It’s Time to Pull the Plug on Pablo Sandoval
Last night, the Red Sox started Pablo Sandoval at third base, the first time in four games he’d been in the starting line-up. He responded by singling to lead off the second inning and miraculously drew a walk in the third inning, which should tell you how sharp Jeremy Hellickson was last night. In the 8th inning, he was replaced by Josh Rutledge for defensive purposes, despite the fact that Rutledge has regularly graded out as one of the worst defensive infielders in baseball. But for Sandoval, this was a pretty successful night, reaching base twice and handling all four balls that he fielded.
But the fact that this is what constitutes a successful game for a player on a team trying to win is why the Red Sox should realize it’s time to just move on.
John Farrell has already acknowledged that Sandoval isn’t really the team’s starting third baseman anymore. His inability to hit left-handers means he’ll never start when a left-handed pitcher is on the mound for the opponent, and his struggles in the field make Farrell hesitant to start Sandoval when the Red Sox start a left-handed pitcher either, given that the opponents will have a lot of right-handed hitters pulling groundballs to the left side. So Sandoval’s current role is facing right-handed pitching when the Red Sox also happen to be throwing a right-handed starter, before being lifted for a pinch-hitter or defensive replacement when necessary.
Carrying a guy who can only play in very specific situations can work if the player is productive enough in those spots; lefty specialist relievers also have very narrow usage requirements, of course. But here’s the thing; 100 plate appearances into 2017, and it’s not clear that Sandoval can still hit right-handed pitching either.
During his time in San Francisco, Sandoval had a pretty basic offensive skillset; he offset an overly aggressive approach at the plate with good contact skills, and with roughly average power, he was an average-to-above-average hitter. That skillset mostly carried over in 2015, his first year in Boston, except he ran a .270 BABIP, and without enough power to compensate, that sank his overall offensive numbers.
Then he missed all of last year with a shoulder injury. This year, in the hoped-for rebound, he’s hitting .217/.277/.370 through his first 101 plate appearances. Of course, anyone can run a bad line for 100 PAs, especially with a .239 BABIP. But if you look under the hood a bit more, Sandoval’s core skill seems to be eroding.
Sandoval’s contact rates, both in and out of the zone, have sunk this year — you can ignore the 2016 marks on that graph, as he only hit seven times last year — and have led to Sandoval running a strikeout rate close to league average for the first time in his career. His overall 74% contact rate is eight percentage points below his career average. Some of that is just the fact that strikeouts have gone up league wide over the last few years, but most of it is Sandoval just swinging and missing with more frequency than he has before.
And Pablo Sandoval, with a league average strikeout rate, is just not a good hitter. He still swings at everything — he has the fifth-highest O-Swing% of any hitter with 100+ plate appearances — and allows pitchers to get him out on pitches out of the zone. Only 38% of the pitches he’s been thrown this year have been strikes, the lowest rate in the majors, so Sandoval is currently swinging at balls and swinging through strikes. That is a bad combination.
And Sandoval isn’t really trading contact for power. His .152 ISO is up slightly from his 2013-2015 stretch, but it’s below his career average, and league ISO as a whole is up now that everyone can hit home runs. Sandoval has launched four homers himself, and his exit velocity on fly balls shows that he can still hit the ball hard occasionally, but he hasn’t learned to avoid hitting ground balls yet, and in this day and age of shifting, a slow left-handed groundball machine isn’t a good thing to be.
In San Francisco, before every team started shifting on nearly every play, Sandoval was reasonably effective when hitting grounders, hitting .261 with a .282 SLG on GBs. Since arriving in Boston and having to adjust to life without the ability to pull the ball between the first and second baseman for a single, he’s hitting .188 with a .197 SLG. Without enough power to offset the GB-heavy batted ball profile, Sandoval is probably going to struggle to run a BABIP over .300 again.
