September 6th, 2007 → 9:21 am @ Seth Mnookin
Scratch everything I wrote below; that applies to the old rules. The new ones say that any player can replace any other player that’s on the DL…which means Ellsbury can (and I’m pretty confident will) replace either Clement or Donnelly. Thanks to the Union Leader‘s Alex Speier for the clarification (and to reader Lenny Harris for prompting my query). For anyone interested in how Manny’s return (and Ellsbury’s surge) will play out, check out Speier’s piece on that very subject. I’d be shocked if Ellsbury took any serious time away from Coco, who I continue to view as the best center fielder playing right now. Drew (despite also turning in impressive performances in right) wouldn’t surprise me quite as much…
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There are lots and lots of arcane rules in baseball; the rules dictating playoff rosters aren’t even close to the weirdest or hardest to understand, but they’re what’s most relevant today…so in response to a query by reader Aaron Cohen, here’s my (undoubtedly insufficient) effort to explain just who can, and can’t, play come the playoffs.
The short answer is, only the 25 guys on the team’s active roster as of August 31, plus anyone who was on either the 15-day or 60-day DL on August 31…which would mean no Clay Buchholz, no Jon Lester, and no Jacoby Ellsbury. The longer answer is, well, almost anyone. Or at least anyone on the team’s 40-man roster.
Let’s back up. I can’t find anyplace that lists the team’s roster at as of last Friday, but I think it looked something like this, including guys on the DL:
Pitchers
Josh Beckett
Curt Schilling
Daisuke Matsuzaka
Tim Wakefield
Julian Tavarez
Jonathan Papelbon
Hideki Okajima
Eric Gagne
Mike Timlin
Manny Delcarmen
Kyle Snyder
Javier Lopez
Matt Clement (60-day DL)
Brendan Donnelly (60-day DL)
Infielders
Kevin Youkilis (1B, 3B)
Eric Hinske (also can be listed as an outfielder)
Dustin Pedroia (2B)
Alex Cora (2B, SS)
Julio Lugo (SS)
Mike Lowell (3B)
David Ortiz (1B, DH)
Jason Varitek
Kevin Cash
Doug Mirabelli (15-day DL; activated on 9/1)
Outfielders
Manny Ramirez
Coco Crisp
J.D. Drew
Bobby Kielty
Since teams are allowed to replace anyone who is injured for the playoffs, that means that, assuming Clement and Donnelly remain out of action, the team has two pitching spots to play around with; both Lester and Buchholz are eligible for those spots (but, of course, that’d mean that one of the team’s 12-active roster pitchers would need to be left off).* There are also three catchers who are eligible for the team’s two catching spots.
You’ll notice that Ellsbury is not listed anywhere above, and since he’s not a catcher, that would seem to indicate his lack of availability for postseason play. This isn’t entirely true: if one of the five outfielders listed above (I’m including Hinske here, who can be listed as either a corner IF or an OF) gets hurt, or “hurt,” the team can use Ellsbury to fill his position. Barring an actual, season-ending injury, that makes Bobby Kielty the most likely candidate for a phantom pull/strain/etc. Now is that all clear?
(There’s more discussion of sundry roster rules in this Bradford Files post.)
* Playoff rosters can change series to series, a fact which is especially relevant when discussing someone like Buchholz, who is on a strict innings diet.
Post Categories: 2007 Playoffs & 2007 Season & Alex Speier & Clay Buchholz & Jacoby Ellsbury & Roster Rules
September 5th, 2007 → 10:48 am @ Seth Mnookin
I tend to have inauspicious timing when it comes to taking time off: I was in North Carolina when the news broke that the Sox had won the Dice-K sweepstakes and I was getting married when Buchholz threw his no hitter. (Note: this does not mean that I will be on my honeymoon should the Sox make it to the World Series.) This deprived me of the chance to write many breathless posts about Buchholz’s composure, the fact that on a weekend in which Pedro returned to the mound for the first time in 11 months the most exciting baseball involving someone with “Pedro” in his name came from Dustin “DP” Pedroia, or how the past four-games have served as a good illustration of the Sox’s front office philosophy.
