Baseball Offseason Thread

The Game Room
261

Because that’s how decisions have to be thought through the in real (baseball) world. The Cubs got a few decent years out of Alfonzo Soriano (and 2, brief, playoff appearances), but are now rueing the decision to sign him for all those years (as will the Nats vis a vis Werth). You simply don’t need to be throwing out tons of money and seasons to 30+ y/o players who aren’t likely to be worth much during the second half of their contracts. And in VMart’s case I’m not even convinced he’ll be all that helpful in the short term. Gonzalez is young enough that they probably won’t regret the trade (and assumed multi-year deal)-maybe. It’s true that you still have to risk such signings sooner or later-Manny never repeated his Cleveland peak (mostly because his average glove became horrid), but the Sox probably would redo that deal again anyway, knowing what they know.

In basketball, I recall the 76ers offhandedly trading a fringe player (Kobe Bryant’s dad, FWIW) to another team for a draft pick 7 years in the future. Sports Illustrated at the time called it “worthless.” That draft pick turned out to be Charles Barkley. But to your way of thinking nobody should ever do deals like that simply because it hurts the team in the short run.

While the SS revolving door is an admitted weakness (mainly brought on by Nomar’s quick decline-he’s the same age as Jeter but ceased being a championship quality regular after 2003) and Theo’s made some strange decisions there (signing then quickly dumping Renteria, letting AGon walk then picking him back up 2 years later), they did get Ellsbury and Lowrie for Orlando Cabrera. Keeping any of those guys probably wouldn’t have been better than any other alternatives (except for <shudder> Lugo). Even successful teams are probably going to have a position where they can’t find someone decent (see Yankees and CF after Bernie Williams or even during his last few years). There just aren’t very many quality SS’s around anymore,and the Hanley dead was a pretty good one for Boston all told-the Sox have continued to win anyway.

262

And Scutaro was fine in 2010, so it’s not like it’s always a weakness.

263

The Yankees just might throw a billion dollars at Cliff Lee now that the Sox signed Crawford. The Sox now have a very left-handed lineup.

264

But the Sox can’t possibly have made a big free agent signing. Epstein isn’t committed to winning, didn’t you hear? They wouldn’t make moves like signing a big name outfielder or trading for the best-hitting first baseman in the game.

265

I must be the anti-Elvis or something: I’m a Sox fan who was gung-ho about Theo’s brilliance before the Crawford signing–now I’m totally over-the-top. I think this actually puts us ahead of the Yankees, on paper on least.

266

Are you having fun with this nonsense? :rolleyes:

267

The world in which the lower-revenue franchises operate, yes, of course. In the Bos/NY/Chi/LA world, no it isn’t, you assemble teams for the current year, or else you lose to teams who do. Once again, it shouldn’t be that way, but it is, and since it is, that’s how you have to work.

You’re shitting me, right?

268

Actually… maybe. It depends on how they get to those 75 wins, doesn’t it?

Sure, if their win percentage sticks more or less at .460 all year long, it won’t do much to generate fan interest.

But there are other ways to get to the same finish line. They could look decent out of the gate. They could win a couple of games they shouldn’t, the Phillies could play poorly early, and who knows - ? The Nats could be, say 30-23 and two games out of first by end of May/beginning of June. Even if swanning down to 75 wins by the end of the year is likely - even a near certainty - that 30-23 start would generate real fan interest, and once people start coming it will take them longer to stop. That would have a real impact at the gate and in the minds of the fans. Now they’re the plucky team that made an early run but couldn’t sustain it… which is a story they can sell into 2012.

It might not happen this way, but adding Werth does increase the chances that it could. A 62-win team is not going to generate any interest, but a 75-win team actually might.

269

Lack of hitting, mainly. You may not have been aware of the front office’s bleatings about how the team would win with “run prevention”. :slight_smile:

Already addressed but ignored. And I’m not spoonfeeding it to you.

Already clarified but also ignored, but here it is again. People who are happy with their team’s doing less than their best aren’t real fans of that team. See? It isn’t hard for those interested in actual discussion instead of ranting.

Now you and RickJay go have fun with each other somewhere. G’day. :rolleyes:

270

He certainly can be brilliant at times, but he can be a damn fool at others. That’s the aggravating part.

Yep. Even after they sign Lee. :slight_smile: It’s a long season, though, they all are.

271

Well, I for one am curious how you reconcile your thesis that Theo Epstein isn’t committed to winning with the fact that he has acquired two superstar offensive players in the space of a month.

So the Sox lineup is going to be something like this:

Crawford (LF)
Pedroia (2B)
Gonzalez (1B)
Ortiz (DH)
Youkilis (3B)
Drew (RF)
Cameron (CF)
Lowrie/Scutaro (SS)
Saltalamacchia (C)

The Yankees, assuming Cashman will be spending his energy on Cliff Lee this year, will look like this:

Captain Clutchiness (SS)
You’re Only Funny When You Actually Hit (RF)
April Swoon (1B)
The Centaur (3B)
A Really Awesome Player Who I Wish Was a Met (2B)
Can’t Catch Anymore (DH)
John Sterling’s Worst Offense Yet (CF)
Who / That Other Guy (C)
Wait, This is Really the Yankees’ Left Fielder? (LF)

I think it’s advantage Boston, offensively and maybe defensively (though I haven’t really looked at that aspect of it). Pitching will be another story, but Lee isn’t a Yankee yet.

272

Well, given even at his peak, Werth has only been a 5 or 6 win player he is probably unlikely to make the difference between 62 wins and 75. I suppose it is possible that all 5 extra wins come early in he season, but even then I doubt it would have much of an effect in revenue. Even when teams win a world series the increased attendance usually doesn’t happen until subsequent seasons. I can’t see winning 75 game being much of a driver for season ticket sales even if the team seems plucky, and 126 million right fielders don’t tend to scream plucky.

