One of the biggest concerns we all had coming into this season was at catcher.  Having made a half-hearted attempt at Russell Martin in the off-season, the Sox seemed content to trust the catching role to some linear combination of Saltalamacchia and Varitek.  Seemed very risky (to put it mildly) and after the first 3 weeks of the season, when the offensive production the Sox were getting from the catcher position was the worst in the league (by a fair bit) these concerns seemed well founded.  Lately, there has not been too much discussion of Salty/Tek in a negative way (a good sign).  How does the tandem stack up at the half-way point?

Offensively, you might be suprised to know that the Sox have the second best production from the catcher spot in the AL.  Here are the top 5 teams:

Tigers (wOBA: 0.377 wRC+:138)

Red Sox(0.335, 107)

Rangers(0.323,99)

Jays(0.322,102)

Indians(0.318,100)

Rather amazingly, the Sox are the second best offensive team in the AL at the position.  The Tigers, with Avila's amazing season, are a clear first.  The Sox, after a fall off from the #1 spot, are a clear #2 in terms of wRC+ (only 4 teams have production from the position which ranks higher than or equal to position-neutral average).

Defensively no one would be surprised that the Sox are worse at C then they are offensively. However by WAR (something that should be taken with a grain of salt [no pun intended] for catchers), the Sox rank 4th overall, a shade behind the number 2 Indians (2.3 to 1.9).  It is fair to assume that while the Sox catcher defense is weak, it is not a disaster and that in fact the Sox catchers have been about as valuable as any in the AL save the Tigers.  Remarkable.  Given some good fortune down the road (Salty continuing to develope, Lavarnway learning how to play D and Swihart signing) the Sox could go from a team with a paucity of catching talent to a team with a bright future at the position.

At this time of the baseball season a fair bit of discussion revolves around the All-Star Game.  Generally I could care less about the ASG, and would rather have the players on the team I root for rest than play in a mostly meaningless game.  However I have noticed a repeated snubbing of Pedroia when it comes to discussion of 2b. This is not just from the mainstream press and fans but also from the SABR community as well.  For the mainstream press we have guys like Kevin Lyttle call Robinson Cano a "no-brainer," while today's New York Times has an article by Tyler Kepner listing Cano followed by Kendrick and Zobrist (all having excellent seasons) as AL second base players.  On the SABR side, we have Dave Cameron leaving Pedroia off the list due to "health concerns" (odd-given that he has played all season) while Justin Inaz of the Hardball Times basically does the same (without the odd explanation).  To be fair to the last two authors-their articles (in particular Dave's) were a bit of time ago.  Do the numbers back up this viewpoint?

In case you didn't notice, Pedroia got off to a slow offensive start.  His ISO was markedly down, and while he continued to get on base at an excellent rate, his K-rate was up.  Concerns about playing with a screw in his foot (perhaps the issue Dave Cameron was mentioning) seemed well founded.  However recently Pedroia has started to do positive things at the plate other than hit singles and walk.  Pedroia's wOBA now stands at 0.364 (wRC+ of 127) and while his ISO is not close to what it was last year, it has inched up and now surpasses at least his 2007 rookie season.  Before last season a promenent member of Pinstripe Alley complained that Pedroia was vastly overrated due to his inability to hit on the road. But in the last 2 years this has not been the case at all. Last year before going down Pedroia posted a road wOBA of 0.393 while this year his road wOBA is 0.371. Both obviously above his home numbers.  Currently Pedroia's wOBA is only a shade under Cano's (0.369) overall. Of course defense is a different story altogether.

Looking at Fangraphs WAR (first number) and BR.com WAR (second number) here are the 4 mentioned 2b:

Zobrist:4.0   3.1

Pedroia:3.8   3.5

Kendrick:3.7   2.4

Cano:2.5   2.3

Several things are clear from looking at these numbers.  First, obviously Pedroia deserves to be in the conversation. In fact, he has the highest average WAR among the 4.  Secondly, it is clear that Cano not only is not a "no-brainer" he doesn't even belong in the conversation despite having a strong first half.  in looking at his numbers we see a return of the average to below-average fielder who never takes a walk that we saw before 2010. 

