Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 28, 2024 -- "Royals, Crowned"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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There are two big reasons they’re in position to steal the division. One is health. During a season when injuries to great players on contenders are one of the big stories, the Royals have been the healthiest team in the sport. They’ve used 18 position players, fewest in baseball, and one of those is trade pickup DeJong. All but 30 PAs have come from 15 guys. Back in March, the ZiPS projection system pegged Bobby Witt Jr., Maikel Garcia, Salvador Perez, and Vinnie Pasquantino to be the Royals’ four best players. Those four, combined, have missed 11 games this year.
 
 

 

Monday, August 26, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 26, 2024 -- "Fun With Numbers: 99! 51! 74?"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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When you’re homering every six PA, a 10% IBB rate means 1-2 dingers lost to never seeing a pitch, much less a good pitch. This may not be a reparable problem for Judge, whose Yankees lead the AL East by 1.5 games over the Orioles and who project to play relevant games deep into September. Judge’s walk rate and intentional-walk rate are not likely to dive the way McGwire’s did, creating those extra opportunities. 

Friday, August 23, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 23, 2024 -- "Collapse"

 

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[Sarah Langs’s Voice] Wheeeeee! 

           R/G   AVG   OBP   SLG   wRC+
7/30-8/4   9.3  .246  .313  .415   104
8/5-10     9.3  .254  .319  .421   108
8/11-16    9.3  .249  .318  .422   108
8/17-22    7.6  .233  .302  .375    91


That is an incredible anomaly. That’s first-week-of-April offense in August. I mention April because weather has been proposed a one reason for the downtick. It has been mild here in New York and in some parts of the country. Can we dispense with the idea, though, that “mild for August” is enough to lop 50 off points of slugging around the league? No one’s wearing balaclavas out there. You can’t see players’ breath. Vendors are still schlepping cold beer rather than hot coffee.
 

Thursday, August 22, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 22, 2024 -- "Perfect Game"

 

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The game had a lot of baseball left in it, the Mets eventually winning on a pinch-hit walkoff homer by Jesse Winker. Whether you’re a fan of the winning team or not, the energy of a walkoff win is incredible, and Winker’s blast -- and his explosive reaction to it -- set Citi on fire. I didn’t think the ball was gone off the bat, mostly because I didn’t think Winker had that kind of oppo power. It cleared the wall in left-center easily, though, flying 414 feet.

For me, though, it was just the second-biggest homer of the day. Watching Vientos crush that Kimbrel fast(ish)ball was my favorite ballpark moment since I took M to our first game in 2018, the culmination of a year of strong opinions about two disparate players.
 

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 20, 2024 -- "The Seattle Kariners"

 

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Last year, the Mariners had the seventh-best OPS when not striking out. This year, they’re 14th. They’ve struck out a little more, but when not striking out, they’ve gone from a very good offense to an average one. That, and not an extra whiff every three games, is the difference between last year’s offense and this year’s one.

 
 
 

Monday, August 19, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 19, 2024 -- "Shutouts, Shut Out"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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These are the games driving the Starterists crazy, the good starts that would have been complete games and shutouts in the 20th century that are six or seven shutout innings and two or three relievers now. There have already been 472 starts this season in which a pitcher left a game having thrown at least five innings with a shutout intact, against a total of 15 individual shutouts all season.
 
 

 

Friday, August 16, 2024

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, August 16, 2024 -- "MLBad Idea"

 

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Yesterday, ESPN’s Jesse Rogers reported that one of the rule changes MLB is considering is mandating that starting pitchers go at least six innings, with some exceptions. Having garnered  considerable praise for its rule changes prior to the 2023 season, the league seems eager for another hit of that positive media attention by placating a vocal subset of media who want the game to look like it did in 1983. 

As reported by Rogers, the rule would mandate that starting pitchers throw six frames unless they reached 100 pitches, allowed four runs, or suffered an injury. To prevent deceit, pitchers leaving the game under the last clause would have to go to the IL for some time. 

