Author Archives: @ltcmiked

About @ltcmiked

Expat-Masshole with an unhealthy obsession for the Boston Red Sox and a burning hatred for Buck Showalter and the entire city of Baltimore. Probably needs therapy. Stat geek with marginal math skills and anger management issues. I can't explain why, but my favorite player has always been Rick Burleson.

“Judging” Rafael Devers

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Let’s jump to conclusions. For one minute, let’s be Yankee fans and make ridiculous assertions about how every player who dons our uniform will one have a plaque in Cooperstown.

Rafael Devers is that guy. His electric start, along with the addition of a scalding-hot Eduardo Nunez, injected energy and offense into the struggling Sox in July and vaulted them back into first place in the East. Even after a recent dip, his .300/8/18 start to his big league career is more than just promising, it’s exhilarating. Let’s face it, if he played in the Bronx they’d already be thinking about retiring his number and ordering his plaque for Monument Valley. God knows they’re already measuring Aaron Judge for a HoF jacket.

But we’re not Yankee fans. Thank the Lord.

We’re smart enough to know that as good as Devers was on the farm, and what he displayed with his hot start, he will level out – in fact he may already have. But when he does, what can we expect? From an offensive standpoint, the answer looks pretty damn good.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Bill James didn’t reinvent the game with his Baseball Abstract in 1977, but he did start a revolution in how we think about, analyze, and project player value. Johan Hill showed Brad Pitt the power of data analytics in Moneyball, and if he could figure it out between adopting half the world’s orphans and murdering zombies then most of us can too.

Many believers in sabermetrics will tell you that the number-one predictor of hitting potential in the big leagues over time is best summed up as the relationship between power, average, and strike-outs. Intuitively, when we think about the greatest hitters who ever played the game, we think about guys who drove the ball with power and seldom swung and missed. Williams, Ruth, Mays, and Aaron come to mind.

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It’s not enough to simply crush the ball. Nobody in their right minds considers Dave Kingman one of the all-time great hitters – though he did hit 442 HRs in the pre-steroid era. Kingman’s problem? He was a career .236 hitter with more than 1,800 Ks. So, the greatest hitters who ever lived are those with high slugging percentages, high batting averages, and low strike-outs. Not exactly rocket science. If you isolate hitting for power (slugging avg – batting avg) and divide by Ks per 9-innings, you can begin to see quantitatively why the people you think were great hitters were, and why we hate Carl Crawford .

Name Level Games Slugging Average ISO-Power SOs SO per 9 Inning ISO-P/K
Ted Williams MLB 2292 0.634 0.344 0.290 709 0.309 0.937
Rogers Hornsby MLB 2259 0.577 0.358 0.219 679 0.301 0.729
Babe Ruth MLB 2503 0.690 0.342 0.348 1330 0.531 0.655
Hank Aaron MLB 3298 0.555 0.305 0.250 1383 0.419 0.596
George Brett MLB 2707 0.487 0.305 0.182 908 0.335 0.543
Willie Mays MLB 2992 0.557 0.302 0.255 1526 0.510 0.500
Gary Sheffield MLB 2576 0.514 0.292 0.222 1171 0.455 0.488
Wade Boggs MLB 2440 0.443 0.328 0.115 745 0.305 0.377
David Ortiz MLB 2408 0.552 0.286 0.266 1750 0.727 0.366
Manny Ramirez MLB 2302 0.585 0.312 0.273 1813 0.788 0.347
Mark Texiera MLB 1862 0.509 0.268 0.241 1441 0.774 0.311
Dwight Evans MLB 2606 0.470 0.272 0.198 1697 0.651 0.304
Jack Clark MLB 1994 0.476 0.267 0.209 1441 0.723 0.289
Jim Thome MLB 2543 0.554 0.276 0.278 2548 1.002 0.277
Dave Kingman MLB 1941 0.478 0.236 0.242 1816 0.936 0.259
Reggie Jackson MLB 2820 0.490 0.262 0.228 2597 0.921 0.248
Carl Crawford MLB 1716 0.435 0.290 0.145 1067 0.622 0.233
Wily Mo Pena MLB 599 0.445 0.250 0.195 559 0.933 0.209

Of the players who belong to the Hall of Fame (bold), Reggie Jackson was an outlier. Objectively speaking, from a quantitative standpoint, he was a painfully average ballplayer. For perspective, in more than 1,000 fewer at bats, he struck out 1,071 more times than Willie Mays. Reggie just happened to excel on the big stage – winning four World Series and winning MVP in two of them.

