Dominikk85

Getting Lynn was expensive and dunning will probably have more War in his 5 years than Lynn this year but Lynn really was almost an ace his last years and is the much needed second TOR guys the Sox need for the post season until one of kopech, crochet or cease is ready to take over that number 2 role. Yeah dunning is probably a nice 2 war 5th starter but going in with him, cease or keuchel as your number 2 into the post season is not great. Yeah it is just one year of the window but if you waste 1 year you really waste like 8-10 years of control (because Robert, madrigal, Giolito, Anderson... all lose a year of control and wasting it by not having a real number two is bad. From now on you don't want to push in your chips too early but you can't really waste a year either so the Lynn trade was a good compromise of keeping talent while not wasting a year due to a huge hole in the roster.

Long term I think Vaughn has more upside. Of course yermin could be Edgar Martinez or Nelson Cruz who also broke out at 27 but I think more likely yermin is a 110 wrc+ guy while Vaughn at his peak is like a 120-130 wRC+ guy. I think currently yermin is better though so what you do is, you keep Vaughn in that part time role until Engel is back and then you send vaughn down to AAA (and collins is back up catcher and once a week DH) and play yermin full time until Vaughn really destroys (I mean really destroy and not just hit. 275 with 15 bomb pace and good walk rate) AAA and then you probably trade Mercedes and call up Vaughn. Regarding Abreu he is going nowhere until end of 2022 but I don't think you want to keep Vaughn down that long. In 2023 then most likely Vaughn is 1b and Eloy DH.

Williams defense is poor in center, in LF he is about average (uzr for his career +0.6 in left and -11.9 in center)

Well he isn't sitting on the bench all the time, he has played half of the games. They can still send him down in May when there isn't an everyday spot for him by then.

Well Mercedes is hitting like . 500 and TLR is not here to develop players. Once Mercedes cools off Vaughn will play more but right now Mercedes is just blocking him. Sending him down now makes no sense either as there is no minor leagues till may.

Well Vaughn is certainly not an everyday left fielder. It makes sense to only play him in left like 3 times a week. Really the Issue is that this team has 3 DHs. I think one of them (not vaughn) should get traded to make more room for him.

I think he will be a good defender eventually. What the prospect guys got wrong was the power. At age 24 he probably won't add much power and probably will be like 5-6 Homer guy. Longenhagen thought he will be a 15-20 Homer guy eventually and that is quite unlikely now.

Yeah it would suck if the Sox didn't win a WS in the next 5 year, I was just saying when they went into that rebuild they did have some high end talent but it wasn't a high performing team. So the rebuild wasn't really creating that much worse of a team and they are already better than they were before the rebuild. Of course they should be but it would have been something else to dismantle a championship team like the marlins did after their last WS, they basically took down a mediocre team with some high end talent but a severe lack of depth and now they have a team which could win 90+ after winning at a 90 plus pace in a shortened season last year. So to some degree the rebuild already paid off.

Regarding the rebuild: I can understand some people hated it but while the pre rebuild team had some very high end talent but it was mostly a mid to high 70s win team, it was not like the sox were dismantling a big winner team. Also two of the guys they traded away (Q and Eaton) did decline or get injured rather soon after the trade. Sale was great the first 3 years before he got injured but overall the Sox did not lose that much by the rebuild. Yeah They turned a mid 70s win team into a 60s win team for a while but they already earned one playoff appearance and right now they are 1 game under. 500 but are still projected for a playoff spot. Compared to 2012 to 2016 the results already have been so much better and will continue to get better. Some people say WS or bust to justify the rebuild and I hope that too but honestly they already have outperformed the 12-16 period (pre rebuild) with last year's playoff appearance and if they make 2 or 3 more playoffs they have vastly outperformed the pre rebuild period.

