11-9-2011: Other areas of need and available free agents

Ben Cherington came out yesterday and suggested that the Red Sox were not likely to be big players on the free agent market this offseason. I think he’s being genuine, but even if they were, what good would it do them to come out and say that?

Here are the problem areas as I see them, and some free agent projections (all numbers assume a transition to the AL East).

1. Starting pitching

With so much money already committed to the rotation, I would be surprised if the Red Sox continued to throw money at this problem. Adding C.J. Wilson or Yu Darvish would be nice, but can we afford another $100M contract here, while our core players will be earning more and more every season? Signing a big arm to a long-term deal like that might mean saying goodbye to Jon Lester or Clay Buchholz once their current deals expire.

Name	Age	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA	WHIP
CJ Wilson	31	182.1	8.2	3.7	0.5	3.42	1.30
Roy Oswalt	34	161.6	7.1	2.4	0.9	3.93	1.30
Erik Bedard	33	64.2	8.7	3.5	1.0	3.94	1.36
Hiroki Kuroda	37	154.8	7.2	2.4	1.0	4.06	1.34
Mark Buehrle	33	189.1	4.9	2.1	0.9	4.10	1.39
Edwin Jackson	28	186.5	7.3	3.3	0.9	4.14	1.45
Freddy Garcia	35	109.2	6.1	2.7	1.0	4.27	1.40
Bartolo Colon	39	93.8	7.0	2.7	1.2	4.28	1.40
Javier Vazquez	35	167.3	8.0	2.7	1.3	4.41	1.33
Jeff Francis	31	123.2	5.6	2.4	0.9	4.58	1.46
Paul Maholm	30	161.2	5.5	3.2	0.9	4.68	1.54
Tim Wakefield	45	118.8	5.8	3.3	1.1	4.92	1.46

As you can see, bringing back Tim Wakefield really shouldn’t be an option; almost any free agent is likely to be better than him going forward. Erik Bedard has huge injury concerns, and that’s not what this staff needs. Hiroki Kuroda doesn’t seem likely to come out east. I think Roy Oswalt could be a fit if he’s willing to take a two-year deal at good money, and Buehrle would be a solid signing if we can get him for fewer than four years. Edwin Jackson scares me a little bit long-term, so I’d avoid offering him more than three years as well.

2. A closer/setup man (or two)

11-1-2011: Replacing Big Papi

The two biggest expiring contracts we have to deal with this offseason are those of DH David Ortiz and closer Jonathan Papelbon. Even though we can’t imagine a Red Sox team without these two integral players, they are both Type A free agents. Letting them walk and signing a replacement would result in a net gain of one or two high draft picks, which is very tempting. Should they be replaced? Can they be replaced? And with whom should they be replaced are some of the biggest questions facing new GM Ben Cherington. Let’s look at the DH problem first. Paying less for a DH seems like a very good way to drop payroll, as no other team has been paying $12M/year for their DH (of course, no other team has been getting our production from the DH spot, either).

What will we be missing?

Ortiz has become THE definition of a prototypical designated hitter, producing a number of stellar seasons since being signed by Theo Epstein before the 2003 season. In his first 5 seasons with Boston, Big Papi produced slugging percentages around or exceeding .600, but has fallen to earth quite a bit since then. Entering his age 36 season, we face the tough choice of re-signing this face of the franchise, or possibly letting him go to a division rival.

Ortiz had quite a renaissance 2011, slashing .309/.398/.554 and smacking 29 home runs. He cut his strikeouts significantly, becoming a much more selective hitter in the process; he posted a career-best 83.3% contact rate. His .321 BABIP suggests that it wasn’t just lucky hits that inflated his numbers, but it was in large part actual performance. Even with the excellent year, here’s what we see for the aging slugger over the next three seasons:

Year	AB	HR	RBI	Avg	OBP	SLG	wOBA	wRAA
2012	543	27	97	0.266	0.354	0.488	0.374	29.9
2013	513	23	86	0.258	0.337	0.462	0.356	17.6
2014	475	19	74	0.249	0.320	0.434	0.336	6.0

Looking at these projections, you can see why a lot of people have been warning against anything longer than a two-year deal for Ortiz; it’s thought that he’s looking for three years. There’s a very good chance that his offensive value just crashes in 1-3 years, so I really would not sign him for more than two years plus maybe a team option.

