Red Sox Run Prevention Watch

[mvp 78]

So, we do throw a lot of fastballs and hard sinkers. It's not like all we throw are sliders, sweepers and change-ups.

 

Bello sinker 39.5%

Houck sinker 316%

 

They are just trying to get away from throwing the straight 4 seamer UNLESS the guy's repertoire really needs it or the 4 seamer is a really good one. Breslow wouldn't have taken away Randy Johnson's 4 seamer.

[moonslav59]

Bello sinker 39.5%

Houck sinker 316%

 

They are just trying to get away from throwing the straight 4 seamer UNLESS the guy's repertoire really needs it or the 4 seamer is a really good one. Breslow wouldn't have taken away Randy Johnson's 4 seamer.

 

It's not rocket science or anything new. Having pitchers pitch more of their best pitches seems like a good idea, but keeping a healthy mix is important, too.

[mvp 78]

It's not rocket science or anything new. Having pitchers pitch more of their best pitches seems like a good idea, but keeping a healthy mix is important, too.

 

And now they are mediocre pitchers coming down the home stretch with tired mechanics leaving pitches over the middle of the plate. Hard to blame too much of it on Bailey. It's really on roster construction.

[moonslav59]

And now they are mediocre pitchers coming down the home stretch with tired mechanics leaving pitches over the middle of the plate. Hard to blame too much of it on Bailey. It's really on roster construction.

 

Yup, and a tightening budget.

 

Our opening day payroll went from $207M in '22 to $181 in '23 to $171, this year.

 

Cutting $36M in 2 winters makes the GMs job very difficult.

[Dipre]

My issue is that the statement, or a variation of, has been repeated so often that many people actually think the Sox don't throw 4 seamers anymore.

 

Good point. They're still throwing 4 seamers right around a third of the time.

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

Scouts looking at possible pitchers to draft usually like projectable bodies that promise power arms: tall frames with strong arms and legs.

 

But the clever Red Sox strategy going forward will now be to look at big toes.

 

Breslow and Bailey, being realists (since they accepted positions in management for John Henry) have tasked their analytics dept. to study John Hopkins Medicine for the latest treatments for Tommy John surgery, aka ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction. As fans know, TJS replaces the damaged elbow tendon with one harvested elsewhere from the body. A "graft" is typically taken from a forearm, hamstring or... big toe extensor tendon.

 

"They're all going to blow out eventually," paraphrased somebody on every thread on talksox. Not to worry, Red Sox boyscouts are always prepared to have a leg up on the competition; at least, a foot up...

[Bellhorn04]

Including yesterday's completed suspended game, the Sox have held their opponents to less than 4 runs 5 times in the last 38 games.

[notin]

28 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Including yesterday's completed suspended game, the Sox have held their opponents to less than 4 runs 5 times in the last 38 games.

The starters in those five games - Criswell (2), Bello (2), and Pivetta.

Criswell with two seems surprising until you remember he’s the “starter” with the fewest IP on the team, and is probably the only one not running in fumes.  

[Maxbialystock]

On 8/20/2024 at 3:37 PM, moonslav59 said:

 

Yup, and a tightening budget.

 

Our opening day payroll went from $207M in '22 to $181 in '23 to $171, this year.

 

Cutting $36M in 2 winters makes the GMs job very difficult.

A fair point.  However, what makes the budget really dire this year is the Sox paying Sale $17M as the ace for the Braves and signing Giolito for $19M/year while he recovers from elbow surgery.    Breslow made those deals, presumably with the support of the head shed.  

And let's not forget that the Sox budget/payroll (now $189M for 2024), is larger than Arizona's $175M--that's the team the NESN announcers raved about last weekend--the Twins $130M, KC's $119M, Cleveland's $107M, and Baltimore's $108M. 

John Henry, the presumptive cheapskate villain in this sad little tale is also the Sox owner who kept the payroll in the top three in MLB for close to 20 years, during which the Sox won 4 freaking WS titles when, with three rounds of playoffs (ALDS, ALCS, and WS), it was especially hard to win the World Series.  He even went out and hired the biggest freespender CBO in MLB, David Dombrowski, who put together the best Sox team ever for the 2018 season--108 wins in the regular season, then beating the Yankees 3-1 in the ALDS, the Astros 4-1 in the ALCS, and the Dodgers 4-1 in the WS.  

