Position: Assistant, Major League Strategic Information

Department: Major League Strategic Information
Reports To: Director, Baseball Analytics & Manager, Major League Strategic Information
Location: Boston, MA

Position Overview:
The Boston Red Sox are seeking an Assistant for the team’s Major League Strategic Information (MLSI) department. The role is an office-based position that works closely with department leadership to provide support across all areas of the MLSI operation. These areas include but are not limited to administrative responsibilities, assisting the MLSI Analyst and Coordinator, and using all MLSI materials to help drive progress in the process of advance scouting and improving internal player production in support of the Major League staff. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Boston Red Sox.

Batters

By winning 92 games, the Red Sox comfortably exceeded most expectations for the team in 2021. How do they do it again? There’s a path available, though not all the elements are in the organization right now.

The part Boston already has sorted is the offensive players who did the most to push the team to fourth in the American League in runs scored. Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts, and Enrique Hernández are back, and there’s no reason to expect any kind of decline from the first two, while Hernández isn’t remotely in the steep decline phase yet. Alex Verdugo, J.D. Martinez, and the catcher tandem are projected to give roughly league-average performances, hardly surprising results. There may be some grumbling about JDM’s projection, but even if ZiPS can mostly overlook his mess of a 2020 — wouldn’t it be nice if we could all forget that year? — it can’t forget that he’s also a 34-year-old designated hitter. Yes, David Ortiz aged incredibly well (and ZiPS was weirdly optimistic he would), but most players of the type do not. Martinez shouldn’t be a problem in 2022, but the day when that will become likely is coming. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

In my previous multi-candidate roundup, I lumped together four 10th-year candidates — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa — about whom there’s little left to be said at the tail end of a decade’s worth of debate, and few minds likely to be changed. Three of those candidates were linked to PEDs, and all four have some pretty dark corners beyond the baseball diamond. As a means of completing my coverage of the major candidates before the December 31 voting deadline, it made sense to group them into a single overview while inviting those readers wishing to (re)familiarize themselves with the specifics of their cases to check out last year’s profiles.

As the holiday season approaches, I’m still playing catch-up with my coverage, but the two candidates in this roundup don’t have the same type of underlying connections. Both hit a lot of homers during their long careers, both were sometimes overshadowed by more famous teammates, and both have struggled to generate a ton of support through multiple election cycles to the point that neither is likely to get to 75% via the writers before their 10 years run out. Beyond that, they’re very different players and cases.
Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. It was initially written for The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books and has been updated for FanGraphs. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

“Papi is even more famous than he is great, occupying his own space in baseball’s cultural catalog with the likes of Mickey Mantle, Dizzy Dean, Satchel Paige, and others who layered personality upon skill in outsized measures. October has much to do with that space.” — Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated David Ortiz Special Retirement Tribute, October 2016
 
In December 2002, the Twins released David Ortiz, which is to say that they looked at the bulky, oft-injured 27-year-old slugger coming off his first 20-homer season, considered the possibility of doubling or tripling his $950,000 salary in his first year of arbitration eligibility and thought, “Nope.” Five weeks later, and two months into his new job, Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein signed Ortiz on the cheap as one of several potential first base and designated hitter options. Read the rest of this entry »

You already basically know how these free agent pieces go. Team signs player! The player makes sense for the team, because, well, that’s why they signed him. If you look on the bright side, it could be a great fit. If you inject a little realism, there’s certainly a chance it doesn’t end up in smiles all around. Throw in some analysis and projections, and bam, you’ve got an article going.

As is probably clear from that introduction, I’m not doing that today. Baseball is a real bummer right now. I might spend the next week trying to understand the phrase “defensive lockout,” which makes about as much sense as the Rockies’ personnel decisions. There won’t be much news at all, and what news there is will feature headlines like “League accuses MLBPA of witchcraft.”

Forget all that. Before the curtains closed, the Red Sox signed Rich Hill to a one-year deal for $5 million plus incentives. Good God, does Rich Hill love the Red Sox. This is already his seventh time signing with them (2010, 2010 again, 2011, 2014, 2014 again, 2015, and now 2021). He’s from Milton, 10 miles (or 45 minutes in miserable traffic on the 93) from Fenway Park. He attended the 2004 championship parade with his dad, for crying out loud. Read the rest of this entry »

Late Wednesday night, the Red Sox and Brewers consummated a trade that sent rightfielder Hunter Renfroe to Milwaukee in exchange for centerfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. and two prospects, shortstop David Hamilton and first baseman Alex Binelas. It was the last agreed-upon trade prior to MLB owners locking out the players at midnight.

While Bradley has had an excellent big league career, the center of this trade is Renfroe, who heads to his fourth team in four years and is coming off a 2021 in which he slashed .259/.315/.501 and cleared the 30-homer benchmark for the second time in his career. He becomes the fourth right-handed hitter acquired by Milwaukee over the last couple of weeks, after corner infielder Mike Brosseau, catcher Pedro Severino, and non-roster invite centerfielder Jonathan Davis. By wRC+, Milwaukee was 26th in baseball against left-handed pitching (96) in 2021; Renfroe is a career .263/.346/.557 hitter against southpaws and should help in this area immediately. And while there’s not a clear platoon partner for him in Milwaukee right now, perhaps Jace Peterson or Rowdy Tellez will take key late-game at-bats against righties in his stead or make the occasional start. Renfroe’s defense — especially his incredible arm, which is one of the best in pro baseball — gives him a little extra utility on days when he’s starting against a righty.

