Red Sox Notes: Pivetta, The Roster, Danny & Marwin

Happy fourth everyone!

Happy fourth, Sox Outsider readers! I celebrated the fourth here in Portland, Oregon by attending my first baseball game since some time in 2019. The Portland Pickles are a wood bat league for college kids, part of the West Coast League, and I was able to take in the game with my family and some family friends. It was a beautiful night in Portland, gentle northwest breezes, tall pine trees, and an evening baseball game. I missed it so! I hope your fourth was as fun and meaningful for you as mine was for me.

After the Red Sox completed their most recent sweep of the Yankees on June 27, I mentioned in my piece the next morning that the Red Sox had a bit of an opportunity to put some space between themselves and their closest divisional competitors courtesy of their upcoming schedule. The Sox were set to face the Royals, A’s, Angels, and Phillies before the All Star break, only one of which had a winning record at the time (the Angels do now but didn’t then). If the Sox went 8-5 over that stretch that would be pretty good. Well, they’re half way through it and they’re 6-1. They swept four from the Royals (who really deserved it for taking two of three from Boston a few weeks before) and took two of three from the A’s in Oakland. That’s a nice little stretch there!

There are a few items to discuss though, so let’s hit the notes section and then I’ll let you get back to your day off work.

Nick Pivetta

Pivetta was fantastic again yesterday. In fact, two of his last three starts have been effective perfection. During those two starts he’s pitched 13.2 innings, walked four, given up two hits (in total!), no runs, and struck out 18. Of course in between those two he sandwiched giving up six runs in 4.1 innings to the Royals, so… yeah. You can’t have everything you want is Nick Pivetta’s point. True, Nick, true. Philosophy through pitching.

Maybe it’s recency bias talking (I just watched Pivetta pitch a few hours ago) but it’s not hard to feel confident when he takes the mound. He’s mixing in a devastating curveball with a mid-to-upper 90s fastball and the results are impressive. I think we might be reaching a sorting out point of sorts soon and Pivetta will most certainly be a part that stays. He’s made himself a mainstay of the rotation, at least for this season and likely for longer provided he remains healthy (always a big if with pitchers), and he’s made GM Chaim Bloom look like a genius for trading for him last year.

Marwin

Ellis Burks was doing the Red Sox color commentary for NESN during the Oakland series. I thought he did a good job for the most part, but he did tend to buy into the players a bit. For example, he talked about how good a hitter Marwin Gonzalez is, and that he expects Marwin to be a big part of this team going forward because he’s so good. Ellis, my friend, I love ya, but… no. Marwin is an acceptable defender at second base, but he can’t hit at all. We have several years of data including the last three months of this season including, for whatever it’s worth, yesterdays 0-for-4 day with four strikeouts performance. There aren’t many days when I could honestly and fairly argue my cat could hit as well as a major leaguer but thanks to Marwin, yesterday I could.

I’m not saying Marwin doesn’t deserve a place on this team, what I am saying is the smaller his place on the team is, the better off the team will be. Given the roster right now it doesn’t seem likely he’ll be going anywhere just because there are others in line ahead of him for DFA or ‘ship him to Siberia (Pittsburgh?) ASAP’ but, as I mentioned above, there is a time for change and I do think that time is approaching for the Red Sox. They’re winning, but that doesn’t mean you sit there and don’t improve the team. Something needs to be done…

The Back of the Roster

Perhaps the one thing saving Marwin’s roster spot is Danny Santana who is Marwin, but slightly worse at everything. You’ve all read more paragraphs calling for Santana to be DFA’d than anyone should have to suffer through in a lifetime so I’ll spare you here, except to say the Red Sox are in a bit of a bind. They have a number of roster spots devoted to players who are all fine if they’re the last guy on the roster, but since there are more than one of them (I count four but your mileage may vary) only one of them is actually the last guy on the roster. The others are, instead, blinking neon signs that say Put Actual Player Here.

There are some obvious moves the team can try to improve the major league roster and by this point we all know what they are. OK, repeat after me: [in sing-songy baby voice] Bring up Jarren Duran, bring up Franchy Cordero, bring up Caleb Ort, bring Chris Sale and Christian Arroyo back off the IL… That’s the meat of it, but while some of those things are happening (Arroyo is expected to come off the IL any minute now) and some of those things are happening soon (Sale is expected to start a rehab assignment in the near future), doing some of the other stuff would mean both destroying organizational depth and cutting loose veteran players, two things this organization is loath to do.

It’s odd, certainly, for a team with a 4.5 game lead in their division to opt to not field the best roster they possibly can, but that’s where we are. If the Red Sox DFA Brandon Workman or Yacksel Rios, they’ll leave the organization. Then if Ort or whomever you add in their place gets hurt or performs badly you don’t have the option of bringing up Rios or Workman because they’re gone. You could make a reasonable counter-argument along the lines of ‘aren’t we trying to win baseball games here?’ and ‘if you lose Yacksel Rios you can replace him with whichever Yacksel Rios facsimile shows up on waivers next’ and ‘let’s not over-think putting the best team on the field here’ but those reasonable counter arguments would fall on deaf ears. There could come a time when the Red Sox do try to put their best 26 guys on the field at Fenway Park, but I’m going to guess that’ll be much closer to October than it is to early July. Not saying that’s right or wrong, just that it is.

And so while one of the list might not be long for the roster, the rest will likely remain, at least for the time being.

Draft coming!

The MLB Draft is coming up next weekend and the Red Sox will be picking fourth overall by virtue of the repeated stepping on a rake that was the 2020 season. I’m hoping to have more on this soon, but at least for now, know the Red Sox will have a shot at at least one very good prospect with a chance to make an impact in the majors. That’s probably obvious, and is, so expect better on the subject in this space sometime in the near future. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and happy Fourth everybody!