What are we talking about here? Well, in 1998, the first year in which we had 30 teams, there were 408 starts -- about 8% of games -- in which a pitcher didn’t hit any of those figures. Last season, that figure was 1514, about 30% of starts. These are all games in which a starting pitcher is lifted while pitching reasonably well and not running up his pitch count. This rule, which would eliminate openers and tandem starts, would force starting pitchers in those 1100-odd games to stay in until one of those marks was hit.

The inspiration for this is the idea that starting pitchers are the stars of a baseball game, which is a very 1960s-1980s prism through which to see the sport. It is porting a football mindset -- where the quarterback really is the center of everything -- to baseball.  The only pitchers who ever drove attendance were Fernando Valenzuela and Nolan Ryan. The idea that fans were heading to the park in droves to watch Dan Petry take on Paul Splittorff is invented.

This thinking privileges a specific era of the game, and one that broke dozens of great talents in the service of this idea. You know why Jack Morris led baseball in wins in the 1980s? Because a whole lot of better pitchers, Hall of Fame talents, were ruined by a sport that asked young starting pitchers to throw 275 innings a year.

Rogers quotes a number of executives who cite the pitcher version of the double-bank-shot idea we saw with hitters and the shift rule: If you mandate six-inning starts, pitchers will have to pitch differently. In doing so they may get hurt less, behave less like witches, and make the hitter/pitcher battle a bit more fair for hitters. There is some truth to this -- pitchers balance endurance with effort and this would force them to shift that balance. From the piece:

"You would have to push command over stuff," Arizona Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen said. "Pushing [pitching to] contact would be the biggest thing to prepare guys to throw six innings on a consistent basis.”

It would be an attempt to reverse 30 years of trading off volume for effectiveness by front offices, player development, and pitchers. As Rogers notes, this could not possibly happen overnight. It took 30 years to get here, and the entire ladder from amateur ball through the World Series is predicated on max-effort pitching. It would take 30 years to reverse that, even if you could. I simply don’t see a world where scouts are prioritizing lower-velocity high-school prospects, or where college coaches paid to win games tell their hurlers to dial it back a bit.

This rule, like so many others MLB has proposed or threatened, is designed to win a press conference and placate a vocal subset of fans and writers. It addresses a knock-on effect of pitcher development -- starters get pulled from games earlier than they used to -- with an awkward kludge whose indirect effects are speculative at best. The pickoff limits created a lot of free stolen bases. The shift ban let hitters double down on dead-pull hitting. My guess is a six-inning mandate would warp the flow of a baseball game, turning the middle innings into a race to four runs as tiring pitchers were forced to face lineups a third time for...reasons. Remember, the third-time-around penalty wasn’t invented at a SABR conference in 1991. It existed for Sandy Koufax and Fergie Jenkins, and isn’t going away any time soon.

This rule is just going to make the sixth inning a slog many nights. Even then, most pitchers who get through the sixth are still going to be pulled because the best way to win the baseball game will be to bring in a fresh pitcher. The number of pitchers’ duels, the number of complete games, the number of shutouts, the number of no-hitters...absolutely none of this will change with this rule. Congratulations, you’ve forced Griffin Canning and Marcus Stroman to pitch through a lineup a third time an additional 20 times a year. Surely, the NFL won’t lead SportsCenter in July any more.

As with the shift ban, and countless off-field changes, this rule would force everyone to play the same way, which is the last thing baseball needs right now. You may not like shifts or openers, but their use did open up some real differences among teams about how to win baseball games. The Rays won 96 games in 2019 using openers about a quarter of the time. The A’s won 97 games and used openers three times. Two years ago, the Blue Jays won 92 games while shifting more than any team in the sport. The Guardians won 92 games with the second-lowest rate of shifts.

We need rule changes that encourage innovation and imagination. There’s a homogeneity to baseball right now that is choking the sport. Mandating every team use its starting pitchers the exact same way pushes the game in the wrong direction.

