Red Sox Offense – Bold Moves

[seabeachfred]

Yet Pedroia has bounced back, Xander has improved, they're one of the best teams at getting on base (which directly correlates into scoring runs) avoiding strikeouts, and pitches per AB. They just can't drive guys in. It's an anomaly.

 

It's called choking in the CLUTCH, something that real baseball people in the game have know for years. RBI's DO count and some can do that job and some can't. We've gone over this ad nauseum but by now you can see for yourself that those metrics of getting on base does not make it if you can't get them home and we just have too many chokers right now.. Could be they are trying to hard but from what I've seen on TV I actually believe many of this year's edition simply don't give a s*** be because they're not team players.

[sk7326]

I get that your offense has sucked balls of late, but your team ERA is 28th out of 30 teams. Your starters ERA is the WORST in baseball at 5.05. Your relievers have been MLB average at 16th. You will not win with those numbers. The hitters will eventually hit. The pitching may not eventually pitch

 

Yes and no. The pitching has stunk - but it is the offense that is preventing from being "kind of ok", which was the realistic prognosis for this team in the first half of the season. The pitching has stunk more than expected, and some of that is because the defense has been worse than expected.

[sk7326]

It's called choking in the CLUTCH, something that real baseball people in the game have know for years. RBI's DO count and some can do that job and some can't. We've gone over this ad nauseum but by now you can see for yourself that those metrics of getting on base does not make it if you can't get them home and we just have too many chokers right now.. Could be they are trying to hard but from what I've seen on TV I actually believe many of this year's edition simply don't give a s*** be because they're not team players.

 

Real baseball say the exact opposite. RBIs (like pitcher wins) are use-less for measuring quality. The most madeup stat of them all.

[iortiz]

Yes and no. The pitching has stunk - but it is the offense that is preventing from being "kind of ok", which was the realistic prognosis for this team in the first half of the season. The pitching has stunk more than expected, and some of that is because the defense has been worse than expected.

 

In other words, the whole team is a mess LOL!

[iortiz]

Real baseball say the exact opposite. RBIs (like pitcher wins) are use-less for measuring quality. The most madeup stat of them all.

 

It is not about the stat but how you take them in a certain context.

[User Name]

That's a cop out based on a poor grasp of what context actually is.

[seabeachfred]

Real baseball say the exact opposite. RBIs (like pitcher wins) are use-less for measuring quality. The most madeup stat of them all.

 

Real baseball? Maybe but not real baseball PEOPLE. All this s*** about WAR, VORP, BABIP, UZR used by this generation of baseball geeks has been used almost like a religion by the Sox and led by their fuzzy thinking owner---and where the hell has it gotten us. Pitching wins are WINS. Some can pitch crappy but well enough to win, and some like Buchholz lately pitch just well enough to lose. And you cannot win without runs and getting people home---which we can't seem to do. RBI's do count and screw the VORPS, WAR and other geek s***. Wins are the only thing that count no matter how they are attained.

[iortiz]

Real baseball? Maybe but not real baseball PEOPLE. All this s*** about WAR, VORP, BABIP, UZR used by this generation of baseball geeks has been used almost like a religion by the Sox and led by their fuzzy thinking owner---and where the hell has it gotten us. Pitching wins are WINS. Some can pitch crappy but well enough to win, and some like Buchholz lately pitch just well enough to lose. And you cannot win without runs and getting people home---which we can't seem to do. RBI's do count and screw the VORPS, WAR and other geek s***. Wins are the only thing that count no matter how they are attained.

Probably the Red Sox have neglected their scouting staff in recent years. Either way as I said they need to change their strategy if this ends up bad again.

[sk7326]

Real baseball? Maybe but not real baseball PEOPLE. All this s*** about WAR, VORP, BABIP, UZR used by this generation of baseball geeks has been used almost like a religion by the Sox and led by their fuzzy thinking owner---and where the hell has it gotten us. Pitching wins are WINS. Some can pitch crappy but well enough to win, and some like Buchholz lately pitch just well enough to lose. And you cannot win without runs and getting people home---which we can't seem to do. RBI's do count and screw the VORPS, WAR and other geek s***. Wins are the only thing that count no matter how they are attained.

 

Real baseball people (as I meant to type) - as is virtually the entire industry - care not a whit about pitcher wins or RBIs. RBIs are made up! It's a made up way to split credit as to how a run scores. (note that is does not cover the other ways the runner got around the bases par exemple). Wins are all that matter - but which pitcher receives the wins are totally unimportant.

