2:50 pm: Brad Peacock has been returned to Triple-A as the corresponding roster move, per Cotillo (via Twitter). Peacock made two appearances, allowing nine runs in 5 1/3 innings.
11:09 am: Right-hander Connor Seabold will be added to the Red Sox active roster to make his first career start tonight against the White Sox, per Chris Cotillo of Masslive.com (via Twitter).
Seabold will start in place of Nick Pivetta, who is on the COVID-related injured list. Seabold and Pivetta came to Boston together in a trade with the Phillies last August. The deal sent relievers Heath Hembree and Brandon Workman to Philadelphia – neither of whom remain with the team.
The 25-year-old Seabold was Boston’s 8th-ranked prospect by Fangraphs at the start of this season. He is their 12th-ranked prospect by Baseball America, who wrote in their scouting report, “Seabold’s three-pitch mix includes a 90-93 mph fastball that sometimes ticks up slightly higher, an excellent changeup with sink and fade and a below-average slider that plays up because of command and deception.”
The Red Sox currently hold the top wild card spot, but their grip is loose. The Yankees trail by just a half game, while the Blue Jays, Athletics, and Mariners are all within a game of New York. Seabold will be thrown right into the fire as the Red Sox continue to deal with a long list of positive COVID-19 tests.
Excellent news! Let’s hope Cora doesn’t mismanage him.
And that was a great trade by Bloom, an absolute steal.
Probably Bloom’s best trade. In essence, he got Pivetta and Seabold for Hembree since they ended up getting Workman back for nothing, albeit briefly.
Cora is an excellent manager. I know you obviously feel different, that’s your opinion when the entire sports world feels as I do.
pasha2k – NOBODY feels like you do. Announcers have to say what the team wants them to say. Cheating is against the rules. The guy is a scumbag cheater.
That’s all you got KD? You using your cell phone or something? LOL
@KD Not true about the effectiveness as a manager. Cheating part may be true, but we wouldn’t be where we are without Cora.
So I haven’t seen anything constructive re. Cora. As I said yesterday you manage with the hand given you. The only criticism I would have of Cora is to require every player in the pen and dugout to mask up..
There now–what exactly is your criticism of Cora: is it his use of the roster, rotation, infield, outfield, catching, DH selection. Maybe remove the culprit that introduced Covid?
YOUR TURN–everyone is waiting patiently. for something constructive.
On behalf of the entire sports world, please don’t speak for us.
He speaks for me, but then again, I’m not full of hate.
Sure seems like you hate those who disagree with you.
FPG – You talkin to me? No way, you can’t be talkin to me!
Give me a better adjective for a guy who cheats, gets caught, cheats again but doesn’t get caught, presents ownership with information that might be damaging to them so they agree to rehire the guy a year later for his silence. What’s the right adjective if you don’t like scumbag? How about referring to him as a man best known for his moral turpitude? Is that refined enough for your politically sensitive palette?
KD, you’re one of my favorite posters and I’ve become accustomed to long detailed responses … ESPECIALLY when it comes to our clueless manager.
I wasn’t disagreeing with you calling him a cheater, just thought you’d bring more reasons why he shouldn’t be managing.
And Cora did, with a 5 run lead he doesn’t give him a shot at the 4th and goes to an overused and underperforming bullpen for another wasted big lead. Cora has cost the team a lot of games by being too short with starters and breaking the bullpen.
Seabold wasn’t pitching well. 2 walks., a single, double, and HR in three innings. -0- strikeouts. Two DPs by Abreu or he could’ve up a few more runs.
He wasn’t great but you aren’t following it up with a dominant and fresh bullpen. See if he can get through another out, or two, or more and try to get closer to the end of the game while you have a lead. Terrible pitching management.
I think this is a situation where we don’t know enough to form a valid opinion. Maybe Seabold was experiencing ML debut jitters that weren’t getting better. I do agree he probably should have been allowed to start the 4th inning, but also Richards had been pitching really well and was on plenty of rest. It’s not like Seabold was replaced by Peacock or some other garbage pitcher.
I could be wrong, but I think they plan out more or less who will pitch and how many innings they will pitch before the game starts. So, the plan was probably to go with Seabold for 3 innings and they stuck to the plan. I don’t think Cora makes these plans by himself.
I said that maybe last Thursday. That if Seabold pitched, I’d like to see him piggyback with Richards for 3 innings each.
And that’s why preplanning pitching is a joke. You go in with multiple plans and don’t lock yourself into a preplanned bad plan.
