A Realistic View at 2019: Part I

[harmony]

Today's humor:

 

https://www.pinstripealley.com/2019/2/20/18230487/yankees-offseason-manny-machado-bryce-harper-world-series-projections-red-sox-astros-cubs

[moonslav59]

Clippard signs with the Guardians for $1.75M with $1M in possible incentives.

[Nick]

Today's humor:

 

https://www.pinstripealley.com/2019/2/20/18230487/yankees-offseason-manny-machado-bryce-harper-world-series-projections-red-sox-astros-cubs

 

I'm all about raising the ceiling....I'd like to see us extend Sale.

[moonslav59]

I'm all about raising the ceiling....I'd like to see us extend Sale.

 

We all want Sale back.

 

Possible budget constraints is the only thing that may make it a tough choice.

 

I'd like to extend him, now, but waiting to see how his health looks makes sense, too. However, if he has a great season with 200+ IP, his price tag should go up.

[Nick]

We all want Sale back.

 

Possible budget constraints is the only thing that may make it a tough choice.

 

I'd like to extend him, now, but waiting to see how his health looks makes sense, too. However, if he has a great season with 200+ IP, his price tag should go up.

 

Don't we have doctors that can give thorough physicals?

[cp176]

Don't we have doctors that can give thorough physicals?

 

Once again - if JH wants him back it will be a done deal. There is no reason not to want this guy to be locked up.

[moonslav59]

Don't we have doctors that can give thorough physicals?

 

Yes, but the 100 best doctors could say he is 100% healed, and he could experience the same injury or a new (serious) one this season.

 

(knock on wood.)

[Slasher9]

Erod showed up in amazing shape and best of all....came with a wipeout slider to go with FB / changeup.

I love our team this year.

[moonslav59]

Erod showed up in amazing shape and best of all....came with a wipeout slider to go with FB / changeup.

I love our team this year.

 

Me, too. I'm not projecting better than 108 wins, but with so many of our players on the rise towards prime or in the meat of their prime, I think we could win 105 games and still be a better team than the 2018 team (or at least the same).

[jacksonianmarch]

Hosmer has alternated good and bad seasons his entire career. Watch next year he’ll be an .880 OPS guy with 25 HRs and everyone is going to want him again.

 

Anyone wanting to deal Price is gonna be disappointed. He’s now got injury concerns, he’s paid in excess of $30 mil AAV and he’s entering his mid 30s. He’s going nowhere.

[jacksonianmarch]

Me, too. I'm not projecting better than 108 wins, but with so many of our players on the rise towards prime or in the meat of their prime, I think we could win 105 games and still be a better team than the 2018 team (or at least the same).

 

And yet regression isn’t on your mind at all? Betts is going to continue this unrepeatable pace? Is King Kong JD going to surpass 1.000 OPS again? Can Xander keep up his career season? Yes, you’ve got some parts that either were hurt or underachieved, but the core of your offense stayed healthy and played bonkers. Expecting that plus improvements in health and production could happen, but it’s far more likely that someone crucial slips back a little or spends some time on the DL.

 

I don’t think the Sox win 100 this year. I doubt the yanks win 100. It’s very difficult to be in a division with two other very strong clubs and win as much as our teams did last year. The reasoning was that Tampa sucked and then went on a late run that was crazy to get them to 90 wins. They’re going to be good again and probably from the outset. Yes, we’ve got the worst team in baseball in our division and a middling squad likely hellbent on rebuilding, so that’ll help rack up wins. But games vs BOS, NYY and TB are going to be dogfights and that’s 38 games of the schedule. Last year TB was a pushover til June and the Sox owned them early. This year, they’ll be good. Let’s just assume that those 38 games are splits. 19-19. In order to win 100, a squad would have to go 81-43 (65%) against the rest and that’ll be hard to do again

[notin]

Last year the Sox went 21-17 against Tampa and NY, and went 87-37 against everyone else. The 31-7 record against Baltimore and Toronto certainly helped...