He’s not a .239 true talent BABIP guy, but looking at his Statcast data, Andrew Perpetua’s xSTATS put him at a .271 xBABIP, in line with what he put up in 2015. He just doesn’t have the kind of batted ball profile or authority to be a high BABIP guy in the day and age of shifting, especially given that he hits more infield flies than you’d like to see.
So, taken together, Sandoval now looks like he’s going to run below-average BABIPs and his contact skills look to be eroding. If you take those things away, there’s not much left. Even with ZIPS and Steamer projecting close to .300 BABIPs for him going forward, he still projects to just a 91 wRC+ over the rest of the season, and once you account for the shift’s impact on his grounders, he’s probably not even likely to be able to match that.
That leaves him as something like an 75-85 wRC+ guy who can’t hit lefties and can’t play the field. And that’s just not a player a contender can afford to roster. I know the Red Sox don’t want to pay Sandoval $50 million to go away, and it’s easy to talk yourself into hoping that a guy with a big contract will come around and help the team, but Sandoval is the most glaring example in baseball of a sunk cost.
He has no trade value, and is not likely to ever be someone the team could move for any real return. Sandoval’s presence on the roster is solely about whether he can help the team win, and right now, the answer looks to be mostly no. A guy who can’t field and probably can’t hit much just shouldn’t be taking up a spot on a team trying to win.
Back in May, I made the case for calling up Rafael Devers, though he went into a tailspin immediately after that post went up. But he’s bounced back in June, hitting .372/.413/.721 this month, and still looks like he could be a superior internal option if the team wanted a left-handed third baseman to split time with Rutledge. Dave Dombrowski said this week that the organization doesn’t feel Devers is quite ready yet, but some of that probably involves the team not yet making the decision that it’s time to cut Sandoval and give his roster spot to someone more useful.
They should be there, though. Sandoval looks like a below-replacement level player, and the Red Sox simply shouldn’t be wasting at-bats hoping he remembers how to make contact or figures out how to beat the shift. Simply put, the Pablo Sandoval experiment failed, and it’s not going to be any more successful by letting him get at-bats that could go to a better player. If they don’t think Devers is going to be ready this year, then you make a trade for someone who is, because the AL East is the most competitive division in baseball, and the Red Sox are throwing at-bats and innings away on a guy who probably isn’t a big leaguer anymore.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
What does Boston have to give up more Moustakas?
Huh?
Apparently “Vietnamese to French to Serbian to English” decided to change his name…
Chuoi-Mrs. Antonio
Boston Baby Moustakas.
Best one since the Jeff Sullivan Salmon Feast
If the Royals pitch is “not just one Moustakas but more Moustakas” then they’ll have plenty of offers.
The Red Sox have a fevuh and the only cure is more Moustakas.
*fevah
*Covfefa
Type a question over lunch, come back 6 hours later only to realize you butchered it.
Happens to me all the time. No worries.
But really, what do the Red Sox give up in a trade for Moustakas?
The better question is what they have to offer any team for anything, whether it’s Jed Lowrie or Mike Moustakas or David Freese or Todd Frazier.
If they’re not giving up Groome or Devers for a rental (and they shouldn’t) and you’re not giving up guys who are helping you today (like Sam Travis or Marco Hernandez) you’re probably looking at Michael Chavis, Bobby Dalbec, Roniel Raudes, Josh Ockimey, Travis Lakins, and Mike Shawaryn as your best trade pieces. What this means is that it’s going to be really easy to outbid the Red Sox if the team is motivated. But maybe they get lucky and there’s one more 3rd base option on the market than are buyers.
If you’re going to pull the plug on that fat pig, better put a bucket where you unplug. A real big bucket.
Because fat. Did you catch that?
HE’S FAT!
He certainly is fat.
This is how fat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koGxRi7AD-A
I think this is entirely a case of having no better option. You say Devers, but I think DD is doing the right thing by not trying to rush him. We’ve seen enough young players have their careers derailed by early call ups, and it’s not like Devers is a Bryant or a Correa with the pedigree to justify the risk when it’s not clear that Devers will be above replacement level in the majors right now.