In all-it is rather shocking how all sides of the baseball discussion have assumed that Robinson Cano is the clear and obvious choice for 2b, when Kendrick, Zobrist and Pedroia are all superior so far this year. In the case of Pedroia and Zobrist, it is not even close.  I guess the media is not nearly as biased towards the Red Sox as Yankee fans like to whine about.

Early last season Josh Beckett signed a contract extension that seemed to be a risky bet for the Red Sox. Beckett has always been more of a "thrower" than a "pitcher" and guys like that don't generally age well.  Those concerns seemed well founded in 2010; Beckett muddled through an injury plagued season in which he approached his 2006 level of HR/FB% on his way to a career worst ERA.  So far in 2011 the picture seems much improved, and currently Beckett is sporting an amazing 1.86 ERA in 92 innings of work. Has Beckett changed or is this just small sample size luck?

Just casually looking at the numbers suggest that Beckett has been lucky. He is sporting a LOB% of 84.3% (career 72.1%) and his HR/FB% is an unsustainable 3.9%.  These things of course cannot be maintained.  Furthermore, his K/9 is the lowest it has been since 2006, his BB/9 is the highest it has been in any full season since 2006, his BABIP is 0.217 and his average velocity on his fastball has never been lower.  All of these facts scream "regression" despite the fact that his peripherals are good (2.98 FIP, 3.69 xFIP). Ironically, Beckett's xFIP is only marginally better than last year's.  Beckett generally underperforms his peripherals, and it is thus amusing that currently his FIP-ERA=1.12.

the above facts suggest that Beckett isn't a different pitcher, only a luckier one. I would like to suggest that a close look at the numbers so far (always a danger with only 92 innings) actually paints a more complex picture.  While Beckett has been somewhat fortunate, his pitching approach is radically different today than it was, say, in 2007. In 2007 Beckett was basically a 2 pitch pitcher.  He had a monster fastball and amazing curveball and that is basically it. In 07 thse 2 pitches were plus plus in terms of success (+17.8/+11.5) and he threw one or the other 88.2% of the time.  Fastforward to 2011 and things are completely different.  Beckett is throwing both the fastball and curveball at (AL) career low levels, and throwing either fastball or curveball at (total) career low levels (a mere 68% of the time).  Instead, Beckett is throwing cutters and changes at career high marks (32% of the time Beckett throws a cutter or a change in 2011, and the cutter alone is his second favorite pitch).  This change of style is not completely new; it appears the makeover started last year. The big difference is that he is throwing the cutter+change even more in '11 and that these 2 pitches are plus for him this year while they were below average last year.

Why the change of approach?  Beckett has always been a pitcher who had much more success against righties than lefties.  His career OPS against LHB is rather substandard for a top-of-the-line starter (0.726 including this season).  However this year he has shown no L/R split of note. If you want to get lefties out as a RHP, one potent way to do it is with decent cutters and changeups.  It would appear Beckett and the Sox staff were aware of his split deficiencies and worked to fix the problem. As Beckett ages, the newfound diversity in his pitching approach will likely serve him well.

Further evidence that Beckett's work so far this year has been good as a result of more than just good fortune is that fact that his LD% is very low (16.1%) leading to a career second best tERA of 3.00 and suggesting that his BABIP, while unsustainably low, has not been a complete fluke.  Also interesting is the fact that while his K rate is down, his swinging strike percentage is markedly up (9.7%-best Beckett has had by far in the AL).  In fact this is perhaps the most clear indicator of his changed approach, as he used to generate a ton of looking strikeouts with his curve and now used his larger arsenal of pitches to simply keep hitters off balance.

Going forward, we cannot expect Josh Beckett to maintain his HR rates, LOB% or even his paltry ERA, but there is decent evidence that his success is, in part, not a fluke, and is based on a very interesting change of approach.

This is an interesting quick read ("Are the Jets a Dissapointment...?").  Barnwell touches on the decline in the Jets D, the effect to the run defense of losing Leonhard, the evolution of Sanchez, the nature of Cromartie's coverage, the Colts vs. Chiefs as a matchup, and the odds of beating the Colts here:

http://nymag.com/daily/sports/2011/01/talking_jets_with_football_out.html

Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Statistics gives the Jets slightly better odds here:

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/wild-card-probabilities-packers-over-eagles/

Before the season started I had a back and forth discussion with jetsbill that resulted in a wager of 100$:  If Mark Sanchez had a QB rating over 75 Jetsbill would win, if he was under 75 I would win.  Given that he will likely rest next week-we should take the number as it stands as the final one.  And the rating?  75.3!

