A Realistic View at 2017 Part III

[moonslav59]

I agree with others who have suggested that taking the first pitch is part of the team's general philosophy of working the count and driving up pitch counts. This year that philosophy doesn't seem to be paying off. I suspect there has been some discussion about getting a little more aggressive lately but now it seems like a lot of our hitters are confused - 'in between'.

 

We seem to be slow on adjusting to teams that have adjusted to our style of play by throwing first pitches right down the middle to some of our hitters. Often, that is the best or only good pitch they will see the whole game, and their bats are on their shoulders.

[Bellhorn04]

It's not so much taking strike one down the middle that bothers me, it's taking strike three down the middle.

[moonslav59]

It's not so much taking strike one down the middle that bothers me, it's taking strike three down the middle.

 

There's that, too. Especially with RISP!

[Behindenemylines]

It's not so much taking strike one down the middle that bothers me, it's taking strike three down the middle.

 

There were too many called third strikes this weekend that Sox didn't put a swing on it. If Sox do not start hitting it will be a long September.

[moonslav59]

The 2015 Kansas City Royals won the World Series with a team OPS of .734.

 

Granted, they had 5 guys with an OPS over .800 while we have 1 or 2 right now, but they had those dreaded black holes everyone seems to abhor.

 

.614 by the guy with the second most PAs on the team (A Escobar)

.706 by their catcher (6th most PAs)

.552 by their 2Bman (7th most PAs)

.640 by their RF'er (9th most PAs)

 

Having Zobrist (.816) helped mitigate those "holes", but can you imagine this site right now, if the Sox had 3 of their top 9 PAs players with an OPS below .640! We're not talking about below .700. Two were below .615!

 

Now, couple that with what their rotation looked like, and you have to be able to see that there are many ways to reach the promise land.

 

Starters:

 

4.34 ERA and 1.371 WHIP (113 OPS+ against)

 

They had Edison Volquez at 3.58/ 1.311, but their next 3 starters by IP'd were:

 

4.08/ 1.30 Ventura

6.10/ 1.75 Guthrie

4.35/ 1.76 Duffy

 

Yeah, they picked up Cueto, but he went 4-7 4.76/ 1.451 with the Royals.

 

They won on defense, base running, strong pen pitching and hitting when it counted.

 

If they can win, so can we. We have better SP'ers and a more balanced line-up. Our team OPS is 10 points higher than the 2015 Royals. Our SP'er ERA is over 30 points better (4.01).

 

Our pen and defense are not as good as their's was, but we are in the top 5 in both areas.

 

Just make the playoffs and just about anything goes.

 

 

 

 

 

[Kimmi]

Way to go, Kimmi !!! That's what I wanted you to say on the game thread last night and said so. The rest of us are wimpy, no good, low down, rotten nattering nabobs of negativism. In my case in comes from long practice.

 

There is a reason that I tend to stay out of game threads during the games.

[Kimmi]

My favorite hitting style is probably Pedroia's. He is pretty aggressive but smart enough to take the walk when it is there.

 

One thing that really bugs me about Pedey is that he almost always takes the first pitch in every AB. He's good enough to get away with it, but others on the team, who try to emulate him, do not have the same skills at hitting while behind in the count.

 

Pedroia's 1st pitch swing % is 15.2%. Out of the regular players, Bogaerts and Betts have lower percentages, at 11.0% and 11.5%, respectively. For some reference, the team average is 20.3% and the league average is 28.1%.

[Kimmi]

You are right, but one thing is different, for me, than earlier in the year. While I still have high hopes for this team's success, I no longer believe our hitting will improve.

 

I expected a strong second half as many of our players would return to their recent year norms, but instead the opposite happened. Most got worse.

 

Had we not added Devers and Nunez and given Vaz more ABs, our second half team OPS would be well below .700.

 

That's sick!

 

Now, that being said, I've always been a firm believer that there are many ways to win a championship without strong hitting.

 

I still am a believer in this team.

 

The hitting truly has been a puzzle and a disappointment for me. Like you, I figured there would be a drop off, but that the team would still be one of the top offenses in the league.

