kleedawg

Well the shift stats are not as simple as where does a player actually hit a ball. It also has to take account how teams actually pitch that hitter. Some teams shift a batter to pull and pitch him inside. Other teams may shift batters to pull and pitch him away. Still other teams will throw a guy nothing but offspeed while others throw a lot of fastballs, etc.

I think you missed my point.

Ryan Rayburn looked amazing against the sox his whole career, but he sucked non the less.

Naw, just sign schwarber for DH, Soler for Rf, and Kyle Seager to play 2b and slug our way to a championship (I'm being so facetious right now).

lol, soler and rosario's defense. 2 DH's playing the outfield. Also D,arnaud is an offensive catcher. Joc & Duval are corner of having to play center field. BTW the astros outfield had alvarez and brantley playing the corners.

I'm not talking about going with your gut, I'm saying that the analytics don't give you an accurate picture if they are not sophisticated enough to take in the account inning, score, situation & hitter type. For example. teams shift over on abreu for to pull groundballs, which he often does. However with 2 out and runners in scoring position is when he hits through a vacant right side. So Lets say he for arguments sake he hits 100 groundballs to the left side and 15 to the vicinity of 2b position. You would obviously shift him to pull. But what if 9 of the those groundballs occurred out of a possible 11 times in situations when there was 2outs and a runner in scoring position. What do you think you should do when that exact situation comes again? This was what I was pointing out in The Tucker example that I got the inning wrong. I understand you are not going to prevent every gb from getting through. I'm not anti-shift at all. But the situation always matters in baseball.

gm 2 second inning. same essentially situation. I was working from memory. My point still stands. 3:30 in your video.

Maybe I got the wrong inning or game, butt it was definately tucker that I'm thinking of

They have to get smarter with their analytics. Analytics is a tool that should be applied but not indiscriminately, and the braves are using discretion. I'll explain: In Game #2 the Sox were winning 4-2 in the 5th with runners on 2nd and 1st with 1 out and Tucker up to bat. We overshifted as the analytics advised. Tucker hit a perfect inning ending double play ball to short that rolled uncontested into left center for an RBI single. The astros would get another run to tie the game and eventually win this pivotal game. This was where the analytics breaks down or is not sophisticated enough or not interpreted correctly. I believ we should have shifted Tim closer to second but still on the 3b side of second due to the situation (inning, out, score) and they type of hitter at the plate. Had there been no one on base earlier in the game Tucker probably pulls that exact same pitch into the shift. But with the current situation and guy with decent bat control like tucker he purposely just hit it to the vacated side. This is very similar to what Abreu does when then overshift him. He just keeps hitting into the shift until there are 2 outs and a runner in scoring position and then he often just hits it through the vacated right side. Now a hitter like Zunino you can overshift all the time because he swings all or nothing all the time and doesn't have the bat control to hit away from the shift. He is only going to hit to the vacancy by accident. The analytics have to be sophisticated enough to show this and/or the person reading the analytics has to perceive this. It has been said that though the braves have bought into the analytics, the starting pitchers have the ability in game not to shift if they feel it is not appropriate to the particular situation.

no, i don't

Kyle Seager is a 3b. He doesn't have the range to play 2b especially at his age.

Except that they did offer the cubs glasnow for Kimbrel at the deadline...

I'm going to state a couple of things that will hopefully lend some closure to the some of the ongoing debates so that we can have some fresh new ones that are more productive. Probably, no chance, but I'm goin to try anyway. 1. We all have our own feeling on how the sox finished down the stretch. I think we can agree that we wished they finished on all cylinders. However what you do in the first 162 games ins NOT a good predicter of what you will do in the playoffs. For every team you can come with as an example to support you argument, you can find one that refutes it just as easily. You just have to put the best team out there under your current limitations and hope for the best. 2. The Kimbrel trade. It turned out to be a bad trade because it did. It was NOT an unreasonable trade on the day it was consummated. You can debated the value of trading controllable assets for short terms gains. Those are valid arguments. However the trade was not unreasonable. We traded and injured player and a reliever with a lot of potential having a bad year for the best available closer in the game. We also traded for another good reliever in Tepera. At the time, We had the best starters in the AL, if not in baseball. On Paper, we had the best bullpen as well. It looked like if we had a lead after 5 the game was over. This is a formula that has worked recently very well for clubs. This is a reasonable thing to do to win now. This is not my opinion, this is what every analyst on the mlb network was saying. This is what most analyst believed. This is what the dodgers, rays, & red sox wanted to do. but, the game isn't played on paper and it turned out bad. Trades don't always work out. The cardinals were lambasted for only acquiring washed up J.A. Happ & Jon Lester. Yet, those trades worked out (and were still awful trades). 3. record against winning clubs. This fallacy is a media talking point that has little meaning. In 162 games you are going to play hot where you can beat anybody and cold when you can lose to anybody. Some teams yo cannot beat because the matchup is always bad. You are going to play certain teams when you are hurt and other while they are hurt. The sox did not play bad against above .500 teams They played horrible in Houston and against the yankees. The won the season series against the cardinals, a's, redsox, & Jays. Split with the rays. Be beating the tribe they made them an under 500 team and get no credit, but had they lost the series to them they would be another above 500 team they lost (damned if they do damned if they don't situation. The beat a lot of other teams that were above 500 when we played them but didn't finish there. Lots of teams have won the world series with a sub 500 record against above 500 teams.

beat me to it, but I'll add the sox were just bad against 2 teams... the astros and yankees. They won the season series against the red sox, a's, jays, & cardinals. They split the series with TB.

