• The first field I ever set foot on was Fenway Park, on a family trip to Boston as a kid. (Thanks, Mom.)
• The first place I moved after college was Waltham, Massachusetts. I lived within 30 minutes of Yawkey Way for the Sox’s second World Series run in ‘07, and got to experience that energy first-hand.
• My wife’s favorite ballplayer is–and has always been–Tim Wakefield. (She tells me everyone from Melbourne, Florida is taught at birth how to throw the knuckleball.)

Anyway, it’s unlikely that you’re here to read my biography. The point of all of this is to remind you that for the past year, I’ve been writing about and analyzing the Red Sox from a non-fan perspective. The experience has been terrific, and I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned from the unique position I’ve been in.

The 2015 Red Sox Were An Easy Team To Like

I’m sure this is something almost every beat writer or team writer deals with, but the longer you cover a team, the harder it becomes not to root for them. I was happy I could bring a measure of objectivity to the team as I covered them–and I carried that through, I hope–but man, this was a team full of fun players even on a down season.

First and foremost, there was American League All-Star Brock Holt. I’m not sure that there’s an easier player to like than the slap-hitting, all-out, utility player with great hair. When that player is actually good? Come on, man. That’s fire.

We got to see the emergence of Mookie Betts as a full-time outfielder, and it was glorious. Eduardo Rodriguez showed flashes of being the team’s best home-grown starter since Clay Buchholz. Clay Buchholz showed flashes of being Clay Buchholz. Xander Bogaerts showed that he’s a very real shortstop, and Blake Swihart and Travis Shaw had great second halves in the shadow of the team’s struggles.

David Ortiz.

It’s a talented team, but it’s a likable team too … and that should certainly carry over to 2016. Adding David Price will be fun. An improved overall attitude from winning–something I see happening–will help too.

The Positional Spectrum Is A Lie (Sort Of)

First, there’s this from the middle of last season:

The “best” of Hanley Ramirez in left field (AKA, why someone with .261/.305/.474, 19 HR, 46 RBI has -0.8 WAR) #RedSox pic.twitter.com/Yf0hr4gDZV

— Joon Lee (@iamjoonlee) July 22, 2015

Then, there’s this from Spring Training 2016:

I thought Hanley Ramirez’s move from the infield to the outfield would be great, and I was wrong. He was an absolute disaster: injured, out of shape, ineffective. He was a bad, bad fielder … which I didn’t imagine would happen after years surviving as a shortstop and third baseman. In my head, I saw the move hurting his WARP, but not by a lot as he would be able to leverage his athleticism.

The move to the outfield should have cost Ramirez something like a win and change, if he could’ve maintained his overall skill during the transition. Instead, he lost a handful of wins, which wasn’t what anyone expected, given the way we currently value defense. Sliding further down the defensive spectrum makes for a scary proposition for next year, but perhaps his value will suddenly lurch back up. I still think he’ll be a solid, if not good, defensive first baseman. But if I could flawlessly predict how position switches would go, I wouldn’t be writing this now.

Don’t Trade Your Elite Position Prospects …

How happy are you that the Sox still have Xander, Mookie, and Blake? You can worry about so many things on a baseball team, but when three of your four middle-of-the-diamond position players are this young and this talented, the performance floor is pretty high. PECOTA projects those three guys to post a combined 7.8 WARP next year, all before hitting 25 years old. I’d bet the over on that, if you’re the betting type. (And I’d project at least one All-Star appearance between the three of them next year as well.)

… Even If It Means Signing Hanley, Pablo, and Rick

We can establish that these signings were not especially good. Hanley and Pablo were two of the worst players in baseball last season, and Porcello looks like a pretty intense overpay after just one year. But would you have been happier at the time if they hadn’t spent anything? Are there players who the Sox didn’t pick up this offseason–other than David Price, who the team signed anyway–who you wish they’d spent the money on instead?

Being a high-payroll team means that not only can the team sign those high-dollar players, but they can absorb a few bad contracts here and there. And all three of those players project to play better in 2016. It’s not the end of the world that they’ll all still be on this team in 2018. Deep breaths.

This Team’s History Is Staggering

Writing the Olde Sox columns has been a real learning experience. I limited my research to players from the past 55 years, but even in that sample I was inundated with tremendously talented former greats. My list of potential players for future installments of Olde Sox — which Chris Teeter and Jake Devereaux will be picking up here — is just as long as my list of profiles already written. It’s a crime we haven’t gotten to John Valentin yet.

Oftentimes when I had previously thought about the Red Sox’s history, I thought of the seasons, or the moments. The Impossible Dream season, the close-but-not-quite years of ‘86 and ‘03, and Fisk waving the ball fair. But examining the whole careers of players like Rico Petrocelli and Dewey Evans has been an experience itself, helping me appreciate the excellence of the men who made up the team. Not every fanbase has a collection of heroes as broad and as deep as the Red Sox do, and we should count ourselves lucky.

This Is How Your Outfield Will Turn Out

• Mookie Betts is going to be the kind of star you remember 20 years later.
• Rusney Castillo will be the kind of player you forget entirely the year after he leaves.
• Jackie Bradley Jr. will be something in between. I have no idea what.

Time Heals All Wounds

The big hits from the past hundred years–Ruth, Buckner, Boone, and everything else–they still matter. But they’re not the same as they were, the hurt seems less fresh in the fans. The ancestral memory has dimmed just a little bit, colored by the intervening years. So when you look back at the disappointments of 2015, take heart. When you look back on this time from your future state, I’ll bet you remember more of the good than the bad, the moments when you shared the Sox with your family or friends. The excitement of the young talent, the nostalgia of old favorites like Papi and Pedroia. The hurt will fade, though it seems like that would never happen during the years as the second-class citizens to the Yankees. The future will be kinder to this moment than we can imagine today.

Anyway, those are a few of the big takeaways I got from watching the Sox this past season. This is my final post here, as I’m moving over to the new Baseball Prospectus – Mets site that launched yesterday, and I’d like to thank you all for stopping by and reading. And many, many thanks to the folks at the site: Ryan, Other Bryan, Kory, Collins, Alex, Dustin, Jake, and all the rest of the writers here for making me feel welcome … and especially Ben, who’s a great writer, editor, and keeper of the Red Sox flame. Thanks for making me welcome in the Sox family, and I hope to see you all in the World Series next year!

Photo by David Butler/USA Today Sports Images

Instead, perhaps he can settle for being the most emblematic player to don the colors of Fenway. Yaz was steadfast and sure, capable of great peaks and the producer of a long, storied history. He never made it to the top of the mountain, so his struggle to win the World Series could mirror that of the team’s 86-year drought between victories. His career may even also mimic the struggle in the shadow of the more popular, more anointed team in New York. No matter how or what the Red Sox do, they may never be able to eclipse the sheer scope of the Yankees, the same way Yaz’s accomplishments must always be compared to that of Ted Williams.

Today, let’s pull the career of Yaz out from Williams’ shadow, and examine it in the context of modern sabermetric stats. We’ll review the things he did well and the memories he helped to create.

Yaz was nearly unique in Red Sox lore in that he played for over two decades, only spent his career with a single franchise, and possessed both longevity and an astounding, productive, nigh-magical peak.

Yaz began his career taking over for Williams in left field in 1961, at the young age of 21. During his first season he showed few signs of the incredible hitter he’d become–his True Average of .249 was the worst it would ever be in his career, though that was still just a bit below league-average. He also didn’t cover himself in glory in regards to his defense, as his -2.2 FRAA in left field would turn out to be one of the worst marks of his career. But there were flashes: despite a .266 batting average, he managed to earn a respectable .324 OBP thanks to a combination of solid approach at the plate and a plus feel for hitting. His arm was already a valuable asset, and he began to learn how to play off his home stadium’s signature feature: the Green Monster.

By the time 1962 rolled around, the “real” Yastrzemski was ready to emerge. First, the defense came around. Yaz earned 18.8 FRAA in left field–think of Alex Gordon’s defensive prime–and began to establish himself as truly elite in that position. Despite left field defense often being looked at as inferior to those players in the center of the diamond, Yaz began to add between a win or two of value each season thanks to his instincts, his ability to play balls off the wall, and his rifle arm. In addition, he had three major pillars of offensive success starting to develop: bat-to-ball ability, power, and a keen batting eye. Though not possessed of Ted Williams’ once-in-a-generation eye, Yaz was already starting to rack up a healthy on-base percentage (.363 that season) thanks to the ability to draw a walk and make solid contact. Finally, he posted 19 home runs, but also 43 doubles. He was starting to emerge as a true offensive threat as well as a defensive force.

