10-6-2011: The year that was

Alright, now that the initial sting has worn off a bit, I can go back and actually try to analyze this past season with some objectivity. We’ll cover our predictions, what went right and what went wrong.

First up, we predicted that the Sox would take the division with 92 wins. While the win figure was not off by much, the Yankees took it with 97 wins (not 90), and of course the Rays edged us out in the final game of the season with 91 wins (not 83). We also had Baltimore with 79 wins and Toronto at 76. Oops.

OFFENSE

We projected Boston to be 2nd best in the AL East at 820 runs behind New York’s 830 runs. In actuality, we led all of baseball by scoring 875 runs compared to 867 for the pinstripes.

Looking at our individual projections, here’s what we see:

Name	xPA	xwOBA	xwRAA	Actual	Diff
Jacoby Ellsbury	519	0.356	18.0	50.0	32.0
David Ortiz	558	0.373	28.9	42.9	14.0
Marco Scutaro	499	0.327	2.7	9.6	6.9
Josh Reddick	110	0.331	1.1	4.1	3.0
Adrian Gonzalez	693	0.392	49.3	51.2	1.9
Jason Varitek	189	0.314	-1.2	0.4	1.6
Jarrod Saltalamacchia	286	0.321	0.1	0.9	0.8
Dustin Pedroia	629	0.379	36.3	35.7	-0.6
Yamaico Navarro	43	0.310	-0.5	-1.2	-0.7
Lars Anderson	39	0.331	0.4	-1.3	-1.7
Darnell McDonald	132	0.330	1.1	-1.7	-2.8
Jed Lowrie	420	0.336	6.2	-5.3	-11.5
Mike Cameron	365	0.347	9.4	-8.5	-17.9
Kevin Youkilis	566	0.407	48.9	20.6	-28.3
Carl Crawford	620	0.374	33.1	-5.3	-38.4
J.D. Drew	522	0.380	30.7	-9.3	-40.0

What I’ve done here is calculate expected offensive runs above average (xwRAA) using forecasted wOBA and expected plate appearances. That’s roughly what we projected each player to contribute offensively. The column marked “Actual” lets you know how the player did in reality, and the “Diff” column tells us who exceeded expectations the most (positive) and who failed the most (negative).

Jacoby Ellsbury came out of nowhere to post a near-MVP caliber season offensively. Instead of producing roughly two wins with his bat, it was more like five, as he clubbed 42 doubles and swatted 32 HR atop the order. David Ortiz was the next overperformer, producing about 50% more with his bat this season than we had a right to expect from him. Offensive contributions from Marco Scutaro and Josh Reddick round out the pleasant surprises of 2011. We got about what we expected from Adrian Gonzalez, Jason Varitek, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and Dustin Pedroia. And in terms of expected production, the players who hurt the team most were J.D. Drew, Carl Crawford, and Kevin Youkilis, in that order. Drew and Youkilis were injured most of the year, but Crawford’s precipitous drop hurt a lot.

PITCHING AND DEFENSE

We predicted that the Sox would ride a strong rotation and amazing defense to allow only 706 runs, but in reality we gave up 737 runs, which was below average in the AL. Instead of posting a 4.01 ERA, the team figure was 4.20. Injuries to Clay Buchholz and Daisuke Matsuzaka, combined with John Lackey’s ineffectiveness, sunk what was supposed to be a great rotation. Also, while the defense enjoyed a great middle of the year, it suffered quite a bit in the early going and then again in September as fundamental baseball went down in flames with the whole team.

Name	xIP	xERA	Actual IP	Actual ERA	IP-Diff	ERA-Diff
Tim Wakefield	122.7	4.70	154.7	5.12	31.9	-0.42
Matt Albers	54.6	4.50	64.7	4.73	10.1	-0.23
Daniel Bard	63.6	3.61	73.0	3.33	9.4	0.28
Josh Beckett	183.9	4.08	193.0	2.89	9.1	1.19
Dan Wheeler	51.5	4.09	49.3	4.38	-2.2	-0.29
Jonathan Papelbon	68.5	2.95	64.3	2.94	-4.2	0.01
Jon Lester	201.5	3.49	191.7	3.47	-9.8	0.02
Scott Atchison	51.9	4.54	30.3	3.26	-21.6	1.28
John Lackey	187.0	4.15	160.0	6.41	-27.0	-2.26
Randy Williams	37.7	4.87	8.3	6.48	-29.3	-1.61
Rich Hill	41.9	5.21	8.0	0.00	-33.9	5.21
Dennys Reyes	40.3	3.94	1.7	16.20	-38.6	-12.26
Bobby Jenks	60.8	3.59	15.7	6.32	-45.1	-2.73
Hideki Okajima	56.9	3.85	8.3	4.32	-48.6	-0.47
Junichi Tazawa	64.2	4.61	3.0	6.00	-61.2	-1.39
Andrew Miller	137.2	3.77	65.0	5.54	-72.2	-1.77
Clay Buchholz	166.1	4.23	82.7	3.48	-83.5	0.75
Felix Doubront	109.8	3.57	10.3	6.10	-99.4	-2.53
Daisuke Matsuzaka	141.4	4.28	37.3	5.30	-104.0	-1.02
Michael Bowden	131.9	3.72	20.0	4.05	-111.9	-0.33
Alfredo Aceves	-	-	114.0	2.61	-	-

We are doing a similar exercise here, but since runs above average isn’t so straightforward for pitchers, we’re comparing expected innings pitched with actual IP and expected ERA with actual ERA. If you concentrate on innings, you’ll see that we used Tim Wakefield, Matt Albers and Daniel Bard more than expected, due to the loss of personnel in the rotation and in the bullpen. Those extra innings are not good for relievers, and generally hurts their performance, as we saw in September for both Albers and Bard. We lost a lot of expected innings from Daisuke Matsuzaka and Clay Buchholz, and we had to limit our usage of guys like Andrew Miller due to ineffectiveness. The loss of innings from guys such as Bobby Jenks and Hideki Okajima was also a big problem. Thank god for Alfredo Aceves and his 114 innings! We would have seriously been up a creek without him. He was the Bronson Arroyo on this staff, always taking the ball whether as a spot starter or a mopup guy or a medium-high leverage situation.

Looking at ERA difference (positive numbers are good), the starter which hurt us the most is John Lackey. A 6.41 ERA is one thing for a reliever, but if you extend that over 160+ innings, it means that you’re basically tripling the effect of a bad reliever. Ouch. We see a number of guys that just didn’t pan out, in light of their career numbers. For some of them, it was the injury bug, but for others… It makes me question what Curt Young was doing all season long. On a positive note, Scott Atchison was reasonably effective out of the bullpen (last year too), and I don’t know why we don’t pitch him more.

Yeah, so some of these differences are just bad projections by me, like expecting over 100 innings from Michael Bowden, for example. That was done to hedge against him possibly being used as a starter this season. But others show a serious problem with our pitching staff. How do we solve the issue? To be continued…

About these ads