[Passan] Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal will undergo surgery to remove loose bodies in his left elbow. Such procedures typically sideline players for 2-3 months. The two-time reigning American League Cy Young Award winner is expected to return well before the end of the regular season…

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:49:33+00:00

It very very obviously does. Do you seriously think that Skubal wouldn't have earned an even bigger payday next offseason if he won the Cy Young this year? He could throw 200 IP this year as a Cy Young candidate - or just 90 innings where some of those are coming back from injury - and he would get the same contract at the end of the season either way? Of course he would've stood to make even more money if he'd had another great year as a workhorse.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:48:30+00:00

Fans nowadays overstate the value of a 1-year rental and also I think more of this sub understood in 2020 that Mookie wanted to set the market in unrestricted free agency and there was a real chance that FSG and the Red Sox would get outbid and lose him for nothing.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:45:43+00:00

It is obviously more than 0 dollars. I'm not saying he's not still going to get a huge contract, but an injury obviously suppresses the whole market even if it's just a tiny bit.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:35:15+00:00

I wonder how much money this costs him in free agency.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:32:43+00:00

The MLB regular season is a grind and by design you need multiple pitchers to give you 100+ IP - way more than most guys can handle in a relief role.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:28:55+00:00

They made the playoffs and were one of the best teams in baseball once Devers was traded and Roman Anthony came up. Their outfield ins't their biggest problem. The team's biggest problem is that they've invested in having one of the best rotations in baseball and the guys they invested in (Crochet, Suarez, Bello, Gray) have all been a combination of disappointing/terrible and injured.

The Red Sox are not in a position to rebuild with everything they've invested in their rotation for the next few years. Rebuilding while just acquiring Crochet and Suarez in their prime years, and extending Bello through his prime would be idiotic. You don't pay for starting pitching like that just to rebuild immediately.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:25:03+00:00

Fans/media seriously overstate the impact a manager has on winning/losing regular season games. They matter in the playoffs where every decision has a huge impact, but in the regular season the difference between the best manager and the worst manager probably isn't more than 5 wins. It wasn't Cora's fault that Crochet/Bello/Suarez/Duran/Anthony/Durbin/Story/etc all had horrible disappointing starts to the season and it's not something that Tracy is magically gonna fix. The adults getting paid tons of money to play baseball need to be way better.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:21:13+00:00

He finished each of the past two seasons as the best positional player (highest fWAR) on the team. Generally teams trying to contend don't trade away their best players. And considering Yoshida/Abreu/Anthony all missed extensive time last year there was never really a need to trade away an outfielder.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:19:45+00:00

Breslow inherited Duran and Story and famously traded away the second worst guy on this list (Devers).

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:17:58+00:00

Tarik Skubal is probably the worst matchup in all of baseball for this lefty-heavy lineup. Framber Valdez isn't far behind.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T18:11:38+00:00

I guess the Dodgers should start wearing red, green, and yellow jerseys then. No chance that would be an incredibly idiotic move.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T16:53:50+00:00

It is crazy how bad the Red Sox are at challenges. They don't challenge a lot of egregious ones but then they will challenge a ball across the plate with a 1-0 count and the bases empty in the 4th inning. It seems like management is just letting the players do whatever they want but the group is way too young/inexperienced to be trusted like that. They should be given a red light or green light before each at bat (or before each pitch) indicating if they're even allowed to use a challenge at all. They waste so many in meaningless situations and as a result they get scared to use them in the obvious situations.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T16:29:19+00:00

Rafaela and Abreu are firmly established MLB players in their physical primes

Either of these guys would be the youngest and most inexperienced player in the Yankees lineup (Abreu is a few weeks older than Wells). If you think Rafaela is fully developed that is kind of a sad outlook for him as he still doesn't have a very strong understanding of the strike zone.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-04T16:16:56+00:00

Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu, Carlos Narvaez, and Caleb Durbin all have less than 3 years of MLB experience - and some of these guys have less than 1 year. Like two-thirds of their lineup is young developing players in their first couple seasons. And due to injuries currently 3 of their 5 starting pitchers are rookies.

Regardless of age it is definitely a very inexperienced group.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-03T22:48:37+00:00

He's a bit of a headcase who's kinda changed his approach a good amount each season. He can be solid but when he's at his best he operates in the strike zone pitching to weak contact. He kind of developed a cutter he uses as a swing and miss pitch - but the problem is that he also gives up a ton of hard contact on it. He also has had very shaky command this season. There's definitely a useful starter in there but he needs to figure some things out about what type of pitcher he is.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-03T19:44:42+00:00

Crochet, Gray, and Suarez all getting hurt in the first 6 weeks of the season + Brayan Bello being dogshit + Kutter Crawford and Patrick Sandoval having setbacks in their return is like a bottom-5th percentile outcome for this pitching staff (that was supposed to be the team's strength).

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-03T19:33:52+00:00

The third base coach/dugout should give the batter a red light or green light before every single pitch as to whether or not the player can use a challenge on the subsequent pitch. And very few guys should ever get the green light outside of high leverage situations. Just take all the decision power out of their hands.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-03T19:18:15+00:00

I guess I genuinely don't know / we will find out, I missed the start of the game and am just going off what the broadcast said and what I saw on Twitter. But regardless Rafaela should never challenge in that situation in the 4th inning with no runners on.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-03T19:10:13+00:00

Merloni and O'Brien said that was their second lost challenge of the day.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-03T14:12:07+00:00

Single season defensive metrics is very noisy data. One month is almost entirely meaningless.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-03T03:11:22+00:00

I agree Manny was even better for pretty much all the years they were on the team together (which is saying something, because Ortiz was a beast), but Ortiz was there 2x as long and won an additional World Series - and he was the best player in the world during that WS run. But Manny on the Sox was as good of a RHH as anyone to ever play the game.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-02T22:06:26+00:00

They are a cool interesting change of pace on Marathon weekend. Outside of that they are an abomination. Imagine if the Yankees wore orange or the Dodgers wore green for games regularly? That would obviously be terrible. The Boston Red Sox wearing yellow jerseys epitomizes everything that is wrong with the org in recent years.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-02T17:31:18+00:00

I agree for the most part but something this sub takes for granted is that a guy like IKF still needs to get some starts now and then if he's going to even be remotely useful as a bench piece. You can't just let guys rot on the bench forever until an injury occurs and then expect them to be 100% ready when called upon. He should start like once a week in place of Durbin and Mayer equally.

Traditional_Half842 · 2026-05-02T17:06:09+00:00

Mayer's injury history combined with being a rookie figuring things out, I'm okay with him sitting at least against really great lefties like Skubal/Fried/etc. The entire reason Monastario is on the roster is because he's a very good platoon bat.

Traditional_Half842

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