sk7326

Red Sox are still in pretty excellent shape - not much has really changed. The Sox have not been amazing since the break: Rays 1-3 Orioles 2-1 Yankees 2-2 Mariners 3-0 DBacks 2-1 Astros 2-1 Royals 1-3 Jays 1-2 14-13 since the break against one of the meatiest portions of their schedule this season. The Jays were the below .500 team they had a losing record against, and those were 3 coin flip games which don't really say anything one way or the other (aside from dem's the breaks). In a virtual tie with Detroit for the best record in the AL and a 1.5 games out from the best record in the league period. Detroit is a better team, but I thought that before the break too. The Sox are 5 games up on a playoff spot with 6 weeks to go. Barring a catastrophic set of injuries like 2011 - they are very high probability to make the tournament.

The stupidest of stats is (of the stats everyone knows) is Saves and Errors. Neither measure what it is supposed to measure particularly well, and both are based on odd criteria. Indeed, an error is - like a basketball assists - an opinion. And errors say nothing about getting to balls, which is a more useful area of defense. Pitcher wins and RBIs are way down there as well for wonky stats - as both are team accomplishments credited to individuals.

Odds are excellent. Just need to keep chopping wood, win series, avoid serious swoons. Blue Jays series was tough - bunch of coin flip games.

Better. Like anyone who has played sports would tell you - the superstars in high school are not the kids who dominated JV as freshman. They are the guys who got rotation minutes with the VARSITY as freshmen. 20 year olds who are competing (and better that) at a grown man level of baseball - those guys almost NEVER miss, the worst case is a guy who sticks around for a decade while we wonder why he underachieved (but by no means a "bust").

Probably the floor barring injury - which is a darn good player. Potentially could be a lot more.

Appeal to authority aside - I'm not dictating a new fangled form of baseball ... more likely musing about baseball from when we were kids, basic Earl Weaver stuff which still works. Now the days of the 100+ appearance by Kent Tekulve or Mike Marshall are clearly over. But the trends of modern bullpens, with 11-12 pitchers without anybody capable of multiple innings is a severe waste of personnel. There are 25 roster spots and you want to use them wisely - and extra pitchers because you are afraid of using your highest paid reliever in an actually stressful situation takes a potential pinch runner, or utility outfielder, or guy who only knows how to hit lefties from the manager's toolbox. Having guys who can actually work multiple innings (like 100 innings a year) would actually be a great benefit - that is separate from the closer discussion. It is tempting to think that the 9th inning is automatically the most important outs in the game. They often are not - and that's why you see so many teams get success just putting random guys into the slot. I'm not even arguing 6 out saves - I'm arguing a much simpler case - if the setup guy does not do his job and creates a real problem ... using a couple of inferior guys just because you are afraid of using your closer for exactly the sort of high pressure situations that are needed - then what are you paying the closer for? To get 3 outs with the bases empty - lots of guys can do that for a lot cheaper than Papelbon.

But you are compensating the closer like he is your best reliever - so if he is not your best reliever, that is a problem. Indeed, I wouldn't even argue that the best reliever should finish the game - it's not so much the argument for the 5 out save happening more frequently, it's arguing for using Papelbon to get the game's most significant out and then move on to someone else to clean it up. The idea that a guy is the guy for the biggest situation but too big a slacker the rest of the time to work a 9th inning is counterintuitive.

Saves were invented by a writer ... Jerome Holtzman ... has no real basis in anything else

Well, here is some research done on win expectancy given a situation http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/other/wpa_inquirer.php that can say some things about closers and what is a key situation: If you take the numbers based on how average teams do - basically you take a 1 run lead into the 9th inning without baserunners - the Win Probability is 88.03% basically need to cash in 9 out 10 of these sorts of games to be doing your job as a closer. A 2-run lead, the probabilty goes to 95.27% - in other words, you'd want your closer to be able to nail down 19 of 20 of these. (note the win prob goes down if you are the road team as there is no chance to come back from a blown lead). A 3-run lead, the probability goes to 98.07%, basically 49 out of 50 save chances. If a closer has an equal number of those sorts of games, you are looking at 94% being sort of the required number, a bit less than 19/20 in save chances to be doing a "good job". Obviously the percentages go up based on outs as well, if you have one out to get with the bases empty and a 1 run lead, it becomes 97.34% (basically 30 of 31 chances). What is interesting is the four out save ... if a reliever comes in with a 1 run lead with 2 gone in the 8th, here are some win probs: runner at 1st: 84.93% runner at 2nd: 82.12% runner at 3rd: 81.23% 1st and 2nd: 80.12% 1st and 3rd: 78.57% 2nd and 3rd: 75.02% bases loaded: 72.40% 2nd and 3rd in a tie game?: 47.20% When you get to a late situation - something like 2nd and 3rd and 2 out ... that final out protecting a 1 run lead is worth almost a 16% increase in the expected win% - more crucial than any of the 9th inning situations during that game. It is mystifying how many managers are squeamish about using your best pitcher then.