Boston’s Future

Rafael Devers hasn’t had enough MLB at-bats to generate a sufficiently large statistical sample yet. But if we compare his minor league numbers to Betts, Bogaerts, and Bradley – and knowing how those players have leveled out after over 450-MLB games each – we can begin to see where he might level out himself.

Name Level Games Slugging Average ISO-Power SOs SO per 9 Inning ISO-P/K
Mookie Betts Minors 313 0.442 0.307 0.135 147 0.470 0.287
Rafael Devers Minors 399 0.482 0.296 0.186 291 0.729 0.255
Rafael Devers MLB 40 0.513 0.300 0.213 39 0.975 0.218
Xander Bogaerts Minors 315 0.503 0.288 0.215 272 0.863 0.249
Jackie Bradley Minors 277 0.474 0.298 0.176 208 0.751 0.234

We should note that currently, through 493 MLB games, Mookie’s ISO-P/K is .355 – placing him squarely between Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. I hope we can agree that he’s leveled out quite nicely. It would be premature, with such a small sample at the big-league level, to project Devers will be in Betts’ class as a pro (he’s at .218 now.  But with good coaching, line-up protection, and patience at the plate,. we can expect him to be more productive than either Bogaerts or Bradley – and that’s not too shabby.

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And just for perspective – NY’s newest hero, Aaron Judge, had a .182 in 348 minor league games.  And despite all the tape measure HRs and Sportscenter fawning, he’s sitting at .202 through 152 big-league games. Dave Kingman? He’s not even Carl Crawford.

 

Note: all statistics thank to the tome of wisdom at www.baseball-reference.com

 

Happy Anniversary Wake

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Aaron Bleepin’ Boone

I was somewhere over the Mediterranean when Aaron Boone hit his home run off Wake to win the 2003 ALCS and send the Red Sox home early from the post season. Another year of what might have been. Truth be told I wouldn’t have been watching anyway. I was redeploying from Iraq that day, and after watching Pedro strike out Alfonso Soriano to end the seventh inning with the Sox still up 4-2, I went to check on my flight home.

Ortiz added a home run off of David Wells in the top of the eighth to make it 5-2. We were in great shape. Between Timlin and Embree the ’03 Sox bullpen was lights out. This was going to be THE YEAR. Enter Grady Little.

When I returned from getting my flight update, Pedro was inexplicably still on the mound for the bottom of the eighth and Jeter was on second base after a one-out double. Bernie Williams singled. Jeter scored. I dropped a number of f-bombs and left. Not because my plane was leaving. I left because I knew, deep down we all knew, how this game was going to end.

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For those too young to remember a time before Aaron Boone was ruining baseball games in the ESPN broadcast booth, I’ll summarize. New York scored three in the bottom of the eighthnn to tie it and Aaron Bleepin’ Boone sent a Tim Wakefield knuckler into the second deck in left field to send NY back to the World Series.

He’s no Bill Buckner

Walking off the mound at Yankee Stadium, having surrendered the series losing home run, Wake admitted that he was terrified that he would no longer be welcome in Boston. After all, the last Red Sox goat – Bill Buckner – had been run out of town after contributing to the collapse in the 1986 World Series against the Mets. But Wake was no Billy Buck.

Wakefield had been with the Sox for nine seasons and won 102 games for Boston by then. He’d thrown 14 great innings of relief and won two games in that ALCS. He was a legitimate candidate for series MVP. Had they won.

Boston forgave Wake. We had Grady Little to hate.

