Here's my perspective on the Sox as presently constituted. Please read it in its entirety:
With Nixon, Gonzo in the lineup this team won 86 games last year and everyone agrees that Lugo and JD is an upgrade in the offense. Everyone thinks the 2B is a problem, but I would give him a chance to blossom until May --50 more games before passing any judgment. I think he makes solid contact and has a decent plate discipline, although he should cut down on his swing with 2 strikes. That alone is + 3 in wins from last year.
The real concern for me right now is Coco as I feel he looks in between and kind of lost at the plate. I was told that he is one of the best fast ball hitters in the game by Theo and he seems to foul off most of the fastballs in the 88 to 92 mph range and chases breaking balls to strike out or pops them up. When facing righties, he has the propensity to chase breaking balls inside instead of laying off.
He would be traded for middle relief come June/July..The one guy I like in minor leagues is Brandon Moss..I saw him at Paw Sox debut vs. Charlotte knights and he is absolutely scorching the ball.. I think he would be a gr8 mid season upgrade over Coco. which was a mistake by Theo trading Marte for him since we had 3 OF prospects in the system which we could have started with in 06 and also we don't have any corner infielders with Power in the system so its imperative to go after Mark of Texas next year to play 1B for the Sox and move Youk to 3B and keep him away from the Yankees -- Remember Teixeira's idol growing up was Don Mattingly -who would be the Manager of the Yanks in 08 and he was upset with Sox scouts who disrespected his dad after drafting him from Ga Tech and did not sign with them so it would be tough to keep him away from the evil empire as they need 1B as well.
I definitely like our starting rotation. Scill has too much ego and pride to be awful and he would be OK for 12-14 wins. Beckett is going to win 15-17 wins with an ERA of under 4.00 and Dice-K is too savvy and poised along with his gr8 stuff not to win 17-18 games.. That leaves Wakefield who I think would win 10-12 games and then the 5th starter which is right now my pet peeve with Sox management:
Hansack who has the best stuff and had a great spring training is relegated to the minors while Julian whose talent is not nearly as good as Hansack is taking the ball every 5th day since we are paying him 2.5 Million and had to get some use out of him. Hansack should be the 5th starter and Julian should be the long relief in the bull pen and possible trade chip for teams that need pitching and willing to gamble on him --maybe the cards !!
Lack of Power is also a concern -only 1 HR in 5 games but David and Manny would heat up but drop off fro last years monster 54 HR season is enevitable. The weather is cold , so I would give them a pass but certainly looking at other AL East teams makes me jealous of their power.
75 HR for Papi(40) and Manny(35), 20 for JD, 30 from Lowell + Varitak, 15-for Youk 10 for coco and Lugo and 5 for 2B and Mirabelli and 20 HR from bench (Pena and Hinski) = Total of 190 HR's decent but not great. Need 220 + HR's and we would be there in 08 if we get Tiexiera.
Elijia Dukes of Devil Rays has 2 HR's and Sox as a team has just 1 ;))
Any intelligent comments and responses are more than welcome.
Showing posts with label Manny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manny. Show all posts
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Manny or Drew..An Intersting conundrum
There aren't too many ballplayers who generate the emotional reaction produced by the two that the Boston Red Sox mulled over this week: Manny Ramirez and J.D. Drew.
For years, the push and pull of Ramirez's relationship with Boston has had all the magic dysfunction of Ralph and Alice Kramden. Meanwhile, the talented but phlegmatic Drew, whose contract with the Red Sox seemed a fait accompli by the time Thanksgiving weekend ended, confounds a number of baseball fans. Not since Musak's heyday has such blandness caused such aggravation.
More than three years after Michael Lewis' Moneyball became the centerpiece of debate over the values of baseball players, Ramirez and Drew present a fierce conundrum for anyone following the game, old school or new.
Often misunderstood, Moneyball principally suggested that franchises should analyze ballplayers dispassionately to find undervalued talent whose weaknesses were superficial, whose perceived flaws were just a reflection of long-established but irrational biases. But this offseason, the Red Sox are moving to rid themselves of one statistically brilliant, handle-with-care outfielder for a different-but-slightly-less extreme version of the same. What are we to make of this?
It's not definite, but Boston's move toward replacing Ramirez with Drew (although some wonder why the Sox don't just forget about expensive pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka and just go with both outfielders) could represent an ongoing merging of pre- and post-Moneyball thinking, showing that you don't have to be a hardliner in either category.
