Red Sox Reality Check

I don't have time for any exhaustive review of the first quarter of the season. But if you want answers, simple and painful, they can be distilled into two charts. You must click to see the full charts. The first examines Red Sox starting pitching. Forget about no Daisuke or Lackey and focus on what is here. First, the Sox are next to last in ERA. They have allowed almost a run more than the league average. Granted the defense is worse than advertised. But look at the best predictor of future ERA, K/BB ratio. With the league average at over 2, the Red Sox are about 1.66 to 1. This also implies that Toronto is living on borrowed time with their staff. Within the team, you can see where the problems have been, specifically Daniel Bard and Clay Buchholz. Both BARELY exceed parity (1:1) on K/BB. It's easy to understand the K/BB ratio as a ratio examining power and command. So as much as the apologistas want to blame injuries to Ellsbury, Crawford, and Youkilis for the Sox m...

Your browser does not support iframes. They call it 'professional baseball', the major leagues, 'the show'. Unfortunately, our lying eyes tell us that, despite efforts to standardize umpiring, MLB is falling short. In the video above, you see Brett Lawrie "lose it", en route to EARNING a four game suspension. The umpire, Bill Miller, has received neither sanction nor public reprimand for his role. Clearly, Lawrie overreacted, but Miller gives the appearance of injecting himself into the action, quite probably retaliating against the volatile Blue Jays third baseman. MLB, while celebrating the human element (making bad calls is evidently integral in baseball), has introduced boundary call replays , precisely because umpires (like all of us), make mistakes and fans (aided by replays) demand a higher standard. Every MLB stadium has a tool, Pitch FX, designed to analyze pitch location, speed, type, and more, but becomes a tool to study both player and umpi...

Here's the problem, Sox fans. We care too much. Walking around time in your Fenway tees and Red Sox caps, we're billboards for sorry obsession. Sure, you love baseball in the fashion of Bart Giamatti and Bob Costas, the smell of green grass and money in the air. Maybe you should pause to reflect upon what Giamatti actually said,  “[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”   In other words, what we're feeling is normal. Really, why should we care, when the feeling isn't mutual or at least universal. Sure, players bask in the re...

As fans we are outsiders. The saying goes, "what you see here and what you hear here, stays here." That is, baseball players must respect the sanctity of the clubhouse. Of course, sometimes we get the tiniest glimpse of what happens there. Chicken and beer isn't as important as the will to prepare, leading to success on the field. Preparation might be mental or physical, watching film or lifting weights, spending ten minutes a day on sports psychology.  One Red Sox employee told me, the all-too-common attitude migrates from "whatever it takes" to "I've got mine." And that doesn't translate to winning baseball. New players on the Patriots talk about doing whatever it takes to contribute to winning, to working toward a common goal, to get to the Super Bowl. Is that what we SEE with Ye Olde Towne Team? Currently, the Red Sox have one of the worst records in baseball. WYSIATI. What you see is all there is? Fans want players who care as much a...

It's hard not to comment about the mediocre defense the Red Sox are running out there lately. Even worse, the announcers either have been instructed to downplay it or simply choose to. First, nobody chooses to fail. I remember the Steve Lyons mantra about earning the right to fail. But over the weekend, Saltalamacchia's defense led to Aaron Cook's injury via the passed ball, and Salty dropped popups on consecutive days. After all, this is the Big Leagues. Tonight, Marlon Byrd misplayed a long fly to the track into two runs, and Will Middlebrooks turned a routine grounder into a three-base error (no way was it a single). At least Middlebrooks hits the ball. Yes, the errors are worse than the whistling past the graveyard approach to announcing. But when the Royals leftfielder misplayed Shoppach's fly ball into a triple, Eck was all over it. "He's gotta catch that ball". It wasn't that long ago that "run prevention" was to become the Sox...

I can't focus on solutions today. The problems are overwhelming. Hope and pageantry have morphed into predation, with the Sox as prey. The Red Sox announcers regularly tell us about the Red Sox fielding percentage and how they're at the top of the league. Anyone who watches the games recently sees: 1) We see mediocre but not average outfield defense (even routine plays look hard), weak throwing arms, and very few 'good' plays. Ask Daniel Bard. 2) Concern about the catching situation. Not only did Saltalamacchia struggle catching Aaron Cook, he contributed to Cook's injury, and missed a popup. We keep hearing about Lavarnway's limitations...and we keep seeing the Red Sox battery running low . 3) The day-to-day lineup, courtesy of injury, gets exposed. Role and platoon players forced into starting positions has gotten ugly . The Orioles look like the 1966 Orioles on the mound. Are they that good or are the Sox simply making them look good? With Ortiz and ...