Red Sox Pitchers Going Deep Into Games

August 11, 2017 Leave a Comment

So far this season, Red Sox starters have worked at least 5.0 innings in 99 starts or 86.8% of all games. That’s the highest such rate in the American League and the third-highest rate in the majors after the Giants (86.2) and Diamondbacks (90.3%).

To date, 163 Major League pitchers have made at least 10 starts, but only 13 of them have worked 5.0+ IP in all their starts. Not surprisingly, Chris Sale is one of that group. Sale was limited to just 5.0 IP twice, both representing his shortest outings of the season. Red Sox starter David Price has also lasted at least 5.0 IP in each of his 11 starts this season.

Last season, the Sox had just one such pitcher, Rick Porcello, who managed to get through at least 5.0 IP in every start. Indeed, of the 184 pitchers in 2016 with 10 or more starts, just three others in all of baseball managed the feat for every start (also Madison Bumgarner in 34 starts, Jake Arrieta in 31, and Kyle Hendricks in 30.

Baseball’s record for the most consecutive starts of at least 5.0 IP is owned by Curt Schilling, who managed it in 147 straight games from July 21, 2001-September 26, 2006. Only 20 of Schilling’s 436 career starts, and just two in a Red Sox uniform, lasted less than 5.0 innings.

This season, Sale has worked at least 7.0 IP in 17 games, the most such games in baseball. Over the past 30 seasons, Boston’s most such games is 30 by Roger Clemens in 1991. Clemens also owns the club’s second and third best records in that span of time with 28 and 26 such games in 1989 and 1992, respectively.

Rarely Going the Distance

MLB Complete Games, Last 30 Seasons This season the Red Sox have four complete games by three pitchers: Sale (1), Porcello (2), and Brian Johnson (1). No other MLB team has as many pitchers with complete games so far this season.

Only the Twins (6) and Indians (5) have had more complete games than the Red Sox. Pitchers for the Athletics, Braves, Orioles, Phillies, Rays, and White Sox have yet to toss a complete game this season.

The Sox have had at least three pitchers with a CG in each of the past six seasons. They had four such pitchers in the World Series Championship year of 2013 (Clay Buchholz, John Lackey, Jon Lester, and Jake Peavy).

To date, there have been just 44 complete games in all of baseball. If that pace continues, there will be 63 such games this season, a new all-time low. As shown in the graph here, the number of complete games has declined dramatically in the past 30 years and in every season since 2011.

Red Sox Missing Doubles This Season

August 8, 2017 Leave a Comment

For years, the Red Sox were known to be a doubles machine, routinely pounding out two-baggers as a major part of their offensive production. But as we head into the final 50 games of the 2017 campaign, the Sox have just 204 doubles, good enough for eighth most in the majors—and 19 of those have come recently, during an offensive spurt over the past six games.

At the current rate, the Red Sox will collect 295 doubles this season, their third fewest in any season since 2000.

Especially since the year 2000, the Red Sox have enjoyed prodigious doubles production. In fact, Boston has recorded the most doubles of any team in fully half of the seasons played since the year 2000.

That’s not too terribly surprising. Fenway Park is, after all, known to a double park. More two-baggers (2,702) have been hit there since 2000 than in any other park. What is more, Fenway has hosted the most doubles in the majors in every decade since the 1960s: 1990s (3,223 doubles), 1980s (3,140), 1970s (2,925), and 1960s (2,746).

In 2017, just 205 doubles have been stroked at Fenway, 11th-most of the 30 MLB parks. 105 of those have been by the Sox, putting them on pace for 152 doubles, their fewest at home since swatting 149 doubles in the 1992 season.

A Season Without A Slam

A tail off in doubles is especially concerning to Red Sox Nation in light of the similar dearth in home runs. Again, even with a recent spurt of long balls (11 over the past five games), Boston is dead last in the American League with just 116 to date.

Last year the Sox had the most grand slams in the AL, but this year the team has none despite fully 102 opportunities with the bases loaded.