Without Devers, where do you turn? Internally Marrero and Rutledge aren’t exactly winning the job, but they at least have utility value on the roster. Maybe you can pick up Plouffe or Peralta for cheap, but those may not even be upgrades over Marrero. Suarez / Nunez / Moustakas are going to cost too much. What’s left?
I disagree that we’ve seen young players have their careers derailed by too early callups. How can you isolate the cause as too early of a callup?
As you say, he isn’t a Bryant or Correa — so there is less risk on the line if indeed calling him up too early hurts his development. (FWIW, I can just as easily say, “we’ve seen far too many players’ development stall in MiLB b/c the competition doesn’t offer a challenge. For all we know about player dev, that could be just as harmful.)
Also, Devers is a 20.5 y.o. who has destroyed AA to a 149 wRC+. The model these days seems to be talented players go from AA to MLB directly.
DD obviously has more information than I do, but you too quickly dismiss Devers’ readiness without information. And, given the paucity of other options, I think that makes Devers a *better* option.
Fair point! I’ll cede that Devers could be a better option. It would certainly be more fun to watch, and you can always send him down if it isn’t working out right away.
But given the red sox NOT calling him up – what else is out there?
“The model these days seems to be talented players go from AA to MLB directly.”
A handful of trees does not a forest make.
Players have certainly been de-railed by being mis-handled. I agree that you can’t prove anything, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Literally nothing baseball-related can be proven. I think the more important point is, would Devers help? He is rough around the edges – I am not sure he wouldn’t get chewed up like Moncada did last year. They could go get some competent veteran for close to nothing probably. If recent hsitory has proven anything it is that you never know how a promotion will go… maybe he goes Bellinger, Schwarber, Correa – maybe he goes Buxton, Trout, Moncada. One interesting thing about the “good” promotion group is that they have not had the success they had on their call-up. Bellinger is the exception as he is still in his honeymoon period – I think I can say with certainty that he won’t hit 60 HR which will represent some sort of decline.
Rutledge himself was called up too early. Look at his minor league stats; 380 PA in AA, 13 HRs, .300+ BA, gets called up to the MAJORS. And now he’s nothing special. Devers has 12 HRs in 240 PA in AA. Eerily similar. Call him up now, and you could have Josh Rutledge II.
In case anyone comes back to this, Rutledge was 3 years older than Devers in AA and had fewer accolades to begin with.
I’d try Steve Selsky. He can play outfield, too–and doesn’t have fans hating him every time he’s in the lineup.
They had Travis Shaw who’s running a 127 wRC+ with a 1.4 WAR, already beating his projections.
Thornburg hasn’t even pitched this season as well. Bad trade to add a bit more insult spice to their 3B situation.
Is Stephen Drew available?
I bet the Nats would sell Drew in a heartbeat if the BoSox dangled a functional relief pitcher
Does Fernando Abad count?
We already had Abad, once was enough thankyouverymuch
Travis Shaw is awesome. No-name prospect, no big tools, everyone just waiting for him to fail and he just keeps on hitting. Some of the prospect write-ups from when he was in the minors are hilarious to read now. The Red Sox probably just figured last year was his true production level given all the negative reports from scouts, and here he is. He’s a grinder, baby!
Until he’s not
not to mention the Sox added extra motivation to his soup by dealing him. As if needed it.
Actually, it might have been fate. His newborn daughter has been dealing with heart issues, and apparently the nearby hospital the Shaws have placed her in is particularly good at dealing with her issues. Had he not been traded, things might have gone much worse for them in that area, and I think we can all agree that that matters more.
If Travis Shaw being traded resulted in his baby daughter’s life being saved, I don’t think anyone can possibly say it was a bad trade.
You DO realize that if Shaw had remaining in Boston his wRC+ would probably be below 100, between the difference in ballpark (Fenway is bad for LHH power, and Milwaukee is terrific for it) and the bouts of bad weather and flu that ravaged Boston’s lineup early in the season.