Actually, that last point can be illustrated in a way that will encapsulate everything else I wanted to talk about. There were a handful of mentions over the last several days about just how Buchholz happened to arrive in Boston: he was the chosen with the sandwich pick the Sox got in the ’05 draft after Pedro signed with the Mets. At the time, Pedro was hailed as the savior of the Mets; over the next two years, as the deficiencies in the Sox’s pitching became more and more apparent, Theo et al were excoriated for letting the most exciting pitcher, well, maybe ever, decamp for Queens; they were also excoriated for any number of other supposed sins. (To quote one example, chosen at random: “…there have been many bad decisions since [the World Series] – letting Pedro Martinez and Johnny Damon escape to New York…Matt Clement, Rudy Seanez and Julian Tavarez, and the long-term contract for puzzling Josh Beckett, for starters,” from Phil O’Neill’s Worcester Telegram piece, “Epstein to blame for Boston’s downswing,” August 27. 2006.)
O’Neill, needless to say, didn’t revisit this topic over the weekend; nor has anyone else, as far as I can see. (I also haven’t seen O’Neill revisit his labeling the Beckett signing a “bad decision,” but I haven’t looked all that hard, either.) If you’re interested in just how horrendous Pedro’s three-year, $40-mil contract has been thus far, consider this comparison: since arriving at Shea, Pedro has started 54 games (and 354.7 innings) and gone 25-16 for a .610 winning percentage. Matt Clement, surely one of the Sox’s most disappointing signings of the last several years, has started 44 games (and thrown a total of 256.3 innings) and gone 18-11 for a .620 winning percentage. Put another way, Pedro’s been paid approximately $1.6 million per win and about $113,000 per inning; Clement has gotten a little less than $1.4 mil per win and about $98,000 per inning. I’m not pointing this out to illustrate how great Matt has been but how piss-poor Pedro has performed. (I’ll avoid getting into this too much, but I do feel compelled to point out the following: Pedro’s arm injuries could have been predicted; Clement getting nailed in the head with a ball traveling well over 100mph could not have been.)
As I was saying, pretty much all of this backstory has been ignored as Boston has reveled in the afterglow of Buchholz’s no-no…pretty much, but not entirely. Take Rob Neyer’s piece on ESPN, which I’m pointing out for reasons other than the fact that he very graciously refers to the ways in which Feeding the Monster addressed just these very issues in a section on the non-signing of Pedro in December of 2004. Neyer may be the only writer to lay out in plain English the implications of not overpaying Pedro many, many millions of dollars: “Because the Red Sox ‘lost’ Martinez to free agency, they were were awarded the 42nd pick in the 2005 draft, and they used that pick to draft Buchholz. So for the Red Sox, the Mets’ profligate offer to Martinez was a wonderful gift, and one that should keep on giving for a number of years.” Indeed. In fact, I’d bet Clay’s a gift we’ll all be talking about long after most folks have forgotten why he ever put on a Sox uni in the first place.
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If you, too, want to deepen your understanding of everything happening in Red Sox Nationa and don’t yet have your copy of Feeding the Monster, the Boston Globe and New York Times bestseller that’s been called “Red Sox porn,” don’t delay: Now’s the perfect time to buy your copy (available from Amazon for only $10.20 (cheap)…and you can even get your copy inscribed with one of these free, signed, personalized bookplates. They’re really nice. Seriously: ask anyone you know who has one.