No Red Sox club since 1953 has gone a full season without at least one grand slam home run.

Catching up with old friends

September 3, 2015 Leave a Comment

A look now at how some former Red Sox are doing with their latest teams.

Reds Burke Badenhop is 1-4, 4.02 ERA in 56 games, 56.0 innings pitched, 29 strikeouts.
Yankees Chris Capuano is 0-4, 7.71 ERA in 18 games (4 starts), 35.0 IP, 32 SO.
Mets Yoenis Céspedes is 38-for-129 (.295) with 10 home runs, 23 runs, 26 RBI, 8 walks in 30 games.
Diamondbacks Rubby De La Rosa is 12-6, 4.46 ERA in a career-best 27 starts, 167.1 IP, 132 SO.
Athletics Felix Doubront is 1-0, 3.28 ERA in 5 games (3 starts), 24.2 IP, 22 SO.
Yankees Stephen Drew is 75-for-356 (.211) with 17 HR, 42 runs, 44 RBI, 35 walks in 115 games.
Braves Jonny Gomes, acquired by the Royals on August 31, was 43-for-195 (.221) with 7 HR, 27 runs, 22 RBI, 28 walks in 83 games.
Cubs Jonathan Herrera is 28-for-122 (.230) with 1 HR, 13 runs, 13 RBI, 2 walks in 70 games.
Braves Ryan Lavarnway is 13-for-51 (.255) with 2 HR 5 runs, 6 RBI, 6 walks in 19 games.
Cardinals John Lackey is 11-8, 2.87 ERA in 27 starts, 178.2 IP, 135 SO.
Cubs Jon Lester is 8-10, 3.59 ERA in 26 starts, 163.0 IP, 166 SO.
Padres Will Middlebrooks is 54-for-255 (.212) with 9 HR, 23 runs, 29 RBI, 11 walks in 83 games.
Yankees Andrew Miller is 2-2, 1.86 ERA in 48 games, 48.1 IP, 74 SO.
Athletics Edward Mujica is 2-3, 4.34 ERA in 31 games, 29.0 IP, 21 SO.
Rangers Mike Napoli is 8-for-28 (.286) with 2 HR, 3 runs, 3 RBI, 2 walks in 15 games.
Rays Daniel Nava is 12-for-52 (.231) with 1 HR, 4 runs, 1 RBI, 9 walks in 20 games.
Giants Jake Peavy is 4-6, 4.38 ERA in 13 starts, 74.0 IP, 53 SO.
Braves A.J. Pierzynski is 100-for-339 (.295) with 7 HR, 33 runs, 42 RBI, 18 walks in 93 games.
Cubs David Ross is 23-for-121 (.190) with 1 HR, 4 runs, 7 RBI, 17 walks in 57 games.
Rays Grady Sizemore is 27-for-125 (.216) with 6 HR, 14 runs, 16 RBI, 10 walks in 39 games.
Angels Shane Victorino is 11-for-51 (.216), 6 runs, 2 triples 2 RBI, 2 walks in 22 games.
Diamondbacks Allen Webster is 1-1, 5.88 ERA in 6 games (5 starts), 26.0 IP, 15 SO.
Tigers Alex Wilson is 2-3, 2.31 ERA in 50 games (1 start), 62.1 IP, 36 SO.

Bryce Brentz, Drake Britton, Mike Carp, Edwin Escobar, Ryan Roberts, and Brandon Workman, all part of the 2014 Red Sox, have not played at the MLB level in 2015.

Slash Lines

June 7, 2015 Leave a Comment

The goal of @RSNStats on Twitter was to be a worthy accompaniment to enjoy alongside Red Sox games. As the game unfolds, the @RSNStats Twitter feed often comes alive with statistics and other tidbits that, hopefully, enhance your enjoyment of the game.