Sabermetrics do support a more flexible use of your best reliever and some teams are already doing that (like Hader or Andrew miller a couple years ago). However pitchers are not machines and some prefer to have a fixed role that they can prepare for. Also the media and fans tend to be more over a 9th inning BS than over a 7th inning blow up. That is a stupid argument but many "closer by committee" situations have failed over this. Theo Epstein said when he was still in Boston that he thinks a BP ace would be better than a closer but the health aspect and also partly media scrutiny made him stick with the traditional closer.

Yeah I'm not talking complete games or anything but among playoff teams in the AL only the Rays had more BP innings pitched last season.

Is this an issue again this year? Last year the pen was really taxed because starters weren't able to go deep a lot. This year so far starters went 5.1, 4.0, 4.2, 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.0 so no starter managed to even start the 6th inning. This of course puts a lot of stress on the pen when they have to pitch more than 4 innings per game. Do you see this just as an early season ramp up that will get better over the season? I think at least in theory with Lynn, Giolito and keuchel should regularly be able to go at least 6 and sometimes 7 to give the pen a breather and that definitely will be needed because cease, rodon and maybe kopech if he gets stretched out will mean a lot of sub 5 inning starts.

It was a FB middle middle and looked bad but I guess he was expecting a breaking ball here with first base open and no outs (pitcher will often throw breaking ball here to get K or otherwise set up double play if the player doesn't bite.

Vaughn defensive replacement Just kidding I know it is due to injury but still strange.

I wonder why he is back to taking so many pitches. He had so much success with his more agressive approach this year in spring and even his first games and today he is back to his super passive take three pitches in a row approach. Maybe he is not seeing dunn's pitches well but still he shouldn't be that passive.

Why is collins starting today? He definitely should start like twice a week but why not tomorrow against a RHP?

Robert tried to be a bit more patient but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. He saw a few more pitches but it meant that he would take meatballs or take late swings on fastballs when the ball was almost by him and he thought "oh shit, strike - I need to swing". Yeah ideally Robert gets more patient but not at the expense of taking an extra long look and thus be late on the FB. He needs to be on time with the fastball even if it means Occasionally being fooled by a well tunneled breaking ball.

Greinke has an anxiety disorder and put up a hall of fame career. It can be managed.

It is old school thinking but many orgs still use their best guy strictly in 9th inning save situations and there was only one of those this year as most of the times the pen blew it earlier. There are very good arguments for using your best reliever differently but even some very progressive GMs defended the strict 9th inning guy, for example espstein admitted when he was still in Boston that he thinks 9th inning closer is stupid but media will be much more over a 9th inning blown save than over an earlier one and also many closers prefer the fixed role and feel more comfortable with it. Maybe Hendricks is a guy who likes knowing when it is time for him to pitch.

Who is the alternative though? Sox have nobody else to back up short and second except for mendick (who can't really play short though).

I overall don't blame the management of tlr but I wonder why he didn't pinch hit for leury and Hamilton the last two innings. I know Billy hit well that game but he still is a bad hitter as is leury and they had Vaughn and collins on the bench. If you carry 3 DHs on the roster then use them to pinch hit as much as you can late in the game.

Well cease was missing sliders by 3 feet. He threw a few good ones too but he was missing so many that it is understandable that grandal didn't want to fall back 3-0. Calling games is not just theory, sometimes a pitcher doesn't have the feel for a pitch and then you have to go with plan B even if it can mean that you get nuked.

His slider is good when he can locate it. The FB is not good, he tried to do the modern high FB thing but it doesn't have the lift of for example Giolitos FB and gets hit hard at the top of the zone.

Yeah the start wasn't great but it is super early. Remember last year when the team started 1-4 and then went on to win 35 games (94 win pace) despite having Ricky and a very bad last week? Yes the team has some holes but once moncada, Abreu, Anderson, grandal and hopefully Vaughn start to hit this is going to be a good offense even if Robert struggles a bit. Also the pen has been very bad giving up runs every game and this should change too as this is a talented group. Yes, the backend of the rotation and the bench are suspect but it was last year too when they were quite successful. I'm very optimistic this is going to be a 90+ win team.

That game is double A quality of play by both teams. No command pitchers, terrible defense and bad at bats.