A day after the Boston Globe reported that Chris Sale had resumed throwing following a shutdown, and two weeks after he was diagnosed with a flexor tendon strain but no new damage to his ulnar collateral ligament, the Red Sox have announced that he’ll undergo Tommy John surgery. The going-on-31-year-old lefty joins the Yankees’ Luis Severino on the short list of star pitchers who will miss all of the 2020 season — however long it may be — following UCL reconstruction, and the Astros’ Justin Verlander among players whose decisions to undergo surgery make more sense in light of the delayed opening to the season.

As I detailed three weeks ago, Sale made just 25 starts amid an uneven season last year; he was fantastic in May and June (2.78 ERA, 1.98 FIP in 71.1 innings) but bad or worse on either side of that stretch before being shut down on August 13 due to elbow inflammation. Though he set career worsts in ERA (4.40) and home run rate (1.47 per nine) — both more than double his 2018 rates — his strikeout rate still ranked second in the majors among pitchers with at least 140 innings, his 29.6% K-BB% fourth, and his 75 FIP- 14th. His 3.6 WAR, despite being his lowest mark since 2011, was more than respectable. That said, Statcast data showed that he had the largest year-to-year dropoff in four-seam fastball velocity of any pitcher from 2018 to ’19, 1.8 mph (from 95.2 mph to 93.4), and the second-largest increase in exit velocity, 3.4 mph (from 84.7 to 87.0).

While Sale paid a visit to Dr. James Andrews for a second opinion last August, he avoided surgery, though he did receive a platelet-rich plasma injection. Although many within the industry have been predicting that the wiry lefty would someday blow out his elbow given his violent delivery — you can find armchair pitching coaches calling him “a ticking time bomb” as far back as 2012, if not earlier — there was no public indication at the time that his injection or his injury were related to his ulnar collateral ligament. This spring, the Red Sox continued to give reassurances that his elbow was fine, even as Sale began spring training behind schedule due to a bout of pneumonia. Read the rest of this entry »

Rick Miller had a solid, albeit unremarkable, big league career. A left-handed hitting center fielder known mostly for his speed and defense — he was awarded a Gold Glove in 1978 — Miller slashed .269/346/.350 in 4,440 plate appearances from 1971-1985. He spent his first seven seasons with the Red Sox, the next three with the California Angels, then returned to Boston for five more.

Miller entered pro ball on the heels of a Big Ten batting title. In his junior season with the Michigan State Spartans, the Grand Rapid native hit .429, prompting the Red Sox to take him in the second round of the 1969 draft. Little more than two years later — this despite a swing adjustment that may have been ill-advised — he was in the big leagues to stay.

Miller discussed the early and late portions of his career when the Red Sox held an alumni game at Fenway Park two summers ago.

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David Laurila: What do you remember about the start of your career?

Rick Miller: “I was drafted in 1969 out of Michigan State. There were a lot of contact hitters at the time, and I got some bad advice when I first came up. This was from one of the people in the Red Sox organization. I’m not going to name him, but when I signed, I went to Pittsfield [Massachusetts], which was Double-A. They watched me take batting practice. I was told, ‘You’ll never be able to hit that way in the big leagues” — the way I was hitting.”

Laurila: What were you doing that they didn’t like?

Miller: “Well, I don’t know. But wherever it was, they didn’t like the way I was swinging. And I was hitting pretty well at the time. But I listened. I was young, naive, and stupid. I didn’t know any better. I’d hit that way on my life, and in my opinion you don’t tell somebody, ‘You can’t hit that way,’ until they get a chance to show if they can do it.

“So I changed. And I never hit that well in the minor leagues. I played two-plus years in the minors, and never did a lot with the bat. My defense is pretty much what got me to the big leagues. Once I was there, I did improve my hitting. It was a longer process, because I used to hit a certain way. I think I would have been successful had I… of course, I wasn’t a big guy. I didn’t hit a lot of home runs.”

