— BTF's Preseason Previews
Monday, April 10, 2006
2006 Boston Red Sox
Linguists out there (along with the rest of us in the dark) would tell us that this is not a syllogism, but an “associative cluster” that might, in this instance, be the first line of a haiku. (I’ll leave it to those with the quick trigger fingers to finish it, however.)
That association of words has become synonymous with the gravitas of baseball in the first half of this decade (that terrible cultural slide-step that continues to plague the world as a whole). The potential for world healing afforded us by the great, unprecedented, mystical curse-breaking that was literally thrust upon the Red Sox in 2004 has remained totally and tragically untapped.
Miracles have no place in our world, unless they’re scripted for media distribution, so the Red Sox’ feat has been relegated to the mundane world of “corporate transformation,” a concept that is being peddled with assiduous deadliness in the little world of baseball.
Capitalizing on the long-time mystique of the star-crossed “can’t win the big one” Red Sox niche, those in the forefront of this tidal wave of newspeak latched on to this so-called tale of transformation with characteristic zeal and the type of overstatement that has become its identifying feature. The Red Sox now represent “a new paradigm for winning.” They are part of a “revolutionary wave that is transforming how the game of baseball is envisioned,” etc., etc.
I love artful ad copy as much as the next chimp, but unfortunately for all of us, that’s about all that’s really here. The Red Sox have Bill James and a young man (Theo Epstein, their on-off-and on again GM) who read him devoutly. In 2003, they made a series of moves that fit in with some of the various theories/ideologies that have been bandied about in the festering world of armchair analysis for some time; one of them, the multiple closer bullpen, was a big bust and undercut most of the other, mostly traditionally sabermetric notions that had been applied to the team. (When I say “traditionally,” I mean concepts that had been first proposed in the 80s, and not by the neo-Jamesian brat pack.)
Three things gave the Red Sox their chance to pull off their miracle in ’04: the acquisition of a second ace starter (Curt Schilling), the arrival of a reliable closer (Keith Foulke), and the transformation of David Ortiz, whose acquisition in the winter of 2002-03 was little more than an afterthought (white rapper Little G was making tongues hang out...), into a superstar. Even with that, it took a monumental fold by the Yankees to facilitate what, even now, some still want to anoint with that seductive, quasi-aesthetic/quasi-scientific term “paradigm shift.”
Let’s see how that “paradigm” fared in ’05. The Red Sox brain trust, gifted with the continuing ascendance of Ortiz, rode his performance to 95 wins, about five more than the Pythagorean method suggests they “should have won.” (Ortiz and the mercurial Manny Ramirez make for one of the best 1-2 offensive combos in baseball history, and the Red Sox brain trust has been wise in not breaking it up.)
As the data below shows (darn it, we’re only in about 550 words and here are those numbers again...), the Red Sox have been very good at assembling a consistent offense. (We like to look at the road performance as a good basic measure of this.) The Sox have been amazingly consistent in run scoring on the road since the dawn of the Epstein-James Era (or the EJE for short):
RUNS/GAME ON THE ROAD 2003-05
2003
Yankees 5.88
Blue Jays 5.43
Red Sox 5.30
LAVG 4.83
2004
Yankees 5.57
Indians 5.51
Angels 5.49
Tigers 5.48
Orioles 5.33
Red Sox 5.33
LAVG 4.97
2005
Red Sox 5.31
Indians 5.22
Yankees 5.05
LAVG 4.78
The Sox survived the offensive downturn from ’04-’05 quite well, losing only one-fiftieth of a run per game in road offense. The problem was that they lost Pedro Martinez after the ’04 season, and tried a number of pseudo-Moneyball moves to patch up that hole. Those mostly didn’t work; what’s worse, Schilling was unable to shake the effects of his ’04 post-season ankle injury. And the bullpen got shaky again. As a consequence, the Sox fell to 11th in road RA/G in ’05, after having been sixth in ’04. (They were ninth in ’03, when they had Pedro, but no Schilling.)
RUNS ALLOWED/GAME ON THE ROAD 2003-05
2003
Tigers 6.04
Rangers 5.73
Orioles 5.45
Devil Rays 5.31
Indians 5.28
Red Sox 5.11
LAVG 4.90
2004
Angels 4.33
Twins 4.42
Orioles 4.60
A’s 4.63
Rangers 4.65
Red Sox 4.67
LAVG 5.00
2005
Devil Rays 6.09
Royals 5.99
Rangers 5.36
Red Sox 5.14
LAVG 4.78
The “new paradigm for winning” is kinda hard to locate in this type of data. Given that the Oakland A’s managed to turn over a large portion of their pitching staff from ’04 to ’05 and actually improve their pitching performance indicates that whatever “new paradigm” for winning that does exist might be located somewhere other than in whatever it is that the Red Sox brain trust is smoking.
