I'm a Dalbec fan. I'm perfectly happy with him batting 9th all year. I would just leave him alone. His struggles have been magnified due to Cordero and before May, Renfroe.
Dalbec hit in 2020 so I'm inclined to give him longer leash. We can always platoon him, too. He's hitting lefties just fine.
Here's something interesting.
I track the Sox pitching staff ERA and it's position with respect to the 29 other MLB teams. The team ERA has been dropping recently and is now 3.85. But not that long ago 3.85 had the Sox ranked 9th, and now 3.85 has them ranked 15th.
Relatedly, of the top 17 MLB teams in ERA, only the Marlins (8th, ERA 3.49) and Nationals (14th, ERA 3.84) have losing records.
Meanwhile, in the hitting and especially run scoring department, The Reds, ranked 5th in run scoring, have a losing record; the Rockies, 6th, ditto; the Diamondbacks 7th, ditto; the Braves, 10th, ditto; the Rangers, 11th, ditto; the Angels, 12th, ditto; the Cubs, 14th, ditto; the Twins, tied for 14th, ditto (in fact, at 12 and 24 they are the worst team in MLB).
So it sure seems to me that, as much as I like the fact that the Sox are 2d in MLB in scoring runs and 1st in team OPS, that good pitching is more vital than ever.
Which gets us back to the argument about the active roster. I say again, more pitching choices are more useful than more position players. Cora actually believes in resting position players by giving them a day off, but this year he seems to want to keep those good bats in the lineup, so in the last two games first Bogie and then Devers were DH while JDM patrolled LF.
It doesn’t help to have 7 well rested sucky pitchers to choose from vs 6 semi rested sucky pitchers to choose from in innings 6 and 7 and sometimes 8 when Ottavino or Barnes are not available. We are talking about keeping Brice well rested?
We need Brasier and Houck back. If they are both healthy and doing well we may not notice how scary our pen is beyond the top 2..
Sox 4 Ever
Brasier has reportedly stated throwing, but he hbasically missed all of spring training. He's probably a ways off.
Houck has a sore flexor muscle. I suppose it depends how severe, but I am pretty sure flexor muscle injuries have cost pitchers entire seasons. At this point, he might be a bonus.
Hopefully, the Sox jettison Brice soon but I have my doubts. And the recent emergence of Jeffrey Springs may have bolstered Blooms confidence in his evaluation skills, which gives Brice a longer leash. (Do not go reading too deep in that comment; it involves a ridiculous amount of conjecture on my part. Like if conjecture was an Olympic event, I'd be on Team USA and my picture would be on a Wheaties Box after that one.)
But if the Sox do add a reliever or two, I would imagine this Brandon Brennan fellow (which sounds like such a fake name, by the way) is probably pretty high on the depth chart. Should we get to know him now?
Taylor seems to have turned it around late, which means either 1) my complaints about him were premature, or 2) he reads my posts and decided to show me up. I'm leaning towards the latter, because it just makes more sense. So I wonder how long of a leash Darwinzon has right now. Dude needs to learn where home plate is...
Blaming Cora for choosing a shitty RPer from a group of 7 of them is just plain wrong. Although I’d argue Blooms hands were tied it makes more sense blaming him than Cora for the choices.
Yes, someone can argue this or that guy would have been a better choice, and that’s always easy to do in hindsight, but look at the choices Cora has with their recent samples of work:
Andriese: has let up a run in 4 of his last 5 outings, including 3 runs twice. He had gone 6 of 7 giving good performances beforehand.
Sawamura: run allowed in 3 of last 5, including 3 HRs.
DHern: 3 hits and 3 BBS in his last 1.2 IP over 3 games.
Valdez: apparently was hurt and not used much for a while. Scoured upon in 2 of his last 4 outings. 3 runs, 5 hits and 3 BBS in his last 4 innings.
Brice: scored upon in 2 of his last 3 outings allowing 6 runs, 4 hits and 2 BBS in the last 3 IP.
Taylor: has done okay, lately but was the poster boy for demotion not Long ago, and who is to say any of the people above might start doing well like Taylor is now? Taylor has gone 6 straight outings without allowing a run, but he has allowed inherited runners to score, often. He let up 2 hits in his last outing.
Whitlock: I trust, but he has done poorly recently. Scored upon in 3 of his last 4 outings. 4 runs and 11 hits- 2 HRs in his last 7 IP.
The other 2 trusted RPers are Barnes and Ottavino, and it wasn’t long ago Ottavino was being called a bum and a big Bloom mistake.
A separate issue is the need to have 6 bad RPers to choose from instead of 5. It’s not like any of these 6 are even close to being overworked. To me, they are all pretty much interchangeable, so just cut Brice loose and give Cora 5 bad choices for the 6th and 7th innings instead of 6.
Sox 4 Ever
I don't understand the strategy of pen usage today. We have our third reliever out today. I'm sure the explanation is 'they need work'. But in few days, we'll hear several guys are unavailable.
Isn't it better to have one guy pitch three innings or at least two innings, shut him down for 4 days instead using 3 pitchers and all three are unavailable for 3 games?
Pitching gurus, tell me I'm stupid.
Why are we throwing Darwinzon? Maybe we'll need him tomorrow. I thought he was one of our better pen guy.
Last edited by Nick; 05-15-2021 at 06:01 PM.
Franchy’s OPS went up 57 points, today.
Dalbec & Bogey’s went up over 30.
Dalbec passed Renfroe, today.
Bogey passed JD.
Sox 4 Ever