Jake

The advent of steroids helped make the union too comfortable with the long period of wait to get to free agency. Now that players are subjected to natural aging and the teams are wiser with their money, the number one problem for the players is that it takes at least 2 or 3 years too long to reach FA. Because of this, the smart money is focused on cost-capped amateurs who turn into cost-capped minor leaguers who turn into cost-capped pre-FA players. And then those guys turn into extremely risky free agents because they are so overwhelmingly like 30 years old and out of useful productive years. The rare young free agent becomes very expensive as a result. Union hasn't even made an effort on this issue in several cycles and it seems to me they have no nerve at all. They jumped at a "compromise" in which they got some chump change on the fringes in those early years while the owners imposed a soft cap that increases below inflation rate and scares all but one team.

When we called up Baldwin, it seemed like he would be a pretty common archetype: solid glove man who might hit for enough average to stay useful in light of low power and non-elite D. Your standard grindy utility guy. Turns out he was something different in ways good and bad. He's got some sneaky power on the left side which opens up some more upside. But his defense everywhere is suspect. Sox thrust him into an outfield role so it wasn't surprising to see him look bad out there. Sox only did that, though, because of a reasonable loss of trust in his infield defense. He has also shown a propensity for mental lapses on defense too, which is not what you expect from those later-round-college-grindy-utility types. I think it makes sense that the Sox have asked him to focus on the outfield. Despite the bad overall defensive play out there, he has some individual catches that were pretty high difficulty which goes to show what he might be able to do. His issues are on the easier plays — at least the ones that are easier for a real outfielder. Loses balls in the sun and lights, struggles going back, loses his bearings near the walls. Per Statcast, he had -5 outs above average as an outfielder last year. On non-routine plays, it was -2, meaning the larger portion of his problems came on the easiest plays. I think I've seen 3 of his plays in the spring so far. One he made easily, another was a routine catch but he nearly botched it before making a last-second stab at it, and another that wasn't a 100% easy catch but which he misplayed probably due partly to the sun. So from that very limited sample I will say I'm not super confident that he has figured out the defensive side of things. At the plate, I'm not too sure what to expect. His bat speed is much faster as a lefty hitter which contributes to a prominent L/R split for him at the dish. That's where the sneaky pop comes from. At the same time, he has a pretty terrible approach up there. Something I dug up last season after watching him hit: despite an overall chase rate of 37% which is poor but not off the spectrum, once he gets to two strikes he chases 50% of pitches outside the zone with a just-as-astronomical 50% whiff rate. So he's passive waiting for a cookie until he gets to two strikes and then he's waving at anything. He struggles to hit fastballs in particular and chases them upstairs. Some real bust potential there but there's a lot of ways hitters can bust and at least he can say he might run into 20ish homers if things go right. Of course, he's still young, so maybe he can make improvements. Sometimes these guys give you some productive seasons and sometimes they're selling insurance before they turn 30 (sometimes both).

To be fair, low fastball velo has always been part of the scouting report for Thorpe even though some had wondered if he had more in the tank. I don't know how far off his norms he was in terms of velocity. I do think it's reasonable to think that his poor command in MLB might have had to do with his elbow. Of course we'll get to find out more about what he can do before too long.

No idea why they stopped playing him there midseason last year. Seems to me the Sox and even moreso the fans have gotten unreasonably down on Lenyn's defense. There's an important distinction between "below average" and "unplayable" and Lenyn is merely below average...with the physical talent to be average at 2B or 3B. Just has to have his head on straight which may be a bit of a pipe dream by now.

To further clarify, he had to stop pitching due to pain in the elbow. It was diagnosed as a "flexor strain." They later saw the spur when imaging the elbow to check his recovery. They decided to remove that. The next time he tried to throw full speed was in spring training when his UCL gave way all the way.

Thorpe had a bone spur in his elbow removed in 2024, it is what ended his season. They had to shut him down because he couldn't pitch through the pain anymore. As he attempted to return from the bone spur surgery, he tore his UCL in spring training 2025. These injuries are almost certainly related as the bone spur forms due to stress on the ligament.

Thorpe had a 40% whiff rate with his changeup which is crazy especially if you don't think they respected his other pitches and that his injury was making him lose his command. If I had more time I'd do a little explainer on how unusual his changeup is but it was certainly very effective.

FWIW, the Sox underperformed their BaseRuns record by 7 wins as well. Both of these are reasonably good ways of removing luck from your results. Teams rarely show any repeatable ability to win close games, etc. I think it's more than fair to say that last year's team was better than its record suggests. More likely than not, they will play closer to whatever their record ends up being this year. Part of that means they could stay about the same and win 70 games. FWIW, bad bullpen is already accounted for in pythagorean and related statistics *unless* you pre-suppose that the Sox used their worst pitchers at the most important times, which I don't think was the case. I recall some very bad luck with their best relievers on the mound...Grant Taylor suffered from some serious seeing-eye singles in a few key moments, for instance.

Baldwin has a good chance of starting his season in Charlotte IMO. Especially because he has options left.

Me neither. Player would need to do something worse than play badly, that's for sure.

I think we can all agree that if his strikeouts don't go back up and his walks don't go back down, he's probably going to stink

Well at least there's some appreciation around here for how difficult it is to prove cause and effect. As far as Vargas goes, he had murdered AAA pitching to an extent that would have made you believe he would be competent in MLB. He was not-horrible in his first exposure to MLB pitching. Then he had an extended run of bad play with the Sox. Then he had an extended run of competent play with the Sox. I think part of the reason it's not crazy to think that the Sox changed something is because the change in his play from horrible to solid coincided with a change the Sox suggested to his swing/stance. Maybe that was coincidental or bound to happen regardless. The world is a complicated place.

The thing Bruce is quoting Getz on is in the context of Getz being asked whether they're looking at playing Teel in the outfield or Quero perhaps some other place and he was poo-pooing those ideas specifically. I don't think it's meant as a statement about whether they might get some DH reps (although it won't shock me if they ultimately decide not to use the DH slot to give them ABs).

From the wording in the article, I wonder if his claim is focused on the Sox not giving him adequate treatment for his bad reaction moreso than making him get the shot in the first place. Not sure how plausible it is that quicker treatment or whatever would have any long-term impact on his recovery from the reaction.

FWIW, Giolito's underlying metrics had some flashing warning signs. FIP about a run higher than ERA and xERA about a run higher than the FIP. He didn't lose velo or anything but he wasn't striking out and generally things weren't trending better as the season went on.