Actually, what that “evil weed” might be is something borrowed from the “evil empire” some three hundred miles to the south. Since the first year of the EJE, the Sox’ moves have looked a lot more like what the Yankees do than what the “paradigm shift” contingent is so loudly espousing. Spending big for Edgar Renteria was out of character for a “paradigm shift” team; at the close of ’05, the Sox were disenchanted enough with this move that they found a taker (the Braves) and essentially swapped him for Coco Crisp, their new center fielder. Now that looks more like what the MBA cadre was chirping about: trade down the payroll and get equivalent value for less money.
Unfortunately, that move was more than counterbalanced by the deal with Florida, where the brain trust picked up a solid young pitcher (Josh Beckett) in his final year before free-agency and wound up with a big-contract, dubious-performance player in Mike Lowell. Of course they still have high hopes (you oldsters remember that as the Kennedy campaign song in 1960…) to sign Beckett to a long-term deal, but it hasn’t happened yet. In the melodramatic pressure cooker that is New England, such an eventuality hinges precipitously on the outcome in the upcoming season.
In the meantime, the Sox have turned over their entire infield, which is now composed of three veterans with variously shrouded performance issues (Lowell, Alex Gonzalez, Mark Loretta) and an erstwhile icon of ancient eastern Mediterranean vase painting (Kevin Youkilis). What’s odd about this edition of the Sox is that it is pretty much turning its back on the initial “innovation” of the EJE, which was to stockpile left-handed batters. That is most clearly not the case with the ’06 team, and if it succeeds despite this “shift back from the paradigm shift.,” it will indicate that this shift is a lot more random than what many would have you believe.
This is a good point to drop in some other numbers (a 500-word gap is the rule of thumb here, in a place otherwise over-run with ‘em...). The Sox offense was 16% above the league average in ’03, 10% in the Miracle Year, and 13% above last year thanks in large part to the heroics of Ortiz (161 OPS+ and an amazing clutch performance that had him touted loudly for MVP).
When you look at the squad they have now, they’re going to need another year like that from Ortiz to be able to stay at 10% above. If Youkilis actually gets to play full time (doubtful at the moment) and was put in the #2 slot of the order, the Sox might gain the margins of his OBP back in some extra runs, but they appear to be set on using Loretta, a contact-type hit-and-run guy, in that slot. No paradigm shift there.
What the Sox are also doing is asking that catcher-captain Jason Varitek (age: 34) continue his late blooming antics for a fourth consecutive year. That very solid performance level (122 OPS+ for ’03-’05) has become more crucial to the team’s offensive structure, and any significant downturn will have more impact in ’06. Another year like ’01, where Varitek played in only 51 games, would create some significant sputtering in the Sox’ offensive engine.
The best one can see for this offense, I think, is around 7-9% above the league, even with the Twin Terrors at full force. That leaves the fate of ’06 in the hands of the pitching staff, which will have to climb out of its 4% below league performance in ’05. Otherwise this purported paradigm will not have shifted, it will have slipped back beneath the sea.
Again, what we’re picking up are mostly mixed signals. The Sox have circled the wagons around Keith Foulke, bringing in a troika of fresh slingers (David Riske, Julian Tavarez, Rudy Seanez) to provide “veteran bulk” (a term guaranteed to put a sneer on the face of any card-carrying “paradigm-shifter”). Perhaps still enamored by the happenstance that forced/permitted Felipe Alou to “hock the LOOGY” (a phrase that, lamentably, taggers across the country have not yet seen fit to turn into ghetto parlance...), the EJE brain trust has seen fit to equip itself with short relievers who are all right-handed. (There is a lefty in the pen—Lenny Dinardo—but he is really a starter-in-waiting and will likely be the “long man” rather than a “LOOGY.”)
Over in the dustbin that is their starting rotation, the Sox bring back some well-aged meat with Schilling, float-like-a-butterfly Tim Wakefield, and David Wells (who starts the year on the DL, which will conveniently give him more time to chat up the media). These three men of Orient are going to be hard-pressed to find a “Star of Wonder”—their antics in ’06 will likely conjure up a lot more murmuring than myrrh.
Boston’s hope for a solid rotation rests with Beckett, who was supposed to be a stone ace already but isn’t quite there, and Matt Clement, still enigmatic after all these years (which, of course, is something that yours truly can relate to). By the middle of the year it’s likely that these two will have Dinardo and Jonathan Papelbon behind them in the rotation, and that could be the thing that keeps the Sox from getting stuck in the spin cycle this year. But they’re going to have to make that move, and do so decisively in order to be in a position to reap the greatest possible benefit for ’06.
Of course, a team like the A’s, with its still-misunderstood “rolling paradigm shift” approach involving a higher, downright mystical skill at identifying and developing young pitchers, is still the only franchise out there operating at all like the way that the “shifters” think should be the case—except, as Cary Grant said in The Awful Truth, it’s the same, only different. The Red Sox are different (different players, different complex of risks/constraints), but they’re essentially the same—a franchise with one foot in the past and another in the nebulousness of fashionable newspeak. “Treading water” doesn’t have the visual drama that being “stuck on the railroad tracks with a speeding locomotive bearing down on you” can conjure, so we’ll take that image as the closing tag here. It’s time to quit flooding the engine, boys, and simply get out and push. For in the land of harsh inflections, 88-to-92 wins is, after all, a train wreck.