In 1963, Yaz officially broke out. He earned 7.4 WARP (fifth among position players in all of baseball and second among position players in the American League) on the strength of his combination of defense and offense, finding himself sixth on the AL MVP ballot while earning an All-Star appearance and a Gold Glove. He won his first batting title, and led all of baseball with a .418 OBP–the first five AL OBP titles he’d win over his career. His .328 True Average was one of the best in the game, far better than what he’d posted before and the mark of a well above-average hitter, even for a corner outfielder.

Over the next three seasons there would be ebbs and flows, but Yaz established himself as a consistent, top-flight young outfielder. In 1964, his power dipped a little, but it rebounded in a big way in 1965 when he hit 45 doubles and 20 homers, good for a .536 slugging percentage. He had a surprising defensive dip by FRAA–the BP metric for defense rated him as slightly below-average despite three consecutive stellar seasons–but by the next year he earned enough fielding runs to make up for that lull. His 31.0 defensive runs by FRAA in 1966 is an astonishing feat; that’s more than three wins of value in defense while spending most of his time in an outfield corner. Despite slipping into bit of an offensive lull, he still played above an All-Star level, with above-average offense, stellar defense, and good all-round skills. But the best was about to come.

Let’s take a moment and talk about 1967. ‘67 was a big year for the Sox as a team–this was the “Impossible Dream” team that made it to the World Series only to run into the unstoppable force that was Bob Gibson. Yastrzemski was a force in that Series, with three home runs in 30 plate appearances and a .400/.500/.840 triple-slash line. He did everything he possibly could to push the Sox to the brink in seven games, but the team could not overcome the Cardinals and win the championship.

Before that ever happened, however, Yaz led up to that point with one of the greatest single seasons in MLB history. After years of 10-20 homers, Yaz’s power finally broke out, and he dominated the American League offensively. First, there were his 44 homers, which tied him with Harmon Killebrew for the league lead. He also led the AL in batting average and RBI, granting him the Triple Crown, a feat that would not be replicated in baseball for nearly 50 years. He led all of baseball in OBP (.418), slugging percentage (.622), and just for good measure, True Average (.373) … lest you think those big numbers were just a creation of hitter-friendly Fenway Park. And, of course, he paired it with his solid signature defense. When you put it all together, you get an 11.8 WARP season, one of the highest in baseball history, and a season that would go down in the books as one for the ages.

Yaz would lose out on a unanimous MVP award thanks to one voter’s decision to go with Cesar Tovar over him. For the record, Tovar earned 2.9 WARP while manning second base for the Twins that season, and the Twins were a good team. But that makes for an 8.9 WARP difference between the two ballplayers, which is an unforgivable gap no matter how big the error bars on WARP may get. For reference, that would be like the National League MVP voters this season choosing Daniel Murphy over Bryce Harper last season. Not a good look.

Yaz would never be as great again as he was in ‘67, but few players in MLB history have ever put up a season that excellent, so we can forgive him. But in 1968, he’d try. He was once again an outrageous offensive force, but this time he traded much of his power (just 23 homers) for an increase in walks and a .428 OBP, which led all of baseball. Of course he missed out on the MVP award this year, as Denny McLain won 31 games, and the pitcher win was king at the time, but Yaz also fell behind teammate Ken Harrelson and a trio of Tigers position players in the voting, among others. He came in ninth in the AL MVP race, despite racking up 10.3 WARP. (Fun fact: he also won the AL batting title with a mere .301 batting average, which is the lowest batting average to ever lead that particular leaderboard.)

1969 was a bit of a down year, but this was primarily due to uncommon bad luck on balls in play. During that season everything else seemed to be working for Yaz: he crushed 40 homers and walked 101 times, but his batting average for the season only reached .255, which would end up being the third-lowest mark he’d ever post in the big leagues. How did last season’s batting champ let things get so low? Despite a career .290 BABIP (and that takes into account the lower BABIP during his career twilight), Yaz only had a .241 BABIP during this season thanks to, likely, dumb luck. A regular batted-ball distribution would’ve resulted in another MVP-caliber season, instead of a comparatively-low .298 TAv. The expected rebound came the next season, as in 1970 he hit another 40 homers … only this time he ran his average back up to .329, led his league in OBP (.452) and slugging (.592), and came in fourth in the MVP race. Oh, and if he’d posted his typical FRAA numbers out in the field instead of the surprisingly-low 6.8 mark of that season, he probably would’ve posted a third 10+ WARP season.

The only recent examples of dominance to start a season that I can think of to compare to Yaz’s decade-long debut are two guys who currently play for the Angels: Albert Pujols and Mike Trout.

So let’s take a break to examine just how great Yaz’s first decade was by the black ink markers. He found himself on the MVP ballot in eight out of 10 seasons, and won the award once. He was selected to seven All-Star games and won five Gold Gloves. He posted a .390 OBP, a .496 slugging percentage, and 66.3 WARP. Can you actually believe that? You know what kind of players average six and a half wins per season? The absolute greatest ones. Miguel Cabrera, another Triple Crown winner, is a no-doubt Hall-of-Famer and one of the game’s premier players. Over his 10 best seasons, he posted 57.4 WARP … and that’s with the benefit of cherry-picking just the best ones. The only recent examples of dominance to start a season that I can think of to compare to Yaz’s decade-long debut are two guys who currently play for the Angels: Albert Pujols and Mike Trout. The list ends there.

Anywho, after 1970, Yaz would continue to grind away at left field and first base for the Red Sox, but his peak was over. In the next 13 seasons, he’d amass plenty more hardware: 11 more All-Star Game selections, another Gold Glove, and spots on six more MVP ballots. But he’d never again win a batting title, lead the league in an important offensive category, or post a six-WARP season. He’d embark on what amounted to a second career: solid regular with occasional flashes of five-win brilliance (‘71, ‘73, ‘77). His True Average marks would rise and fall, but most often would hover around .270-.280, making him a better-than-average hitter, but not much more than that. His defensive brilliance faded into quiet consistency, especially as he transitioned to first base from the outfield.

By the end of his career, he owned many of the Sox’s career records, including games played, plate appearances, runs scored, RBI, hits, doubles, intentional walks, and more. (Miraculously, both Dewey Evans and Jim Rice beat him out for the strikeouts record!) He sauntered into the Hall of Fame with 94 percent of the vote, and his number eight has been retired by the team. He was an absolute fixture for over two decades, and was a valuable, effective player at the least for nearly all of them–an elite peak plus elite longevity.

There are probably just two things I’ve done with any consistency over the past 23 years: watch baseball and enjoy brownies. That’s it. I can imagine things that I’ll continue to do and enjoy from now to a point two decades down the line, sure … but even still, doing any one thing for a quarter of a century seems so long. Timeframes of that length stick in my head as esoteric concepts like special relativity and string theory–as hard as I try to wrap my head around them, I just can’t do it.

It’s possible that this is the first time Carl Yastrzemski’s career has been compared to a concept like time dilation, but there was certainly a gravity to Yaz. He was solid, sure, and true. The further that we’ve moved from his orbit, the clearer we can see what he was. No other player in the history of this franchise will ever eclipse his marks in longevity, I’d bet; the game is no longer designed to give players 23-season careers, let alone with a single franchise. As much as you may love Mookie or Xander, can you honestly imagine them starting for this Red Sox team in 2035 or beyond?

For that reason, among others, I decline to do as I often do and point toward a player currently in the organization who compares to my subject. To call a Red Sox player the “next Carl Yastrzemski” is to do to him the same disservice as calling him the “next Ted Williams.” No man should be expected to hold his own for 23 seasons, to be the most valuable player in the league, to be a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. Carl Yastrzemski was a singularity, doing all the amazing things we expect from a baseball player but at a scope that stretched longer, deeper, and broader than anyone could have hoped. If that’s not representative of this storied franchise, I’m not certain what is.

