Indians Hire Sox Coach Carl Willis

October 26, 2017 Leave a Comment

When he announced John Farrell‘s firing, Red Sox president Dave Dombrowski was clear that the current Sox coaches, though under contract for 2018, were free to pursue other opportunities. On Thursday came the news that pitching coach Carl Willis had done just that, becoming the new pitching coach for the Indians under Terry Francona.

Willis replaces pitching coach Mickey Callaway, who was recently named manager of the Mets.

For Willis, 56, the move to Cleveland is a homecoming having begun his pitching coach career with seven seasons there (2003-09). Willis was the Mariners pitching coach 2010-13 before joining the Red Sox in May 2015.

This season under Willis, the Red Sox ranked second in the American League and fourth in the majors with a 3.70 ERA, the club’s lowest such mark in 25 years (3.59 in 1992). Boston also led the majors in 2017 with a franchise-best 1,482.1 IP, 17.1 more than any other club and 33.2 more than any other postseason team.

In Cleveland Willis will be responsible for a pitching staff that led the majors in ERA in 2017 (3.30, having allowed the fewest earned runs (529), home runs (163), and walks (406) while collecting the most strikeouts (1,614) in baseball.

A former big league pitcher, Willis was 22-16 with a 4.25 ERA over 267 career appearances (1984-95) with the Tigers, Reds, White Sox, and Twins.

Red Sox Overcome First Inning Hole, Again

September 28, 2017 Leave a Comment

The Red Sox came away with a 10-7 win over the Blue Jays on Wednesday. In doing so, they avoided a sweep and lowered their magic number for a consecutive division crown to two.

Starting pitcher Rick Porcello once again put Boston into an immediate first-inning hole, allowing three quick runs before the Sox had even come to the plate. “Thank God our offense put up those runs,” Porcello said afterwards.

Porcello has now allowed a club-high 26 runs this season in the first frame. His 6.55 first-inning ERA is the club’s highest single-season mark by a pitcher with at least 30 starts since John Burkett‘s 10.12 ERA in 2003.

Porcello is averaging 0.78 runs per first innings pitched this season. Only Doug Fister (1.07) has a higher such ratio on the club. Porcello and Drew Pomeranz are among the 25 major league pitchers averaging the most first inning runs per innings pitched this season (minimum 30 starts).

For all its strengths, Red Sox pitching this season has now allowed exactly 100 first-inning runs, the 3rd-most in the American League. That ties this year’s crew with the 2003 club for the second-most such runs over the past 15 seasons.

2017 is just the 10th time in the last 50 Red Sox seasons that Boston has allowed 100 or more first-inning runs. The record is the forgettable 2012 season, when the Red Sox gave up 126 runs to first inning batters, the most runs allowed in any inning in that span of time.

Porcello’s Tough Season

Porcello, last year’s American League Cy Young Award winner, has struggled with his control throughout the season. He’s allowed the most runs in the American League in 2017 (125) and the most two-out runs (39) on the club, including two on Wednesday night.

With home runs by Jose Bautista and Darwin Barney, Porcello tied the Red Sox club record for most games in a single season with multiple home runs allowed (11). The others to do this were Tim Wakefield in 1996 and 2005 and Earl Wilson in 1964.

Porcello finishes the 2017 regular season 11-17 with a 4.65 ERA in 33 starts, setting new career highs for hits (236), runs (125), earned runs (105), and home runs (38) allowed. His 181 strikeouts were good for a career-best 8.0 SO per 9.0 innings pitched ratio.

Porcello gave the Red Sox 19 quality starts this season, in which he worked at least 6.0 IP and allowed three or fewer earned runs. He suffered a club-high nine losses in those starts. The righty worked two complete games, but had no shutouts.

For 2017 Porcello earned $20.1 million. His contract guarantees him $21.1 million for both the 2018 and 2019 seasons.

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.

Manny being…a Fighting Dog

January 9, 2017 Leave a Comment

For many fans and baseball pundits, going after the big bat of new free agent Edwin Encarnación to fill the Red Sox offensive gap left by David Ortiz‘ retirement made a lot of sense.

Encarnación, who just turned 34 years old on January 7th, had a solid, All-Star season in 2016 slashing .263 AVG/.357 OBP/.529 SLG while setting a new career high for RBI (127, the exact same number as Big Papi) and matching his career best with 42 home runs.

For the past five seasons since the start of 2012, Encarnación’s .973 OPS at Fenway Park is second only to Ortiz’ (minimum 150 at-bats) and his .590 slugging percentage for those same conditions is second to none.

Edwin Encarnacion
flickr photo by Keith Allison shared under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license

Encarnación in a Red Sox uniform, however, wasn’t meant to be. Instead, he signed a three-year, $60 million deal with the Indians that included a club option for 2020 that would earn him another $25 million. The deal represented a bargain for The Tribe, as Encarnación entered the off-season expecting to land a far more lucrative contract.

So why didn’t the Red Sox pursue Encarnación? The Globe’s Alex Speier explains that it’s partly because any deal for Edwin would have cost the Sox a first-round draft pick (the Blue Jays had already extended a “qualifying offer” to Encarnación) and secondly, because that deal would have pushed Boston over the luxury tax threshold for a third straight year, which has significant financial ramifications. If you’re interested in the business of baseball, Speier’s column is a great read.

Now, on to a few other items of interest for Red Sox fans:

Manny Ramírez, who is appearing this year on his first Hall of Fame ballot and will turn 45 in May, is returning to the field with The Kochi Fighting Dogs of Japan’s independent Shikoku Island League. Ramírez played 19 MLB seasons, including eight with the Indians and then the Red Sox and finishing overall with a .312 AVG/.411 OBP/.585 SLG slash line. Hall of Fame inductees are required to be out of baseball for at least five seasons, but playing for the Japanese club won’t impact Ramírez’ HOF eligibility. Manny’s last MLB game was with the Rays in 2011.
Blast from the Past II: Daisuke Matsuzaka, who hasn’t pitched in the majors since 2014, has looked fairly good in winter ball in Puerto Rico. Japan Times says Dice-K “went to Puerto Rico hoping to get himself ready to vie for playing time next year, when he’ll try to make an impact for the first time since returning to Japan from MLB in 2015.”
Sox infield prospect Sam Travis, 23, looked great last Spring Training and was expected to appear with the big club at least in September before being sidelined by a torn ACL on May 30th. Still, Travis’ path to the big leagues is far from totally blocked, despite baseball president Dave Dombrowski’s recent signing of Mitch Moreland.
These days, complete games are tough enough to come by, let alone complete game shutouts. Last season, Sox newcomer Chris Sale led all of baseball with six full game efforts for the White Sox, just one of them a shutout. Steven Wright, meanwhile, gave the Red Sox their only CG SHO of 2016 while the American League Champion Indians tied the 2016 league record with three such games, two of them by Corey Kluber. Boston hasn’t had three such pitching performances in a single season since their 2007 World Championship campaign (Clay Buchholz, Kason Gabbard, and Curt Schilling). It has been 28 years since the Sox had double-digit CG SHO in a single season (10 in 1988).

Sunday Odds ‘n Ends

June 5, 2016 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:

Embed from Getty Images

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.
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.
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).
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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?