[notin]

I do wonder how good Tampa really is. They were 54-53 on July 31 before going on a 36-19 stretch to end the season. Are they going to be the April-July team or the one from the last two months? September records can be deceiving because of roster expansion and how it inundates the league with players who may not be major league caliber at the time...

[Bellhorn04]

I do wonder how good Tampa really is. They were 54-53 on July 31 before going on a 36-19 stretch to end the season. Are they going to be the April-July team or the one from the last two months? September records can be deceiving because of roster expansion and how it inundates the league with players who may not be major league caliber at the time...

 

I think the TropDome is their secret weapon. I think other teams get depressed just being in it. They swept us in a 3 game series there Aug 24-26, outscoring us 24-5. By far the worst our team looked all year.

[jacksonianmarch]

They’re intriguing because they’ve got some incredible pitching in Snell plus some really good pen arms and a manager who knows how to use them. The trades of Colome and Archer actually made them better immediately. What the Pirates gave up is going to suck for us right away. Glasnow is a better pitcher than Archer and he’s already seen a velocity bump. Meadows looks like a good prospect too. They’ll also see their top prospect return after TJS as well as DeLeon from TJS. Remember, they lost 3/5 of their rotation to injury before the season started. They then got Eovaldi back and dealt him and then moved Archer once he got healthy. They added some pitching this year with Morton and added a lot to their offense with Garcia, Zunino, Diaz and a full year of Tommy Pham.

[jacksonianmarch]

Also, I looked at the records against. The Yanks were 9-10 vs the Sox in the regular season. The Sox, though, were 6 games better than the Yanks vs the rest of the division. The crazy thing is, the Yanks were 35-22 vs the rest of the division, a .614 win percentage and the Sox were 6 games better. That’s crazy and likely not repeatable.

[moonslav59]

Hosmer has alternated good and bad seasons his entire career. Watch next year he’ll be an .880 OPS guy with 25 HRs and everyone is going to want him again.

 

Anyone wanting to deal Price is gonna be disappointed. He’s now got injury concerns, he’s paid in excess of $30 mil AAV and he’s entering his mid 30s. He’s going nowhere.

 

I'll never want Hosmer, and not just because he's on and off.

 

He is a good poster boy for not expecting the same results as the year before, like some here seem to do often.

[moonslav59]

And yet regression isn’t on your mind at all? Betts is going to continue this unrepeatable pace?

 

Many times I have said we will have injuries and we will see some players fall short of expectations and decline, possibly even players not yet at prime years. Of course it is possible and probable that more than 1 or 2 players will do worse than 2018. We saw in 2017 how more declined than improved despite their age curve suggested growth. However, the same could happen to every team, even the great Yankees.

 

Is King Kong JD going to surpass 1.000 OPS again?

Good chance he does- good chance he doesn't. I'd say the odds are close to 50-50 that either Betts or JD repeat or better 2018 while the other one does not.

 

Can Xander keep up his career season?

Why not? He's only 26. I could see him hit .900 or even .950, but of course, he could fall back to .800 or lower. Some of his lower numbers from the past involved him playing through wrist injuries.

 

Yes, you’ve got some parts that either were hurt or underachieved, but the core of your offense stayed healthy and played bonkers. Expecting that plus improvements in health and production could happen, but it’s far more likely that someone crucial slips back a little or spends some time on the DL.

 

Betts & Bogey spent time on the DL. Pedey missed the whole year. Devers missed a lot of time. Nunez played hobbled. Vaz missed time. Sale & ERod missed time and were not the same by the playoffs. There's a ton of room for more production by these guys just playing more, even if their numbers dip slightly.

 

Look, I get the argument that some or many can dip, but we are talking about what is expected, and you seem to expect the worst from just about every Sox player and the best from every Yankee player.

 

I'm expecting growth from many Yankee players as the near prime, but I could easily ask if Judge will ever repeat his career best. (I actually expect Judge to have his best season in 2019.)

