Links 11-1-2011: Pedroia wins a Fielding Bible award

Congratulations to Dustin Pedroia, who finished first among all second basemen in this year’s Fielding Bible Awards (expanded results are here). Adrian Gonzalez finished in second place among all first basemen, making the right side of our infield the best in baseball. Those of you holding out for us to sign Albert Pujols, it ain’t happening. You can’t play either of those guys at DH or anywhere else.

Carl Crawford finished eighth in left field, and Jacoby Ellsbury was sixth among centerfielders.

10-31-2011: Sox pick up Scutaro, decision remains on Wheeler

With the World Series over, MLB players have started to declare for free agency. That means the deadline for teams  exercising or declining their options on players is coming right up.

The Red Sox exercised their $6M option on Marco Scutaro yesterday. The 35-year old shortstop had an excellent season, hitting .299/.358/.423 this year and exhibiting the contact (94.7% contact rate) and pesky hitter skills (3.92 P/PA) the Sox valued when they brought him aboard.

Defensively, Scutaro played well (+1.0 UZR/150) at a premium defensive position where Jed Lowrie seems to be proving less and less capable the past two years (-15.4 and -17.4 UZR/150). Scutaro has been about average at the position since he joined the Sox two seasons ago, so it makes a lot of sense to keep him on one more year, with Jose Iglesias still on the cusp of the Majors. A 2013 roster with Iglesias starting and Lowrie as the utility infielder looks pretty good to me.

10-26-2011: Lackey getting TJ surgery

At his inaugural press conference, new GM Ben Cherington announced that pitcher John Lackey will undergo Tommy John surgery and miss all of 2012.

Several take-home points from this:

• Lackey’s poor showing in 2011 was likely due at least in part to his bum elbow; it wasn’t completely a change in talent level so much as it was an injury.
• The front office should have secured another starter besides Erik Bedard, or at least had a better contingency plan.
• The lost season means that Lackey’s option year kicks in for the league minimum (making him potentially tradeable towards the end of his deal).
• The option year means that the AAV of his deal goes down to $13.8M, which helps in determining the CBT payroll.

The Sox will have to be in on one substantial free agent pitcher, or else swing a deal for one this offseason. What do you think is the right approach?

Link 10-20-2011: PITCHf/x analysis of Lackey

Josh Weinstock takes a look at what’s troubling John Lackey the past two years as a Red Sox.

The PITCHf/x data shows his velocity and movement to be just fine, but it appears his command is slipping. Specifically, fastballs to lefties have been right over the plate at times and have gotten clobbered to the tune of .343/.401/.514 this year. Much of that is due to an astronomical .383 BABIP for southpaws, but you have to admit it’s concerning the way everything appears to be over the heart of the plate.

One other hint that command was an issue: try 19 hit batsmen in 160 IP on the season, a new career high. His previous high was 12 back in 2007, and he pitched 224 innings that year.

If you look at his pitch selection, you’ll see that Lackey went away from his fastball and towards his slider a lot more this year, possibly because of this issue. That’s been his only plus pitch since he’s joined Boston. The pitching coach needs to get in there and work with this guy, because he’s not going anywhere until he builds up some trade value.

10-17-2011: The Lackey situation

Everyone is pretty worried about John Lackey and the three years remaining on his contract. What do we do with this albatross? Certainly none of the stats guys saw this coming. Curt Schilling claims that Lackey can’t rebound from the year he’s had, and the stats are beginning to agree. Here’s what we see in the crystal ball, taking into account his poor performance this year:

10-14-2011: How much did Ellsbury change his projection?

Jacoby Ellsbury recently won AL Comeback Player of the Year, and with good reason. His MVP-caliber performance really buoyed this offense when they lost key contributors like Kevin Youkilis. He is definitely one of the bright spots in a season filled with bad news.

Here is what we projected for him coming into 2011, based on his previous three years of performance:

Age	AB	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	SB	Avg	OBP	SLG	wOBA	wRAA
27	478	18	6	8	36	63	42	0.280	0.336	0.390	0.347	11.5
28	482	18	6	8	36	63	40	0.280	0.336	0.389	0.346	11.0
29	481	18	5	8	36	62	38	0.279	0.335	0.387	0.344	9.9
30	476	17	5	8	34	61	36	0.278	0.333	0.384	0.341	8.1
31	465	16	5	8	32	59	33	0.276	0.330	0.379	0.336	5.7
32	449	15	4	7	30	56	31	0.273	0.325	0.373	0.331	2.9
33	429	14	4	7	27	53	28	0.269	0.319	0.366	0.325	-0.1
34	404	12	4	6	24	50	26	0.265	0.312	0.358	0.318	-3.2
35	375	11	3	5	20	46	23	0.261	0.305	0.348	0.310	-6.1

Boy does that look dumb now. Once we factor in his amazing 2011, the projection now looks like this:

10-13-2011: Some random thoughts on free agents

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to leave all this clubhouse talk behind and start thinking about next year. We’ve got a number of decisions to make on our own guys, and I’ve heard lots of names bandied about, which I’d like to weigh in on and discuss.

David Ortiz, DH (age 36 next year)

The guy has been great for us, and he had a wonderful bounceback year. I expect he’ll be wanting a three- or even four-year deal, but I would like to see the Sox spend no more than 2/20 on him if he stays. Is anyone convinced that he will definitely duplicate his numbers next year? How about in two years? Three? Given his age and his recent comments, maybe we SHOULD let him go, take our draft picks and let Kevin Youkilis DH. We can sign a stopgap third sacker and let him compete with Jed Lowrie/Mike Aviles for the job until Will Middlebrooks is ready.

C.J. Wilson, SP (age 31 next year)