mac9001

You can argue the strategy of improving the defense is working. The starting pitching has been decent and Soroka, Flexen and Fedde have looked decent enough where we can probably flip them. The Sox were going to be bad and we knew these guys weren't going to hit. If these guys are still playing in August and we haven't cut or traded have the roster then we have a bigger problem. This (and likely next year) are throw away years, there was no way to fix it, just enjoy watching bad baseball and hopefully when (if) they build a new stadium it's with the intent to sell.

I was surprised how hard Kuhl throws his sinker (avg today was 95.2, max 97). Not sure why someone hasn't put him in the pen to focus on 2 max effort pitches for an inning. It's clear he can't be a starter but everyone keeps throwing him out there.

I think most of us probably accepted the fact the Sox wouldn't score many (or any) runs this year. But the pitching and defense at least have the potential to be respectable. I will say if they pitch and catch this well all season (they won't since if they do many of them will get traded) they will likely over perform their projected consensus low 60 win total.

Hit 98 with the fastball and threw twice as any sliders as fastballs. At one point he threw 6 straight sliders. Most of the pitches in the zone were sliders. Kid needs to figure out how to get a (98mph) fastball over if he's going to have success. It's only 7 fastballs, but his spin rates were 1200-2800. That's actually absurdly inconsistent. A 98 mph fastball with a 2800 spin rate is 70+ grade. There's definitely something special there with some consistency.

Yeah, it's not worth brining him back to save a few million but potentially lose a hundred million of future reputation value. That was some amateur penny pinching s%*# that should be above a respectable organization.

The fact that they haven't been able to leverage financial flexibility into tangible assets doesn't mean it's still not valuable. The purpose on an exercise like this is to quantify value. Having money to spend is very valuable.

Beating 10fWAR isn't exactly a tall order. You might as well use a random number generator on guys like Soroka or Fedde. They very well could be bad, but we spent a lot of money on pitching last year to be bad. Spending nothing and beating 10fWAR would actually be somewhat of an accomplishment.

Honestly it's kind of a garbage write up. The Sox have actually built up some decent minor league pitching depth. If they have a couple more drafts to pad the depth they're likely to at least fill enough of the staff internally to free up a lot of potential money for a impact FA acquisition. The probably won't actually spend the money, but given they have fairly substantial financial flexibility that actually should work out in their favor for future value building.

I keep waiting to see like 10 bullpen guys get cut. I will hand this to Getz, somehow without spending any money or acquiring any real talent the Sox staff might still show how improve over last year. It's almost unfathomable that it's a real possibility.

I think you have to go under at 61 simply because if they're on pace for 70 wins it means someone is performing and we'll trade them at the first opportunity.

Thursday is an off day and all the bullpen arms are gonna be fresh. Might as well make it a bullpen day.

I think people too often try to compare kids like this to establish professionals. Hendricks is essentially a two pitch pitcher that excels at getting weak contact on pitches outside the zone (but still doesn't get a low of swinging strikes). You obviously need great command to execute in that way. But Thorpe throws a wide range of pitches and he predominantly lives in the zone. He's just getting people to swing and miss (at roughly twice the rate Hendricks has). He's also not getting the same level of weak contact. Hendricks is unique in that he can get high contact rates without throwing in the zone. Thorpe is limiting walks by throwing a lot of strikes (getting whiffs and strikeouts), but he's also getting hit a lot harder as a result. He profile is very similar to an elite backend bullpen guy with elite raw stuff who's just putting pitches over the plate (limits walks). How he's doing it is a bit of a mystery, you'd be hard pressed to find a current big leaguer that has a similar metric profile with the grade on his stuff (IE low velocity).

Giolito is a textbook example of why velocity doesn't matter. Between 19-21 he was able to throw change ups over the plate, avoid hard contact and get a decent amount of swing and misses by getting ahead, getting people to miss pitches over the plate (usually with a change) or get them chase fastballs out of the zone. For the last two year's he wasn't able to get the same results on the change up and his fastball started to get lit up. Similarly Cease was able to work off an elite slider in 22. If you have an elite pitch you can throw over the plate, get strikes and not get hammer you'll do just fine with any fastball as long as you have at least average command.