 

I don’t think the Sox win 100 this year. I doubt the yanks win 100. It’s very difficult to be in a division with two other very strong clubs and win as much as our teams did last year. The reasoning was that Tampa sucked and then went on a late run that was crazy to get them to 90 wins. They’re going to be good again and probably from the outset. Yes, we’ve got the worst team in baseball in our division and a middling squad likely hellbent on rebuilding, so that’ll help rack up wins. But games vs BOS, NYY and TB are going to be dogfights and that’s 38 games of the schedule. Last year TB was a pushover til June and the Sox owned them early. This year, they’ll be good. Let’s just assume that those 38 games are splits. 19-19. In order to win 100, a squad would have to go 81-43 (65%) against the rest and that’ll be hard to do again.

 

Cleveland is worse, and many AL teams did not improve on paper. I'm expecting 100+ wins from both the Yanks and Sox. I've been rong before, but these two teams are light years better than others in the AL (except Houston, but even they did not improve on paper).

[BillyWilliams]

Everything Went Right For The 2018 Red Sox. Are The Champs Destined To Regress?

By Neil Paine

 

J.D. Martinez and the Boston Red Sox must fight regression this year.

It’s hard to imagine things going more right for the Boston Red Sox than they did last season. Boston jumped out to a scorching 17-2 start, was 38 games over .500 by the All-Star break, posted the most regular-season wins (108) by an MLB team in 17 years, and then steamrolled through the playoffs with an 11-3 postseason record en route to a World Series title. Statistically, it was probably the most impressive performance any major team had in 2018.

 

But now the calendar has flipped to 2019, and as spring training warms up for the Sox in Fort Myers, Florida, Boston must focus on defending its crown — and staving off the inevitable regression that comes in the wake of a season as charmed as the one the Red Sox just enjoyed.

 

As a rule, clubs that win a crazy number of ballgames in one season tend to come back down to earth quickly in the next. Of the 32 teams that cracked the century mark in wins (per 162 games) since 1990, 28 had an inferior record the next year, and 24 failed to return to the 100-win club. (Thirteen failed to break even 95 wins.) On average, these 32 triple-digit winners declined by 9.6 wins the following season.

 

Teams that won substantially more than 100 games have tended to regress even harder. The 2002 Mariners, for example, won “only” 93 games after the 2001 squad tied a major league record with 116 wins; the 1999 Yankees won 98 a year after the team took home 114. The inescapable truth is that few major league teams actually have 100 wins of “true talent” on their rosters, much less 108. Most of these huge winners were aided by some not-insignificant amount of luck along the way.

 

And it’s hard to argue that the Red Sox weren’t one of the luckier teams in baseball last season. According to the Pythagorean expectation, a team with Boston’s runs scored and allowed should have won four games fewer than it actually did. Furthermore, a team with Boston’s particular statistical profile (its singles, doubles, walks, etc. — both for and against) should have had a Pythagorean record five games worse than it actually did. Add up those two categories, and the Red Sox benefited from an MLB-high 10 extra wins of luck, whether through prevailing in the relative toss-ups of close games or through stringing hits together (or stranding opposing runners) in an unusually favorable manner.

 

On top of all that, there’s another way a team can have everything go right for it, and that’s at the player level: Did everyone outperform their expected levels of performance at once? Injuries can often play a role here — though the Red Sox were in the middle of the pack in terms of man-games lost to the injured list. More pertinently, Boston also saw a number of players post career-best seasons last year, from American League MVP Mookie Betts (10.6 wins above replacement) to blockbuster free-agent signing J.D. Martinez (6.1), plus young up-and-comers such as Andrew Benintendi (4.1) and even longtime puzzles such as Eduardo Rodriguez (2.7).

 

Altogether, 12 of Boston’s 21 regulars (those who played at least 2 percent of the team’s available playing time) exceeded their established level of WAR, with only Jackie Bradley Jr., Eduardo Nunez and the catching tandem of Sandy Leon and Christian Vazquez significantly undershooting their previous production levels during the 2018 regular season.

