jasonpiques.com

Finally here you have it, a graphical analysis the major offseason acquisitions.

From Jason Bay to Mike Cameron:

From Mike Lowell to Adrian Beltre:

Julio Lugo, Nick Green, Alex Gonzalez, and Marco Scutaro:

Thoughts?

Wow – this guy’s gotten a little dusty. My apologies to few of you that may have checked sometime between August 1^st and today – but spare time is a luxury I don’t get to enjoy anymore.

Let me start off with saying that even though I haven’t been spending as much time as I’d like to blogging about the Sox, it is no measure of how much I’ve been thinking about this off-season and how fascinated I am with the number of ways things could break for the local 9.

I’d like to start today by arguing that the biggest problem with the 2009 club is still the one that’s talked about the least – the sieve that was the entire left side of the field last year (except for the now Blue Jay, Alex Gonzalez). The biggest culprit was Mike Lowell who went from being simply bad to absolutely and completely horrendous in the field. Always limited in his range to his left, Lowell reached almost comical levels of miserable in 2009 where he rated -17 plays to his left. Coupled with Nick Green who was almost equally as terrible as going to his right, and Jason Bay who let more than his fair share of balls fall in front of him you had perhaps the worst defensive 3B/SS/LF combo in the game last year for most of the season.

Of course, there are some, and I actually consider myself one of them, that put limited stock into defensive metrics because of their occasional wild fluctuations in individual performances from year to year. For example imagine a fictitious team signs Aaron, Bobby, and Carl McGoldglove to play in the outfield for them one season. All three of these players may be considered some of the finest fielders to ever play the game, but in 2010 Bobby McGoldglove runs down balls that Aaron and Carl routinely caught in seasons past, by no diminution in their talent levels but because of Bobby’s commanding play. Stats like UZR, and +/- are going to penalize Aaron and Carl for not making plays on balls that they can still get to but aren’t making because of Bobby.

This is why even though UZR and +/- tell us a lot, total team defensive efficiency is still the most effective metric when considering defense. Defensive efficiency quite simply measures the number of outs made on balls put into the field play vs the total number of balls put into play. In the hypothetical example of the McGoldgloves it doesn’t matter who made the outs in the outfield, but that total % of balls hit into the outfield that were turned into outs.

The significance in this stat is that it very clearly shows an enormous deviation from the 2009 squad and the teams from the previous two seasons. In 2007 the Red Sox ranked 2^nd in MLB with a defensive efficiency (DE) of .705 (or 70.5%), in 2008 they were 5^th in MLB with a DE of .699. In 2009 the Red Sox were right in the cellar ranked just above the Astros and the Royals with a DE of .679. In the course of 3 seasons the team went from elite to atrocious.

It’d be foolish to think the Sox front office hasn’t taken notice of this either. Earlier last week we heard that the team would be willing to pay half of Mike Lowell’s $12m contract in a trade, and have been linked in contract talks with Matt Holliday even after Jason Bay’s season at the plate. While it’s true that the name of sexy free agent names promptly stops after the names Bay, Holliday, and Lackey are uttered there are still some very underappreciated defensive studs available in this free agent class. Conveniently so – some of the best defenders are at the three positions the Red Sox had the most trouble with last year and wouldn’t hurt the Sox’s offensive production in the least:

3B – Adrian Beltre. On the surface Lowell’s slash numbers make any gain in defensive abilities appear minimal when considering the drop in value with the bat. There’s a whole world of a difference though between the ballparks on the opposite sides of I-90 – Fenway a double hitters paradise, and Safeco which… isn’t. Truth be told even in Beltre’s uncharacteristically bad year, he still outhit Lowell in away games at a .279/.324/.393 clip vs. Lowell’s .276/.331/.382. When you factor in that Beltre is one of the best 3B in the game it’s an enormous upgrade at a moderate expense.

SS – Marco Scutaro. By now I believe every person who has talked about the Red Sox in the past 5 years has actually used the phrase “revolving door at SS” when discussing the tenure of Theo Epstein. Just how bad has it been? In 2007 Red Sox SS hit .231/.288/.345, in ’08 .268/.358/.360, and last year .235/.297/.358. So even if Marco Scutaro doesn’t perform at last year’s levels, or even the year before, the Sox would still come out ahead at the plate. One thing that Scutaro does provide at the very least is average to above average defense – something the Red Sox have lacked with the Julio Lugos and Nick Greens of the past two years.