Photo by Greg M. Cooper/USA Today Sports Images

The real worry from his 2015 performance wasn’t his defense, at least in my eyes. It was his hitting. This past season, Hanley coughed up a .252 True Average, which amounts to a slightly below-average offensive season. That is not okay. It was the worst season he’d ever had with the lumber, and his on-base percentage dipped under .300 (to .292) for the first time in his career. At the same time, young Travis Shaw stepped up and performed admirably in limited action for the Sox, hitting 13 homers in 65 games and posting a .278 True Average in relief of the ineffective Mike Napoli. Though Shaw was never seen as a sure thing in previous seasons as a prospect, he looked very solid in his half-season or so last year.

So now we come to the nut of my article, two long paragraphs in: is there a possibility that the Red Sox would be smarter to hand the first base job to Travis Shaw to start the 2016 season, rather than converting their highly-paid veteran to the position? Should the Sox consider Hanley Ramirez a sunk cost and move on, or try to wring his value out at the expense of Mr. Shaw?

Before we get into the psychic costs and benefits of such a move, we absolutely must at least try to crunch some numbers. Yes, Travis Shaw was a better hitter AND fielder than Ramirez last year, but last year is not everything. It’s a sample, and in Shaw’s case, it’s not a very long one. The best thing we can do is go to PECOTA’s projections, and see about the tale of the tape. Let’s start with our proxy for raw offense: True Average. We’ve already detailed the two players’ output during 2015, but PECOTA sees a flip-flop coming in 2016. The projection system imagines a .280 TAv for Hanley, and a .257 TAv for Shaw. If you believe in the power of projections versus simply relying on the previous year, you have to give an edge to Han-Ram. Shaw appears to be a league-average hitter, where Hanley is significantly better than that.

If you believe in the power of projections versus simply relying on the previous year, you have to give an edge to Han-Ram.

We should also probably address the issue of Shaw’s reverse platoon split in 2015, which helped buoy his offensive explosion. Where most lefties have trouble hitting southpaws, Shaw had a very high batting average and enormous power against them. While that’s fun and terrific to watch, it’s not something that’s usually sustainable. You can imagine that this is an area where PECOTA projects him to regress, as a .330 TAv against lefties doesn’t look likely to happen again.

Oh, let’s quickly knock out baserunning runs here: Hanley was a completely average baserunner last season, Shaw probably cost the Sox a run according to BRR. While that’s roughly a wash, and Ramirez is getting older and older, Shaw’s never been a good baserunner in the past. We may still want to give Hanley a very slight nod here. But only a slight one.

Now we arrive at the magic of defense, and this is where things get interesting. Do you believe that Hanley Ramirez will be a good defender at first base? Do you believe he will be average? Honestly, if you believe either of these things, I think it’s a no-brainer to make Hanley the everyday first baseman … because the arrow still points to Hanley’s offense over Shaw’s. However, if you believe he could be below-average or bad … then I think we may want to re-think the Sox’s decision.

If you look at WARP, and PECOTA’s projections, you’ll find that the values for each player are predicated on Hanley being average (0 FRAA), and Shaw being slightly below-average (-1 FRAA). I don’t buy that. Shaw’s minor-league FRAA numbers are pretty decent, including 4.2 FRAA at Pawtucket last season and 2.2 FRAA last year. He’s proven to be a survivable defender at third base … but I guess Hanley did a few years ago too, so maybe we need to throw out that data point. At any rate, projecting Shaw to be maybe a run or two above average instead of below, especially if he’s playing mostly every day, seems to be a safer bet than taking the under.

What if you really do have a wash between the performance of a young, talented guy trying to make the most out of his chance versus a highly-paid veteran looking to recapture some of his old magic?

Hanley, on the other hand, is a wild card. He could be fine. It’s eminently possible. But he could be awful too. If the first looks in Spring Training show a player who’s going to be a strong negative in the field (think -5 to -10 FRAA), then the team would be giving up anywhere from more than half a win to over a full win by running Hanley out over Shaw. And that just might be the difference between the two players’ offense. Then you’ve got a wash.

So, what if? What if you really do have a wash between the performance of a young, talented guy trying to make the most out of his chance versus a highly-paid veteran looking to recapture some of his old magic? If–and I’m not saying they will, but if–the numbers turn out the same, which one should you roll with? From my outsider’s perspective I say you roll with the guy with experience and who is a veteran who could either galvanize or tear apart your locker room. The expectation for Hanley is that he will be an everyday player, while Shaw doesn’t have those expectations yet. The price of keeping Hanley around is expensive, and the team’s fans know that, while the price of keeping Shaw around is minimal. In this case, I imagine that it’s better to stick with the guy who has proven himself time and time again at the big league level over the guy who’s new to this whole thing, even if his 2015 was pretty great.

The last thing I want to point to is the two players’ range of PECOTA projections. As I said before, Hanley’s has a neutral view of defense while Shaw’s is very slightly lower, but the range still is very enlightening. To get to a TAv of .261 for Hanley–remember, this is higher than the median projection for Shaw–we have to dip all the way down to Ramirez’s 20th percentile projection. Shaw’s upside appears to be a .298 TAv, while Ramirez’s is as high as .308. The veteran, not the young player, appears to be the higher-upside option. The 90th percentile WARP on Ramirez (3.9) is likely a full win higher over a full season than Shaw (3.0).

In the end, we should probably remember that the Red Sox are pretty smart, and make logical decisions, the Porcello/Sandoval/Ramirez offseason notwithstanding. The decision to forge ahead with Ramirez may seem like a strange one at times with a talented young replacement in the wings, but the numbers say that Ramirez is likely to offer more upside, no matter how bad last season’s debacle was. Sometimes, the gut decision could even be the right one!

Photo by Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports Images

Stanley was a first-round pick of the Red Sox in 1974, and worked his way up the ladder until debuting for the big-league club in 1977. Over his career–all of which he’d spend with Boston–he’d fill a variety of roles. Mostly a reliever (both long and short), he opened up his career as a starter in ’77. (Well, mostly.) At the start of the season he was used mainly as a starter, but by the time mid-June rolled around he was mostly working out of the ‘pen. By the end of the season, he had earned half a win over 151 innings–while he’d posted a 3.99 ERA and 3.93 FIP, his DRA was quite a bit higher at 4.76.

The following year, he spent a few games starting, but mostly lived in the bullpen as the team’s closer and late-inning ace. He appeared in 52 games, all but three as a reliever, and absolutely crushed it. He threw 141.7 innings with a 2.60 ERA and a 3.16 DRA; a large part of this success was due to his signature skill in inducing ground balls. With a 62 percent ground-ball rate this season, Stanley ranked in the top-25 of all pitchers with 50 innings or more that season. That’s a lot of worms killed, but it would also go on to be the worst ground ball rate of his career until 1985. At the same time, Stanley struck out virtually no one–his 2.4 strikeouts per nine was the fourth-lowest mark among that same sample of 247 pitchers. Despite his lack of whiffs, he earned a seventh-place Cy Young finish and the same share of MVP votes as teammate Fred Lynn.

Despite his lack of whiffs, Stanley earned a seventh-place Cy Young finish and the same share of MVP votes as teammate Fred Lynn in 1975.

So how do you follow up a season like that? Naturally, you move back to the starting rotation. Despite spending 30 games as a starter, Stanley also dropped into the ‘pen as needed from time to time, logging another 10 appearances there. He started a game and lasted a third of an inning, he started a game that lasted 10 innings. Along the way, he racked up a career-high in innings: 216.7. His DRA bumped up to 4.24, but he hit the top-10 in ground ball rate and he earned an All-Star selection for the first time in his career.

And that brings us to 1980. With the new decade came a rotation run, until a few poor outings to close June of that season booted him back to the bullpen. It would be the start of Stanley’s long run as the stalwart of the Sox’s bullpen. He went into July with a 4.43 ERA, but his performance in that month made him the Red Sox’s closer by August–in that month he appeared in 15 games, and either won or saved 14 of them. By the time the season was over, he dropped that ERA all the way down to 3.39 over his 175 innings. It wasn’t the almighty success as a starter that he or the team might’ve hoped for, but it set the tone for good things to come at the back of the bullpen.

