Boston » Eduardo Rodriguez http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com Bringing BP-quality analysis to Boston Mon, 11 Mar 2019 11:30:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1 Once More Unto The Depth http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/04/10/once-more-unto-the-depth/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/04/10/once-more-unto-the-depth/#comments Tue, 10 Apr 2018 13:00:45 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=37636 The Red Sox, owners of a franchise-best 8-1 record so far, are looking excellent. The pitching has been stellar, the offense has sprung to life, and everything’s clicking all at once. Hanley Ramirez looks healthy and has been productive, David Price is doing great things, and even the backups in Eduardo Nunez and Brian Johnson have been rock solid. With all this optimism, it’s somewhat easy to forget that the Red Sox are really relying on their depth a lot in the early going.

The performance of the pitching depth has been the most surprising, as Johnson and Hector Velazquez have combined to allow just two runs in 11.2 innings pitched. They’ve taken care of business where business needed to happen: in Florida, against both the Rays and the Marlins. Granted, we’re not talking turn-of-the-decade-Yankees juggernauts here, but outings like that are always very positive, especially in an environment where baseballs are being launched into the stands more than ever. Eduardo Rodriguez came back a little earlier than expected and had middling results for the first game, and with Drew Pomeranz still about a week away from returning, we’ll be seeing a little more of Johnson, with Velazquez in the bullpen for now.

On the position player side, that depth is about to get tested. Eduardo Nunez is a bench guy already playing due to Dustin Pedroia recovering from knee surgery, but as far as bench players getting a lot of playing time, he’s really the only one. That’s about to change, thanks to the weird, freak injury Xander Bogaerts suffered on Sunday. At first glance, it seemed like a rolled ankle or something just as innocuous, but it was a fair bit worse than that:

Well, that’s a bummer. Thankfully, it’s looking like two weeks until Bogaerts returns. I really feel like crediting the Red Sox for actually letting Bogaerts heal up this time, but that seems like the sort of thing they should do in the first place, not let them play for three months with a bad wrist.

And so the Sox look for a stand-in. Deven Marrero is long gone, as he was traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks towards the end of Spring Training. Tzu-Wei Lin was called up to take Bogaerts’ roster spot, and he can play both middle infield positions, but he’ll probably take a backseat at shortstop to Eduardo Nunez, while he and Brock Holt trade off at second base. No one else can readily play shortstop for the Red Sox at the moment, and you can’t really count on Marco Hernandez showing up anytime soon, as he’s on the 60-day disabled list, and won’t appear in game action until the end of May. Mitch Moreland is strictly a first baseman, and Blake Swihart is a catcher with corner infield experience in a pinch. There’s not much past Nunez, Lin, and Holt for middle infielders, unless you want to go deep into the minors.

The quality of the middle infielders is just alright. I’d like to be higher on these guys, but we’ve seen their shortcomings. Nunez is fine, Holt is an uninspiring player nowadays, and there’s a pretty wide range of outcomes for Lin should he play a lot over the next couple weeks. I’d honestly like to see more Lin and less Holt, but I’ve been very down on Holt for a long while — with good reason! — so I feel that’s more of a personal preference. Either way, there’s going to be a lot of shuffling around second base.

The Bogaerts injury really forces them to dig deep for infielders, and it’s not like this is a common occurrence.

Injuries like this are really testing the Red Sox early on. It’s not a test to see if they can keep up their winning ways or production — they have above-average regulars at nearly every position. The Bogaerts injury really forces them to dig deep for infielders, and it’s not like this is a common occurrence. Bogaerts is a pretty healthy player, as he’s played 144 games or more in every season since he took hold of a starting job in 2014, so it’s not as if the Sox were lax in looking for a backup here. Bogaerts doesn’t often go down like this, and if it wasn’t already obvious, the “Bogaerts is soft!” complaint doesn’t really hold up.

The Red Sox were more prepared to cover for Pedroia’s absence instead, but with Bogaerts’ injury, it forces them to spread that depth thin across two positions, and potentially field someone like Holt for a not-inconsequential amount of time. That’s a sub-par outcome, for reasons including his poor production in the last two years. But this is what happens when depth is needed, especially for someone that really never needs a break — you’re forced to use guys who aren’t always cut out to be starters at certain positions. It’s times like this when you miss Marrero’s defense, even if that meant biting the bullet when it came to his offense.

This could all just be handwringing. It’s only two weeks or so! The Nunez-Holt-Lin hydra could perform spectacularly and emulate Johnson’s and Velazquez’s starts to the season. That is also possible! All of these players have had very notable runs of success before, for example: Brock Holt, 2015 American League All-Star. Personally, I’d fall on the pessimist side of things here, if only because I keep low expectations in general.

But this is why depth exists. None of them are supposed to be as good as the starter, or else they’d be, y’know, starting. The Red Sox are a stacked team with a lot of good players, and having one of the starting nine be “just alright” won’t trip them up, but it’s probably going to be a bit bland without Bogaerts out there. At least he’ll be back soon, and we can worry no more.

