Red Sox Reality Check

Historically, the Red Sox have not rushed prospects to the bigs. Sure, there was Carl Yastrzemski at 21 in 1961, Tony Conigliaro at age 19 in 1964, Ken Brett at age 18 in 1967. Jim Rice (21) and Fred Lynn (22) made their appearances in 1974, and were rookie stalwarts on the 1975 World Series team. Jacoby Ellsbury had an 1.188 OPS in the 2007 World Series at age 23. Obviously, these 'exceptions' don't establish that Jackie Bradley, Jr. and Xander Bogaerts will light the baseball world afire in 2014. But it doesn't preclude the possibility that they can impact the Sox lineup as previous young players have. A multitude of fortunes must break your way to win championships. Do Red Sox fans expect that a team that hit a collective .227 in the postseason would get enough pitching to capture its third title in a decade? Do they recognize that without other-worldly performance by Koji Uehara this was impossible? Did they anticipate that Jon Lester would go 4-1 in October w...

Years ago I penned the piano falling from the sky and flattening Red Sox fans. 1967 wasn't so bad, the Sox prohibitive underdogs to the Cardinals of Gibson and Brock. No expectations. 1975 brought a miraculous series, squashed by the Big Red Machine. Ed Armbrister, where are you now? 1986 continued the misery, a thousand paper cuts in a vinegar plant, combining servitude in the ICU at Bethesda Naval Hospital with the apocalyptic collapse against the Mets. I'll ignore the 1972 'bad trip' around third base of Luis Aparicio leading to a half-game pennant loss, the 1978 Torrezian playoff game drilling by the Bucky Dentist, or "why does my wife ask me to call her Pedro?"..."Because I never take her out (2003)". The former meant little in the big picture, and WS I erased the Yankee defeats better than any tranquilizer. The worst demons hit the fan. Maybe young Sox fans envy grizzled Sox addicts the suffering. How many Sox fans can remember 1946 with th...

For the two of you who haven't seen this. While you may take a few things to the bank, the Yankees' internal pledge to stay below the salary cap isn't one of them. Their salacious pursuit of Masahiro could easily blow their pitching budget into the stratosphere. The posting fee for the Japanese import is twenty million and the right-hander is angling for a 17 million dollar per year contract. "If you want economy, then you have to pay for it." Meanwhile, the Sox have a surfeit of pitching (a dangerous concept indeed with the fragility of pitchers), but the odds favor them relocating one for cap space and maneuvering room to sign either Stephen Drew or more outfield help. Drew must be kicking himself (better yet uber-agent Scott Boras) for declining fourteen million dollars. First round draft pick compensation weighs on Drew like Roseann Barr singing the National Anthem. What I fail to understand is the bum's rush for Will Middlebrooks. Yes, I understand...

Rany Jazayerli, he of baseball authorship, pens about the demise of the Yankees . First, I think it unseemly to dance on another's grave, especially so when they have previously danced upon your'n so regularly. Second, baseball, being a game of mean reversion, sometimes exorcises strange demons and no birthright or copyright guarantees the Red Sox either a division or world title in 2014. In the world of baseball economics, the fantasy "wins/dollar", the Red Sox pummeled the Bombers, but both New York and Boston have a long way to go to catch Houston. Houston may have had only 51 wins, but spent 29.3 million dollars, .574 million dollars per win. The WC Red Sox 177.2 million dollars for their 108 (including post-season) wins, 1.646 million per win. But the Yankees, they of the 237 million dollar payroll, spent 2.79 million dollars per win, almost five times as much as Houston. Texans celebrate your frugality amid plenty. The beauty of being a big-market team i...

Sometimes "strength" is as much illusion as reality. Consider the Red Sox starting rotation. The "strength" argument looks at Lester, Lackey, Buchholz, Peavey, Doubront, and Dempster...with contenders like Brandon Workman (serious) and Allen Webster (are you serious?). Lester and Lackey are legit and I'm a Doubront fan, although his pitch efficiency (ability or willingness to pitch to contract) is an issue. Peavey is at least healthy, but Buchholz's 2013 can't be viewed (healthwise) as confidence inspiring and Dempster gives you more innings than high production. Yes, you can win with an E.R.A. approaching 5, as long as you lead the league in both on base percentage and runs scored, which is not assured. As for Anthony Ranaudo, Matt Barnes, and Henry Owens, you cannot expect to catch lightning in a bottle, no matter how tall the bottle. While all could pitch next season in Boston, we simply can't expect more than stopgap production. The S...