It would be great if life were as simple as “just swap in what Shaw has done so far for the Brewers into Boston’s lineup”, but it isn’t. Sadly for Boston, it probably wouldn’t work for the team either way.
And FYI, any trade becomes a bad one when the main/only guy you traded for immediately misses his first season due to injury. That’s baseball, Susan.
Boston isn’t in a good place with 3B. Technically that’s nothing new, but this season has been a pretty substantial boiling point. Trading both Shaw and Moncada brought on this situation, and while I think both trades were defensible in a vacuum, they were ultimately doubling-down on a bet which was bad out of the gate.
Sandoval is the sort of player that comes out on the losing end of modern baseball, a game which has rapidly shifted towards rewarding flyballs and brutally punishing grounders. Sandoval loses on both of these fronts offensively, and he ALSO loses on the only relevant one (grounders) defensively, with his limited and declining range drowning out his only defensive asset (his arm). If it weren’t for the changes in the game, I think we would probably see a more normal aging curve for him. He’s still comparatively young, but the game has left his skillset behind.
Given the barrenness of Boston’s farm system, coupled with their (understandable) desire to reset their luxury tax penalty this year, I’m really not sure that they’re going to make a trade (e.g. for Moustakas or Fraiser) unless the Yankees continue forcing the issue in the AL East. I suspect that their plan is to limp along until September, ideally sitting in-or-near first place, and then call up Devers and see how he does with an eye toward the post-season. Basically, the 2013 Bogaerts plan of action.
However, if the Yankees continue to dominate, they really might have no choice but to either accept a one game play-in as their ticket to the post-season, or do something about their blackhole platoon of negative WAR at 3B.
Looking at the two choices you posed, I think we all know what the notorious Dave Dombrowski will do.
They got slightly unlikely that BOTH Holt and Marco Hernandez got hurt. I know Hernandez wasn’t playing well, but I think he would be a better bet than any of their current options.
Losing Holt was a devastating blow. The Sox always felt he was a more than adequate place holder in the event of Sandoval’s almost inevitable failure.
The two trades we not made in a vacuum, and you’ve whiffed on the idea behind them.
It’s basically been made crystal clear that DD knew he had to trade one of Moncada or Devers (who seems grossly underrated in these comments) to enable a Sale trade (imagine where Boston would be without him!), and he chose Devers, keeping in mind that Moncada likely brought back a bigger return.
You make it sound as if the two trades were about doubling-down on Sandoval, and that is a ridiculous notion. Boston hoped Sandoval could rebound and hold the fort at 3B for as long as Devers needed, and then Sandoval would have been shifted to 1B or DH (or traded, if he did well enough). He was already a sunk-cost investment, but just because DD wasn’t building the team’s future plans with him in mind at 3B doesn’t mean he wasn’t someone who could still be useful.
So Boston entered the season with a hopefully rebounding Sandoval as the projected starter, with the solid Brock Holt as the backup, Marco Hernandez as plan C, and a “break glass in case of emergency” of Devers waiting in the wings for later in the season. Well, Sandoval didn’t rebound AND both backups got hurt too quickly to turn to the emergency option, and here we are.
That isn’t poor planning. That’s an almost worst-case scenario coming to pass, and no team (expect perhaps the Dodgers and Yankees) can have an ENDLESS number of options at a position. All you can do is say “well this sucks” and keep trying.
The Red Sox have defeated the Phillies 3 games to none with their lineup. The Sox are loaded with two way talent. They steal hits from the opposition and then swing the bat lethally when it’s their turn.
Sandoval sticks up and out and all about like a Russian diplomat at a congressional hearing.
Sweep wouldn’t of happened when I was GM.
Sweep wouldn’t of happened when I *were* GM.
Dumb ass.
Have.
Illiterates.
“Had I still been the GM.”
“had I still were the GM.”