Photo by Greg M. Cooper — USA TODAY Sports

]]> http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/04/10/once-more-unto-the-depth/feed/ 1 The Present And Future David Price http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/03/16/the-present-and-future-david-price/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/03/16/the-present-and-future-david-price/#comments Fri, 16 Mar 2018 13:00:58 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=36345 As has been said time and again, Spring Training stats aren’t worth much of anything. From a fan’s perspective, the value of Spring Training is really two-fold. First, baseball is back after a long winter and baseball, any baseball, even meaningless baseball, is very good. Second, while it’s difficult to tell how good any given team is from their spring numbers, one thing you can tell is health. Is the guy on the field? If yes, hooray!

Yesterday David Price threw four shutout innings against mostly Blue Jays backups. He struck out five, walked one, and gave up one single. Good as they are, those results tell us little about how well David Price pitched yesterday or will pitch this season. They do show us that David Price is healthy right now. That’s about the best you can ever say of any pitcher in spring training, but it’s downright vital for the 2018 Red Sox as well as future iterations of the Olde Town Team. Hooray!

The astute reader will note that health represents a marked difference from last season, when Price was unable to throw a pitch during Spring Training and wasn’t able to take the mound in anger for Boston until the very end of May. That is yet another in a line of data points pointing towards the fact that Price’s time with Boston hasn’t been what was hoped when he put pen to paper following a Cy Young-caliber 2015 season split between Detroit and Toronto. Price’s 2016 season, his first in Boston, featured a quantity of innings but perhaps not quite the quality that had been hoped within those innings. Then came 2017 when Price was beset by injuries. The team won 93 games and the division anyway, despite getting just 74.2 innings from Price (with 8.2 of those coming out of the bullpen).

A good thing about Price’s 2017 was that his velocity bumped up to 2015 levels after a step downwards in 2016. Price beats you with stuff and location, so it’s not a huge deal if he’s throwing 92 instead of 95, but obviously 95 gives him a bit more room for error. Yesterday in his first action of 2018, Price was in the low 90s with his fastball but still managed eight swinging strikes in just 55 pitches. Velocity isn’t a concern at this point, just health though, sure, getting outs is better than getting knocked around. That he was on the mound and throwing the ball over the plate is the main thing though.

It’s the main thing because this year’s Red Sox, as impressive as the offense looks to be, is going to rely heavily on starting pitching. Chris Sale sits at the head of the table when it comes to the Sox rotation, but Price isn’t far away. With Drew Pomeranz and Eduardo Rodriguez, the Sox rotation has some upside as well, but both those guys aren’t known as the most durable. So a healthy Price will go a long way towards giving the Sox a step up on the Yankees if the rest of the rotation is doing their job, or just keeping them in the Wild Card hunt if not. If Price and Sale are healthy and give the Sox 400 innings, I don’t see how this team doesn’t make the playoffs.

Which brings us to: the playoffs! We’ve seen just about every type of pitching staff have success in October over the past five seasons. The Royals did it with a strong bullpen and little starting talent. The Indians did it with starting depth and a deftly deployed and hellacious back of the bullpen. The Cubs won with a more standardized pitching rotation and bullpen setup. The point seems to be less how you deploy your talent and more that you have the talent to deploy (and that the talent plays well in the moment). Right now the Red Sox have the talent, with Sale, Price, Pomeranz, and Kimbrel in the ‘pen.

The thing about the way baseball structures its playoffs is that it allows teams to deploy their best players a lot, more so than during the regular season. This is especially so for the pitching staff. Sale and Price can pitch almost every game of a five game series. They can throw more than half the games in a seven game series. That’s an advantage over almost every team in baseball.

Since the moment Price signed his seven-year contract with Boston, it seemed clear that he was going to leave after three seasons. The deal gives him an opt-out after this season, allowing him back on the free agent market at age-32 for yet another massive payday. Price’s opting out would get the Red Sox out from under the remaining four years and $127 million of his deal. The only thing that might stop Price from opting out would be a catastrophic injury of some sort. Beyond that, he’s gone.

Except no, because then came the 2017-2018 baseball off-season. Suppose Price pitches well this season, five wins or so, his best since 2015 in Detroit/Toronto. Is any team going to offer him $127 million? Yu Darvish got $127 million from the Cubs, but he was a year younger than Price, and he’ll have to play two more seasons to get it. Forget the $127 million, Jake Arrieta didn’t even get four years from the Phillies. Teams aren’t giving $30 million per season to pitchers in their early 30s anymore.

Things change of course, and maybe next off-season will be different and teams will open up their vaults for 32 year old pitchers again. But, if you were David Price, would you be willing to turn down the kind of money he has guaranteed to him in order to take that chance?

Unless something changes David Price is going to remain with the Red Sox through his contract. The thing is, that might not be such an awful thing. The money will be bad, but if the Sox get a good pitcher out of it, then they can deal with a bit of an overpay. The question for the Red Sox, at least right now is whether or not Price is healthy. Yesterday he was, and that’s all you can ask of a beautiful spring day.

Photo by Jasen Vinlove — USA TODAY Sports

]]> http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/03/16/the-present-and-future-david-price/feed/ 2 The 2017 Roster Recap Compendium http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/03/13/the-2017-roster-recap-compendium/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/03/13/the-2017-roster-recap-compendium/#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2018 13:00:33 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=36099 During the offseason, we here at BP Boston run a series called Roster Recaps, in which we detail the year that was for every player that graced the major league roster in 2017. Some you might vividly remember (Chris Sale!), while others you’ll struggle to recall what they did (Ben Taylor… ?). For the players in the latter category, we’ve got you covered. If you feel like looking back on some good times, we’ll accommodate you too.

