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7 Straight Wins

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The Red Sox have been enjoying their West Coast jaunt so far. They’ve won seven consecutive games, including a three-game sweep of the Athletics and taking the first three in a four game set at Anaheim.

The winning streak is the Sox’ longest of the season and longest since seven-in-a-row in September 2021.

On Wednesday, Boston capitalized yet again on a reeling Angels club that extended a franchise record with a 14th straight loss. The loss streak, which, at least in part, claimed the job of Manager Joe Maddon, has been historically bad. Accord to Elias, it has made the Angels just the third team in Major League history to be 10+ games over .500 only to endure a 10+ game losing streak to fall below .500, joining the 1978 A’s and 1970 Cubs.

All three games against at Angels this week have been one-run wins for Boston (1-0, 6-5, 1-0), with the first coming as a complete game shut out for Michael Wacha.

Lots of traffic, but no runs

On Wednesday, Nathan Eovaldi allowed six hits but no runs. Working in and out of jams, he lasted just five innings (84 pitches). Eovaldi was the first Boston starter to allow six or more hits but zero runs over 5.0 or fewer innings and come away with a win since Ramiro Mendoza on July 5, 2003, also at Anaheim.

Notably, Eovaldi did not allow a home run on Wednesday. It was his second straight game without a home run allowed, remarkably his longest such streak in his 12 games of 2022.

Following Eovaldi, four Sox relievers combined to allow just one hit over the next four innings. In all, Boston pitchers issued zero walks on Wednesday for the fifth time in 2022, tied for 5th-most games in the American League.

Angels pitchers have contained the Sox so far, holding them homeless in three games. It’s the team’s fifth stretch of three or more games without a long ball this season. Boston was homerless in a season-high six games April 23-28.


Martín’s Revenge

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Red Sox fans came to appreciate the hard work and good nature of Martín Pérez in his two seasons with Boston. “Pérez Days” could be festive occasions at Fenway but the results at the end of the game weren’t always there.

Yes, there were bright spots, but in all, Pérez’ time ended with a 10-13 record and a 4.65 ERA. After a particularly rough stretch that yielded a 7.13 ERA in 11 starts, Pérez was demoted to the bullpen last August.

Not surprisingly, the team passed on a chance to re-sign him for 2022.

But the Red Sox front office, which seems to pride itself on finding undervalued talent (see Matt Strahm, Jake Diekman and Michael Wacha as examples), seems to have dropped the ball when it came to evaluating Pérez’ real value. His stuff is playing, and playing big for his new team, the Texas Rangers.

Historic in Texas

In 10 outings with Texas the season, Pérez is 4-2 with a Major League-best 1.42 ERA. For the month of May, his 0.64 ERA was the lowest by an American Leaguer any any single month since Johan Santana‘s 0.45 ERA of September 2004 (minimum 40.0 IP). Last week, against the formidable Rays, Pérez worked 7.0 shutout innings, allowing just three baserunners in all.

Texas has won seven of Pérez’ last eight starts. That’s no fluke. The 31-year-old Venezuela native has lasted at least 6.0 innings and hasn’t allowed more than one earned run in each of those games, tying him for the third-longest non-losing streak since earned runs became an official statistic in 1913. Only Hall of Famer Bob Gibson (11 games) and Jake Arrieta (10 games) have posted longer streaks. 

Pérez is now tied with another undervalued pitcher to whom Boston showed the door: Jon Lester, who similarly had eight such games in 2016 after leaving Boston for the Cubs.


Ups and Downs of May

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As the calendar turned to May the Red Sox looked as though they had finally turned the corner offensively, but hopes have faded after missing opportunities for homestand series wins against Baltimore and Cincinnati.

On Tuesday, the Sox came close to making all the wrong kinds of history before finally scoring their first run of the game in the ninth inning. It wasn’t enough, though, and Boston lost by a score of 1-2 after scraping together just four hits. With the one run, the Sox narrowly missed being shutout in consecutive games at home for the first time since August 2002.

Things had been looking up earlier this month. Team wOBA, this writer’s preferred measure of offensive production, was an American League-worst at .268 before May 1. But then the hits started flowing and for the middle two weeks of the month, the Sox led the Major Leagues with a .361 wOBA.

The Red Sox lead baseball in doubles this year, by far, and recorded a club-record 76 of them in the month of May, edging the previous record of 75 doubles in 2004. The 76 doubles were the most for May by any team in Major League history save for the 1926 White Sox and 1930 Cardinals (80 doubles).

Individual contributors

Throughout the month, standout performances by Trevor Story, J.D. Martinez, and Rafael Devers made Red Sox baseball fun to watch. Suddenly, no opponent’s lead seemed insurmountable. And that was important, because while the offense was powering up, Sox pitching was shaky, at best. No AL team allowed more home runs than the Red Sox (39), tying a club record for the most ever in a month of May (also 1977 and 1965). Boston’s team ERA was 4.44 in May, fourth-highest in the league.

Among Red Sox batters with at least 75 at-bats in May, Martinez led the team for batting average (.406) and on-base percentage (.467). Devers was the team leader for wOBA (.482), slugging percentage (.712) and OPS (1.133).