@RSNStats followers are a diverse group. Some are diehard fans with encyclopedic knowledge of the game and Red Sox history. Others are new to baseball or to Red Sox Nation. Everyone’s welcome, and the ever-evolving @RSNStats data feed tries to keep things entertaining to fans across the spectrum.

The average stat

A very common statistic you’ll see in the @RSNStats data feed is batting average (abbreviated as AVG), which may be provided in total or within a given context. For example, you might see a player’s AVG for the whole season or for the particular situation they’re in right now (such as with the bases loaded).

AVG is a basic, very straightforward statistic. It’s simply the number of hits divided by the number of at-bats expressed to three decimal places. 19 hits over 73 at-bats, for example, yields a .260 AVG.

But as common as AVG is, many fans realize its limitations, too. For one thing, AVG ignores the value of walks, a critically important offensive tool. AVG also treats all hits equally, so hitting a home run or a double counts the same as hitting a single.

To address deficiencies in AVG many fans turn to two other baseball statistics: On-Base Percentage (OBP) and Slugging Percentage (SLG).

Understanding On-Base Percentage

OBP helps you better understand how often a batter avoids making an out.

Rather than just divide the number of hits by number of at-bats, as you do with AVG, OBP is calculated by dividing the number of hits a batter gets plus the number of times he walks plus the number of times he gets hit by a pitch with his total at-bats, hits, walks, hits-by-pitch, and sacrifice flies.

“If you tell me I can only know one thing about a hitter,” Keith Law writes in his excellent 2017 book Smart Baseball, “I want to know how often he gets on base—that is, how often he doesn’t make an out. [OBP] is a simple number that encapsulates a couple core skills, from the ability to make contact to plate discipline and pitch recognition, and has more predictive value going forward than batting average does.”

Ted Williams

Most people learn early on that any AVG over .300, meaning the batter gets a hit at least 30% of the time, is pretty good. In 2016, across all of baseball, batters got 42,276 hits over 165,561 at-bats for an MLB AVG of .255 (the Red Sox team AVG in 2016 was an MLB-best .282 compared to .277 in the club’s 2013 World Championship season).

So what’s a good OBP? Well, across all of baseball OBP for 2018 was .318.

Among Red Sox with at least 250 at-bats, the all-time best single-season OBP was .553 by Ted Williams in 1941. For his career, Williams’ OBP was a club-best .482. Since 1990 Manny Ramirez owns the best single-season OBP of .450 in 2002.

A hit is not a hit

Not all hits are created equal. After all, which would you rather have? A player who, in his last 10 at-bats, hit 3 singles or one that hit a single, a double, and a home run? At 3-for-10, both players have a .300 AVG, but while the slugging percentage for the singles hitter is .300, the SLG for the other player is .700.

SLG addresses the problem that all hits are not equal by counting doubles as being twice as valuable as base hits, and valuing triples and home runs at 3× and 4× the value of a single, respectively.

For the player with a single, double, and a home run in his last 10 at-bats the SLG calculation is ((1×1) + (1×2) + (0×3) + (1×4)) / 10.

A perfect SLG would be 4.000, which could be achieved by hitting nothing but home runs. Across all of baseball, SLG for 2016 was .417.

Among Red Sox with at least 250 at-bats, the all-time best single-season SLG was .735 by Ted Williams in 1941. For his career, Williams slugged a club-best .634. Since 1990 Manny Ramirez owns the best single-season SLG of .647 in 2002 (though Mookie Betts came within a whisper of that with a .640 SLG in 2018).

Putting it all together

No one statistic explains the whole picture which is why AVG, OBP, and SLG are often presented together, and in that specific order, in what’s called a slash line that lists all three: .252 AVG/.314 OBP/.394 SLG or just .252/.314/.394, for short.

Since 2015 @RSNStats followers have increasingly requested slash lines to enhance their enjoyment of the game and so you’ll often see slash lines in the data feed.

Your thoughts on slash lines, and any other statistics you’d like to see more of, are welcome here. Just leave your comments below.