Of course, before he’d really hit his stride in 1982, there had to be that misspent season of ’81, where his ERA was shiny (3.83), but his DRA was 4.64 and his cFIP was 117, meaning that both his deserved performance and his seasonal true talent level were far below average. The less said about ’81, the better … but this would lead to far better things coming forward for Stanley over the next four seasons.

Unlike the closers of today, Stanley was a pitch-chucking machine; he logged a massive 145.3 innings in just 64 appearances in 1983.

In both 1982 and 1983, Stanley was fire. ’82 saw The Steamer post a 73 percent ground ball rate–no Kent Tekulve (77 percent), but still!–and 3.3 WARP as a full-time reliever. In just 48 relief appearances, he logged a staggering 168.3 innings of work, and saw his strikeout rate rise to non-basement levels at 4.4 punch-outs per nine. Between that and the worm-burning ways of his sinker, he earned 3.3 WARP … and took home his second seventh-place finish in the Cy Young voting. ’83 would be more of the same: an 84 cFIP, an All-Star nod, and MVP votes as the closer for the Red Sox. Unlike the closers of today, Stanley was a pitch-chucking machine; he logged a massive 145.3 innings in just 64 appearances.

1984 and 1985 were very good years for Stanely as well, but he didn’t get the same awards recognition as the previous two seasons. In 194.3 innings over those two seasons, he’d post a 3.24 ERA and a 3.67 FIP, not too much different from his previous two years. The only major difference was the change in those innings pitched. After putting forth something close to starting pitcher innings in each of the past two years, he was merely doing the work of a mortal reliever in both ’84 and ’85.

Then it was on to 1986, or “The Year That Must Be Forgotten.” Stanley had pretty good peripherals (a 3.70 FIP and 88 cFIP put him solidly above-average in terms of walks, strikeouts, and dingers), but his ERA was the highest of his career to that point: an ugly 4.37. Our DRA metric that examines what his deserved performance was 5.67, which earned him a WARP of -0.6. That’s right, he was a below-replacement pitcher for the season. Part of the reason the ERA and DRA numbers differ so was due to his unearned runs–he gave up eight over the course of the season. If you take those into account, his ERA transforms into a 5.25 RA9, something far more ugly.

Then, of course, there was the World Series. In Game 6 of the World Series, he was the pitcher on the mound at the end of the game, attempting to close things out for the Sox. Effective in six appearances prior to Game 6 (2.31 ERA), Stanley relieved Calvin Schiraldi with two outs in the 10th, coming in to face Mookie Wilson. A wild pitch plated Kevin Mitchell, and then Bill Buckner’s error sent the series into a seventh and final game, and delayed the Sox’s grand curse-breaking for another 17 years.

The irony is that Stanley did the one thing he did better than anyone else: he induced the ground ball that he was supposed to. He did his work. Anyway, here’s video, if you need the pain to help you know you’re alive.

After that debacle, life moved on. By ’87, Stanley was nearing the end of his run, but the Sox decided to try and return him to the starting rotation. No matter where he pitched–rotation or ‘pen–he had a rough go of it. In 152.7 innings, he saw his signature ground ball rate dip all the way to 54 percent, and his ERA topped 5.00–just barely–for the year. By 1988, he had fallen back to the ‘pen, where he had a very solid bounceback year (101.7 innings, 3.18 ERA) that also included the lowest DRA of his career: 2.60. 1989 would be his final season, and he scuffled in 79.3 innings as both his strikeout rate and ground ball rate dipped from his career norms. In September, he’d announce his retirement, ending his run with the only team he’d ever play for in his career.

Looking back at the entirety of his career, we get the picture of a thrower who worked wherever he was asked: rotation, swingman, closer, and middle relief. His ability to leverage his rubber arm into multiple-inning stints gave him 1,707 career innings for the Sox, which is the sixth-most among all pitchers with the team since 1900. He only trails Tim Wakefield, Roger Clemens, Cy Young, Luis Tiant, and Mel Parnell. That career ground ball rate of 64 percent was the key to his 3.64 ERA as a useful pitching piece over more than a decade.

Looking back at the entirety of Stanley’s career, we get the picture of a thrower who worked wherever he was asked: rotation, swingman, closer, and middle relief.

I talked a little about the current Sox and how they could use a pitcher like Stanley: a little above average but able to function as swingman or leveraged reliever. But is there anyone on the team as currently constructed who could do this job? Perhaps. The guy that comes to my mind has great stuff and experience starting: Joe Kelly. Kelly could potentially be used as a swing starter or multi-inning reliever if a pitcher like Henry Owens or Roenis Elias bumps him out of the rotation. Kelly also has a pretty sweet ground ball rate–he didn’t display it last season (46 percent), but saw percentages around the mid-50s in previous seasons. Kelly could certainly play a Stanley role in a perfect world.

Reliable, versatile, and effective, Stanley was never a superstar, but was almost always available. Every team would love to have a team lifer like him as part of the plan, and precious few players like him have ever existed. He’s earned his spot in the Sox Hall of Fame, and in the annals of the team’s storied history.

Photo by Bob DeChiara/USA Today Sports Images

Super-prospect Yoan Moncada has reached serious heights on BP’s Top 101 prospects list–number seven! We did it, fam!–following his first professional season. He’s still a world away from contributing at the major-league level, but today he’s one step closer to being an impact contributor for the Red Sox.

What Went Right in 2015

Moncada did exactly what the organization must’ve hoped for: he spent the 2015 season getting used to baseball in the U.S., and continued to show flashes of the skills that could make him an impact player at the big-league level. We’re contractually obligated to talk about his speed and athleticism first, considering that Moncada is an absolute specimen. Moncada stole 49 bases this season … which is great on its own. But getting caught just three times is even better. And Moncada didn’t even really turn on the wheels until later in the season. If he gets a green light for a full season, look out.

More importantly–but less decisively–the bat appears to be coming along. If you look at the stat line, he held his own at Greenville,  switch-hitting and putting up numbers that are roughly 35% better than the league average, including a 11.8 percent walk rate and a .278 batting average. That’s not so bad for an age-20 season, and his ripped physicality projects him to improve on his power numbers going forward. Look, at the lower levels, all you really can hope for is (1) continued development of tools and skills and (2) numbers that aren’t going to embarrass you or your coaches. Moncada succeeded on both counts.

Here he is going yard from the left side.

Oh, and he was the Sox’s Minor League Player of the Year. No big deal.

What Went Wrong in 2015

You could make the argument that the first half of his season went wrong. After starting the season late (he made his debut on 5/18/15, a day that will live in Sox lore, perhaps), he went .200/.287/.289 going into the halfway point of the season. He couldn’t hit for any power, only hitting one homer before mid-July. Of course it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that a 20-year-old in a new country playing real baseball for the first time in nearly two years had a little rust to shake off.

Dan Farnsworth at FanGraphs–a much finer scouting mind than mine–states that Moncada’s swing plane remains a little choppy, so that’s a ding on him. In addition, if he can’t stick at second base (where his bat could be dynamite) and has to move to the outfield, that could limit his long-term value.

But once the second half kicked in, it was almost all gravy for the Sox’s top prospect. The good way outweighed the bad.

Outlook for 2016/MLB ETA

I think even an aggressive development plan for Moncada has him spending 2016 in Salem, working on his hitting and continuing to acclimate to the pro game in the U.S. Sitting atop a Salem lineup that also features Rafael Devers and Andrew Benintendi … that’s just awesome for prospect hounds. I’m not sure that any minor league lineup has that sort of upside. If he crushes it–and more importantly, his skills continue to progress­–he’ll likely get a minute in Portland.

So long as his offense continues to develop, Moncada’s probably on track to take Fenway in September of 2017 or May of 2018. Sure, Dustin Pedroia will probably still be around by then, but Moncada will either move, or (gasp) maybe Pedroia will if the kid stays on this path. With his world-class physical gifts, Moncada is a rare guy with a high ceiling and a reasonable floor, provided he can figure out how to be an average defender. He’s the very definition of exciting, and his ultimate potential gives Sox fans something very special to look forward to.

[Editor’s note: Almost as special as his arms.]

Here $138.5 million in Cuban talent. Viva capitalism. pic.twitter.com/JcrlnXMCxO

— Pete Abraham (@PeteAbe) February 15, 2016

Photo by Kelly O’Connor/www.sittingstill.smugmug.com

Of course, as we all know, not every prospect pans out. Today, what I wanted to do was look at a few of the Red Sox players on that top 101, and compare them to reasonably similar players near their position on the list from Top 101 lists over the past seven seasons. Perhaps that could give us some idea of how players like the Red Sox’s young talent have succeeded recently? Perhaps not. I’m not Nostradamus here.

