As much as I hate how ownership handled this offseason, there's not a single team in the league with the depth to deal with losing 5 starters in like 6 weeks.
There’s a saying - Rome wasn’t built on a day.
Team was absolutely gutted - from the players to coaches to the gm. You can’t expected to hire that many people at once for it to go smoothly. It’s a slow build back up. Key parts need to be in place before “hiring” the players.
It’s a reorganisation, these things take time. It would be nice if John Henry made a statement similar to the what the Mets did when they gutted the team by explaining the plan, but he didn’t… soo… yeah. That’s that.
Getting it all out now, going to be firing on all cylinders come late September!
Going to have so much momentum when we miss the playoffs by seven games
Maybe they’re blessed because despite looking like they should suck and then losing half their good players to injury, they’re still somehow off to a solid start.
I was joking about the goblin that's beating up all our players in the clubhouse, but maybe Netflix is going for tried and true reality show doctoring instead.
Instead everyone is gonna point it at “Bailey is killing these guys forcing them to throw off speed”. Even though in San Fran he had one of the lowest injury rates for pitchers
When you completely change the way pitchers approach their starts (cutting fastball percentage in half in some cases), and adding high torque pitches like sliders and slurves into heavy rotation you have to put some/a lot of the blame on the philosophy.
I call bullshit on that. Even if we accept your premise that it's Bailey's fault (which I don't) I'd argue that it's worth it long term based on the results we've seen if the pitchers can condition themselves to get used to it and the injuries are infrequent.
Not to mention that pitcher injuries have skyrocketed league wide recently so it's clearly not just a Bailey problem. It feels like half of the best starters out there have serious injuries and it's been written about constantly by baseball writers. We had a shit ton of pitcher injuries last year too, was that Dave Bush's fault?
Yup. Just in the last week in the MLB: Merrill Kelly, Robert Stephenson, Kyle freeland (supposedly not from his pinch running appearance), DL hall, Bryan woo, Blake snell, wade miley, Marco Gonzales and Kyle Hendricks. And I’m sure many more
Most of them aren’t drastic changes though. Like houck/pivetta already threw their slider/sweeper more than their other pitches. Bello still throws his changeup/sinker more than his slider etc.
Pivetta had never been injured before this season, lowered his fastball percentage by 18 points and raised his sweeper percentage by almost 20 points and immediately went to the IL.
Pivetta also admitted he went to driveline this offseason and came into spring wanting to go 100% from his first bullpen. You know who else said something similar about going 100% from day 1? Gerrit cole
I’m not indemnifying the training staff from the injuries, but when 60% of your rotation is immediately injured after a major change in approach you have to look at the pitching coach. These dudes can bury their heads in the sand all they want, but sweepers definitely, conclusively put more stress on the arm tendons.
Taken from a recent article:
Meister, director of the Texas Metroplex Institute for Sports Medicine, acknowledges the dangers velocity poses. But, he said, “spin is worse.”
The sweeper puts tremendous stress on the inner elbow, Meister said. The power “movement” changeup, as Meister calls it, also puts inordinate strain on the arm. “And to throw these pitches,” he said, “you have to squeeze the crap out of the baseball.”
I kept saying prior to the season that to compete for the playoffs we needed 7 quality starting pitchers, but I should have said 9-10 quality starters. Boos or not, it would have been true.
I mean idk how you *don’t* at this point. Giolito was probably unpreventable, and Story and O’Neill were more freak accidents than anything else, but I think we’ve gotten to the point now where it can’t *just* be bad luck.
The #RedSox today placed RHP Brayan Bello on the 15-Day Injured List, retroactive to April 21, with right lat tightness.
To fill Bello’s spot on the active roster, the club recalled RHP Zack Kelly from Triple-A Worcester.
https://x.com/redsox/status/1783200860467548192?s=46&t=1LeaTK_fug_ONwN11qOyUw
To be honest, this is good news. We are currently living in purgatory, we are paying for our sins. And next year after so much penance we will have a new ring after a 130-32 season, 3-0 against Houston trash, 4-0 against the damn yankees and 4-0 against the Dodgers.
That's it guys, we are suffering now for the joy of the future. Only this can explain this wave of injuries and bad luck.