 

That said, we are on pace to score 767 runs, which would put us at #3 in the AL last year. That's still more of a drop than I expected, but our middle of the pack status is due more to other teams scoring more runs this year.

[moonslav59]

Pedroia's 1st pitch swing % is 15.2%. Out of the regular players, Bogaerts and Betts have lower percentages, at 11.0% and 11.5%, respectively. For some reference, the team average is 20.3% and the league average is 28.1%.

 

Pedey is being a poor role model.

[moonslav59]

The hitting truly has been a puzzle and a disappointment for me. Like you, I figured there would be a drop off, but that the team would still be one of the top offenses in the league.

 

That said, we are on pace to score 767 runs, which would put us at #3 in the AL last year. That's still more of a drop than I expected, but our middle of the pack status is due more to other teams scoring more runs this year.

 

Good points. It's kind of surprising we have scored so much with just about everyone but Vaz doing worse or much worse than last year.

[Nick]

Apparently Sox has no plans to bring up Bryce.

 

What a bunch of f***ing idiots. This is similar to Devers. Just give the guy few at bats. WHAT THE f*** IS THE DOWNSIDE? Our offense might stall for one game? He hits 31 home runs. WHY THE f*** KEEP HIM AND WASTE A ROSTER SPOT. Promote a younger guy. What a bunch of f***ing idiots. I hope they lose every f***ing game. What a bunch of morons.

[oldtimer]

Good points. It's kind of surprising we have scored so much with just about everyone but Vaz doing worse or much worse than last year.

 

Hard to make changes with 25 games left. A shakeup in who goes on the field or the batter order is a good idea as maybe something can be awakened with this team. If not, I would clearly look to make some significant changes next season. That includes players coaches and the manager. Produce or vamoose.

[Bellhorn04]

Good points. It's kind of surprising we have scored so much with just about everyone but Vaz doing worse or much worse than last year.

 

That's one way to look at it. Another way, unfortunately, is that we are on pace to score 110 runs fewer than last year, while the average MLB team is on pace to score 29 more runs than last year.

[Maxbialystock]

No, it just means the offense is kinda sucky and they win more close games.

 

Managers normally don't win or lose games that aren't close, but they can have an effect on close ones.

[Spudboy]

Hard to make changes with 25 games left. A shakeup in who goes on the field or the batter order is a good idea as maybe something can be awakened with this team. If not, I would clearly look to make some significant changes next season. That includes players coaches and the manager. Produce or vamoose.

 

Now that is the spirit!

 

Good stuff.

[Nick]

ntn

[MADSTORK]

The hitting truly has been a puzzle and a disappointment for me. Like you, I figured there would be a drop off, but that the team would still be one of the top offenses in the league.

 

That said, we are on pace to score 767 runs, which would put us at #3 in the AL last year. That's still more of a drop than I expected, but our middle of the pack status is due more to other teams scoring more runs this year.

 

 

As of today, Boston ranked 26th in SLGPCT. Ranked 23rd in total bases. Ranked 24th Grounding into DP's and ranked 28th leaving runners on base which is not good.. I understand some of these stats are mis-leading but it is what it is.

 

The problem is combination of several young players either not being Coached correctly and or not being mentally prepared to adjust or play on a daily basis. Then again, who really knows. Another september slide and a quick exit in the playoffs Dombrowksi has to start churning over this roster and eliminating the deadweight to include the coaching staff..

 

It aint over, but with the Sale struggles of late and the zero production from Ramirez your in trouble

[oldtimer]

As of today, Boston ranked 26th in SLGPCT. Ranked 23rd in total bases. Ranked 24th Grounding into DP's and ranked 28th leaving runners on base which is not good.. I understand some of these stats are mis-leading but it is what it is.

 

The problem is combination of several young players either not being Coached correctly and or not being mentally prepared to adjust or play on a daily basis. Then again, who really knows. Another september slide and a quick exit in the playoffs Dombrowksi has to start churning over this roster and eliminating the deadweight to include the coaching staff..