That’s why the opener concept is flawed, you expect performance from multiple guys instead of managing how the pitchers are doing. Seabold wasn’t great but up 5, why not try to steal some more outs from him? Expect 3 innings from Richards and get a less than an inning and making it a game again.
ffrhb14Sox – Excellent points.
Completely agree, the game should dictate which plan to follow.
That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for years! When you expect performance from multiple guys, the chances that at least one of them won’t have good stuff that game go up quite a bit.
That’s one reason why the constant pitching changes drive me crazy. If you’ve got a guy in the game who is pitching fantastic, don’t pull him so quickly because it’s quite possible the guy who replaces him could have nothing that day.
ffrhb14Sox11 hours ago
Seabold wasn’t great but up 5, why not try to steal some more outs from him?
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That cuts both ways. If you get away with three innings from a rookie pitcher, why press your luck. It’s like a poker table theoretical. I find just as many people will say, if you are winning, press your advantage. And just as many people that will say to take the win.
That said, the only way I’d look at it is that the chances of Seabold out-pitching Richards in innings 4-6 were slim.
Fever Pitch Guy3 hours ago
If you’ve got a guy in the game who is pitching fantastic, don’t pull him so quickly
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If that was the case, I’d agree. If this was Snell, in last year’s WS, I’d agree. The LAD weren’t touching him.
But Seabold was having a bad game. 2 walks, a single, double, triple, and two line drive outs, in 3 innings, is very weak.
Or, put another way, and I am virtually 100% certain on this, had Cora left Seabold in, and he gave up 2 runs in the 4th, all the posters that hated to see him pulled, would’ve complained about leaving him in.
Joe it’s a simple matter of letting the kid start the 4th, and keeping him in until he allows a couple batters to reach base in the inning. You can do that when you’ve got a 5-run lead.
If the game was close at that point, either tied or up/down 1-2 runs, then I’d agree with you to pull him after the third inning.
Plenty of times a pitcher starts poorly and then settles down, with a big lead Seabold should have gotten that opportunity.
Finally!!!
this dude is gonna be good – and make me annoyed he was dealt
How many starts will he have to make before we can say he’s a Hall of Famer? I HOPE it’s less than 10!
Meanwhile we have no starting pitchers at AAA to call up and are pitching bullpen games every fifth day. And nothing left from the trade ..
Relax, we have Bello and Groome in AA and hopefully Mata bounces back after his Tommy John besides most of our pitchers in the bugs right now are guys we signed for or traded for. Sox are know for developing hitters not pitchers lol.
he’s talking about Philly
DarkSide……a Philly fan….I did not know…
He’ll likely look stellar against the White Sox and pedestrian against the rest of the league. The White Sox have an annoying habit of making rookie pitchers look like Cy Young winners.
Idk if the stats back it up, but I would almost certainly bet that the Braves are also one of the worst hitting teams when they’re facing a rookie as well…
I’d say over the past maybe five to seven years or so, the Braves are definitely one of MLBs worst five or so teams when they’re matched up against rookie starters..Maybe not according to purely wins or losses, but BAA, H/9, K%, OBP, ISO..They really seem to do very poorly against rookie starters, and it is just incredibly frustrating, because the Braves also seem to be one of the best teams against top pitchers…
Makes zero sense..lol
Actually it makes perfect sense. When hitters don’t perform well against rookies, it means their team isn’t providing them with good scouting reports.
That’s what it’s all about when it comes to rookie starting pitchers, scouting reports.
Part of the reason why AJ Alexy has killed it in his first two starts. Not a heralded prospect and his stuff didn’t look electric when I went to the Angels game on Monday, but no one can hit him
I wonder if it’s because the computers don’t have a file on them until they perform at the Major League level. Since GM’s run programs with the sabermetrics and algorithms so they can decide what to do solely based on that, they’re basically “blind” when a minor leaguer doesn’t have any advanced stats in the computer yet, so teams could use it to their advantage if there was a tiebreaker.
But there’s nothing stopping teams from having a “file” on minor league players, at least the AAA players of ML teams they’ll be playing against.
I’d bet a gazillion $$$ that they have a file on every minor league player of any importance.
And I’d bet that they told the players what pitches he uses, the velocities, the breaks, etc.
But players still have to see the pitcher. Knowing that his FB is 94 is useful, but you still have to see how it breaks.
The Braves just aren’t that good, like the rest of the NL East this year.
What a great trade. Two washed up relievers for two young starters with years of control.