I think at a minimum I expected a draft pick as part of the return if you didn't get a legit top 20 guy.

No he didn't, his best season he averaged 93.1 and 91 for his career.

Comparing him to someone like Garland doesn't really work. John had high contact, high GB rates with a very low swing and miss profile. He had one of the lowest K rates and a super low swing strike rate. To put it in perspective Thrope got 2.5% more swinging strikes than Nastrini, who himself is in elite company for starters.

The dude has a 70 grade change up. I haven't seen him pitch and the pitch level data doesn't exist (probably), but my guess is he can throw his change up straight center plate and guys are just not on it enough to make contact. There's obviously something uniquely different as he doesn't have the raw stuff to expect the kind of results he's had. In some ways I think his profile is lends itself for career success than a dude who has great raw stuff but needs to develop command.

3.7, about as low as it gets. Dude throw strikes and gets a lot of swing and misses. Two recipes for success.

I don't think people grasp just how elite a 18.6% swing string rate (and 21% in AA) is. This isn't Buehrle (7% career swinging strike), this is the kind of number you see with elite closers that focus on getting 3 outs. That on it's own would be impressive but the kid actually throws strikes.

While the return doesn't blow me away I think people are vastly underrating Thorpe. The kid has some elite numbers that tend to transfer over to the big leagues. Zavala as a 19 year old put up a .420 OBP in low A ball and played CF. Thorpe probably slides in as our #2 and Zavala might be our #4 best prospect and probably no lower than #5. Note: I do believe Schultz will probably be out best pitching prospect by end of year, but right now you have to put Thorpe slightly ahead of him on production alone.

Kid had a 18.6% swinging strike rate. That's some elite swing and miss stuff.

Which is why my expectations are low. But given that on a long term depth chart you have to pencil in guys like Fletcher and Horn I'm not exactly feeling optimistic on long term success. There's a pretty good chance our entire starting 5 is not on this roster next year. That's not a recipe for sustained success or even a foundation where you can expect reasonable internal growth. 2026 might be the first year we look at the roster and say this guy may have a long term future. I'm relatively optimistic when it comes to prospect development but given the state of our roster and even in the most ideal conditions we probably need a few years of MLB development for the arms we have that show legitimate potential, it going to be a bleak and depressing time to be a Sox fan.

There is no point to having Pillar on the team. There's at most 1 or 2 other teams that would even consider wasting a roster spot on him. Short of about 10 games in May last year when he went on a tear Pillar likely couldn't make the cut on most teams AAA rosters.

I didn't say effective platoon ABs. Finding a lefty that can at least hit right handed fastballs and put up league average production is not a significant cost. If that's what you need to fill out your roster it's not going to strain your long term financial flexibility to go spend some money. If you can develop that internally that's great, but given all available data you can't realistically expect that from Fletcher. At this point a realistic expectation is probably a wRC+ of 75-85. In a platoon role maybe you get him up to league average, but at this point he's probably the only viable option we have for RF, so he's going to see his far share of lefties.

Because on a competition team with ambitions of playoff baseball guys like this don't have a roster spot. If they're on the team because they vastly outperformed expectations great. The more likely scenario is Horn bounces between AAA and the bigs filling in as an ineffective lefty and Fletcher never hits his weight and at best fills in as a 4th OFer/limited platoon ABs in a corner spot. Both extremely replaceable roles that can easily be filled by brining in a bunch of NRIs in the spring. The issue I have with the moves for these guys is you're just wasting prospect capital for seat filler. If you're gonna move young SP prospects at least consolidate and aim for quality. The whole off-season strategy seems to be around (poor) quantity with limited upside. It doesn't appear Getz had a lot of money to spend, but getting guys like this has minimal impact on long term success, they're easily replaceable for a minimal cost.