Thus I lose (by 0.3 points).  However it is a good time to ask what you think about Mark's progress. If you care about QB ratings (I don't so much) then 75.3-while a marked improvement over last year, is pretty poor.  He is ranked only ahead of Matt Hasselback, Brett Favre, Derek Anderson and Jimmy Clausen in the whole NFL and that is pretty poor company.  This year QB ratings are at an all-time high, way over last year even, and if I had known this would be the case I probably would have moved that bar up for the wager a bit (:-)).  Still, I think Mark has really improved his game and is maturing.  He has hurt the team far less than last year, and his good games are better and more numerous. I think Josh Freeman is a good case to look at. They came into the league the same year, and Freeman's rating last year was even worse than Sanchez'.  This year, Freeman is 9th at 93.6 (ahead of Drew Brees) and has 23 TDs to only 6 picks.  I bring this up not to say that Freeman (who has faced far worse defenses) is better than Sanchez, but to show how a system and offensive coordinator can help his young QB.  Freeman is now in a system that is very simple, and he has thrived.  The Bucs have removed the risk from his passes. As we have seen the last 2 weeks against very good defenses, when Shottenheimer does the same, Sanchez (and hence the Jets offense) thrives.  This is something to look forward to for the rest of this year, and into the next.

I know fanposts are for "intelligent" things, but after watching today's game this rant is for cathartic purposes only. This may be the most angry I have ever been about an umpire, and I have seen plenty of crappy games called by Cuzzi, Bucknor, Hernandez, Froemming and Joyce.  Here is Scott's K-zone:

http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/zoneTrack.php?month=5&day=12&year=2010&game=gid_2010_05_12_tormlb_bosmlb_1%2F&prevDate=512

what do you see?  19 Pitches out of the zone call against Boston batters for strikes.  4 for Toronto. In a 1 run game, that is unacceptable. The 9th inning was especially criminal (pull it up on Brooks). No wonder Francona got tossed, and Papi, Drew, Beltre and Youkilis were either screaming or shaking their heads.  The next time an Angel fan or Brian Fuentes complains about home town umping at Fenway, they should watch the tape of this game.

Here on OTM there has been a recent flurry of statements concerning the Sox offense for 2010.  Much of the speculation centers on the obvious fact that the Sox have made efforts to improve their run prevention ability for next year.  The signings of Cameron, Scutaro and Lackey make that clear.  At the same time, the Sox will lose perhaps their most potent bat from 2009, Jason Bay. In addition Mike Lowell, a decent offensive player, will also move on. Scutaro and Cameron are not spectacular offensive players.  Given these facts, many have cried for the signing of, or trading for, a player or players that could provide the needed offensive upgrade.  The quantitative question is, how much of an upgrade would be needed to put the Sox in the ballpark of the offense they had in 2009?

I am assuming that the Sox had a very good offense in 09.  The team was 3rd in the league in runs scored, and trailed the Yankees (number 1) by a mere 43 runs.  No Sox offense since 2005 scored as many runs as the team did last year.  While there have been complaints that this was a mirage, a reasonable analysis (that I will not provide here) shows otherwise.  One should always be suspicious of the claim that certain offenses only hit well against poor pitching. Generally speaking, teams that score a lot of runs are good offenses.

The basis of this analysis will be the statistic wRC, an estimate of how many runs a player contributed or contributes to total offense.  If you go over to Fangraphs, you can check that a sum of wRC for a season is close to the total number of runs scored, which speaks to accuracy.  If you prefer James' "runs created" stat, the picture I present here will be unchanged. You can find RC on baseball-reference.com.  What I will do is breakdown the Sox 2009 by wRC, and compare that to the James projections for wRC for 2010.  I do this to compare "apples to apples." Note also that this attempts to guess what the Sox offense will look like next year.

Here is the breakdown in terms of "runs contributed."