Post Categories: 2007 Season & Clay Buchholz & Pedro Martinez & Rob Neyer & Sports Reporters & Theo Epstein
May 25th, 2007 → 12:15 pm @ Seth Mnookin
It’s Memorial Day weekend, it’s 90 degrees…and I’m moving. Perfect timing! But I haven’t forgotten my blogalicious duties, so without furtherado, this wrapup/compendium:
* Some good news on the Sox’s home-grown pitching talent front and some thoughts about why it’s best to remember the all of the implications of every action. Jon Lester has been ripping it up at Pawtucket to the tune of around .8 Ks per inning and a 1.62 ERA. We all saw lefty Lester’s potential last year, and we all hope he’s back in the bigs soon. One thing we might all not know: if the infamous A-Rod for Manny trade had gone down in the winter of ’04, Lester wouldn’t be here…because he was slated to go to Texas as part of the deal. In other minor-league news, Clay Buchholz is getting raves at AA (to the point of folks saying he out-dueled Clemens earlier this week). The Sox were able to draft CB because of the compensatory pick they got when Pedro signed with the Mets. Every rational person would admit that, thus far, Petey hasn’t been worth his annual salary in New York. If Clay develops into a reliable fourth starter — and people are talking about him as much more than that — he’ll definitely be worth his. (One last interesting Buchholz note is that he dropped as low as he did in the draft because of a laptop theft in high school. I got arrested in high school (and did lots of stuff I should have been arrested for but wasn’t) so I’m fully in favor of second chances…
* Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of Rob Bradford’s work. He has a recent couple of pieces worth checking out. His most recent post in his always-worth reading Herald blog, The Bradford Files has several interesting tidbits, including details of Sox players’ off-season workouts (I’m not going to be trying those anytime soon) and part of a Q/A with Eric Hinske. These are the types of things blogs should have: interesting notes that wouldn’t make it into the paper and standard-fare Q/As that aren’t jaw-droppingly revelatory but are interesting nonetheless. (One especially interesting note is Hinske’s thoughts about Theo’s relationship with the players.) And a Herald article from a couple of days ago is another example of why I’m a fan of Rob’s: a evergreen feature on Sox advance scouts Dana Levangie and Todd Claus actually teaches you something about the team you might not know even if you were an obsessive reader of all things Red Sox related…
* Speaking of evergreens, Gordo has a nice piece in the Globe about the job of official scorers. This is an perfect example of a story that oftentimes wouldn’t make it into the paper for all the wrong reasons: because it seems obvious to everyone on the inside. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that’s not the case for your average reader.
* Two interesting perspectives on the Sox’s recent successes…and reasons why they might not be the winningest team in baseball when all is said and done. The ProJo’s Sean McAdam weighs in on the J.D. Drew’s struggles and the bullpen’s successes. McAdam finds Drew’s offensive suckitude troubling (you’ll get no argument from me there) and the bullpen’s lights-outedness unlikely to continue (ditto). But — and this is a big but — it seems like there’s a logical inconsistency behind thinking a consistently good player won’t return to his level and a group that’s collectively over achieving will fall back to earth. The Telegram-Gazette‘s Bill Ballou looks at all of the Sox’s underachievers (Crisp, Drew, Hinske, Pineiro, and Manny) and sees an illustration of Francona’s skills as a manager: one of the ways he keeps the clubhouse functioning smoothly in a tough-to-play-in town is by showing faith in guys when they’re scuffling. As Ballou notes, sometimes in pays off (Damon and Bellhorn in the ’04 playoffs) and sometimes it doesn’t (Bellhorn and Millar in the ’05 season). One point I’d add: it’s not always just that Francona is showing patience; sometimes it’s that the players are acting like whiny little punks (Millar in the ’05 season).
* Speaking of Manny, if the Sox weren’t tearing it up, we’d be hearing a lot more about his general suckiness, a topic Edes covered earlier this week (and one that’s been receiving some attention over at SoSH). Edes talks to the scout that signed Manny about his seeming hesitation at the plate. It’s hard not to get a tinge of panic when watching him walk back to the bench after being called out on strikes one more time; on the other hand, I was with the Sox in 2005, the Gammons “he just doesn’t care out there” year, the “I’m worried about my mom and her blood transfusions” year, the black-hole until late May year. History says there’s no reason to expect this to be any different. Emotions worry otherwise.
* And finally, for everyone out there who thinks the Lugo signing was, based on the evidence thus far, an unmitigated disaster, here’s an interesting factoid: John Dewan, author of The Fielding Bible, says Lugo’s been the fourth best defensive shortstop in all of baseball.
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That’s it for now. It’s gonna be a hot one this weekend, and you don’t need to be back at work until Monday. That means, of course, that it’s an absolutely perfect time to read Feeding the Monster, which is available from Amazon for only $17.16 (cheap!). And, of course, free signed and personalized bookplates are here for the asking. They’re really nice. Seriously: ask anyone you know who has one. Or just write in. But whatever you do, act today.
Post Categories: 2007 Season & Clay Buchholz & J.D. Drew & Jon Lester & Julio Lugo & Manny Ramirez & Rob Bradford & Sports Reporters