What’s most frustrating about this is the path forward has been obvious for a decade. Changes to starting pitcher usage aren’t about starters, they’re about relievers. Bullpens are twice as large now as they were when Koufax and Jenkins were pitching, and 60% larger than they were when Petry and Splittorff were captivating America. Those pens aren’t filled with lesser pitchers any more, either, but with velo and spin monsters developed to throw 15 pitches at max effort three times a week.

If you want MLB teams to rely more on their starting pitchers, you have to limit the relief options available both to managers and GMs. The league capped pitching staffs at 13 a few years back, a meaningless restriction, and hasn’t addressed roster movement. I write this Friday morning, and over the first four days of this baseball week. 218 relief pitchers have been used. The Reds used eight different relief pitchers in a three-game sweep of the Cardinals. The Red Sox used ten relievers in four games.

That’s what you have to fix. That’s what you write rules for. Cap pitching staffs at 12 beginning in 2025, and then at 11 starting in 2027, and you start to change the equation for managers. Limit roster moves, or pitchers used in a week, or do something else that breaks the daily shuttles, and you start to change the equation for front offices. This is how you change the use of starting pitchers, not by forcing them to pitch when they’re the worst option, but by making it so that on more days, they’re the best option.

 
 
 

Thursday, August 15, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 15, 2024 -- "Thinking Inside the Box"

 

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Tigers 3, Mariners 2 (10 inn.)

                  AB  R  H  BI
Robles CF          5  1  0   0



The Victor Robles story is fascinating. He’s a former top prospect who, at 22, was the starting center fielder and four-win player for a championship team, then lost his way in 2020 and never really made it back. Robles, now 27, was released last month by the Nationals, no longer even a post-hype sleeper. The Mariners, desperate for outfield help, signed Robles and watched him play great ball for a month: .355/.444/.581 in 38 PA with good defense and four stolen bases.

I’d argue that Robles, who certainly isn’t a true-talent .355 hitter, had actually changed his game a year ago. In 2023, Robles opened the year as the Nationals’ starting center fielder. He started 30 of the team’s first 31 games, hitting .292/.388/.360 with the best strikeout rate (13%) and K/BB (14/10) of his career. On May 6, Robles injured his back stealing second, and lost six weeks to the injury. He lasted five games -- with a hit in every one -- and then went back on the IL for good. Robles broke out last year, but the back injury ended his season before anyone noticed.

In Robles’s absence, Jacob Young made a strong impression, setting up a job battle that was eventually won by...Eddie Rosario? Robles would strain his hamstring in both March and April. When he returned in May, he hit just .130 (.188 BABIP) in ten games and was released. I don’t think the 2024 performance with the Nationals, which amounted to ten starts in almost two months, had any signal at all. As bad as it was, Robles still carried the good K/BB forward, 9/5 in 33 PA.

The Mariners did a great job ignoring the 2024 line and focusing on the skills change. Robles played so well that the Mariners signed him to a two-year contract extension at a very low price -- less than $10 million. If Robles is just an extra outfielder for them, and he has all the skills for that job, it’s a good deal.

It hasn’t been all sunshine and lollipops, though. Robles’s 0-for-5 yesterday, from the leadoff spot, puts him at 6-for-43 in August, with a 445 OPS. The strike zone has been getting away from him again, as his K/BB has slipped to 13/2, and is 20/5 since the All-Star break. I’m a believer in the changes he’s made, and I think he’ll help the Mariners, but we can safely reset expectations that he will be a key offensive player.

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 14, 2024 -- "Them Again"

 

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Mind you, they’re also a team for which very little has gone right this year. Their best player, Kyle Tucker, has been out for two months after fouling a ball off his right shin. What was once pegged as a day-to-day injury has now wrecked an MVP-caliber campaign. The Astros’ most expensive starter, Justin Verlander, hasn’t made an appearance since June as he navigates ill-defined neck discomfort. These two injuries, somewhat random and to two of the most critical pieces of the roster, have hardly stopped the Astros. They’re 34-19 without both Tucker and Verlander since June 10. 
 

Tuesday, August 13, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 13, 2024 -- "The Vogt Number?"