One of the things I’d like to point out here is this: I AM NOT A SCOUT. As such, it’s a fool’s errand to try and compare tools or projectability for these guys. Even though I’ve seen some video, I’m not completely qualified to talk about their skills except on a general level. So when we talk about comps here, we’re looking at only a few basic things:

1.     Top 101 Ranking
2.     Position
3.     Age, level, or any other demographic factors that I can find
4.     Basic skill types (power, speed, defensive profile, etc.)

So let’s see what this gives us.

Yoan Moncada – 2B (No. 7 on the 2016 BP 101)

Potential Comps: Dustin Ackley (No. 12 on the 2010 BP 101), Mike Moustakas (No. 7 on the 2011 BP 101), Xander Bogaerts (No. 12 on the 2013 BP 101), Carlos Correa (No. 4 on the 2014 BP 101)

Moncada’s a tough comp due to his position: second basemen don’t really find themselves on the list, which favors shortstops who eventually get moved off the position. Also, Moncada’s got a bonkers physicality, is pretty young (even for a prospect), and has ridiculous speed.

The upper end of Top 101 prospects is a lot different than the middle- and back-end; guys who live in the Top 10 or Top 25 tend to be a different class of prospect than the others on the list. As such, I tried to limit my comps to guys within about five places on the list. That left us with a load of talented players, but precious few second basemen.

For that reason alone, I think that Dustin Ackley is worth examining. Ackley was a lower-tier prospect on the 2010 list, and he certainly has a different skillset than the Red Sox wunderkind. However, I do think that using him as a comp can help highlight how rough a second-baseman profile can be on a guy. Ackley had to be moved off the keystone, and that drastically damaged his value. If Moncada is put in the same situation, we could see more of the same … and that would require his still-developing bat to play up more. The fact that the only real 2B prospect on this list more or less busted isn’t all that encouraging.

On the other side, I think there are a few ways in which Astros superstar Carlos Correa is a fair comp. Like Moncada, he’s a middle-of-the-diamond talent with impressive physical gifts at a young age. Correa’s physical development threatens to bump him off shortstop eventually, but he showed potential in all facets of the game early on, enough to earn him a 1-1 draft position. There’s no question that Moncada would also have challenged for a 1-1 draft position if he were eligible for the draft and not a Cuban defector.

Moncada’s already been able to leverage his run tool in the minor leagues, so he’s very different from many other players on any of the Top 101 lists. It’s like in football drafts where they draft a guy as “Athlete” and work out the position later. Sometimes the team gets a Brian Urlacher–a long-term, impact physical talent who slots in where needed–and sometimes you draft a guy who’s gone and forgotten in a year. Moncada could be a huge success for the Red Sox (and I’d lean that way), but all outcomes are still in play.

Rafael Devers – 3B (No. 35 on the 2016 BP 101)

Potential Comps: Nick Castellanos (No. 37 on the 2013 and 2014 BP 101), Miguel Sano (No. 31 on the 2011 BP 101), Josh Vitters (No. 31 on the 2010 BP 101)

Surprise, surprise … the anecdotal evidence already look like some good and some bad. Devers was signed internationally as a very young man, projects as a bat-first regular with hit and power tools and could (at this point, probably will) eventually slide down the defensive spectrum. Sano is obviously the best-case scenario, but Devers doesn’t have Sano’s crazy 80-grade power all over the diamond. He can bang, but he’s not Joey Gallo. A bat-first regular who can paper over any defensive flaws would be nice, but Devers doesn’t yet look like a 40-homer guy.

Nah, I think we need to take a closer look at Josh Vitters … sorry Sox fans. Vitters was a highly-sought-after high school bat who tore up the minors for a bit but failed to materialize as a productive big-leaguer. Vitters also had a line at Single-A that matches nicely with Devers’ line from Greenville last year: both were highly successful, without big swings between their batting average and OBP, both hit for respectable power, and both didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory defensively.

Tigers third-sacker Nick Castellanos is another bat-first five who split the middle a bit between the worst-case Vitters run and an All-Star at third. He also had a shockingly good line at Single-A, and he has an improved hit tool that matches Devers’ profile better than perhaps Vitters did. Castellanos never quite came into his power enough to thrive, and his defense is still an open issue, but at least he’s an effective regular at an important position.

The Red Sox could do worse than their own Castellanos, but with the hype Devers has, it’s tough to imagine anyone being happy with that outcome. But this just goes to show that Devers’ bat will carry him either to the top or to the bottom. His combination of offensive skills already looks shiny, but the error bars are a little scary. We shouldn’t expect resounding success from such a young, bat-based prospect, but be very happy if he more resembles Sano than Vitters.

Andrew Benintendi – CF (No. 46 on the 2016 BP 101)

Potential Comps: Michael Choice (No. 39 on the 2012 BP 101), Joc Pederson (No. 50 on the 2014 BP 101), Aaron Judge (No. 49 on the 2015 BP 101)

This is a legitimately difficult one. Benintendi is an under-sized college draftee without the prototypical center fielder speed-and-defense profile, without the mass or size of some monster hitters, but still a bat-first guy who could potentially hit .300 and knock 20 homers with a good OBP. There simply haven’t been a lot of guys at his draft position with his combination of demographics and skills in recent years!

Without a doubt, I feel that Michael Choice is easily the best comp for Benintendi so far, which has got to be a scary proposition for folks like me who’re rooting for Benintendi to succeed. Choice put up terrific college numbers like Benintendi, was drafted in the Top 10 overall like Benintendi, and dominated in his first taste of the minors like Benintendi. Choice had more power and less hit than the Sox prospect, so there’s probably a little less likelihood of complete failure–which is basically what Choice has been in his pro career so far. After getting off to a rip-roaring start, Choice struggled after facing tougher pitching and suffering his first injuries, and has only surfaced briefly in the big leagues.

I think that’s an important reminder here–players can hit snags when faced with challenges, whether they be injury- or performance-related, and sometimes these events can really come out of nowhere. It wasn’t too long ago that Choice was considered a fairly “safe” prospect, much like Benintendi is now. Life comes at you fast.

Also, Pederson is an easy choice here–he’s a PECOTA comp for Benintendi in this year’s BP Annual, and the same type of post-college all-around player. Pederson had a much higher strikeout rate expectation than Benintendi should, but also a bit more power. I’d expect Benintendi to post a solid OBP like Pederson, but perhaps a higher average. Meanwhile, Aaron Judge is something like if Benintendi ate a Super Mushroom after falling into a Mario Brothers game. With almost nine inches on AB, Judge has a very different physical look, and a power-based skillset that doesn’t exactly resemble Benintendi’s.

I’m not sure that I learned anything truly substantive or objective here, but this exercise did one thing for me: it reminded me of the bust potential of prospects. While we all hope that these hitters continue to develop, prospecting is a fickle, fickle thing. These three guys all have a ways to go to reach their ultimate ceilings. As much as we love to hold our prospects close, busts are real, and do happen. The Sox are loaded with multiple high-end talents, bursting with possibility, but we also need to prepare for the possibility that one or more won’t really pan out.

Photo by Andrew Benintendi/Kelly O’Connor, www.sittingstill.smugmug.com

Back in 2014, anything was possible. Sure, Allen Craig was having a down year in St. Louis, but acquiring both him and Joe Kelly for John Lackey’s shambling corpse? What a deal! Coming off two very productive offensive seasons, Craig possessed significant power that supported a righteous ability to make hard contact. He wasn’t a complete masher, and he was a bit of a butcher in the field despite his versatility, but Craig looked like a valuable asset to a Red Sox team in need of good right-handed hitting.

As it turned out, Craig was hopelessly broken. Instead of thriving after his mid-season change of scenery, things went from bad to worse. He was bad in St. Louis, but he was a complete mess in Boston. The process of the John Lackey trade looked acceptable at the time, but in hindsight? The Red Sox look like they really got crushed in that deal. That’s mostly Craig’s fault. [editor’s note: how often this sentence is true …]

What Went Right In 2015

Nothing.