2009

Youkilis-111.7, VMart/Tek-(42.3/43.1), Bay-112.5, Drew-91.3, Ellsbury-97.3, Pedroia-103.9, AGonz/Lugo/Green-(20.1/14.8/27.2), lowell-65.1, Ortiz-80.9. 

This totals to 810.2.  Note that this is close to the team's total runs scored last year, and does not include the contributions of Kotchman, LaRoche,Baldelli, Kotsay, Lowrie, etc.  We should perhaps include the estimated 10RC that Kotchman, LaRoche and Kotsay contributed at 1b. This brings the total to 820.9, without other bench play.

The James estimates are

2010

Youkilis-105.4, VMart-95.8, Cameron-76.3, Drew-93.5, Ellsbury-97.1, Pedroia-105.6, Scutaro-72.5, Ortiz-91.9.  This does not include a 3b at all (or a extra 1b if Youkilis moves over). The total is 738.1.  Now lets add the additional player-Kotchman is projected to be 49.8 wRC in 408 PA. Lowrie is predicted to be 58.9 wRC in 437 PA, and for fun, Beltre is predicted to be 61.7.  All of these work out to be about 60 in a full season.  This puts the estimate to about 800 runs even.  Thus, a reasonable evaluation of the numbers places the 2010 Red Sox at a mere 10-20 runs behind the 2009 Sox, despite losing Bay who contributed more "runs" in 09 than any single player.

Where does this come from?  Well, Cameron is actually decent. Scutaro and VMart are more than 10 run upgrades each.  Also, Lowell was not offensively effective last year.  Of course this evaluation is crude. For example the benches have been left untouched, I have not factored in adjusting players like Scutaro, Cameron and Beltre (if he were to sign with the Sox) for new parks. In fact that fact alone will move the evaluation even closer to 2009's number.

The bottom line is that the Sox offense, even without someone like Adrian Gonzalez, will be close to what it was last year with Bay and Lowell.  On the other hand, a full season of Lackey, Dice-K and Buchholz combined with the improved defense (potentially at 3-4 positions, eg LF,CF,3b and ss) will save a lot of runs. I am excited for 2010 even if the Sox don't pull of any more deals.

Buchholz will start Wednesday and take Wakefield's spot.  This according to the Globe.  Wake's injury is described as a lower back strain.  Since fanposts need to be 75 words long-here is the link:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/

and now some extra words: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

There has been much discussion in recent years concerning the "Verducci Effect" which states (more or less) that pitchers of age 24 or less who increase their innings pitched by 35 or more are subject to injury/diminished performance in the next year.  The annectdotal evidence for this seems strong.  On the other hand, there have been no real studies to quantify if the "effect" is large or if it even exists.  Since Jon Lester had essentially the largest innings increase of all eligible pitchers last year, I was quite interested to follow his and other potential Verducci victims during the year. Especially since Lester's early struggles were often linked in the press to the abuse he took over last year's long season.

Since this more or less marks the midway point of the season, I thought it might be interesting to look at this year's group of potential pitchers suffering from the Verducci effect.  I will look at the seven pitchers identified in Peter Bendix's Beyond the Boxscore article:

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/1/5/709161/verducci-effect-update-7-r

These pitchers are

a)Jon Lester

b)Cole Hamels

c)Chad Billingsley

d)John Danks

e)Mike Pelfrey

f)Tim Lincecum

g)Jair Jurrjens

In looking at this group, we will compare their FIPs this and last year, so as not to bias (or at least limit bias of) outcomes based on possible random variation/defensive issues and the like.

a)Lester: Jon Lester has shown no signs of the Verducci effect.  Lester's FIP is a remarkably low 3.22 (among the best in the AL) and his K rates are up substantially. Despite the lingering effects of residual bad luck (his BAPIP is still a high .342), Lester has lowered his ERA to 3.87.  He is among the handful of best starters in the AL at this stage.

b)Hamels: Cole Hamels has struggled a bit with injury. While his ERA is significantly higher than last year (4.87 vs 3.09) his FIP is remarkably similar (3.90 vs 3.72). Hamels' FIP and BAPIP (.348 in 2009 vs .270 in 2008) suggest that his bloated ERA is largely beyond his control.