Learning more

Over the past few years weighted on-base average (or wOBA, for short), a sabermetric based on linear weights that was created by Tom Tango, has become a more accepted view of a player’s overall offensive strength. Starting in 2018 wOBA started showing up more regularly in the @RSNStats data feed. You can learn more about wOBA right here on the RSNStats web site.

Baseball is all about the numbers and we’re just scratching the surface. For a lot more coverage about baseball stats I like A Mathematician at the Ballpark: Odds and Probabilities for Baseball Fans, a fun book by Ken Ross that’s now available electronically and in soft back, and John Thorne’s and Pete Palmer’s excellent, Hidden Game of Baseball.

Dustin Pedroia makes history

August 12, 2014 Leave a Comment

Much has been made of Dustin Pedroia‘s production of late, perhaps too much. But this past weekend’s Red Sox series with the Angels gives us an opportunity to spotlight some very real strengths of the de facto Red Sox captain.

Pedroia has been on a tear lately, going 20-for-55 (.364) over the past 15 days.

On Sunday he hit his club-best 30th double of the season giving him a 7th season with 30+ doubles, the most ever for a Red Sox second baseman and eclipsing the 6 such seasons by Red Sox great, Bobby Doerr.

Pedroia’s 7 seasons of 30+ doubles ties him with Dwight Evans and Dom DiMaggio for the 5th-most in Red Sox history. David Ortiz and Wade Boggs lead the club list with 9 such seasons. Carl Yastrzemski and Ted Williams are next with 8. Among all active players, Albert Pujols, Bobby Abreu, and Manny Ramirez have the most seasons of 30+ doubles (12 each). For all-time Stan Musial and Tris Speaker are the MLB leaders with 16 such seasons.

Pedroia is not only hard-working, he’s baseball smart. He showed it again Saturday with a heads-up baserunning play, stealing second and then third when he realized it was undefended. Pedroia became the first Red Sox in history to have two stolen bases on the same play.

Quick look back

Pedroia, 2006-14

The chart to the right shows some of his main offensive production since 2006 through where he’s projected to finish in 2014. Where you see a red dot, it represents the year of Pedroia’s maximum output in that category.

As you can see, Pedroia’s home run production and steals have been on a steady decline since peaking in 2011 with 21 home runs (or, basically, a HR in 13.2% of his games) and 26 steals. In the subsequent years his home run tally has been 15, 9, and is projected to be just 7 this season. Watching him today it’s hard to remember this was a player that had 20+ steals in four of his 9 seasons, most recently in 2012.

Pedroia’s OPS, a measure of a player’s ability to both get on base and hit for power, has also been on decline since a 2011 highpoint, falling in successive years from .861 to .797, .787, to .723 so far this season.

Meanwhile, his strikeouts in 2014 are projected to be near his career high in 2011 (85).

That said, Pedroia has proven himself a durable, highly skilled defender. His 114 games at second base is tied for the most such starts in baseball so far this season.

A three-time Gold Glove winner, Pedroia’s 1.8 defensive WAR rating is 8th-best in the American League this season (though even that’s down from the 2.3 and 2.2 dWARs he generated in 2011 and 2013, respectively). So far this season he’s amassed 331 assists (3rd-best in the AL). His 212 putouts are the 2nd-most by a second baseman in the American League (third most in the MLB).

More than numbers

Even at RSNStats, it’s clear that numbers don’t tell the whole story, as the Boston Herald’s Scott Lauber wrote recently. Pedroia’s “feel for the game and his instincts [are] unmatched by older and younger teammates alike,” Lauber wrote, calling what Pedey brings to the table “an intangible, unquantifiable quality.”

As Clay Buchholz says in the Lauber article, “There’s not a number that shows how much he means to any club that he’s a part of…He’s a spark plug in the dugout between innings,” recalling that even heading into the 19th inning early Sunday morning, Pedroia’s the guy who’s rallying the team to a win, adding “He’s a necessity for our team.”

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