Our Ironman

Wakefield pitched 17 seasons in Boston, winning 186 games for the hometown team and 200 for his career. He did everything anyone could have asked. He averaged 200 innings a season for his 19-year career. He started. He did long relief. He closed. Sometimes all in the same season.

In 1999, the Red Sox used Wakefield, a knuckleballer who’s every pitch was an adventure for the catcher and a home run waiting to happen for the hitter, to close. In addition to staring 17 games that year, he saved 15.

Wake was selfless. In game three of the 2004 ALCS, when Boston was getting pummeled by New York and on the verge of going down 0-3 in the series, Wake asked for the ball so Franconia could save the bullpen. He entered the game in the third inning, already down 10-0. He took his lumps for 3.1 innings and gave the Sox a chance in game four.

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He came out of the bullpen in game five and threw three innings of one-hit ball in extra innings in an elimination game. And won. For those who didn’t live through the 2004 ALCS, it is difficult to describe the intensity. For Wake, who walked off the mound a loser last year, to pitch so many clutch innings in against the same opponent in the same elimination situation the following year, his performance was nothing short of incredible.

Happy Anniversary Timmy

Today, September 13th, marks the sixth anniversary since Wake won his 200th career game. It’s not a major sports event, in fact I only remembered this morning when Facebook reminded me that I was there. I’m glad I was. Tim Wakefield really represents the great unsung Red Sox that are too often overlooked. He won’t ever be enshrined in Cooperstown, but he is exactly the kind of player that this franchise should celebrate.

Baltimore: America’s Sports Armpit

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Worse than New York

Though I now live outside Washington, DC and spent most of my adult life a nomad, I will always consider myself Bostonian to the core. There is only one kind of chowda, and only one way to say it.   Dunkin Donuts kicks Krispy Crème’s ass. And, of course, New York sucks.

I hate everything about New York – from the filth in the streets to the noise pollution that is their accent. I hate the Yankees, the Giants, and all their fans – certainly in part because much of my childhood misery came at their hands. However, like most rationale Massholes, as much as we hate our neighbor to the south, we have to respect them. New York is a strong, important city with character and the Yankees and Giants have great traditions of winning.

The same cannot be said for the landfill three hours further south. Baltimore has not one redeeming quality. I’d rather live in Baghdad, again, than spend more than an hour in that cesspool.

Baseless Arrogance

Baltimore, a city that burned itself to the ground in a race riot two years ago and needed the National Guard and 1,000 police officers to restore order, still somehow presumes to lecture Boston on racism. I get it, the Red Sox were the last team in baseball to integrate. Yeah, it was almost six decades ago. Progress has been made.

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Maybe they haven’t heard that Red Sox principle owner John Henry is so overwhelmed with guilt that he doesn’t sleep well? The sport’s most aloof owner is “haunted” by the ghost of Tom Yawkey, who – like Scrooge’s Marley – apparently walks the concourses of Fenway Park in the dark of night howling racial epithets.

Perhaps it was Yawkey’s ghost who threw racial slurs at Adam Jones on that fateful night in May. That’s the only plausible explanation how in 2017, in a crowd of a thousand cellphone cameras, nobody caught the incident on video, nobody saw who said it, and not a single witness has been found. I’ve seen enough Discovery Channel to know you can’t see ghosts. It couldn’t possibly be that Adam Jones wasn’t telling the truth or just hates a divisional rival. Of course not.

Besides Jones, of course, my least favorite bird has to be Manny Mochado. Mochado spiked Pedroia on a dirty slide back in April and Pedroia hasn’t really been healthy since. If there were any justice in baseball he’d take a heater in the ribs every at bat in Fenway for the rest of his career.

The O’s are led by an equally unbearable ass. Buck Showalter once managed the Yankees, but since landing in “Charm City” has found the nerve to complain about baseball’s uneven financial playing field. Even more than the fact that he’s a hypocritical ass, I hate that he absolutely owns the Red Sox. Since taking over in 2011 the Orioles lead the head-to-head matchup with Boston 72-56. Thankfully, he’s simply awful in the post season, having one exactly one post season series in 19 years and posting a 9-14 record.