 

It aint over, but with the Sale struggles of late and the zero production from Ramirez your in trouble

 

Yes and it is compounded with poor management decisions. A pitcher struggling, a real need to win a game and a very deep BP. So what does Farrell do? He leaves Porcello in after it is totally obvious that he is done and now the game goes out of reach. Sometimes what is being done is inexplicable. Yes, we have young players who make mistakes from time to time. Yes, the Luxury tax limits have tied our hands somewhat but still we are not playing up to our potential, or at least I think t we have more potential.

 

Maybe Betts gets going and we get some help from guys like Travis and Lin but it is hardly enough and we appear to be going into a swoom again.

[a700hitter]

The best of the Killer B's right now are Benintendi and Bradley. Benintendi is the best offensively and adequate defensively. Bradley is an All Star defensively and he does more than enough offensively. Betts is a top defender, but not at the level of Bradley, and his offense is slipping. Bogaerts is just a disappointment. He can't recognize or hit a slider. It is destroying his offensive game. His power threat is almost nonexistent. Defensively, Bogaerts is solid, but nothing special. Based on what I have seen thus far, I would not give any of these guys a 10 year contract.

[Nick]

this......

[moonslav59]

Soxprospects.com has their September rankings out...

 

http://soxprospects.com/index.html

 

The biggest movers...

 

In top 15

+14 Beeks (to #9)

+11 Mata (to #5)

+8 Chavis (to #3)

+6 Shawaryn (to #8)

+1 Devers, Groome

0 Travis, Ockimey, B Johnson

-7 Chatham

-10 Dalbec

 

16-30 Ranked:

+41 or more Lin (NR to #19)

+37 or more H Velazquez (NR to #23)

+30 or more Chad de la Guerra (NR to #30)

+29 Brentz

+14 A Maddox

+5 D Hernandez

+4 A Tavarez

-5 Ben Taylor, C Shepherd

-9 R Raudes, Lakins

 

New to Rankings:

6 Houck

7 Flores

11 Brannen

12 Scherff

18 J Thompson

20 D Diaz

27 B Netzer

28 Z Schellenger

32 J Haley (returned from rule 5)

33 D Mars

 

Not Ranked:

Jeremy Barfield

 

[moonslav59]

The best of the Killer B's right now are Benintendi and Bradley. Benintendi is the best offensively and adequate defensively. Bradley is an All Star defensively and he does more than enough offensively. Betts is a top defender, but not at the level of Bradley, and his offense is slipping. Bogaerts is just a disappointment. He can't recognize or hit a slider. It is destroying his offensive game. His power threat is almost nonexistent. Defensively, Bogaerts is solid, but nothing special. Based on what I have seen thus far, I would not give any of these guys a 10 year contract.

 

Betts is awesome on D. He covers a lot of ground in Fenway's massive RF.

 

Bogey is not "solid" on D, unless you think slightly below average (at best) is "solid"..

 

The rest I agree with.

[Spudboy]

As of today, Boston ranked 26th in SLGPCT. Ranked 23rd in total bases. Ranked 24th Grounding into DP's and ranked 28th leaving runners on base which is not good.. I understand some of these stats are mis-leading but it is what it is.

 

The problem is combination of several young players either not being Coached correctly and or not being mentally prepared to adjust or play on a daily basis. Then again, who really knows. Another september slide and a quick exit in the playoffs Dombrowksi has to start churning over this roster and eliminating the deadweight to include the coaching staff..

 

It aint over, but with the Sale struggles of late and the zero production from Ramirez your in trouble

 

Stop making sense. It frustrates the people wearing rose colored glasses.

[cp176]

The best of the Killer B's right now are Benintendi and Bradley. Benintendi is the best offensively and adequate defensively. Bradley is an All Star defensively and he does more than enough offensively. Betts is a top defender, but not at the level of Bradley, and his offense is slipping. Bogaerts is just a disappointment. He can't recognize or hit a slider. It is destroying his offensive game. His power threat is almost nonexistent. Defensively, Bogaerts is solid, but nothing special. Based on what I have seen thus far, I would not give any of these guys a 10 year contract.