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)

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.

9-29-2011: RIP to the Red Sox

Last night was such a fitting end to the Red Sox’ 2011 season. With the Sox up 3-2 and the Rays trailing New York 7-0, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that, at worst, we’d be playing that one-game playoff today. But one rain delay, a Dan Johnson pinch-hit home run and a Jonathan Papelbon collapse later, it was suddenly gone. I just have no words. How do you explain a season where we were roundly picked as the best team in baseball, and we collapse like this? How do you explain THIS (image taken from FanGraphs.com):

8-12-2011 Links: Pedey vs Cano, Sabathia vs Sox, Gonzalez grounded, defense, prospects report card

Dustin Pedroia is in the midst of his best season ever, and it has sparked discussions about whether he or Robinson Cano is the best second baseman in baseball. Here is Jonathan Scippa’s interesting take. As for me, give me Pedey every time.

Coming into the year, we were worried about our lefty-leaning lineup and some very tough starters in our division. So why is CC Sabathia so bad against Boston this season? David Pinto takes a look.

Mike Axisa at FanGraphs has some nice plots which show how Adrian Gonzalez has fallen into hitting a ton of grounders since about June 18, and how that has directly sapped his home run power. He could be headed for about a 27 HR season, which is lower than most people predicted, but is pretty well in line with the 30 HRs I predicted.

As Sox Therapy points out, the Red Sox defense has gone from very good to great this season, and it’s been a huge reason for our success in June and July.

Wondering how our top prospects are doing on the farm? John Sickels has a summary for you. (SPOILER: It ain’t pretty.)

6-24-2011: Gonzalez, Ortiz and inter-league play

I’m not sure what all the uproar is about. Adrian Gonzalez is the better hitter. He’s the better fielder by far at first base. Ergo, David Ortiz should grab some pine and be ready to pinch hit. Okay, nine games is a long time, and maybe you want to give Papi a start or two in there, but nothing more than that.

As for Gonzalez out in right field (or left)? The man is a $150M investment and a Gold-Glove first baseman. I understand that he’s willing to do whatever helps the team, and he’s not totally inexperienced out there, but he’s not used to running full-tilt to snag flies, or catching balls against the wall or rushing a throw to the plate. Why put him in an unfamiliar situation where he might hurt himself and be out for much longer than a game with Big Papi at first?

6-2-2011: May wrapup, a great month

The month of May was a good one for the Sox, a really good one. They began the month at just 11-15 on the year, scraping the bottom of the division. The offense was barely average, and the pitching was decent but inconsistent. What a difference a month makes. Now Boston sits at 30-26 on the year, and is in second place, just two games back of the Yankees, despite the recent three-game sweep at the hands of the ChiSox. What have been the keys to this turnaround?

Offense

The Red Sox offense was the most potent in the American League in May, and not by a little. Putting up 126 runs in 29 games (5.38 runs/game) is very impressive by 2011 offensive standards, where league average is just 4.30 runs/game. Just a year ago, the average was 4.45 runs/game, and the year before that, it was 4.82 runs/game. So you probably have to kind of mentally add a quarter to a half run per game onto that figure if you want to compare with previous years.

Month	R/G	Avg	OBP	SLG	BABIP	wOBA	BB%	K%
April	4.11	0.243	0.331	0.380	0.283	0.319	10.9	21.1
May	5.38	0.287	0.349	0.472	0.317	0.361	7.9	18.4

As a team, the Red Sox put up a .287/.349/.472 slash line and a .361 wOBA (second was the Yankees at .340) and were about 26 percent better than the average AL offense. Looking at the walk and strikeout rates, it looks like the Sox as a team got more aggressive, and it’s been paying off. also, the power is back on. They hit the most doubles with 61 and tied with New York for first with 39 HRs this month. Even the running game got started (along with Carl Crawford), as the Sox swiped 28 bases in May. Some of this extra production comes from that high .317 BABIP in May. With league average at .286 on the year, that’s going to fall back to earth a bit. Still, this offense has moved up to fourth on the year and has the potential to keep pushing up the ranks.