Showalter and his team love to talk about “playing the game the right way” and the unwritten rules of baseball. Save it. You haven’t even been to a World Series since 1983. Please stop talking until you do.

Whiney Losers

The truly sad thing is that the Orioles are actually Baltimore’s likeable team. Led by the whiniest coach this side of the University of Michigan, the Ravens may be the most disgusting franchise in all major North American sports.

I get the whole Edger Allen Poe thing, but let’s face it, only reason they chose the Raven as their mascot is that the NFL wouldn’t let them put the image of a battered spouse on their helmets. The greatest players in the history of the franchise are a murder and two spousal abusers. By the way, brave stance there with Ray Rice – once the video leaked anyway. Terrell Suggs? Oh, he’s still productive on the field so let’s not discuss his domestic abuse history.

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The Ravens aren’t just bad, they’re stupid. Baltimore once made Joe Flacco the highest paid player in league history – the self-appointed “elite” QB with a career QBR lower than Rich Gannon. Rich Gannon. Take a moment and let that sink in.  And, of course, who can forget the 2015 AFC Divisional playoff game when New England twice took advantage of the same innovative, but fully-legal, formation to conceal eligible receivers to get critical first downs on scoring drives against Baltimore.

Harbaugh, of course, lost his mind – first on the field with the officials, then in the post-game press conference, and finally in the off season when Baltimore joined other teams to petition the league to change the rules. To this day, Harbaugh cries foul, despite the fact that the league has confirmed time and again that the formations were legal.

The Ravens didn’t make the playoffs last year.  They probably won’t this year either.  Neither of those facts will stop Harbaugh from being a whiney sideline diva.

One Good Thing

We are a week away from the final Red Sox – Orioles series of the year.  Baltimore will most likely miss the post season again – for the fifth time in Showalter’s eight years as manager. With any luck they will finish below .500.  But, as we head into this final series, we should recognize that Baltimore has in fact given us one thing for which we should be thankful: the HBO series The Wire. It’s saying something that this city’s greatest contribution is a cable drama about their crime and political corruption.  As we assess the Orioles and Ravens, their contemptible players, their unlikeable leaders, and their seemingly unending jealousies of the Red Sox and Patriots, I offer this final thought, from The Wire’s great warrior poet Omar Little: “you come at the king, you best not miss.”

 

Farrell Falls Short as Sox Biggest Flaw

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The 2017 Red Sox aren’t a World Series caliber team. This much should be obvious by this point in the season. That doesn’t mean they can’t win the World Series, it just means they’ll have to get hot and play above themselves for a few critical weeks. We’ve seen that before – I hope we can all agree that the 2013 Red Sox weren’t a great team either.

This year’s squad can’t hit for power, a critical ingredient to October baseball, and they run the bases like little leaguers hopped up on Mountain Dew. We can blame Farrell for the almost nightly disaster on the base paths, as well as for a litany of line-up and pitching decisions.  But we can’t pin the team’s structural flaws on him.

Mismanagement

John Farrell didn’t sign Panda; that was Ben Cherington. He didn’t spike Pedroia at second base; that was Manny Machado. He didn’t trade Travis Shaw for an injured Tyler Thornburg and he didn’t not sign Edwin Encarnacion or any other suitable replacement for David Ortiz; those are on Dave Dombrowski.

Sure, Dombrowski landed Kimbrel, but he also invested $217 million over seven years in David Price. How’s that working out? We knew long before his classless meltdown with Eckersley that Price was a spoiled, over-paid number two starter, incapable of performing under pressure, and unwilling to accept criticism. That was the book on him. Red Sox ownership was so worried about coddling his sensitive ego that their mouthpiece Boston Globe took time out of their busy schedule slandering Tom Brady to publish one article after the other about.   What a great guy, he how works so hard, and how we should all treat him better. Dombrowski and John Henry have been poor David’s helicopter parents since the moment he arrived.

Price and Sandoval are the most obvious examples. But there are so many other bad player decisions in recent years that have shaped this ball club. The 2017 Red Sox are poorly assembled. That’s not John Farrell’s fault.

