“Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.” – Albert Camus

The 2018 Boston Red Sox won 108 games and dominated the postseason, going 11-3 and winning the World Series. The 2019 Red Sox…did not. It’s hard to call an 84-78 season an unmitigated disaster. Still, the Red Sox were out of the divisional race by June, resulting in president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski getting his pink slip. Replacing Dombrowski is Chaim Bloom, poached from the Tampa Bay Rays, and a public mandate to get the payroll under the luxury tax threshold. Boston, perhaps more than any near-playoff team in 2019, faces an uncertain future.

The Setup

Winning the World Series is every team’s (eventual) goal, and no matter what the Red Sox had done to follow-up on their big 2018 win, nobody was going to take down that flag. For the sequel, the Red Sox decided to go the route of keeping the band mostly together and hoping people would buy the Greatest Hits album. Whether or not it was due to excessive thrift — the Red Sox were safely over the luxury tax threshold — the team did little in the offseason aside from re-signing 2018 midseason acquisitions Nathan Eovaldi and Steve Pearce.

There’s an argument to be made that a roster that wins 108 games one year ought to be at least a serious contender the following year without too many alterations. The danger of that argument, however, is that a team is far more likely to win 108 games when an excessive number of things go right than when the majority of things go sour. Boston’s farm system wasn’t likely to provide much in the way of reinforcements in 2019, making the cost of either inaction or losing players to free agency higher than it would be for teams with greater internal depth.

When it came to the bullpen, inaction would have been an upgrade. Boston’s relief corps was far from the portable fire-starter of this year’s champs, ranking 13th in WAR and sixth in FIP in 2018, but it wasn’t a particularly deep group. The team let Craig Kimbrel and Joe Kelly go, something that 2019 hasn’t exactly forced the organization to regret. Still, the Red Sox needed to replace those contributions somehow, as Kimbrel and Kelly combined from two of the bullpen’s 4 WAR. But Boston didn’t do any of that, instead opting to move the returning relievers up a place, a bit like Darth Vader did with empire personnel every time he lost his temper and force-choked a commanding officer.

The Projection

As someone from Baltimore who grew up rooting against the Yankees, it irked me a bit that even while the Red Sox were winning the World Series, ZiPS thought the Yankees were the better team. That pattern continued in 2019; ZiPS forecast the Red Sox to finish four games behind the Yankees at the start of the season. Of course, Boston’s projected 94 wins were the fourth-most in baseball, so it’s not as if the projection system’s baseline expectation was a disappointing season.

There were, however, some troubling signs in the margins. The rotation projected for a more-than-healthy 18.1 WAR, but ZiPS also saw an enormous gulf after the front five starters. Beyond that group, ZiPS saw non-prospects Matthew Kent and Chandler Shepherd and journeyman reliever Ryan Weber as the team’s best spare options, a troubling ranking considering the propensity pitchers have for breaking. ZiPS loved it some Mookie Betts but saw the team’s lineup as top-heavy, and after Michael Chavis, was unimpressed with the offensive depth. ZiPS’ mean projection for the team was four games worse than the Yankees, but its 10th percentile projection was 10 games worse, which was more a reflection the weakness of the “break glass in case of emergency options” than of the riskiness of the team’s talent.

The Results

Boston started the season by dropping eight of 10 games, failing to win a series outright until they swept the Tampa Bay Rays in late April. Through the end of April, Red Sox starting pitchers posted a 4.73 FIP, better than the likes of teams such as the Orioles, but firmly in the bottom-third of the league. Chris Sale, Nathan Eovaldi, and Rick Porcello all struggled at the start of the season, enough for manager Alex Cora to use a six-man rotation for much of the first half in an attempt to give the starters more rest. Sale recovered somewhat as the season went on, though he never pitched at his usual level of awesomeness; a sore elbow ended his 2019 season early, but as of now, it looks like he has managed to avoid Tommy John surgery. David Price also bowed out early due to a cyst on his wrist that made throwing breaking pitches painful.