Renfroe has two years of team control remaining, as 2022 will be his second arbitration year and ’23 will be his last before hitting free agency after the season. Milwaukee has some similarly-skilled outfield prospects on the way in Joe Gray Jr. and Joey Wiemer, but unless they ascend more quickly than expected, it’s a safer bet that Renfroe wraps his pre-free agency days as a key cog in Milwaukee.

Conversely, this trade leaves Boston without a powerful, right-handed hitting outfielder on their roster. Obviously the Red Sox can continue to shape their roster after the lockout ends, but its current composition is heavy on lefty sticks in the outfield (Bradley, Jarren Duran, Alex Verdugo). The on-roster solution is for Christian Arroyo to get infield starts against lefties with Enrique Hernández moving to the outfield on those days. Another path may be for Jeter Downs (who had a terrible summer, rebounded in the Fall League, and was added to the 40-man last month) to push for at-bats in a fashion similar to Arroyo or be present depth behind him, as Arroyo gets hurt a lot. Or Triston Casas could kick down the door and claim the everyday first base job at some point, which would open up a lefty-mashing four corners role for Bobby Dalbec. There are clear, on-roster avenues for Boston’s pieces to compliment one another, though the front office probably is not done shaping the fringes of the roster.
Read the rest of this entry »

As the hours wound down on MLB’s collective bargaining agreement, the Red Sox took one last flier, signing left-handed pitcher James Paxton to a one-year deal worth $10 million, with a two-year, $26 million club option.

Never a bastion of durability — he’s never thrown enough innings in a major league season to qualify for the ERA title — Paxton’s had a particularly rough couple of seasons. In 2020, he underwent surgery to remove a peridiscal cyst, a type of spinal lesion, but last year’s late July start gave him enough time to be ready for the season. Unfortunately, when the season actually did get underway, he was missing about 3 mph from his fastball and suffered from significant soreness in his elbow. That soreness was diagnosed as a flexor strain, but there was no ligament damage found at the time. The New York Yankees had initially been hopeful that he’d recover to at least make a postseason appearance, but further setbacks prevented him from returning.

After signing with his old team, the Seattle Mariners, the 2021 season didn’t go any better. It only took five batters for an injury to knock Paxton out for the year, requiring Tommy John surgery. This can’t be described as anything but a brutal setback for a player who, from 2016-19, had finally settled into a pattern of being mostly healthy if used carefully. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have made their first free-agent signing of the offseason, bringing in Michael Wacha on a one-year, $7 million deal, as the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier reported. The 2022 season will see Wacha donning his fourth uniform in the last four years after he spent ’21 with the Rays, ’20 with the Mets, and everything up to that point with the Cardinals. That recent bouncing around comes as his performance has fallen on hard times, with three straight seasons with an ERA over 4.50. But while the 30-year-old righty may not be a splashy signing, teams have found ace-level performance in this price range in previous years, like the Giants signing Kevin Gausman to a $9 million deal in 2019, or the Blue Jays signing Robbie Ray for $8 million last offseason. And in Wacha’s case, there were some interesting things happening with him late in the year that make this deal worth diving into.

When Wacha is off, as has often been the case since 2019, he has a hard time keeping the ball in the yard. His HR/FB rate has nearly doubled from his prime years with the Cardinals and is the fourth worst in the majors since 2019. And that’s despite his velocity — 93.8 mph on his four-seamer on average last year — being nearly the same as it was when he was in St. Louis. Read the rest of this entry »

In his own words, Ivan Johnson is “just a normal 23-year-old guy with some tools… who is going to take it as far as I can go.” It’s a humble self-assessment. Currently the No. 14 prospect in the Cincinnati Reds system, the switch-hitting middle infielder is coming off a strong season split between Low-A Daytona and High-A Dayton. A fourth-round pick in the 2019 draft out of Chipola College, Johnson put up an identical 125 wRC+ at both levels.

The Atlanta native’s initial collegiate experience after matriculating from Kennesaw Mountain High School was brief. Originally at the University of Georgia, Johnson transferred to Chipola for his sophomore year. Talent-level wasn’t a major factor.

“It was circumstantial more than anything,” explained Johnson, who is playing with the Arizona Fall League’s Surprise Saguaros. “Our shortstop [Cam Shepherd] was coming off a Freshman All-America year, so I would have had to move over to second where we had an older guy [LJ Talley] who was more used to what the SEC was all about. So I wouldn’t say I wasn’t ready. I think I kind of showed that in my JUCO year.”

Johnson put up a 1.078 OPS at Chipola, impressing scouts not only with his production and plus athleticism, but also with the fact that he swings from both sides. That he does so is product of advice he received at young age. Told by “some older baseball minds” that it would advantageous once he began facing more-mature pitchers, the natural right-handed hitter decided “to just run with it.” Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Analyst

Department: Baseball Analytics
Reports To: Director, Baseball Analytics
Location: Boston, MA

Position Overview:
The Boston Red Sox are seeking an Analyst for the team’s Baseball Analytics department. The role will support all areas of Baseball Operations while working closely with Director of Baseball Analytics, and our team of analysts.

This is an opportunity to work in a fast-paced, intellectually curious environment and to impact player personnel and strategic decision making. Read the rest of this entry »