Laurila: I recall you having success when you first came up [in September 1971]. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Chavis enjoyed a solid rookie season with the Red Sox in 2019. Primarily playing first and second base, the 24-year-old former first round pick slugged 18 home runs while putting up a .766 OPS and a 96 wRC+ over 382 plate appearances. Power was his calling card. Per Statcast, Chavis’ taters traveled an average of 419 feet, and his longest was jettisoned a prodigious 459 feet.

He rode a bit of rollercoaster on his way to Boston. Drafted 26th overall in 2014 out of Marietta, Georgia’s Sprayberry High School, Chavis scuffled in his initial professional seasons. Struggling to find his swing, he put up high strikeout rates, and tepid offensive numbers, casting doubt on his future. Then he began to find himself. Buoyed by a 2017 reunion with his old hitting coach, Chavis regained his stroke, turned a corner, and within a few years was once again propelling baseballs far distances.

Chavis discussed his power-packed swing — including how it was lost, and then rediscovered — at the tail end of last season.

——

David Laurila: Is hitting simple, or is it complicated?

Michael Chavis: “It depends on the day you’re asking me. When things are going good, it’s as simple as could be — it’s easy — but when things aren’t going well, you start trying to find an answer. You start searching for a difference in your swing. Even though you know you should keep things simple, it’s not like you can be, ‘Oh, I just don’t care; it’ll figure itself out.’ It’s kind of… I guess the weird thing about hitting is you’re constantly making adjustments and changes in order to stay consistent.”

Laurila: You’re changing in order to stay the same…

Chavis: “Yes, which obviously doesn’t make sense. But that’s what it is. One day you can think — this is a random example — ‘swing down,’ because maybe you’ve been getting long and loopy. So you think about swinging down, and your body — just how the body works — is going to make an adjustment. But at some point your body is going to make that adjustment without you being aware of it. All of a sudden, thinking ‘swinging down’ is going to become physically swinging down. Then you have to make an another adjustment.”

Laurila: Basically, one of your mental cues needs to be adjusted. Read the rest of this entry »

Meg Rowley and Sam Miller briefly banter about the state of Chris Sale’s arm and appreciating one’s friends when they are on vacation, then preview the 2020 Boston Red Sox (4:40) with the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier, and the 2020 San Francisco Giants (38:40) with The Athletic’s Grant Brisbee.

Audio intro: David Bowie, “Under Pressure”
Audio interstitial 1: David Bowie, “Changes”
Audio interstitial 2: Dan Bern, “The Sun Shines on McCovey Cove”
Audio outro: David Bowie, “Heroes”

Link to order Homegrown: How the Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground Up
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With David Price shipped off to Los Angeles with Mookie Betts and Chris Sale’s spring beset by arm issues, the Red Sox rotation looks incredibly weak. With questionable internal alternatives, the Red Sox have added a potential solution from the free agent market in Collin McHugh, who will earn a base salary of $600,000 with incentives based on innings and active days on the roster that could push his earnings to a bit above $4 million.

Of course, McHugh was still on the market because he wasn’t cleared to throw until recently. He began last season in the rotation, but after four quality starts to begin the year, his performance went downhill in a hurry. Four ugly outings followed those four good ones and after two relief appearances, the latter a two-inning, four-strikeout performance, elbow soreness (but a clean MRI) meant time on the injured list. McHugh missed more than a month, then returned in a bullpen role at the end of June. He pitched well out of the pen, putting up a 3.65 FIP and 2.70 ERA through the end of August. Unfortunately, the elbow soreness returned; McHugh returned to the injured list and was eventually shut down for the season.