A roaring comeback never came for Porcello or Eovaldi. Porcello’s ERA didn’t dip below five after the midseason, and he likely only kept his spot in the rotation because of the various misfortunes of others. Eovaldi missed part of the season with sore biceps, and in order to facilitate a quicker return to action, Boston used him in relief for a spell.

As may have been expected given the team’s lack of depth, once the rotation’s Fab Five fell to ruin, the pitching picture was painted with a bleak palette. Outside Boston’s planned 2019 rotation, the team’s starting pitchers combined for a 6.79 ERA and 23 homers in 119.1 innings. The situation was dire enough that the team banked on Andrew Cashner being able to continue his surprisingly adequate 2019.

He didn’t.

Things were a good deal brighter offensively. Dustin Pedroia was only able to make it into six games, but any contribution was notable. Betts and J.D. Martinez regressed somewhat from their 2018 seasons, but no more than ought to have been reasonably expected by an impartial observer.

Xander Bogaerts had his best season yet, hitting .309/.384/.555 for a 141 wRC+ and 6.8 WAR, with all of those numbers representing career-bests. The Red Sox are lucky they were able to ink Bogaerts to a contract extension in April, as he would certainly have been much more expensive this winter.

It wasn’t all sunny, however. He wasn’t the worst performer on the offense, but Andrew Benintendi was arguably the most disappointing one. In a season that saw 53 players hit 30 or more home runs, Benintendi failed to find another 15 long balls in his bat. He turned some of his liners into fly balls, but a more aggressive approach at the plate hurt his contact numbers more than it helped his bottom line offensive stats. Benintendi looked a lot more like the middle-of-the-pack starter of 2017 than the star-level performer of 2018. He just turned 25 this season, so there’s still time, but as of this moment, I’d struggle to call him a player a team should build around.

In the end, the rotation’s struggles were too much for the offense to overcome. Realistically, even giving Betts and Martinez their 2018 lines wouldn’t have been enough to get the Sox to the playoffs.

What Comes Next?

This question is a pretty big matzah ball for the Red Sox (or whatever the Boston-equivalent of that Seinfeld colloquialism is). The Sox have expressed a public desire to get below the luxury tax threshold for the 2020 season. There’s always the chance that this is a bluff, and that ownership is not really as obsessed with this idea as they’re indicating, but it’s a dangerous game to signal to your paying customers that the product is going to get worse soon.

I’m not sure how this goal can be achieved by just cutting fat here and there. RosterResource projects the Red Sox to be over the luxury tax threshold even if they do nothing this offseason. That means no free agent replacement for Porcello and no veteran signings, short of other moves giving them additional space with which to play. The team is likely to trade Jackie Bradley Jr. and is not-so-subtly shopping Betts. The obvious problem here is that the Red Sox don’t have the in-house replacements to mitigate a JBJ loss, let alone Betts, who my colleague Ben Clemens just argued should not be traded. Betts will fetch real prospects, but if those theoretical prospects could effectively replace Betts in 2019, their current team would likely just play them instead of swapping them for the 2018 AL MVP.

Just as before the 2019 season, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel have the Red Sox farm system last in future value. Triston Casas‘ first full professional season was enough to get his FV moved up to 50; the Red Sox didn’t have a 50 FV prospect coming into the season, so that’s something, I guess.

Chaim Bloom’s charge with the Red Sox is to restock the farm system while not throwing in the towel on 2020 or 2021. It’s going to be a challenge.

The Absitively, Posilutely, Way-Too-Early ZiPS Projection – Rafael Devers

Rafael Devers’ 2018 line (.240/.298/.433, 90 wRC+, 1.0 WAR) was underwhelming on its face. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that Devers was only 21 in 2018; any 21-year-old prospect who debuted with those numbers would have been hailed as a 2019 breakout candidate. That’s just what Devers did, hitting .311/.361/.555 with 32 homers, 54 doubles, and a spine-tingling 5.9 WAR. Devers rose to elite territory in average exit velocity (16th in the majors), and there’s still room in his swing to get more loft and turn some of those doubles into home runs. Devers is unlikely ever to be a serious Gold Glove candidate — I won’t say never because of Marcus Semien — but he made great strides in his defense in 2019, cutting his errors by a third.

