Boston Red Sox: Not worried about the competition

1) Baltimore Orioles

I really wouldn’t want to be an Orioles beat writer.  Sure, that applies all year round. You’ve got the ups and downs of being a perennial middle-of-the-road team with an identity crisis, neither flush enough to spend big nor humble enough to await a serious rebuild, that makes for a pretty difficult to predict, and thus write about, season.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the current offseason has to go down in record as one of the quietest and ultimately underwhelming for some time in Baltimore. Writers contractually obligated to provide content have struggled through endless unlikely rumours and to-and-froing about only one major player – Chris Davis.

Davis was originally the Orioles first baseman prior to his entering free agency where, as expected, he simply re-signed with Baltimore again. What wasn’t expected was the price tag. A staggering contract worth $161 million over 7 years, mostly deferred but nonetheless still applicable. This one, I have to confess, is a touch of a head scratcher for me. Baltimore really didn’t have much competition for Davis and the money will almost certainly tie their hands going forward.

The joke going around was that the Orioles wouldn’t budge beyond $150 million for Davis, so they lost him to the Orioles. A classic case of a joke being funny because it’s true. In the end, the contract is good for Davis and stereotypical of the kind of long term, expensive contract mitigated only through deferrals that his agent Scott Boras advises his clients to seek in free agency. A worrying precedent for the Red Sox as they seek to extend Xander Bogaerts, also a Boras client.

As for Davis, well, he is what he is. He strikes out more than any other player in the league, some 31% of the time in 2015 matching his career average, but what he has is power and lots of it. His clandestine AVG of .262 and OBP of .361 in 2015 belie the beast within. His SLG was a whopping .562 and he hit more dingers than any other player in baseball at 47 for the year. Throw in an OPS of .923 and you have quite possibly the most prolific example of a hulking power bat, the prototypical first baseman that sits somewhere around third or fourth in the batting order and brings many, many runs.

Of course, the figures show he brings many K’s as well, more than any other as noted, but the effects of this are somewhat muted. Take note, for example, that as soon as there are men on base, suddenly Davis is slugging .617, his OPS hits the dizzying height of 1.011 and, in case you were wondering what kind of contact he generally makes, his ISO sits at .338.

Though Davis did have a rather rough 2014, hitting for a hilariously bad AVG of only .196 and yet again cementing himself further as candidate you should definitely not choose to use for a strikeout drinking game at 33%, I’m willing to put this off as a flier. His norm is what it is. He misses a lot, but when he hits he launches.

All this added up to a player worth a pretty 5.6 WAR for the Orioles in 2015 and certainly would be someone they’d struggle to replace should he have left. All the same, how exactly did Baltimore improve from this? Ok, you’ve got Davis back, now what? Instead of looking to improve in other key areas, the Orioles have stood pat and only really lost this off season.

Want another example? They re-signed reliever Darren O’Day. Certainly a good acquisition, but how does this help Baltimore get better in 2016? While the other teams are at least trying to move forward, the Orioles are running up a going-down escalator , fighting to stay still. And losing.

They lost starter Wei-Yin Chen to the Miami Marlins (see number 2 in our list on the first page) and honestly, an argument could be made that he was their best, or at least most consistent, pitcher in 2015. Meanwhile what have they gained? The same strikeout heavy slugger they had all along and that elite reliever who may not even have the chance to make much impact. It doesn’t look promising for Baltimore and certainly, I don’t foresee an uptick in their fortunes barring a major coming-together of breakout seasons.

Though obviously it’s early to tell, Boston likely can rest easy on competition from Camden and perhaps even in the long run. Davis’ contract is a dangerous precedent and likely closes many doors to the future for the Orioles.

Next: 2 - New York Yankees

2) New York Yankees

Well, at least so far, it’s been a fairly quiet offseason for the Yankees by any metric. That’s good. Really when we made the list at the start of this article, we could have put a number 6 on the preference list as “Sells his soul to the forces of evil and signs for New York”. Nothing could be worse for a Red Sox fan than seeing the Yankees get better.

Unfortunately though, they have. While the Yankees have added to their depth by trading for Aaron Hicks and Starlin Castro, they don’t really make any vast improvements to an already, fairly solid Yankee line-up. Their most recent acquisition, however, does. New York seized the opportunity and grabbed super elite closer Aroldis Chapman from the Cincinnati Reds at knock-down prices due to on-going investigations into domestic abuse. And who exactly is surprised? The most hateful team in baseball is going to do hateful things, what does one expect from a pig but a grunt?