Presenting the full list 2017 Roster Recaps, listed with the authors that wrote them. An asterisk denotes a player who has, as of March 13th, dearly departed the Red Sox. We’ll miss them all terribly.

RRvazquez

Catchers

RRdevers

Infielders

RRbenny

Outfielders

RRkimbrel

Pitchers

Header photo by Winslow Townson — USA TODAY Sports

]]> http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/03/13/the-2017-roster-recap-compendium/feed/ 4 A Rivalry Rekindled: The Pitching http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/03/02/a-rivalry-rekindled-the-pitching/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/03/02/a-rivalry-rekindled-the-pitching/#comments Fri, 02 Mar 2018 14:00:45 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=35595 Last week we looked at how the Red Sox offense stacked up against that of the New York Yankees. There have been articles written about this, and everyone seems to come up with something slightly different. I gave the Red Sox a slight advantage, but your mileage may vary. And that’s fine. The point is the two teams are likely to be pretty close, offensively speaking. That’s only part of the story when it comes to a baseball team though. Pitching is also pretty important, so that’s what we’ll look at this week.

I’m going by the rotations as listed on Roster Resource, which of course may change during spring training. As for the order, I’ve organized them by their WARP projections.

Rotations

Red Sox:

  1. Chris Sale (6.1)
  2. David Price (2.1)
  3. Drew Pomeranz (2.1)
  4. Rick Porcello (1.2)
  5. Eduardo Rodriguez (1.2)

(12.7 total WARP)

versus

Yankees:

  1. Luis Severino (4.1)
  2. Sonny Gray (2.5)
  3. Masahiro Tanaka (2.4)
  4. Jordan Montgomery (1.0)
  5. CC Sabathia (0.6)

(10.6 total WARP)

Not unlike the two team’s lineups, their rotations aren’t too far apart in overall talent. Perhaps the Red Sox enjoy a bit more at the top of the rotation, whereas the Yankees have more overall depth. But the end result is roughly the same, as you can see from their respective WARP totals.

Is Luis Severino as good as Chris Sale? No, probably not, but he’s not wholly far off. Sale is the best player of either group and the one who the Red Sox hope can put them over the top, both during the regular season and in the playoffs. Severino has the potential to be that guy for the Yankees. Still, the advantage is with Sale.

The thing about PECOTA and really all projection systems is its innate pessimism. It’s not really even pessimism though because players get hurt all the time and age gets everyone at some point and then there’s the guys who just have bad seasons because of who knows what. That all said, it’s not difficult to expect more than PECOTA projects from a few guys on each team, and not coincidentally the two I’d expect more from are the same guys I’d point to when discussing the most pivotal pitchers of the rotation. That would be Price for the Red Sox and Gray for the Yankees. Both have been top pitchers before, as recently as 2016. In Gray’s four seasons he’s been above 4 WARP in three of them including last season, so his 2.5 projection seems a tad short. But there it is just the same.

Price likely has a similar issue to Gray, namely injuries. Price spent a significant number of days on the DL last season, the first time he did that in his career. The result was a one-win season after averaging six wins per over the three seasons before that. Still, the Red Sox are depending on Price this season in a way that I’m not sure fans have fully grasped. If Price gives the team 75 innings of 4.50 run ball and then exits stage left, the Red Sox are going to need a lot of quality innings from Steven Wright and/or Brian Johnson. To paraphrase the words of a former Yankee manager, that’s not what you want.

But if Price is healthy, he’s Boston’s second ace, and he changes the completion of the team completely. The same thing could be said for Gray, whose reputation took a hit during an injured and ineffective 2016 season. Peak Gray probably isn’t the equal of peak Price, though it seems that Gray reaching his previous heights is the more likely possibility of the two (though as of this writing both claim to be fully healthy).

Past the top two guys, the Yankees need Tanaka’s arm to remain attached to his shoulder, possibly a difficult ask considering his previous medical history. If he’s healthy though, a caveat that should probably be applied to all pitchers, Tanaka offers what any team would look for in a third starter: namely quality and dependability. The Red Sox are more on the first of those attributes and less on the second with their third starters (yes, two) in Pomeranz and Porcello. Porcello can’t be as bad as he was last season (can he?), but he’s probably not going to win another Cy Young either. As such, sure, two wins seems perfectly adequate, even if you maybe would hope for more given his $20 million salary. Pomeranz is hitting his stride as a starter after a late start to his career, but he’s always been on the fragile side. Together they’re probably in the five-win range, which is what the Yankees will likely get out of the combination of Gray and Tanaka.

The back end of the Yankees rotation is C.C. Sabathia and Jordan Montgomery, both of who had stronger seasons in 2017 than you’d have guessed given their respective ages and, in Sabathia’s case, everything else about him. And yet here he is again. Note that PECOTA is as unimpressed with him as you are. The Red Sox back end features the aforementioned Wright and Johnson unless, and this is the key, Eduardo Rodriguez gets healthy. Say what you will about Montgomery, but the Yankees don’t have a pitcher of Rodriguez’s quality in the back half of their rotation. If Rodriguez comes back healthy with no knee troubles, he gives the Sox rotation depth few teams can match.