Though Ramirez is on a path to the Hall of Fame, there are statistical reasons for moving into the future with Drew. Despite his reputation as a player likely to disintegrate at the first strong gust of wind, the 31-year-old Drew racked up 645 plate appearances in 2004 and 594 in 2006; his 2005 season was curtailed with a hit-by-pitch, not a case of the vapors. Using the Wins Above Replacement Player stats (which include defensive contributions) calculated by Baseball Prospectus, in his last two full seasons, Drew was more valuable than Ramirez: 9.8 to 8.2 in '04, 8.6 to 7.7 in '06.
Given that Drew will make millions less than Ramirez, even with the frothy salaries that free agents are commanding, given that Drew is 2 1/2 years younger, given that Ramirez has battled health problems himself that found him playing fewer games than Drew last season, there's a worthy argument to be made that Drew, plus any savings in Ramirez's salary that Boston can invest in other players, plus the loot the Sox can reap in a Ramirez trade, is a sound step forward.
To be sure, there are numbers arguments in Ramirez's favor too: The guy, after all, has a track record like few others in the game today, had 379 total bases (including walks) last season and posted an Equivalent Average, according to Baseball Prospectus, of .352 -- significantly higher than Drew's .306. That statistic leaves defense out of the equation, but nevertheless, there's no guarantee that the loss of Ramirez will be made up on the field by Drew and the Ramirez trade bounty.
So while it would be foolish to ignore the statistics of both players -- and downright moronic to tunnel-vision on misleading traditional stats like RBI when there are more insightful choices to be found -- there is enough doubt about whether Drew or Ramirez has the better statistical future for Boston to glance carefully at the character and personality issues that seem to envelop them.
Ramirez has been a regular on the "he's doggin' it" circuit, while Drew's baggage wouldn't fit in an overhead compartment of a jumbo jet, if you believe the common perception. The rap is that Drew doesn't play through pain or give a full effort. He's joyless in the clubhouse. He's motivated by money rather than winning. And to top it all off, in exercising his option to end his five-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers after two years, he reportedly betrayed assurances he had made that he would stick around.
There are counter arguments to the above. For example, up until the last minute, Drew retained every right to change his mind about opting out, and the Dodgers were responsible for understanding that. And playing through pain is often overrated. For all the images we have of Kirk Gibson-types gutting it out, you'll find plenty of players who make a nagging injury dimensionally worse, or who set the team back by keeping a spot in the lineup from a reserve who could do better until the starter has recuperated.
In a recent Boston Globe story, Gordon Edes wrote that "according to one major leaguer who has played against Drew for much of his career, one Dodger player greeted the news of Drew's departure by phoning friends in jubilation." Whether this anonymous story is apocryphal or not, it would seem to reflect badly on Drew ... until you question what wisdom and character conclusions we should draw from a Dodger who would be celebrating the departure of a player who was, except for Rafael Furcal, the team's most valuable.
A thoughtful general manager can and should weigh testimony like this without abandoning old-school values or turning tail from new-school ones. There's room to debate how much character and personality matter -- a lot or a little. But for those who give them any weight, there is also a way to take a Moneyball approach to character and personality, to do their best to find which character traits are overvalued and which are undervalued. It's entirely possible that the so-called character deficiencies of Drew -- or Ramirez -- are both relevant and misunderstood.
You'll go crazy with frustration if you can't accept the fact that Drew and Ramirez won't play 162 games like, say, Juan Pierre does. But those who can get past their biases about what every ballplayer should do in a perfect world, who can adjust their expectations and look at the overall pluses and minuses of Drew and Ramirez together, who can avoid letting preconceived notions distort the truth (Drew was notorious in Los Angeles for failing in the clutch despite posting statistics in 2006 showing that he excelled in every clutch situation, including close games in the late innings), will find their ability to make an intelligent assessment skyrocketing.
As for Boston, whose activities this offseason may well be discussed for years to come, it is possible that everything that the Red Sox think they'd be gaining from Manny no longer being Manny could be lost in J.D. being J.D. Or vice versa. If the Sox can't find clarity through statistics, they're stuck trying to decide which competing aphorism to buy into: "The grass is always greener" vs. "better the devil you know."
For years, the push and pull of Ramirez's relationship with Boston has had all the magic dysfunction of Ralph and Alice Kramden. Meanwhile, the talented but phlegmatic Drew, whose contract with the Red Sox seemed a fait accompli by the time Thanksgiving weekend ended, confounds a number of baseball fans. Not since Musak's heyday has such blandness caused such aggravation.
More than three years after Michael Lewis' Moneyball became the centerpiece of debate over the values of baseball players, Ramirez and Drew present a fierce conundrum for anyone following the game, old school or new.