Devers is a legitimate star at the hot corner and should be a foundational player for the Red Sox over the next decade or so. Coming into 2019, ZiPS had Devers as the seventh ranked third baseman in terms of career WAR remaining, behind Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Jose Ramirez, Alex Bregman, Manny Machado, Matt Chapman, and Kris Bryant. That’s a tough crowd to break into, but I would not be shocked to see Devers ascend into the top five.

Devers’ WAR obviously won’t be quite this stable — this is a projection after all — but that’s the forecast of a top third baseman.

The Red Sox have had a sad start to the offseason, even by the standards of baseball’s recent payroll doomsaying. While some teams have intimated that they won’t increase payroll, the Sox have gone further; owner John Henry announced that they plan on dropping below the luxury tax threshold for 2020, setting the tone for a strange winter where cutting salary might matter more than the eventual product on the field.

Viewed through that lens, it’s somehow a bad development when one of the best hitters in baseball chooses to stay on your team. J.D. Martinez was the 16th-best qualified hitter by wRC+ last year, and that was a down year. He elected not to opt out of his current contract, and is slated to make $23.75 million next season — a steal if he hits his Steamer projection, and a useful piece for a team with no other DH options. And yet, when you set artificial salary constraints on yourself, things tend to snowball.

With Martinez in the fold, things took an even weirder turn. The offseason rumor mill seems increasingly convinced that the Sox will offload Mookie Betts to save the last year of his salary and avoid an appropriately costly extension, reaping some prospects in return and cutting payroll in the bargain. I’ll attempt to quantify what this might do to the team, but let me say upfront: this seems like an obviously bad choice to me. Dan Shaughnessy hit pieces aside, Betts is probably the best non-Trout player in baseball. You don’t trade someone like that and take a step forward.

But okay, fine, let’s go through the math of trading Betts. We’ll do the grim calculus of turning player contracts into cash amounts first: if you value a win on the free market at $8 million, Betts’ 6.6 WAR projection is worth $52.8 million. If Betts earns his projected arbitration salary of $27.7 million, that works out to $25 million in surplus value. That sounds reductive, and it is. Mookie Betts isn’t an asset worth $25 million to the Red Sox; he’s one of the best players in baseball, and also a great bowler in his spare time. But if we’re doing the math, that’s the starting point. Read the rest of this entry »

In the first of a six-part series — one piece for each division — I’ll be highlighting each team’s most notable free agents and how it could fill the resulting void on the roster. A player’s rank on our recently released Top 50 Free Agents list, along with Kiley McDaniel’s contract estimates from that exercise, are listed where relevant. In some cases, the team already has a capable replacement ready to step in. In others, it’s clear the team will either attempt to re-sign their player or look to the trade or free agent markets for help. The remaining cases are somewhere in between, with in-house candidates who might be the answer, but aren’t such obvious everyday players to keep the team from shopping around for better options.

Here’s a look at the American League East.

Baltimore Orioles | Depth Chart | Payroll

Mark Trumbo, DH/1B

Trumbo’s expected departure is only notable because it marks the end of a disastrous three-year run that resulted in an 87 wRC+ and 40 homers in 248 games at a total cost of $37.5 million. In his debut season with Orioles in 2016, he had a 125 wRC+ with 47 homers, which led to the contract extension. The particular role Trumbo was supposed to fill, primarily as a designated hitter who could occasionally fill in at first base and the corner outfield spots, now belongs to 25-year-old Renato Nuñez, who will make slightly above the minimum salary next season, is under contract through 2025, and had a 99 wRC+ with 31 homers in his first full big league season.