c)Billingsley: Chad Billingsley is almost the identical pitcher this year compared to last both in traditional metrics (ERA 3.38 vs 3.14) and FIP (3.56 vs 3.35).

d)Danks:  John Danks has seen a slightly diminished numbers (FIP of 3.93 vs. 3.44) but he has still pitched decently.  His FIP difference represents the largest negative amount of the group.

e)Pelfrey: By FIP Mike Pelfrey is essentially the same pitcher this year as last.

f)Lincecum: No problems here. Tim Lincecum is the most dominant pitcher in baseball, and sports a FIP a full 0.61 points lower than in his Cy Young winning year.

g)Jurrjens:  Jair Jurrjens' FIP is basically the same this year as last.

Amazingly, the annectdotal evidence *against* the Verducci effect are even stronger this (half) year than the 2008 evidence in favor of the effect.  All of these guys have been good this year, and none have serious health issues.  Hamels seems to have suffered the most, but the aggregate FIP of the pitchers listed above is actually lower this year than it was last year.  While statements like "Still, the results are convincing, and Verducci writes of similar results from past seasons as well" (from Bendix's article) seem sensible, the evidence so far this year strongly suggests that the correlation is overblown.  Either way, perhaps it is time that a serious (as opposed to superficial) look into this putative effect is performed. 

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4170755

Rocco will DH for now.  After Papi's comments after yesterday, I can only assume this was a mutually agreed upon decision.  Unfortunately, this would be a good set of starting pitchers to face to turn things around.  Let's hope a break can clear up whatever issues he has.  If not, it may be a shorter period for Ortiz before he is done for good than I had assumed.

We have all witnessed Beckett's less than stellar performances this year.  After a great start against the Rays, he has had difficulties ranging from decent starts (as in last nights game) to horrible ones.  The traditional statline is clearly bad.  Beckett has a 6.42 ERA in 40+ innings and a whip of 1.77.  While the season is young, it is useful to look inside these numbers and see if we can learn anything about Beckett's struggles.

1)Beckett's walks are way up.  In 2007 Beckett walked 40 in 200 innings, In 2008 he walked 34 in 174.  He has already walked 20 in merely 40 innings to date.  Before 2007, Beckett hovered around a 8.5 BB%.  In 2007 and 2008 he cut that nearly in half below 5%.  This year, he is at a career high 10.47%.

2)There is nothing wrong with Beckett's arm.  Beckett's average fastball velocity is right in line with the last two seasons.  His K numbers have been good as well with more than 1K per inning.

3)He has been unlucky.  As we have all witnessed, Beckett "appears" to have been undone by weakly hit balls.  For example last night an infield single and a bloop hit the other way contributed to 2 of the Rays' 3 runs.  It seems like this has happened a lot.  A check of Beckett's BAPIP supports this.  Beckett currently has a BAPIP of 381, compared to a career average close to 300. On the other hand, his LD% is significantly up, at a high 25% (previous season high of 19.2% last year).  This suggests that part of the BAPIP issue is luck, but part is not. On the other hand, it is known that these two are empirically correlated (usually quoted as LD%+0.12=BAPIP).  We see that Josh's BAPIP is exceeding his "empirical" BAPIP a tad.  Overall this is bound to come down.

4)His HR allowed, are, so far, not his problem.  HR/BIA (5.33%) is below the good years of 2007, 2008, and not close to his awful 2006 of 10.75%.

So, from this we can say that control has been the biggest issue.  The rest seems beyond Beckett's ability to control.  What is different?  Well, for one thing, his pitch selection is significantly different from his 2 previous years. Just check out the numbers here:

http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=510&position=P

Beckett is throwing a far lower percentage of fastballs, and a far higher % of curveballs.  Clearly this seems to indicate either a plan that the Sox have, or the possibility that Beckett is not happy with his ability to command his fastball, which has seemed to be the case in several games this year.  In conclusion, the numbers show that Beckett's biggest problem has been location and command related, and is not related to HRs allowed or velocity.  He has been likely unlucky, but if you are repeatedly catching too much of the plate your BAPIP will be higher.  It is obvious, but if Beckett can start to command the fasball, he can throw more of them, and we should see the return of "good" Josh Beckett.  Otherwise, this could be a very disappointing season from our ace.

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