Leaving the extreme ethical questions out of the equation, as we’ve discussed before Chapman makes an immediate and immense impact. His Fastball is the fastest there is, averaging over 100 MPH and really that’s all he needs. You’d think someone who throws his heat over 75% of the time would be predictable and ultimately hittable, and you’d be right. Chapman bucks the trend, he carries with him a ridiculous K9 of 15.74 and FIP of 1.94 in 2015 and that’s, honestly, probably as good as you’ll see anywhere.

Now Chapman’s addition to the Yankees may be affordable and certainly, it will make an impact, but it’s questionable how much difference this will actually make for Boston. You see, New York already had two, yes two, elite relievers in Andrew Miller (14.59 K9, 2.16 FIP) and Dillan Betances (14.04 K9, 2.48 FIP) in the bullpen. Take note, both are in the top five relievers in baseball today. With the addition of Chapman, who almost certainly will kick Miller out of his closing role, it really shifts the line-up a notch down and allows for starters to bow out earlier. Note the Red Sox themselves have built their bullpen with much the same in mind (see: Craig Kimbrel, Carson Smith and Koji Uehara).

Still, this doesn’t seal up games by any stretch of the imagination. The Yankees rotation is very suspect with only Michael Pineda and Nathan Eovaldi managing to match half a season of Clay Buchholz at 3.2 WAR (Pineda ended up with 3.5 and Eovaldi with 3.2 in 2015, both over a full season). Both finished with ERAs above 4 and neither looked set to lower that based on advanced sabermetrics. The rest of the line-up is sketchy to say the least. Masahiro Tanaka, the Yankees would be ace, is a walking, pitching health hazard. An extreme version of Buchholz with considerably more pressure to perform on his arm. Luis Severino has potential, but he’s only 21 and even if he is ahead of his time, the Yankees will be unable to get anywhere near a full season of innings out of him for half a decade.

Then there’s CC Sabathia. Oh CC, you are emblematic of all that is wrong with the Yankees, bless you. He’s 35 and pitching worse year-on-year but is locked in an ill-advised albatross contract till at least the end of next year. Indeed this is New York’s biggest issue, they have far too many aged and aging players locked in to too many large contracts. They can no longer afford to make the moves they did in the past, finances be damned, without first shedding some of the load.

So you see, the addition of Chapman is a boon for the Yanks, but it’s not a deal breaker. The Yankee starters are hittable and their hitters aren’t getting any better. A closer can only finish a game already won, but for New York that’s not a given by any means. Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman promised austerity on free agents this offseason and he stuck to his word. Perhaps it was the right move in the long term, but in the short term it’s not making New York any more likely to be playing baseball in November 2016.

Next: 3 - Tampa Bay Rays

3) Tampa Bay Rays

Of all the teams in the league, it’s perhaps a little premature to make any judgments of the Rays offseason. There exist still many rumors involving Tampa, such as interest in trades with the Chicago Cubs for Javier Baez and/or Jorge Soler. Both would bring immediate upgrades to an infamously tame Rays hitting line-up and present something of a threat to the Red Sox and the league.

That the Rays are still very much in the confirmation for major trades this offseason speaks volumes of their depth. Their pitching depth that is. Tampa is famed for its pitching development (thanks for David Price, by the way) and they have a plethora of available and desirable talent that could yet be moved if some offense is available in return. Closer Brad Boxberger and starters Jake Odorizzi or Alex Cobb could garner a significant return and the stars seem to align well between Tampa and a title hungry Chicago.

As of now though, the Rays have had a fairly reasonable offseason with some decent pickups, all, perhaps unsurprisingly, from the trades market. Chief among these was a six man trade with the Seattle Mariners that saw Tampa get Danny Farquhar, Logan Morrison and Brad Miller in return. Of these, Farquhar is the throw in (though a case could be made for Morrison too) and I’d imagine only Morrison and Miller will be fixtures in the 2016 Rays line-up.

Morrison is coming off a fairly ugly year with the Mariners, worth -0.2 WAR and hitting for an abysmal .225 AVG. His OPS was a rather sad .685 and honestly, I struggle to find any redeeming qualities to him. He’s young? I guess? 28 is young for a slugger and stupidly young for a player that will, if he gets any time on the park at all, likely result in him being a DH. Still Morrison has value as a rebound candidate and does manage at least 15 homers every year.