Total WAR: -0.3

Boston Red Sox | Depth Chart | Payroll

Rick Porcello, SP
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 31
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 2 years, $18M

Chris Sale, David Price, and Nathan Eovaldi combined to make 59 starts in 2019 and there’s not much reason to believe that any of them are likely to give the Red Sox anywhere near 30 starts or 180 innings in 2020. That’s why the potential loss of Porcello, who has made at least 31 starts in eight of his 11 seasons and has never had less than 27, could be a major blow to a team with limited starting pitching depth behind Eduardo Rodriguez and the aforementioned trio.

Badly in need of an innings-eater, it’s possible that the best fit for the Red Sox rotation in 2020 is Porcello, even if he’s nowhere near the pitcher he was when he won the AL Cy Young award in 2016. But even if they cut his 2019 salary of $21.25 million by more than half — Kiley predicted a two-year, $18 million contract for Porcello in our Top 50 Free Agents — Boston is attempting to shed payroll and might be looking for much cheaper options.

Brock Holt, INF/OF
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 33
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 2 years, $15M

After a 1-for-16 start to the season followed by a six-week stint on the Injured List, Holt returned to slash .313/.380/.424 in his final 276 plate appearances while making starts at six different positions. The 31-year-old should be rewarded by a team that can offer him more playing time, which could open the door for Tzu-Wei Lin or one of a handful of prospects, including Chad De La Guerra and C.J. Chatham, to become the team’s next super-utilityman.

Mitch Moreland, 1B

Coming off one of his most productive season at the plate, the 34-year-old Moreland’s price tag could still be less than the two-year, $13 million deal that just expired. Still, the Red Sox have bigger voids to fill than at first base. Some combination of Michael Chavis and possibly an inexpensive veteran — think Yonder Alonso or Logan Morrison — could do the job, with prospect Bobby Dalbec, who slashed .239/.356/.460 with 27 homers between Triple-A and Double-A in 2019, a possibility to help out later in the season.

Andrew Cashner, SP/RP

Since an impressive performance as a relief pitcher with the Padres way back in 2012, Cashner worked almost exclusively as a starter over the next six-and-a-half years. He was very good at times, but was also very bad at others, leading at least some people — well, mostly me — to wonder whether it was time to move him back to the bullpen. That time finally came after he posted an 8.01 ERA and 6.81 FIP in six starts after being acquired from the Orioles in July. Excluding his final appearance of the season, which was disastrous, Cashner had a 2.38 ERA and 3.52 FIP out of the ‘pen with four holds and a save while limiting opponents to a .160 batting average over 22 and two-thirds innings.

It’s unclear what kind of market Cashner would have as a reliever, or if there are still teams interested in him as a starting pitcher, but a return to Boston as a setup man to Brandon Workman could be a nice fit for the 33-year-old.

Total WAR: 3.7

New York Yankees | Depth Chart | Payroll

Didi Gregorius, SS
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 10
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 3 years, $48M

With Gregorius out of the picture, Gleyber Torres could move to shortstop, DJ LeMahieu could get most of his starts at second base, and the corner infield spots should be covered by some combination of Miguel Andujar, Greg Bird, Mike Ford, Gio Urshela, and Luke Voit. It really could be as simple as that.

That doesn’t mean the 29-year-old Gregorius, who was 20th in AL MVP voting in 2017 and 2018, is on his way out. The Yankees don’t have many holes to fill. If they prioritize keeping Gregorius, there’s a good chance he’ll stay put. But the fact that they didn’t give him a qualifying offer, making him much more valuable on the open market, probably means that they’re ready to move on and will focus their offseason efforts elsewhere, possibly in the starting pitching market.

Brett Gardner, OF
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 21
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 1 year, $13M

When Gardner re-signed with the Yankees for the 2019 season, it appeared that his days as a starting outfielder were behind him. Coming off one of his least productive seasons, he was set to fill a part-time role behind Aaron Hicks, Aaron Judge, and Giancarlo Stanton. A year later, things have changed substantially.