If there is one place where New York has a step on Boston, it’s in previous injuries. Why are they important? A wise person once said the greatest predictor of future pitcher injuries is past pitcher injuries. With that as a background, the Red Sox are at greater risk with Price, Rodriguez, and deeper down, Wright and Johnson all having missed significant time in recent seasons. Only Gray fits that description with the Yankees (though Sabathia has pitched through injuries, he’s not particularly injury prone).

Bullpens

Predicting what will happen with bullpens is the greatest of impossibilities, like jumping across the country using only trampolines, or drinking an entire bottle of Gatorade without your tongue jumping from your mouth and running screaming down the street. The Red Sox have one of the two or three best relievers in baseball in Craig Kimbrel. That’s a good start. After that, they could have a very deep pen with Carson Smith and Tyler Thornburg splitting eighth inning duties and Matt Barnes and Joe Kelly covering the sixth and seventh. Or all those guys could spontaneously explode like Spinal Tap drummers.

Like the rotations, the Red Sox have that one top guy, but the Yankees have quality and more depth in their pen. And yet, Aroldis Chapman wasn’t so hot last season, and Dellin Betances wasn’t either. Both were fine overall, and very good at times, but showed real moments of shakiness. Tommy Kahnle was less than spectacular after putting up an amazing first half in Chicago, and David Robertson was good, but not amazing either. Still, those guys have track records of (mostly) excellence, so few are likely to flame out. It could easily turn into the Craig Kimbrel And That’s It Show in Boston, whereas the Yankees have too much depth and not enough Craig Kimbrel for that to occur to them.

Where things stand now, the Red Sox have a slight advantage in the rotation, but when you factor in the bullpens, that lead dwindles. Like their offenses, and like the teams of 2003 and 2004, picking which one is truly better is likely a fool’s errand (thus these articles). We never know what will happen over the course of a baseball season, but often times we kinda know, right? Here I legitimately have no idea. Except to say this: even after 162 games it’ll probably be quite close.

Also, the Houston Astros are better than both teams.

Photo by Noah K. Murray — USA TODAY Sports

]]> http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/03/02/a-rivalry-rekindled-the-pitching/feed/ 0 Roster Recap: Hector Velazquez Adds Some Depth http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/02/22/roster-recap-hector-velazquez-adds-some-depth/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/02/22/roster-recap-hector-velazquez-adds-some-depth/#comments Thu, 22 Feb 2018 14:00:12 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=35178 It was right around this time last year that the Red Sox made the final signing of their 2017 offseason by purchasing the contract of Hector Velazquez from Capeche of the Mexican League. Velazquez was a guy who we knew little about and expected even less from. His stats were intriguing enough—2.47 ERA and 1.00 WHIP over 131.1 IP. Perhaps he could be a worthwhile depth piece. That was about it. If everything went well for the team he wouldn’t need to see any time, but he was an added insurance policy for the club to rely on if they had to deal with a myriad of injuries.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Teams always end up using more starters than they anticipate — or maybe I should say we anticipate — and the 2017 Red Sox were no exception. Velazquez adapted quickly in Triple-A, posting even better numbers in Pawtucket than he had in the Mexican League, sporting a 2.21 ERA and 1.00 WHIP over 102 IP. This effective performance was even more impressive because it came off of effectively zero rest. What do I mean by zero rest? After Velazquez was signed by the team in on February 18th, he got right back to throwing. Sounds normal, right? Wrong. He had continued pitching in Mexican Pacific Winter League and the Caribbean series all offseason, and had logged an astonishing 246.1 IP and 46 starts before even making it to spring training. The fact that he held his own was incredible.

Velazquez logged another 24.2 IP of work at the big league level with a four-inning shutout of the eventual World Series Champs on October 1st. It was a great season, albeit a tiring one for the new Red Sox pitcher.

WHAT WENT WRONG

Nothing really went wrong for Velazquez last year, unless you count the fact that he logged 373 IP between April of 2016 and October of 2017. That is a lot of bullets. It proves Velazquez is durable, but also this isn’t an ideal way to do things.

WHAT TO EXPECT

After Brian Johnson — who is out of options — it is likely that Velazquez will be the first starter summoned from Triple-A should an injury occur. It is not a given at this point that Steven Wright or Eduardo Rodriguez will be available to start the season, so Velazquez could see time immediately should he look good during spring training.

Let’s not get carried away, however, as Velazquez is a 29-year-old journeyman, not a prospect or a threat to develop into anything really intriguing. He throws a fastball/slider/changeup mix that is reliable, just not exciting. His fastball has below-average velocity, but it does generate ground balls. You can’t mistake his offspeed or breaking offerings for wipeout pitches, but they are acceptable pitches for what they are. You can expect that Velazquez will come in, be durable, and keep the ball low in the zone. Essentially, he will give the team a chance to win when he’s in the game. This is all you can ask for the 7th or 8th option in the rotation, and Dombrowski paid very little to get him.