McHugh’s best years came as a reliable member of Houston’s rotation from 2014 to ’16. He made 90 starts and pitched at an above-average level, putting up an average of three wins per season. Elbow issues at the beginning of 2017 limited him to 12 starts at the end of the season before he was given a long relief role in the playoffs, where he made two appearances. He pitched the entire 2018 season in the bullpen before his up-and-down 2019 campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

While getting good performances from players in spring training is nice, it’s really more of a bonus. The most important part of spring training is getting players healthy for Opening Day. For the Red Sox and Yankees, injuries are piling up. The most recent bit of news for the Yankees comes in the form of trouble for Aaron Judge, who felt pain in his right pec while swinging, putting his status for Opening Day in doubt. On the Red Sox side, Chris Sale, who was already under a slower throwing program that would put him on the injured list to start the season, has a sore elbow after throwing and is being sent for an MRI. While we wouldn’t want to go overboard on the impact of these injuries given the timelines are very much unknown, everything we think we know about the AL East could go sideways.

The Yankees’ rotation has already been hit hard, with Luis Severino set to miss the season recovering from Tommy John surgery and James Paxton out until at least May and potentially longer after back surgery. Domingo Germán is also out for the first 63 games of the season due to a domestic violence suspension, but Gerrit Cole at the head of the rotation followed by Masahiro Tanaka gives the team some wiggle room to stay afloat and rely on a potent offense. But that potent offense isn’t quite as potent without its two best hitters.

Here are the projections for Yankees hitters this season. Read the rest of this entry »

My first ever conversation with Jarren Duran took place prior to spring training when the Red Sox held their annual rookie development camp. Things started off clumsily. The speedy outfield prospect has a certain intensity about him, and his responses to my initial inquiries came couched with edgy caution.

Duran has a 50% ground-ball rate since turning pro, and when I noted that worm-killing isn’t exactly de rigueur in today’s game, his reply was a terse, “Yeah, but I can’t beat out a fly ball. That would be a waste of my speed, so why not use the tool that I have?”

Fair enough. Duran has plus-plus wheels — he swiped 46 bags last season — and he profiles as a table-setter as opposed to a bopper. Even so, is a willingness to stay on the ground really in his best interest?


“I’m willing to accept any ball that will give me a hit,” Duran proclaimed. “Ground balls. Line drives. Even fly balls. I’m just trying to make hard contact.”

Again, fair enough. But it’s not as though the 23-year-old Long Beach State product is wholly without pop. The 2018 seventh-round pick did leave the yard five times between high-A Salem and Double-A Portland, and he’s by no means built like a beanpole. Plus, fence-clearing ability is a quality any hitter should aspire to. Right?

“Bobby Dalbec is the big guy, the home run hitter,” Duran said of his muscular minor-league teammate. “I’m the little guy who gets on for the bigger guys.” When I pointed out that he’s bigger than Mookie Betts, Duran shrugged and deadpanned, “He’s got more power than me.” Asked if power is something he’s hoping to grow into, his response was an equally-shrug-worthy, “If it comes it comes. If it doesn’t it doesn’t.” Read the rest of this entry »

While the heavily-favored Yankees deal with the loss of Luis Severino, the Red Sox have a rotation problem of their own, albeit on a significantly smaller scale. On Thursday, interim manager Ron Roenicke told reporters that Chris Sale will begin the year on the injured list. While his delay is related to a bout of pneumonia rather than the elbow injury that curtailed his 2019 season, it’s yet another reminder of the concerns that surround the going-on-31-year-old lefty.

Last year, Sale made just 25 starts, the final one on August 13. He was then shut down due to what was termed elbow inflammation, and while he paid a visit to Dr. James Andrews for a second opinion, he avoided surgery, though he did receive a platelet-rich plasma injection. The headlines at the time were to the tune of “avoids Tommy John surgery,” but there’s never been any indication that Sale’s complaint or his PRP injection were related to his ulnar collateral ligament. His elbow is now said to be fine; he’s been throwing bullpen sessions and is scheduled to throw an extended batting practice session this weekend. However, he’s behind the schedule of his rotation-mates due to back-to-back cases of the flu and pneumonia that he contracted earlier this month. Here’s what Roenicke said, via ESPN:

“With the sickness, it cost him two weeks’ time, and that two weeks is what we’d like to give him to make sure that he’s right,” Roenicke said. “He’s worked hard on getting his arm right, and we didn’t think four starts in spring training was fair to him.