2006 ZiPS Projections - Boston Red Sox Name P G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB K SB CS AVG OBP SLG Ortiz* 1b 148 560 99 167 42 2 40 123 88 110 0 0 .298 .392 .595 Ramirez lf 148 542 99 158 34 1 37 114 82 108 1 2 .292 .389 .563 Nixon* rf 113 371 60 109 24 2 16 61 51 61 2 1 .294 .381 .499 Crisp# lf 150 610 106 197 41 5 15 98 50 76 19 12 .323 .372 .480 Loretta 2b 126 485 89 155 30 1 9 77 49 42 5 4 .320 .387 .441 Lowell 3b 150 540 93 153 49 1 20 104 60 70 3 1 .283 .356 .489 Youkilis 3b 109 343 59 92 25 1 8 42 67 59 2 2 .268 .400 .417 Varitek# c 135 457 61 125 29 1 20 71 59 113 4 2 .274 .361 .473 Gonzalez ss 146 510 71 140 41 2 15 88 34 104 3 3 .275 .326 .451 Graffanino 2b 92 310 60 89 14 2 5 37 28 43 6 2 .287 .349 .394 Pedroia ss 106 400 71 110 20 2 9 47 41 37 5 3 .275 .343 .403 Bard# c 89 300 33 83 16 0 8 45 28 48 0 2 .277 .338 .410 Mohr rf 112 299 49 71 20 2 12 48 37 83 3 2 .237 .325 .438 Snow* 1b 115 360 52 96 23 1 5 48 38 60 1 0 .267 .346 .378 Moss* rf 137 494 82 135 24 3 11 58 42 112 10 4 .273 .333 .401 Nye 3b 121 413 45 111 24 2 6 46 39 77 3 3 .269 .336 .380 Harris* 2b 103 300 60 80 12 1 2 30 44 58 17 7 .267 .359 .333 Cora* 2b 127 383 43 103 17 3 5 41 28 41 4 3 .269 .334 .368 Kapler rf 106 238 40 65 14 1 4 25 17 39 4 3 .273 .322 .391 Machado 2b 133 458 75 125 15 2 3 38 42 61 19 11 .273 .339 .334 West 1b 130 466 49 115 28 2 11 49 32 80 1 1 .247 .298 .386 Stern* lf 83 288 45 75 19 2 5 31 24 44 17 13 .260 .320 .392 Bailie 1b 75 276 34 66 20 1 8 34 17 69 2 1 .239 .284 .406 Pinckney# 3b 117 427 63 108 21 3 10 48 20 79 3 2 .253 .292 .386 Calloway* lf 114 378 44 93 20 1 7 39 37 80 9 7 .246 .316 .360 Durrington 2b 121 345 55 87 14 2 4 32 35 71 22 12 .252 .327 .339 Allen* lf 129 438 60 103 17 3 13 52 38 84 7 5 .235 .294 .377 Bacani 2b 104 293 33 73 15 1 3 29 31 59 7 8 .249 .331 .338 Murphy* cf 123 427 59 105 20 1 9 48 33 74 6 5 .246 .298 .361 Otness c 124 433 44 111 20 0 5 40 20 40 3 3 .256 .295 .337 Huckaby c 66 201 20 46 9 0 1 18 9 37 0 0 .229 .263 .289 Flaherty c 50 146 13 29 10 0 2 16 5 29 0 1 .199 .229 .308 Name W L ERA G GS INN H ER HR BB K Schilling 14 6 3.47 30 24 174.0 166 67 17 30 156 Hansen 3 2 3.51 42 0 82.0 74 32 4 29 76 Timlin 6 4 3.67 77 0 81.0 82 33 6 18 55 Foulke 6 3 3.73 62 0 70.0 64 29 8 18 65 Tavarez 5 2 3.80 72 0 71.0 72 30 3 21 41 Beckett 14 7 3.86 27 27 161.0 150 69 14 52 140 Meredith 5 3 4.03 65 0 76.0 77 34 8 19 52 Arroyo 12 8 4.07 33 30 188.0 194 85 18 47 118 Wells* 12 9 4.08 30 30 194.0 219 88 22 20 94 Papelbon 9 6 4.14 32 22 137.0 129 63 17 45 130 Nunez 5 4 4.18 44 0 56.0 43 26 3 39 69 Breslow* 2 2 4.22 61 0 79.0 75 37 7 31 63 Seanez 5 3 4.22 57 0 64.0 56 30 7 29 70 Delcarmen 7 5 4.28 46 0 61.0 52 29 5 35 66 Lester* 9 7 4.30 25 24 132.0 121 63 13 58 125 Dinardo* 6 3 4.30 29 20 115.0 112 55 10 34 90 Clement 12 9 4.33 31 31 187.0 181 90 19 72 150 van Buren 3 3 4.42 57 0 55.0 48 27 6 29 56 Riske 4 3 4.44 64 0 71.0 68 35 10 24 63 Ginter 4 4 4.54 32 15 109.0 122 55 14 22 61 Alvarez* 10 8 4.56 28 26 146.0 157 74 22 34 99 Wakefield 12 12 4.74 33 32 205.0 213 108 28 70 140 Pauley 9 8 4.78 27 27 158.0 173 84 21 45 97 Vermilyea 4 4 4.97 38 8 96.0 110 53 12 26 53 Serrano 5 10 5.53 33 22 135.0 138 83 24 66 131 Bausher 4 7 5.87 34 11 95.0 102 62 20 44 79 Bumatay* 2 4 6.05 51 0 64.0 63 43 10 46 62 Zink 6 10 6.07 29 19 129.0 142 87 16 82 70 Rozier* 4 7 6.58 21 20 93.0 108 68 13 62 42 Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors - many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2006. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production - a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.