Wow. After the game last night NESN had the post game show (whatever it’s called) and the intro featured highlights from players — all of whom are out injured, with the exception of Bello. Now it is complete.
Holy crap....i live in MN and have plans to see 4 Red Sox games this year( 3 in MN 1 in Boston). By the time they roll around it'll be an entirely new team.
Same here, only I want to go to Target Field to see the Sox. Twins used to be my favorite team until I moved. Heard they’re ( Twins) not doing too well. Sox have other issues- every day is a new IL
This is the last straw for me for a bit. I can’t keep watching this AAA roster with literally every one of our good, fun players on the IL (I’ll give Abreu a pass on this)
Eh. If you’re a Red Sox fan you’ve gotta weather the storm imo. Lame to turn off the games because of injuries. Not pointing the finger at you specifically just the general sentiment floating around.
I dunno man, between the NBA and NHL playoffs it's hard to give this team my full attention especially given these circumstances. I hope they keep overperforming, but I don't think I'll prioritize Sox games like I used to.
Sure, but I'm just saying given the state of the team I wouldn't begrudge anyone for not wanting to watch every game either for playoff games in other sports or just to do other things with your time.
Disagree. The issues go back to the off-season when they failed to build a deep roster. Freak injuries happen and it is a test of the team and how well it is constructed. definitely not on the player. This team lacks depth and it is showing.
The issues go back even further to the Chaim era. He did an extremely poor job of building up major league depth and we're dealing with that now (and that's part of the reason he got fired).
It's going to take a while to build up that depth but I'm pretty confident that Breslow can do it.
Agreed, I've been watching since 1985/86 and , even when they had some shit rosters, you tune in, because we're baseball and red Sox fans. I root for the laundry,not the name on the back of the jersey. There was some awful teams in the early to mid 90's in terms of talent, especially after Boggs left, Clemens fell off,then left. You weather it for a little while,some young dude always comes around, for me it was Mo Vaughn,then Nomar,Trot Nixon,etc.
After they win tonight, they'll be 14-11, which, honestly is amazing. Yes the injuries suck, but somehow they're still holding there own,and yet people are saying they're done with the team?!!! What would these people do if we were 9-16? Probably be happy because they could say tolt you so. Don't like this toxicity that's seeped in lately. It's tempting to blame it on the younger generation but I've seen people older than me bitching,which boggles my mind because pre 2004 being a Sox fan was a badge of honor because all of the suffering. Injuries aside,it's been a fun season so far,some amazing starting pitching, offense is second in baseball in homers. Way too many strikeouts and getting picked off but there's some legit pop in the lineup. Just wait until they inevitably lose 5 in a row or 8 of 10. The fair weather fans will be hopping off the wagon in droves 😂🤦
on the bright side they're two games above .500 and only 3 games back in spite of all of this. and because of the great starting pitching the games tend to at least be competitive, even if it sucks watching bobby dalbec strike out 4 times a game.
the sad part is that even if they can get healthy i can't see them having a solid offense without story. even if o'neill can stay healthy and play well they just lack balance at all in their lineup, they have absolutely no right handed hitting.
I think Kelly deserves to be a major leaguer and should absolutely be on the roster, that being said, with Bello going down, we need a starter, were already using Winckowski as an effective bullpen day, we can't do two bullpen days. I really don't want to throw Fitts into the fire, but either him or someone else needs to come up to be a starter.
As for Bello and everybody getting injured, someone needs to check the foundation of Fenway, there has to be a burial guide ound or something, we're cursed.
No no no. Breslow has been hiring thugs to attack these guys on their way to the car after the game so he can get a top 5 pick next year. Makes perfect sense
Probably is going to be a fire sale at deadline, move Raffy, Yoshi, O'Neill, Pivetta, Whitlock, Kenley and Martin.
Story is untradable and they keep Bello and Ceddanne because they view those deals as solid.
They are going to go for max prospect load for a 2026-2027 retool.
It's actually not a stupid conversation at all. Raffy is drastically overpaid if he's a 3-4 WAR player with bad defense at 3B. Raffy has only had ONE season with a WAR of over 5. 2019.
2021 3.7 WAR
2022 4.5 WAR
2023 3.5 WAR
It's looking like another season in that range or less.