The 36-year-old Gardner just had what was one of his best offensive seasons as a major leaguer. He could still be very valuable to the Yankees, who will be without Hicks for at least half of the season as he recovers from Tommy John surgery. If they fail to re-sign Gardner without making a competitive offer, it’s a sign that they believe Mike Tauchman’s breakout season (128 wRC+, 13 HR in 296 plate appearances) wasn’t a fluke and that he’s ready to be penciled in as their Opening Day center fielder.

Edwin Encarnación, DH/1B
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 25
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 1 year, $11M

After a season in which nearly every position player in the Bronx missed time due to an injury, the Yankees might be better off rotating their lineup regulars in and out of the designated hitter spot to keep them well-rested and healthy. Or they could use it early in the season to ease Andujar back into action as he returns from rotator cuff surgery. In either case, Encarnación’s time with the Yankees is likely over even if he still has a lot left in the tank as he enters his age-37 season.

Dellin Betances, RP
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 22
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 1 year, $12M

Betances didn’t make his 2019 debut until September 15, striking out both batters he faced before he was shut down for with a partially torn Achilles’ tendon. The Yankees’ bullpen was still very good without him. Zack Britton and Adam Ottavino both posted sub-2.00 ERAs and Tommy Kahnle bounced back from a disappointing 2018.

The 31-year-old, who had over 15.0 K/9 in three consecutive seasons prior to 2019, could pursue both a multi-year deal and an opportunity to be another team’s closer. But if other teams aren’t willing to offer either of those because of health concerns, he could opt to stay with the Yankees and rebuild his value on a one-year deal in hopes of a big payday next winter. If the Yankees are unwilling to spend much more on their bullpen — Aroldis Chapman, Britton, and Ottavino will make a combined $38 million in 2020 — they could move one of their young starting pitchers to relief. Jonathan Loaisiga or Deivi Garcia would be options.

Cameron Maybin, OF

Like Gardner and Tauchman, the 2019 Yankees brought out the best in the 32-year-old Maybin. After having to settle for a minor league contract last offseason, he’s all but certain to land a major league deal this time around after slashing .285/364/.494 with 11 homers in 269 plate appearances on team that won 103 games.

Total WAR: 7.0

Tampa Bay Rays | Depth Chart | Payroll

Eric Sogard, INF/OF
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 39
Kiley McDaniel contract projection: 1 year, $6M

Acquired in July to help pick up the slack with several key players banged up, Sogard had injury troubles of his own late in the season and was shut down in mid-September. He did return for the post-season, making one start and homering against Gerrit Cole. With a deep Rays team expected to return to full health, the 33-year-old Sogard probably won’t be back. Finding a major league deal shouldn’t be a problem, though, after he finished the season with a .290/.353/.457 slash line in 442 plate appearances while making starts at five different positions.

Avisaíl García, OF
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 30
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 1 year, $10M

With three starting outfielders who don’t figure to sit much in 2020 and Guillermo Heredia in line to be the defensive replacement off the bench, García will likely look elsewhere to cash in on a strong bounce-back season. At age 28, he’s one of the youngest free agents on the market.

Travis d’Arnaud, C/1B
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 27
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 2 years, $14M

d’Arnaud was acquired from the Dodgers to help fill the void shortly after Mike Zunino went on the Injured List with a strained quad in early May. By the end of August, he was the primary catcher on a Rays team that was headed for a 96-win season and a playoff appearance. He also made 16 starts at first base because the Rays didn’t want his bat out of the lineup when he wasn’t catching. After Zunino’s offensive production dipped drastically for the second consecutive year, the Rays could bring back the 30-year-old d’Arnaud to pair with him once again. Or they could make room to re-sign him by non-tendering Zunino, who is entering his final year of arbitration eligibility.