Plateaued Performance

What we can, and indeed should, ascribe to Farrell and his coaching staff is the poor on-field performance of so many talented players. Forget entirely about the lunacy on the base paths that has resulted in Boston running into more outs that any other team in the league.  What’s most disturbing this year is the regression of players like Bogaerts, Bradley, and Betts.

Xander is hitting 25 points below last year’s batting average, 74 points lower in OPS, has 13 fewer home runs, and 17 fewer runs batted in. He’s also committed more errors this season to date than all of last year (in 100 fewer total chances).

Bradley’s averages are comparable to last year but his power in significantly down. His 12 home runs are just over half last season’s 26 and he has driven in 33 fewer runs.

Most troubling is Mookie Betts’ decline at the plate. His .259 BA and .769 OPS are nearly 60 and 130 points below last season respectively. Last season Betts was second only to Ortiz in HRs and RBI with 31 and 113. This year he will be lucky to break the 20/90 threshold.

Bogaerts, Bradley, and Betts represent the future of the franchise. Yes, Benintendi and Devers look promising, but Betts could easily have been AL MVP last year and we once spoke of Xander and Jackie as untradeable perennial All Stars. Does anyone still feel that way? More to the point, does anyone have a ton of confidence when either of them come up in a big spot in an important game?

It’s frustrating to try and discern why Mitch Moreland isn’t in the line-up all the time.  Or why a starting pitcher goes out to start the eighth inning already having thrown 100 pitches.   John Farrell isn’t our biggest problem. Poor team construction is our biggest problem. John Farrell just isn’t helping.

 

Chris Sale: Boston’s MIA Ace

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It’s time for Chris Sale to be Chris Sale

We should stop talking about Chris Sale (15-7, 2.85 ERA this season) as the likely 2017 Cy Young award winner.   Let’s start talking about his awful games against good teams for the last two months. And why Cleveland’s Cory Kluber (14-4, 2.56 ERA) will win the AL Cy Young award.

Who cares? After dropping three of four against the second place and perennial pain-in-our asses Yankees, the struggling Red Sox need their ace to be an ace once again. Since July turned to August, he’s been largely missing in action. Save his great outing against a weak Tampa team on August 8th, in which we went eight scoreless innings and struck out 13, and last week’s dominance against the hapless Jays, he has been pretty pedestrian since July.

Since the July 1st, the Sox are seven wins and five losses when Sale starts. In those 12 games, Sale has produced five wins, four losses and three no–ecisions, 75.3 IPs, 25 ERs, 115 Ks, and given up nine HRs. That’s fine for a number-three starter, but not for an ace.

Against the worst, he’s the best

Since the end of June, most of his good numbers have come against the dregs of the league – Toronto, Tampa, and a Seattle team that’s 14.5 games out of the AL West. Against likely playoffs teams in this window, four starts against NYY and two against CLE, he’s been very unimpressive: zero wins, three losses, three no decisions. Zero wins. Zero. His average line against the teams we need to worry about? Fewer than six innings and more than three and a half earned runs per start.

Sale remains our best pitcher.   But he isn’t the runaway Cy Young award winner he looked like in July. Boston’s once substantial lead in the East has been cut to 3.5 games.   This would certainly be in jeopardy if they didn’t have a soft schedule for the rest of the season. With six more games against Toronto and Tampa, and three against a terrible Cincinnati team, the Red Sox should cruise to the playoffs.

Step up or step out

To have any legitimate shot at a deep post season run, the Red Sox need to win the division. With the introduction of the second wild card and the one-game play-in between wild card teams five years ago, winning the division has taken on renewed importance. This year, more than ever for the Sox, it is paramount. It’s not that Boston can’t beat New York or anyone else in a single game in October.  Despite his recent struggles I’ll still take my chances with Sale on the mound.

But that’s the problem.  The Sox would have to go with Sale in the play-in game and then enter the divisional round with a rotation of Pomeranz, Porcello.   Then either Fister, Price or E-Rod take the mound before bringing Sale in to pitch a potential game 4. Win the division and the Sox have a significantly better rotation lined up – including getting Sale twice in a long series. Lose the division, waste Sale in a one-or-done match-up, and the future could very well come down to how well Rick Porcello, David Price, or Doug Fister pitch in an elimination game. That’s terrifying to think about.