And this is to say nothing of the unexpected performances the team received in the postseason from the likes of Steve Pearce — a fizzled-out former prospect who arrived in Boston via a midseason trade and ultimately won World Series MVP — or Nathan Eovaldi, another castoff who had a 1.61 ERA in 22 1/3 postseason innings. (Or, in general, the amazingly fortuitous splits the team had in crucial playoff situations.)

 

All of those different ingredients explain how a team that won 93 games in 2017 suddenly exploded for 108 and won the championship a year later. But again, the pull of baseball’s gravity is strong. Based on data since 1990, we’d expect a team that improved by 15 games between seasons to give back about 5.2 wins the next season. It’s just another data point to toss onto the heap of statistical indicators that foretell a decline for the Red Sox heading into 2019.

 

The good news for Boston is that if your starting point is a 108-win team, you have a ton of room to regress and still be one of the best teams in baseball. Even if the Sox didn’t truly have 108 wins of talent on the roster last year, they still played like a 98-win team according to their underlying statistics, and almost all of that team will be back this season (with the notable exception of closer Craig Kimbrel). According to an early preseason version of our 2019 MLB projections, we rate Boston as the third-best team in baseball, with a 95-67 projected record and a 10 percent chance of repeating as champs, which is also tied for third-best in MLB.

 

Trouble is, that might make the Red Sox only the second-best team in their own division. Our simulations consider the arch rival New York Yankees just as likely as Boston to win the World Series and actually think that New York is ever-so-slightly better talent-wise. Although the Sox got the better of the Yankees last season, winning 13 of 23 games (including an August sweep and a four-game division series victory), for all intents and purposes, our projections have the two teams in an absolute dead heat as we look ahead to 2019:

 

AVG. SIMULATED SEASON CHANCE TO…

TEAM ELO RATING WINS LOSSES RUN DIFF. MAKE PLAYOFFS WIN DIVISION WIN WORLD SERIES

Yankees 1566 95 67 +137 74% 41% 10%

Red Sox 1564 95 67 +136 74 41 10

Rays 1527 86 76 +50 42 15 3

Blue Jays 1483 75 87 -52 13 3 1

Orioles 1421 60 102 -198 1

Based on 100,000 simulations of the 2019 MLB season

 

And the Red Sox could be running out of time to make the most of their current core. By 2021, Betts, Bradley, Chris Sale, Xander Bogaerts and Rick Porcello (plus potentially Martinez, who has an opt-out clause) will have all hit free agency. And team president Dave Dombrowski built 2018’s champion in part by bucking MLB’s prospect-hoarding trend and emptying out the farm system’s next generation in favor of short-term wins, so reinforcements aren’t exactly on the way.

 

The result of Dombrowski’s moves was a championship, and one of baseball’s all-time great single season performances, so I’m pretty sure it was worth it. The question now is how steep the drop-off will be in 2019 — and beyond. In many ways, Boston caught lightning in a bottle last season, enjoying the kind of magical year that comes along only once every decade or so. But if history is any guide, the follow-up will have trouble coming close to matching the original.

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-went-right-for-the-2018-red-sox-are-the-champs-destined-to-regress/

[Slasher9]

hahahahahah.

simulated season stats.

so great how yankees fans have become pre-2004 red sox fans. hahahahahaha.

"wait til next year"!!!!!

[BillyWilliams]

hahahahahah.

simulated season stats.

so great how yankees fans have become pre-2004 red sox fans. hahahahahaha.

"wait til next year"!!!!!

 

What would you know about pre-2004 sox fans?

 

You think baseball was invented in 2004.....

[Slasher9]

What would you know about pre-2004 sox fans?

 

You think baseball was invented in 2004.....

 

it wasn't invented in 2004 but the hammer definitely became the nail in 2004............

2018 was fun. the bronx had a good view

[moonslav59]

Everything Went Right For The 2018 Red Sox. Are The Champs Destined To Regress?

By Neil Paine

 

J.D. Martinez and the Boston Red Sox must fight regression this year.

It’s hard to imagine things going more right for the Boston Red Sox than they did last season. Boston jumped out to a scorching 17-2 start, was 38 games over .500 by the All-Star break, posted the most regular-season wins (108) by an MLB team in 17 years, and then steamrolled through the playoffs with an 11-3 postseason record en route to a World Series title. Statistically, it was probably the most impressive performance any major team had in 2018.