Total WAR: 4.1

Toronto Blue Jays | Depth Chart | Payroll

Clay Buchholz/Clayton Richard, SP

To fill their rotation needs in 2019, the Blue Jays took a chance on a pair of oft-injured right-handers, Buchholz and Matt Shoemaker, as well as veteran lefty Richard, who made 59 starts over the previous two seasons. While Shoemaker pitched brilliantly out of the gate, he suffered a season-ending knee injury in his fifth start while the other two battled injuries throughout the season and combined for only 22 mostly mediocre starts.

In the same boat a year later, looking for veteran starting pitchers that can help bridge the gap to the team’s young pitching prospects, Toronto moved quickly to acquire Chase Anderson in a trade with the Brewers and will likely add at least one more starter who is a safer bet than any of last year’s additions.

Total WAR: -0.1

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers —Jace Fry, Mitch Keller, and Josh Taylor — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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Jace Fry, Chicago White Sox

“I started throwing a slider when I was about 14, but it was a different grip, and a different kind of pitch. It was more of a big, sweeping slider. After my second Tommy John surgery, I stopped throwing that one and started throwing the slider I have now. J.R. Perdew taught it to me. This would have been in 2016. I gained a little more velocity, and get sharper action.

“Going back to the beginning, I started throwing a curveball when I was 10, and that one I’ve been throwing my whole career. The slider was added once I got into high school. Growing up, there were a lot of good coaches in my area [Beaverton, Oregon]. My pitching coach was Jim Coffman, who is an area scout for Oakland. I went to him for four or five years, and he’s the one who taught me how to spin the ball correctly, and how to be on time. Read the rest of this entry »

When J.D. Martinez signed his five-year, $110 million contract with the Boston Red Sox two years ago, it included multiple opt-outs, the first of which came this offseason. Martinez could continue with his current deal, which will pay $62.5 million over the next three seasons, or take a $2.5 million buyout and become a free agent, likely with a qualifying offer attached. Martinez has elected to stay with the Red Sox under his current contract, as first reported by Jeff Passan and Jon Heyman.

Martinez has certainly lived up to his end of the bargain in its first two years. In 2018, he put up a six-win season thanks to 43 homers and a 170 wRC+ as the Red Sox won the World Series. While Martinez didn’t come close to matching those numbers in 2019, a 139 wRC+ and 3.2 WAR still made him one of the better hitters in the game. As he heads toward his age-32 season, Martinez seems to have found the comfort of a $62.5 million guarantee more inviting than what might have awaited him on the open market. The move is a bit surprising, but with the Red Sox unlikely to pursue him should he have opted out and the Yankees perhaps out of the mix with their focus on pitching, the number of suitors in the American League in need of a designated hitter, even one as good as Martinez, might not have been as great as needed to significantly improve his current contract.

Of next year’s potential contenders, consider that the Astros, Indians, Twins, A’s, and Angels already have designated hitters pretty much locked in. Which teams remain that might have made big bids on Martinez? The Rangers or the White Sox perhaps, though the former would have had to cut bait with Shin-Soo Choo while the latter’s decision to extend Jose Abreu a qualifying offer probably would have made Martinez a less good fit. The Royals and Tigers, as well as the non-Yankees and Red Sox teams in the AL East, are either ultra-frugal (the Rays) or unlikely to be competitive next season (the Orioles and Blue Jays). The Mariners didn’t seem like a great fit for the same reason as that AL East duo, and the National League was likely off limits given Martinez’s defensive issues. The risk of the market drying up was reasonably high, and with another opt-out after next season, a good 2020 would position Martinez to only have to beat two years and just under $40 million.

