Red Sox Sign Adam Duvall

123 – don’t forget that a run saved is a run earned.

Defense is significantly worse around the skill positions, which, can be expected to have the effect of raising pitcher eras and increasing the runs required for a win.

I actually lump all the young arms together. Whitlock had a hard time with a 3rd trip through the rotation, not unlike Houck. Bello doesn’t have much track record yet. None of them have an innings count up to mlb standards and so you’ve got a dilemma. A pile of arms, but, all with hit their limits and battle arm fatigue/injury risks at the same time of year.

Sale/paxton/all the young arms. None have either ever pitched 170 mlb caliber innings in a season or haven’t done it since 2018/2019. So what do you do, stash some young guys in the minors eating up the innings? They hit the wall at the same time. Stick them in the BP? Then they aren’t stretched out even though you no longer would use the innings they’ve got at a higher rate in the first half.

Bring paxton along slowly to debut in the second half might be the best option there, but, then you expect your 1-2 punch to be sale without a good tandem leading to inflated era, and, kluber who… hasn’t put together good full back to back seasons since… well, before bloom was in charge anywhere anyways.

Meanwhile you’ve got a full rotation of guys who can’t go deep into games, and, a bullpen of arms that are AARP members already you want to shoulder that heavy workload.

I like to compare the sox rotation this year to having a diesel pickup truck with a aux bed tank, plenty of fuel that in theory adds up to lots of miles of range.

There’s lots of arms, and in theory, lots of innings available.

Problem is, the alternator is bad. Can’t charge up for the long haul. Like can’t automatically stretch out for the long season.

So, you’re stuck with burning up as much as you can before the battery fails, gets you further down the road.

Hopefully they save the BP arms as long as possible and sacrifice using two SP/game one 4 ip, one 5ip, or some such division of labor. 6/3, mix in openers, get creative. You know you’ve only got so many months to use up those unproven arms so burn em while you can then hope a well rested and under utilized BP can limp you over the finish line.

Joe – Notice I said ‘likely be worse than you expect’

As to how I make that guess? When threads have come up discussing the red sox rotation you make posts in the same train of thought as here – such as you just implying that getting more than 5 ip out of sale is necessarily a positive asset.

If sale puts up 100IP of 5.5 era ball, is that really better than the production he is replacing from last season? I think the answer would be no from most people.

But, you repeatedly cheerlead for the pitching rotation saying you don’t think it’s gotten worse than 2022, and have said that in many threads this offseason.

So, by logical deduction, in order for a pitching rotation not to get worse, it needs to equal or improve upon any lost innings. Therefore, either you’re wrong when saying it hasn’t gotten worse, or, if the innings sale provides are worse than what he replaced from the 22 squad he IS indeed likely worse than you expected/hoped for.

One place I’ll disagree again with you Joe, it comes down to allocation, and, player transition.

Lots of guys have gotten messed up, for good, bouncing repeatedly between RP and SP.

You get past that and my question is, at what point do these respective guys hit their IP limits? I get a feeling that many of them will happen around the same time.

So, who will be on the roster around, say, late July, and not suffering from dead arm you can call up without seriously risking injury/hurting future development?

The staff needs at least one, preferably two innings eaters to mix in with the young kids. They have the wrong type of veterans to play this balancing act in a conventional way.

Unfortunately, the defense is looking even worse in 2023 than 2022. Much like a Christmas Carol, if these shadows of things to come remain unchanged, it’s easy to forsee a future in which ERA lags FIP even worse in ’23 than it did in ’22.

LF:
In ’22 you had Verdugo over 100 games in LF. Scouts generally agree Yoshi will be a weaker OFer than Verdugo, both due to arm strength, being used to infielders playing deeper to the OF, and, the fact he was always seen even in NPB as subpar. There’s no numbers to directly compare for Yoshi in mlb, but I’d expect him to be quite negative in OAA.

CF:
duvall will be worse than JBJ who held most of CF duties down… even as he slowed down some from his otherwise impressive 10+ usual, JBJ was a 7 OAA player in ’22, more than duvall.

RF:
Kiki didn’t really play RF in boston, but he did quite a bit in LA. From 2016-2020 he consistently was worth -1, 0, or 1 OAA in RF. Verdugo has been a -1 OAA player in RF. That’s not much difference at all.

In the infield

3B:
you’ve got Devers still butchering the ball, and..

SS:
still no true SS available. Say what you want about bogey but he was dependable and not that bad. Now they’ve got only options of people who haven’t held down the spot, no-arm story, Kiki who is inexperienced if you pull him from the OF in which case, what, refsnyder? that’s a wash in OF, not an improvement, and a SS downgrade.

2B:
You lost story who played a good 2B. First to injury, and, one expects forced back to SS when healthy based on having him begin a ss throwing program.

1B:
You had dalbec, a -1 oaa in ’22. Now you add turner who was a -2 oaa in ’22, although, he was playing 3rd. Not a perfect comp, but, nothing to say he’s going to make some great improvement across the diamond.

Now, OAA isnt a perfect comp and has been better for OF than IF. I just stuck with it because the infield is in such Flux right now that I don’t think people are that worried about who is at 1b defensively, and Devers will still be a butcher.

But, no, the redsox haven’t improved defensively, they downgraded.

Casas has no track record yet either, but, dalbec wasn’t a problem defensively at 1b, and, I’m not sure casas will move the needle much there.

Arroyo I consider to be a backup/IF sub, and, at any rate, inferior to Story’s ’22 production defensively at 2B which was +10 OAA. Are you arguing that arroyo would be defensively equivalent or superior to Story last year? In 3 seasons with the red sox Arroyo has never rated a single positive OAA at any position he played in Boston in any season. If not then that’s still a downgrade

Pwndroia- I’ll agree on the moving parts issue, but, these moves reek of more bloom throwing disorganized garbage at the wall to see if anything sticks – think the peraza experiment, cordero, etc.

It’s more about accumulating guys you hope you can flip for prospects at the deadline than a balanced lineup to try and win ballgames.

But, while guys can overperform or have career years, and often do, we can look at track records from the past.

Objective metrics and past performances say every position around the diamond **as of right now** the sox are worse, often substantially, in defense compared to last season. And when we compare fip to era like you did, we’ll, that trend isn’t likely to reverse. And there’s no blaming story getting hurt for that because it was a conscious roster construction move by bloom that forced story into hurting himself.

* in full candor, maybe pitchers have fewer bad luck balls hit right at Devers, or right at yoshi, and don’t get dinged as a matter of luck. That would skew your era vs fip ratio differently. Lots of things in baseball do come down to luck afterall

The only, ONLY good news about this offseason is that long term Bloom has limited the underwater/bad contract exposure to Devers and yoshida, and, a minimum of money has been deferred into the future.

Bloom’s replacement should have a relatively clean slate to work with, lots of either expiring deals or expiring players with the ages on some of the guys.

William – don’t forget the boneheaded move of actively exceeding the cbt knowing it would cost you in draft compensation/bonus pool allocations.