RSNStats

Baseball News and Stats
Red Sox Nation Focused

Papi’s Gift Season

5 Comments

For stats lovers, David Ortiz in his final season is the gift the keeps on giving. It seems that in every game, he keeps adding to impressive collection of milestones. It’s almost impossible to keep up. What we’re witnessing, fans, regardless of how the voters see it five years from now when he first becomes eligible, is a Hall of Fame caliber player. And he’s right here, in front of our eyes, almost every night.

Assuming he stays healthy, Big Papi stands to finish his final season with 183 hits (one more than his career high of 182 in 2007), including 66 doubles (his most ever), 39 home runs (fourth best in his career and his most since 41 in 2007), 77 runs scored, 89 walks (fourth best in his career and most since 2005), and 133 RBI (fourth best in his career and most since 2006). He’ll also have 79 strikeouts, fifth fewest in any season of his career where he played in more than 82 games.

OPS Plus

Ortiz’ OPS+ after 84 games this season stands at a career-best 184. We haven’t talked a lot about OPS+ on RSNStats, but it’s an interesting and useful metric that adjusts traditional OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) for different ballpark factors. OPS can be far more meaningful than AVG (more about that another time), but OPS+ is even better for two reasons. First, because of its normalization adjustments for ballparks, and secondly, because it’s expressed as a simple percentage. An OPS+ of 100 means the player is operating at league average. Papi’s 184 OPS+ means he’s operating at 84% better than league average.

No major leaguer with at least 100 at-bats this season has a better OPS+ than Ortiz. By this measure, Papi is playing better than Mike Trout (172), better than Josh Donaldson (165).

And he’s 40 years old.

With a half-season left to play, Ortiz is closing in on Ted Williams‘ all-time best OPS+ for a player 40 years of age or older. Williams’ 1960 OPS+ of 190 has stood the test of time for 56 years.

40 is the new 34

What a way to wrap up a career. At the time this is being written, David Ortiz has 34 doubles through just more than half the season completed. That’s one shy from Sam Rice‘s MLB single-season record for doubles by a player aged 40 or above, with as many as 78 regular season games to go.

With that caveat of continued health throughout the season, Ortiz’ current .677 slugging percentage and 1.106 OPS are the best single-season marks for 40+ year old players ever. He’s among the top four such players for batting average, and among the top seven for on-base percentage.

At this current pace, Ortiz will challenge Darrell Evans‘ 1987 tally of 34 home runs, the most ever for a “senior” player. He’ll need 25 of those to tie Carl Yastrzemski at #2 on Fenway Park’s All-Time Home Runs List (Ted Williams is tops with 248 career home home runs there).

Fenway Faithful

OPS Leaders at Fenway Park, 1911-presentOrtiz is in the Top 10 of nearly every All-Time Fenway list. In the long history of the ballpark, Papi is already has the sixth most at-bats (3,546), sixth most runs scored, seventh most hits, third most doubles, third most RBI, and fourth most walks.

Among the six players ever to amass 3,500 or more at-bats at Fenway, Ortiz ranks fourth in AVG (.311) and second to Williams in both OBP (.408) and SLG (.587).

The fans at home expect Papi to come through in clutch situations, each with their own memories of their favorites (for me, his grand slam in 2013 ALCS Game 2 never gets old). Why shouldn’t they expect it? For many, he’s the greatest clutch hitter in their lifetimes with .502 career SLG in Late & Close situations, among the top 20 players with over 1,000 such at-bats in baseball history.

Designated Greatness

As a designated hitter, no one is even close.

Ortiz has the most home runs (467) of any DH ever. His longevity, resulting in more than 7,300 DH at-bats, has yielded the most hits (2,118), most doubles (543), most RBI (1,511), most total bases (4,098), most walks (1,135), and most intentional walks (187) of anyone who has ever played the role. Papi’s 1,215 runs scored as a DH are 332 more than second place Edgar Martinez.

We’ll Remember Him

Now is the time, not just in Game 162, to take stock of this amazing player and savor this gift of a season. Now’s the time to acknowledge David Ortiz’s place in franchise history. Now’s the time to enjoy this one last season with a Red Sox player who we will remember for the rest of our lives.


Big Papi’s Retirement Plan

Leave a Comment

Just an idea…

https://youtu.be/WnKS58UtCLk


Sunday Odds ‘n Ends

Leave a Comment

After a mammoth May for the Red Sox, June started with a disappointing 3-4 road trip to Toronto and Baltimore that exposed clearly the pitching weaknesses of this 2016 club. Still, Boston managed to cling to at least a share of the division lead heading into a short weekend series at home.

