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World Series Resumes Tonight

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It’s the final weekend of baseball as the World Series begins again, this time in Chicago, with the Cubs and Indians knotted at 1-1. In eight of the last ten series that were tied at one game apiece, the winner of Game 1 (in this case, the Indians) has won the championship. Indeed, Game 1 winners have won the Fall Classic 70 total times (63.1% of the time), including 12 of the last 13 and 17 of the last 19 times.

In their long franchise histories, both the Cubs and Indians have eight times before found themselves in a 1-1 tie in a best-of-seven postseason series. In the previous seven times the Cubs have won just one of those series (the 2016 National League Championship Series) while the Indians won the whole thing four times (though they’ve lost each of their last three such series).

The 2016 series is guaranteed at least three more games with starts by Kyle Hendricks, John Lackey, and Jon Lester for Chicago versus Josh Tomlin, Corey Kluber, and Trevor Bauer for the Indians, respectively.

Mookie Betts


Gold Glove Finalist Mookie Betts
flickr photo shared by Keith Allison under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license

On to some news and notes now for Red Sox fans:

  • Gold Glove finalists for defensive excellence were announced this week and the hometown team were well represented by Dustin Pedroia, Mookie Betts, and Jackie Bradley. The Red Sox were one of eight teams this season with at least three nominees. The Cubs and Tigers had an MLB-best four finalists each. Gold Glove winners will be announced November 8.
  • It’s the offseason so that means a perennial check in on Pablo Sandoval‘s weight. Here’s the latest.
  • What a postseason already for one-time Red Sox Andrew Miller. The Indians reliever has racked up 24 strikeouts already, the second most in a single postseason by a reliever since Francisco Rodriguez collected 28 with the Angels in 2002. Miller’s 13.2 scoreless postseason innings are eighth most in major league history. With his next out Miller can tie Hall of Famer Whitey Ford in 1961 for seventh most such innings. The all-time record is by Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson, who went 27.0 IP in the 1905 postseason. Red Sox great and Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez had the 17.0 scoreless postseason innings in 1999, good for fourth most in MLB history.
  • Of the 50 players on the Indians and Cubs roster just six have World Series experience, five of those with the Red Sox: Coco Crisp (2007), Mike Napoli (2013), Lackey (2013), Lester (2007 & 2013), and David Ross (2013). Ben Zobrist also experienced the Fall Classic before with the Rays in 2008 and the Royals last season.

And finally, while today is October 28 and the nine year anniversary of the 2007 Red Sox Championship, it’s hard to believe that 12 years ago today we were still dazed at the reality of the first Sox Championship in 84 years. Re-live the memories through the eyes of the New York Daily News, which thoughtfully re-posted their story from that day in 2004.


Indians Take Eary Series Lead

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The 112th World Series got underway Tuesday with a 6-0 shutout win by the Indians over the Cubs at Progressive Field in Cleveland.

Yesterday’s was the 54th World Series game in Cubs’ history, but just the third time they’ve been shutout. Their last shutout in a Fall Classic game was September 5, 1918 versus the Red Sox (also a Game 1). No team had been shutout in the first game of the World Series since the Reds blanked the Athletics 7-0 in 1990.

Though national popular sentiment seems focused on the Cubs, the Indians are just as focused on winning. As he showed in Game 1 of the American League Division Series against Boston, Tribe manager Terry Francona knows the value of that initial win. Indeed, every Game 1 winner since 2010 and all but two since 1997 have gone on to win the series.

That said, too much shouldn’t be read into the shutout loss. The Cubs have proven themselves resilient this season. What’s more, of the 16 teams in major league history to suffer the indignity of a shutout loss in the first game of a World Series, nine have gone on to win the whole thing.

Worth noting: On the threat of rain the forecast for Cleveland, Major League Baseball moved the start time for Wednesday’s Game 2 up an hour. First pitch will be at 7:08 ET/4:08 PT.

