- 5 months ago
Bill Koch joined Toucher & Hardy to talk Red Sox and believes they have a real shot at the playoffs thanks to a deeper roster and expanded postseason field. He’s still concerned about the lack of a solid No. 2 starter behind Garrett Crochet. Koch also questioned why the team wouldn’t include Jarren Duran in a deal for Twins pitcher Joe Ryan. Still, strong recent play from Trevor Story, Lucas Giolito, and the team’s success at Fenway make the Sox a legit contender.
Image courtesy of USA TODAY NETWORK
Image courtesy of USA TODAY NETWORK
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00:00Where are you with the Red Sox right now?
00:02Where do you stand?
00:03Where do you think they are?
00:04What are your expectations as of today?
00:08Well, my expectations are always that they should contend
00:10and be a playoff team.
00:12I mean, the field is so expanded compared to what it used to be
00:15when you had one or two division winners
00:17and maybe one extra wild card getting in.
00:21And they're still, even though they're not standing to their maximum,
00:24they're still one of the highest payroll teams in the sport.
00:26So I think that they should play in October every year.
00:30That's just my thought.
00:32And right now, if the season ended today,
00:34we would see them playing postseason baseball.
00:37Okay.
00:38Now, where do you think they stand in the American League?
00:42Do you think the American League is wide open
00:44or do you think there's a dominant team?
00:48How do you read their place in the American League once the playoff starts?
00:52Well, you mentioned Detroit.
00:54Obviously, they're playing very well.
00:55Houston, even though Boston just swept them,
00:58Houston is a good team.
01:00When you have two guys out front,
01:02you're rotation like Hunter Brown and Frambo Valdez.
01:05You're pretty good.
01:06The lineup is excellent.
01:10You know, and certainly the Yankees have stumbled here,
01:14run into some trouble, you know,
01:16but there's still a problem, still talent in that clubhouse.
01:20Seattle, you mentioned, I don't think anyone got,
01:25I don't think anyone did more to strengthen their team at the deadline
01:28than Seattle did, adding the hitters that they did to the pitching
01:32that they already had.
01:34But I certainly think that as the AL sits right now,
01:37that Boston will be a playoff team.
01:39They're basically contending with the Yankees, the Mariners, and the Rangers.
01:43Two of those teams will get spots.
01:47One of them will be left out.
01:48That's the wild card race.
01:50And I think Boston has enough to get there.
01:52Do you believe, Fred was just talking about pitching,
01:55do you believe in Lucas Giolito and Brian Bale?
01:58Because one of those two guys is going to have to start a game two for you.
02:01That was probably the most disappointing thing about the trade deadline
02:06is the gap between Garrett Crochet and whoever would start second in a series
02:12is still too large for me.
02:15You know, even if you'd gotten Merrill Kelly,
02:17and it cost the Rangers three top 13 prospects to get Merrill Kelly,
02:23who's going to be rental.
02:24But even if you got him, you would have bridged that gap a little bit.
02:27I don't know if this is the real Lucas Giolito or the real Brian Bale.
02:32I have no idea.
02:33Their past performances, both in Boston and elsewhere,
02:37would tell you that they're somewhere in between what they're showing recently
02:41and what they showed earlier in the season or last season or in previous years.
02:48So I don't know.
02:49How do you guys feel if you see Crochet wins game one,
02:53or even better, Crochet loses game one,
02:57and you have to put Lucas Giolito out there in game two.
03:00I know that my confidence level would have been a lot higher
03:03if I had had Joe Ryan or if I had had even someone like Merrill Kelly,
03:09who pitched very well in the postseason recently.
03:11If it's a morning game, I feel pretty good about it.
03:13Right, exactly.
03:14Despite his love of reading, he got up and did that.
03:17But let's talk about Joe Ryan because this whole story is pretty interesting.
03:22Right.
03:22If you had Joe Ryan, you've got as good one, too, as anyone.
03:25I mean, then you're in conversation of who's going to beat you.
03:29I mean, you know, no one's better.
03:32I mean, someone might be the same, but no one's better.
03:34So Joe Ryan thought he was getting traded.
03:36It came out on social media.
03:38He was getting traded.
03:39Now there are people that cover the team that are going –
03:43the Red Sox were willing to go all in on him,
03:45but they didn't want to give up an everyday player.
03:48What are you hearing about how close it was?