But, if Sale doesn’t return to form and provide quality starts against good teams the rest of the year, we won’t have to worry about it.

Is Pedroia Bound for Cooperstown?

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A little more than a decade ago, I took my son to Arlington to watch the Red Sox play the Rangers. I’d been to the park a few times – whenever Boston came to town we’d try to catch a game or two.

A couple of years removed from 2004’s Curse Breakers, the ‘07 Sox were good. Objectively speaking, they were far and away the best of our three recent World Series teams. The 2007 Rangers sucked. Most of the 40,000 in attendance were there to watch Boston.

First Glimpse of Greatness

I don’t remember much about the game except that Julian Tavarez started for Boston and somehow managed to avoid having a psychotic episode on the mound – which was rare for him. The other thing that I’ll never forget?   Watching our diminutive rookie second baseman play for the first time.

Clinging to a one-run lead in the top of the ninth inning, Pedroia put together an epic AB against Texas closer Eric Gagne. To be fair, this was not Cy Young Gagne. He was three seasons removed from his chemically enhanced prime, but he could still pitch.

He and Pedroia went at it for nine or 10 pitches. Then, Gagne made the mistake of throwing him a high but hittable fastball – not the 101mph steroid specials that made him a hero in LA, but a low-mid 90s get-me-over – and Pedey drilled it 400-plus feet to the left-field bleachers to seal the win.

That single moment in time epitomizes Pedroia’s career. He fights for everything and he usually wins.

Though his most recent stint on the DL is hopefully coming to an end this weekend, the number of those has piled up over the last few years. It isn’t too soon to start wondering how much game he has left. He’s a 12-year veteran, but over the course of the ten full seasons he’s been with the big club (’07-‘16) he’s only averaged about 137 games a season.   He’s tough, but he isn’t exactly durable. And he isn’t getting younger.

Can he go the distance?

So where does his career land him?

He’s clearly one of the all-time great Red Sox players. But a Hall of Famer?

Probably.

If Pedroia can get back in the line-up this season and contribute at his pre-DL rate, he’s on pace for his career averages and should compete for another Gold Glove (would be his 5th). If we conservatively assume that Dustin will be 70% as productive for the next five years as his per-season career average, then when compared to the last four infielders elected to the Hall by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA – a horrible organization name by the way), Pedey deserves a plaque in Cooperstown.

G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO BA
Pedroia NOW 1483 5930 910 1786 392 15 139 716 612 640 0.301
Pedroia (Projected) 2050 8198 1256.5 2468.5 542.5 22 191.5 989 846.5 885 0.301
Jeter 2747 11195 1923 3465 544 66 260 1311 1082 1840 0.310
Larkin 2180 7937 1329 2340 441 76 198 960 939 817 0.295
Biggio 2850 10876 1844 3060 668 55 291 1175 1160 1753 0.281
Alomar 2379 9073 1508 2724 504 80 210 1134 1032 1140 0.300

Thanks to baseball-reference.com we know that, conservatively speaking, Scrappy Doo will have a significantly stronger Hall resume than Barry Larkin (in two fewer season), plus a Rookie of the Year, League MVP, and at least four Gold Gloves to his credit. Barry Larkin was a hell of a player – also a league MVP, three-time Gold Glover, and a World Series winner in 1990 – but Pedroia is clearly better in all aspects of the game.

We could put Bill James on retainer to analyze the second and third order stats to compare Pedroia to Jeter, Biggio, Alomar, and anyone else.  The result will be the same. Pedey’s problem is longevity and staying in the line-up. His career-per-season productivity is almost identical to Jeter’s – and unlike “the Captain”, Pedroia actually earned his Gold Gloves. If he stays reasonably healthy and averages about 450 ABs a season for the next five years, they’ll hang his plaque in Cooperstown.

I can’t wait for the speech.  You know it’s going to be hilarious.