 

But now the calendar has flipped to 2019, and as spring training warms up for the Sox in Fort Myers, Florida, Boston must focus on defending its crown — and staving off the inevitable regression that comes in the wake of a season as charmed as the one the Red Sox just enjoyed.

 

As a rule, clubs that win a crazy number of ballgames in one season tend to come back down to earth quickly in the next. Of the 32 teams that cracked the century mark in wins (per 162 games) since 1990, 28 had an inferior record the next year, and 24 failed to return to the 100-win club. (Thirteen failed to break even 95 wins.) On average, these 32 triple-digit winners declined by 9.6 wins the following season.

 

Teams that won substantially more than 100 games have tended to regress even harder. The 2002 Mariners, for example, won “only” 93 games after the 2001 squad tied a major league record with 116 wins; the 1999 Yankees won 98 a year after the team took home 114. The inescapable truth is that few major league teams actually have 100 wins of “true talent” on their rosters, much less 108. Most of these huge winners were aided by some not-insignificant amount of luck along the way.

 

And it’s hard to argue that the Red Sox weren’t one of the luckier teams in baseball last season. According to the Pythagorean expectation, a team with Boston’s runs scored and allowed should have won four games fewer than it actually did. Furthermore, a team with Boston’s particular statistical profile (its singles, doubles, walks, etc. — both for and against) should have had a Pythagorean record five games worse than it actually did. Add up those two categories, and the Red Sox benefited from an MLB-high 10 extra wins of luck, whether through prevailing in the relative toss-ups of close games or through stringing hits together (or stranding opposing runners) in an unusually favorable manner.

 

On top of all that, there’s another way a team can have everything go right for it, and that’s at the player level: Did everyone outperform their expected levels of performance at once? Injuries can often play a role here — though the Red Sox were in the middle of the pack in terms of man-games lost to the injured list. More pertinently, Boston also saw a number of players post career-best seasons last year, from American League MVP Mookie Betts (10.6 wins above replacement) to blockbuster free-agent signing J.D. Martinez (6.1), plus young up-and-comers such as Andrew Benintendi (4.1) and even longtime puzzles such as Eduardo Rodriguez (2.7).

 

Altogether, 12 of Boston’s 21 regulars (those who played at least 2 percent of the team’s available playing time) exceeded their established level of WAR, with only Jackie Bradley Jr., Eduardo Nunez and the catching tandem of Sandy Leon and Christian Vazquez significantly undershooting their previous production levels during the 2018 regular season.

And this is to say nothing of the unexpected performances the team received in the postseason from the likes of Steve Pearce — a fizzled-out former prospect who arrived in Boston via a midseason trade and ultimately won World Series MVP — or Nathan Eovaldi, another castoff who had a 1.61 ERA in 22 1/3 postseason innings. (Or, in general, the amazingly fortuitous splits the team had in crucial playoff situations.)

 

All of those different ingredients explain how a team that won 93 games in 2017 suddenly exploded for 108 and won the championship a year later. But again, the pull of baseball’s gravity is strong. Based on data since 1990, we’d expect a team that improved by 15 games between seasons to give back about 5.2 wins the next season. It’s just another data point to toss onto the heap of statistical indicators that foretell a decline for the Red Sox heading into 2019.

 

The good news for Boston is that if your starting point is a 108-win team, you have a ton of room to regress and still be one of the best teams in baseball. Even if the Sox didn’t truly have 108 wins of talent on the roster last year, they still played like a 98-win team according to their underlying statistics, and almost all of that team will be back this season (with the notable exception of closer Craig Kimbrel). According to an early preseason version of our 2019 MLB projections, we rate Boston as the third-best team in baseball, with a 95-67 projected record and a 10 percent chance of repeating as champs, which is also tied for third-best in MLB.