However, that 2018 greatest ever Sox team became the also-ran 2019 Sox despite still having the biggest payroll in MLB.  On top of that,  DD needed a whole bunch more cash, over and above the biggest payroll in MLB, to outbid the Dodgers for Mookie Betts and find a couple more starters to replace Price and Sale--while still paying their big salaries.  

Don't get me wrong,  I agree completely that the Sox need to spend more, especially on pitchers.  But wouldn't it be nice if those additional funds were spent intelligently?  

 

[jung]

Well, our pitching was suspect from day 1 and our fielding has been disgusting. Those two elements of the game are at the essence of run prevention.

 

So, what did we expect.

[Maxbialystock]

About the defense.  Yes, it's horrible this year--the very worst in MLB in terms of errors and unearned runs--and what moonslav calls runs caused by non-errors which were, however, bad plays.  

That said, however, almost every MLB roster breaks down into 13 pitchers and 13 lineup players.  The pitchers contribute exactly nothing to the offense.  Moreover, only one of them is on the mound at a time.  So, if you want a good defense, it makes sense to develop good pitching.  

And, funny thing about defense which is consistently ignored on talksox and by moonslav himself, is that the worst fielders have fielding percentages above 90 %.   On the other hand, those same fielders rarely can get a hit 30% of the time they come to bat--and, at the same time those fielders are the only players on the team who can get hits, sac flies, etc and score runs.  Hitting is so important these days there are a zillion stats related to how well and how often that round bat hits a round ball squarely.  

FWIW I love great defense.  It's the real poetry of baseball.  I hated it when the Sox dumped Jose Iglesias in the 2013 season to pick up another starter, Peavy.  But that actually paved the way for Xander Bogaerts--solid hitter, so-so defensive SS--to become the Sox starting SS for 9 freaking seasons.  

[moonslav59]

Other expensive arms lost and never replaced was Porcello & Kimbrell. Later, ERod & Nate.

[moonslav59]

42 minutes ago, Maxbialystock said:

About the defense.  Yes, it's horrible this year--the very worst in MLB in terms of errors and unearned runs--and what moonslav calls runs caused by non-errors which were, however, bad plays.  

That said, however, almost every MLB roster breaks down into 13 pitchers and 13 lineup players.  The pitchers contribute exactly nothing to the offense.  Moreover, only one of them is on the mound at a time.  So, if you want a good defense, it makes sense to develop good pitching.  

And, funny thing about defense which is consistently ignored on talksox and by moonslav himself, is that the worst fielders have fielding percentages above 90 %.   On the other hand, those same fielders rarely can get a hit 30% of the time they come to bat--and, at the same time those fielders are the only players on the team who can get hits, sac flies, etc and score runs.  Hitting is so important these days there are a zillion stats related to how well and how often that round bat hits a round ball squarely.  

FWIW I love great defense.  It's the real poetry of baseball.  I hated it when the Sox dumped Jose Iglesias in the 2013 season to pick up another starter, Peavy.  But that actually paved the way for Xander Bogaerts--solid hitter, so-so defensive SS--to become the Sox starting SS for 9 freaking seasons.  

I know almost every player has a 90%+ fielding %. It does not need to be mentioned. Also, scorer decisions are often arbitrary and just plain wrong. I hate using Flg% to judge anyone. It is near useless. Besides, a 5% difference is 1 error per 20 attempts. That's like turning a .290 hitter into a .240 one (or .330 if really good.)

Nobody is claiming defense is more important that batting or pitching, but really good pitching can turn sour when asked to make 4-5 outs in too many innings. And, when some team's get out of a jam with a skillfully turned DP, others let yet another batter come up. Even the best pitching is at a distinct disadvantage needing to get extra outs, too often.

I'm not one to blame any loss on one payer or one play, but there are easily 15-20 Red Sox losses that a bad defensive play or two led to the deciding amount of runs to score against us. Sure, better pitching could get us 15-20 more wins, too. More timely hitting, as well.

