every time I look at his Baseball Savant & see how hard people hit the ball against him & his lack of control, combined with the decreased velocity I just cringe & think he was lucky to post the stats he did.
But yes, if he could bottle whatever magic he had during that streak (slightly better pitching, slightly better luck?) he'd be g2g.
I think thee is a wide range of outcomes for what Pivetta's season ends up looking like, but I will throw out there that he allowed 3 ER or less in 21 of his 33 starts, and I think there is a value in that. He also got really blown up a few times, which isn't something you really want from an ace, but that isn't what the team (hopefully) wants or needs him to be. I think he definitely is a "value added" player to the team, even if his overall numbers don't necessarily scream "very good pitcher".
Naw. I was making fun of any implication that we should more heavily weigh the effectiveness his age-whatever season with Philly from some 4 years back more than his past two seasons with us. In those, he's been generally healthy and league averageish, with 2021 being a bit up, and 2022 being a bit down. So they seem to be a fair gauge from which a reasonable poster could posit "I expect him to be league average-ish." Which is what most here seem to be saying.
I hope he's more 2021 than 2022 in the upcoming season. You?
Is there? The Red Sox were 15-18 in his starts, so they had a .455 winning % when he pitched, & .489 when he didn't.
He threw 6 or more innings in only 12 of his 33 starts, & not once after August 16th. 10 of the 12 were during an 11 game stretch from May 7th to June 29th.
According to the stat you used: 3 ER or less in 21 of his 33 starts, Pivetta hit that mark in 63.7% of his starts. Josh Winckowski did that in 9 of his 14 starts, which is 64.3%. Is that really the bar we're trying to cross? Of course...they were .500 in Winckowski's starts.
16 of 33 Pivetta starts were against AL East teams, compared to 4 or 14 for Winckowski. And of course he was pretty bad against the division. Whether that means anything, who knows.
I mean, sure, I think Winckowski adds value to the team, too, if that's what you are asking. Pivetta also threw 5+ in 25 of his 33 starts, and I think 5 IP is pretty close to the new 6 IP in 2023 terms (for reference, Winckowski was 10/15).
I am not trying to say that I want Pivetta at the top of the rotation, but he's cheap and isn't a zero value pitcher.
Edit: Basically, I wouldn't cry if they traded him, but I am also not an advocate of the "trade him for whatever half penny you can get for him", especially with all the health question marks they still have coming into camp.
I sure hope so. Dare I say, I hope he's even better than he was in 2021. I'm just not expecting it, that's all.
He's certainly not our biggest problem. If he doesn't end up starting very much for us, that's probably good news because it means Sale and Paxton are healthy (another thing I'm not expecting!), but he's not likely to be a big difference maker either way.
Yeah...I think the AL East team thing is a bit of a red herring. Yes, it is a good division offensively, but that's because of 3 teams - the Yankees (2nd in runs scored), Blue Jays (4th) & the Red Sox (9th). The Orioles (20th) & the Rays (21st) were below average last season.
So yes, Pivetta started against the Rays 4 times (with a 6.86 ERA), but those should not be difficult starts. The fact that they are could be telling of how Pivetta will only get worse as his career progresses & teams see him more - or it could be small sample size noise as there was that 1 stretch of games where he was good & the rest of the season he was not.
Rodon from 2019 is not joining the Yankees. More probably they acquired 2022 Rodon, who threw 178 innings and averaged 5 2/3 per start. I won't quibble with your comments about Severino or Cortes, to me those are more likely guys who Yankee fans might worry about.
I think the simplest answer to Pivetta’s struggles later in the season is that he didn’t benefit from elite defenders at 2B (Story) or RF (JBJ).
Left-handed batters hit him very well, and the cards are stacked even more in their favor this coming year. Same for base runners (Pivetta gave up the most stolen bases in the AL in 2022).
Left-handed batters hit him very well, and the cards are stacked even more in their favor this coming year. Same for base runners (Pivetta gave up the most stolen bases in the AL in 2022).
We have two camps here, it seems: people who see past injuries as a thing which the Sox will be lucky to not have recur -- sort of like "injured" is a guy's new permanent reality until proven otherwise -- versus people who see past injuries as past bad luck, and unless there is more bad luck on the way (which, yeah, but it does tend to even out over time) then the player will be OK. JM3 and I and others would be the latter, and I guess we just have to accept that Petagine and others are just oriented differently here. Because we are all operating from the same set of facts.
