This year:
#1 OPS
#5 ERA
Last year:
#22 OPS
#4 ERA
If you could pick one reason for the big change from last year, what would it be?
This year:
#1 OPS
#5 ERA
Last year:
#22 OPS
#4 ERA
If you could pick one reason for the big change from last year, what would it be?
Originally Posted by moonslav59
I said JDM, but give Cora a lot of credit.
It's a real tough call.
If I could have split my vote it would have been Cora/JDM. I voted Cora because I figure most people will vote for JDM.
What's kind of cool about Cora is that he was working for a team that had to analize how to beat the Sox the last couple of years. He knew some of the Sox players weak points and strengths. He had been studying those players from another angle than an internal angle for a good time, and now can use that info to make the players better.
In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed to sea
And he told us of his life
In the land of submarines
So we sailed up to the sun
'Til we found a sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our yellow submarine
The obvious choice is JD and OPS.
But I would tend to point to "positive regression" of our hitters.
"Hating the Yankees like it's a religion since 94'" RIP Mike.
"It's also a simple and indisputable fact that WAR isn't the be-all end-all in valuations, especially in real life. Wanna know why? Because an ace in run-prevention for 120 innings means more often than not, a sub-standard pitcher covering for the rest of the IP that pitcher fails to provide. You can't see value in a vacuum when a player does not provide full-time production."
Other
Mookie Betts is back to being the 7WAR+ player
JD replaces what we lost without Papi, but the real reason is threefold, all basically rounding up to the kids developing
First of all, the rotation. Sale was expected to dominate, and we'd be a winning team with him as long as we didn't have 4 sacks of potatoes in the rest of our rotation slots. But the emergence of E-Rod over the last couple seasons has been a pleasure to watch. With Porcello, E-Rod, and Sale in the top 3 rotation slots our rotation is an easy nominee for best rotation in MLB. Throw in Price as not quite what we paid for, but at least a highly durable starter who can save the pen, and we have the weapons we need to make a push in the postseason, with a little luck
Secondly, the young guns taking over on offense. Mooke Betts has been outstanding. Bogaerts has been living up to the hype so far. Benintendi has held up his end of the bargain. Devers is showing signs of "getting it." Our catchers have... managed not to be offensive liabilities at least. The rebuild is well underway. Yes having Martinez as the centerpiece of the offense helps, but he can't do it all by himself either.
Betts and Beni in particular deserve a lot of credit for the role they're playing. Benintendi has been having a low key fantastic season hiding behind JD and Betts. Most teams would kill to have a single young 5 tool prospect. We have two, even if one is so out-of-this-world good that the other kind of stands in the shadows a bit. But Andrew Benintendi's excellent showing this year is absolutely not to be overlooked. He's tied for third on the team in HR's, leads the team in steals, and has the 4th highest bWAR behind the obvious 3 -- Sale, Betts and Martinez.
The fact that the team is so talented that it can actually hide a monster like Benintendi behind 3 other superior players should make us fans very, very happy people.
Thirdly -- consider the number of our relievers who are either homegrown or "found talent". A large number of our current relief staff spent at least some time in Pawtucket before they got there. I could be mistaken, but I think that Kimbrel, Kelly and Thornberg are the only "mercenaries" among our relievers and replacements. We've had enormous good fortune with cost controlled middle relief options, and that gives us the freedom to pursue the mercenaries we need to complete a shutdown pen.
I dunno about anyone else, but if I needed a closer after Kimbrel's gone, letting Kelly and Barnes fight it out isn't the worst of the available options IMHO. We shouldn't just leave it at that, but at the very least it gives us the luxury of a better bargaining position with Kimbrel or whoever might ultimately replace him.
Long story short, our bullpen is strong, deep and cheap thanks to homegrown and "found" relief talent. That's pretty exciting, even if the lighthouse fallacy applies to every bullpen and they're only ever noticed when they fail. The fact that the bullpen ISN'T a major topic of conversation is a pretty ringing endorsement when you think about it.
If history tells us anything, the path to redeption for any bad baseball team is marked with a deep rotation of durable starters, a world class defense in both infield and outfield, a lineup that can generate runs in more than one way, a bullpen that won't steal defeat from the jaws of victory, and a top end catcher to hold the whole package together. These are the conditions by which victory is achieved, anything that does not accomplish these objectives is a waste of resources.
J.D. Martinez is the obvious choice. Cora also a big factor. Credit Dombrowski for both. Also , Mookie entering his prime. A true superstar. And then , there is the abundance of really weak opponents. But J.D. is the one that stands out the most.
If I had to pick just one factor, I'd go with Cora, even though I voted for regression, because I was expecting our offense to be much better this year even without the additions of Cora and JD. And someone had to vote for that option.
Of course, it's a combination of several factors.
1. Cora, as I have already mentioned.
2. Positive regression, which was not just possible, but highly expected. With that, Cora gets some credit too. He encouraged our hitters to be more aggressive, rather than taking that first pitch fastball right down the heart of the plate. Also, I heard a couple of days ago that part of Bogaerts' improvement was due to Cora telling him that he'd rather Bogaerts be a .285 hitter with some power than a .330 singles hitter, or something to that effect.
3. JD obviously lengthens the line up. In terms of being a positive role model and taking some pressure off of the other guys, he has helped as well. In terms of providing line up protection, no can do.
I would go for the effect of the coaching staff. I have no hard proof but I always felt that the players didn't really respect the coaches we had last year.
JD Martinez period. The team won the division and is better this season. He is the reason. All the other positive perforformances are countered by negative performances to a great degree. JD has been the difference. If he gets injured, we will be in deep doo doo.
The King of TalkSox has Spoken.
I really had no issue with Farrell last year and didn't think that he was a problem. However, many comments were made in ST and early this season about how guys were not having fun last year and similar types of things. Perhaps Farrell's management was a bigger issue than I realized.
Before the season started, I posted that it's too bad that we wouldn't have the chance to see what this offense would do this season without JD. Note: I am not saying that's it's too bad that we signed JD.
They were going to improve either way. Of course our offense, as a whole, would not be as good without JD as they are with him, but the other guys in the lineup would have seen marked improvements even if JD had not been signed.
Perhaps some of us were right all along.
To me, I didn't care about lineups or any of that crap. We can even see now that the Sox can't run the bases, so it can't all be attributed to Farrell. However, the glaring issue last year was how Farrell handled the Pedroia (it's them not me) and the Price (Eck) issues. It just seemed like he wasn't a leader and wasn't able to handle things in house. To me, that's the most important job of a manager.
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