5-23-2011: Papi’s new groove

I posted a few weeks ago about how David Ortiz seems to have completely changed his plate approach, and how it has really revived his career. Big Papi appeared to be reaching the end of his DHing career the past two seasons, but has really broken out this season.

Take a look at his Fenway spray charts from this year compared to last season:

Spray charts taken from redsox.com

You can see how he’s really spreading the ball out and using the opposite field. Papi has always peppered the Monster for singles and doubles, but the distribution is different. Notice that he hasn’t pulled a single double down the line this year, and half of his Fenway HRs have been Monster shots, while he hit only 4 of those all of last year. Also of note, no bunt/infield singles to the left side against the overshift.

Maybe it’s the influence of Adrian Gonzalez, as Rob Bradford has suggested. Maybe it’s not being expected to be the only lefty power bat in the lineup. Whatever it is, it’s working, as Papi’s .299/.373/.530 slash line can attest. A big part of that success is his .300/.397/.480 against southpaws. Different approach? Small sample size (58 PA)? Time will tell.

5-22-2011: Farm report for Portland

The Portland Sea Dogs stand at just 12-26 on the season, sitting in the basement of their division of the Eastern League.

Offense

As a team, there’s a lot to like about this year’s Sea Dogs. They’ve averaged 4.5 runs per game, good for 5th in the Eastern League, but their team line of .270/.348/.399 shows that they have a dynamic offense that gets on base plenty. In fact, most of their regulars show up as being league average or better:

Name	PA	BB%	K%	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	BABIP	wOBA	wRC+
Alex Hassan	166	16.1%	12.5%	0.359	0.472	0.531	1.003	0.384	0.458	194
Jonathan Hee	85	9.9%	25.0%	0.309	0.413	0.441	0.854	0.400	0.400	155
Will Middlebrooks	145	5.0%	24.6%	0.299	0.333	0.500	0.833	0.365	0.376	138
Che-Hsuan Lin	161	12.4%	10.1%	0.268	0.373	0.333	0.706	0.298	0.344	117
Tim Federowicz	156	9.3%	17.8%	0.267	0.331	0.400	0.731	0.300	0.332	109
Mitch Dening	74	8.1%	25.4%	0.238	0.333	0.381	0.714	0.289	0.324	103
Ryan Lavarnway	158	9.2%	21.3%	0.235	0.307	0.404	0.712	0.245	0.323	103
Oscar Tejeda	140	8.8%	18.9%	0.262	0.331	0.361	0.692	0.313	0.323	103
Chih-Hsien Chiang	97	6.5%	21.8%	0.241	0.290	0.425	0.716	0.277	0.322	102
Jorge Padron	148	9.7%	10.1%	0.271	0.340	0.341	0.681	0.293	0.317	98
Ryan Dent	64	7.8%	19.0%	0.224	0.281	0.276	0.557	0.271	0.281	74

The lineup has been paced by LF Alex Hassan, who at age 23 continues to put up very good offensive numbers, despite lacking the HR totals you want to see in a legitimate prospect. He lacks the pure athleticism the Red Sox usually like in their outfielders, but he has always hit well and he can play in right field, so he has some flexibility. His minor league career has been limited by some injuries, but Hassan has always produced, and he does smack quite a few doubles, which means he could still become a pretty decent Major Leaguer.

Che-Hsuan Lin, recently promoted to Pawtucket, is a very good defensive centerfielder, and he handles himself well at the dish. Not much power to speak of, but a high OBP and low K rate are nice to have in a speedy slap hitter. Still just 22 years old, I could see him being a 4th outfielder type as early as next season.

Solid performances from both Tim Federowicz and Ryan Lavarnway, which means that our catching depth will be quite a bit better next year than it is this year.