Wth was the Phillies GM thinking? Should have at least gotten Matt Barnes with that package
Yeah, that was one of the worst trades of the past several years. Not sure what Klentak was thinking on that one.
To be fair if you go back and read the comments at the time of the trade nobody was under that impression. It didn’t work out but it wasn’t bad at the time of the trade.
I loved Seabold as a prospect, but yeah, for what Hembree and Workman SHOULD have done, it would’ve been worth it. one less blown save from either and we were in the postseason.
ryrockak – Wish he had!!! That would have helped Boston even more. It might have motivated the thinker to actually do something like procure a real closer.
We can ALWAYS count on KD for a sour puss comment! Lol. Just like the sun coming up….more like the sun going down. Lol
KD can not say anything nice to save his s….
I thought you got kicked off the site for the harshness of your comments!! So you came back incognito? See if you really wanted to fool people you should change your constant mantra. It’s kind of a tell.
Barnes would have swung the trade too much in the opposite direction.
1-They weren’t washed up when Philly traded for them. They weren’t top-tier or anything, but at least league average. Workman was 17-2 with 16 saves with a 2.39 in 2018-19. The peripherals were weaker, but still respectable.
2-Pivetta has stuff, but he was pretty much finished with Philly. He had a 5.50 in parts of 4 years with Philly. You can’t keep sending him out there hoping he figures it out. And while he’s done okay with us, as a 4/5, He’s not exactly a top-tier pitcher.
3-Philly had to do something. They had easily the worst BP. They had a rotation, and they had some hitting. You can’t just give up.
Lets hope Seabold has a good outing. It is possible Pivetta returns to start tomorrow’s game, if not it could be Garrett Richards or a straight bullpen game
I’ll take 5IP and 2 ER out of Seabold today. That would be a nice start to his MLB career, especially against an offense like the White Sox have. Boston probably needs to score 5+ runs to win this game though. Need big games from Schwarber & Xander today; would also be nice to see Devers snap out of his slump.
Realistically, Red Sox games started by anyone not named ERod-Sale-Pivetta-Evo are bullpen games.
Realistically starting pitching isn’t being developed in today’s game so most games are bullpen games which is sad and takes away from the game.
Have to disagree with you there. Other than Tampa and maybe a couple other teams, the starting pitcher role is still pretty much intact. The union will always make sure of that, because starting pitchers is where the big money is at.
Looking forward to next year’s rotation in Boston. Mata going down with TJS certainly hurt them but if Seabold does well for the rest of this season, I could see both Seabold and Garrett Whitlock competing for two spots in the rotation next season. Sale & Eovaldi have the top two spots locked up and Pivetta probably gets another chance as well, so maybe 1 or 2 free agent additions and the pitching staff has the chance to be really good next year. Hopefully, Mata will be able to contribute by July or August as well. Things are looking up in Boston for sure!
Bring back Lester! He’d be a solid #5 starter who could provide lots of tutelage to the young guys on the team.
Red Sox owe him after the way they treated him.
The batting order is wrong by Cora. Kiki needs to hit 9th since his OBP is .339. Schwarber, Bogaerts, JD, Devers, Renfroe, Verdugo, Dalbec, Vazquez and Kiki makes the most sense.
Seabold will need pinpoint accuracy because most of the CWS line-up can take him downtown on any pitch. Even without Anderson, the manager gets how to build a batting order Robert is a Mookie-like guy with even more power, Moncada is a classical #2 hitter, then rather than batting Abreu #5 like Cora would they bat him 3rd like JD should be batting for Boston. Jimenez is monster with huge power, Grandal is a nice number #6 hitter who moves into the 5 hole with Anderson out. Seabold needs to be nearly perfect to get out of the first inning let alone win the game.
It will be a great test for him. If he survives he might make for a decent long relief guy next year. His stuff isn’t starter quality at this point. Either he finds more velocity or more pinpoint control otherwise he’ll be another Lopez or any of the many wanna be pitchers that have gone through the revolving door the last two years.
The game starts with an out by Kiki and a walk by Schwarber, the high OBP guy that should be hitting first so Bogey, JD and Devers can drive him in rather than wasting an out on Hernandez.
Ummm … your best slugger, if he’s got a high OBP which Schwarber does, should bat 3rd.
And Bill James agrees with me.
FPG – I’ve already explained in detail the flaw in his thinking. I still remember when that guy was in a little hole in the wall place in Bannockburn, IL back in the eighties. His writings are a double edged sword. While some of them have advanced baseball thinking others have set it back years.