Often misunderstood, Moneyball principally suggested that franchises should analyze ballplayers dispassionately to find undervalued talent whose weaknesses were superficial, whose perceived flaws were just a reflection of long-established but irrational biases. But this offseason, the Red Sox are moving to rid themselves of one statistically brilliant, handle-with-care outfielder for a different-but-slightly-less extreme version of the same. What are we to make of this?
It's not definite, but Boston's move toward replacing Ramirez with Drew (although some wonder why the Sox don't just forget about expensive pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka and just go with both outfielders) could represent an ongoing merging of pre- and post-Moneyball thinking, showing that you don't have to be a hardliner in either category.
Though Ramirez is on a path to the Hall of Fame, there are statistical reasons for moving into the future with Drew. Despite his reputation as a player likely to disintegrate at the first strong gust of wind, the 31-year-old Drew racked up 645 plate appearances in 2004 and 594 in 2006; his 2005 season was curtailed with a hit-by-pitch, not a case of the vapors. Using the Wins Above Replacement Player stats (which include defensive contributions) calculated by Baseball Prospectus, in his last two full seasons, Drew was more valuable than Ramirez: 9.8 to 8.2 in '04, 8.6 to 7.7 in '06.
Given that Drew will make millions less than Ramirez, even with the frothy salaries that free agents are commanding, given that Drew is 2 1/2 years younger, given that Ramirez has battled health problems himself that found him playing fewer games than Drew last season, there's a worthy argument to be made that Drew, plus any savings in Ramirez's salary that Boston can invest in other players, plus the loot the Sox can reap in a Ramirez trade, is a sound step forward.
To be sure, there are numbers arguments in Ramirez's favor too: The guy, after all, has a track record like few others in the game today, had 379 total bases (including walks) last season and posted an Equivalent Average, according to Baseball Prospectus, of .352 -- significantly higher than Drew's .306. That statistic leaves defense out of the equation, but nevertheless, there's no guarantee that the loss of Ramirez will be made up on the field by Drew and the Ramirez trade bounty.
So while it would be foolish to ignore the statistics of both players -- and downright moronic to tunnel-vision on misleading traditional stats like RBI when there are more insightful choices to be found -- there is enough doubt about whether Drew or Ramirez has the better statistical future for Boston to glance carefully at the character and personality issues that seem to envelop them.
Ramirez has been a regular on the "he's doggin' it" circuit, while Drew's baggage wouldn't fit in an overhead compartment of a jumbo jet, if you believe the common perception. The rap is that Drew doesn't play through pain or give a full effort. He's joyless in the clubhouse. He's motivated by money rather than winning. And to top it all off, in exercising his option to end his five-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers after two years, he reportedly betrayed assurances he had made that he would stick around.
There are counter arguments to the above. For example, up until the last minute, Drew retained every right to change his mind about opting out, and the Dodgers were responsible for understanding that. And playing through pain is often overrated. For all the images we have of Kirk Gibson-types gutting it out, you'll find plenty of players who make a nagging injury dimensionally worse, or who set the team back by keeping a spot in the lineup from a reserve who could do better until the starter has recuperated.
In a recent Boston Globe story, Gordon Edes wrote that "according to one major leaguer who has played against Drew for much of his career, one Dodger player greeted the news of Drew's departure by phoning friends in jubilation." Whether this anonymous story is apocryphal or not, it would seem to reflect badly on Drew ... until you question what wisdom and character conclusions we should draw from a Dodger who would be celebrating the departure of a player who was, except for Rafael Furcal, the team's most valuable.
A thoughtful general manager can and should weigh testimony like this without abandoning old-school values or turning tail from new-school ones. There's room to debate how much character and personality matter -- a lot or a little. But for those who give them any weight, there is also a way to take a Moneyball approach to character and personality, to do their best to find which character traits are overvalued and which are undervalued. It's entirely possible that the so-called character deficiencies of Drew -- or Ramirez -- are both relevant and misunderstood.
You'll go crazy with frustration if you can't accept the fact that Drew and Ramirez won't play 162 games like, say, Juan Pierre does. But those who can get past their biases about what every ballplayer should do in a perfect world, who can adjust their expectations and look at the overall pluses and minuses of Drew and Ramirez together, who can avoid letting preconceived notions distort the truth (Drew was notorious in Los Angeles for failing in the clutch despite posting statistics in 2006 showing that he excelled in every clutch situation, including close games in the late innings), will find their ability to make an intelligent assessment skyrocketing.
As for Boston, whose activities this offseason may well be discussed for years to come, it is possible that everything that the Red Sox think they'd be gaining from Manny no longer being Manny could be lost in J.D. being J.D. Or vice versa. If the Sox can't find clarity through statistics, they're stuck trying to decide which competing aphorism to buy into: "The grass is always greener" vs. "better the devil you know."
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