Mike Napoli tweeted his return to Boston...and Sox fans couldn't be happier. Napoli, in my opinion, was the most important of the cadre of free agents hanging in the dollarsphere, reportedly agreeing to a two year, 32 million dollar deal. The Red Sox now have established right-handed power, with the power production of Will Middlebrooks at the other corner and Xander Bogaerts at shortstop to be determined. As of now, the most likely lineup will look something like this: RF Victorino LF  Nava 2B  Pedroia DH  Ortiz 1B  Napoli SS  Bogaerts C   Pierzynski 3B  Middlebrooks CF Bradley, Jr. Also, there's huge money potentially coming off the payroll at the end of the season (pending the disposition of Jon Lester and John Lackey). Roughly speaking Ortiz (11.5M), Dempster (13M), Peavey (14.5M), Ross (3M), Pierzynski (8.25M) yield over 50M dollars to be redeployed. Obviously, the Sox still have interest in Stephen Drew who still has a few other...

The simple reality is that with more money floating around chasing fewer free agents (more promising talent being locked up early, like Evan Longoria), it creates a seller's market. Jacoby Ellsbury, Scott Kazmir, and Hunter Pence (among others) take advantage of that reality. In Boston, we like our players to show emotion, outward manifestations that they care. That doesn't mean that we can't embrace a 'cold-blooded' performer doing his job, like Ellsbury, and good looks aside, his personality and affection for the audience (engagement) never matched his ability. One can legitimately ask, "is that a problem for you?" If the Sox could field twenty-five baseball-playing, fire-breathing robots, cleverly manufactured in Bill James' baseball laboratory, and win the World Series every year, would that be enough for us? Conversely, how should we feel about media-friendly self-promoters, who underachieve yet develop a cult following. The raw numbers ...

In the bright afterglow of another championship season, the competition has the audacity to raid the Sox pantry, shoplifting the Red Sox former centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury for the GDP of a small country. Of course, not everyone in New York is doing cartwheels.  Daily New columnist  Mike Lupica  put it, the Yankees "don't just pay, they overpay." Meanwhile the Red Sox lie low, waiting for the market to sort itself out, excepting the Boris Badanov  Burke Badenhop era, and another Boston Bad Boy, A. J. Pierzynski, whom you'd think was less popular than Whitey Bulger.  Now we're worrying about Jon Lester leaving, and probably soon starting to whine about signing Xander Bogaerts to a long-term deal.  Yes, there is an imperative to value assets properly, to develop your high value pieces, young players under control with manageable salaries. Those 'values' allow you to sign higher priced (and often bigger gambles) free agents.  First, more on Ellsb...

I haven't written for a long time. There's a simple answer...superstition. Don't interrupt karma. How do you win a World Series with less talent and more panache and character than the 2013 Red Sox? I don't think it's (to paraphrase Jonny Gomes) possible to explain it with words. From the Boston Marathon tragedy (much like 9/11 culminated in a Patriots' Super Bowl), a spirit arose that meant walkoff wins and unlikely heroes. The Sox finished with a closer who was never meant to close, a backup catcher who missed more than a third of the season on the DL, a first baseman who almost was never here because of a hip problem, a third baseman from Aruba via a late-season call-up, and a reserve left fielder who started games 10-1 in the postseason. They won with two dominant starters (chicken and beer redemptions) and unlikely bullpen stalwarts including two Japanese pitchers, a left-handed molecular physicist, and another tall Texan who began his major leagu...

Here's how it works, borrowing from behavioral finance. What's mine is good, what's yours is okay, and possession affects perception. . Boston: We get a former Cy Young Award pitcher to bolster our staff down the stretch run. We trade an outstanding young defender with limited offensive production and some minor leaguers including a young power arm. We deal from a position of strength and get stronger. We have major league ready players to step in. We take on salary without trading our elite prospects. We are confident that we have strengthened our team. What's not to like? . Detroit: We protect ourselves (with a suspension coming in all likelihood) by getting the top infield defender in baseball. This bolsters our pitching and we have a strong offense that needs to be supplemented by augmented run prevention. We surrender a promising young outfielder. What's not to like? . Chicago mentality: We get a top outfield prospect and other prospects. We trade a startin...

The Red Sox have enjoyed a wonderful season...and all the players, coaches, and management deserve a healthy dose of credit. But I'm not a believer. Over the long pull, team spirit and very good players can win a lot of games, but talent wins championships and the Red Sox don't have enough as currently constituted. Their pitching, especially the starting pitching without Clay Buchholz is not championship caliber, despite good efforts from Lackey, Lester (recently), Doubront, Dempster, and Workman. In a short series how do you feel against Verlander and Scherzer, or Price and Moore...and more? Their offense, despite leading the league in runs, has been spotty more recently. You say "it's good pitching." Well that's what you face in the playoffs. Michael Young, greybeard, for Will Middlebrooks? That's asinine. There isn't one player they can get who puts them over the top, and if Ben Cherington drives up to my house and tells me differently, I'...