His bat has much more value in CF, but I am not sure at his age you can count on him to do it at a premium level. I think he stays in RF. Bradley's range at CF is a better fit.

I think the pressure is a bit overrated - or the rush to use pressure as to why the inning went to seed. After all, when Rivera blew the 2001 save that inning did not have a single ball hit hard. These are grownups in a job they've been doing for a long time. Also, a lot of the import of the job has been stage managed away. Consider in 1974, Mike Marshall won the Cy Young as a reliever. He was reliever who made 106 appearances and pitched 208 innings. 21 saves yes, but also a 15-12 record! Compare that with the lavishly compensated Jonathan Papelbon who only is giving 60-70 innings or value - and often in very specialized situations. In 2003, Grady I think never understood the whole closer by committee idea - and just seemed to pick guys randomly, which was not at all the intent. When Bill James put that idea out there, it was making the simple observation that you want your best pitchers to be pitching when it matters the most, and a lot of times that is not the 9th inning. This makes sense - a 2 run lead with the bases empty and 3 outs to get is not a difficult situation. You shouldn't be saving a closer for that situation and using lesser pitchers for those highly leveraged at bats in the 7th and 8th. Heck, in 2004 Tito understood this fully - and had no shame in bringing in Foulke in the 7th when things were getting hairy. Papelbon has been a good reliever and occasionally great (though not as consistently since 2008). That said, $14M is a lot for 60 innings of work ... and unless he is a guy you are happy bringing into the non-9th inning of a game, I am not sure how irreplaceable he really is. Saves are a weird made up stat which do not really help with identifying good relievers. But arbitration pays for them and so does free agency, so we are stuck with a lot of 1 inning closers being overpaid for a very very narrow job description.

It is possible that there is extra pressure - but I have not seen a good analysis proving it (and a bunch of ex jocks who got paid to do it aren't great authorities). I look at it very simply - if you don't want to bring a pitcher into the 8th inning of a tie game with the go ahead run on 3rd ... then he's not a guy you trust and not really worth the scratch.

A lot of their relievers last year weren't particularly good to begin with. There are a lot of talk show sort of reasons to anoint closers - but what the job has become ... pitch an inning, without any baserunners on ... is not that bad, and often are not the most important outs of a particular game. I was watching the MLB.TV package for Sox-Royals and got the Royals announcers and they were talking about "getting the game to Holland" in the 9th - as if they would never bring him in the 8th when the Red Sox were building the rally. Yet that is how almost every team thinks - what good is a closer if you refuse to use him when the game is on the line? I argued for Hanrahan over Bailey early in the year - but that is because Bailey was the better pitcher and should not be kept in the "proven closer" glass case. I mean the Phillies are paying $14 million for 50 innings of work - is that an efficient use of money? Only pitch a guy when there is a lead and no duress?

8 HRs allowed in 55 IP ... has been Tazawa's soft spot all season, and Arrencibia is more than capable of closing his eyes and hitting it far.

It IS a volatile position - I agree. But Papelbon clearly when we let him go had stopped justifying his contract demands. Pitching innings with nobody on is not really a skill that should cost a ton of money. Papelbon is a closer because he was anointed in 2006 and amassed enough saves that the market is paying him as such. But he has not been treated like a team's best reliever for a few years - now granted not nearly enough teams use their best relievers when it matters most (the Red Sox are good there relatively). The one inning closer is a relatively unimportant invention - it is helpful that they find SOMEBODY, but they don't need to go nuts identifying who.

Iggy's replacement is a pretty good defensive SS - a modest dropoff for an improved bat. Detroit needed a SS, and they got one who has an everyday starter sort of ceiling - although his hitting matters there too, his struggle is going to be producing enough to stay playable. This year his body of work has been a "yes" there. His July is not acceptable, his August to date is.

Well, two playoff appearances and 179 wins in two playoff misses ... not flags, but 29/30 teams can say that. The Sox run was pretty good - not like Pedroia, Youk etc became bad people suddenly. But - in any case, this year has been a bit of a return to form. Not sure if a title will come from it - just from the perspective that no baseball favorite is ever any sort of iron lock - but has been a terrific season and an unruined summah.

It is a good reason to look year to year with the bullpen. Just pick a guy and let him work the 9th ... it's an inning - just like the others, although the financial incentives have gone insane. I mean this year Uehara - a pitcher with phenomenal command and a good splitter, but no wipeout pitches - has been remarkable this year. But he could turn into a pumpkin next year easily. You could just as easily have Drake Britton get those reps next year (obviously Koji deserves the role until he loses it) - just how the cookie crumbles. Tampa turned an Angels castoff (Rodney) into somebody after turning career underachiever Kyle Farnsworth into the same. We have plenty of live arms - just run them through.