 

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Now in 2024, we have another team that is perceived as a slappy, singles-and-speed operation instead winning games by hitting the ball over the fence. The Guardians are tenth in MLB in runs scored on home runs (231) and ninth in the percentage of their runs scored on homers (41.9%). They are first in the AL Central in this figure. Most notably, they are becoming more reliant on homers as the season wears on.
 

Thursday, August 8, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 8, 2024 -- "Third Third Previews, Pt. 5"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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2. Chicago Cubs (57-60, .487, 20th in MLB)

This is the flip side of my Guardians pick, allowing my preseason call to drive the decision to keep the Cubs in playoff position. This one is easier to defend; the Cubs are closer to a playoff spot than the Guardians are to falling out of one.

Jed Hoyer tried to have it both ways at the deadline, adding Isaac Paredes to upgrade third base while shuffling the bullpen -- Mark Leiter Jr. out, Nate Pearson in. The Cubs are a bit better for the moves, if nothing else because of the defensive upgrade at the hot corner. It’s a bit disappointing that they didn’t do more given the holes in their lineup and the general weakness of the teams chasing playoff berths in the NL.

Pretty much everything I wrote about the Cubs in a long piece in June holds. The starting pitching has held up as everything else has collapsed. The bullpen, actually, has been much better than it was those first two months, and as more Cubs pitchers get healthy, projects as a top-ten pen the rest of the way. Since July 1, Cubs relievers have the lowest ERA (1.77) and FIP (2.77) in baseball. With the upgraded defense, I have the Cubs as one of the strongest run-prevention teams in baseball over the last 50 games, and that’s the case for them making the playoffs.

Will they score enough? Man, I don’t know any more. They have three lineup holes no matter who plays, and though they’ve been better in high-leverage spots -- .255/.338/.422, a 111 OPS+ -- they’re just 16-23 in one-run games. Again, this is something that should correct a bit, but is hardly guaranteed to do so. The Cubs have a soft August slate -- right now, they play one team above .500 the rest of the month  -- that provides a launching pad. If they’re not in playoff position on Labor Day, it will be a wasted opportunity.

Mildly Interesting Statistical Nugget: The Cubs are slugging .382. Just once since offensive levels jumped in 1993 have they had a lower slugging percentage, .378 in 2012.

Who Plays Where Now? Paredes has been the everyday third baseman and Cody Bellinger the everyday DH over the last week. The Cubs have one of the most stable lineups in baseball now, with Pete Crow-Armstrong seemingly locked in center field. Bellinger still can’t throw; when his broken finger heals well enough, he could move out to center with Mike Tauchman getting some additional playing time.


 

Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 7, 2024 -- "Third Third Previews, Pt. 4"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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8. Baltimore Orioles (67-47, .588, fourth in MLB)

It was a disappointing trade deadline for the Orioles. They had the young talent to go out and add to their starting rotation, but instead added bulk. In overpaying for a #5 starter in Trevor Rogers, they made one of the worst decisions at the deadline. Kyle Stowers and Connor Norby may have had no path to playing time in Baltimore, fine. It’s just hard to believe that package wouldn’t have returned more value. Were the Tigers’ return for Jack Flaherty or the White Sox’s return for Erick Fedde that much better?

The failure to meaningfully add to the rotation looms larger a week later, after Grayson Rodriguez was unable to make his Tuesday start after experiencing pain in his shoulder. We’re still waiting on the results of imaging, but stealing from Will Carroll’s excellent Under the Knife newsletter...

If it’s the upper lat as indicated, this would be like a 2022 injury that Rodriguez had. He also missed time this year with a minor shoulder inflammation that resolved well, but could be related.

That was a Grade II lat strain and he missed three months, though Rodriguez was a hot prospect at the time and was handled very conservatively. If this is a lesser grade strain combined with a more aggressive rehab, Rodriguez could be back in a matter of weeks, giving him plenty of time to be “normal”. It could even end up like his last IL stint, which was just over the minimum. The key here is the grading and exactly where in the muscle (and which muscle - there is some question on that.)

