The “State of the Nation”

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have fantastic news for you today. Rather, I think it’s fantastic, and it impacts Fire Brand. Fire Brand will be at a new home on Monday. I will let you know the URL to update your bookmarks. As you know (or don’t know), I am the Fire Brand columnist and also own Most Valuable Network. I used to write Fire Brand there but moved over here when MVN acquired All-Baseball.com. MVN is moving to a new domain – MVN.com and with that, I’m returning to my MVN roots. The other fantastic All-Baseball blogs will eventually be joining me over there, but for now I will be the only blog over there (which will last only a matter of days before others start writing there). Fire Brand will be what is known as a “guinea pig” … meaning that I’m the site that everyone can tear apart to find bugs. I love the new layout and I look forward to writing on it, and I look forward to seeing you all over there. So without further ado, the final All-Baseball Fire Brand article is penned by Andy Lavin, who also is a Marlins fan who gives his state of the nation because I am at the moment fighting with a rather large bug at the new site which will be fixed by the time you head over there.
The starting nine as presently constituted, and likely go into the season with:
Lugo
Youk
Papi
Manny
Drew
Lowell
Tek
Pedroia
Crisp
Good speed and OBP at the top
Outstanding power bats/OBP in the middle
Solid 6 hitter, declining but serviceable #7 hitter
Unproven yet promising #8 hitter
Well above avg #9 hitter with speed
I have Coco 9th because I want him back to back with Lugo. Them hitting back to back allows the Sox to do some things on the bases (double steal, hit and run, better chance of going from 1st to 3rd on a single, essentially be more aggressive on the basepaths). Pedroia’s production (or lack thereof) in the 8 hole will dictate whether or not he’s more suited for the 8 or 9 hole. Preferably, I’d like to see the two speedsters hitting back to back.
The starting rotation is looking like this (assuming we don’t whiff on a closer and Papelbon isn’t moved back there):
Schilling
Dice-K
Beckett
Papelbon
Wakefield
Evan: I see it as Schilling, Wakefield, Beckett, Matsuzaka and Papelbon.
That’s as solid a starting five as you’re gonna get. Look for Lester to be integrated into this rotation as well as the season progresses, giving the team six above average starters in their respective spots in the rotation.
A quick aside– I watched some video clips of Dice-K last night both in Japan and in the WBC. He was extremely impressive. I loved his mound demeanor (very Pedro-esque in that respect). He’s portrays a very calm like confidence giving off the aura that he’s in charge. I love seeing that out of pitchers. He has a fastball that gets up into the mid 90’s that he’s able to throw by hitters consistently. He loves burying that fastball on the inside corner to right handed hitters. He’s very effective doing that.
Offsetting the fastball is an 80 mph screwball/gyro ball that seems to fall off the table. It has the illusion of a knee/waist high strike, then at the very last second falls off the table.
He also mixed in a slider and a change-up, giving him four effective pitches.
Performance wise, he was as good as it gets in Japan. Probably the best pitcher in Japan during his time there. In his final season there, he was 17-5 with a 2.13 ERA. In 186.1 innings, he struck out 200 while walking just 34!
Did I mention 14 complete games?
He dominated the WBC too, taking home the MVP honors there. He went 3-0 with a 1.38 ERA en route to leading Japan to the title.
He finished his Japanese baseball career with a 108-60 record with a 2.95 ERA and 1.17 WHIP in eight seasons.
Basically, he’s dominated at every level he’s pitched at. The big leagues is the next logical step.
He will have to overcome a few obstacles, however. In Japan, he pitched on five days of rest. Over here he’s gonna have to pitch on a more traditional four days of rest. Will he make the transition? My guess is yes. Don’t look for him to tally 14 complete games, however. 🙂
As for the other starters, I expect Curt to go out on a positive note. I’d look for 15+ wins out of him with at least a top 10-15 AL ERA. Beckett’s second season in the AL should be less turbulent as well. I wouldn’t expect a 5+ ERA again.
Papelbon is conditioning his arm for 150+ innings of work, and it’ll be better for his shoulder/arm to pitch every fifth day as opposed to 2-3 times/week as a closer. I’d only advocate a move back to the closer’s role this year should we whiff on acquiring a featured closer this offseason.
Wakefield as a #5 might be the best #5 in baseball. He’s always a lock for double digit wins. You won’t find many #5s that win ya 10+ games with an ERA in the low to mid 4’s.
Now, where things get dicey is the ‘pen. Okajima I think can be a decent arm for us both in short inning work and as a lefty specialist. He might even emerge as the featured set-up guy on this team. With 681 K’s in 642 innings over in Japan, he’s proven his worth as a K pitcher. Look for him to get some situational work, and if successful, will see increased work as a short inning man and set up guy.
Timlin? I’d look for him to receive the primary set-up duties. We know what we get out of him: solid, unspectacular ball. Probably below average as far as set-up men goes; certainly below average for a set-up man on a playoff team to be sure. I’d like to see him more in a 7th inning role and us go out and get a guy in the Scot Shields/Brandon Donnely mold.
Delcarmen is a good young arm in our ‘pen; more polished than Hansen at their respective stages of their careers. I look for him to see more high leverage situations in ’07. Last year, he had a decent K to BB ratio of 45/17 (close to 3 to 1) in 53.1 innings. His 68 hits allowed over that time is a bit high for my blood. He must get that number down if he’s going to emerge as a 7th inning go-to guy for us. Natural maturation will help there.
A sleeper in the group could be Devern Hansack. He posted impressive numbers last year, albeit with a small sample size. In 10 innings, he posted a 8 to 1 K/BB ratio, accompanied by a WHIP of 0.70 and a BAA of .171. Very good numbers that certainly warrant a further look. I would like to see him get a shot in our ‘pen to see if he can build off last year’s numbers.
As for Hansen, he might have the greatest upside in our ‘pen, but he needs more seasoning. In order to be an effective reliever at this level, he needs a dominant offspeed pitch to offset his fastball. I heard Francona say something in a press conference I thought rang true: “it doesn’t matter if you throw 1000 mph…if it’s straight, it’s gonna get turned around.” That was the case with Hansen last year. If he wants to transition into the future closer of this team, he needs to command at least one other pitch, preferably of the off-speed variety.
Outside of that, this team needs a closer. Where will it come from? Will we trade away a Murphy, Ellsbury, WMP, or somebody of that ilk to acquire one? You’d hate to see this season go into the tank because of an inability to hold a 8th/9th inning lead. To me, I do whatever I can to get a featured closer in here, whether it’s Cordero (WASH), Gonzalez, (PITT), or somebody of a similar caliber, but this team must go into the season with a featured closer. I don’t want to go through April-June with a shaky closer, fall X amount of games behind the Yankees as a result, and be forced to acquire one at the deadline. Ideally, I’d like to get our closer now. And again, Papelbon would be a “last resort” kind of thing.
Well, that’s my state of the team. I really believe we have the offense and the starting pitching to win it all. The big question marks will be the defense and the bullpen. Will Lugo/Pedroia/Crisp be strong enough up the middle to help anchor the team? As it is, the Sox are breaking in a new middle infield tandem this year. Can it work as cohesively and flash as much leather as Gonzalez and Loretta did last year? Time will tell.
As for the bullpen, hopefully the front office will be just as diligent repairing those areas of the team as it was repairing the right field/#5 hitter, SS, and front end starting pitcher holes.