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He has four yeas of MLB time, thus is two yeras away from FA.
I can read comments for snark. I'd like to read articles for content.
they appear to be set on using Loretta, a contact-type hit-and-run guy, in that slot.
If they be putting anybody in that slot instead of Youkilis, Loretta is the guy.
And, if Crisp's ZiPS are to be believed, his projected OBP of 372 is not horrendous at all.
What is this referring to?
Keep beating that little drum about the committee closer that never was, though. You'll find that bogeyman someday. And until then, people love hearing about it. Seriously.
I'm a Lobster Bisque man myself.
I had to reread the article, but I believe that this is referring to "can't win the big one."
The battle between New England Chowder and Manhatten Chowder
I like Malcolm, but he can be offputting. There's a bitterness in his writing, to quote one of my friends. It's like he thinks that he should've been the darling of the baseball blogosphere, but others were instead.
Incidentally, if there are other people who also want to do write the article, I'll probably be happy to defer to them; in the meantime, I'd rather write the article myself than force the apparently onerous duty upon Don for a fourth year (lest it allegedly not get written).
I'd be happy to take a crack at it. However, I find this defense of Don more than a little obnoxious. Either the criticisms of the preview are valid or they aren't. Boston doesn't have a shortstop on the roster who can hit better than Alex Gonzalez; does that make him a good hitter?
In all seriousness, maybe next year all the ST folks (and whomever else) could get together and do sort of a roundtable Sox preview. Be that an in the flesh meetup over beers or via IRC, whatever. Could be fun, at least as an alternative.
Speaking of Repoz, that was begging for a Mission of Burma reference.
That would be sweetness
Thanks, PrimerMonkey.
They tried a number of pseudo-Moneyball moves to replace the combo of Martinez and Lowe. And they attempted to do that with Clement and Wells, right?
Clement + Wells, 2005: 28-13, 4.51 ERA, $14 million
Martinez + Lowe, 2004: 30-21, 4.59 ERA, $22 million
This mostly worked.
What’s odd about this edition of the Sox is that it is pretty much turning its back on the initial “innovation” of the EJE, which was to stockpile left-handed batters.
Was it?
2003
LHB: Walker, Ortiz, Giambi, Abad
RHB: Millar, Jackson, Kapler, McCarty, Brown, Haselman
Switch: Mueller
2004
LHB: Mientkiewicz, Roberts (both for 2 months)
RHB: Reese, Burks, Hyzdu, Cabrera (for 2 months)
Switch: Bellhorn, Crespo
If this front office is to be held accountable for abandoning whatever philosophy they'd had, Renteria is the hard evidence. "Stockpiling lefties" is the yellowcake.
And, if Crisp's ZiPS are to be believed, his projected OBP of 372 is not horrendous at all.
Good point, griffy. And Loretta is projected at 387. That's a lot of OBP at the top, if realized.
But those include projections of home stats. Road stats are all that matter, right, Don?
I like Malcolm, but he can be offputting. There's a bitterness in his writing, to quote one of my friends.
Funny. I don't object at all to his final projection for the Sox this year, but I have lots of objections on how he got there. Many analytic objections, some linguistic/snarky objections. (I can generally separate the snark from the underlying message, but with Don Malcolm I find that after I separate the snark there's not much message left. Or maybe the snark is the message?)
I get the feeling that if/when the Sox win 88-92 this year Don will see it as affirmation of his reasoning, and we'll see him standing at a podium with a big "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him. And it will mean just as much to me as the last time I saw something like that.
“veteran bulk” (a term guaranteed to put a sneer on the face of any card-carrying “paradigm-shifter”).
A swipe at those who worship at the altar of youth. Probably doesn't apply to as many now as it did @ 1998, but I found it funny.
“hock the LOOGY” (a phrase that, lamentably, taggers across the country have not yet seen fit to turn into ghetto parlance...)
I thought that that was clever wordplay, but I have no clue what a tagger is. From an aesthetic standpoint, I don't care for LOOGYs, so I liked it.
