9-22-2011 Link: A defense of Theo Epstein

For all of you who are laying the blame for our September meltdown squarely at Theo Epstein’s feet: Brian MacPherson of the ProJo points out that the injuries we’ve sustained to the rotation this year would have been devastating for any club. The fact that we’re still the favorites for the wild card is pretty impressive.

I’m not saying that Epstein is free from blame, not at all. But who could have foreseen the loss/implosion of 60% of our starting five? In my opinion, going into the season with Tim Wakefield, Andrew Miller, Alfredo Aceves, and Felix Doubront as depth starters was not unreasonable. They went out and got Kevin Millwood and Erik Bedard, but I think the front office could have done more to shore up the rotation, once they realized how bleak the situation was getting to be.

And don’t forget the devastating losses of Rich Hill and Bobby Jenks too. This bullpen went from being a real strength to a weakness pretty quickly with the loss of these two. Matt Albers and Daniel Bard are getting overexposed because they haven’t been there, and Dan Wheeler hasn’t been effective.

7-18-2011: What to look for at the deadline

The Red Sox are in first place and seem to be a lock for the playoffs. That part is great. And despite the struggles of J.D. Drew, our offense is the best in baseball right now. I don’t see acquiring a big bat to be the priority right now. However, we are facing some major instability in the rotation and other areas, which could require some smaller moves to be made. Looking over our current situation, I’d recommend three moves by this year’s trade deadline. Here they are, in order of importance.

Trade for a 4th or 5th starter. Importance: Medium

Jon Lester and Josh Beckett seem to be on track for now, and John Lackey has shown some signs of improvement, but there is still no timetable for Clay Buchholz to return to the rotation. Andrew Miller has been a pleasant surprise, but we don’t know how long he can keep it up, and Tim Wakefield, who hasn’t gone over 140 IP in a year since 2008, is already at 81.2 IP. Should Buchholz not be able to return, or Miller lose it, or Wake’s body break down, I really don’t want two months of Kevin Millwood up here. He’s fine for a few starts, but that’s it.

6-9-2011: Injuries piling on

I’m feeling pretty good about our Sox right now, as they continue to show how faulty the Yankee rotation is. That being said, there are a number of problems developing on the injury front…

The Dice-K Drama

Daisuke Matsuzaka will undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery next week. While many are suggesting that this is the end of his tenure in Boston, he’s still got one year left, and with the speed of recovery these days after TJ, I think we could see him come back for one more go-round. Okay, given the number of headaches Daisuke has given the Red Sox and the amount of time lost to injury, we can safely say that this signing was a failure. Matsuzaka did not live up to the hype or the contract, though he did provide some decent value when he was healthy.

5-17-2011: What we know about our pitchers by now

While several hitting statistics are starting to stabilize by this point in the season, pitching stats take quite a bit longer to mean something. At 150 batters faced, you can reference strikeout rate, GB rate and line drive rate, and at 200 batters faced, you can talk about fly ball rate and FB/GB ratio. Here’s a look at these numbers from our rotation:

	2011						2010
Name	BF	K%	GB%	LD%	FB%	GB/FB	BF	K%	GB%	LD%	FB%	GB/FB
Lester	238	24.4%	55.3%	12.0%	32.7%	1.69	861	26.1%	53.6%	16.9%	29.6%	1.81
Buchholz	202	14.9%	47.0%	14.6%	38.4%	1.22	711	16.9%	50.8%	17.7%	31.5%	1.61
Beckett	195	25.1%	43.8%	16.4%	39.8%	1.10	577	20.1%	45.8%	19.0%	35.3%	1.30
Lackey	192	9.9%	33.6%	21.2%	45.2%	0.74	930	16.8%	45.6%	18.4%	36.0%	1.27
Matsuzaka	167	15.6%	31.6%	12.8%	55.6%	0.57	664	20.0%	33.0%	21.6%	45.5%	0.73
Wakefield	99	11.1%	37.5%	16.3%	46.3%	0.81	610	13.8%	37.0%	16.5%	46.6%	0.79

You can see that Jon Lester is his same dominant self, and that he is clearly the ace of this staff, boasting very high strikeout and ground ball rates. Josh Beckett is fully healthy, striking out hitters at the highest rate in the rotation and a lower line drive rate. Clay Buchholz is very solid in these peripherals, and so we should continue to see solid starts out of him, though he won’t likely reproduce that sub-3.00 ERA from last season.