LF – Matt Holliday. This one almost breaks my heart because I was the president of the Jason Bay fanclub even before he was traded over here. I, like a stubborn 4 year old, closed my eyes and blocked my ears to everything suggesting that he was one of the worst defensive LF in baseball. In fact it was a recently as 2007 that I considered Bay to be a far superior player to Matt Holliday because of the questions home/road splits Holliday had at Coors Field. Looking at it objectively however its not contest. Bay’s agent Joe Urbon recently referred Jason Bay a “complete ball player” as though hitting for average and defense were not parts of a complete player. The obvious drop between Bay to Holliday is in power. Bay’s Isolated Power (ISO which is SLG-AVG)) was .269 last year, Holliday’s was .201 but the difference is made up in AVG and OBP.

What does Scutaro and Holliday have in common? They’re both Type A free agents and would require the Sox to forfeit a draft pick to Toronto and St. Louis to sign either of them. What also significant is that in signing both free agents the Sox would lose their first and second round pick but would also receive 2 picks for each of their type A free agent’s Jason Bay and Billy Wagner should they sign elsewhere. The first 16 picks of the draft are protected and the Red Sox would receive a 2^nd round pick if any of those teams were to sign either Bay or Wagner, but it is at least likely that the Sox could end up signing two type A free agents and still end up with 4 picks before the 2^nd round.

The reason why this is important is this extra cache of draft picks could help off-set a trade of some of the upper echelon talent in the farm system in order to get one of the Halladays, Hernandezes, or Gonzalezes. So if one of those players, or really any other player available by trade is what you think helps fix some of the Sox woes – maybe you should consider rooting for Jason Bay to sign in Seattle or anywhere else - not named New York of course.

Bill James recently came up with a system to measure how tired a closer is. It’s a great idea to track something like this but I have two problems with it:

a.) Why just closers? Why not all relievers?

b.) And this is more important, by using a system that bases fatigue on “Batters Faced” an 11 pitch battle is weighted exactly the same as a 1 pitch grounder to SS.

So I took the same system and substituted Batters Faced with Pitches Thrown.

The math if you want to do it is

Pitches (yesterday) x 5/3.82 + Pitches (date-2) x 4/3.82 + Pitches (date-3) x 3/3.82 + Pitches (date-4) x 2/3.82 + Pitches (date-5) x 1/3.82

And thats it. Enjoy.

I’ll try to keep these somewhat educated and not just something I’m pulling out of thin air. Perhaps my best prediction was made two years ago at the lemmingtrail board about a certain rookie second basemen.

jay - 01/23/07 - 11:44 am (76.19.196.169)
also: dustin pedroia will hit more doubles than mike lowell.

I also predicted - to my employer at the time at the start of the 2008 season that Jed Lowrie would be the starting SS by the end of the season.

I’ve also made some bad and very bad predictions too - but these are my hunches going into 2009.

1.) Josh Beckett is going back to “2007″ Josh Beckett. Interestingly enough - Josh’s 2008 wasn’t really that bad if you look at the things he had immediate control over. His strikeout rate actually rose and his walk rate fell compared to his Cy-young caliber 2007 season. He was marred by injury and some bad breaks from his defense. In 2008 his defense got to 67.3% of balls that were put into play - compare that to 68.4% in 2007 and 73% in 2006 - the average rate for all picthers is about 70%. I think a 3.25 ERA is certainly within reach for Beckett this year.

2.) David Ortiz is going to be fine. Now maybe not 54 home runs fine, but certainly worthy of the #3 spot. Looking at his post injury numbers last year he hit .277/.389/.529. His “post-Manny” numbers were .262/.381/.519. Given the extra time to heal his ailing wrist I think a .280/.410/.550 season is very attainable for him. His average will shrink from his 2007 levels as a result of teams giving him a free pass but he’ll still OPS over .900

3.) Jacoby Ellsbury is going to lose his spot as the leadoff hitter. The frustrating thing for me about watching Ellsbury play is that he had tremendous success with his plate discipline in the minors - but that has yet to come to fruition for the big league club. In 2008 Ellsbury had a .336 OBP - for reference only two teams in the American League had a lower OBP from their leadoff hitter and those teams were the Twins and the As. Should Ellsbury fail to improve on that rate - I think there is a very high possibility of seeing JD Drew return to batting leadoff.