03:50How much of this crap do you believe in terms of the offers
03:54and the validity of those?
03:56What is your take on it?
03:59Well, the Red Sox are saying that, you know,
04:01we were uncomfortably aggressive, I think was Craig Dreslow's term.
04:05And the Twins are obviously leaking to Ken Rosenthal that, you know,
04:10Boston wasn't anywhere close.
04:12And that, you know, whatever they offered for Joe Ryan wasn't enough
04:16to get it done.
04:17Now he and that group of pitchers are among the most valuable commodities
04:22in baseball, the controllable starter, someone who is cheap,
04:27someone who hasn't hit free agency yet, but who is an elite arm.
04:31And none of those guys moved, to be fair.
04:34Nobody else got a deal done for a controllable starter.
04:38So it wasn't just the Red Sox who fell short trying to get a pitcher
04:41with term left.
04:43But, you know, in terms of what they offered, Craig Dreslow basically said
04:48that they didn't offer a major league player for him.
04:52So Jaron Duran, whatever final proposal they made,
04:56probably wasn't part of those discussions.
04:58Certainly Roman Anthony wouldn't have been part of those discussions.
05:01Willier Brahe might not have been part of those discussions.
05:04You would assume that the Red Sox would deal from the outfield because that is
05:07their position of strength.
05:08And I get the sense that they weren't going to go there,
05:12that they were offering minor leaguers prospects for Joe Ryan,
05:15and the Twins wanted more.
05:17Okay.
05:18So say the Red Sox were like, you're not giving up Anthony or, you know,
05:24that's ridiculous.
05:26I wouldn't do that.
05:27Give up an everyday kid that could be a star for a pitcher.
05:30I wouldn't do that in general.
05:33That's already in the major leagues.
05:35But say they were like, okay, because this is what some people are saying,
05:39is that they were like, they went nuts with prospects.
05:42They were just like, take them, take them, take them.
05:44And then they were like, well, we also want Duran.
05:48Why would that be the stumbling block?
05:50Like if you were willing to, you know, purge your minor league system,
05:55why would be your fourth outfielder be the difference between getting that deal?
05:59Duran is an everyday player.
06:00Hang on real quick.
06:01You're so much better with Ryan than you are with Duran.
06:06No one would argue that.
06:07I'm sure you wouldn't argue that.
06:09Why would that be the stumbling block for you?
06:11I don't believe that.
06:12I can't believe that.
06:15That's a great question.
06:17And certainly if, let's say the Twins were to ask for Duran,
06:21Peyton Tully, who's your top prospect who, according to reports,
06:24is going to be promoted to Worcester here,
06:26and maybe more like the Password, who is on fire in Worcester right now
06:31and hitting home runs left and right.
06:34For me, if I felt like I could get an extension done with Joe Ryan
06:38and, you know, I felt like he had said maybe to some of my guys at the All-Star game,
06:42hey, I want to come to Boston, and yes, I'd want to be there long term,
06:46you'd have him and Garrett Crochet locked up for an extended period.
06:50You'd have Anthony here for an extended period.
06:53Williur Bray, who's still not making much money.
06:56Sedan Raffaella already locked in.
06:58Your infield mix, you know, you could sprinkle certain guys there,
07:03you know, maybe try to get an extension done with Bregman,
07:06you know, maybe see how the rest fill in.
07:08I certainly think that you're in the window right now
07:11and that if you were to bring in Ryan,
07:13you're at a point where you could win a World Series
07:15or at least get there this season.
07:17Yeah, that just struck me as odd that you would go,
07:23we're all in on this kid.
07:25Obviously, the Twins are going to be like,
07:26this is a controllable asset that is worth a ton.
07:30You go, here's my minor league system, take who you want,
07:34but by the way, you can't have our fourth outfielder, who's 29.
07:37That doesn't make any sense to me.
07:39And doesn't play a lot against leftists.
07:41And I heard this as being like a valid argument against it,
07:44which is ridiculous to me.
07:46That's the move you made.
07:49The other thing that might have happened here is the Twins sold,
07:54you know, basically traded eight or nine guys off the Major League roster.
07:58You know, they're going to have a change in ownership there.
08:02So you're wondering what their salary structure is going to be.
08:06You know, if they wanted to strip down payroll to get to the point
08:10where new ownership would come in and there wouldn't be any big contracts there,
08:13I think that was a big part of dealing Carlos Correa to the Astros.