That said, this piece probably shouldn't be in Looking Forward. It should be in a Malcolm specific venue, be it 2random4chance (has that been updated?)or Big Bad Baseball
Yes it was a bust, but the author chooses to view this as an indictment of the theory as a whole instead of what it really is; the Red Sox had a lack of good bullpen arms, no matter how they were deployed. If Chad Fox pitched like he did later in the season with Florida, Or Mendoza diddnt crash and burn then there wouldnt have been an issue with a lack of closer.
Could somebody explain what is so "psuedo-moneyball" about the patches they tried? As already mentioned, it wasn't Pedro they were replacing, it was Pedro AND Lowe's cobined production. So could somebody explain what about that is a moneyball approach, besides the fact that David Wells doesn't look good in Jeans? Furthermore, the replacements on a whole were not even a downgrade.
Sort of irrelevant, considering that the Red Sox play half their games at Fenway Park, and will continure to do so.
Why, because you say so? A team with a 130 million dollar payroll is "out of character" when they sign big free agents?
This seems right out of a CHB column.
How does Loretta get grouped in with these guys?
I havent seen any evidence that there was an effort to stockpile lefties. If anything, they seem to prefer switch hitters.
No they tried to replace Martinez. You dont try to get another 5.42 ERA (Lowe in 04), you assume you can do better than that. Pedro plus Joe No-Salary would have about matched Clement/Wells in 2005 in performance and pay with the added benefit of still having Pedro Freakin Martinez on the team instead of a fat tub of goo.
They could have had Martinez but not Lowe!
Every year, it isn't good.
Every year, we all complain about it.
...
Gang-related graffiti "artists" who "tag" street signs, billboards, buildings, bridges, etc with the markings of their particular gang.
Duh, of course.
Gang-related graffiti "artists" who "tag" street signs, billboards, buildings, bridges, etc with the markings of their particular gang.
I think at this moment, taggers are less associated with gangs and are mostly people who like to put their name/symbol everywhere.
I vote for Chris Wok writing it. My second choice is a dialogue between kevin and Mahnken.
Cheers,
LSon2nd
Machemer, if you want to blog that preview you're doing somewhere, send me an email and we'll post a link on Sox Therapy. A couple of requests though:
1. Make sure to use the word syllogism.
2. Try to limit the content about you to < 70 percent of the article.
3. Remember that, although you should never explain why, you must only include road stats.
4. If you're going to use terms like "new paradigm for winning" or "psuedo-Moneyball," it's important that you DO NOT DEFINE THEM IN ANY WAY!
That way, everyone can enjoy it.
Rivals In Exile Redux.
Of particular note is that moneyball and/or sabremetrics takes the approach that a team can make the playoffs if it wins a certain number of games (roughly 95). So, when Theo wanted to replace his pitching from 2004 it is partially true that he wanted to replace Pedro and Lowe, but only in the context that he wanted to get back to 95-100 wins.
The Red Sox FO use sabre tools (or moneyball tools if you prefer) to find cheap, quality players who are admittedly not superstars, like Gonzalez. It's not about the age. Its about cost and predicting performance. But, he uses those same tools to find players that he thinks could be future superstars (e.g. Coco, WilyMo Pena, Beckett, Papelbon, Lester). In this way, Theo has not departed from the paradigm shift, he is just a few years behind Beane who has been doing it since the 90's.
The most important "miss" of this article is that it ignores the general consensus that the Sox could win 105 games or 82 depending on injuries and aging performers. Basically, the Sox age and injury risk makes them the least predictable team in MLB. Don only gets the bottom half of that projection by clamoring on about how Wells & Schilling are old, Clement is an underperformer, Beckett is hurt. He is right. But, if these old fat guys play well for one more season, if Beckett shows that his injuries are flukes, if Clement realizes his potential, then the AL East is theirs.
If nothing else, think about what most conventional wisdom/old-school guys would say about a team that won 95 games last year and acquired Beckett and Schilling (who was effectively gone for the season). BTW, the stats say that Crisp is basically a wash with Damon on offense 6.8 WARP3 in 2005 and Crisp is much younger...Yanks, can you say wrong side of 30?
The single best point this guy made is that the Pythag shows the Sox having a lucky year in 2005 (over-performed by 5 wins). That does not bode well for 2006. I would probably place the Sox at about 90-95 wins this year. 95 should be enough to win the AL East if the notably older Yankees suffer an injury to any position player. But, if the Yanks stay healthy, this is their division again.
He is as involved as I am. He has a section of the site for which he is primarily responsible for providing content, he participates in the discussion list for the blog owners (which BTW, Darren, you should be on, too), and he knows how the process of allocating previews works - Dan asks for volunteers, volunteers step up, Dan assigns due dates, and sometimes we meet them :)
I think that trying to label what the Red Sox do as somehow indicative of a "Moneyball" approach or "paradigm shift" (or whatever) oversimplifies their approach - as it does with Oakland. The Red Sox make use of more tools than do other teams - but they still have to interpret the information they are given and decide how much weight to give it, and that's still dependent on the people who make the decisions. I don't think that you are any less likely to make mistakes if you follow a strictly statistical approach than you are if you follow an approach that is 100% ignorant of sabermetrics; you just make a different class of mistake.