 

Trouble is, that might make the Red Sox only the second-best team in their own division. Our simulations consider the arch rival New York Yankees just as likely as Boston to win the World Series and actually think that New York is ever-so-slightly better talent-wise. Although the Sox got the better of the Yankees last season, winning 13 of 23 games (including an August sweep and a four-game division series victory), for all intents and purposes, our projections have the two teams in an absolute dead heat as we look ahead to 2019:

 

AVG. SIMULATED SEASON CHANCE TO…

TEAM ELO RATING WINS LOSSES RUN DIFF. MAKE PLAYOFFS WIN DIVISION WIN WORLD SERIES

Yankees 1566 95 67 +137 74% 41% 10%

Red Sox 1564 95 67 +136 74 41 10

Rays 1527 86 76 +50 42 15 3

Blue Jays 1483 75 87 -52 13 3 1

Orioles 1421 60 102 -198 1

Based on 100,000 simulations of the 2019 MLB season

 

And the Red Sox could be running out of time to make the most of their current core. By 2021, Betts, Bradley, Chris Sale, Xander Bogaerts and Rick Porcello (plus potentially Martinez, who has an opt-out clause) will have all hit free agency. And team president Dave Dombrowski built 2018’s champion in part by bucking MLB’s prospect-hoarding trend and emptying out the farm system’s next generation in favor of short-term wins, so reinforcements aren’t exactly on the way.

 

The result of Dombrowski’s moves was a championship, and one of baseball’s all-time great single season performances, so I’m pretty sure it was worth it. The question now is how steep the drop-off will be in 2019 — and beyond. In many ways, Boston caught lightning in a bottle last season, enjoying the kind of magical year that comes along only once every decade or so. But if history is any guide, the follow-up will have trouble coming close to matching the original.

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-went-right-for-the-2018-red-sox-are-the-champs-destined-to-regress/

 

Good read, and of course this could happen, but our team has very few players past prime, and those that are do not have a major role on the team.

 

Some will regress- some will improve. Maybe full seasons from Pearce and Eovaldi will make up for losing Kimbrel. (Losing Kelly & Pom is a wash.)

[Slasher9]

Good read, and of course this could happen, but our team has very few players past prime, and those that are do not have a major role on the team.

 

Some will regress- some will improve. Maybe full seasons from Pearce and Eovaldi will make up for losing Kimbrel. (Losing Kelly & Pom is a wash.)

 

why bother Moon?

new york yankees are obviously 2019 ws champions.

[BillyWilliams]

Good read, and of course this could happen, but our team has very few players past prime, and those that are do not have a major role on the team.

 

Some will regress- some will improve. Maybe full seasons from Pearce and Eovaldi will make up for losing Kimbrel. (Losing Kelly & Pom is a wash.)

 

I thought it was a good read as well.

 

Should once again be an interesting battle!

[BillyWilliams]

why bother Moon?

new york yankees are obviously 2019 ws champions.

 

Which neither I nor the article claimed.

 

Once again you clearly show that you skipped the "Reading is Fundamental" part of growing up.

[Slasher9]

Which neither I nor the article claimed.

 

Once again you clearly show that you skipped the "Reading is Fundamental" part of growing up.

 

who do you think the 2019 WS champ is going to be?

before last season, who did you think the 2018 WS champ was going to be?

[moonslav59]

With 4-8 teams lookin highly competitive every year, it's awfully hard to project the winner more times than not, and I've been wrong way more than I've been right, but to me, the Sox look like the best team, on paper, and the Yanks are second.

 

The Dodger and Astros are not too far behind the Yanks.

[BillyWilliams]

who do you think the 2019 WS champ is going to be?

before last season, who did you think the 2018 WS champ was going to be?

 

I think there are a handful of teams that could win it all this year, just like last year.

 

Way too many variables over the course of a long season to come out and say "this is definitely the team that will win it all"

[moonslav59]

I think there are a handful of teams that could win it all this year, just like last year.

 

Way too many variables over the course of a long season to come out and say "this is definitely the team that will win it all"

 

I think only 4 have a great shot, as of now:

 

BOS

 

NYY

 

LAD

 

HOU