What Went Wrong In 2015

Where do you want to start? His moderate power appears to have evaporated into thin air. Instead of his career 18 percent strikeout rate prior to 2014, Craig has struck out 30.8 percent of the time in Red Sox colors, including posting a .239 OBP and .203 slugging percentage in 88 plate appearances last season. His work with the Red Sox cost the team 0.6 WARP, despite him only taking that limited number of plate appearances.

Exiled to Triple-A for the brunt of the season, Craig was actually an above-average hitter in Pawtucket, but his mysterious power drain was even more evident down there. He still had a slugging percentage (.350) lower than his on-base percentage (.368), but at least he didn’t do as much damage to Pawtucket’s chances of winning games as he did with the big club.

As bad as 2014 was, a reasonable bounce-back campaign in 2015 could have put him back in the team’s plans, as the Sox could have run him out there while they flailed at the bottom of the AL East. Instead, he established himself as the dead-est money on the team’s roster, which is quite the feat on a team featuring Pablo Sandoval.

Outlook for 2016

It is not good, folks. Outrighted off the 40-man roster, Craig is a non-roster invitee to Spring Training, and probably less likely to see time in Boston this year than Travis Shaw or even Bryce Brentz. It wouldn’t surprise me if Sam Travis pushes him off first base in Pawtucket, which leaves Craig twisting in the wind as a Triple-A utility guy/designated hitter. He’s unlikely to suit up for the big club again, unless he returns to 2013 form … or we enter the darkest timeline.

Acquired to be the team’s rotational 1B/LF/DH destroyer of left-handed pitching, Craig is now the worst thing a professional ballplayer can be: irrelevant.

Photo by Nick Turchiaro/USA Today Sports Images

To a subset of younger (but not too young!) Red Sox fans, Mo Vaughn stands out as one of the most dynamic players during the team’s turbulent nineties. Vaughn was many things off the field: philanthropist, troublemaker, businessman–but on the field he was one of the team’s most valuable assets, rivaling even Nomar Garciaparra in on-field value. Sometimes. Of course, as great as Vaughn was, he never soared to quite the same heights as his short-term teammate. By the end of his run in Boston, he wasn’t exactly missed … especially once he took the field for his second and third teams. 

But we’ll get to that later. First, let’s reminisce about the great times Vaughn had in Boston, where he posted terrific, consistent numbers for the better part of six seasons. He was a true masher, launching balls over the right field fence with alacrity, and striking fear into the hearts of all opposing hitters.

In baseball the home run is the game’s greatest currency and, by that standard, Mo Vaughn was hella rich.

Vaughn came up with the Sox in 1991, but didn’t really make a mark on the team until his 1993 season. For his first two partial seasons, he struggled a bit, showing his under-developed skills but hinting at the skills that made scouts like this one excited about his future middle-of-the-order potential. In 659 plate appearances in ‘91 and ‘92, Vaughn only hit 17 home runs and showed no indication he’d develop into a .300 hitter, managing just a .244 batting average. In short, he was a poor man’s Tom Brunansky.

In 1993, he officially ousted Scott Cooper from the first base position on a permanent basis, and it was now that he started to shine. That season, he showed the combination of skills that would define him during his prime: excellent power (.525 slugging), great contact ability (.297 batting average), and solid patience (79 walks). His .306 True Average that season was substantially above-average–and it would go on to be the lowest seasonal mark for the rest of his career as a Red Sox.

The only real dig one could find on Vaughn at that point was that he didn’t exactly field his position like Keith Hernandez. The young Vaughn was still a large man, and though athletic, he was more of a designated hitter operating as a first baseman out of necessity. BP’s FRAA fielding metric docked him only three runs over that full season, but things never would get substantially better for Vaughn with the leather. Oh … that’s not true. Vaughn would go on to cost himself about half a win per season just by being a terrible baserunner over much of his career. Mo Vaughn: not exactly a five-tool player.

But oh, that bat.

In 1994, he didn’t get the chance to play a full season, but still managed to lead baseball with 20 intentional walks and smack another 26 dingers. By this point, coming into his prime, he was flirting with the platonic ideal of the middle-of-the-order hitters of the time: 30+ homers, .300 batting average, and 100 RBI. But by 1995, those numbers would look like child’s play. During that season in the middle of the decade, Vaughn had his most famous, and one of his best seasons. He turned up the power, bashing 39 homers and leading the league in RBI, even though his overall offensive performance by True Average (.307) wasn’t much different than his ‘93 campaign. Still, he firmly established himself as one of his day’s premier bats. Who cares that he went 0-for-the-playoffs after the season ended? 

Was Albert Belle a better hitter in ‘95? Sure. Was teammate John Valentin arguably a better overall player that season? Ask your older sister or your uncle! (Yeah, probably.) But Vaughn walked away with the American League MVP Award, his first All-Star appearance, and a Silver Slugger.

In 1996, Vaughn did something a bit unexpected: he improved on his ‘95 performance, in almost every way. This was his true offensive peak in my book, a season where he appeared in 161 games, hit a career-high 44 homers, and posted a .420 OBP to go with a .583 slugging percentage. His defense was god-awful if you ask FRAA (-24.2 runs), though Total Zone was more forgiving, so he didn’t post as high a WARP as he did the previous year (3.8 WARP in ‘95, 2.7 WARP in ‘96).

At the risk of sounding boring, the next two seasons–what would be his final seasons in Boston–were simply more of the same. In 1997 and 1998, Mo would post his two finest seasons by TAv (.319 and .323) while hitting 75 homers and taking over 1,300 plate appearances. Steady and solid as a rock, Mo also managed to redeem his poor playoff showing by hitting two homers in four games in the Sox’s aborted 1998 playoff run. He remained one of the league’s most compelling and fearsome hitters, able to take one out of the park or off his arm–he crowded the plate pretty good–no matter the scenario. He hit bombs like this one, walking it off on Opening Day in his final season with the team.

Vaughn never reached the gaudy WARP (or fWAR, or bWAR, for that matter) totals of some of his peers due to his position, his poor fielding, and his god-forsaken baserunning. Where some players were and are able to supplement their bats with other, less-impressive skills, Vaughn was all-bat, all-the time. There’s nothing wrong with that, but his offensive output was merely great, not the legendary stuff of Ted Williams and the greatest hitters of his time. In order to truly stand among the best to ever wear Red Sox colors, he’d have to continue his dominance for several more seasons. Of course, that didn’t happen. He elected a six-year, $80 million contract from the Angels that was the largest contract ever, at the time of its signing.

Reportedly, Boston made little effort to re-sign Vaughn as he entered free agency after the 1998 season. Despite his popularity and skill, this turned out to be a very, very smart decision by team management. Mo’s weight and conditioning was always a concern for the Sox, and in his final five seasons in the league, it would contribute to a series of injuries that saw him change from an impact bat to just an impact contract. He swiftly converted from a transcendent bat to just an above-average one, and his sketchy defense an inability to stay healthy saw his career fall into decline in his final seasons with the Angels and Mets.

Boston made little effort to re-sign Vaughn as he entered free agency after the 1998 season. Despite his popularity and skill, this turned out to be a very, very smart decision by team management.

Of course, we have to ask ourselves this: is there anyone currently in the Red Sox organization who can do a convincing Mo Vaughn impression? Vaughn was known for his unbelievable left-handed power, keen eye, and poor defense even at first base … so naturally the Sox have been employing an accelerated version of him for the past 13 seasons. David Ortiz is the apotheosis of Mo Vaughn, his perfected state. Sure, Ortiz doesn’t have Vaughn’s MVP season, but he has enough top-five MVP finishes to hold his own. And while Papi had his down seasons–Remember 2009? I wish I didn’t!–his best years were better than Mo’s best.

No, I don’t think there’s another Mo Vaughn lurking in the Red Sox’s developmental pipeline, but who cares when the Sox have had Vaughn-plus in the lineup for over a decade. Perhaps that’s why Mo is a bit of forgotten lore in Red Sox history these days? You hardly hear his name mentioned in the annals of great Sox sluggers, despite his towering power and relative consistency. Perhaps it’s because of Ortiz’s shadow, his shorter peak, or the acrimonious way he left the team.