I think he was referring to konerko re-sighning with us after 05 when the angels and orioles had reportedley offered more

If we are the highest bidder we get him, simple as that.

Word is they are going to sign one of the big name ss (prolly Seager) move Lemahieu to 2b and trade Torres.

What I want: -give Rodon a QO - Rodon accepts offer or sign one of Rodon, Scherzer, Ray - Trade Keuchel, Collins, & Burger to a rebuilding team - say Arizona for Carson Kelly & a Decent reliever. - Trade Kimbrel to the Rays for Glasnow if they still want to do that. If not somewhere else for prospects - sign Chris Taylor to play 2b this year as a placeholder for Jose Ramirez next year. (then Taylor plays everywhere almost everday rest players once a week or trade him for good prospects). - re-sign Tepera - sign 1 of graveman, hudson, Iglesias - re-sign Leury What The sox will do: - qo to Rodon Takes it or walks - Lopez replaces Rodon in rotation - Trade Keuchel with Burger & Kimbrel in 3 way deal that get us Gleyber Torres - sign 1 of Gausman, desclafini, stroman - sign escobar to 2b - re sign Tepera - Hire schildt to coaching staff if he doesn't take a manager's job elsewhere

absolutely terrible.

Rey 21 said "But IMO he’s a better hitter than anybody else on this roster, isn’t that what we want? As much as we want to say defense/pitching was an issue, the offense was just as shitty in the postseason… So why not add Castellanos who can hit RIGHT NOW, during a championship window. I get the DH/corner overload but he’s a better hitter than any of the DH/corner OF types they have and then allows you to shop Sheets/Vaughn/Eloy/Abreu to fill other holes. We can agree to disagree but Castellanos hit both LHP & RHP very well, regardless of handiness the dude just hits and brings an attitude something this team lacks. For a team who offense looked so inconsistent all season I’m surprised people want to pass up on his bat. " Yes Castellanos would make our hitting incrementally better if he doesn't regress at a contract that would greatly hamper fixing our other needs and retaining the core. Let me use this analogy to to help explain the situation. You have a house with a good furnace, but its winter and you have all the windows open. What do you do? Option 1 is buy a newer more efficient furnace (castellanos). Option 2 close the windows. Man that new furnace would be great, but its not your most pressing need, and its cheaper to close the damn windows.

No, and I previously stated what those were.

So, spend lots of $ on Castellanos which makes our defense worse, exacerbates are right handed hitting imbalance, and hampers are being able to re-sign our core players when the time comes. Also, sell low on young , cheap players like Vaughn or potential superstars because they struggled after missing most of the year due to injury like Eloy. Seriously people, we have had multiple pages debating me that we can't have Sheets in RF because of his defense, but then suggestions we get guys like Schwarber & Castellanos to play RF.

The do really matter, but it isn't all the time or necessarily in the big moments. I'll give you an example.. Jerry Manuel had no confidence in Jon Garland. Every time a runner got on base in the 5th inning or later he yank him. In Ozzie's first year managing, Garland was winning a game in Yankee stadium early in the year. In the 5th or 6th inning Jon got in trouble walking guys with 1 out and the bases loaded. Ozzie cam out and Jon was about to hand him the ball. Ozzie gave it back to him, settled him down, and told him it was his game. He got out the inning (with the help from Olivo picking off a guy on 2b) pitched a couple more innings and got the win. Garland was dude after that moment for his sox career. Its those moments that matter. Anyone can really make the decisions on when to bunt, steal, replace a pitcher. Hell most of us at home know which relievers to bring in and when (if only Tony knew).

Eloy, used to hit the cutoff man. Then. he threw out at home in KC after coming off the IL. Now he seems to regularly fly the cutoff man. Seems an easy fix to me. Eloy hit the the cutoff man or I'm going to go all Tom Hanks (Jimmy Dugan) on you - Tony LaRussa.

Yeah agree we can get that on the FA market. However, I think the only way we can get rid of Dallas and his big contract is to include burger to a rebuilding team. The only thing they would be willing to give up is a reliever and/or a defensive 2nd catcher, which we both need. Sure, if we want to keep dallas just sign gomes or perez and whichever reliever we need.