I'm not really worried about our defense, next year, unless Story is out again, and Rafaela is not in CF.

[Maxbialystock]

1 hour ago, moonslav59 said:

I know almost every player has a 90%+ fielding %. It does not need to be mentioned. Also, scorer decisions are often arbitrary and just plain wrong. I hate using Flg% to judge anyone. It is near useless. Besides, a 5% difference is 1 error per 20 attempts. That's like turning a .290 hitter into a .240 one (or .330 if really good.)

Nobody is claiming defense is more important that batting or pitching, but really good pitching can turn sour when asked to make 4-5 outs in too many innings. And, when some team's get out of a jam with a skillfully turned DP, others let yet another batter come up. Even the best pitching is at a distinct disadvantage needing to get extra outs, too often.

I'm not one to blame any loss on one payer or one play, but there are easily 15-20 Red Sox losses that a bad defensive play or two led to the deciding amount of runs to score against us. Sure, better pitching could get us 15-20 more wins, too. More timely hitting, as well.

I'm not really worried about our defense, next year, unless Story is out again, and Rafaela is not in CF.

Name the 15-20 games "that a bad defensive play or two led to the deciding amount of runs to score against us."  I've looked and can't find them.  

And please do not claim that 90% fielding percentage and 30% hitting percentage are not drastically different.  90% fielding percentage is actually low because good fielding percentages are closer to 97%, 98%, or even 99%.  Rafaela leads the Sox in errors and his is 97%.  Devers has a negative DWAR and his is 96%.  Duran's is 98%.  

Meanwhile, it turns out that 30% is actually high because no one on the Sox is hitting 30% (.300).  Duran, Devers, Yoshida, and Ref are all at 29% (.290).   Here are the batting averages of the ten Sox with 82 or more games this season:  Duran .293, Rafaela .260, Devers .292, Abreu .267, Wong .283, Hamilton .254, O'Neill .262, Smith .237, Refsnyder .289.  

[Maxbialystock]

On 8/11/2024 at 11:03 AM, notin said:

I assume by “run prevention”, you mean “pitching.” The Sox have little to no interest in defense…

Defense is vastly over-rated.  As I told moonslav, lousy defenders with negative DWAR's have fielding percentages above 95%.  And right now not not a single Sox hitter has .300 (30%) batting average.  

"Good field, no hit" is a reliable description of players stuck in the minors.  

[moonslav59]

6 minutes ago, Maxbialystock said:

Name the 15-20 games "that a bad defensive play or two led to the deciding amount of runs to score against us."  I've looked and can't find them.  

And please do not claim that 90% fielding percentage and 30% hitting percentage are not drastically different.  90% fielding percentage is actually low because good fielding percentages are closer to 97%, 98%, or even 99%.  Rafaela leads the Sox in errors and his is 97%.  Devers has a negative DWAR and his is 96%.  Duran's is 98%.  

Meanwhile, it turns out that 30% is actually high because no one on the Sox is hitting 30% (.300).  Duran, Devers, Yoshida, and Ref are all at 29% (.290).   Here are the batting averages of the ten Sox with 82 or more games this season:  Duran .293, Rafaela .260, Devers .292, Abreu .267, Wong .283, Hamilton .254, O'Neill .262, Smith .237, Refsnyder .289.  

I said a 5% FLG% difference (maybe 99% compared to 94%, but again, errors are subjective and NEAR useless) is 1 per 20 plays, which with BA is .050. A SS gets more plays at SS than PAs at the plater, but I'm not arguing defense is more important than batting. I actually said it WAS NOT!

