He's all about that Bill James nonsense and iPad coaching. It's annoying.
I really believe you have to let the players play the game. He doesn't.
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MLB 2023
- Thread starter maflynn
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He's all about that Bill James nonsense and iPad coaching. It's annoying.
I really believe you have to let the players play the game. He doesn't.
That's what I hate about baseball - analytics have driven out gut feels, experience, trusting players.
There was a point in the prior decade where there was a trend where the starting pitcher would only face a few batters, maybe not even finish the first inning and then start introducing relievers based on who's at bat. I think during he playoffs during that time, there was a single pitcher for each batter and that just killed the game. You saw more commercials then plays. I'm glad they have the rule a pitcher has to face 3 batters, but it was instituted berceuse of that nonsense.
An Opener. I hate it. Kap does it quite often. Drives me nuts. Or pulls a guy who's throwing a shut out when he still has good stuff.
My fave strategy is when he pinch hits for a guy who has multiple hits already.
Mind boggling.
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I call that the curse of Money Ball... lol.
This used to drive me nuts. Let them pitch for crying out loud. I could only imagine a modern couch loosing their sh*t if they had to coach say someone like Nolan Ryan and he pulls this!
Nolan Ryan pitches 13 innings and throws a mind blowing 235 pitches
I’m not sure. Rebuilding the farm system was a long term project, and is something that needs constant attention. Perhaps Chaim could have seen this come to fruition with a team built for long term contention, like the Astros have been in recent years. It will be interesting to see how much talent comes up from the minors over the next three years or so.
To bring in a Dave Dombrowski style character who guts the farm system again for a single title seems like an unsustainable way to carry the team forward. I hope the Sox think long-term and attempt to create a team which leverages both a few star players and strong home-grown contenders.
I agree but the Red Sox ownership (Henry, Warner and Kennedy) LOVE to beat around the bush when it comes to their true intentions. The past 4 years, it's been "We want to build a championship team but we also want to build for the future" but they traded Mookie and let Xander walk. Regardless of how you feel about their current contracts or what their projections would have been with the Sox, you have to admit that letting TWO home grown players like that walk away, all while saying "We want more rings!" is extremely counter intuitive.
The past 4 years has felt a lot like "Let's throw something on the wall and see what sticks. If it's cheap, then we'll go with that option. If it's expensive, then we'll examine and analyze the ever living F out of it to see if it's a good fit or not."
Even with the past few trade deadlines, they've intentionally scraped the bottom of the barrel or became the "Interested" kings because they didn't immediately pull the trigger on names that they knew would help them during the season and other teams swooped in and grabbed them instead. Grabbing Kyle Schwarber in 21 was the ONLY time they got someone worth a damn and it payed off because going to the ALCS was NOT supposed to happen lol.
Personally, I think the Red Sox organization is going to have to figure out what they want to be. Do they want to be the New England Rays where they have loads of talent for dirt cheap and might get them to the post season OR do they want to be the real Boston Red Sox and actually play for players that will get them more rings?
The Giants aren't exactly blessed with a surfeit of workhorse starting pitchers right now. I don't love the contemporary concept of the "opener" or "bullpen games", but sometimes if all you've got are lemons, you're better off making lemonade.
Sabermetrics are incredibly useful and powerful tools, but I do think a manager should be able to go with their gut sometimes. I grew up watching the late 70s/early 80s game, which more heavily emphasized speed. Looking at it from a statistical analytics standpoint, it was not a very efficient style of play, but it was more exciting to watch than "three true outcomes" ball, that's for sure.
I've wrestled with the question of whether Kepler and Zaidi deserve more time. One could argue their project hasn't succeeded, but I think at least one more year is justified with the influx of young players breaking through to the majors and the rest of the minor league system significantly strengthening. I would like to see them finally make a big move or two at the major league level: Ohtani would be a perfect fit, whether he can pitch or not.
I do believe we have some very good players coming up....
Even more, do they want to just pick up a championship here or there or do they want to have a chance at building a historically strong team? Maybe with the way things are going they’ll be able to trade some prospects for quality major leaguers and pick up a championship every five years, but the rest of the league is not standing still. There are more top-quality teams out there now than in 2018.
Honestly I think getting a good stream of pitching talent going is key to solving the problems with the rotation. Bello, Houck and Whitlock have quickly become mainstays of the team (when available) but it isn’t a rotation yet to compare to the greats of Boston World Series teams of recent history. In 2018 they had Sale, Porcello, Eovaldi, Rodriguez and Price, five good frontline starters and among them arguably two aces.
Under Chaim, the Sox offense has been unreliable and often made of bit players, and the rotation has never had a full complement. Admittedly there was Sale’s Tommy John surgery which took him out for the better part of two years and assorted other injuries, but the rest of the rotation hasn’t been up to scratch. The 2018 rotation seems like sheer luxury from todays perspective.
Ya know they had a pretty impressive run in the early and mid 2000's.
Not sure how much has changed since their last WS win in 2018 ...
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Yes it’s true, four World Series championships in 14 years between 2004 and 2018 is pretty good, but each of those was done after a gap and with a substantially rebuilt team. You could argue that the Sox never mastered the art of being long-term contenders, but ended up being great at building ’peaked’ teams which would then quickly fall apart.
I guess I’m just a little frustrated at their inconsistency…
ABY: Anybody But Yankees
A sound philosophy, my friend.
Same for the Giants.
I feel like certain teams, bodgers, spanks, are always good. It may not be true but it feels that way... #shouldershrug
They lost some games they absolutely needed to win at Planet Coors, but that ballpark is usually a house of horrors for them. At least they picked up a win yesterday, after coming perilously close to blowing a 9 run lead.
I'm honestly not too bothered if they don't make the playoffs this season. They've shown some progress, but there's still plenty of work to do. Next season is make or break for Zaidi and Kapler.
[EDIT] Looks like the Rays have struck a deal for a new stadium. 30K seats, a dome, and a whopping $1.2 billion price tag. The city and county are due to pay half the cost.
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Updated: 09/18/2023
Looks like we are going down the home stretch...
So far:
Eliminated:
Rockies
Athletics
White Sox
Royals
Angles
Clinched
Braves
Orioles
Rays
Dodgers
Looks like we are going down the home stretch...
So far:
Eliminated:
Rockies
Athletics
White Sox
Royals
Angles
Clinched
Braves
Orioles
Rays
Dodgers
We got the D-Bags and Dodgers away up next. Going to be tough.
[EDIT: Welp, that was a depressingly predictable result. And Alex Cobb had to leave the game early with an injury, so the Giants are now down to only one legitimate starting pitcher.]
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Feel like the GIANTS are doing the same thing... more or less...
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It looks like to me, that the red sox have given up and are just playing out the string, where as the Yanks are fighting to the bitter end
While not mathematically eliminated they're all but out, so it looks like they ought to be making changes, but will they? Who knows