thxfrthmmrs

They’re not going to want to go into luxury tax right away. Sign Springer and that brings them pretty close to luxury tax.

So this would effectively take Mets out of race for Bauer and Hendricks, right?

Watching Williams play, it’s not hard to see why Bulls wanted him at 4th, good athlete with the tools to be a good shooter and defender. I think his floor is a good 3 and D player but if he gets better at creating his own shot and gets stronger and finishes better at the rim, he could be an all star and more.

He sold it after Ken Jr finally moved out of the house.

They most certainly do but I’d try to keep Kopech if we somehow can. Make that trade, sign La Stella to play 2B, sign a lower cost closer option (Colome or Rosenthal), and cheap options for LH DH and backup C to round out the roster. Castillo would make this one of the best rotations in the AL.

Would Cease, Madrigal, and one of Thompson/Dalquist be enough for Castillo?

Where does it say he’s more comfortable with Toronto? (I haven’t read all the tweets today) And he will go to whoever will give him the most money and the 4th year.

I don't buy the wife is from Canada and he's leaning toward the Blue Jays crap. If he's dead set on playing in his wife's home country, he wouldn't have met with other teams to begin and have them on a list of finalists. Just another ploy by the agent to get Sox (or other bidders) to up their offer or give a 4th year (if they are not giving it already).

And the comparison probably ends there.

Ideally I would prefer A (as much as I'm wary of a 4th year for Hendricks), but as CWS pointed out in the post above, it really depends on the price for Musgrove. If they spend $13M on Hendricks, their SP4 options are really limited, I am not even sure who is available outside of the 2 Pirates guys that are within their budget payroll and prospects wise.

I think the question now is would you rather sign Hendricks to $13M AAV and give him a 4th year, then trade prospects from the farm (hope it's prospects outside of top 5) for someone akin Musgrove, or sign someone from the likes of Colome, Yates, Rosenthal and Bradley to 1-2 year deals for $6-8M AAV and sign Q for $8-10M AAV.

Here's what I have on current payroll: If it's $135-140M, and they land Hendricks (~$13M), they pretty much have to trade for a low cost option like Musgrove and bring in a depth bat to compete at DH, and address backup catcher through NRI or MILB deal.

No. FIP is an ERA equivalent metrics. Fangraphs even have metrics that compare ERA to FIP called E-F. FIP is meant to take out the components of the ERA that are attributed to balls in play, because hitters and pitchers do not have control over that, and only measures the HR, BB, K, and HBP aspect where the pitchers do have control over, then applying a constant to bring it to the ERA scale. There is another version of this called xFIP, which substitutes the HR pitchers give up with a HR/FB% because HR% should be normalized over time.

Bold statement.

Yep, the Garrett Richards love on this board is still something I don’t get.

I am in the camp that Collins deserves a shot. But even if they they look for an external option, it shouldn’t be someone they spend more than $2M on, that’s why I said it should be at the bottom of the list.

Most teams in the league do not have luxury carrying two quality catchers. 2020 Sox was an exception. Yankees with their massive payroll ran Romine and Higa out there the last few years.

Of all the needs Sox have, backup catcher should be at the bottom of the list.

Cardinals playing all these games must have made Musgrove’s pitches spin better and move a lot more.

Dumbest post I have seen on this site. You’re comparing a player who has never played that position at the pro level to a MLB pitcher who has shown moderate success at his position.

Musgrove isn’t a failed to prospect by any means. He was always a mid to back up top of arm and he has been exactly that. He’s also a late bloomer poised to breakout after significantly improving his secondary pitches, think of guys like Arrieta and Morton.

So you simplify admit you choose to ignore these data points because you don’t understand it. His stats are only mediocre if you choose to ignore his best starts. If those starts are fluke performances you could ignore them, but they arent, they are dominant performances where he was mastering his curveball and slider. You could make up all the excuses they Cleveland and STL couldn’t hit (which is very funny to be honest), but the movement and command of those pitches would tough for any MLB hitters to hit (this is all backed by statcasts data, which I know you would continue to ignore because you simplify won’t take the time to learn).

A good case for someone who is less effective from the stretch is Giolito. His normal delivery is slow so he speeds up his delivery from the stretch, which has led to really bad results in 2018 (.794 OPS against overall vs. .861 with men on), that has lead to a 63% LOB rate, and a significantly higher ERA than FIP. He corrected the issue in 2019, pitching much better from stretch, which led to an elite 78% rate. As a result, his ERA and FIP were virtually the same in 2019. But then he struggled again in 2020, leading to another season with higher ERA than FIP.

I had done more research on Musgrove to figure out what else could be driving the sizable differences between his ERA and FIP (as Fangraphs calls it E-F). As I noted the bad D of the Pirates and inconsistent BP play has a lot to do with it, but one thing I have overlooked is his pitching with men on base. This is what's keep his LOB% down, in other words more men scored against him when they get on base (again, some of this could be attributed back to the Pirates BP, but a lot of it is on him also). For his career, his overall OPS against is .740. However with men on base, it is .790, which is a pretty big difference compared to other pitchers. I sampled some of the pitchers with elite LOB%, and for their career, their overall OPS and OPS with men on base are about the same (granted some of these guys have the added luxury of pitching in front of elite BPs, e.g. Clevinger, Kershaw, Ryu), in fact, a guy like Verlander actually shifts to another gear with men on base the last 5 years, he's absolutely lights out. Even for a mid rotation starter, their difference is anywhere from marginal to .30 ish. Now I haven't seen Musgrove pitch more than a start or two myself, I don't know how well he could pitch from the stretch, but that really seems to be inflating his ERA compared to his FIP the last few years. 2020 is actually a year he posted a strong LOB% (14% increase from 2019). However since 2020 stats are SSS, there isn't a large enough sample of ABs with men on base to truly tell if Musgrove has made real improvements pitching from the stretch, at least not without seeing him pitch. I still believe he's an improved pitcher from 2019 based on his much improved secondary pitches, but I would say his ability to pitch from the stretch will be the determining factor between him being a legitimate #3 or even #2, or just a #4 starter with a shiny FIP and fWAR.

Am I citing his stats from 5 years ago? It’s funny because I could have swore that you wanted to bring up his Astros stats. If that is somehow cherry picking, then I don’t think you know its definition. FIP is meant to take the randomness effect out of a pitcher’s stats by removing the events in the field of play. The only time when FIP is unreliable is when the pitcher consistently allows hard contact, e.g they allow a lot of doubles and triples yet FIP normalizes these as a regular hit. This wasn’t the case with Musgrove in 2017 and his expected stats based on quality of contact all backs up his FIP. I’ve also provided enough data to explain why his FIP is considerably lower than his ERA in his Pirate years (which aligns with how FIP is intended to work) I don’t want to rehash it. Now unless you have an argument why 2017 Musgrove’s ERs are allowed aren’t random and there were underlying factors that will contribute to him keep giving up more runs than his FIP indicates going forward, I would like to hear that. Otherwise you don’t have an argument. Even then, it’s pretty silly and irrelevant since it’s 4 years ago and as many has pointed out Musgrove has made real improvement as a pitcher in 2020.