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talking to yourself is getting old pike.

I have no problem with people trashing Pike if it floats their boat but I wish they'd find a separate thread to do it in.  I found the Bill James story to be interesting.

In response to S5's comment:

Just focus on the post, that's all.  When Softlaw is in his 'bash all things RS', then I feel free to ridicule the content of the threads.

At other times, he can be fairly insightful, and I respond accordingly.

Bill James is always interesting.  The haters are not going to like this one bit, and I already know what their various reactions will be.

As I stated on my "positive thread", the Sox offense has a legitimate chance of improving their OPS at every position taken one by one.

It's the rotation that scares me, and I think James was being a bit generous with our starters.

In response to moonslav59's comment:

We have a very difficult rotation to predict.

Two guys with ace potential, coming off of bad years.

A very good pitcher switching leagues, and 36.

A #2 type coming off of surgery and not at a young age.

A sophomore with good, but uneven stats.

With not a lot of variables going south, we could be bottom-5, and with just a handful of variables going north, we could be top-5 in SP.  Just for fun

• Lester 2011  3.47
• Buchholz 2011  3.48
• Dempster 2012 + 0.33 for league  3.71
• Lackey last healthy season 4.40
• Doubront 2012 FIP  4.37

It is unlikely for all five events to occur, but these aren't once in a lifetime events either.

In response to Joebreidey's comment:

I know, Joe.  Thanks for the props.  I just get tired of seeing the same anti-Pike posts in thread after thread disrupting the stuff that's worth reading, and sometimes it bubbles to the top with me.  :-) 

 

In response to Joebreidey's comment:

if you look at the names of that 5...that's a pretty damn good 5...on paper...i'm not like everybody who see's doom all the time...and i think that 5 will be alright.

In response to raider3524's comment:

same here. lester, lackey and buch will al rebound nicely. hopefully doobie will build off of a pretty solid rookie season and Dempster makes the transition well. we also have some pretty decent depth in Aceves/Morales and eventually RDLR (probably won't be available until the AS break-ish).

I know, Joe.  Thanks for the props.  I just get tired of seeing the same anti-Pike posts in thread after thread disrupting the stuff that's worth reading, and sometimes it bubbles to the top with me.  :-)

I have no idea, really, who Pike is.  There are posts that I just scroll through or I don't.  I don't really look too much, to see what the name is attached to the post, before I decide to comment on it.  It's either interesting or it is not.

Half the time, when they accuse someone of being Pike, there is no similarity at all in the writing forensics.

In response to mef429's comment:

and john farrell is our manager...he's good with pitchers.

In response to Joebreidey's comment:

i'm in the same boat..who is pike?

It's an interesting take. I'm not sure a whole lot of posters here would agree with his projections. To me, the offensive projections look pretty reasonable, but his projections for the rotation are more what would look to me like a best case scenario.

In response to mef429's comment:

If I were just doing an accounting exercise, I'd have promoted Morales instead of paying $12M+ for Dempster.  But at least now, we should have a little bit of depth.  I've posted this a few times, but it bears repeating.

In 2004, we got 157 starts from our regular 5.

In 2007, we got 140 starts from our regular 5, with great support from our 6/7/8, Lester, Gabbard, and Buchholz.

BB can be amazingly simply sometimes.  In the regular season, you just need a solid offense, with a preponderance of quality starts.  Even good teams will lose if they dip too deeply into their 6/7/8 with having quality pitchers.

If we get 140 starts from our rotation, and 22 from Morales, Aceves, Tazawa, and DLR, we should be fine.

The Sox rotation certainly has the potential to be near top 5, if everything goes right, but seriously, would any of you really rather have our rotation over these?

Rays: Price, Hellickson, Moore, Niemann, Cobb

Yanks: Sabathia, Kuroda, Pettitte, Hughes, Nova/Phelps

Jays: Dickey, Johnson, Buehrle, Romero, Morrow/Happ

(That's just in our own division)

Now, some other selected AL teams:

Tigers: Verlander, Fister, A Sanchez, Scherzer, Porcello/Smyly

A's: Anderson, Milone, Parker, Griffin, Straily/Colon

Angels: Weaver, Wilson, Vargas, Hanson, Blanton

CWS: Sale, Peavy, Floyd, Quintana, Santiago

Royals: Shields, E Santana, Guthrie, W Davis, B Chen

Rangers: Harrison, Darvish, Holland, Ogando, Lewis/Perez

Yes, one could argue we may be better than 1 or 2 on this list, but it is clear to me that, on paper, we might be lucky to be ranked 8th or 9th best in the AL alone. (Maybe 7th)

I hadn't heard James had moved to Colorado or Washington!

So let me get this straight the O is pretty darn good and the ERAs are great, but all the starters are ~.500.

2012 ERA rank qualified AL starters with BJ '13 projections interspersed:

Price

Verlander

Weaver 

Sale

Hernandez

Hellickson

Harrison

Kurado

Peavy 

Sabathia

Shields 

Diamond

BUCHHOLZ 3.64

DOUB 3.70

LESTER 3.71

DEMPSTER 3.74

Scherzer

Millone

Moore

Wilson

Vargas

Darvish

WY Chen  

LACKEY 4.05

Hughes

Floyd

 

 

if our hitters hit like that and pitchers get those ERA's...then those wins will be way off.

"I have no problem with people trashing Pike if it floats their boat but I wish they'd find a separate thread to do it in."

But he trashes people in their own threads all the time. Would you say the same to him or do you apply the usual weak internet argument double standard? 

Do you know that it's possible to cover two topics in one post to a thread? I know it's a mind-blowing concept. 

As for James, it's truly amazing that someone deep on the Sox management payroll promised a more prominent roll is optimistic about the Sox. 

His view of our starting pitching is optimistic to say the least. 

James also assumes Napoli is healthy and his contract issues behind him, a pretty big assumption. I think he's optimistic on Ortiz' production also. If Ellsbury has a bounce back year as James projects it will be bittersweet, I still hope they find a way to trade him for pitching talent which we sorely need. 

That said, I think James is more on target with the hitting than the pitching. Heck, I hope he's right about all of it but   I worry that his optimism about our starting rotation will convince Sox management to stand pat. 

If James turns out to be right and I'm wrong, I'll be glad to be wrong.

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Maybe our great pen will win the no decisions.

In response to moonslav59's comment:

Based on this list (thank you moonslav59), I like Oakland and Toronto. 

Oakland's rookie pitching staff handled pressure very well despite losing McCarthy and Anderson to injuries and being in a tight race with the Angels and Rangers. 

In response to Ice-Cream's comment:

There are other AL teams with starters about as good as ours that I didn't list.

Couple of years again I got a Bill James book for Christmas. yep, what to get an aging boomer for Christmas.  Gotta admit it was fun to use during the games that year. It was better than average at predicting trends and tendencies. I find his work doesn't take into account career years too well. 

Anyway, we are building a great bullpen.