Photo by Kim Klement — USA TODAY Sports

]]> http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/02/22/roster-recap-hector-velazquez-adds-some-depth/feed/ 1 Roster Recap: An Early Exit For Steven Wright http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/01/12/roster-recap-an-early-exit-for-steven-wright/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/01/12/roster-recap-an-early-exit-for-steven-wright/#comments Fri, 12 Jan 2018 14:00:57 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=33041 Steven Wright is 33 years old, which is a larger number than the total number of innings he threw last season. When your age exceeds your innings pitched, that’s officially not a good sign. Another bad sign would be an ERA greater than the number of innings thrown. Fortunately for Wright, he managed 24 innings before knee surgery ended his 2017 season, and his ERA was 8.25 at the time, so he survived that particular ignominy. Still the total package — low innings, high ERA, and age — was not a good or promising one. Then there was his arrest on domestic violence charges. The charges are in the process of being dropped, but…still…ugh. Very very ugh.

That’s your introduction to Steven Wright’s last season! Yet, despite the arrest, despite the surgery, despite the lousy performance last season, there is a very real chance that Steven Wright will be the Red Sox number five starting pitcher in the 2018 season. Is that good? Is that bad? Should it even be happening?

What Went Wright

(sorry) (not sorry)

To find something that went right for Wright, you have to skip last season. Go back to 2016 when Wright threw 156 innings for the Red Sox with an ERA of 3.33. He was quite good then! And especially in the first half when he made the All-Star team. Coming in to the 2017 season Wright was expected to hold down a rotation spot… aaaaaand that concludes everything that went right for Steven Wright in 2017!

[hold for applause]

Fine. Whatever. See if I come to your office and clap for you when you finish that memo.

What Went Wrong

Wright lasted five starts into the season before getting shut down with discomfort in his left knee. It was initially thought to be a short-term injury, and he was put on the 10-day disabled list, but that eventually morphed into the 60-day DL and season-ending knee surgery. That was it. That was the end of Wright’s season. Five starts. Five lousy starts. Five crappy, lousy starts.

It’s difficult to take much away from Wright’s work in 2017. He was bad (the aforementioned 8.25 ERA), but he had also been bothered by his knee since spring training. Perhaps in a world where his knee was healthy he would have pitched more effectively. Perhaps in a world where his knee was healthy we’d all be eating muscle-building jelly-beans in a field with unicorns. When you look at it that way it’s really a shame he hurt is knee, right? In any case, Wright’s season was essentially a washout.

What To Expect

This is where things get interesting. The Red Sox already have Chris Sale, Drew Pomeranz, and Rick Porcello. They also have Eduardo Rodriguez and David Price, two pitchers who might be healthy and good, might be healthy and not good, or might not be healthy at all. In a perfect Red Sox season (cough2013cough), Wright wouldn’t touch the mound in the first inning all year, except maybe by accident while walking out to the bullpen before the game started. Except we all know that perfect seasons come along extremely infrequently — unless you’re the Yankees where 24-year-olds who were crap in Triple-A are MVP candidates and 3,000 pound 37-year-old pitchers with chronic knee problems are borderline Cy Young candidates. My point: it’s likely the Red Sox will need Wright on the mound as a starter at some point.

Given the injuries the 2018 Red Sox starting staff has already suffered — and we’re still about two months from spring training — 150 or so innings of 3.50 ERA ball would be a godsend to this team. It doesn’t sound wholly out of the realm of possibility for Wright to replicate something in that vicinity in 2018, either. He’s clearly got it in him. His 2016 season wasn’t full of BABIP luck or a ridiculously lucky home run rate or anything like that. Wright pitched fine and the results were fine. He could absolutely do that again in 2018, and the Red Sox would be all the better for it.

But knuckleball pitchers are like the weather. We study it and study it, and we’d like to think we can predict with some accuracy what will happen. Then we look outside on a day we thought would be 70 degrees and sunny and we find it’s snowing. Despite the awful 2017 season and the injury, Wright might well be a huge asset to the 2018 Red Sox. He could be the best sixth starter in the league, and a legitimate fireman who can give you two or three innings from the bullpen when the rest of the rotation is healthy and the pen needs a breather. Or he could be bad and get injured for the third season in a row. Given the odd proclivities of the knuckleball, and the strange up-and-down that Wright has seen in just a few years time, neither scenario playing out should be surprising. Perhaps a more modest goal, like keeping his ERA below his innings pitched totals, should be set.

Photo by Patrick McDermott — USA TODAY Sports

]]> http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2018/01/12/roster-recap-an-early-exit-for-steven-wright/feed/ 2 Roster Recap: Doug Fister is Unremarkably Usable http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/12/08/roster-recap-doug-fister-is-unremarkably-usable/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/12/08/roster-recap-doug-fister-is-unremarkably-usable/#comments Fri, 08 Dec 2017 14:00:33 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=31213 You may recall Doug Fister from his time on such shows as “Tall Pitcher Dude Is Good”, and “Tall Pitcher Dude Is Not So Good”, and “Where in Triple-A is Tall Pitcher Dude?”. Fister’s career went from Cy Young vote receiver to dude without a job in a manner of a few seasons. That brought him to the Rich Hill portion of his career, where he signed with Boston mid-season, was better than expected, and then left for a larger contract with a different team featuring blue uniforms.