 

I won't ruin your party and give you the larger picture answer as to where has it gotten this sad sad organization over this sad sad decade plus.

 

This generation of baseball geeks includes probably 28 or 29 of 30 front offices - and most of them probably don't use the publicly reported stuff.

[sk7326]

Probably the Red Sox have neglected their scouting staff in recent years. Either way as I said they need to change their strategy if this ends up bad again.

 

That seems to run counter to what most of the publications that follow these things notes. If anything, they have been harmed by being consistently good and not getting the sort of draft picks from whence your superstars generally come from.

[Bellhorn04]

Real baseball people (as I meant to type) - as is virtually the entire industry - care not a whit about pitcher wins or RBIs. RBIs are made up! It's a made up way to split credit as to how a run scores. (note that is does not cover the other ways the runner got around the bases par exemple). Wins are all that matter - but which pitcher receives the wins are totally unimportant.

 

But if RBI's are meaningless, aren't 'hitting with RISP' stats also meaningless?

[a700hitter]

But if RBI's are meaningless, aren't 'hitting with RISP' stats also meaningless?

Excellent incisive point.

[User Name]

But if RBI's are meaningless, aren't 'hitting with RISP' stats also meaningless?

 

You can get RBI's while failing with RISP (RBI flyouts and groundouts), and without RISP (Homeruns). It''s an incomplete stat.

[Kimmi]

Kimmi, I'm afraid the pre-season projections about the Sox having a great offense this year may have been made with rose-colored glasses. The facts are that we had one of the worst offenses in the league last year, and our big additions were Hanley and Panda, who had an unspectacular OPS of .739 last year.

 

Declines by Ortiz and Napoli this year are not shocking.

 

Where exactly was this big leap from bad offense to great offense supposed to come from, when you break it down?

 

Was it based on high hopes for Mookie, Bogaerts and Castillo - maybe even Craig?

 

Go through our offense one by one. The numbers are consistently disappointing, and yet, none of them should really be all that shocking.

 

The computer projections are not made with rose-colored glasses though. They are about as objective as you can get, and they take into account normal rates of decline based on recent years' performances, age, body type, and position.

 

I agree, declines by Napoli and Ortiz are not shocking. Declines to the extent that they have had are. And the fact that almost the entire offense has underperformed to the extent that they have is shocking. You expect some underperformances. Maybe even a couple that are really bad. You don't expect the level of underperformance that we've seen.

 

Last year's offense underperformed. So part of the improvement this year was supposed to come from those underperformances regressing. I was not a fan of the Panda signing, but even so, his unspectular OPS of .739 is a significant improvement over the .656 that we got from our 3B last season.

 

Perhaps none of the hitter's numbers should be shocking, taken in a vacuum. But like I said, the fact that they are all so disappointing is shocking.

[Kimmi]

Ben is the one who put Hanley in left field and just assumed he'd adjust. Do you have an advanced stat on how many runs Hanley's given up in the field compared to a left fielder of average ability?

 

But of course I do! Actually Fangraphs does. It's called DRS, or Defensive Runs Saved. It measures how many runs a player has saved or cost his team above or below average. Hanley's DRS is -11.

 

We all knew there would be a learning curve for Hanley switching to left field. We just hoped that he would be able to adjust quicker and better than he has.

[Kimmi]

It does seem that losing Vazquez, and then Hanigan as well, has hurt a lot in that intangible area of leadership.

 

I really wish we had a way to know how much of a difference the Vazquez/Hanigan duo would have made. A big part of the philosophy behind assembling the staff was the "improvement" that Vazquez could provide with his defense.

[Kimmi]

.

Well, some will tell you that this department is not the problem. In 30/50 games this team has allowed 5+ R and still this team won some of those games. Sure, the offense has been disappointment as well, but I can easily see a come back there (they better), but once again, we need that this pitching stay away from the last places in that department.

 

I'm not sure where you're getting 30/50 games that the team has allowed 5+ runs. By my count, the team has allowed 5+ runs in 23/51 games. Not great, but not as bad as what you posted. And of those 23 games, they gave up exactly 5 in 7 of them. Remember, we never expected our pitching staff to be lights out. We expected that our offense would be able to win a lot of 6-5 or 8-7 games.