Hey, it’s only February but congrats on the most condescending post of the year.
What do you think the Sox should do with Pivetta?
Why isn't it reasonable to think that if he had that good of a stretch, that it can't be harnessed with more consistency? Obviously if he was able to pitch an entire season like that 11 game stretch, he'd be borderline Pedro Quality and a $35M a year pitcher. But an 11 game stretch isn't a 3 game outlier in a shitty season- he can show consistency. He pitched great in big games. Whatever the Sox W/L record was behind him during that stretch is about as important as talking about RBI's in predictive value.
What exactly are they supposed to do with Pivetta? They're not just going to DFA him - he was worth 1.5 fWAR last year and led the team in IP. He's worth 2.5 according to BTV, so that gets you essentially a lottery ticket in a trade. Can you imagine the absolute vitriol that'd get spewed here when Sale/Paxton are pitching on a short leash through April, the bullpen is already taxed, and meanwhile Pivetta is humming along in the back of a rotation in San Diego or Milwaukee in exchange for a middling prospect in AA?
Even if he pitches the same as he's done in the 2 years he's been in Boston, that's still 165 IP of 96 ERA+ ball, which is essentially league average. How are you going to fill the innings he's projected to throw? Do you really think that Crawford (87 IP/4.71 ERA) and Winckowski (93 IP/4.65 ERA) will be that much better? The projections sure don't.
Even if he pitches the same as he's done in the 2 years he's been in Boston, that's still 165 IP of 96 ERA+ ball, which is essentially league average. How are you going to fill the innings he's projected to throw? Do you really think that Crawford (87 IP/4.71 ERA) and Winckowski (93 IP/4.65 ERA) will be that much better? The projections sure don't.
I agree- as I said in my post, I think Rodon will be very good this year. But, he had shoulder surgery in 2017 and TJS in 2019, and missed time with elbow and shoulder injuries/discomfort in 2020 and 2021. I believe he reworked his mechanics prior to the 2021 season and has managed to stay relatively healthy the last two years (with great performances). So, maybe he's reinvented himself, but, at 30 years old and with that injury history, I think he'll miss some big chunks of time over the next 6 seasons.
Here's more of the same:
https://nypost.com/2023/02/15/yankees-frankie-montas-trade-is-brian-cashmans-carl-pavano-2-0/
I'm ambivalent on moving him mostly because his near-averageness is offset somewhat by his durability, espcially early, but I think one reason for pessimism was his drop in velocity -- about 1.5 MPH from 21 to 22.
If only the Red Sox had thought of harnessing his talent. If only Pivetta could force himself to be more consistently good. Why, if he just tries harder, he could be better!
To focus in on a small part of the season and use that as proof that he is something other than what he is, while ignoring the rest of the season, is just cherry picking. Who knows why Pivetta did what he did? Some luck probably, good during his hot streak, bad during the rest of the year. Chawson makes a good point about his fielding support - certainly, recent Sox teams have not really helped pitchers in the field. Maybe he made some adjustment that caused him to pitch well in those 11 games, the league figured it out and batters adjusted accordingly, and then he was unable to make the next adjustment. Maybe he had some nagging injuries that meant he wasn't able to pitch the way he did during the good spell.
He certainly pitches better when he doesn't walk the ballpark, but he's shown very little if any ability to do that on a consistent basis. He walked only six batters in 38 innings in May. The Sox went 5-2 in those starts and he won 4 of them. He pitched to a 2.11 ERA. But he basically doubled that walk rate in every other month of the season, most of which were not good results-wise.
Idk? Because he's 30 & has never had a particularly above average season? I don't think it's impossible that he improves - it just kind of goes against everything I see.
The various projection systems on Fangraphs predict him to have an ERA between 4.63 & 4.99.
For reference purposes on the other Red Sox potential starting pitchers...
Whitlock 3.44 to 4.02
Sale 3.47 to 3.98
Houck 3.58 to 4.14
Walter 3.68 to 4.28 (seems...optimistic)
Bello 3.85 to 4.27
Paxton 4.05 to 4.80 (2nd highest is 4.29)
Murphy 4.09 to 4.86
Winckowski 4.20 to 4.92
Mata 4.22 to 4.96
Crawford 4.23 to 4.75
Kluber 4.51 to 4.76
