Jayhawk Bill

Chamberlain, Hughes, Buchholz, Kennedy, Lester, Delcarmen, Hansen

I was listening to the Yankees game driving home. Michael Kay reported that x-rays were negative, but that Jeter was day-to-day with the possibility of an MRI later to confirm the x-ray.

Humungous Media Market! Gargantuan Payroll! Absurdly high revenues!

My observation is that opposing pitchers are throwing strikes, knowing that his power his lacking.

Pardon, I just wanted to preserve this post by quoting it.

f***??? Don't f*** with my mojo. *** I got in just in time for Papelbon's bases loaded strikeout.

Whoa...strongly disagree with you there. Clay Buchholz is probably going to inherit the mantle of staff ace from Beckett/Matsuzaka, whether it be this year or next year, if he stays healthy. Buchholz had two bad starts and he hit the DL. No shame there. He had one bad start earlier vs. the Yankees, but he allowed only one walk. I already posted, in considerable detail, the trouble Buchholz had with umpiring his last start. Let's give the guy a chance. *** That said... ...the correlation of two factors does disturb me: 1) His trouble is in road games, and 2) If you check the Red Sox celebration photos at their parties last October, Buchholz was completely trashed. I hope that it's not an issue, but we could have another Derek Lowe-type problem. Career split for Clay: Home: 4-0, 1.39 ERA Road: 1-4, 6.89 ERA But give the kid some time, OK? :dunno:

FWIW, Lester got no help from Brian Knight. Six pitches in the strike zone were called balls; none outside the zone were called strikes. Knight was more generous to Hochevar on outside strikes. It's not statistically significant as bias--it's close--but certainly Jon Lester got no help from the umpire.

When I was a new poster here, TheKilo helped me get established in the Talksox community. This Game Thread is started in his honor, as a gesture of thanks and appreciation. Don't f*** with my mojo. :thumbsup:

Adequate game by Lester.

Hmmm...my assessment pre-game differed from Gordon Edes's. Cheez, I pick up the low ERA in the last four starts and nobody listens? :dunno: *** If the Red Sox are lucky enough to prevail tonight, no pre-game analysis tomorrow.

Gratuitous error on Lester's part, hurling the ball over to the stands to let the backup catcher advance to scoring position on two outs. Did he really expect a steal?

Well, I might be concerned if my kids had a private school teacher or coach whom I suspected had used drugs illegally for two decades. :dunno:

Cool. I see that he's moving from assistant coach to head coach, and that the school already won a state championship earlier this month. I wonder if Biggio is sharing with the students where to get the best, um, dietary supplements and stuff?

Who's our best relief pitcher so far this season? Javier Lopez. Yup, Javier Lopez. How do I reach this conclusion? By checking WXRL. WXRL is a measure of the change in Win Expectation during a pitcher's outings above that expected from a Replacement-level pitcher, adjusted for strength of opposing lineups. Note that this metric gives great credit for holding tight late-inning leads and and even greater penalty for blowing those leads, even if runners left by other pitchers score the actual game-changing runs. It's who's on the mound that counts. Here are the stats thus far for 2008: [table]NAME | WXRL (Wins) | LEV Javier Lopez | 0.77 | 1.15 Hideki Okajima | 0.54 | 1.68 Jonathan Papelbon | 0.50 | 1.77 David Aardsma | 0.49 | 0.80 Bryan Corey | 0.08 | 0.86 Julian Tavarez | -0.28 | 0.34 Kyle Snyder | -0.29 | 1.26 Mike Timlin | -0.53 | 1.16 Craig Hansen | -0.54 | 1.13 Manny Delcarmen | -0.59 | 0.91 Total | 0.15 | 1.00*[/table] The entire Boston bullpen, as a group, has been 0.15 wins better than a bunch of ten AAA call-ups thus far in 2008. That's terrible. It's also probably not indicative of the bullpen's talent. Disregarding the stats of Corey, Tavarez and Snyder, all of whom are gone, raises the sum WXRL to 0.65, half a win better. We also know that we're taking a snapshot of Jon Papelbon at his worst moment: he would've been closer to 2.50 WXRL if not for those two fluke blown saves. But flukes count in the stats. Let's face it, relief pitching has been a problem for Boston in 2008. Let's also take heart in realizing that this is an area where we can expect to do much, much better the rest of the way, even without the Front Office's making a trade. Last year Papelbon, Okajima, Lopez, Delcarmen and Timlin were worth 13.3 WXRL over the course of the year. Expecting a third that much from the bullpen from now through September would mean a Boston team winning 99 games instead of the 95 games one might project from our current standings. Expecting just two-thirds of last year's production--expecting our relief pitchers to match, not to exceed, what they did last year--would result in 103 wins for Boston, all other factors held constant. *** Our bullpen has sucked thus far. They're still good pitchers, though, and we're still a very good team. :thumbsup: * a leverage index of 1.00 defines the beginning of a game; the mean of Boston relief pitchers' LEV is different and less relevant.