The Cardinals also swept the Phillies recently, and they don’t have that great of a lineup either. Beating up on the Phillies isn’t really saying much.
Actually this was obvious a year ago. In signing Panda the Sox had to hope for surplus value (in WAR or a championship) in the first years of the contract; after he was awful in ’15 and hurt in ’16, the chances of anything but a disastrous outcome were tiny. The Shaw trade, of course, made the situation worse – especially in view of luxury tax constraints.
Agree. “Winning” the bidding war on Panda was unfortunate from Boston’s perspective. I’m afraid the same might be happening with David Price. But maybe if he has TJ surgery in the near future, the Sox can still get more value from him.
What’s weird is how fickle John Farrell seems to be about picking a 3Bman. He’s consistent until abruptly changing his mind.
After Sandoval and Marco Hernandez (out for the season) both went on the DL, Josh Rutledge was the starting 3Bman for 7 out of the first 8 games. But then he must have realized that Rutledge is defensively inept, so he started Marrero for 18 straight games. Then Sandoval came back and was in a R/L platoon with Marrero for 8 games. Then both of them were benched for 4 straight games in favor of Rutledge. And yesterday, Marrero was optioned.
Marrero was optioned because their bullpen had to eat almost 12 innings in 2 games.
#FreeDevers
It’s interesting that people are missing just how much this 2017 3B situation in Boston parallels the team’s LF situation in 2016.
And just as how Boston eventually turned to its superprospect late in 2016 to solve the issue (and he did indeed solve the issue), the team likely will turn to Devers when the time is right. That means ANYTHING to team does in the meantime has to factor in the likely endgame of the position being taken up for roughly September.
Any chance that Sandoval would accept a minor league assignment, to which he’d have to agree because he has 5+ years of MLB service time?
Dave makes good points that Sandoval looks to be done. OTOH, we’ve also only seen about 600 PA’s of Sandoval being useless as an MLB player (with a season lost to injury in the middle of that stretch), he’s just under 31 years old, and the Red Sox have to pay his contract no matter what. Even if Sandoval goes to the minors for no longer than the rest of this season, by the off-season the Red Sox should have a better idea of whether Sandoval has anything left and also whether Devers is currently ready for MLB.
He has added motivation to NOT accept the assignment, because the Sox would just leave him down there. They would do that because it would remove his big salary from the luxury tax calculation. They are doing that with Craig and Castillo, who couldn’t prevent themselves from being sent down.
I agree with you if he’s DFA’d off the 40 man roster, and obviously no other team would claim him due to his contract.
If he has at least one available option year, however, optioning him while keeping him on the 40 man doesn’t provide luxury tax relief.
He signed a major league contract. He doesn’t have options.
Do you have a link to a source saying that’s the case?
I don’t think it’s the case that signing a major league contract automatically means that a player doesn’t have option years, though option years that Sandoval used with the Giants (if any) would count against his max total of up to 3 option years. And, as I noted previously, Sandoval can refuse any minor league assignment because of his MLB service time.
Were Pablo agreeable to a minor league assignment to get straightened out, it’d be simple to add a clause granting him his release (with pay, of course) if they fail to bring him back up within, say, a month. Of course, this assumes the Players Association would sign off on the whole thing.
More than his defense, it amazed me to see how contagious Sandoval’s bad play at third was to the rest of the defense. Marrero proved a superior option to Sandoval even swinging his sub-Mendoza bat, and management has not forgotten what happened to Moncada in his call up last September.
They really do have no options to Marrero, unless………..they break some 100 year old eggs and try Moreland at third, allowing for Travis at 1B. They badly wanted to keep Travis’s power bat up in Boston but the roster did not allow for it. Moreland is slick, has a powerful arm, throws across his body well and accurately, and knows what a hot corner is.