Beckett, the ALCS MVP of our last title, that bastion of negativity. I'd like to think he is a guy who simply no longer can pitch - diminished fastball without the command to become something else. I always saw his answers as a guy who recognized the loss of stuff but wasn't going to cry because a bunch of reporters wanted him to. It showed in the results in any case. The Dodgers this season have been interesting - first half of the year something like 3rd in the NL in OBP and last in runs ... that imbalance was not going to last. I suspect the presence or absence of a #5 starter was not changing that much one way or the other.

Valentine as a scapegoat has some truth, once again a comic level of injury derailed the team as much as anything. But when one considers how inept he was at managing his own coaching staff (I don't care if his players liked him) - that was a serious problem, and a poor reflection on him. (nobody in a real job would be allowed that garbage either) The negativity was largely self-inflicted. Instead of a 90-72 team which lost a playoff bid on the shoulders of a team which had a month of poor pitching and started to run out of players generally - the management team listened to much to the soap operas fabricated by WEEI or Dan Shaughnessy and the like and were very reactionary. But it is seductive - nobody wants to say there was a lot of bad luck. 2012 the bad luck compounded, and then the trade + the injuries left them fielding a legitimately bad team. This year, a bunch of the unlucky has sort of shifted back to "about how it should be" and suddenly, a contender.

Valentine as a scapegoat has some truth, once again a comic level of injury derailed the team as much as anything. But when one considers how inept he was at managing his own coaching staff (I don't care if his players liked him) - that was a serious problem, and a poor reflection on him. (nobody in a real job would be allowed that garbage either) The negativity was largely self-inflicted. Instead of a 90-72 team which lost a playoff bid on the shoulders of a team which had a month of poor pitching and started to run out of players generally - the management team listened to much to the soap operas fabricated by WEEI or Dan Shaughnessy and the like and were very reactionary. But it is seductive - nobody wants to say there was a lot of bad luck. 2012 the bad luck compounded, and then the trade + the injuries left them fielding a legitimately bad team. This year, a bunch of the unlucky has sort of shifted back to "about how it should be" and suddenly, a contender.

If there has been one thing Cherington has done wrong - it has been the fetish for trading for "proven closers" - often overpaying. Bailey and Hanrahan need to be object lessons here. You are better off just throwing live arm after live arm at the situation until one sticks. Tampa shows the way here - sift through other team's garbage (or your own) and there is plenty to be had.

I say no - but Carp with a right handed caddy is not at all bad as a fallback position. And yes, if Napoli did not have a competition for his services, he'd make a fine righty partner.

Well Braun won't be doing that anymore probably - but those stats are an expectation for a LF ... Stanton is batting .238, but he is getting on base almost as often as Ellsbury, so it's not at all bad. The SB numbers are more interesting than crucial - we know the industry values stolen bases, but 1985 ain't comin back. Speedsters between 30 and 36 have had some good numbers, but speedsters without pop who can't play CF anymore - the stolen bases are just not enough to offset the other stuff. Basically you are talking Ichiro - who has not been an effective corner outfielder for 3 years. I love Ellsbury - and the lack of homeruns does not bother me - he is clearly not a slap hitter. He is hitting the ball hard, just not as many going over the fence. But I am not sentimental about what he represents as an investment. The Crawford comp is instructive. Crawford had a pseudo-MVP season entering his free agent year - a great athlete but also a guy who was not playing CF. His rough season in 2011 indeed was made even rougher because he was playing an "offensive" position. That he was a good defender in LF (and he slipped there too in 2011) hardly mattered when his bat when in the tank so hard. The Red Sox if anything overvalued the defensive component of Crawford's WAR-case. This is the basic principle of WAR/VORP/whatever. The fact is the Red Sox could snap their fingers pull Daniel Nava and Mike Carp from obscurity into ok production at LF. So if Ellsbury can't produce like Daniel Nava as a left fielder - then a team is wasting its money, since that sort of production is not hard to find. Can a team like Pittsburgh - for instance - who is getting NOTHING out of their RF, justify Ellsbury as a RF with McCutchen manning CF? Sure - but that is a very specific case. I love Ellsbury - I am trying not to be sentimental about his production as a 30 year old outfielder.

He moves to LF, his fringy .800 OPS-ness puts him in a cohort with Giancarlo Stanton or Ryan Braun's statistics ... that is a different group than as a CF. His numbers have to be examined in context with being an acceptable CF, and more credit for being a good one. He will be 30 when he enters the market - and with so much of his value in his legs, how much peak vs decline would you be buying over the next 6 years REALLY.