On 15-20 games lost, in part because an error or bad defensive play led to enough runs to flip the score or tie it, is easily 15-20. God, I can think of 5 or 6 just on the failure to turn an easy DP. There were more plays where the OF could have caught the ball, and it went for a single, 2B and a couple times a homer- no error charged. But let's look at just unearned runs scored by the opps, that flipped the score:

9 games lost by differential of just UnEarned Runs

7/30 lost by 4 (5 unearned runs)

3/30 lost by 1 (3 UER)

4/18 lost by 1 (2)

5/15 lost by 1 (3)

4/6 lost by 1 (2)

7/4 lost by 1 (2)

7/20 -1 (2)

7/22 -1 (2)

Ties = 6

8/26 lost by 4 (2 UER)

4/16 lost by 3 (3)

5/16 2 (2)

7/5 2 (2)

8/14 2 (2)

8/19 1 (1)

9+6=15, and this is not counting unturned DPs, misjudges fly balls and other defensive mistakes not counted as a error. I amend my statement to claim 20-25 games NOT 15-20 total.

[jung]

Clearly pitching is the most important aspect of baseball. That said, poor defense can really make life miserable for pitchers. 'Every play in baseball starts with the ball in the hands of.........the Pitcher.

In addition, IMO the pitching in MLB is hideous this season. Now this is hard to support in stats because what we really have is the contest between pitcher and batter. Who is to say which is performing better in a specific contest between pitcher and hitter.

However, in this case I am pointing to the number of pitchers that have no command of all these pitches that I suspect, management is asking them to throw....NO COMMAND with few exceptions around the league. How many pitches have we seen just grooved to hitters. Pitchers this year are in the main wild in the strike zone or just all over the map.

I don't know how ML pitching digs out of its current malaise. Starting pitching has been in the main trash and if your starters are trash, what do you expect from your pen?

[notin]

3 hours ago, Maxbialystock said:

About the defense.  Yes, it's horrible this year--the very worst in MLB in terms of errors and unearned runs--and what moonslav calls runs caused by non-errors which were, however, bad plays.  

That said, however, almost every MLB roster breaks down into 13 pitchers and 13 lineup players.  The pitchers contribute exactly nothing to the offense.  Moreover, only one of them is on the mound at a time.  So, if you want a good defense, it makes sense to develop good pitching.  

And, funny thing about defense which is consistently ignored on talksox and by moonslav himself, is that the worst fielders have fielding percentages above 90 %.   On the other hand, those same fielders rarely can get a hit 30% of the time they come to bat--and, at the same time those fielders are the only players on the team who can get hits, sac flies, etc and score runs.  Hitting is so important these days there are a zillion stats related to how well and how often that round bat hits a round ball squarely.  

FWIW I love great defense.  It's the real poetry of baseball.  I hated it when the Sox dumped Jose Iglesias in the 2013 season to pick up another starter, Peavy.  But that actually paved the way for Xander Bogaerts--solid hitter, so-so defensive SS--to become the Sox starting SS for 9 freaking seasons.  

Fielding percentage is a useless stat.

The Sox could put Stephen Hawking at shortstop, and as long as he fielded all those grounders that he could get to  (re: grounders hit right at him) his fielding percentage would stay at 1.000.   Of course all ones he couldn’t get to - most of the, safe bet - would just be scored as hits…

[Bellhorn04]

1 hour ago, notin said:

Fielding percentage is a useless stat.

The Sox could put Stephen Hawking at shortstop, and as long as he fielded all those grounders that he could get to  (re: grounders hit right at him) his fielding percentage would stay at 1.000.   Of course all ones he couldn’t get to - most of the, safe bet - would just be scored as hits…

Fielding % is not a valuable stat on its own, but it's not totally useless.  The Red Sox have the most errors in MLB, the worst fielding percentage, and by far the most unearned runs allowed.  

A lot of fielding misplays do occur on balls hit right at the fielder or on bad throws, right?  Those have nothing to do with range.

Of course the fact that fielding % doesn't take any range factors into account means that other numbers have to be looked at as well.

[Duran Is The Man]

19 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Fielding % is not a valuable stat on its own, but it's not totally useless.  The Red Sox have the most errors in MLB, the worst fielding percentage, and by far the most unearned runs allowed.  (They're also close to the top in chances, which may be a problem in itself-not striking out enough batters.)

A lot of fielding misplays do occur on balls hit right at the fielder or on bad throws, right?  Those have nothing to do with range.

Of course the fact that fielding % doesn't take any range factors into account means that other numbers have to be looked at as well.

crappy defense and no pitching. every year. and Henry's morons choose to do absolutely nothing about it.