*Powerful left arm
Moreland is left-handed and has never played third (or any infield position other than first) in his whole professional career. However, he HAS played the outfield (and for a significant amount of time in the majors). That opens the door to some rather creative juggling if the Sox FO really wanted to:
1. Call up Sam Travis
2. Moreland to Left Field
3. Benintendi to Right Field
4. Betts to Third Base
Betts came up as an infielder, and he’s even played on the left side of the diamond (he was a shortstop before he was a third baseman). But doing this in the middle of a contending season sounds… nuts.
You’re promoted. This should be implemented immediately
It is a question whether it’s more nuts to leave things as they are. I like your proposal. But Benintendi in center, Bradley in right. BTW, Betts still takes infield to this day..
I love Beni as much as the next Sox fan but he makes a lot of heads-down errors, sometimes on the field but especially on the basepaths. Probably just an inexperience thing but I’d put my faith in JBJ in CF.
Although Moreland’s defensive stats as an OF were pretty poor, if you can get him enough practice playing the Green Monster he might be adequate (not a lot of ground to cover).
I like this idea. It’s far less crazy than this:
https://www.si.com/vault/1988/10/17/118693/how-a-stopgap-shortstop-won-a-world-series#
FWIW the Rangers scuttled any further Moreland outfield experiments because of durability concerns as much as his actual ability to play out there. In fact, after acquiring Mike Napoli in the 2015 season, their solution to getting all 3 of the Napoli/Moreland/Fielder trio into the lineup was to stick Napoli in LF, which was a hell of a thing to watch.
He could probably hack it in Fenway’s LF if the Red Sox asked him to, but I wouldn’t count on his ankles holding up if you made him do it every night.
He wouldn’t do it every night, you’d do a strict platoon to get Young more PAs, which he deserves despite his meh start
Todd Frazier could make more sense than Moustakas if they go the trade route. He’s probably cheaper to acquire and he’s a RHH, so if Devers proves ready sometime in July, there’s no road block for him. At that point, you’d not only have a platoon at 3B, but Frazier could be a partner for Moreland at 1B.
Was gonna say the same thing. Can’t imagine he’d cost more than a half-decent relief prospect or two.
I would strongly endorse this too. Frazier seems alive all of a sudden and if you’re not giving up Groome or Devers then you probably need something cheaper than Moustakas who might require a little more than what the Sox have.
I like this idea.
As one of the foremost Red Sox devotees on this forum, I would like to fervently endorse Mr. Cameron’s comments, except for his comment that Sandoval “looks like a below-replacement level player”. His level of play now wouldn’t cut it in Greenville or Salem. His analysis of his usage was perfect. Only against righties when the Red Sox throw a righty. That is on a team that has four, count ’em, 4 lefties in their rotation. This is the equivalent of holding on to Kodak stock when the digital camera came along. Admitting that $85,000,000 was thrown down the drain is tough but if ever a player was completely worthless Sandoval is the poster blimp.
I’m a Red Sox fan, as well, Mr. bosoxforlife. You make good points. Also, the Red Sox are one of the few teams that can absorb throwing away $85,000,000 without it completely ruining the future.
Knowing my man Dave D, he will remedy this problem by trading Devers for a middle reliever
I know Lou Gorman. I grew up watching the Lou Gorman Red Sox. I have a specific visceral reaction to the name “Lou Gorman”
Dave Dombrowski is no Lou Gorman.
In addition to the truly-terrible-in-retrospect trade of Travis Shaw, it’s worth noting that the Red Sox have signed three players to huge deals who basically contributed nothing after they signed. Carl Crawford, Pablo Sandoval, and Rusney Castillo are $300 million dollars of DFA-ness. Epstein and Cherington were really savvy in a bunch of ways but those were not good looks for Boston.
Hanley Ramirez hasn’t exactly been a bowl of cherries either. One decent year and now strictly a DH at $22,000,000 a year. Papi was “only” making a paltry $10,000,000 in 2016 and to say there is no comparison only embarrasses the front office more.
You can’t call the Thornburg trade “truly terrible in retrospect” when it still easily has the potential to work out completely differently.
