ptatc

Yet people are always ready to sign players to long term deals saying that they expect the players to be bad in the last few.

It's the common baseball philosophy espoused by Cooper. Sacrifice velocity for control and save the injuries.

It's always fair to question a decision. I don't think its fair to say it was absolutely the wrong decision and there is no question it was the wrong decision as some are saying.

True. On the flip side Grandal has been awful hitting lately. So maybe the possibility of another groundsball to the right side for a double play outweighs the fact the he hasn't bunted very often in games because he is normally a very good hitter.

I would disagree. He was one of the first managers to embrace analytics. He may not always follow them but you can bet he uses them in his decisions. He has always been known as a person who takes information from all sources and his highly intelligent.

That's fine but let me ask you this. What do you think the entire purpose of the analytics department is? Do they just take the analytics published for everyone to see and feed it to the team? They look at individual matchups of upcoming series and games for situations like this.

Does Robert have a better chance to steal against this pitcher/catcher combination? Does Grandal have a lesser chance against this pitcher and the count. Maybe the team has much more specific analytics about the individual situation as opposed to the public stats on the average pitcher against the average hitter.

Rose is a great example of working hard to recover during rehab. He returned earlier than expected nearly ever time. The injury prone discussion is different.

One thing to remember about all of the predictive stats is that it uses the data from all outcomes against all players and teams. It doesn’t look at the outcomes against the best teams or the best pitchers in this case. The odds of bunts being a better option might be increased against the other teams best reliever as opposed to the worst reliever. Unless you can find a data for this individual pitcher, if he is one of their best ones, using the data for the league average pitcher won't necessarily apply. This is also why analytics have less value in the playoffs. Teams are nolonger facing average or below average teams from which the data is derived. Not all stats can be generalized to all pitchers, hitters and situations.

Pitching in MLB innings is much different than just strengthening. It's like getting ready for a marathon by walking. It's the same motion but the intensity isn't there.

Of course, it changes if he is far better. They are trying to win. But if its anywhere close, Rodon is the one out.

Let him. There's nothing he can do about it. It's not like they pitched him on short rest. In fact he had an extra, I believe.

It's a business and reality.

I'm guessing that's the plan. It will depend on how Cease is pitching but with Rodon most likely being gone next year, they will lean towards Cease.

I think the reason they had Rodon pitch back to back games like that comes down to a few reasons. 1. Ride him while he's pitching well. Based in history it won't last long. 2. He won't be back next season. He will either flame out or not worth the risk to re-sign him if he pitches well. 3. They expect Kopech to take his spot by the end of the year.

They dropped the ball on that one.

I'll take your word for it. PTs are not known for math skills and I am the epitome of that.

Not much but multiply it by 100, if they strike out that many more times and it starts to become significant.

But use the negative number for strikeouts and since the HR hitters typically strikeout more, it negates some of that advantage.

Correct. Is that someone can learn with experience. You don't need to be confident but you can aslo acknowledge that some players do improve after only playing 50 games in the MLB. Instead of being absolutely, sure that he has reached his ceiling 50 games in. From experience, I've seen people improve. Maybe he won't but I'm not willing to write him off yet.

The Sox won the series! On to the next one.

Is that a "yet" or do you as an evaulator think he has reached his peak?

But who sold you the "bill of goods" The FO? The media? "experts". In the end none of the projections matter when it comes to play on the field. Evaluate him based on what he is doing and project where he can get to.

The job of the FO is to explore anything trades that will help improve the team. I'm sure they had discussions on nearly every player. I wouldn't read much into media "rumors" as the Sox would have Cruz, Bauer, Wheeler and Machado if that were the case.

No offense but professional sports teams should not evaluate their players based on what fans think.