In our Top 50 Free Agents list, where Martinez ranked fifth assuming that he would opt out, Kiley McDaniel predicted the DH would garner three years and $77 million as a free agent, while the crowd predicted about $10 million more. Those are reasonable forecasts, but the upside seems to have ended up being worth less than the potential downside. This what Kiley had to say:

I prefer Grandal as a player since he’s younger and has a much greater margin for error, but am projecting Martinez for a bit more money since he would be opting out of three years and $62.5 million to hit free agency. With another opt out after 2020, he could also effectively opt in for a one year and $23.75 million before hitting the market again. He’ll only opt out if he had very good reason to believe that there was at least $70 million out there for him.

The decision shows Martinez’s confidence level. Meanwhile, Jay Jaffe, in his free agent blurb for Martinez, raised concerns about his level of play:

Not only did he not hit the ball quite as hard in 2019 — his exit velocity dipped from 93.0 to 91.3, while his xwOBA dropped from .421 to .401 — he did far less damage against four-seam fastballs 95 mph or higher; over the past three seasons, his xwOBA against such pitches has dropped from .505 to .473 to .351, while his xwOBA against all four-seamers has fallen from .535 to .476 to .419. Between the suggestion that his bat is slowing down as he moves into his mid-30s and his defensive liabilities (-15.1 UZR and -17 DRS over the past three seasons), he could find the market less hospitable than his last time around.

While rumors swirl about the future of Mookie Betts, Alex Speier notes that the Red Sox could try to see what the market holds for Martinez.

While Martinez is a good bet to over-perform the value of his contract, the downward trend noted by Jay, plus the potential dearth of suitors as noted above, could make finding a trading partner difficult. If the Red Sox are only interested in dumping the salary, they shouldn’t have to try too hard to find a taker, but if they are looking to add talent in the deal as well, it could prove difficult. (Why the Red Sox feel the need to cut salary and move talent when they have a contending team in a tough division is a reasonable question.)

With Martinez back in the fold, the Red Sox have a luxury tax payroll of roughly $236 million. Taxes will add another $15 million to Boston’s spend if they make no moves. Trading Martinez would save his $23 million salary, plus another $12 million in taxes. Meanwhile, trimming three wins from the roster without an increase elsewhere will reduce Boston’s chances of making the playoffs. The club will have to decide where its priorities lie.

J.D. Martinez is a good hitter who earned his $110 million contract and all the provisions that came with it. He’s elected not to exercise his opt-out this winter and, at least for now, will stay with the Red Sox under the terms of that deal. It’s proved beneficial to both parties, though so some self-imposed budgetary constraints might end up putting Boston in a difficult spot this offseason.

Josh Osich doesn’t bury his head in the sand when a change is in order. Compared to most hurlers, the 31-year-old southpaw has been chameleon-like in terms of his pitch usage. He’s switched teams, as well. Originally in the Giants organization, Osich spent 2019 with the White Sox, and just this past week he was claimed off waivers by the Red Sox.

Intrigued by what I saw in his pitch-type column, I asked the former Oregon State Beaver for the reasons behind all the ebbs and flows of his offerings.

“If the scouting report is the same every year, they know what you’re going to be throwing,” Osich said this summer. “It’s always nice to change things up, so that they don’t know what’s coming. In 2016, I was sinker-heavy. The year before that, I was fastball-changeup-cutter; it was more of a mix. In 2018, there were probably a few more changeups. This year I’ve been cutter-heavy.”

Very cutter-heavy. Roughly two out of every three pitches Osich threw in 2019 were classified as cutters. Might that not be contradictory to his “they don’t know what’s coming” comment? Read the rest of this entry »

In an interview that ran here last week, Red Sox Senior Vice President/Assistant General Manager Zack Scott suggested that Dave Dombrowski’s successor will be heavily invested in analytics. That turned out to be an understatement. On Monday, Chaim Bloom — an integral cog in Tampa Bay’s cutting-edge front office since 2005 — was formally introduced as Boston’s Chief Baseball Officer.

If you paid heed to the press conference, you’re aware that “collaborative” was the buzzword of the day. Bloom, principal owner John Henry, chairman Tom Werner, and president/CEO Sam Kennedy used the term (and variants thereof) as frequently and purposefully as “Trick or Treat” is heard on Halloween.