08:18But maybe they took a step back and said, wait a minute,
08:21we're working on these five or six other deals.
08:24Joe Ryan's our primary asset.
08:26We don't need to trade him right now.
08:28We could let this get to the offseason.
08:31Everyone's going to know at this point that he was out there at least being
08:34discussed at the trade deadline with the Red Sox and who knows who else.
08:38That could be a deal that Boston revisits at the winter meetings,
08:42and it could certainly be something that the Twins could use as leverage
08:46against other teams as well to drive up the price.
08:50Okay.
08:50And do you think that that's a deal better done in the offseason
08:53or better done at the trade deadline?
08:56Well, for Boston, I think it would have been better at the trade deadline
09:00because you get, you know, however many more starts out of the guy,
09:03you know, 10 to 12 starts over these 60 games.
09:06And you might get the Twins at a point where you might be in one of the primary
09:13suitors.
09:13It might be you and two other teams.
09:15If you get to the winter meetings and teams have a chance to set their rosters
09:18and their budgets for next year, now it might be you and five other teams.
09:22So you might end up paying more next offseason.
09:25It might be, you might not trade a major league player,
09:29but you might need to trade three or four prospects like what they needed to give
09:33away to get Garrett Crochet out of Chicago.
09:36Yeah.
09:37I just, I wonder if the Red Sox were trying to tell themselves that they didn't
09:43need to do it at the trade deadline because, as they said, Bill,
09:46they really liked their team.
09:48They liked the roster.
09:49They liked the way they were playing.
09:50But even if that were the case, there's no way they foresaw, you know,
09:55winning series against the Dodgers and the Twins and then sweeping Houston,
10:00which is, you know, what it's taking for some people to realize, okay,
10:03maybe it's not the worst thing in the world, but I, you know,
10:06I can't give them credit for thinking that that was going to happen.
10:11No, I don't know if they saw that coming, you know,
10:14certainly not against Houston who they've struggled with in the past.
10:18Or even taking the series from the Dodgers.
10:21I know the Dodgers hadn't been playing well up in, you know, for a stretch,
10:24but yeah, there's no, there's no way you would have reasonably expected that to
10:28happen.
10:30No.
10:30And, but you've got some guys, you know,
10:32we mentioned G Alito, obviously who's pitching very well.
10:36He's got a 0.33 ERA in his last four starts at Fenway Park.
10:41Trevor Story looks like the guy, you know,
10:44from like 2017, 2018 with the Rockies at this point, you know,
10:49he's got an 886 OPS in his last 52 games,
10:52which is not something that we've seen from him in three plus years in Boston.
10:56If he's going to hit like an all-star in the middle of the lineup with
11:00everything else that they have going on, you know,
11:03this is a much more formidable team, you know,
11:06and I think we've seen, you know,
11:09what they've done at Fenway this year compared to last year,
11:11last year, they're five games under at Fenway this year, the 37 and 21.
11:15This is a true home field advantage again.
11:18And it hasn't felt like that in a few years,
11:21despite what we see in the crowds and the fact that, you know,
11:24the Dodgers took over.
11:26Not exactly loud at Fenway for the home team anymore.
11:29I was at that Dodgers game, that Sunday Dodgers game,
11:32and that was a Dodgers home game.
11:33Yeah.
11:34At least where I was sitting.
11:35I mean, very good seats, Jonathan.
11:37Of course.
11:38But I mean, I'm not with the riffraff, but I mean,
11:41I'm no Tony Maz in the owner's box, but I am there at the game.
11:44But yeah, that was funny during the Dodgers series.
11:48It's a much better constructed team to play at Fenway in recent years.
11:53You've got some right-handed hitting on this team, finally.
11:55You know, with Bregman obviously coming in,
11:58Story performing the way he has recently,
12:00and a lot of the platooning they've done,
12:02a lot of the mixing and matching that Alex Cora has done
12:05with right-handed hitters against left-handed pitching.
12:07Some of those guys have performed,
12:08whether it's Ref Snyder or Romy Gonzalez,
12:11or even earlier in the year, Abraham Toro.
12:15So this team might be better constructed to play at Fenway Park
12:18than some of the previous recent versions,
12:21and I think the record bears that out.
12:25All right.
12:25Well, look, great appearance, Bill.
12:27Bill Koch, read him in the Providence Journal.
12:30Thanks so much for coming on.
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