Despite all that, despite the team’s darker days in the mid-90s, there was a time when young Sox fans could glimpse the foundation of a team with Garciaparra and Vaughn blasting their way through American League rotations. Though Vaughn never reached the Hall of Fame heights of some other Red Sox greats, he certainly remains one of the team’s most distinguished, and identifiable sluggers.

Photo by Kelly O’Connor/www.sittingstill.smugmug.com/

It’s also nearing the point where we can stop haunting MLB Trade Rumors and Baseball Prospectus and Twitter, wishcasting on those big-ticket free agents. Most of the major offseason trades have likely taken place as well. Once Yoenis Cespedes finds a new home, the heavy-duty part of the offseason transaction mill will be done, and we’ll be left with the small pieces that fit in here and there.

The Red Sox are primed to make another go at it in 2016. With the acquisitions of David Price, Craig Kimbrel and Carson Smith, the team looks to have addressed some of the team’s biggest holes. But no roster is perfect, no franchise bulletproof. If we buy into the idea that there are no more large moves in the offing, we can ask ourselves the next logical question: what smaller moves could the team make in order to optimize the roster for ‘16 and beyond?

Having an awesome farm system and enough money to make Scrooge McDuck blush is a nice way to operate a ballclub.

Before I jump into this, the first thing I’d like to posit here is this: the Red Sox are actually a pretty deep squad. When doing my research, I fully expected to find two or three immediate low-impact wants that could be addressed. Most teams have those! Instead, I’ve found very few glaring weaknesses. Having an awesome farm system and enough money to make Scrooge McDuck blush is a nice way to operate a ballclub.

Nevertheless, every team could use some extra help at times. Here are the best places the team could make small moves to help win 2016.

Add another backup outfielder

Recently, the Sox inked Brennan Boesch to a minor-league deal with an invite to Spring Training, and it’s possible that he could fill this role on the team. But as I look at the current (projected) 25-man roster, I see a bench with a bit of a hole. Right now, you’d have to figure that the bench would consist of Ryan Hanigan, Chris Young, Brock Holt, and … maybe Travis Shaw? It’s gotta be Travis Shaw, right? The Sox are likely to roll with a small bench, but while Holt can play outfield (and pretty well), he’s the backup middle infielder as well as the fifth outfielder. It would be fantastic if the team had another outfielder who could come in if there’s a long-term injury and spell the team’s outfield starters if something happens. Bonus points if he hits left-handed, and can be stashed at Triple-A. (Like an outfielder Travis Shaw!)

Of course, that’s exactly what Boesch likely is. The problem with Boesch, as it is, is that he’s pretty terrible. Over the last four years, he’s been worth -1.6 WARP, he’s a rough defender, and his worst big-league cup of coffee came, well, last year. He posted a .148 True Average, and he did it in the hitters’ paradise called Cincinnati. Ick. So while he could be a decent option if everything breaks right, leveraging his once-useful power in the outfield, it’s much more likely that he’s now a Triple-A player who folds in the majors, playing out the string on the wrong side of 30.

I’d be thrilled if the Red Sox took a flyer on former top prospect Domonic Brown, instead of potentially leaning on Boesch. Is it possible that Brown is a garbage baseball player, one of the worst defenders in the outfield and a hacky hitter? Of course … he wouldn’t be available if he wasn’t. But, at the same time, Brown has shown more and better power and more recent success at the dish than Boesch. He’s left-handed, and he still carries a career TAv of .264 despite down years in 2014 and 2015. He’s also younger, and could perhaps be a change-of-scenery candidate after being jerked around so much in Philly.

Best of all, the looks he’d give Ruben Amaro Jr. every time he reached first base! Priceless!

Add a better backup third baseman

Ostensibly, Brock Holt is this team’s backup third baseman. But as mentioned before, Holt is also the backup for Xander Bogaerts and, more importantly, the increasingly fragile Dustin Pedroia. Holt will be great when pressed into duty, but invariably, the team could use another replacement on hand. Personally, I have deep reservations about Pablo Sandoval’s continued effectiveness on this team, and his injury potential remains high. So what happens if BOTH Pedroia and Pablo go down with injury?

Of course Sean Coyle could be an option at second, or even Deven Marrero … and Travis Shaw is capableish of playing third base. But in a perfect world, the team might have another hand stashed away capable of filling in at third in case of a real emergency. Someone like Garin Cecchini … from two years ago. With Cecch off in Milwaukee, who could the team turn to as an emergency backup … or a potential right-handed caddy for the Panda?

There’s a pretty good chance that Rickie Weeks is done as a major leaguer, but I’d toss him an invite to Spring Training and a minor-league deal in case he feels as if he wants to give it a go, or likes the weather in Pawtucket in April. In 2015, Weeks basically stopped hitting the ball hard at all. His line drive percentage absolutely cratered, with about five percent of his contact going hard off the bat. His overall hard contact dipped dramatically as well, going from a career mark around 30% to a paltry 17% in his limited action with Seattle.

It’s possible that he’s just a ruined shell of his former self. It’s also possible that continued action in 2016 could see him up his numbers from last year. No one expects Weeks to return to the halcyon 5.1 WARP days of 2010, but giving him a shot in Spring Training could be a good fit for both he and the Red Sox. If he can figure out how to handle third base and maybe make a little more hard contact, he could be a decent backup plan in the case of the inevitable injury woes that hit every team.

Yet another reliever, please!

You literally cannot have enough relief pitching on a baseball team. Every team always needs another relief pitcher. No team is an exception. And while a team gets the most value out of their most-leveraged arms (an area where the Sox are looking pretty good!), having another hand ready is a great idea. In the case of the Sox, again … the projected bullpen looks chock full of guys on major-league deals, with names like Matt Barnes, Noe Ramirez and Heath Hembree perhaps starting the year in the minors. As such, whomever the Sox add to the bullpen mix probably needs either to have options remaining, or be a candidate for a minor-league deal.

Here, I’d hope to try to snag a left-hander, even with the team carrying Roenis Elias, Henry Owens and Brian Johnson in the wings. All of those guys are better served as starters (except maybe Elias), and they are more foundational pieces. I’d want someone who’s more off the beaten path, who the team can stash, use in case of emergency, and not worry about screwing with their path to starting.

I’d want Adam Loewen.

Hear me out. I understand that Loewen is currently a free agent. The pitcher-outfielder-pitcher-again had a remarkable strikeout rate last year in Triple-A, punching out more than 30 percent of hitters in 46 innings with Lehigh. The southpaw also saw real big-league time with the Phillies, and maintained a high strikeout rate in the big leagues too! That’s promising.

Of course, by now you’re probably checking his BP player page and seeing the other side of things: his control has completely gone away during his years attempting to be an outfielder. His walk rate is an unmitigated disaster, and he gave up a boatload of hard contact. He was, in a couple of words, Not Good.

But for the purposes of this exercise, he is Just Fine. After all, we’re working at the very, very ends of the margins of this major league team. The Red Sox are deep enough to be able to absorb some risk with these minor-league contract guys. Loewen actually carries some nice upside — he’s proven he can strike out big-league hitters, so if he can eventually find the strike zone, there’s enough potential for him to be a big league contributor. If not, hey, maybe he can run double-duty in Pawtucket as a lefty specialist/left fielder?

One of the real points of this exercise, for me at least, was finding out just how deep of a roster the Red Sox have built. The team has room to improve, for sure, but the best way to improve this team is take a couple of the couple-win players on the team (Rusney Castillo, Pablo Sandoval, Joe Kelly, etc.) and replace them with All-Star caliber guys, and that’s a difficult (and expensive) feat. That kind of performance is both unpredictable and costly.

The next thing could be to add marginal guys with a little bit of upside to fill in when a team needs 50 plate appearances or a few innings here and there. And while the Sox farm system is loaded, the close-to-the-majors talent appears to be concentrated mostly in left-handed starting pitchers. By adding a couple of vets on minor-league contracts, perhaps the team can sneak out a few runs here and there.

And anything has to be better than signing Brennan Boesch.

Photo by Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports Images

Lowe is worth an article himself (I’m sure I’ll get to him at some point), but today it’s time to celebrate Jason Varitek. Famous for being a stalwart Sox player through the entirety of the first decade of the millennium, Varitek was a critical piece of the team’s 2003 playoff run as well as the squad’s 2004 and 2007 World Series victories. The fourth team captain in the franchise’s long history, Varitek remains a beloved and respected figure for the team’s fans today.