Dombrowski didn’t depart Fenway Park in a gorilla costume, as Theo Epstein famously did in 2005, but the reason he’s being replaced isn’t cloaked in mystery. However much the ownership group cares to dance around it, Dombrowski didn’t fully embrace the collaborative process that was deemed necessary to move the team forward, certainly not to the extent they expect Bloom to do so.

Couching his comments with, “I wouldn’t contrast the two,” Henry said from the dais that ownership was “extremely desirous of bringing in someone who would augment and add, as opposed to bringing in someone who might have been an autocrat.” Read the rest of this entry »

Thad Ward didn’t make our Red Sox Top Prospect List prior to this season. Baseball America wasn’t bullish on the 22-year-old right-hander, either. Their rankings went 30-deep, and Ward didn’t make the cut.

Next year will be a different story. Ward was a revelation in his first full professional season, fanning 157 batters, and allowing just 89 hits, in 126-and-a-third innings. Those numbers came between low-A Greenville and high-A Salem, where his cumulative ERA was a sparkling 2.14.

His slider is his best pitch.

“It’s a Chris Sale slider,” is how Red Sox pitching guru Brian Bannister described it to me in late September. “It’s a sweeping slider, with a similar shape to Jhoulys Chacin’s or Corey Kluber’s. It has that extra horizontal component to it.”

That’s long been the case, although Ward’s understanding of the how-and-why is recent. When he reported to spring training this year, the 2018 fifth-round pick out of the University of Central Florida got a crash course in Pitching Analytics 101. Read the rest of this entry »

Zack Scott is currently one of four people running Boston’s baseball operations department. Along with Raquel Ferreira, Brian O’Halloran, and Eddie Romero Jr, the 16-year member of the team’s front office is keeping a chair warm while the search for Dave Dombrowski’s replacement continues. His core responsibilities remain largely the same. Scott’s title is Senior Vice President/Assistant General Manager, and per the Red Sox media guide, he “oversees the club’s Baseball Analytics and Baseball Systems departments.”

What is the current state of Boston’s analytics department, and how much has it changed since the University of Vermont graduate (B.S. in Mathematics) joined the organization in 2004? I addressed those questions with Scott following the completion of the Red Sox season.

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David Laurila: How much has the Red Sox analytics department grown over the years?

Zack Scott: “There’s been a lot of growth, not just with us, but in the industry. As you know, there’s been an explosion of data. Throwing out round-number estimates, when I started there were around 10,000 data points, and now it’s more like 10 billion data points. And a lot of that has been the last five years. So the need to grow is apparent; there’s only so much you can do with a short staff.”

Laurila: How many people are currently in the department?

Scott: “We added five new employees last offseason. Overall, our R&D team is 15 people. It’s around half analysts, half software developers/technology-implementation.”

Laurila: There’s a perception that the Red Sox went from one of the top analytics teams in baseball to one that is below the top tier. Is that accurate? Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Brian Bannister, Andrew Cashner, and Rick Porcello — on how they learned and developed their changeups.

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Brian Bannister, Boston Red Sox (VP/Pitching Development)

“Everyone starts that journey of trying to throw it slow, and in that process you choke the grip, you drag your back foot, you curl your toes — you do everything you can to make the pitch slower. But Zack Greinke will talk about how we had a teammate [in Kansas City] named Ramon Ramirez who threw his changeup 90 mph. He didn’t even try to throw it slow. We watched him do it successfully. We watched Felix Hernandez do it successfully. We were always watching James Shields dominate with a power changeup. That’s what we used to call it.

“Once we started realizing that your hand pronates more on a changeup than it can on a two-seamer, we could get the depth of an elite two-seamer by throwing our changeups as hard as possible. It added that element where it was almost a Brandon Webb sinker, but you’re holding it with a changeup grip. Read the rest of this entry »