This isn’t the god-awful (which I hated the moment it happened) Hanrahan trade, which was over the moment his one season of Boston ownership ended. Thornburg will be around for at least two more seasons, and so could easily make good.
The odds of the Brewers not liking what it got out of the deal were very, very low. It got a cheap, cost-controlled player who might never have been worth starting for a championship contender but is ideal for a team in transition, plus a second quality prospect, in return for a bullpen arm it didn’t “need”. But Boston also got a reliever coming off a lights out season, at a time when RP prices have EXPLODED (and this price was not in line with those highest prices).
The goal was for this to be a win-win. Obviously, Boston losing its end of the deal to injury means it didn’t get its side of the “win” in year one, but that doesn’t mean this is now just “terrible”. Things are a LOT more complicated and dynamic than that.
It sure looked like a win-win at the time, but the guy just had thoracic outlet surgery. I don’t know how much I fault Dombrowski for this trade because at the time it seemed fair. But it looks horrible in retrospect. In the absolute worst case scenario where Shaw flopped again, they’d have Dubon to trade for someone to play 3rd base.
Didn’t they get BROCKHOLT in that deal though?
There weren’t a lot of people who liked the Hanrahan trade for the Pirates, so you must have a better crystal ball than most. And you still got Holt, so I’m not sure you have that much to complain about.
Plouffe is about to be DFA’d and Boston had interest this offseason. That seems preferable to trading assets for an okay-ish stopgap. After all, Holt/Plouffe would work well enough in the event Devers doesn’t take the job eventually.
Neither one is a great option right now–Plouffe is hitting terribly and Holt, well, poor guy. Both offer the potential to be better options at some point, unlike Sandoval who looks hopeless.
Exactly. Replacement level would be an improvement. I hope Holt makes it back in the 2nd half.
Aaand he’s going to the Rays. That ends this speculation.
One thing that was mentioned above and should at least be recognized is that Betts came up through the minors as an infielder. From the reports I’ve read he was very good defensively (though maybe not as amazing as he has been in the outfield.)
There may be more options to finding another outfielder than another 3B. Sandoval’s contract is a sunk cost. The Red Sox have lots of options moving forward. In my opinion, rushing Devers can potentially cause more harm than good. He is a great prospect, but for every prospect who was called up early and succeeded, there are many more who did not.
The Sox have no outfield prospects in the high minors (only former prospects like Brentz and 4A guys aplenty like Selsky). On the other hand, their top prospect is a 3B. Sometimes 1 plus 1 really does equal 2.
Not a lot we Giants fans can hang our hats on this year. But Pablo had the same 90 million dollar offer from the Red Sox and Giants and decided his feelings were hurt in SF and that none of the team liked him except Bochy. This in spite of the fact he was beloved, even adored, with 3 titles and a ballpark full of panda bears every night being clutched. So next time someone rags on me about being (last count) 16 out before the AS break, I’ll bring up the 90 million we saved on Panda. Just don’t ask for nothin’ else.
could you shift mookie to 3b and play moreland in the OF?
It’s time to release the tub of lard and move on.
I can’t help but add an “again” to the title of this article.
Yep. You’d think the Red Sox of all teams would be good at recognizing a sunk cost. Heck, even Steve Selsky at AAA might be better out there.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-coming-red-sox-orioles-bidding-war/
Who knows if it is to blame, given his diet problems, but Sandoval was never right after that lasix surgery in 2014-5 (?). He actually used to hit LHB better than RHB.
I wish this was going another direction, but Pablo has just sucked since he got to Boston.
Last night vs the Phillies, Sandoval hit with 2 outs in the 9th. Hit is not the right word, I should say, came to the plate and flailed at 2 terrible pitches about a foot below the strike zone to strike out. You could tell all Neris had to do was bounce one to get strike 3, he did and Pablo missed by a mile.
The Plouffe is in the pudding.
Panda ate it.