5-9-2011: The rebuilt bullpen, a work in progress

After one month, it seems that everything about the sub-.500 Red Sox is unsatisfactory. I read this article the other day impugning our new bullpen, and I’ll admit there have been some really bad moments, but has it really been that bad?

As a group, the bullpen has an ERA of 4.89 thus far, which ranks as the 4th-worst bullpen in the AL and 6th-worst figure in all of baseball. But if you take a closer look at the figures, they have not pitched that badly. Rather, their 7.37 K/9 and 0.86 HR/9 rank solidly in the middle, and they’ve walked very few batters at 3.17 BB/9. This translates into a much better 3.74 FIP and 3.78 xFIP (corrected for HR luck), which puts them right in the middle of the pack. Considering that they pitch in the uber-talented AL East, I’d say that’s not a bad performance at all. I’d be happy to get that kind of performance from them for the year.

One glaring weakness has been their inability to prevent runners from scoring, as shown by their 64.6 LOB%, fourth-worst in MLB behind the White Sox, Astros, and Mariners. You could chalk a lot of that up to bad luck, but whatever the reason, once guys get on base, they tend to score more often against the Sox than other teams.

5-3-2011: April farm report for Pawtucket

One month is in the books. You know what’s going on with the Major league club, but here’s a look at our minor league affiliates and some of the interesting performances at each level.

Pawtucket Red Sox (AAA)

The Paw Sox have gotten off to a strong 14-11 start. They have managed to score 5.3 runs/game (2nd best in the International League), while allowing only 3.6 runs/game (3rd in the IL). Despite a middling batting average of .258, the team boasts an excellent .350 OBP and .442 SLG. The pitching has been solid, but perhaps not quite as good as they’ve been early on. The low ERA is largely dependent on a very low rate of 7.5 hits per 9 and 0.7 HR per 9, best in the league.

Name	PA	Avg	OBP	SLG	OPS	BB%	K%	BABIP	wOBA	wRC+
Hector Luna	30	0.429	0.467	0.929	1.395	3.3%	14.3%	0.429	0.592	284
Yamaico Navarro	100	0.321	0.430	0.607	1.037	13.0%	15.5%	0.343	0.451	187
Michael McKenry	43	0.306	0.419	0.528	0.946	16.3%	27.8%	0.375	0.426	169
Drew Sutton	94	0.321	0.394	0.536	0.929	9.6%	27.4%	0.424	0.409	157
Tony Thomas	66	0.268	0.379	0.536	0.915	12.1%	26.8%	0.316	0.406	155
Josh Reddick	109	0.250	0.330	0.583	0.914	11.0%	17.7%	0.222	0.399	150
Lars Anderson	102	0.284	0.422	0.333	0.755	18.6%	27.2%	0.383	0.363	126
Juan Carlos Linares	64	0.233	0.281	0.500	0.781	6.3%	20.0%	0.244	0.331	103
Nate Spears	61	0.189	0.295	0.321	0.616	11.5%	28.3%	0.222	0.291	76
Daniel Nava	96	0.158	0.323	0.224	0.547	19.8%	28.9%	0.218	0.269	60
Ryan Kalish	60	0.236	0.300	0.309	0.609	8.3%	18.2%	0.289	0.268	60
Luis Exposito	56	0.192	0.250	0.327	0.577	7.1%	17.3%	0.214	0.261	55
Jose Iglesias	77	0.233	0.263	0.233	0.496	2.6%	23.3%	0.304	0.228	32

Two of the best hitters have been names who were once considered top prospects at their positions, but fell behind Ryan Kalish and Jose Iglesias on the depth chart. SS Yamaico Navarro has been blistering hot at the dish with 14 XBH, while racking up great walk and K rates. He won’t keep slugging like this, but this 23-year old could earn a look late this year if he keeps hitting well. And if you thought we had a lot of middle infield depth at the Major League level, there’s also 28-year old Drew Sutton, currently batting .321/.394/.536.