The Orioles are unlikely to fall out of a playoff berth even if Rodriguez misses a month. Albert Suarez stepped in strongly last night and remains a solid #6/swingman. The bigger issue would be if Rodriguez didn’t make it back for the playoffs, especially if the O’s have to play the extra playoff series. Burnes/Rodriguez/Eflin/Suarez and Burnes/Eflin/Suarez/Kremer are two very different playoff rotations, especially since Corbin Burnes is unlikely to be used on three days’ rest.

The team’s trade for Eloy Jimenez didn’t make much sense, either, especially given it cost Heston Kjerstad his roster spot. The Orioles, who added Austin Slater as well, seem determined to keep Kjerstad, Colton Cowser, and even Jackson Holliday from seeing left-handed pitching. I’m not sure that’s the best baseball decision, as none have huge platoon splits. I am certain it’s a terrible developmental decision. Kjerstad was second on the Orioles in OBP; it’s hard to justify cutting that kind of player.

This is a front office I think highly of, but it has made some very curious choices over the last few weeks, parallel to the Yankees getting better. 

Mildly Interesting Statistical NuggetJackson Holliday started his MLB career 2-for-34. Since being recalled on July 31, he’s hitting .400/.478/.900. Only Brandon Hyde can shut him down.

Who Plays Where Now? Craig Kimbrel’s last four appearances have all had a Leverage Index of less than .20, which is more or less how you’d use me if I wandered into your bullpen. The Orioles become the fifth straight team to acquire Kimbrel as a closer and move him to low-leverage relief in less than a year.

 

 

Monday, August 5, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 5, 2024 -- "Third Third Previews, Pt .3"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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The number in front of every team’s name is their preseason ranking in this space, which is also the order in which the Third Third capsules run.

Record and rank are through Sunday, August 4.
 
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18. Cleveland Guardians (67-44, .604, first in MLB)

[record scratch]

Yeah, I know. The team with the best record in baseball on August 4 missing the playoffs? The Guardians are 4 1/2 games up on the Twins in the Central, 7 1/2 up on the Red Sox for any playoff spot, ten up on the Rays, a team I effectively have beating them out.

I’ve been on this corner for a while, going on VSIN in July and even then -- when the Guardians had just edged into that “best record in baseball” status -- offering them up as the division leader most likely to miss the tournament. 

There are a few things happening here. One, “best record in baseball” doesn’t mean what it usually does. The top tier of MLB teams is far weaker than it’s been since the mid-2010s, with no team on pace to win 100 games after at least three teams reached that mark in every full season since 2017. Second, the Guardians are no more a .600 team than I’m a linebacker. Per Clay Davenport’s third-order record, which looks at underlying performance and strength of schedule, the Guardians are the most overachieving team in the game, closer to a .500 team (56-55) than a .600 one.

The Guardians didn’t do much at the trade deadline. Lane Thomas is a good player best used in a fourth outfielder/platoon role, definitely stretched in center field. Batting him second everyday is a mistake, as even in his last few breakout seasons he’s had a sub-.300 OBP against right-handed pitchers. Thomas is a better player than Will Brennan, I’m just not sure that how he’s going to be used helps the Guardians much.

The Guardians didn’t add quality or bulk to their starting rotation, leaving them with a two-man rotation of Tanner Bibee and Gavin Williams. After that, Ben Lively, Carlos Carrasco, and current wheel spin Joey Cantillo are filler, looking to the offense to save them. Triston McKenzie has a 5.09 ERA and an 18% walk rate in five Triple-A starts. Logan Allen comes back tonight; he had a 5.67 ERA and a 5.45 FIP in 18 starts. There are just going to be a lot of nights when the Guardians’ starter puts a game out of reach, effectively neutering the team’s terrific bullpen.

That’s the obvious stuff. The less obvious problem is that an offense we spent three months praising has gone back to being the Cleveland Guardians. The team is 13th in wRC+ for the season at 102, but the wheels are coming off; just three teams have hit worse since the start of July. Mind you, the team’s numbers to date have been compiled against the second-worst schedule in baseball, one that gets rougher starting now. The Guardians, who split with the Orioles over the weekend, don’t see another team that’s out of contention until September 9, and they play 26 of their next 32 games against teams above .500.

