Adrian Gonzalez put up great numbers playing in the worst hitter's park in baseball. Imagine what he'll do in Boston. I hate the Red Sox, but they're going to be very good in 2011.
The same thing Adrian Beltre did, I bet. Or close to it. Look, I'm not saying the Sox aren't going to be good, or even very good. I'm just saying that I don't think one or two players make a team... especially when those one or two players are replacing guys who also performed at a high level last season. I still think the biggest factor for the Sox improving over last year is Beckett and Lackey pitching like the Sox management expected them to. I don't know if it will happen, but there's more room for improvement there over last season than anywhere else, including the injuries to guys like Pedroia and Youkilis.
You're seriously underrating Adrian Gonzalez. He averaged 30 homers and 100 RBIs at PETCO. I'm willing to bet his numbers will improve now that he's playing at Fenway. Adrian Gonzalez is replacing Victor Martinez - that's a big upgrade at first base. Kevin Youkilis is now a full time third baseman. That's who's "replacing" Beltre. Carl Crawford's taking Darnell McDonald's spot. That's arguably the biggest upgrade of the off-season. You forgot about Jacoby Ellsbury. Ellsbury stole 70 bags in 2009. The highest steal total for a full-time Boston player in 2010 was 9. Carl Crawford and Jacoby Ellsbury will change that.
Well, I wasn't going just by HR and RBI. I was thinking more of his overall value (of which HR and RBI are a part, sure). wOBA has all four players very close last year. Runs created (which leaves out defensive value or positional offensive value) also has them fairly close. In that, Martinez is a bit behind the other three, but he also was primarily a catcher, which increases his offensive value. Hmm. That's a very strange way of looking at it. Martinez was their catcher, primarily. (462 PA as a catcher. 55 as a 1B.) Who's replacing his ABs at that position, and how are you going to account for that in your oh-so-rosy scenario? Where is Youkilis coming from? To hear you tell it, he's replacing nobody. Here's how I'm accounting for it.... The Sox have lost the production of: Martinez at catcher Beltre at third Youkilis at first McDonald in CF Nava/Hall/Whomever in LF They will gain the production of: Saltilwhatever at catcher? Youkilis at third Gonzalez at first Crawford in LF Ellsbury in CF Looking at it semi-positionally from the offensive side, it's a downgrade at catcher, a wash (offensively) as Youkilis moves from first to third, maybe a slight upgrade as Gonzalez replaces Beltre in the lineup, and an upgrade in LF as Crawford replaces whomever is out there. I don't think CF is that much of an improvement. McDonald played league average last year, and Ellsbury hasn't shown that he's anything more than that. Oh, yeah, he's fast and dreamy. But other than that, nothing much. Aside from 2007, he's had a shitty OBP to go along with zero power. Look, I'm not saying those new guys aren't very, very good players. I'm saying that -- if you look at something comprehensive to player value -- something like WAR or wOBA, all of the players were very close, so it's hard to picture crazy amounts of improvement, just because they were already pretty damn good to begin with. Among all four of those players - Beltre, Gonzalez, Martinez, and Crawford - by wOBA, Beltre had the best season last year. If you use wins above replacement, Beltre still had the best year of the four, with a 7.1, compared to 5.3 for Gonzalez, 6.9 for Crawford, and 4.0 for Martinez. Should Gonzalez's WAR go up because of Fenway? Sure, probably. Do you expect him to actually top Beltre's 7.1? That'd be a crazy good year if he did. Could he do it? Sure. By how much? If you're looking for him to add a full win over Beltre's 2010 season, well... that's some seriously rarefied air. No, I didn't. I just don't think very highly of him.