What Went Right

For the Red Sox, what went right was Doug Fister being bad for the Astros in 2016 then awful for the Angels Triple-A team to start 2017. The Angels started 13 different pitchers in 2017 (only three of which had FIPs under 4.00) and still somehow none of them were Doug Fister. It was with that background that Fister was cut loose and signed with Boston. There he proceeded to be…okay. There were some disaster starts, especially at the beginning of his time with the Red Sox, but mostly Fister was exactly what the team had (probably) hoped he’d be: a perfectly acceptable back-of-the-rotation guy.

In the end Fister gave the team 90 innings that were worth, depending on which WAR measure you use, somewhere between a win and no wins. Regardless of which number you put on it though, the Red Sox needed someone to pitch innings and Fister did that without getting hurt and generally without setting off the pitching version of a grenade in the first inning. It’s not the type of thing that gets your face mangled on a copper plaque in upstate New York, but it was the minimum requirement for the Red Sox to meet in order to finish the season in first place. Fister met that requirement and the Red Sox met theirs. Fister pitched so acceptably that he got the start in Game Three of the ALDS against Houston. In retrospect, that start went appropriately well as Fister got bazooka-bombed for three runs in an inning and a third. It probably should have been much worse, but the Red Sox won anyway.

I discussed Fister back in September in a piece called The Same Old Doug Fister. The notable thing about Fister’s success was how much it lacked note. It wasn’t based on anything particularly new or noteworthy beyond a slight uptick in velocity. All of that was and remains true. Fister could go to Texas and get cut in May or he could wind up pitching in the All-Star game. It’s pitching. None of those outcomes are off the table.

What Went Wrong

What went wrong was the confluence of events that led to the Red Sox signing Fister in the first place. Eduardo Rodriguez’s injuries, Steven Wright’s season-ending injury, and of course, the pièce de résistance, David Price’s on-again-off-again injury status. All of those guys possibly save Wright would have been upgrades on the pitching Fister gave Boston. In the end though it’s difficult to say it would have made much of a difference in the end though. Perhaps if Price had stayed healthy all season and contended for the Cy Young, the Red Sox might have been able to beat the Astros, but even then that would have been an extremely tall order. But I digress.

As for Fister, what went wrong was pretty much nothing. He came to Boston and pitched well enough and now he has a team to pitch for in 2018. Happy things.

What To Expect

Who cares because he signed with the Texas Rangers so hopefully he’s terrible again. Fister had a bounce-back season in 2017 as pitchers sometimes do. That it was for the Red Sox rather than against them was, I suppose, preferable as these things go. Fister was able to throw pitches and get some outs for our team when we needed someone who could do those things. He did them, and now he’s going to do them elsewhere which, in the end, is probably the best of possible outcomes for the Red Sox, then, now, and in the future.

Photo by Ken Blaze – USA TODAY Sports

]]> http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/12/08/roster-recap-doug-fister-is-unremarkably-usable/feed/ 1 Roster Recap: A Disjointed Season For E-Rod http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/28/roster-recap-a-disjointed-season-for-e-rod/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/28/roster-recap-a-disjointed-season-for-e-rod/#comments Tue, 28 Nov 2017 13:00:37 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=30629 Eduardo Rodriguez is probably the guy least talked about when discussing the Red Sox youth movement. He’s only 24 years old, the same age as Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts, and will turn 25 just after Opening Day. He’s a major league-caliber starting pitcher with some success, and he’s made notable progress every season he’s been in the majors. The reason why Rodriguez isn’t talked about as much is because, well, he hasn’t done much to talk about, other than gradually improve in a way that isn’t too flashy. Mookie Betts is just incredible, Xander gets a ton of hits, Rafael Devers plays with a fun, explosive wildness, and Andrew Benintendi is solid or better at pretty much everything he does. Rodriguez isn’t bad, just young, and since he’s a pitcher, he’s volatile by definition. It’s really not Eddie’s fault here.

Despite all that potential and pedigree, Rodriguez hasn’t been able to put together a full season yet, thanks to ineffectiveness or, more recently, injuries. With most pitchers, it’s the elbow. With Rodriguez, it’s his knee, and that same knee has made sure that Rodriguez will have to wait until 2019 to pitch a full season in the majors.

What Went Right

Remember those incremental improvements? He had some more this year. His strikeout rate jumped up four percentage points from last year, settling at 25.8 percent, a career-high for the southpaw. This wasn’t just a fluke either – Rodriguez got more whiffs this year than he ever had. It showed in his great first half, as he held opposing hitters to a .219/.290/.416 line while notching 65 strikeouts in 61 innings. His best start of the year, however, came in the second half in Yankee Stadium, where he shut down New York’s offense for seven innings, and even touched 96 at one point.

With how bad the Red Sox have been in regards to developing starting pitching, this could honestly be listed as a minor miracle.

Rodriguez was, at the very least, a solid starting pitcher in 2017. He didn’t hurt you too much, his high points showed glimpses of what he could become, and he totaled more WARP this year than he had in the last two seasons combined. He’s getting there. Just give him time.

What Went Wrong

He might be getting there, but his knee is trying to trip him up every step of the way. Before his start on June 1st in Baltimore, Rodriguez fell over while warming up in the bullpen.