…”Nothing at all with the arm. He’s doing really good with that,” Roenicke said. “We’re really happy with that.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have received a fair amount of criticism for trading Mookie Betts. Owner John Henry tried to clear the air a bit, clarify some misconceptions that are out there, and justify trading Mookie Betts. If his explanation felt lacking, it’s probably because the real explanation isn’t pretty. The Red Sox traded Betts to save money at the expense of a potentially winning team in 2020. That they received some talent in return can’t obscure the primary goal of the trade. Financial flexibility might remain a popular catchphrase, but there’s little reason to think the Boston Red Sox couldn’t just keep payrolls at similar levels over the foreseeable future and continue to add talent considering nearly $100 million in salaries comes off the books over the next three offseasons.

A few specific passages in Henry’s statement stuck out to me:

“It is not the system’s fault that the Red Sox ended up in this position. We were faced with a difficult choice.”

Henry called this an “extraordinary challenge,” a “difficult choice,” and characterized “tough decisions” for the organization. To frame trading Betts as a difficult choice, one must first frame the options and the results. It’s not just get prospects versus a draft pick. It’s contending in 2020 versus not. It’s attaching a bad contract to the trade versus getting the best possible future value. It’s decreasing spending by $60 million versus maintaining an already profitable level.

Henry appears to be accepting responsibility for big contracts for David Price, Chris Sale, and J.D. Martinez that put the Red Sox in a bind where keeping Betts wouldn’t be possible, except it is Henry that decides what it is possible and what is not. It is Henry who has decided he wants to cash more checks and write fewer ones. We’ve heard about a rumored $300 million offer, but that was another offseason ago before Betts accumulated $47 million in arbitration awards. An offer of just $250 million in free agent money when Mike Trout was accepting $100 million more (on a bargain deal) with Betts a full year younger and coming off his 2018 MVP season isn’t exactly much of an effort at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Trading a star player is easier to sell to a fanbase when said player’s potential replacement is part of the return package. When the Pirates traded Andrew McCutchen, they got back Bryan Reynolds. When the Marlins traded Christian Yelich and J.T. Realmuto, they got back Lewis Brinson and Jorge Alfaro. The exit of a star player always begs the question of who will take his spot, and if the team can point to a shiny young newcomer from another organization and say he’s the answer, it helps to maintain at least an illusion of stability at that position. Fans might miss their old star player, but fear not, because the new guy could be just as good, and so on. This has worked out better in some situations (McCutchen to Reynolds) than others (Yelich to Brinson), but it’s easy to see why a front office would want to employ this kind of strategy.

That’s how the Boston Red Sox behaved when scouring the market for potential returns in their efforts to dump the transcendent Mookie Betts (and, importantly, mountains of salary commitments), and they found their match in the Dodgers, who offered 23-year-old outfielder Alex Verdugo as part of their package in a deal that was completed earlier this week. On the outset, it seemed like a seamless transition. Verdugo certainly won’t be as valuable as Betts in any phase of the game, but he’s a decent enough bat and capable fielder who the Red Sox can plug into right field and forget about. Seems easy enough, right? Well, not necessarily. Verdugo, a left-handed hitter, will be replacing the right-handed-hitting Betts. The other two presumptive starting outfielders for Boston, Andrew Benintendi and Jackie Bradley Jr., are also lefties. Since the plan for right-handed-hitting J.D. Martinez should be to use him in the field as little as possible, and the rest of the projected bench combining for little-to-zero big league outfield experience, the Betts trade still left Boston in a vulnerable spot where outfield platoons are concerned. Read the rest of this entry »