 

Right on!

[OH FOY]

Sox are #7 in runs scored in AL. 653 at this moment. Chances are that is where they will finish. Remember the other 6 teams in front of them play games too. Twins have scored 24 more runs than us.

Sox scored 878 runs last year. Man we miss Ortiz. For the Sox to reach this number they would have to score 9.3 runs a game rest of season.

We might have to think about Stanton.

Edited September 5, 2017 by OH FOY!

[Yaz Fan Since 67]

Yes and it is compounded with poor management decisions. A pitcher struggling, a real need to win a game and a very deep BP. So what does Farrell do? He leaves Porcello in after it is totally obvious that he is done and now the game goes out of reach. Sometimes what is being done is inexplicable. Yes, we have young players who make mistakes from time to time. Yes, the Luxury tax limits have tied our hands somewhat but still we are not playing up to our potential, or at least I think t we have more potential.

 

Maybe Betts gets going and we get some help from guys like Travis and Lin but it is hardly enough and we appear to be going into a swoom again.

 

While we all share your frustration as I've been saying all year this team has .260 hitters with little power in the heart of their lineup, a lineup scattered with .240-260 hitters, very serious injuries to their starting pitching which resulted in very uneven performances and a problem with setup men in the pen. If you ask me a team that has been in first place most of the year with all these problems has if anything overachieved.

 

But right now they are painful to watch. I got to see the Baltimore disaster as it was on locally. Oriole fan friends of mine were giving me crap. That's right, fans of the worst starting pitching in history were talking big. Yeah that was great.

Edited September 5, 2017 by Yaz Fan Since '67

[moonslav59]

It's very painful to watch right now. Frustrating and painful.

 

That being said, we've had some rough patches before and bounced back. Our pitching and defense is better than last year. That counts for something, especially in an era where run-scoring has skyrocketed.

 

That brings me to an important point- not an excuse, but still important. We are on pace to score 766 runs this year (4.73 per game). That would have placed us 6th or 7th last year, which is about where many of us expected us to finish this year after the loss of Papi. 766 would have been just 13 runs from finishing 3rd last year. While this might all seem irrelevant today, and in some ways it is, the fact is the league has passed us. The offensive increase by most teams is about as influential in our ranking drop as our decline. This doesn't make the issue any less important, but when comparing this team to last year's team, it's really not that much worse than it appears. The context of the numbers has changed radically, and that has hurt this team beyond what some of us expected.

 

There were many posters who warned of the offense being way too weak to compete. This offense surprised me and others. I don't think anyone expected just about every major player, except Vaz, who has only player just over half our games this year, to improve on offense.

 

We've seen, what appears to be, an unprecedented decline by just about everyone, even players who are in prime or approaching prime- years where one might normally expect improvements not near total declines.

 

Now, the other side of the equation. We all knew "the plan" was that improved pitching (Sale, Thornburg, Smith) and defense (Moreland, Beni) and maybe base-running would more than offset the expected slight (or major) decline in scoring. As the league has taken off in offense, the imporved pitching should be viewed as even more improved than it looks on paper due to the massive run increase from last year to this. Just as out offense looks worse in light of everyone else scoring more than last year, our pitching has vastly improved.

 

This year, our pitching/defense has allowed 550 runs. That places us 6th (3rd in the AL behind CLE & NYY). That puts us on pace to allow 645 runs this year. Last year, we allowed 694 runs. We placed 9th. That's almost 50 runs less than last year. That should have and has offset some of the decline in offense. Our offense declined from 878 runs to a projected 766 runs scored this year. We may lose 120 runs scored while allowing 50 less. That's a net decline for sure. The 70 run differential is significant. It's almost a half a run (.43) per game.