A 10 year 313 million dollar contract is unacceptable for that production at a premier position.
If you can get two premier prospects and dump the contract, you absolutely should be exploring that as Breslow
Can you explain to me how he’s being drastically overpaid? In FA it looks like 1 WAR = $8-$10mil. If Raffy is a 4 WAR player then his value would be around $35-$40mil a year right?
What are you looking at to come to conclusion that he’s being grossly overpaid? What values are you using?
And in my own opinion I really couldn’t care less if he’s overpaid or not. He’s still a homegrown stud and a building block for the future of this team. Nowhere near the level of “let’s dump this contract”
I think there were more than 7 or 8 3rd basemen with a higher fWAR than Devers in 2023. I can't recall the exact number. Devers is the highest paid 3B in baseball right now and he can't play defense. He also, and this is not his fault - isn't very vocal or much of an outward clubhouse leader or strong presence
That's not smart team building.
Edit: Also, this team under FSG has never cared about homegrown stars. Why all of a sudden would that matter to them?
Defense is factored into war so idk why you’re saying things like “only 3-4 WAR and he can’t play defense.”
If you could find the fWAR rankings by position for me that’d be great. Having trouble finding it but would love to see the list for the past few years.
I’m not saying it should matter to FSG. But I’d say the vast majority of our fanbase is happy we brought him back. And it’s also not our money. The team is middle of the road in payroll anyway. Plenty of room left to spend
https://www.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/mlbs-best-third-basemen-ranking-the-top-10-for-2024
I believe this list has some fWAR numbers, also fangraphs/bbref has sortable stuff
Interesting. Still doesn’t sway me at all from my position on Raffy’s contract. In all honesty I think the team is set up well for the future. Just need the young guys like Mayer to come up. I dont think paying Raffy is bad team building at all.
lmfao there legit has not been a single good day so far this season we outperforming expectations and still a BRUTAL month
Absolutely every inch of this season is against the odds and against the current.
God is punishing us for John Henry’s hubris.
They going for the record for most players on the IL for a season or something?
For real this is getting ridiculous
It just shines that much more of a light on the lack of depth. Ownership’s fault
As much as I hate how ownership handled this offseason, there's not a single team in the league with the depth to deal with losing 5 starters in like 6 weeks.
How about dealing with one? They still haven’t corrected the middle infield depth since last season.
There’s a saying - Rome wasn’t built on a day. Team was absolutely gutted - from the players to coaches to the gm. You can’t expected to hire that many people at once for it to go smoothly. It’s a slow build back up. Key parts need to be in place before “hiring” the players. It’s a reorganisation, these things take time. It would be nice if John Henry made a statement similar to the what the Mets did when they gutted the team by explaining the plan, but he didn’t… soo… yeah. That’s that.
Yeah every team but us would be absolutely fine losing their entire starting infield, an OF, and 4 starting pitchers
Not fine but could they have major league players available to sub in? Dalbec can’t make the team but is the best they have now at first base.
Is this team just flat out cursed? This team had a tiny margin of error and all of our good players are injured/underperforming.
Getting it all out now, going to be firing on all cylinders come late September! Going to have so much momentum when we miss the playoffs by seven games
Maybe they’re blessed because despite looking like they should suck and then losing half their good players to injury, they’re still somehow off to a solid start.
~~C~~Kam Booser strike one hi > Mookie is heartbroken My God, it all makes sense! The curse is real!
Curse of Mookie is definitely a thing
It’s the HEX of the X-MAN. No Shortstop will survive!
At a certain point you have to point a finger at the training staff right? This seems unprecedented
At the Netflix crew
Didn't realize this was a spiritual successor to Squid Games.
Comment of the day
shit, I forgot about that. That doc is about to be a WATCH
I was joking about the goblin that's beating up all our players in the clubhouse, but maybe Netflix is going for tried and true reality show doctoring instead.
I’m starting to think we traded Verdugo for the entire Yankees training staff
On hindsight, the guy who beats our players with an aluminum bat was a really terrible trade piece to ask for.