-- MWE
Maybe technically by my contribution is about 10% as valuable.
I was just trying to say, in my own way was that anyone can write these previews. There is no special club. People wrote previews as their first articles because they emailed Dan and asked to do it. I believe, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong victor illonardo who wrote the Tigers (or maybe the brewers) preview had never wrote for the site, and asked Dan to do it. Dan said sure. If you want to write a preview email Dan.
Wanna Bet??
I don't know who Don Malcolm is but I would take even odds that he has read this thread and cried into his pillow.
You lose, Don never reads the comments that follows his posts.
That would be totally awesome.
How do I get on the discussion/mailing list?
Yes, Wily Mojo Nixon.
It would be cooler if we actually did it over some beers in person with like...a tape recorder or something. I bet it would be hugely entertaining.
i would be so totally down for something like this.
Victor originally emailed me about scribbin' the Tigers preview and I passed the note along to Jim Dandy.
BTW...as usual, I found Malcolm's jazz fascinating.
However, the beginning of this article is badly structured, and demands far too much work of the reader. It is a perfect illustration of why editors are needed for all writers, even Bill James, who notoriously resents us. Malcolm is particularly fond of playing games with the readers, but this game doesn't work. Someone should have cut the first four paragraphs and the first sentence of the fifth. Start from there, and I think you've got an excellent preview of a team whose roster construction since 2004 has left me wondering who is actually in charge.
Sort of irrelevant, considering that the Red Sox play half their games at Fenway Park, and will continure to do so.
This is an example of the kind of snarky comment that strikes me as a wilful misreading. Malcolm's point, which he is actually open about up in the article (unless something has been added in a subsequent edit to the original), is that road performance offers a 'neutral' measure. It could certainly be refined, but if you want a basic ranking it's a reasonable option, as he says. However, I can see that if one is used to park-adjusted metrics, it might seem a little lazy. But we should always remember that the approximate improvement over the regressed Marcel that all these modern, fancy-pants metrics deliver is about 5 percent. That doesn't strike me as worth the effort on my part, but YMMV.
I recall hearing it from Theo Epstein. Whether he got the idea from Gammons or not, I don't know. ;-)
You dont try to get another 5.42 ERA (Lowe in 04), you assume you can do better than that. Pedro plus Joe No-Salary would have about matched Clement/Wells in 2005 in performance and pay with the added benefit of still having Pedro Freakin Martinez on the team instead of a fat tub of goo.
Had Pedro/Joe projected to match Clement/Wells in performance and pay, then you still go with Clement/Wells. The expectation is the same, but the downside is much different if one of them gets hurt. The former is a high variance situation, in which you really can't afford any situation that involves Pedro getting hurt. Clement/Wells is much lower variance, because the team could much more easily withstand one of them getting hurt. (With Wells it could be argued that they also picked up greater likelihood for injury, but that was mitigated by lots of non-guaranteed stuff in his contract, making him easier to replace should something happen).
At the same cost, and with the same expected results, you should always choose the lower variance.
This may be the case for some (hi, Zoidberg), but I can't stand BPro. GGC has hit the nail on the head. Malcolm needs to let go of this battle he's been fighting for five or ten (or more) years.
Do we need to hear complaining about JT Snow? Or fears about Mike Lowell, Loretta and Foulke? Or hopes for Papelbon and Lester? I'd rather read Don Malcolm grinding axes and injecting himself and his interests into the preview than read some dry, dispassionate analysis of a team's strengths and weakness. I'm a thinking fan goddammit and I already know most teams' strengths and weaknesses.
Yeah, Malcolm's prose can get tortured. And yes, he has a tendency to write a lot of parentheticals. But at least he's saying stuff I haven't heard before. Or to the extent I have heard it before, at least he's saying it interestingly.
Now, I understand Malcolm wasn't even really using road stats to project anything about the 2006 Sox (surprise, surprise). Rather, he was just using them to illustrate...I don't know what. Boston's road pitching went from bad to good to bad the last three years? And, despite the admitted consistency in road offense, the pitching performance means that Boston doesn't have a "new paradigm for winning," a phrase coined by and adhered to by...I don't know whom. Malcolm's little Quixotic crusade used to be fresh and thought-provoking, if a tad overwrought. Now it's just pathetic.
Just preview the ####### team. I think it's been adequately documented that Don Malcolm, Maverick Blogger, does not care for the sabermetric trappings of Boston's front office. Can we move on now?
Says you. I think it makes the point that the Red Sox do better when their road offense is is better than the league average. It works as a projection because it tells you what to look for as the season develops. Maybe it is pretty obvious, but you miss the whole point of Malcolm's shtick: the minimal amount of additional information given by neo-sabermetric metrics is almost the emperor's new clothes. The fascination with projection overlooks sabermetrics' foundation in analysis. The idea that analysing what the Red Sox did right in 2004 is somehow irrelevant to a projection denies the validity of traditional sabermetric tools.
