Life In The Cell

On the Departure of Nick Masset

To be honest, I’m happy that Nick Masset is gone. He just isn’t that good, which is unfortunate because he was unecessarily placed in higher leverage situations. The first stat most people look at his ERA and his is at 4.64 which turns out to be a 95 OPS+ which doesn’t sound that bad, but that’s until you account for the fact he’s a reliever. League average ERA is 4.40, but league average for a reliever is 3.93. This means e gives up almost 3/4 of a run more than your average reliever. I would even go so far as to say he’s lucky to have that low of an ERA. His WHIP is 1.701, which is abysmal. It is just poor. It’s probably due that high WHIP (specficially his 55 hits in 44 innings) that he has allowed so many inherited runners to score; on the year he’s allowed 10 of his 22 inherited runners to score, but those numbers don’t show up on the stat sheet. By way of comparison, Boone Logan who has pitched in more games with a 4.21 ERA has allowed only 5 of his 28 inherited runners to score. The high number of inherited runners is another indictment against Masset.

The one question Nick’s departure brings (besides when to throw a party) is who replaces him in the ‘pen. The Sox have a few options, and I would like to suggest Clayton Richard with the two caveats that the Sox don’t mind having a large number of lefties in their pen (Thornton, Logan) and assuming that he doesn’t stick as a starter this season. Clayton has shown to ability to get through lineups at least once or twice, and could easily fit in as a long reliever as Masset had. His groundball tendencies will help as well, because not letting up homers is a plus for relievers. Of course, there is always the possibility that Kenny swings a deal for a reliever in the next hour and fifteen minutes. So I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

One other roster question is who gets the boot to AAA, Brian Anderson or Dewayne Wise? Wise is out of options I believe, so he would have to clear waivers and then elect to go to AAA, though maybe since he already did that once this year he won’t have to again, I’m not 100% sure. I reckon it’ll be Wise that gets sent down. BA provides better defense and Griffey is a left handed bat, so that may eliminate the need for Wise. On the upswing, I reckon Russell will get called up from AAA.