I get that you worship at the alter of James but OBP is still the way good teams produce more runs. The first inning is irrelevant compared to he late innings and one more at bat by the players with higher OBPs leads to late runs. Why throw in a crap hitter like Kiki at the top when he can serve the same role at the bottom of the order and give a better hitter one more at bat. Jame’s theory is flawed just as I told you last time you said this.
KD – You’ve gotten me mixed up with someone else. I’ve been quite vocal about my disdain for many advanced stats and the combined overuse/misuse of them by others.
I think WAR is a joke, try to find even one post of mine that includes it … you won’t be able to. For hitters I use OPS the most, for pitchers ERA and WHIP.
I’ve also pointed out many times that Beane has been a failure and Moneyball was a farce. And I suffered through the “Closer By Committee” year which Bill James was behind.
There are most definitely players who are clutch, and strikeouts ARE worse for hitters than making outs on contact.
Does all that sound like James worship? LOL
I can easily provide one great example of how walks are NOT helpful – it’s name is JD Drew.
The guy was notorious for taking far too many hittable pitches just because they weren’t in the strike zone. Some of the biggest homeruns over the years were hit off pitches that were out of the strike zone, yet Drew refused to swing at them even with RISP and the game on the line.
When there’s a good hitter at the plate with RISP and the game on the line, do you want him to walk? Or do you want him to drive in a run or two with a hit?
There’s a reason why teams issue intentional walks, because walks are NOT the preferred outcome when you’re batting.
Crap hitter? Haven’t you been watching any of the games? He’s got a .794 OPS which makes him look like Trout compared to all the other truly crap hitters we’ve seen on the team this year.
But I never said he’s the guy I want at the top. I want either Xander or Dugie at the top, because they are 2nd and 3rd on the team in OBP and they both have some speed, which Schwarber obviously does not.
Sorry I didn’t see your response last time, I never click the Replies Notification on my posts. But what I posted before was not a theory, it was a fact. The number of additional PA’s Schwarber would get batting leadoff are negated by the fewer PA’s with runners on base.
Bottom line is the 35 additional PA’s from batting leadoff instead of 3rd are not worth the 98 fewer PA’s with runners on base.
Funny thing is, James was simply reinforcing what was already known for a century. Historically the best hitter on every team has batted cleanup and the 2nd best batted 3rd, because that’s where they can do the most damage. Bill’s take on lineups wasn’t exactly groundbreaking.
Here, I’ll post it again below.
Lineup Position Plate Appearances
1 767
2 749
3 732
4 714
5 697
6 680
7 661
8 643
9 625
Lineup Position Number of Times With Men on Base
1 259
2 323
3 351
4 363
5 333
6 314
7 304
8 293
9 288
FPG – My apologies for thinking you are a James follower.
The reason those stats don’t mean much to me is the same issue I have with most of the modern metrics, THEY ARE NOT SPECIFIC TO A TEAM or A SPECIFIC SITUATION THAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE. They are numbers from a simulation game and in Jame’s case they are averages from decades of games played with varying line-ups.
There is no batting order rule that fits all teams. The make-up of the team should dictate each unique batting order. For the current Red Sox team, Schwarber makes sense to be the lead off hitter because other than the first at bat he follows Kiki the 9th hitter just as if he batted 2nd and Kiki batted first. The difference only happens in the first inning when his RBIs will be limited.
Why should Kiki bat 9th not 1st? The difference is you substitute a Schwarber at bat for a Kiki at bat by the end of the game unless the last out is made by Kiki. The additional at bat by a power hitter, high OBP lead-off hitter is extremely valuable. Again, think probabilities. Roughly 40% of Schwarber’s plate appearances end with a runner on base or a home run. That’s a great way to start a game. Next, Bogey is also a 40% OBP guy that will either put 2 runners on, clear the bases for 2 runs or leave one runner on for the 3 hitter. JD is an RBI machine and having 1 or 2 runners on increases his chances for RBIs. There is a 36% chance that nobody will be on base, there is a 40 percent chance there will be one base runner on for JD and a 16% chance he’ll have two runners on. That’s how JD got so many RBIs in 2018. The probabilities were in his favor. They more than make up for the fact that nobody will be on base for Schwarber in his first at bat.
OBP at the top of the order is the secret to maximizing runs not just hitting your best hitter 4th and second best hitter 3rd. Sometimes it might work out that way but each team has different personnel so there should not be one rule except maximize OBP at the top of the order and cluster them together.
Again, sorry if I confused you with someone who has argued James to me for years on websites like this one.