^ Everything you just said doesn't change the fact that the Sox had a way better off-season than the Yankees. There's no way in hell anyone can say that Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford aren't huge additions. I don't know if you're Yankees' bias has completely taken over your mind, but try to look at this clear eyes. They picked up two of the best players in the game and you're trying to say they don't really matter. What has New York done to upgrade their roster? The starting rotation outside of CC Sabathia still looks mediocre-at-best and they signed a setup man to a ridiculously stupid contract. Russell Martin is terrible. He's done absolutely nothing since 2007, and even then he was pretty crappy. Once again, I'm not some biased Red Sox fan trying to talk up the team. I despise the team, but it's not hard for me to see that they look very, very good.
Okay, but I didn't think we were comparing the success of their offseason signings. We were comparing the current talent levels of the teams, no? I never even came close to implying that they weren't huge additions. I just pointed out that there were significant subtractions from the Sox roster, too. It seems like you're not accounting for that. My eyes are perfectly clear, thanks. And, again, I'm not trying to say they don't matter. I'm saying you need to look at the overall picture. If the question was, "Are the Sox better with Gonzalez and Crawford than they would be without them?" then the answer would obviously be, "Hell, yes!" But that wasn't the question. The question is/was (roughly), "How much better are the Sox, overall, and did they improve enough that they are now better than the Yankees?" You said you didn't see how anyone could say the Yankees are better. I don't think it's a slam-dunk, clear-cut difference by any means, but I provided you with several reasons why people might not think the Sox are automatic favorites: 1. The additions of Gonzalez and Crawford are (mostly) offset by the losses of Beltre and Martinez. (And just to avoid any misunderstandings again, this is not a knock on Gonzalez or Crawford as much as it is a sign of just how productive Beltre and Martinez were for the Sox.) 2. There were six games between the Sox and Yanks last year. That's a big gap. Even if you account for improvement from adding players and Sox players staying healthy all year, that's a lot of ground to make up. 3. Some of the biggest problems/question marks the Sox had last year are still there this year (Beckett/Lackey/Papelbon). It seems like you're trying to say that losing Beltre and Martinez don't matter, that we shouldn't take into account the difference between the teams last year, and that we should just assume that Beckett, Lackey, and Papelbon will definitely be awesome next year. Because I don't see how you could be so sure otherwise. I think the Yanks and Sox will both field very good teams next year. I don't think the Sox are clearly better than the Yanks. Might they be? *shrugs* I suppose. I'd stay away from that bet, though. That's not entirely relevant to the original question. They won 95 games last year and had little room on the roster for upgrades. A starting pitcher was the only true "need." If you want to go there, though, they likely significantly upgraded their bullpen for an entire season (Soriano), their DH position (Posada), likely the back-end of their rotation (simply by subtracting Vazquez and Moseley), and their bench/depth (Jones). That's not as flashy as adding a premier position player, but the Yankees don't really have much of a need for those kinds of players. The only thing they could have really used was a starter. The contract shouldn't matter if you're discussing talent. I don't care for the contract myself, and wasn't a fan of the signing (because of the contract) but you can't deny that Soriano is a talented pitcher and likely makes the bullpen much better. As for the rest... *shrugs*... if Pettitte comes back, that would help, but I wouldn't call the Hughes and Burnett part of the rotation "mediocre-at-best." At best, they're both dominant pitchers. The Yanks won 95 games last year despite Burnett having by far the worst year of his career, Javy Vazquez sucking for most of the season (he started 26 games for them last year), and Dustin Moseley pitching a dozen games for them, too. Hard to see how Nova/Mitre would be worse. The 21 games from Pettitte will be the hardest to replace, but he still might come back. We'll see. In any case, I don't see how the situation is quite as dire as you're making it out to be. Are you sure you want to be telling other people to look at this with clear eyes? Maybe you should take off your Don-colored glasses. :smile: You're looking at that signing the wrong way. If Martin is truly terrible, as you say, then Montero likely gets the bulk of the catching duties, and the Yanks have a more than serviceable veteran backup. If he regains his old form because he's healthy and not overworked (like he was in LA), great. The Yanks have a solid catcher and Montero can develop more in AAA. That's a nice low-risk, high-reward signing. There's really no downside to that (unless Montero totally sucks, too, but if that's the case, then he's not the player everyone thinks he is). One more time: that wasn't the original question. Do the Sox look very, very good? Sure. Does that mean the Yankees don't? Not at all.
