Dominikk85

I think the pen will be fine. Yeah they have been bad and bummer and foster probably were due to some regression but overall I still think the pen is a talented Group that will be fine. Also team defense was very bad which did not help either but when Anderson and Engel are back and nick gets more acclimated this will improve too. Right now the injuries just mean a lot of guys play out of position or are below average there. Vaughn and leury play out of position and collins has improved but still isn't a great defensive catcher. With madrigal also slumping Defensively (I still think he will be fine, he had a month in the majors and then a shoulder surgery which probably didn't help either) this means a lot of defensive weak spots in the roster.

I wonder if only certain pitchers want to pitch to collins. I do like giving grandal a few more days off and keeping him fresh as he is 32 (I think 115-120 games caught is good for him), but play collins against righties please.

But he is an infielder and the Sox are pretty well set with madrigal, Anderson and moncada. Sure marte is fast and could play Of but why not get an outfielder in the first place who is probably cheaper than marte.

I think Vaughn has looked OK in left and shagged some routine fly balls but his sprint speed at statcast is 25.8 ft/s which is 27th out of 30 guys in LF this year. For comparison Eloy was at 27.2 last season. That is definitely not playable every day in the Of, but occasionally it is OK. I really think the Sox should make a trade here, you don't want Williams or hamiltons bat there but also not Vaughns glove. I wouldnt want Engel there every day either, just get a decent rental who can put up a 100 wrc+ with average defense.

Not really, his sprint speed is 25.5 according to statcast. That is quite slow. Vaughn also is only at 25.8 which is really slow too and not really playable in LF every day. Thus I think the right move for Vaughn is to play him in left part time until Engel is back and then send him down. You can't play a sub 26 sprint speed guy every day in LF, of course he will some routine fly balls but over a year that is probably - 15 runs over a full season like Hoskins was in his LF season (and Vaughn is even slower than Hoskins)

Thanks. I only work with HS and college kids on hitting but I thought that was pretty glaring, never seen that rigid and passive of an upper body in the load. There are if course also guys who coil up too much and get long but a bit of that probably wouldn't hurt his contact a lot. I'm quite active on Twitter and actually send this suggestion to Sox coach Ryan Johansen what he thinks but understandably he said he can't talk about current players. Some other hitting coordinators are more open but I can understand that it is a risk to talk about that

To be fair naquin had just 600 PAs those seasons combined so it was about a 20 Homer full season pace. Stil of course there is upside.

What costs madrigal power is that he has a very passive upper body/spine in the load and his hands thus are not quite connected to the hips. His back is super stiff and not doing anything, he does load his hips and his hands but between that nothing happens which is why it looks stiff and unathletic. I put him in this video next to David Wright who did the move I'm talking about quite extreme. https://www.coachseye.com/v/7a25702a430642e8a1c68ba05674bff1 Wright uses rotation and side bend of the thoracic spine almost like a snake or lizard to create that front shoulder down look. This creates separation and a fluid connection of the hips and hands. Madrigals spine is completely dead, zero counter rotation and side bend. You Don't want to counter rotate too much as that makes the swing long but most top hitters use a bit of counter rotation and side bend in the spine so there is some "stretch" between the hips and hands while madrigal's "dead back" when he uses his hands and hips kinda independent of each other instead of together with the hips slightly moving ahead. Madrigal could probably add a couple mph of Exit velo just by this.

Many thought he could bulk up and add power, some even dreamt of him becoming altuve. Longenhagen thought madrigal would eventually hit 15+ Homers with good defense which could have made him a 4-5 win player. The floor was his strongest argument but it is not like he had no upside, if he Really was a. 300+ guy with 15 bombs and good

4th overall picks last 10 years to madrigal 18: madrigal 17: brandan mckay 16: Riley pint 15: Dillon tate 14: schwarber 13: Kohl stewart 12: Kevin gausman 11: Dylan bundy 10: Christian colon 09: Tony Sanchez You hope for more but really outside the top picks any guy who becomes an average regular is a success. Sure when they drafted him they hoped to get a 3.5-4 win guy but really most 4 picks in the last 10 years have not even been regular 2 win players except for gausman and Bundy who took long to get good too.

Madrigal has a good eye, last year his chase rate was a league average 31% and this year he has lowered that to an excellent 20% (not uncommon it is a bit higher in the first MLB year as you haven't seen that kind of movement at lower levels). He won't walk a ton if he is a 5 Homer guy but I think he will be around 7% or so and not be a 3% walk guy like Alberto. Billy Hamilton might be a good comp for this (obviously Billy has a way worse hit tool but he is a no power hitter with a solid eye and has a career 7% walk rate despite not being able to hit).

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.