The Maverick Blogger does not moan about the sabermetric trappings of Boston's front office. What he moans about are the claims made by some sabermetricians that they have discovered some kind of baseball alchemy that was employed by the Red Sox to win a World Series. Maybe that's old, but we've had Mind Game published in the last year, so maybe it isn't.
Malcolm needs to let go of this battle he's been fighting for five or ten (or more) years.
I don't agree. But I think he needs to try a new strategy. It's sort of turned into Grant attacking at Cold Harbor.
I'm not so sure the two are so easily divorced. The problem with Malcolm's preview, though, is that he spends 95% of the piece analyzing past performance (poorly) and commenting on how this reflects (or doesn't) the philosophy of Boston's FO and/or the philosophy others have projected onto Boston's FO. Then, at the end, he pulls a projection out of thin air and calls it a day. That's fine (and interesting!) for an opinion piece, but it's inappropriate for a team preview. Malcolm is analyzing 2004 to the degree that it allows him to take obtuse potshots at Baseball Prospectus. 2004's relevance to the team's expected performance in 2006? Whatever, Don Malcolm doesn't have time for that crap.
I think it's a valid point to make if it's true - I don't honestly know whether or not it is, and Don's article doesn't shed enough light on the issue to convince me one way or the other. If the Red Sox are being classified as a "sabermetric success", and they really aren't one, then it is IMO legit to call them out on that. (Not that I believe that any team should be characterized in that manner, as I've said before - better to evaluate the reasons for success/failure without slapping a label on them, IMO).
-- MWE
Now, you see, I don't read it like that at all. I read it that after Pedro left, the Sox sorted it out by getting Clement and Wells. I don't see Malcolm saying they are foolish for letting him walk. Maybe I lack that extra-special East-Coast sensitivity that sees an insult in anything that isn't hapless fanboyism.
The problem with Malcolm's preview, though, is that he spends 95% of the piece analyzing past performance (poorly) and commenting on how this reflects (or doesn't) the philosophy of Boston's FO and/or the philosophy others have projected onto Boston's FO. Then, at the end, he pulls a projection out of thin air and calls it a day. That's fine (and interesting!) for an opinion piece, but it's inappropriate for a team preview.
And, of course, characteristic of Bill James' Abstracts. You know, what it comes down to is that some people like James'/Malcolm's style and some don't. And some people don't like Malcolm taking potshots at their preferred source of sophomoric snarkiness.
There's just too much assumed knowledge/agreement in this.
I think that's true, but it's characteristic of Malcolm. He always takes it for granted that his audience have watched the same films and read the same books. Once upon a time, everyone had.
I call that the Dennis Miller Quotient (not that Malcolm is a fan of his or anything). Repoz has the same MO and I've actually looked some stuff up after reading Malcolm or Repoz. Malcolm's one reason that I added old noirs to my queue at Netflix.
Do people really think they have the same style?
I had no idea it was written by Don Malcolm until I got about halfway through, gave up in disgust, and checked the author just to see who it was.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I exclusively find myself getting annoyed at the author of this piece, which reduces my willingness to consider whether he's actually got anything useful to say.
It's incredibly obvious he has an agenda, and is going to use the preview to further that agenda, and will not include information which might damage it. So, unless I'm particularly excited about that agenda, it means that I really have no interest in what he has to say.
I'm sure there was some interesting stuff in there somewhere underneath all the bitterness and hidden inside the parentheticals, but I'm not going to trudge through trying to find it.
I think people don't like using a team preview for that purpose, no. I think it's ridiculous that you attribute the reaction here to some love of BPro.
I would guess it's the "myth" promoted by the Prospectus book that the Red Sox "finally got smart" and won a World Series. Well, they did a lot of smart things (Millar, Bellhorn, Ortiz); they did some courageous things (Nomar); and they did some lucky things (Mueller, Bellhorn); but I think what Malcolm's getting at is that the title was won pretty conventionally, with four of the biggest contributions coming from four of the most expensive players in the game. Maybe Malcom's derision is misdirected in this particular forum, but I think all he's getting at is that, if things had broken just a little differently in any number of years since 1975, no one would be talking about how the Red Sox suddenly "got smart." In other words, Theo Epstein is for good reason everybody's darling, but it may be that with their resources they don't really need Theo Epstein; the likes of Lou Gorman or Dan Duquette could have gotten them just as far.
That would be great material for a review of Mind Game, but it really doesn't fit in well with a preview of the 2006 season.
On another note, I'm honestly wondering if some heading or something is missing from the top of this article. The first paragraph seems utterly nonsensical--referring to some unclear group of words in a really unclear way.
Do people really think they have the same style?
Well, I didn't mean to imply they have the same writing style, but James certainly didn't always 'preview' the team in the way Mattbert wants to see. Maybe that's a bad thing nowadays. But not to old folks like me.