Among Red Sox pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched in May, Nick Pivetta led the team with a 2.11 ERA and 0.835 WHIP over six appearances. Opponents against him slashed 187 AVG/.226 OBP/.302 SLG. Out of the bullpen, Austin Davis worked to a team-best 0.75 ERA in May, followed by John Schreiber (1.74) and Jake Diekman (2.45). Schreiber’s 0.581 WHIP was the best May mark out of the pen. Matt Strahm had the best strikeout rate (11.57 per 9.0 IP), minimum 5.0 IP.

Without consistency from the offense, this Red Sox team isn’t going anywhere. Despite the bright spots, Boston’s pitching, particularly relief pitching, is as expected. Again and again in May, Matt Barnes showed he is nowhere near reliable, recording team-highs in ERA (9.64) and WHIP (1.929) in 11 appearances. Ryan Brasier similarly disappointed with a 7.84 ERA in 10 games after allowing opponents to go 14-for-43 (.326) against him.

The Red Sox finished May at 14-14.


Understanding OPS+ and ERA+

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Over at @RSNStats on Twitter there is increasing reliance on two valuable stats for measuring offensive production and pitching strength. They’re OPS+ and ERA+ and their names may lead you to undervalue what they can tell you. After all, most stats-minded baseball fans know that OPS and ERA have their limitations. Still, the plus versions of these stats offer improvements that make these stats useful for reasonably comparing how a player or team is performing.

There are several plus stats used in modern baseball and they share one important trait: they normalize what they tell you relative to average league performance.

What this means is that any plus stat at 100 represents average performance. A plus stat at 110 represents performance that’s 10% better than league average, while one at 90 means performance that’s 10% worse than the average.

In addition to normalization, the plus stats also take park factors, such as dimensions and altitude, into consideration. Adjustments for performance in hitter or pitcher friendly ballparks help make it easier to compare today’s players but can also be applied to players of the past, making comparisons across eras more reasonable.

OPS+ and ERA+ Leaders

For all-time, the top single-season OPS+ among qualified batters was 281 by Josh Gibson of the 1943 Homestead Grays. Since 1970, the best OPS+ is 268 by Barry Bonds in 2002.

Ted Williams sits atop the Red Sox all-time leaderboard with a 235 OPS+ in 1941. Williams, in fact, dominates the Boston leaderboard, holding seven of the Top 10 spots.

With a 527 ERA+, the all-time single-season pitching leader is Robert Keyes of the 1944 Memphis Red Sox. Since 1970, the best ERA+ for any season in the Major Leagues was 291 by Pedro Martinez for the 2000 Red Sox. Four seasons for Martinez are in Boston’s Top 10 all-time ERA+ leaderboard.

50 Years of World Champions

In the 50 seasons from 1971 to 2021 no team that won a World Series had a regular-season OPS+ of less than 90. Similarly, there wasn’t a championship team in that span with an ERA+ under 96.

In fact, 64% of World Series winners in that time had an OPS+ of 100 or better. More starkly, 88% of those winning teams had an ERA+ of at least 100.

The lowest OPS+ for a World Champion was 90 for the 1988 Dodgers. The highest was 123 for the 2017 Astros. The lowest ERA+ for a champion was 96 for the 2012 Giants; the highest was 146 for the 2020 Dodgers.

Red Sox in the Fall Classic

For the Red Sox, OPS+ in their most recent World Championship seasons was 107 in 2007, 110 in 2004, 112 in 2018, and 116 in 2013. The 2013 results tied for the 4th-best OPS+ of any championship team between 1971 and 2021.

Boston’s ERA+ 109 in 2013, 116 in 2004, 118 in 2018 and 123 in 2007. The 2007 results also tied for the 4th-best ERA+ of any world champion in the research timeframe.

Alternatives to OPS+ and ERA+

You’re not stuck with OPS+ and ERA+ if the limitations of their underlying stats trouble you. For example, just as RSNStats prefers wOBA to OPS, you might prefer wRC+ to OPS+ for measuring offense and FIP- for measuring pitching.


Sox Pacing Historic Losses

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Even a casual fan doesn’t need a stats background to recognize a terrible start. The Red Sox aren’t just losing, they’re on pace for a historically bad season.

While Red Sox starting pitching has been well beyond pre-season expectations (3.28 ERA, fourth-best in the American League), the bullpen has been weak (1.267 WHIP is third-highest in the AL).

Worse, though, Boston’s offense, thought to be a sure-thing prior to the start of the season, has been all but non-existent. With a few exceptions, the Sox offense has been mostly empty at-bats, with aggressive but often fruitless swings, and weak contact, when contact is made at all.

In all, the Red Sox have scored just 3.3 times per game, the third-lowest runs tally in the Major Leagues, and have made the most one-pitch outs in baseball (93). And yet despite the terrible results, there’s been little substantive change in the approach since the start of the season.

In search of the bottom

Sunday’s 3-2 defeat to the White Sox was Boston’s 11th loss of the season by two or fewer runs, the most in baseball.

With nearly a fifth of the season already done, the Sox are on pace for 61 such losses this year, which would be a new franchise record and tie the 1968 Mets for the second-most such losses by any team in Major League history. Only the 1917 Pirates had more (63).

To date, the most single-season losses by two or fewer runs for Boston was 54 in 1966. No Red Sox team in franchise history has made the playoffs with more than 42 such defeats in a season.