 

Now, just 2 weeks ago, our offense was projected to score enough to have placed 3rd last year, so maybe these projections will change, if we hit a hot streak, but the way this team has hit, I'm not very hopeful that happens. We have shown glimpses of offense here and there this year, but they have been few and far- between. Hoping or expecting this team to start hitting once the playoffs begin is probably just wishful thinking, but history has shown that teams can win without great or even good offense.

 

We're going to have to ride our pitching and defense. We're going to have to hope our base-running is a plus by eliminating dumb mistakes. We're going to need some luck and/or timely hitting. I guess every team may need that to win it all.

 

I haven't given up hope on this team, but our offense is surely a big weakness right now. It's painful to watch.

[Bellhorn04]

That brings me to an important point- not an excuse, but still important. We are on pace to score 766 runs this year (4.73 per game). That would have placed us 6th or 7th last year, which is about where many of us expected us to finish this year after the loss of Papi. 766 would have been just 13 runs from finishing 3rd last year. While this might all seem irrelevant today, and in some ways it is, the fact is the league has passed us. The offensive increase by most teams is about as influential in our ranking drop as our decline. This doesn't make the issue any less important, but when comparing this team to last year's team, it's really not that much worse than it appears. The context of the numbers has changed radically, and that has hurt this team beyond what some of us expected.

 

And what are the possible explanations for other offenses getting better this year?

 

-An influx of good young hitters?

-Improvements in hitting approach?

-Decline in quality of pitching?

-Juiced ball?

[illinoisredsox]

And what are the possible explanations for other offenses getting better this year?

 

-An influx of good young hitters?

-Improvements in hitting approach?

-Decline in quality of pitching?

-Juiced ball?

 

Juiced ball is out (this assumes everyone is hitting the same balls)

 

IMO, the overall approach has to change. The bit about taking automatically taking strike one has to be altered. If the pitch is on the outside corner at the knees, fine. But how many times have we watched get me over fastballs in the middle of the plate let go. Most of the time they don't even follow the pitch. And even when they swing at them, I'm not convinced they are fully committed to doing so. Another thing these guys have to learn to do is foul off tough 2 strike pitches. Yeah,sometimes the pitcher is going to get you. The Yankees did this to perfection against both Sale and Pomeranz. There is no reason most of these guys can't do the same thing. Finally, if they are going to pitch you outside, go the other way.

Edited September 5, 2017 by illinoisredsox

[moonslav59]

And what are the possible explanations for other offenses getting better this year?

 

-An influx of good young hitters?

-Improvements in hitting approach?

-Decline in quality of pitching?

-Juiced ball?

 

Maybe...

 

- Balls and strikes called differently

- More teams using technology to improve hitting approaches

- Teams recognizing the Sox hitters are slow to adjust their approach (too easy predictability)

 

A juiced ball should have helped the Sox too, so I doubt that is it.

Decline in pitching should have helped us, too.

We added Beni and Devers, so we had "an influx" of good young hitters, too.

 

I'm not sure there is a simple explanation. I know some want to claim almost all of our players got worse, because of Papi's departure. I just can't accept that as being a significant factor in our offensive decline. Certainly going from Papi to Moreland was going to create some decline from 2016 to 2017, but while most of the league has seen players doing better from 2016 to 2017, almost all of our players have gotten worse or much worse. When you also see that none of our regular players are post-prime, the declines are baffling, to me. Leon's decline was expected, but not this...

 

2016 to 2017

.897 Betts .769 (-118) 22 y/o

.866 HRam .760 (-106) 33 y/0

.850 Young .710 (-140) 33 y/o

.845 Leon .652 (-193) 28 y/o

.835 JBJ .770 (-65) 27 y/o

.835 Beni .798 (-37) 22 y/o

.825 Pedey .778 (-47) 33 y/o

.802 Bogey .728 (-74) 24 y/o

.705 Holt .500 (-205) 29 y/o

.585 Vaz .734) (+149) 26 y/o

 

These numbers speak for themselves. The drop off by all but one player is mind-boggling. No player is older than 33. 7 of these players are 29 or less- ages that normally do NOT see decline. When 6 of those 7 decline, many by over 60 or 100 points, you have to shake your head and wonder.