[Bellhorn04]

Errors:

Red Sox 98

Historically bad White Sox 80

MLB average 70

Unearned runs allowed

Red Sox 85

Historically bad White Sox 61

MLB average 49

[Duran Is The Man]

11 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Errors:

Red Sox 98

Historically bad White Sox 80

MLB average 70

Unearned runs allowed

Red Sox 85

Historically bad White Sox 61

MLB average 49

wow. their  s***** D is even worse than i thought. and, sadly, it's this way every freakin' year.

[moonslav59]

I found 15 games where taking away the unearned runs, tips the balance to the Sox (9games) or ties (6) the game. Nobody know what might have happened in those games, and I'm not blaming poor D for 100% of the reason we lost those 15 games, but that is not even counting all the missed routine DPs, misjudged fly balls, throw to the wrong base, and other non plays that many other players make- sometimes with ease.

No way is defense as important as batting or pitching, but when it forces the already over-worked pitching staff to get more outs than the norm, it ends up breaking down the staff, not to mention the morale of a team.

Bases loaded, one out, hard grounder right to our 2Bman: easy double play, but OH NO! The SS double pumps and fails to turn the DP. The inning stays alive for the opps, and the next guy hits an infield single that our 3Bman could not make a pretty normal play on. No errors charged: 2 runs scored. The pitcher is so bummed, he then lets up a granny.

This is our Red Sox.

 

 

[jung]

Check out the Red Sox earned runs and combine them with their unearned runs and tell me how they are ever going to make the post season this way.

[moonslav59]

On May 1st, we were 3rd in runs allowed. One June 1st, we were 9th. On July 1st, we were 11th. Now we are 26th. Is it impossible to return to the early season form?

[jung]

The starters are gassed....the pen is about gassed except for Janson (don't much need your closer in games you are losing).

I don't see a return to early season glory. We still cannot find the baseball with our gloves, miss the cutoff man too often and generally just boot the ball around.

 

[moonslav59]

2 hours ago, jung said:

The starters are gassed....the pen is about gassed except for Janson (don't much need your closer in games you are losing).

I don't see a return to early season glory. We still cannot find the baseball with our gloves, miss the cutoff man too often and generally just boot the ball around.

 

I doubt it, too. I'm just saying, in baseball, tides change, often. 

I see no signs of a turn around. The SP'ers are doing slightly better than 2-4 weeks ago, but not nearly as well as April-May. The pen has been god-awful, but we all know pen arms are fickle. They can go from good to bad and bad to good on a dime. (Again, I'm not predicting a turn around.)

[TheSplinteredSplendor]

On 8/11/2024 at 11:06 AM, Bellhorn04 said:

 

Not even trying to distinguish between the two at this point. The Red Sox supposedly have a Run Prevention Unit.

That Run Prevention Unit should be fired. Only the Pale Hose and the Angels have given up more runs than the Sox.

[TheSplinteredSplendor]

15 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

I found 15 games where taking away the unearned runs, tips the balance to the Sox (9games) or ties (6) the game. Nobody know what might have happened in those games, and I'm not blaming poor D for 100% of the reason we lost those 15 games, but that is not even counting all the missed routine DPs, misjudged fly balls, throw to the wrong base, and other non plays that many other players make- sometimes with ease.

No way is defense as important as batting or pitching, but when it forces the already over-worked pitching staff to get more outs than the norm, it ends up breaking down the staff, not to mention the morale of a team.

Bases loaded, one out, hard grounder right to our 2Bman: easy double play, but OH NO! The SS double pumps and fails to turn the DP. The inning stays alive for the opps, and the next guy hits an infield single that our 3Bman could not make a pretty normal play on. No errors charged: 2 runs scored. The pitcher is so bummed, he then lets up a granny.

This is our Red Sox.

 

 

And if you take away the games where the opponents have scored more runs than the Sox then they are undefeated.

We can 'what if' all day but this is supposed to be the realistic thread, not the fantasy thread.

[Bellhorn04]

If you lose a game 19-18, and 2 of the runs you gave up were unearned, whose fault was the loss?

These things are never that simple!