Greg Hibbard

It’s likely than Moncada will wind up the year with 50-55 xbh and 70+ walks. I certainly would’ve taken those numbers from him in a heartbeat if you had told me those preseason.

You said that, but also “weak contact stranding runners everywhere” which is what I was specifically responding to

The Sox aren’t among the league leaders in LOB

Not too surprising, as the youth/speed angle has been touted much of the year. I think it’s an interesting stat. The temptation I have is to be impressed... but how much do stolen bases and triples correspond to increased run production or wins, though? The least number of triples an AL team has is 10 (compared to the Sox’ 36) - with a league average of 20. The stolen bases range from 100 all the way down to 29 with a league average of 64 (the Sox have 85). What’s interesting about the triples number is that the Sox are among the teams that have the fewest doubles in AL. Given that the Sox probably have acquired their triples from stretching otherwise doubles into three bases (if you halve their triples and add it to their doubles total, they have nearly the league average in both), and that they have 20 more stolen bases than the league average, it seems as though the speed component has provided 38 bases “above replacement” to their total of 1755. The trouble is of course that their total bases are about 50 total bases below the league average. The Sox are also fourth from last in runs scored in the AL, although much of that probably has to do with their lack of hitting in general (bottom tier in OPS). So what’s the factor? Digging deeper into team stats, we discover this team is generally bad at taking walks, and in my opinion, it’s the single biggest contributor to our overall offensive woes (and indirectly to OPS). We have a couple guys who walk at an above average clip, but most are way below average or dreadful. All of this is to say I wonder if front office and management in general severely overrates the speed component of the game compared to the walk component. Stolen bases and triples really don’t seem to be as much of a factor in run production, at least not as much as OBP and walks. What does everyone else think?

Moncada now leads this game in unintentional productive outs

Again I ask what the heck was McEwing doing pinch hitting for delmonico in the ninth last night as hot as he is

Why on earth would you pinch hit for delmonico

Horrible

AVI!

For the life of me I cannot figure out why Tim didn’t just stay at first. He made the turn without even really hesitating

What in the heck is going on here

That was hilarious

Home run from the right side tonight.

FINALLY!

My lord Avi is like Mr. BABIP. At it goes, he goes.

First of all, the Sox went 3-4 on west coast road trip against fairly good teams. The west coast is a place where good Sox teams went to die virtually every year for a very long time. Also, regarding the series at Tampa - since when is sweeping a road series anywhere something to just gloss over? Any road sweep is pretty amazing - good or bad team. Tampa isn't exactly Baltimore or KC. Should play better against teams playing out the string? You mean virtually half of the major league teams post all star break every season? Good, because they're going to be playing a lot of games against those teams every single year. This team is by and large not great at hitting right now. As a group they have a .721 OPS since the ASB. It's not just Moncada that's slumping - Avi has been pretty bad the last couple weeks. Every night I look up and down our lineup and it's a sub .250 wasteland. Routinely 7 of 9 guys are in the .215-.248 range. Meanwhile - you're right - Covey is either really good or really bad - and it's often inning by inning. We're so shellshocked into uncertainty with Giolito and Lopez that 8 ER or 0 ER isn't surprising anymore. Even when they are in back to back starts. I don't know. I guess I look at it that despite all the inconsistency this team has found away to scratch out a .500 record over a meaningful sample. I look at 32 games as not some 10 game blip on the radar, but a pretty healthy slice of a season. Even if they are playing a little hotter than they should by a game or two, it means they MAY be a 70-75 win team AS IS, without Kopech and Eloy, and with Moncada basically shitting the bed. Don't forget that even though Abreu has been hotter recently, he's still having one of his worst seasons as a pro.

I seem to recall easier this season some were (kind of mysteriously?) complaining about the Sox losing just too many games this season... So amid this terrible Moncada slump, and with the lineup and pitching staff generally having a hard time looking terribly consistent, the Sox have somehow put together a 32-game stretch of .500 ball. Rodon and Abreu have been the anchors obviously. What’s most interesting here is that just 9 of those 32 games are against the Royals, and we only went 5-4. The Yanks and Indians are in there, and so was a west coast trip through LAA and SEA, two pretty decent teams. We also had a road series at Tampa, a location that always seems to give us fits when we were competitive. So what gives? Is this team improving as a whole to a 75ish win caliber team, or is this just luck, variance or both?

A bunt? After KC pitching gives up three home runs???

Looking at Batting Average alone really doesn't do justice to the type of hitter he is. He's not a one dimensional high average hitter. Much of his value comes from bases on balls, xbh, and speed.

But if we all concede that he’s gotten hosed on probably 20, maybe even close to 30 called strikes that should have been balls, his k rate comes down significantly. Nobody can argue he hasn’t at least gotten “unlucky” with called third strikes, which is something that just doesn’t show up in the stat line. If even 10 at bats change from strikeouts to walks it has a 6 point effect on BA and a 20 point effect on OBP. now imagine a year he was “lucky” in that department

I’m not saying they’re alike. You missed my point. I’m saying that extremely good players have somewhat bad seasons, and extremely bad stretches of seasons.

Some of you need to get a serious grip on reality. 19 starts ago Moncada was at .234 BA with a .733 OPS and is going through a particularly brutal stretch during his rookie season. It’s almost as if some of you have never watched the game of baseball before. God forbid you should have to suffer through something like, I dunno, the 2003 season of Paul Konerko without jumping off of the freaking ship and screaming bloody murder every 15 friggin seconds. Get a damned grip. A 20 game BRUTAL stretch of yes bad play but also VARIANCE in a HIGH VARIANCE game is....normal? Especially for an extremely young major league player. Newsflash: rookies gonna play bad sometimes. Yeesh

How do people feel about Rodon's FIP tho? Is he due for a stat regression at some point?

using terms like "trainwreck" and "awful" to describe Moncada's 2018 season show absolutely no understanding of the game of baseball

His July average being .231 isn't really telling us the whole story. His OPS that month was .749.