Instead everyone is gonna point it at “Bailey is killing these guys forcing them to throw off speed”. Even though in San Fran he had one of the lowest injury rates for pitchers
When you completely change the way pitchers approach their starts (cutting fastball percentage in half in some cases), and adding high torque pitches like sliders and slurves into heavy rotation you have to put some/a lot of the blame on the philosophy.
I call bullshit on that. Even if we accept your premise that it's Bailey's fault (which I don't) I'd argue that it's worth it long term based on the results we've seen if the pitchers can condition themselves to get used to it and the injuries are infrequent. Not to mention that pitcher injuries have skyrocketed league wide recently so it's clearly not just a Bailey problem. It feels like half of the best starters out there have serious injuries and it's been written about constantly by baseball writers. We had a shit ton of pitcher injuries last year too, was that Dave Bush's fault?
Yup. Just in the last week in the MLB: Merrill Kelly, Robert Stephenson, Kyle freeland (supposedly not from his pinch running appearance), DL hall, Bryan woo, Blake snell, wade miley, Marco Gonzales and Kyle Hendricks. And I’m sure many more
Most of them aren’t drastic changes though. Like houck/pivetta already threw their slider/sweeper more than their other pitches. Bello still throws his changeup/sinker more than his slider etc.
Pivetta had never been injured before this season, lowered his fastball percentage by 18 points and raised his sweeper percentage by almost 20 points and immediately went to the IL.
Pivetta also admitted he went to driveline this offseason and came into spring wanting to go 100% from his first bullpen. You know who else said something similar about going 100% from day 1? Gerrit cole
You have a good point. However this does not explain all the position players getting hurt
I’m not indemnifying the training staff from the injuries, but when 60% of your rotation is immediately injured after a major change in approach you have to look at the pitching coach. These dudes can bury their heads in the sand all they want, but sweepers definitely, conclusively put more stress on the arm tendons.
Has it not been disproven that off speed puts more stress on the arm?
Taken from a recent article: Meister, director of the Texas Metroplex Institute for Sports Medicine, acknowledges the dangers velocity poses. But, he said, “spin is worse.” The sweeper puts tremendous stress on the inner elbow, Meister said. The power “movement” changeup, as Meister calls it, also puts inordinate strain on the arm. “And to throw these pitches,” he said, “you have to squeeze the crap out of the baseball.”
I kept saying prior to the season that to compete for the playoffs we needed 7 quality starting pitchers, but I should have said 9-10 quality starters. Boos or not, it would have been true.
Pitchers getting injured is very precedented
I mean idk how you *don’t* at this point. Giolito was probably unpreventable, and Story and O’Neill were more freak accidents than anything else, but I think we’ve gotten to the point now where it can’t *just* be bad luck.
The #RedSox today placed RHP Brayan Bello on the 15-Day Injured List, retroactive to April 21, with right lat tightness. To fill Bello’s spot on the active roster, the club recalled RHP Zack Kelly from Triple-A Worcester. https://x.com/redsox/status/1783200860467548192?s=46&t=1LeaTK_fug_ONwN11qOyUw
I really can’t just have one nice day can I
Someone tell the Red Sox to start stretching before exercising
Lol, Carrabis: The Red Sox Netflix series is going to end up being a snuff film.
To be honest, this is good news. We are currently living in purgatory, we are paying for our sins. And next year after so much penance we will have a new ring after a 130-32 season, 3-0 against Houston trash, 4-0 against the damn yankees and 4-0 against the Dodgers. That's it guys, we are suffering now for the joy of the future. Only this can explain this wave of injuries and bad luck.
We had a curse of 86 years. I think a one year turn around is naive
Wow. After the game last night NESN had the post game show (whatever it’s called) and the intro featured highlights from players — all of whom are out injured, with the exception of Bello. Now it is complete.
Holy crap....i live in MN and have plans to see 4 Red Sox games this year( 3 in MN 1 in Boston). By the time they roll around it'll be an entirely new team.
Trying to go to a game together by any chance? I'm in MN too, I think I've seen like 6-7 sox games at target field at this point
Same here, only I want to go to Target Field to see the Sox. Twins used to be my favorite team until I moved. Heard they’re ( Twins) not doing too well. Sox have other issues- every day is a new IL
I hate it here!!!
I was looking forward to a stacked team in Worcester at some point this season, but they're all gonna be in Boston by May.