Here, now, are some odds and end from the week that was:

  1. Few Sox fans want it to be over for David Ortiz and the way he’s playing, it’s reasonable to question why he would retire after this year. On the other hand, there is still a lot of season left to play and you can’t blame Ortiz for wanting to go out on top. And on top, is certainly where he’s shaping up to be. Of Ortiz’ many achievements so far, consider this: Among players with at least 75 plate appearances this season, Big Papi owns a .309 batting average when batting with two strikes, the best such AVG among all major leaguers of any age. The next best mark is held by the Nationals’ Daniel Murphy at .289.
  2. In part because of Ortiz’ play, the Red Sox lead MLB with a .224 team AVG when batting with two strikes this season, one of just two teams batting over .200 in such situations (also the Marlins at .209). Boston’s two-strike hitting is their best in any season since at least 1988.
  3. Against the National League the Sox are 5-2 this season and will face the senior circuit again next week when they travel to San Francisco for two against the Giants. Boston has done well in Interleague play, owning an overall record of 202-148 (.577), second only to the Yankees (204-141, .591). The best overall record by any NL club in Interleague action is the Cardinals’ 157-131 (.527). But in Pittsburgh, manager Clint Hurdle has led the Pirates to a 59-41 mark (.584) against the American League since he joined the team in 2011. That’s the third best Interleague record in baseball during that time after the Yankees (.606) and Red Sox (.602).
  4. American League teams hold an edge over National League clubs in 2016 Interleague play, 48-43, with NL teams batting 849-for-3195 (.266), just ahead of AL teams, which have gone 830-for-3170 (.262). AL pitchers hold the edge over their NL counterparts, however, with ERAs of 4.25 vs 4.69, respectively.
  5. Jackie Bradley‘s 29-game hitting streak is the longest in baseball so far this season. When it ended on May 26, Xander Bogaerts then owned the longest active such streak in baseball. That streak ended this week, too, but left Bogaerts tied with the estimable Nomar Garciaparra and Johnny Pesky for the second longest hitting streak in history for Sox shortstop (only longer was Garciaparra’s 30 games in 1997). The Elias Sports Bureau says Bradley and Bogaerts represented just the second time in the last 75 seasons that two teammates had streaks of 26 or more games in the same season. The others were Shawn Green (28 games) and Shannon Stewart (26) for the 1999 Blue Jays. On Saturday, the day after Bogaerts’ streak ended, he went 3-for-4 and told WEEI after the game, “I felt great today, coming to the park. Relieved…the streak is amazing. It’s awesome and all, but it’s nerve-wracking.”
  6. With Betts’ and Bogaerts’ hitting streaks ended, the new longest active hitting streak in baseball are those of Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz, both of whom collected their 12th straight game with a hit on Saturday. Since May 3, a Boston player has held at least a share of the longest active hitting streak in the majors.
  7. Mike Trout‘s résumé looks better every year. This past weekend he collected his 150th career home run making him just one of eight players in baseball history with that many HR and 500 runs scored in an age-24 season or younger. That’s a list that includes Hall of Famers Jimmie Fox, Mickey Mantle, Mel Ott, and Frank Robinson, as well as Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, and 2016 Hall of Fame inductee Ken Griffey, Jr.
  8. As remarkable as the 2016 Red Sox offense has been, there is certainly a clear problem with Boston’s pitching. So far this season, the Sox have lost seven games even after scoring six or more runs, the most such losses in the majors. This was certainly on display in two tough Sox losses (7-12 and 9-13) to their division rival, the Orioles, last week. Thursday’s loss was particularly ugly with a franchise-high seven home runs allowed by Red Sox pitchers for just the fourth time in club history. This season, between May 27 and June 2, Boston scored 30 runs in four losses.
  9. On Thursday, Jackie Bradley became the first Sox player to be named an AL Player of the Week since Dustin Pedroia almost five seasons ago. Better still, Bradley and his wife, Erin, welcomed their first child, a daughter named Emerson, on the same day.

     
    Bonus: A year after parlaying his late season success with the Red Sox, the Athletics’ Rich Hill continues to put the pieces together. After 12 big league seasons, the 36-year-old Boston native earned his very first AL Pitcher of the Month honors after going 5-1 with a 2.13 ERA in May. Could a return to Boston be in the cards as the Sox look for help down the stretch?


Baseball beyond the numbers

Leave a Comment

There aren’t many so-called human interest stories on RSNStats. This is more of a facts and figures kind of web site. But there was something altogether impossible to ignore in this week’s Red Sox narrative, something that went beyond the play on the field—and that’s saying a lot coming off the solid week of winning baseball we’ve all just experienced.

You may have heard bits and pieces of this, but MLB Network’s Matt Vasgersian does a great job with the full story of young Maverick Shute and his hero, David Ortiz.


Sunday Morning Odds ‘n Ends

Leave a Comment

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).