2-7-2011: Sox add Reyes to bullpen options, announce NRIs

The Red Sox announced the signing of veteran left-hander Dennys Reyes to a minor league deal this weekend. Should he make the big league club and play a lot, he could earn $1.4M in 2011.

A 34-year old this coming season, Reyes has played 14 years of MLB, and been mostly a journeyman LOOGY reliever. A strong groundball pitcher (career 50.0%), he throws a 90 mph fastball and a good slider, and has a show-me changeup that he will throw to righties. Reyes has always posted decent strikeout rates, but he walks a lot of hitters (as most lefty relievers do). He should be a solid, if unspectacular, option. We project him for about 40 innings and a 3.94 ERA.

Reyes’ signing makes it more likely that the Sox will employ Felix Doubront as a starter, rather than using him in the bullpen. The Sox now have several Major League-caliber lefty options after Hideki Okajima, including Andrew Miller, Randy Williams, Rich Hill, and Reyes.

Non-Roster Invitees

The Sox announced their list of NRIs for this year. As I’ve noted earlier, I like the way that they’ve focused on younger players with some upside as well as veterans who should contribute.

1-2-2011: Okajima signs, bullpen and roster complete

With the signing of Hideki Okajima over the weekend, the Red Sox bullpen makeover is complete and we are looking at a full 40-man and a filled-out active roster.

Here’s what our projections see for this bullpen going forward:

Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	ERA
Papelbon	68.2	9.9	2.9	2.95
Doubront	38.2	8.5	3.8	3.57
Jenks	55.1	8.3	3.1	3.59
Bard	60.2	9.1	3.9	3.61
Miller	38.0	7.8	3.9	3.77
Okajima	57.0	7.9	3.5	3.85
Wheeler	57.1	7.9	3.0	4.09
Albers	34.0	6.6	4.4	4.50
Hill	23.1	8.0	5.4	5.21

Not bad, Mr. Epstein, not bad at all. The projections see Jonathan Papelbon returning to form this season. His ERA was high, but his peripherals were still solid last season, as shown by his 3.51 FIP and 3.72 xFIP last season. As long as he can avoid the DL, I think this is a distinct possibility.

Links 12-17-2010: Sox round out bullpen, Patterson to SD

Red Sox Beacon likes the addition of Bobby Jenks to the end of the bullpen. I think he’ll be very strong as an additional setup man/occasional closer.

The Red Sox announced a slew of minor league signings yesterday, including lefties Rich Hill, Andrew Miller, Randy Williams, Lenny DiNardo. They also signed right-handed pitchers Clevelan Santeliz and Ryan Harvey. So they are obviously trying hard to sift out a quality lefty out of that bunch. Out of those players, Hill, Miller, Williams and Santeliz have Spring Training invites. The nice thing about this bunch is that they’re not all old guys, and have some potential for breakouts. I’m glad we got Miller back, since we traded to get him.

Eric Patterson was sent to San Diego as the PTBNL in the Adrian Gonzalez deal. Patterson will make a nice complement with Cameron Maybin for the Pads as they try to sort out their mix for center field.

Links 7-2-2010: Catcher crisis, MDC to DL, Gammons, SaberCards are back

Like Deepwater Horizon, the Red Sox DL just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Jason Varitek has a broken foot and will miss 4-6 weeks. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except our other catcher, Victor Martinez, has a broken thumb. So the Red Sox went out and got Kevin Cash, trading away Angel Sanchez as a temporary stopgap. Gustavo Molina will act as the backup for now. Neither of these guys can contribute much offensively, so we just have to hope that Martinez returns quickly.

Manny Delcarmen is also going on the DL today with what is being called a forearm strain. It is thought that Michael Bowden, who has been pitching well recently, might get the call. But he’s been throwing as a starter, and we need bullpen help right away. The recently-signed Rich Hill could be called upon as well.

Peter Gammons talks about the Red Sox woes. Interestingly, he brings up Kerry Wood and his 98 mph fastball as a possible deadline acquisition.

For those of you who love the SaberCard idea (like me), there’s another update, this time featuring our own David Ortiz.

Another baseball visualization, the season TripTik. You can quickly see how hot we’ve been at home in June, and that July and August are going to be tough for the Sox, with so many games on the road.