I'll say again, I had no idea who had written it until I gave up halfway through and checked the author.
It seems to me that anyone who can't see "bitterness" or at the very least "mean-spiritedness" is bringing their own pre-conceived notions about Malcolm (and those he often spars with) into it.
Again, I have no problem with Malcolm, per se. I thoroughly enjoy reading his blog from time to time. What I object to is his continued use of the Red Sox team preview as a platform from which to carry on about "neosabermetrics" and various other targets of his ire. He has a blog for that. There are more than enough threads on Primer for that. The team preview should not be for that; it should be about, you know, previewing the team.
if malcolm can't deliver, he shouldn't be getting the job.
his #### about paradigms is pointless and not very well written.
That's my feeling exactly. I don't subscribe to BPro and didn't buy Mind Game. I want to read a preview of the Red Sox, not Malcom's rebuttal of the BPro perspective on the Sox.
THANK YOU
I can't believe I bought that bullkrap about PEDRO+Krap Lowe = Clement + Wells
I cannot believe I bought it a year ago.
I also don't agree that Clement/Wells are lower variance than Pedro and Joe Blow. Their pitching performances are finite events, not a smooth line of ERA/innings at the end of the year. If you look at win expectation on a game by game basis, I wouldn't be surprised that Pedro/Joe blow is lower variance because Pedro will pull that variance down tremendously and Joe Blow will be propped up by the Sox offense enough times that he doesnt differ from Clement/Wells by more than that Pedro boost. Of course, it depends on who Joe Blow is and in fact, it could be several players. You don't have to stay with a sucky Joe Blow for the whole season...
Joe Blow can easily be replaced to improve the team, as the season goes on. Clement and Wells can't, they're basically average, and above-average pitching is scarce. It's better in general to go stars'n'scrubs than all average, because of the flexibility.
Also, the Sox offseason is not reducible to one move. It's a huge mash of Renteria and Varitek and Bellhorn and everyone else. The key, in most any offseason, will be to sign the best players. The Sox went out instead and signed a bunch of mediocrities. There were multiple arrangements of the offseason that involved getting Pedro without signing a replacement-level 5th starter. A cheaper SS, a cheaper starter (say Paul Byrd instead), there's a ton of flexibility here.
And I note that you've moved off the Lowe canard. Do you now agree that it doesn't work logically?
Attributing a negative characteristic to a whole class of people is a fine way to get people to think you're capable of rational thought. By all means keep it up.
I guess the point of this is that they were good enough to win the world series getting this performance out of 2 spots in the rotation. But what has to be included is:
Clement + Wells, 2005 postseason: 0-2, 9.00 ERA
Martinez + Lowe, 2004 postseason: 5-1, 3.11 ERA
You completely and utterly missed my point.
If you check the quote I referenced in #68, you'll see I was responding to Nasty Nate in #34, who stipulated "Pedro plus Joe No-Salary would have about matched Clement/Wells in 2005 in performance and pay". My discussion of variance was with regard to the impact of health/breakdown on team performance, given Nate's stipulation.
As such, the "high end of said variance" is that everyone is healthy. Relevant to your comment, if you need that to achieve your goals, you're likely not going to meet your goals. At least with Clement/Wells, if one of 'em goes down they're relatively easy to replace. (Moreso with Wells, because he wouldn't have triggered his contract incentives, and that would free up $$ to find someone.) With Pedro/Joe, you're toast if Pedro gets hurt.
Joe Blow can easily be replaced to improve the team, as the season goes on.
...at a cost. Nate's hypothesis was that Pedro/Joe and Clement/Wells would be roughly same performance and same pay. A performance upgrade on Joe would likely mean higher cost. If cost doesn't matter, then there's no reason to start the season with Joe in the first place. (Why not Pedro/Clement? Heck, Randy Johnson was on the block, too.) But cost does matter.
If Joe gets hurt, or performs below replacement level, he can be replaced at almost no cost. That's the positive, and it's a rather large positive. But if you go down that path, you cannot afford for Pedro to get hurt. That's a huge negative. If Clement/Wells are basically average as you contend, they're easier to replace, and even a downgrade to replacement level is a more sustainable dropoff than were it to happen with Pedro. There are still positives and negatives, but they are muted.
And I note that you've moved off the Lowe canard. Do you now agree that it doesn't work logically?
Not at all. I didn't address Lowe that time because I was responding to Nate's comment, which also didn't address Lowe.
Guess again.
Nice strawman, though.
What was the point if not what I said?
On that level, I think the comparison works fine.
Looking back on the decision to let Pedro walk is a different story, of course. I still think it was quite defensible--there are 3 years left on his deal and we don't really know how much longer/how much more the Sox would have had to pay to get him.
The comparison would be a lot easier if the Sox replaced Pedro/Lowe with 2 pitchers who added up to the exact same money. Instead, though we have to take into account the Varitek, Renteria, and other contracts that may have made use of the leftover money in 05, plus whatever way the 06-08 savings are used.
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