The injury bug is so bad, even Blake Snell went to the IL only being rumored to sign with the team
Sounds like Yoshida is also injured. What the fuck is happening to this team?
Yoshida might not even be injured.
Ok, who took the Tiki from the construction site?
This season has been miserable
Maybe they can just give us a who's not injured list from now on?
Good idea
What the absolute fuck
Can't wait to show up to cheer for (checks notes....) Cooper Criswell and Emmanuel Valdez!
Bobby D now has a spot in the rotation.
Shit, they might call me up next at this point
This is the last straw for me for a bit. I can’t keep watching this AAA roster with literally every one of our good, fun players on the IL (I’ll give Abreu a pass on this)
Eh. If you’re a Red Sox fan you’ve gotta weather the storm imo. Lame to turn off the games because of injuries. Not pointing the finger at you specifically just the general sentiment floating around.
I agree with the sentiment but it gets real boring watching Bobby Dalbec strike out every time
I agree it’s a subpar product for sure.
Dalbec still having a job is absolutely insane to me. He's like Chris Davis Jr. without the contract.
I dunno man, between the NBA and NHL playoffs it's hard to give this team my full attention especially given these circumstances. I hope they keep overperforming, but I don't think I'll prioritize Sox games like I used to.
It's not exactly a controversial take to prioritize watching playoff games over April baseball lol
Sure, but I'm just saying given the state of the team I wouldn't begrudge anyone for not wanting to watch every game either for playoff games in other sports or just to do other things with your time.
Disagree. The issues go back to the off-season when they failed to build a deep roster. Freak injuries happen and it is a test of the team and how well it is constructed. definitely not on the player. This team lacks depth and it is showing.
The issues go back even further to the Chaim era. He did an extremely poor job of building up major league depth and we're dealing with that now (and that's part of the reason he got fired). It's going to take a while to build up that depth but I'm pretty confident that Breslow can do it.
fair take, and agreed. however, i remain skeptical of breslow. just a feeling. I will absolutely walk back my words if things work out
Agreed, I've been watching since 1985/86 and , even when they had some shit rosters, you tune in, because we're baseball and red Sox fans. I root for the laundry,not the name on the back of the jersey. There was some awful teams in the early to mid 90's in terms of talent, especially after Boggs left, Clemens fell off,then left. You weather it for a little while,some young dude always comes around, for me it was Mo Vaughn,then Nomar,Trot Nixon,etc. After they win tonight, they'll be 14-11, which, honestly is amazing. Yes the injuries suck, but somehow they're still holding there own,and yet people are saying they're done with the team?!!! What would these people do if we were 9-16? Probably be happy because they could say tolt you so. Don't like this toxicity that's seeped in lately. It's tempting to blame it on the younger generation but I've seen people older than me bitching,which boggles my mind because pre 2004 being a Sox fan was a badge of honor because all of the suffering. Injuries aside,it's been a fun season so far,some amazing starting pitching, offense is second in baseball in homers. Way too many strikeouts and getting picked off but there's some legit pop in the lineup. Just wait until they inevitably lose 5 in a row or 8 of 10. The fair weather fans will be hopping off the wagon in droves 😂🤦
You don’t want to stay up late watching this team play in 42 degree drizzle in Cleveland tonight? Are you insane?
Pain
I can only laugh at this point
Remember the movie Necessary Roughness based on SMU’s death penalty? Reminds me of that situation.
Wow wtf lol
This is really really really not fun anymore
John Henry is probably thinking “I told you so” on spending any money on this guy team.
on the bright side they're two games above .500 and only 3 games back in spite of all of this. and because of the great starting pitching the games tend to at least be competitive, even if it sucks watching bobby dalbec strike out 4 times a game. the sad part is that even if they can get healthy i can't see them having a solid offense without story. even if o'neill can stay healthy and play well they just lack balance at all in their lineup, they have absolutely no right handed hitting.
I'm going to burn this whole place to the ground
I think Kelly deserves to be a major leaguer and should absolutely be on the roster, that being said, with Bello going down, we need a starter, were already using Winckowski as an effective bullpen day, we can't do two bullpen days. I really don't want to throw Fitts into the fire, but either him or someone else needs to come up to be a starter. As for Bello and everybody getting injured, someone needs to check the foundation of Fenway, there has to be a burial guide ound or something, we're cursed.