That looks pretty innocuous, right? Turns out it was a lot worse. Rodriguez’s start went poorly, and he was placed on the disabled list the very next day with a right knee subluxation. That right knee is also why he had a late start to the 2016 season, and why the Red Sox were worried about him when he was playing winter ball. He didn’t return until after the All-Star break, and other than a couple great starts, Rodriguez was hit-or-miss for the rest of the season, thanks to the instability of a balky knee that potentially affected everything from control to velocity.

Statistically, he didn’t really regress anywhere, but didn’t really improve some key parts of his game. Rodriguez still has issues getting grounders, and that put him at risk of turning into batting practice with all the homers the league was hitting. While the four home run game in Baltimore was a product of a hurt knee, being a fly ball pitcher with half your starts in Fenway Park isn’t a precursor for success. The improvement there will probably come, sure, but he wasn’t really a guy to induce a ton of grounders anyway, and the current homer-happy environment of MLB could really slow progress here.

What To Expect

That troublesome knee had to be fixed sooner or later, and the Red Sox decided on sooner.

Best guess? He won’t pitch until June, and that’s if everything goes as planned. Sometimes his rehab starts don’t go well, and he has to spend another week in Pawtucket to get sharp. That happened a few times in 2017, and as David Price so emphatically pointed out, Dennis Eckersley was not a fan of one of those starts. Regardless, it’ll be a while until we see Rodriguez take the mound in Boston.

It’s hard to predict how he’ll do coming back from that, but if he can get 120 innings in 2018, that has to be seen as a success, health-wise. As for performance, it’s probably not wise to bet against Rodriguez taking another step forward. Maybe he’ll start inducing weaker contact, and cut down on the homers. Maybe he’ll walk fewer batters while the strikeout rate keeps steady. Everything’s there for a breakout season, and were he a lock for the Opening Day roster, I’d probably say he’s due for it. We can only hope he comes back healthy for the long run, because if he keeps getting better at this pace, we might see yet another good left-handed starter in the Red Sox’s rotation.

Photo by David Kohl – USA TODAY Sports

]]> http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/28/roster-recap-a-disjointed-season-for-e-rod/feed/ 0 The Stanton Conundrum http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/15/the-stanton-conundrum/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/15/the-stanton-conundrum/#comments Wed, 15 Nov 2017 13:30:52 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=29953 With the Marlins finally out from under the sticky fingers of now ex-owner Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins new owners have indicated that Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 million contract is too hefty for them to keep. So they are looking to trade the face of their franchise. Given Stanton’s prowess with the bat (59 homers last season) and the Red Sox’s lack of power – being perhaps the easiest problem on the team to both diagnose and correct – Stanton should be at the top of Boston’s offseason wish list. And maybe he is. But the situation is far more complex than that, and, as it turns out, in a very interesting way.

I don’t need to sell you on Stanton the player, I hope, but here’s the Cliff’s Notes version just in case. He was worth 8.6 WARP last season (around seven WAR via other measurements). He has monster power, a career slugging percentage of over .600, and he’s a fine defensive right fielder who could, you would think, easily move to left field at Fenway Park. He gets on base well and he’ll be only 28 years old next season so it’s easy to imagine him being around and productive for a long time to come. So that’s all great and you can see why teams want him.

The complicating factors though are many, and this is where things get fun. First, Stanton has a long-term contract that will pay him $295 million over the next 10 seasons. That’s a lot of money to take on. You could make the argument that if he were a free agent right now that some team would give that to him, and you might be right, but there’s two more factors that compound things. The first is Stanton has an opt-out clause that he can use to become a free agent after the 2020 season. However, the team that deals for him doesn’t know if they’re getting Stanton for three years and $77 million, or 10 years and $295 million, and they don’t get to pick which and they don’t get to know which until likely the last second (and if they know sooner it’s probably not a good thing). It’s not hard to imagine those two hugely different amounts of time and money representing very different values to teams.

The second complicating factor is Stanton’s no-trade clause, also included in his contract by the Marlins. This isn’t one of those where the player can pick 10 or 15 teams he doesn’t want to be traded to. This is a full no-trade. Stanton can’t be dealt without his permission, period. This means if Stanton doesn’t want to come to Boston then he doesn’t have to come to Boston. But it also means Stanton can pick a team he wants to be dealt to and tell the Marlins that’s it, deal me there or nowhere. Or, Stanton could be less hard-headed about it and give the Marlins multiple teams with which he will accept a trade. Or he could tell them that he’ll approve a deal anywhere. The thing about all these possibilities is we just don’t know what he’s thinking. Presumably the Marlins do, or will, but as of now, nothing has come out about Stanton’s desires nor his level of desire to engineer his own destination.

Stanton’s no-trade and the liberality in which he uses it will greatly affect what the Marlins can get for him in return. If Stanton says “I’m only going to the Red Sox,” then the Red Sox aren’t going to give the Marlins very much and Marlins will have to decide how badly they want to get Stanton’s money off their books. Is it worth just being rid of Stanton even if they get very little in return for their most marketable player? If there are two teams involved, then at least they can be pitted against each other in the deal and the Marlins would presumably get more back. But even then the total money committed by the acquiring team, who must be prepared to pay all of Stanton’s salary even if he ends up opting out, and the uncertainty created by the opt-out are massive barriers to the Marlins getting a good return.