I cannot believe the Blue Jays have managed to get out of both albatross contracts that J.P. Ricciardi doled out to Rios and Wells. I thought they were stuck with both of them playing at a mediocre level until I was collecting social security. Great job. That team now has a shitload of resources to try and scale the great wall that is the AL East. They'll take a hit because of the major league talent they lost this year, but they have a nice farm system and now just came into a shitload of money because the Angels got so desperate. If the Angels had signed him to a 4 year 75 million dollar deal which is the rest of his contract minus what Napoli and Rivera made this year, we'd all be laughing our asses off. How the Blue Jays didn't have to kick in money is beyond me.
Anthopolous is a genius....I NEVER thought Wells would be traded with that contract....and still get something in return (Napoli, Rivera). Well done.
Great deal for the Blue Jays. Got 2 good players for 1 good player with a gigantic contract. Anthopoulous must have some nasty pics of the Halos owner.
If you really want to be technical Salty is replacing Victor Martinez (huge downgrade), Gonzalez is replacing Youkilis (marginal) and Youkilis is replacing Beltre (marginal) and Crawford is replacing McDonald which is pretty damn big. But this isn't like the 2009 Yankees when Teixeira replaced shit bag Giambi and Sabathia and Burnett replaced Moose and a revolving shithole of the 5th starter. The Sox are replacing talent with talent.
Gonzalez at first is a huge upgrade. He's an incredible defender and he's put up big power numbers at PETCO.
You're replacing a contract year Beltre with a consistantly good Youk. Beltre will not match his stats this coming season.
That's not the point. The question wasn't whether the Sox are better off with Beltre or Gonzalez going forward. That has an obvious answer. The question is how much value/production will Gonzalez add above and beyond what Beltre added last year (in his contract year). And Beltre added a lot. So much that it'd be hard for ANYONE to top it. No matter how good the player is. Do people just not realize how good Beltre was last year? Gonzalez can have the amazing year everyone is predicting and STILL not produce much more than Beltre did. And I thought Youkilis was a sick first baseman, defensively, no? And Beltre was a great third baseman. My understanding is that the Sox will see minimum upgrade in defense at first, and a moderate downgrade at third (where Youkilis is just good, not great).
But Beltre wouldn't be matching his lines from last year, so you're looking at a downgrade right there. Youk and Gonzales more than make up for Beltre pending lack of production.
Again, this misses the point. That is not what was being discussed. If we were talking about whether the Sox should have re-signed Beltre vs. acquiring Gonzalez, you'd be 100% correct that Gonzalez is very likely a huge upgrade. But we weren't talking about that. We were talking about whether the entire team would be better than last year and by how much. To that end, you use last season's production as the point of comparison, and regardless of what Beltre does going forward, there is no denying what he did last year.
I guess Arencibia will be the starting catcher for the Jays this year after all.....and....we got a closer finally. Napoli to the Rangers for Frank Francisco. Well done, Anthopolous. link
I have no idea why the Rangers did this deal. I can't fathom a real reason other than they didn't like Francisco enough in the closer role. But he did it already and they have a better hitting DH and C already. Good move for the Jays tho. Arencibia needed to be the everyday guy. He's not going to blow up like Posey did, but he's got potential to be a great everyday guy behind the plate. Maybe lightning will strike twice and they'll have another good production year behind the plate (Buck was a great pickup last year).
I want to see how the Jays progress this season....before I say the Jays are in good hands with Anthopolous.....but on paper, it looks like he's made some decent moves so far. Getting rid of Wells' contract is a major coup for this team. Plus, I LOVE the Brandon League for Brandon Morrow trade last season....Seattle's bum is probably still sore from that one.