[a700hitter]

A bludgeoning offense would not keep a team afloat that has the worst starting piching ERA in baseball.

[Kimmi]

I get that your offense has sucked balls of late, but your team ERA is 28th out of 30 teams. Your starters ERA is the WORST in baseball at 5.05. Your relievers have been MLB average at 16th. You will not win with those numbers. The hitters will eventually hit. The pitching may not eventually pitch

 

Our pitching has improved though. In May, our team ERA is 4.12, and since May 13, after Masterson's last implosion, our team ERA is 3.53. They are pitching well enough that we should be winning games with the offense that we're supposed to have.

 

Here is an excellent illustration:

 

In the month of May, one of the teams with a worse ERA than the Sox is the Rangers, with an ERA of 4.23. In May, the Rangers were 19-11. The Sox were 10-19 with roughly the same ERA. How can that be, you ask?

 

The Rangers scored 158 runs (5.3 runs/game) while the Sox scored a miserable 82 runs (2.8 runs/game)

 

As I have said many times, if the offense were doing what we expected them to do, we would likely be in first place, despite the pitching staff not pitching that well.

[Kimmi]

Real baseball? Maybe but not real baseball PEOPLE. All this s*** about WAR, VORP, BABIP, UZR used by this generation of baseball geeks has been used almost like a religion by the Sox and led by their fuzzy thinking owner---and where the hell has it gotten us. Pitching wins are WINS. Some can pitch crappy but well enough to win, and some like Buchholz lately pitch just well enough to lose. And you cannot win without runs and getting people home---which we can't seem to do. RBI's do count and screw the VORPS, WAR and other geek s***. Wins are the only thing that count no matter how they are attained.

 

Three World Series Championships?

[Kimmi]

Real baseball people (as I meant to type) - as is virtually the entire industry - care not a whit about pitcher wins or RBIs. RBIs are made up! It's a made up way to split credit as to how a run scores. (note that is does not cover the other ways the runner got around the bases par exemple). Wins are all that matter - but which pitcher receives the wins are totally unimportant.

 

I won't ruin your party and give you the larger picture answer as to where has it gotten this sad sad organization over this sad sad decade plus.

 

This generation of baseball geeks includes probably 28 or 29 of 30 front offices - and most of them probably don't use the publicly reported stuff.

 

All you have to do is remind Fred of the year that Julio Lugo had more RBIs that Pedroia. That certainly must mean that Lugo was the better hitter.

[Kimmi]

But if RBI's are meaningless, aren't 'hitting with RISP' stats also meaningless?

 

The difference is, RBIs are a counting stat.

 

Most hitting with RISP stats are rate stats.

 

If you want to compute RBIs as a rate out of opportunities, it would have more meaning.

[Kimmi]

A bludgeoning offense would not keep a team afloat that has the worst starting piching ERA in baseball.

 

Exhibit A: See my post regarding the Texas Rangers.

[Bellhorn04]

Our pitching has improved though. In May, our team ERA is 4.12, and since May 13, after Masterson's last implosion, our team ERA is 3.53. They are pitching well enough that we should be winning games with the offense that we're supposed to have.

 

True, but you also have to consider that it was just around May 13 we stopped playing AL East teams for a while. The 3 teams that really fattened up our ERA were NYY, Baltimore and Toronto.

[iortiz]

I'm not sure where you're getting 30/50 games that the team has allowed 5+ runs. By my count, the team has allowed 5+ runs in 23/51 games. Not great, but not as bad as what you posted. And of those 23 games, they gave up exactly 5 in 7 of them. Remember, we never expected our pitching staff to be lights out. We expected that our offense would be able to win a lot of 6-5 or 8-7 games.

Point is that both departments have sucked, plain and simple.

[iortiz]

Three World Series Championships?

 

2013 won't save his head if this ends bad again.

[Bellhorn04]

If you want to compute RBIs as a rate out of opportunities, it would have more meaning.

 

Right. If RBI's are looked at contextually they can have some meaning...that's the way I see it.

[SoxnCycles]

Point is that both departments have sucked, plain and simple.

 

Then don't make up stats.

Just say they suck.

[iortiz]

Then don't make up stats.

Just say they suck.

Well, both suck, happy?, because I'm not.

Edited June 2, 2015 by iortiz

[SoxnCycles]

Well, both suck, happy?, because I'm not.

 

Yup, that way Kimmi doesn't have to waste her time proving you wrong.