On to some news and notes for Red Sox fans now:

  • Old friends, Part I: Cubs ace Jon Lester was charged with three earned runs and his first-ever World Series loss Tuesday. Lester had not allowed more than 1 ER in three previous such starts, all with the Red Sox.
  • Old friends, Part II: What a moment last night when Indians reliever Andrew Miller struck out Chicago’s David Ross with two outs and the tying runs on base. Lester, Miller, and Ross (not to mention Cleveland’s Mike Napoli) were, of course, part of Boston’s 2013 championship team.
  • In case you missed it, Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald recounts how the Theo Epstein/Joe Maddon tandem in Chicago was close to getting together in Boston back in 2003, before Epstein hired Francona. It’s an interesting, albeit cursory look at the process of hiring a team manager. For his part, Maddon says Francona was ultimately the right decision for the Sox, “I thought Tito was more prepared for that moment than I was at that time.”
  • There won’t be a General Manager to replace Mike Hazen, who left the left the Sox to run Diamondbacks baseball. Instead, Boston president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski promoted Eddie Romero Jr. to Senior VP and Assistant GM, where he’ll join Brian O’Halloran, who has the same title. Romero, 37, was previously Vice President for International Scouting for the club.
  • Meanwhile, Amiel Sawdaye, the Red Sox VP of International and Amateur Scouting and a potential Sox GM candidate himself, has decided to follow Hazen to Arizona where he’ll be an Assistant GM. Speculation continues that Hazen will also be talking to popular Sox Bench Coach Torey Lovullo about managing the D-backs.

Sunday Morning Odds ‘n Ends

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Random thoughts from the Red Sox week that just finished:

  1. The Yankees are in last place and while that’s unlikely to last, the Sox are capitalizing on New York’s slow start, taking the first two games of this weekend’s series. Saturday night’s shut out win over New York was historical for a number of reasons.
    • Regardless of Sunday’s outcome, Saturday’s win ended a string of 6 straight series win at Fenway for the Bombers over the Sox dating back to 2014.
    • Saturday’s game featured two triples by Jackie Bradley, Jr., making the Red Sox the first team since the 1962 Cardinals to have two different players with two triples in a game before the end of April, according to Elias. Mookie Betts also had two triples on April 22.
    • Saturday’s shutout of the Yankees was the first by the Red sox since June 2, 2013 at Yankee Stadium and the first at Fenway in over five years (May 14, 2011).
    • The 8-0 win was the widest margin of victory by the Red Sox in a shutout of the Yankees since an 11-0 win on September 6, 2003 in the Bronx. The Sox hadn’t shutout the Yanks in Boston by that margin since a 10-0 win at Fenway on August 2, 1973.
  2. It’s impossible not to be impressed with the way David Ortiz is going in this, his final MLB season. Last Wednesday, April 27, Papi became just the 11th player in baseball history (and first Red Sox player ever) to collect three doubles in a game at age 40 or older. Before Ortiz, the last MLB player to accomplish that feat was the Giants’ Omar Vizquel on August 1, 2007.
  3. Sox pitcher Steven Wright is in some elite company. Wright started this season working at least 6.0 innings in four starts without allowing more than two earned runs. The only other Red Sox pitchers to do that in the past 20 seasons are Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, and Clay Buchholz. If you count his work in the 2015 season, Wright has pitched at least 5.0 innings and allowed two runs-or-fewer in each of his last seven starts, the longest active streak in the Majors.
  4. Happily, Hanley Ramirez has settled in nicely at first base, error-free in 150 total chances going into Saturday’s game. Ramirez does, however, lead the club in strikeouts with at least one SO in 17 games of the first 24 games of the season, the most since Mike Napoli collected 19 such games in that span of time during the 2014 campaign. In 2014 Napoli tied the team record for strikeouts over the first 24 Red Sox games (21, also Dick Stuart in 1963).
  5. Cardinals rookie shortstop Aledmys Diaz enters May with a .423 batting average after 71 at-bats. Earlier in the week Elias reported said Diaz was the first rookie in Major League Baseball’s modern era (post 1900) to post a .500 batting average after 50-or-more career at-bats.
  6. Though largely reduced over the past couple seasons, doubles have long been a major part of the Red Sox offensive toolbox. In fact, no club has led MLB for doubles in a season more frequently than the Sox, who’ve topped baseball’s Doubles List for 45 non-consecutive seasons starting in 1912 and ending in 2013. In 2016, doubles appear to be back in style for Boston, which starts the month of May with 66, the most in the majors and the club’s most in a first month since 2003 (71). The Red Sox have five players with six or more doubles thus far (Xander Bogaerts, Bradley, Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, and Travis Shaw). No other club has more than four such players.
  7. The Pirates’ Andrew McCutchen produced three home runs in one game last Tuesday for the second time in his career. He joins Hall of Famers Ralph Kiner (who had four such games), Willie Stargell (4), and Roberto Clemente (2) as the only players in Pittsburgh history with multiple three-HR games. In Red Sox history since 1913, Hall of Famer Ted Williams had three career games with three HRs each. Mo Vaughn, Nomar Garciaparra, and Hall of Famer Jim Rice each had two such games. Dustin Pedroia is one of 17 Sox players with one such game.
  8. Good starts: No American League club has more first inning runs than the Red Sox (29). The nearest AL competitor has just 17. In all of baseball, only the Nationals have more first-inning runs (30) than the Sox. There’s still a long way to go, but for all of 2015, the Sox had the fourth fewest such runs in the AL.
  9. We keep hearing that this Red Sox lineup will hit home runs when the weather warms. We’ll see. Their 19 in the first month is the club’s fewest over a first month of play since the 1974 team also had 19. Interestingly, the Sox’ 21 stolen bases are the club’s second most ever for the first month of a campaign. Only the 2013 team had more (22).