Don't be fooled by the Kansas City Royals. Pundits are jabbering excitedly about the new-look Royals, a team merely two games back of the division-leading White Sox in the AL Central. They speak of youth, excitement, and a belief on the bench that the team can win. After years of futility, Royals fans are enjoying the excitement of a pennant chase once again. Of course, many teams' pennant chases have come to abrupt ends and tragic disrailments within view of the Green Monster. That may be about to happen again. Consider this: 1) The 2008 Royals are 6-0 against the Detroit Tigers. That's well and good, but a whole bunch of teams beat up the Tigers pretty effectively this season. Beating the Tigers--especially in the first three games of this season--isn't a reliable measure of excellence. 2) The Royals are 7-2 in games Zack Greinke has started. Zack Greinke is a good guy, and he was a pitcher who seems finally to have channeled his flashes of potential into a significant streak of excellent games. Zack Greinke chalked up his fifth win yesterday as the Royals beat the Marlins 9-3. He will not pitch in this four-game series. 3) In games not started by Greinke and not versus the Detroit Tigers, the Kansas City Royals are 10-20, a .333 W/L Pct, a record that would leave them below the hapless San Diego Padres as the absolute worst team in Major League Baseball. If that's not enough of an indictment of their talent, let's rub it in: these guys are chokers. Over the season thus far the team is batting .264/.321/.373, team stats that are 5th, 10th and 11th-best in the AL, respectively. With two outs and runners in scoring position, their team batting line is an anemic .220/.321/.274--yes, that's a .274 slugging percentage and an .054 isolated power. Even worse, in high-leverage situations* their batting line is .220/.272/.304: not only aren't they batting in runs, they're not even reaching base when it really matters. That's why the Royals are last--dead last--in run scoring in the American League. For Boston, the toughest game of the four-game series comes tonight. Rookie Luke Hochevar is the Royals' second-best starting pitcher thus far in 2008. Despite getting just average defense behind him, Hochevar has posted an ERA below 4.00 for April and May, largely due to his getting ground balls 54.4% of the time. Hochevar is 3-2 despite getting a miniscule 2.09 supporting runs per 27 outs pitched. Greinke looks like a Cy Young candidate, but Hochevar looks very formidable himself. Facing the Royals for Boston will be Jon Lester. While Lester's stats over the whole season look very similar to Hochevar's, they conceal the fact that Jon Lester has been very effective in his last four starts, allowing only a 2.13 ERA in 25.3 IP. Lester will have challenges tonight: the wind is blowing out and he's almost three times as home run-prone as Hochevar, and the Royals bat .285/.347/.403 as a team vs. left-handed pitchers. Still, with several Boston hitters coming off great games over the weekend, Lester will have every opportunity to earn a win for his team and Red Sox Nation tonight. Game Time: 7:05 pm EDT Fenway Park Current Weather: 57 degrees wind 20 mph blowing out Royals pitcher: Luke Hochevar RHP (3-2) 3.94 ERA Red Sox pitcher: Jon Lester LHP (2-2) 3.95 ERA * High-leverage situations are those with a Win Probability Added of over 1.50, which are roughly the 20% most important plate appearances of the season.

BP hasn't adjusted ELO standings yet this morning. Here are yesterday's: [table]AL East | W | L | Relative Strength | Proj Wins | Proj Losses | Champions (%) | Wild Card (%) | Playoffs (%) Red Sox | 26 | 19 | 1545 | 91 | 71 | 52 | 15 | 67 Rays | 25 | 18 | 1505 | 84 | 78 | 16 | 14 | 30 Orioles | 23 | 19 | 1488 | 79 | 83 | 7 | 7 | 14 Blue Jays | 22 | 23 | 1513 | 82 | 80 | 11 | 10 | 21 Yankees | 20 | 23 | 1524 | 83 | 79 | 14 | 12 | 26[/table] Note that the Yankees are the second-best team in the AL East by BP's reckoning on the ELO method with a 1524 in the relative strength column. ELO considers the current winning or losing streak in conjunction with the pattern of past performance, including 2007 at an appropriately discounted rate. Unlike other systems, ELO essentially includes credit for the front office's history regarding late-season moves. A six-game deficit is significant but not overwhelming. The Yankees are a championship-caliber team off to a bad start. They will still contend in the AL East, and they certainly might prevail. It is far too early for either panic or hubris.

And Boston wins. The wind blowing out and weak Milwaukee pitching helped Boston overcome four gopher balls allowed by Beckett. Great days for lots of Boston batters, especially Big Papi, Youk, and Pedroia; terrible day for Coco Crisp, 0-5, the only Boston batter not to get a hit. Quiet hero: Tek was 2-3 with two walks, raising his BA to .281.

Excellent point, Dustball. Few MLB players are more offensive than A-Rod.

While I'd rather see MDC pitching better than he did, he showed uncharacteristic calmness pitching out of his own jam there.