4.) Daisuke Matsuzaka (and this may be Josh Beckett redux) is going to look more like 2007 Daisuke than 2008 Daisuke. Continuing on with where we left off with Beckett - there are certain few things that a pitcher has nearly absolute control over; striking a batter out and walking a batter. Now as we were mentioning earlier of the remaining balls hit into play (BIP) that were not Home Runs (99.9% of Home Runs at least) Daisuke got some very lucky breaks. Before the 2009 season began I made a spreadsheet for my two fantasy baseball leagues jokingly referred to as the “Risky Business” list. It measured pitchers who caught some lucky breaks in things they didnt have any control over - an above average defensive efficiency on fielding balls in play (Like we said with Beckett this rate should be around 70%), a very low Home Run to Fly Ball rate (most SP fall somewhere between 10-11%), and a very high percentage of stranded baserunners (average is about 72.5%)

Daisuke was the one pitcher who scored well outside of one standard deviation in all three categories. His defensive efficiency was at 73.3%, his HR/FB rate was freakishly low at 6.1%, and his strand rate was at 80.6%. None of these three metrics are indicative of a pitcher’s ability but rather his luck. The two things Daisuke could truly control (and I’m using that word ironically) is his Strikeout and Walk rate and both of these rates regressed from their 2007 levels. Only Tom Gorzelanny, Fausto Carmona, and Barry Zito had a higher BB/9 and none of those guys had an ERA under 5.00.

I’m maybe being a little too hard on this - but I think a 4.80-5.20 ERA for Daisuke is what we can expect from this year. Especially if he shows signs of fatigue from the WBC.

Link.

Oh yeah it’s good.

Mike,

You’ll always have a place in the heart of Bruins fans - maybe not for your play on the ice, but in the stands. You’re also currently the last Bruins coach to lead the team to the Stanley Cup finals - a definite bonus. I mean you’re even a local guy too so you even get some more extra points there.

And hey, you know what, maybe I am being a little too sensitive when you say disparaging things towards one of my favorite Bruins, Mr. Axelsson. But I just need to know, exactly what did P.J. do to earn such scorn? Yes he was being misused on the power play, but that was simply due to a lack of left-handed shooters on this team - A problem since solved by acquiring Mark Recchi. In fact I’m sure if you asked P.J. about it, he’d probably tell you himself that he shouldn’t ever be on the power play. He is however, one of the premier defensive forwards in the league, and if the Selke trophy actually was awarded for the best defensive forward, Axy probably would have at least been nominated at one point in his career. He’s consistently rated in The Hockey News as being one of the leagues most underrated players and is perhaps the perfect 3rd or 4th line left-winger.

Yet you still deride the lone Swede for his lack of a scoring touch. Of course being someone like yourself, who has spent so much time in the league I am sure you would have a natural eye for what true talent looks like. I mean lets take a look at your savy trades as GM of the New York Islanders:

Trading Wade Redden (with Dominic Rhodes) for Martin Straka, Bryan Berard, and Don Beaupre.
This one looks like a win - except Straka got claimed after you waived him before ever playing a game for the Islanders, Berard was dealt for 33 games of Felix Potvin (later traded for Kevin Weekes and Dave Scatchard).

Trading Beaupre with Kirk Muller for Ken Belanger.
Loss.

Traded Wendel Clark and Mathieu Schneider for a pile of garbage and Toronto’s 1st round pick (Roberto Luongo)
Well that one is a nice move Mike!

Traded Zigmund Palffy, Brian Smolinski and a bag of pucks for Olli Jokinen, two also-rans and a first round pick.
Considering ownership was forcing your hand in this one, I still say its a score considering you were able to pick up a talent like Jokinen and a 1st rounder. Granted the 1st rounder (#8 overall) was Taylor Pratt, but that was a weak draft - so we’ll cut you some slack.

Traded Luongo and Jokinen for Oleg Kvasha and Mark Parrish.
Wow - well. Two positive trades lead to a franchise crushing negative. But lets keep going.

Traded Zdeno Chara and others including the #2 overall pick (Jason Spezza) for Alexei Yashin.
Another amazingly terrible trade - though not quite as bad as dealing Luongo and Jokinen.

Selected Rick DiPietro #1 in the 2000 entry draft, instead of Dany Heatley or Marian Gaborik.
I wish I could cut you some slack here. Maybe you saw a kid from your home state and thought he could be special. He very well could be above average some day. Meanwhile Heatley and Gaborik are already All-stars.

Mike, for a guy with such a willingness to deal, you may end up going down in history as having the worst eye for talent a NHL General Manager ever has had. You could assemble an all-star team with the talent you managed to trade away from New York and in doing so have buried the Islanders with so many bad trades that they remain at least a few seasons away from any kind of relevance.

So please leave the talent evaluation to the guys who know what they’re doing. Axelsson doesn’t score many goals - but he’s not out there to do that. That doesn’t mean he is without value.