At times, Varitek was also lauded as one of the greatest players in the league, or at least one of the game’s best catchers … an assertion that the numbers at the time never really backed up. Today’s goal is to explore Varitek’s overall value and answer a few questions with the new data at hand: was Varitek legendary, or more ordinary?

Instead of breaking down Tek’s value on a year-by-year basis, as I often do in Olde Sox, I’d like to break his performance down into offense and defense. Varitek had a reputation as a good-hitting catcher through most of his career with Boston, and I’d like to touch on his skills and performance in that arena before talking about his defense–an especially appropriate and exciting topic given the release of Baseball Prospectus’s new catching metrics.

So let’s get into it. A switch-hitter with power and on-base skills, Varitek at his best was everything one could want in an offensive catcher. His career True Average (TAv) of .261 posits him as a league-average hitter over his career, no mean feat for a catcher. Catchers typically hit closer to 10% below league-average during that timeframe, so Varitek obviously was a good hitter for a catcher.

A switch-hitter with power and on-base skills, Varitek at his best was everything one could want in an offensive catcher.

How’d he succeed? Varitek hit for a little power with 193 career homers and a .435 slugging percentage. Most of his damage was done in four seasons: 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005. During those years, he wasn’t just a good hitter for a catcher, he was a good hitter. In each of those seasons, his TAv was .277 or higher, which would be suitable for a hitter at nearly any position, not just the toughest one on the diamond.

Varitek was also skilled at reaching base despite a just-okay career batting average and little to no baserunning ability. Tek had a career walk rate of 10.5 percent, which helped him post a career .341 on-base percentage despite his middling .256 batting average. Though his bat earned him only three All-Star berths and a few down-ballot MVP votes, he was a good enough hitter to win a Silver Slugger in 2005.

Also, Varitek was able to succeed in the postseason … once. Truthfully, his overall postseason numbers aren’t that great, but Tek made an effort to power the Sox to the World Series during the 2003 failed bid for the AL pennant. During that run, he hit four homers and posted a .706 slugging percentage in 11 games. Unfortunately, the rest of his postseason career was nothing to write home about–even with those games as part of the calculation, his career postseason line includes a .292 OBP due to a drastically slashed walk rate during October contests.

His one true Achilles’ heel was, well, attached to his heels. In nearly each season of his long, storied career, Varitek cost the team a substantial amount of runs on the basepaths. Over his entire career, he cost the team 40 runs via BP’s BRR metric for baserunning, though other metrics like FanGraphs’ BsR are slightly more forgiving. That’s four or more wins over the life of his career, and often between two and five runs per season. While not a lot of cost individually, this certainly adds up over the course of his career … you could say this is like taking one of his better seasons (before accounting for BP’s new catcher defense stats) and wiping it from the ledger.

Overall, Varitek wasn’t truly a premier offensive catcher, though he did have a few very good seasons, and a host more where he was average or good, if not great. Without FRAA in the conversation, Varitek’s WARP runs 23.2 wins above a replacement player–that’s a good, but not great career total. But, as we know now, offense (and position adjustment) aren’t everything. Varitek had the reputation of a great defensive catcher, and that deserves its day in the sun as well.

Now, with the new catcher defense statistics debuting today as part of “Catchella,” we can break down Tek’s defense into its component parts, and paint an even clearer picture of his excellence. Now, catcher defense has been broken down into four primary metrics, and we can see where Varitek rates among the best backstops at each of them.

We’ll start with the thing that, for many years, was the hallmark of catcher defense: the running game. Varitek never received much in the way of kudos for his arm, and that bears out using a statistic called Swipe Rate Above Average (SRAA). Among the thousands of catchers rated by SRAA, Varitek has the seventh-most runs to the negative in SRAA, having cost the Sox 16.5 runs more than an average catcher. That’s not great, and works out to a little more than a win and a half of value that he cost the team over his career. Funny enough, the guy Varitek unseated at catcher, Scott Hatteberg, has the third-worst SRAA in the existing sample, with -19.6 SRAA over his career.

There’s another, smaller factor in the running game that we can measure, and that’s Takeoff Rate Above Average (TRAA). This measures how good a catcher was not at throwing out runners, but rather preventing them from taking off at all in the first place: holding them on the bag, or using reputation to keep them from stealing. Over his entire body of work, Varitek was worth 0.5 TRAA, a very, very slight positive. Now, most catchers–even the greatest ones–never put up huge numbers in this category, and most registered within a run of average. Varitek’s mark is par for the course … another Sox legend is second all-time, as Carlton Fisk earned a (comparatively) enormous 7.6 TRAA over his career. Johnny Bench, by the way, has the greatest TRAA in history with 12.4 runs above average–a true outlier.

Those first two numbers paint Varitek in a bit of an unflattering light, but the next two redeem him, and then some. Errant Pitches Above Average is a measure of blocking ability the same way the other two measure control of the running game, and by this metric, Varitek is one of the greatest defensive catchers since 1950. Among all catchers, Tek ranks eighth all-time in overall blocking value, sandwiched on the leaderboard between Hall of Famers (and Mets) Mike Piazza and Gary Carter. His score of 10.9 EPAA undoes most of the trouble his arm caused the Sox, and underscores that blocking, while valuable, may only be worth a win or so even during a career as long as Varitek’s.

The real value for a catcher comes from pitch framing, and the BP statistic to judge that is Called Strikes Above Average (CSAA). This measure only dates back as far as 1988, but Varitek has amassed the 13th-most value by that metric over a career since that date. His CSAA of 85.6 tells us that he added more than eight wins to the Red Sox by getting extra called strikes and presenting pitches to the umpire in a favorable light. (This may have been one of the reasons why Varitek also caught a then-record four no-hitters in his career.)

It’s not surprising that Varitek also has the 13th-most overall catcher defense added overall in the history of the game, with a total of 80.5 runs added over his career.

With his CSAA stats so great, it’s not surprising that Varitek also has the 13th-most overall catcher defense added overall in the history of the game, with a total of 80.5 runs added over his career. That’s a huge amount compared to most catchers, and every drop of that value went to the Sox over his 14-year career.

When looking for a comparable to Varitek, it’s easy to bring up Blake Swihart, who also is a switch-hitting catcher with some solid offensive potential. It would take a couple of better-than-league-average offensive seasons for Swi to match up with Tek, but it’s a possibility. The trouble is this: in his 2015 rookie season, Swihart wasn’t nearly a Varitek on defense. In fact, he was nearly the opposite of the long-time vet’s defensive profile. The team’s rookie backstop cost the Sox six runs by framing, and 0.6 EPAA in terms of blocking. Swihart’s arm was fine, earning him no points by TRAA, and 0.3 runs by SRAA.

On the other hand, Christian Vazquez’s 2014 season was an elite framing year, earning him 13.4 CSAA, which is a number that is excellent … and in line with Tek’s best framing seasons. Varitek actually had five seasons in which he posted more CSAA than that, the best of which was a remarkable 25.8 CSAA in 2002. Now, CSAA tends to fluctuate a bit from year to year, so there’s certainly a chance that Swihart could develop his skills more behind the plate and come to approximate Varitek’s value, but right now it’s the other talented young receiver on the roster who looks more similar to Tek in the area that perhaps matters most.

The point of these Olde Sox columns is to help us understand Fenway’s greats just a little bit better through the use of more modern metrics. There’s literally no metric more modern than today’s release of the BP catching statistics, and those are very useful for helping us understand how much value a player like Varitek can earn by playing catcher at a high level for such a long run. His offensive stats, on the other hand, are a member of public record, and have been a mark in his favor for years … in sabermetric circles and otherwise.

Numbers don’t exactly peg Jason Varitek as a Hall-of-Fame player, but he was undeniably a huge part of some of the best and most important seasons in Red Sox history. Today, he’d be a sought-after commodity as teams look for catchers with defensive skills, and his bursts of slugging prowess and on-base ability would make him an asset to any club. But Varitek is also special for his durability and loyalty to the Red Sox, playing 1,546 games in Sox gear. He may not have been the greatest catcher in Red Sox history, but Jason Varitek has a substantial claim as one of the most talented and reliable players in the franchise’s storied existence.