273

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so schizophrenic about a signing as I do with Crawford to the Sox. Half of me is jumping up and down and screaming about how we now have a Roomba with a jetpack in left, and the other half is frowning at just how bad 2016-2018 will be, once Gonzo and Crawford both hit their decline years.

Theo’s got some balls. Gonzalez, at least, is projectable (given his skill set) to maintain solid production through the life of his contract, but Crawford could either become Rickey Henderson or plummet off a cliff with one leg injury. There’s so much potential for utter disaster thanks to the length of the contract, but the potential upside is ridiculous.

274

And yet lack of hitting is practically the only problem that the Red Sox didn’t have this year.

They scored more runs per game in 2010 than any team not named the New York Yankees. The Sox were one of only two teams in the whole of Major League Baseball to average more than 5 runs per game. The scored more runs than Tampa, more than Texas.

They were second in home runs, third in walks, third in OBP, second in SLG, and first in OPS.

Now, they did suffer the misfortune of being in exactly the same division as the #1 scoring team and the #3 scoring team, but it seems just bizarre to me to argue that the biggest problem faced by this team is 2010 was lack of hitting.

Well, it’s certainly true that run prevention was a big problem for Boston. If we put aside the excellent seasons by Lester and Buchholz, the Red Sox starters were pretty damn awful. In the 98 games that were not started by Lester and Buchholz, the Red Sox starters managed an ERA of 4.99. If Lackey, Beckett, Matsuzaka, and Wakefield had enjoyed even career-average (not exceptional; just average) years, and if Papelbon had lived up to expectations, the Sox would have allowed a good half a run less per qame, and that could easily have been the difference between making the playoffs and not. That’s where the biggest difference between the Sox and the Rays and Yankees was this year, not hitting.

Now, we’re talking about the front office here, so the next question has to be: do you think that the front office was incompetent in predicting that they could win with run prevention at the beginning of the season? I certainly don’t. I don’t know about you, but when i looked at that Red Sox rotation and bullpen back in March, there’s no way i predicted that they would give up so many runs.

Oh wait, i do know about you. Here’s what you had to say back before the season started:

December, 2009

February, 2010

So, you were saying in the off-season that their pitching looked good, and that they were going to win a lot of 4-2 games. This suggests that you agreed with the Red Sox front office that run prevention would, indeed, be an important factor in Boston’s 2010 campaign.

Also, despite your 20/20 hindsight in arguing that this team was never going to make the playoffs, here’s what you had to say in the prediction thread:

Category 4 is the AL Wild Card, and Category 9 is the AL Pennant.

275

Tanbarkie: So? By then they won’t have much time left on their contracts, the money actually doesn’t fucking matter, and even if it did their contracts won’t be all that out of line for medium performers at that time, and there will be other guys they can go get instead. Hey, maybe some of these precious draft picks will turn out to be good by then.

How about we not worry about 2016 until 2016, and enjoy the present instead?

storyteller, I’ve gone into that subject in sufficient depth already, thanks.

276

Really? I just heard about Crawford today; you’ve discussed that already somewhere?

Ah, well. Just made the usually-stupid assumption that you came here to discuss, rather than pontificate. By all means, carry on.

277

It “fucking matters” if you want the Red Sox to be contenders for years to come. Or do you really think there’s such a thing as a guaranteed World Series title? The Phillies came into 2010 thinking they had the whole thing sewn up, with nearly as imposing a lineup and a far superior rotation to the 2011 Sox, and they only made it to the second round of the playoffs before being annihilated by the twin terrors of Giants pitching and Small Sample Size.

If you really want your baseball team to win titles, you HAVE to consider the future beyond the coming year. Even the Yankees, at their most-stacked, can never be sure of coming out of the season with rings in hand.

This is the reality of the situation: most likely, Gonzalez + Crawford will be worth every penny of their contracts for the next two or three years. And that gives the Red Sox a pretty good chance of winning it all (as long as they don’t royally screw up the rest of their roster). But it still doesn’t guarantee it. Another injury-ravaged year or two, combined with under-performance from their shiny new superstars, and the Sox’s 3 year window is gone. And then you better pray that Gonzalez and especially Crawford have serious longevity, because paying $17 million a year for a 38 year old Derek Jeter will look like front office brilliance by comparison to paying $20 million a year for a corner outfielder with an OPS in the .750 range.

Look, I’m excited about Crawford. Who wouldn’t be? He’s going to be an incredibly fun player to watch for the next few years. He’ll steal a bazillion bases and act as a human shield for the grass in front of the Monster. He’ll stretch doubles into triples and hit a bunch of homers in Yankee Stadium. But as fans, we also want our teams to win it all, and from that lens, signing Crawford is an extraordinarily risky proposition, one that could either pay off with multiple championships or completely blow up in our faces. Or anything in between.

278

Eh, the Sox pitchers will dictate whether they’re better than the NYY in 2011. The offense needed serious upgrades and that’s exactly what it got. I think Epstein has been pretty damn good all along. I did almost lose my mind over the JD Drew deal at the time. I remember thinking we should have just kept Trot Nixon for half the money…probably a good thing that didn’t happen. And yes, I sometimes say “we” in referring to my sports teams.

279

Yes, yes, this is all very interesting, but when are we all going to get down to debating the Indians’ courting of Nick Punto?

280

Anyone else think it’s odd that the Cardinals would sign Lance Berkman as an outfielder? There are a lot of teams who could use him, but that one just seems like an odd choice.