Typically a trade involves satisfying two people: the GM of the first team and the GM of the second team. Trading for Stanton involves satisfying the GM of both teams, the owner of the acquiring team (because of the massive amount of money that team is taking on), the owners of the Marlins (because this is Stanton, and he’s hugely important to the public relations of franchise), and Stanton himself.

Beyond all that, we’ve got the question of where Stanton fits in on the Red Sox. Presumably he would play left field which would mean the Red Sox will have dealt one of the players from their major league outfield. It doesn’t make sense to keep Andrew Benintendi or Jackie Bradley unless Stanton is going to spend most of his time at DH. That could be the plan, but spending $30 million annually on a DH goes strongly against the current thinking about the value of the DH, so likely Stanton would take a permanent place in the outfield.

If the Sox had Stanton for the next 10 years at a discount, you might be able to talk yourself into one or more of those possibilities. But that might not be the situation. And this gets to the heart of this problem.

So what would it take to acquire Stanton? That’s incredibly hard to say. Are the Red Sox taking on all of his salary, or is Miami helping out in some fashion? Are the Red Sox the sole bidder or are they bidding against other teams, and if so how many other teams? These questions are virtually impossible to answer right now.

There’s also the longer term view with which the Red Sox need to consider. David Price and Drew Pomeranz will be free agents after this coming season, and will need to be replaced (unless Price doesn’t opt-out in which case, uh-oh). Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts are getting into their arbitration seasons and getting closer to free agency. The Red Sox have lots of money, but not endless amounts, so spending big money on Stanton could mean losing some of the young talent Boston has on hand currently. It could mean filling holes in the starting rotation become more difficult.

There’s a question I’ve been thinking about all throughout this column, and it is this: what if I, Matthew Kory, were the GM of the Red Sox. What would I trade for Stanton? Would I trade Andrew Benintendi and Eduardo Rodriguez? That’s a tremendous amount of young talent to deal. What about Benintendi, Rodriguez, and top prospect Jay Groome? Would you throw Chavis in there also? If the Sox had Stanton for the next 10 years at a discount, you might be able to talk yourself into one or more of those possibilities. But that might not be the situation. And this gets to the heart of this problem.

Any player can be dealt. We’ve seen it before with huge contracts trading hands in deals that, before their consummation, would have been thought impossible to pull off. So even though this seems daunting, it could absolutely happen. And Stanton is an amazing player who would look fantastic in the middle of the Red Sox batting order. So the Red Sox should explore things with the Marlins. And they will. But in the end, wouldn’t it be easier to skip all the above and give J.D. Martinez $175 million, check off that box, and move on with your offseason?

]]> http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/15/the-stanton-conundrum/feed/ 0 Roster Recap: Chris Sale Makes History http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/07/roster-recap-chris-sale-makes-history/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/11/07/roster-recap-chris-sale-makes-history/#comments Tue, 07 Nov 2017 13:00:23 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=29506 Just gonna leave this here.

That is some damn good pitching.

What Went Right in 2017

This was the best year of Sale’s career, hands down. He racked up 308 strikeouts while only walking 43 guys, making Sale the first 300 strikeout pitcher in the American League since Pedro Martinez. It’s only his first season in Boston and Sale’s already getting compared to Pedro. And get this – his peripherals say he should’ve been even better. That’s just mind-boggling to think about.

His first half was absolutely dominant. He recorded eight straight games with 10 or more strikeouts. When the dog days of August came, Sale buckled down, and registered seven scoreless starts of six innings or more in the second half – and all of them came with eight or more strikeouts, as is customary for any Sale start. Sale led the Red Sox in almost every pitching category, and if it wasn’t for Craig Kimbrel, he would’ve been tops in K/9 and strikeout rate as well. He might have been the best hitter on the team, too.

Sale’s constant presence in the rotation was a much-needed boon to this team, as David Price and Eduardo Rodriguez dealt with injuries, Drew Pomeranz with fatigue, and Rick Porcello with a chronic case of suck – and yes, that’s the scientific term for it. It’s pretty easy to see that without Sale this Red Sox team would be a lot worse than 93 wins and a division title, and they might’ve not even made the Wild Card game had Sale not been there. This man and his slider were the bedrock of this Red Sox team.

Sale’s season had so many career-bests and historic markers that it’s hard to describe, yet easy to undersell. So here’s his season in a single pitch:

We hardly knew ya, Kyle Seager.

What Went Wrong in 2017

His second half was somewhat okay relative to his first half? That might honestly be it. Might miss out on a Cy Young Award, but hey, it would be a bit unfair for the Red Sox to say they have three Cy Young Award winners in their rotation, so I can see the parity in it.

But if Sale goes his entire career without getting a Cy Young, it’ll be a travesty.

What to Expect in 2018

It’s hard to say “more of the same”, because Sale did so many things well. He’s in his prime years, and I want to believe he’ll do something like this again, but it’s extremely hard to keep producing at such a high level like Sale did in 2017. Could he do it again? Absolutely. But we have to understand that even an average Sale season is still a superb year, and if he’s not going to be historically good again, I don’t think we can really dislike Sale for being really, really good instead.

Sale’s going to be good, and he’s going to be must-watch TV. There aren’t many predictions that are as slam-dunk as that.

Photo by Bob DeChiara – USA TODAY Sports

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