From 2006-2008

Player 1:

33-19 W-L
465.2 IP
3.27 ERA (LgERA 4.32)
1.185 WHIP
8.6 K/9
2.1 BB/9
4.0 K/BB

Player 2:

38-26 W-L
522.2 IP
3.94 ERA (LgERA 4.43)
1.284 WHIP
9.0 K/9
3.3 BB/9
2.7 K/BB

Player 1 is John Smoltz who will cost the Red Sox somewhere between $5.5-10.5m

Player 2 is A.J. Burnett who will cost the Yankees $16.5 this season and the next four.

These are some of the posts that can catch me some grief from family. Spending more than 5 minutes thinking about the 5th outfielder or “first bat off the bench” guy is probably something most fans won’t do until the post-season - but being unemployed does afford me some extra time so enjoy:

Using Baseball Prospectus’ depth chart projections the Corner OF/1B position will be a battle for as many as 300 plate appearances and could end being the most significant upgrade over the 2008 bench. Most of the bench at this stage is already set:

4OF: Rocco Baldelli (R) replacing Coco Crisp (S) - Its a little up in the air if Baldelli can give the Sox the 361 AB Crisp gave them last year (He hasnt been healthy enough to get there since 2006). Fortunately the Sox won’t need him to unless Ellsbury struggles.

MI: Jed Lowrie (S) / Julio Lugo (R) replacing Alex Cora (L) - Alex Cora for all his “baseball intelligence” was not good in any of his years in Boston. His defense was outstandingly overrated and his bat was abysmal, having his best year last year with an 87 OPS+. Whoever loses this battle will still be an upgrade - Lugo has the better speed (though not always the smartest/most efficient baserunner) and could be effective as a pinch runner.

C-2: Josh Bard (S) / Kottaras (L) replacing Kevin Cash (R) - Cash hit over .200 for the first time in his career last year. It shouldnt be hard to at least equal the sub-Mendoza stats. I may have to take a deeper look at this one later.

Which means there’s one spot left: the “first guy off the bench” spot. Theo and Co. have said that one thing they place a lot of value is positional flexibility - which is one of the reasons Sean Casey isn’t here anymore (well that and his complete inability to hit for power). Mark Kotsay was brought back to serve that role - but will now be out at the beginning of the season recovering from a back injury. An additional depth signing was made bringing in Brad Wilkerson as additional depth for the minors joining two other sluggers. Chris Carter, the player we received in the Wily Mo Pena trade - can mash but is a complete butcher in the field. Jeff Bailey on the other hand plays a more respectable 1b, LF and even RF and won the International League MVP award last season.

I’ll go ahead and say that Chris Carter doesn’t have much of a chance of cracking this lineup unless something Ortiz has to miss significant time and the Sox plug Carter in that spot (still very unlikely - as the Sox would probably go to Baldelli).

Which leaves the last roster spot open to either Brad Wilkerson (LHB) and Jeff Bailey (RHB) until Mark Kotsay (LHB) can return. The Sox will likely be tempted to give the job to either Wilkerson on Kotsay to ensure they have a left handed bat on the bench - but I think this isnt maximizing the potential of this roster spot.

minorleaguesplits.com has a handy tool that converts a players minor league stats into what they would be in the majors and it puts just into context just how good Jeff Bailey’s year was last year.

Just for comparisons sake here are last years stats for the three:

Jeff Bailey (Translated from PAW to BOS)
.261/.349/.473

Mark Kotsay (ATL + BOS)
.276/.329/.403

Brad Wilkerson (SEA + TOR)
.220/.308/.326

And while Kotsay and Wilkerson would give you the match-up advantage (LHB vs RHP), neither of them were really that great at it. Kotsay OPS’d .777 whereas Wilkerson only managed a .649

Even though Bailey is weaker against RHB his translated stats from last year indicate he would be good for a .242/.348/.450 line against RHP.

Not to mention he’s mashing this Spring.

Well wow.

McCourt says:

“We love Manny Ramirez,” said Dodgers Owner Frank McCourt, “And we want Manny back, but we feel we are negotiating against ourselves. When his agent finds those ‘serious offers’ from other clubs, we’ll be happy to re-start the negotiations.

“Even with an economy that has substantially eroded since last November, out of respect for Manny and his talents, we actually improved our offer.

“So now, we start from scratch.”

Spring training games have already started, March is two days away, and Manny is turning down an offer for 1 year $25m with a player option for a second year at $20m. Now I could just chalk this up to Manny and Boras playing chicken with the Dodgers, but I really wonder if something is up.

Buster Olney recently said that many teams were staying away from Manny based on his behavior temper-tantrum before being traded from Boston.

ESPN is reporting that the offer was for $10m in 2009 and $10m in 2010 and $25m deferred. I’m still not convinced that the Yankees are out of it either - regardless of what Cashman may say. (He did say the same thing about Teixeira.)