3 Worth Reading

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Happy new year, fans. Very best wishes to you and your for a happy, healthy new year!

As we count down to Spring Training and a new Red Sox season, let’s have a look at some noteworthy stories from around the web for Red Sox fans:


Full-scale blackout

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If there’s one thing we knew we could count on for the 2015 Red Sox it was offensive production.

2015-06-10_12-46-30_01How could they miss with sluggers like David Ortiz, Mike Napoli, and Hanley Ramirez in the lineup?

The pitching was suspect, but the bats would be hopping and, the logic went, those hot bats would more than compensate for a starting pitching staff that lacked an ace.

Early on, the logic seemed to play out. The Red Sox offense looked promising, scoring an average 5.9 runs per game to go 7-3 over their first 10 of the season, despite allowing 5.2 runs per game by the shaky starters.

But it wasn’t long before what was assumed might be a temporary power loss turned into a full-scale blackout.

Most infuriating of all was that once the starting pitching stabilized, the offense still couldn’t find its way to a win even when needing just a run or two to make it happen.

In all, the Sox have scored a measly 3.75 runs per game through their first 59 games of the season putting them 4th lowest in the American League and 7th lowest in all of baseball.

10 run games

On Sunday, June 7, the Red Sox offense exploded to score 7 runs in the 8th inning. It was a thrilling 7-4 win, coming late in the game and after 7 lackluster earlier innings. 7 runs, particularly in one inning, represented solid output from a team that has scored 7+ runs in a game only 10 times through their first 59 contests.

The lack of offensive production has made the Red Sox the only team in the American League, and one of just two in baseball, not to score 10 or more runs in a game so far this season (the other team is the Phillies). By this point in the 2013 season the Sox had already enjoyed 5 such games, and even had 9 games with 10+ runs scored in the Lost Valentine season of 2012.

Over the first 59 games of a season since 1914, there have been only two other seasons beside this one with no games in which the Red Sox scored 10+ runs. In 1943, the first came on July 3rd, their 68th game. They’d have 4 more that season.
 

2015-06-10_13-16-06

The second time the Re Sox didn’t score 10+ runs in any games through the first 59 was in 2014, making this season and last the only back-to-back such seasons in Red Sox history since at least 1914. Boston went on to collect 8 such games for the 2014 season, the first coming on June 13 against the Indians in Boston Game #67.

Over the first 59 games of a season the most 10+run games came in 1950 (12 games).

For full season the most 10+ run Red Sox games was in 1950 (30 games). The fewest was in 1992 (3 games).

Appreciation to @RSNStats follower @donhewitt3 for his Twitter comments that inspired this post.