At DH, his bad (dire actually) defense is mitigated and he can cause very little damage on the whole. What he does bring is a fill to one of the many gaping holes in the Rays line-up that can tide them over till their impressive farm system comes of age and carries the weight. He does, it must be said, hit righties a bit better than south paws, in 2015 (a career bad year for him, but not by much) his OPS was a far more serviceable .767 against righties. But he’s not the prize here, no that’d be Miller.

Miller is 26 and was one of the most exciting prospects in the Mariners system for years. A Shortstop, he flashed massive potential with both glove and bat and was, and still is by many, expected to be a star. Of course, his power never fully developed as expected, his line for 2015 stood at .258/.329/.402 which isn’t amazing, or bad, just about average actually. Still that’s only really not that impressive, for his age, when you compare it to say Xander Bogaerts (.320/.355/.421) who is already a star shining brightly for Boston.

Regardless, Miller is a solid acquisition for Tampa and brings a reliable and improving bat, athleticism at SS and decent base running (13 stolen bases in 2015) to a team that desperately needs it. With the Rays amazing pitching rotation, spearheaded by Price protégée Chris Archer, any upgrade to their offense presents a challenge to the rest of the league.

Having said that though, it’s clear these aren’t mega upgrades and Tampa, who finished fourth overall in 2015, needed mega upgrades. It’s difficult to see how the new look Rays, who don’t look all that new really, will be able to usurp the Yankees or the Blue Jays, let alone the Red Sox. Sure, Miller’s a great pickup, but it only really makes up for the loss of Asdubral Cabrera. Much like the Orioles, the Rays seem to be fighting against the current only to stand still.

Next: 4 - Toronto Blue Jays

4) Toronto Blue Jays

Oh boy, this is a toughie. 2015’s AL East champions the Blue Jays really didn’t have to do an awful lot over the offseason to make themselves contenders to do the same again in 2016. They are by default. American League MVP Josh Donaldson is just one of the vast array of offensive talent on baseball’s most offensive team. Throw in Jose Bautista, Troy Tulowitzki and Edwin Encarnacion and you’re going to be getting runs. Many of them home runs.

The pitching situation is a little bit more of a touchy subject in Toronto. They lost Price (admittedly they only had him for a mere 3 months) to their division rivals your Boston Red Sox and replaced him with, well, J.A. Happ. I’m not sure that’s really a replacement as much as it is roster filling. Happ had an impressive second half of 2015 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, flashing ace in September/October (1.75 ERA for the month, 11.25 K/9). That’s all well and good, but really now, Happ is a known commodity and such a small sample size compared to his 9 years of obscurity in the Majors is dizzying.

Obviously Toronto are hoping that the Pirates “fixed” the 33 year old Happ. They’ve done it before for other pitchers, why not for this one? Well he wasn’t exactly pitching in AL East so there’s that. Either which way, it’s more likely that the Blue Jays are quite content to skirt the starters issue altogether. That enormous offensive potential translates into plenty runs. 2015’s World Series winners the Kansas City Royals got their rings off the back of a mediocre rotation backed up by solid bats and a lights out bullpen.

Toronto don’t really have the latter, though they have plenty of the former, perhaps more than any other team in the game. So you see, it’s somewhat difficult to judge the future of what already was a pretty complete line-up that didn’t really do any awful lot over the offseason. Sure, they lost Price. That’s a seriously big loss by any metric, but they still have more than enough quality to get the job done.

Undoubtedly Toronto will be Boston’s top competitor for the division in 2016, but there are reasons to be positive. Even in 2015, Rick Porcello bombs and Eduardo Rodriguez pitch tipping included, the Red Sox came out on top over the Blue Jays as many times as the opposite. In the second half of the season when Boston hit their groove (and Toronto too, for that matter), the Red Sox went 6-3 against the Jays. With the emergence of a young core of talent, the Red Sox showed us that they were very close to competing with the best in the division in 2015, but for a few missing pieces.

Next: Red Sox 25 in 25 - Ryan Hanigan

Dombrowski hopes to have filled all the pieces and the Red Sox are unquestionably the most improved side in the league for it. How far that takes them remains to be seen, but the signs show that Dombrowski may have done just enough at a time of weakness for divisional rivals to ensure a return to contention in 2016 is a very real possibility.