New Englanders know 'Calvinist' theology, figuratively through scripture and literally through the Calvin Schiraldi meltdown from the 1986 post-season. Perhaps it is fitting that the 2013 baseball season opens with the 'reformed' Red Sox, offering fans a different attitude and ambience, although extrapolating to the long season is one part impudent and one part folly. For example, the Sox will not go errorless in 2013, will not have an ERA sub 3, and Daniel Nava will not have forty plus homers, although who would have predicted him to have homered in consecutive games from opposite sides of the plate...this season? I'm not wholeheartedly jumping onto the bandwagon, but admittedly, one has to be encouraged by the results from the notoriously slow-starting Jon Lester and from Clay Buchholz. Sox fans had reason to expect a productive bullpen, but nobody expected Koji Uehara to look like the bullpen edition of Greg Maddux or Joel Hanrahan a reasonable facsimile of...

We're on the cusp of the baseball season, and a thousand questions arise. Let's toss out a few. Has there ever been a great manager who began as a pitching coach? Is the Red Sox pitching rotation 'fixed'?  Should the Sox keep Jackie Bradley, Jr. at the big league level? Time heals all heels? What will David Ortiz bring to the table and when? Who will overachieve and who will underperform? John Farrell brings two years of managerial experience and a .475 winning percentage with him. First, managerial performance follows talent, and the Jays weren't great. However, you can name the great contemporary managers who were pitching coaches in a nanosecond.  Highly regarded Bud Black was the NL Manager of the Year in 2010 with San Diego, but he's not headed to Cooperstown anytime soon. The definitive article is here .  Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz had great Spring Training and that matters. Jackie Bradley, Jr. did, and it doesn't. Huh?  Whether Farrel...

Welcome to the 2013 Boston Red Sox , a Tom Werner production. "Every pleasure is yours to experience."  After all, the bad karma of Bobby Valentine has evaporated, and a kinder, gentler Prodigal Son, John Farrell returns to steer the ship. Red Sox Nation lives as a dystopian society, where older fans, reminded of "25 players, 25 cabs" are to be eliminated in favor of 'pink hats' and any corporate memory of the embarrassment of late in 2011 and all of 2012 removed. In honor of principal owner John Henry, trend-following commodities guru, maybe we should go with "this time it's different."  If only Johnny Gomes could be a pitcher, then we could wax poetic about the second coming of Ricky Vaughn.  Future disgruntled centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury is hardly to be heard, as media grooms us for (not 1984, but 2014) Jackie Bradley, Jr.  And no doubt Shane Victorino has all the style and soul of the Kia hamsters. Juan Nieves has already been dri...

The Red Sox rely on reversion to the mean coming into the 2013 season. That is, having more players achieve closer to their 'normal' performance.  The "Moneyball" approach looks to translate historical performance in key metrics, to oversimplify, OPS for offense and K/BB for pitching, into effective play. Traditionalists argue that Moneyball overlooks what others would call baseball instinct. Sabermetricians could reply that your "lying eyes" see what they want. I lack the inclination to review the entire team by plate appearances, but we can go through a couple, especially the "strength up the middle" dynamic. Among AL catchers with at least 300 plate appearances, Jarrod Saltalamacchia was eighth in OPS (.742) and tenth in WAR (1.2). The good news, if that matters, is that he was better than Jesus Montero. In centerfield, Jacoby Ellsbury has been a model of inconsistency. Injury-plagued, the Sox 'golden boy' has had an AL MVP runneru...

What you see is not always what you get.  Baseball fans and baseball organizations are often mesmerized by numbers. We should be able to measure production. Of course, isolated statistics (small sample size) may not always reflect perception...or future production. Here are statistics from two Red Sox players from 2012. Both had similar plate appearances, but one had better on base percentage, slugging percentage, and OPS.  He also had better isolated power (IsoP) and Secondary Average (SecA). One player is adored throughout much of Red Sox Nation. The other is an afterthought. Player one (88 games played) is Daniel Nava , he of the better stats. The other is Jacoby Ellsbury . Of course, Ellsbury has a more polished resume' and a fantastic "once in a lifetime" season in 2011. Ellsbury has suffered through two seasons of misery with extended time on the DL. But what is perception and what is reality?  Nava will struggle to make the team and Ellsbury anticipate a 12-...