This is, admittedly, a flag plant, but it’s one in which I believe. It is possible that the offense and starting pitchers turn over just enough leads to the bullpen -- the best in the game -- for the Guardians to avoid a collapse. They need maybe 22 wins to lock up a playoff berth, so even .400 ball from here on in would get them across the line. I just see so much collapse risk here that I’m comfortable saying they won’t get there.

(Let me stick this in here to hopefully stave off some angry emails. If anything, I am biased towards the Guardians. Keith Woolner, with whom I worked at BP when we were building it, has been an executive with the Guardians for 20 years. There aren’t a dozen people on the planet I respect more, and Woolner becoming the latest Prospectus alum to get an inappropriately large ring would make me very happy.)

Mildly Interesting Statistical Nugget: Guardians relievers have allowed a .199 batting average, giving them a chance to be just the fifth team to give up a sub-.200 average out of the pen, and the first since the 1989 A’s.

Who Plays Where Now? Lane Thomas has started three games in right field, two in center, with Jhonkensy Noel and Tyler Freeman looking like the odd men out so far, and Angel Martinez keeping most of his playing time.

 


 

Saturday, August 3, 2024

Newsletter Excerpt, August 3, 2024 -- "Third Third Previews, Pt. 2"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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The number in front of every team’s name is their preseason ranking in this space, which is also the order in which the Third Third capsules run.

Record and rank are through Friday, August 2. 

 
15. Boston Red Sox (58-50, .537, tenth in MLB)

The Red Sox added Danny Jansen, who turned out to be one of the best position players to switch teams at the deadline. Jansen bumped Reese McGuire off the roster to give the Sox one of the best catching situations, with Connor Wong, in the majors. 

Avi P. checks in...

One more comment on the Danny Jansen trade. Connor Wong can play second base, which has been a real problem area for the Red Sox.

He can, in the sense that he has, but he’s played 20 innings there in four years, plus a couple of games at Worcester. I don’t think he's an option outside of some weird intra-game maneuvering, which is how he’s gotten all his run there. I don’t think I’d ever start him there over David Hamilton or Romy Gonzalez. Jamie Westbrook has ejected himself from the conversation, as expected, and I know nothing about Nick Sogard. 

The Sox also added two relievers in Luis Garcia and Lucas Sims, and starter James Paxton, all for prospects that Baseball America had outside the game’s top 500 and outside the top 30 dealt at the deadline. With their starting rotation deteriorating, Alex Cora leaned on his pen, which collapsed to a 4.85 ERA and 4.40 FIP in June and July. The reinforcements aren’t great, but they will help, and Paxton is intriguing in a relief role.

The Sox, of course, were on the other side of that prospect challenge trade with the Pirates. Their infield, 2024 second-base situation aside, is beginning to get crowded. Ceddanne Rafaela and David Hamilton will soon be joined by Marcelo Mayer, so Nick Yorke was already being moved around the diamond a bit. Priester had failed to launch for the Pirates, with a 6.46 ERA in 94 2/3 innings, including 14 starts. Without much of a two-seam fastball, but a curve that misses bats and a changeup that has performed well in limited use, Priester is a candidate for the Red Sox “just throw your best pitches” makeover. He could be the next Nick Pivetta, a deadline pickup who ends up throwing 500 average innings for no money.

Mildly Interesting Statistical Nugget: The Red Sox are 26th in Statcast’s defensive measurement, Outs Above Average, the lowest of any team that can be considered a contender. It’s the infield -- they’re last in runs prevented (-20) and Outs Above Average (-26). RafaelaRafael DeversEnmanuel Valdez, and Pablo Reyes are all among the 40 worst infielders in baseball by OAA.

Who Plays Where Now? Jansen pushed McGuire out to the parking lot. The bigger surprise was Greg Weissert losing his roster spot to all the imported relievers after becoming a high-leverage guy for much of the summer. Weissert, though, had a 5.96 ERA since the start of June. I expect him to be back in September, maybe sooner.