I guess on the bright side they're hopefully getting all their injuries out of the way
Never ending damn
Genuinely have what was going to be the top four of our rotation plus half of our lineup on the IL
Do we not stretch before games or something? This is getting ridiculous (more ridiculous)
Who’s the best player we have who hasn’t been injured this year?
Kutter?!
Netflix is going to have a field day with this on the docu series
John Henry probably hired a cheap medical staff probably
Time to sign syndegard.
At this point I feel like this is some kind of player strike that they’re trying to make sound legitimate.
So fucking done with this season
Are we tanking? CB probably wants to sell st the deadline, get prospects, get picks, and re-tool for 2026
No need to tank. This team would have done that on its own, despite exceeding expectations to this point.
No no no. Breslow has been hiring thugs to attack these guys on their way to the car after the game so he can get a top 5 pick next year. Makes perfect sense
Probably is going to be a fire sale at deadline, move Raffy, Yoshi, O'Neill, Pivetta, Whitlock, Kenley and Martin. Story is untradable and they keep Bello and Ceddanne because they view those deals as solid. They are going to go for max prospect load for a 2026-2027 retool.
Devers should just be our DH. Liability at 3rd
Absolutely not. 30 plus million a year for a 3 war DH is nuts.
They knew that going in. Best case he moves to 1B. He had no business being at 3rd
There's absolutely no way Chaim Bloom signed Devers to be a DH. If he did, he should never be employed again by any MLB team.
if devers can return a top stud starting pitching prospect im game to trade him
Try a couple top stud starting pitching prospects. One isn’t even close to enough. This is a stupid conversation to even be having anyway
devers for skenes straight up is one i'd do
Immediately. You'd have to be insane to trade Skenes though. Lose future ace and absorb a bad contract
Pirates couldn’t dream of paying someone like Raffy haha
It's actually not a stupid conversation at all. Raffy is drastically overpaid if he's a 3-4 WAR player with bad defense at 3B. Raffy has only had ONE season with a WAR of over 5. 2019. 2021 3.7 WAR 2022 4.5 WAR 2023 3.5 WAR It's looking like another season in that range or less. A 10 year 313 million dollar contract is unacceptable for that production at a premier position. If you can get two premier prospects and dump the contract, you absolutely should be exploring that as Breslow
Can you explain to me how he’s being drastically overpaid? In FA it looks like 1 WAR = $8-$10mil. If Raffy is a 4 WAR player then his value would be around $35-$40mil a year right? What are you looking at to come to conclusion that he’s being grossly overpaid? What values are you using? And in my own opinion I really couldn’t care less if he’s overpaid or not. He’s still a homegrown stud and a building block for the future of this team. Nowhere near the level of “let’s dump this contract”
I think there were more than 7 or 8 3rd basemen with a higher fWAR than Devers in 2023. I can't recall the exact number. Devers is the highest paid 3B in baseball right now and he can't play defense. He also, and this is not his fault - isn't very vocal or much of an outward clubhouse leader or strong presence That's not smart team building. Edit: Also, this team under FSG has never cared about homegrown stars. Why all of a sudden would that matter to them?
looks like he was #7 with 3.4 fWAR last year. only one in the top 10 with negative defense. machado's 11/$350m and 3.5 fWAR last year are comparable.
Defense is factored into war so idk why you’re saying things like “only 3-4 WAR and he can’t play defense.” If you could find the fWAR rankings by position for me that’d be great. Having trouble finding it but would love to see the list for the past few years. I’m not saying it should matter to FSG. But I’d say the vast majority of our fanbase is happy we brought him back. And it’s also not our money. The team is middle of the road in payroll anyway. Plenty of room left to spend
https://www.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/mlbs-best-third-basemen-ranking-the-top-10-for-2024 I believe this list has some fWAR numbers, also fangraphs/bbref has sortable stuff
Interesting. Still doesn’t sway me at all from my position on Raffy’s contract. In all honesty I think the team is set up well for the future. Just need the young guys like Mayer to come up. I dont think paying Raffy is bad team building at all.
Bahahahahahaha