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Add to the list of blessings: 85% SB success rate (40 stolen, 7 caught).
Who the hell needs payback? Seriously, just because we have to watch Lugo play does not mean we're deserving of extra goodies. The last four-plus years have been a bounty of riches, and the preceding 37 weren't really that bad, all things considered.
And Darren, as you are king of the pants pissers, I hope the post was written with tongue in cheek, not head in ...
I don't know, an entire offseason of hearing people call Jon Lester "random small fry"
First, I don't even know what that means.
Second, if you're hanging around folks who talk about Jon Lester all offseason, you need to get out more.
OK, I'll grant that bastard cancer certainly deserves more than the occasional ass-kicking.
and i'm also drinking the varitek kool-aid...
mlb-record 4 no-nos caught.
oh, what a night!
-----------
Back to the original thread topic... This team has been a very entertaining team to watch. Naturally, they're entertaining because they're winning (on a 97-win pace as of today, BTW). But it's more than that. They have so many players right now who are a lot of fun to watch. There's the no-hit twins, Lester and Buchholz. Beckett established himself last year as a fun one to watch. Matsuzaka has an ERA+ around 200. Okajima. Papelbon. Lowell. Youkilis. Pedroia. Crisp and Ellsbury - at bat, in the field, and on the bases. Ortiz. And the guy - literally and figuratively - out in left field. That doesn't even count the captain of the team (131 OPS+) or Wakefield, who when he's on is a LOT of fun to watch.
In the next two games their starters are being called up from the minors. One gave up two hits in his major-league debut. The other has won a Cy Young Award.
Their backup 1B has a 140 OPS+; their backup catcher, 125; their utility infielder, 154, and his backup, 118.
This is a ridiculously fun time to be a Red Sox fan, and that's saying something for a team that had Pedro Martinez at his peak.
I'd probably rather take my chances of getting Pedro in his prime or four stiffs (which was never the case, but just for the hypothetical) because Pedro was just that awesome. But it's pretty cool to go to the park almost guaranteed to see an interesting pitcher out there.
We wouldn't even have a thread on this had Callaspo gotten a hit.
It's not good luck, it's superior development organization
Good post, Darren. One thing that's been interesting about this run of success is that it hasn't been quite as personal. I had a relationship with Pedro and Nomar, and they carried an interchangeable bunch of teammates to some nice successes. Over the last 5-6 years, the love has really been spread around, with young guys like Youks and Ellsbury and Lester/Buchholz, long time Sox like Wakefield and Varitek and Manny, newer additions that you come to love like Bellhorn and Okajima and Mueller, and Papi, who is beyond categories. The joy in watching this team is watching all the different successes in their different forms, rather than the more intense enjoyment of Pedro's change or Nomar's line drive stroke on a ball at his ankles.
We are ridiculously spoiled, and it's nice.
The interesting questions are the specific ones, how did particular skills get taught to particular players, which players were drafted for which reasons, what sorts of pitches were refined most effectively at which levels, how was workload managed, how about workouts? These can't really be usefully merged into a single measure of "player development quality" because the questions are so qualitatively different and the sample is tiny and the draft is a wildly confounding factor.
I hope we get some interesting work on how different player development regimes work and have worked, but I think we need to stop asking bad questions like who was superior and who was lucky if we want to get anywhere productive.
Yeah, those people should have their children taken away... by an Earthquake.
Wakefield, who when he's on is a LOT of fun to watch.
didn't you get the memo? He's a coward.
It's not good luck, it's superior development organization
I think the development people should get some credit, but it's not really "luck" when we had all those draft picks in 05 and 06 (and still wasted a bunch of them). We just had more chances to score than other teams, because we had all those high draft picks those years.
There's a lot that goes into this (as you pointed out) but there's a huge component that some teams pick the guys whose arms explode (or who eat their way out of the league, or can't hit a Double-A curvebal or...) and others don't.
Edit: To add, that's not a knock on the Red Sox at all. They are (obviously) a really well-run organization that has done a great job with their drafting and minor-league system. My comments are general in nature.
Goals of player development might be summarized as
1. Develop 2 quality players a year.
........... this would yield 14 players over 7 years; enough to fill a lineup and key parts of a pitching staff if everyone lasted about 7 years
2. Develop a star player every 3 years.
........... If star players have 12-year shelf lives, that means the team would have 4 stars at any time, which is good.
Look at #2: If you analyze an organization over 9 years (a loonnng time for a GM!), they should hope to have developed 3 stars. What if they only have 2? Bad system? The odds of getting 2 versus 3 or 4 stars out of 100-ish drafted players just from random luck is HUGE. Run the stat tests, binomial or Posisson, blah blah blah; you can easily get 1 or 5 when "3" is the expected answer.
RB - my point wasn't that our analysis should ignore random variation. Every player, every coach, every instructional model is different. The system is irreducibly complex, and no one will ever be able to explain it without reference to many sorts of variation. But if we're stuck talking about "they were good" or "they were lucky", we're never going to get to the interesting questions at a more specific level.
I thougth he had rebounded pretty nicely with the shiny new ring and hot girlfriend, but that's just me.
MCoA: Fair enough, I think we're probably talking around each other and pretty much agree on things.
According to Inside Edge, Lester threw 84% fastballs, threw 16 curves, and threw 4 changeups, all to RH.
It seems to me to be an extreme mix and not something that suggests future success in MLB.
Lester did get discounted bigtime this offseason during the Santana negotiations. I'm so happy for him.
I think the opposite was true. I realize that Buchholz was considered off-limits, but that was warranted considering their track record. Also, all lot of Boston media would use "Buchholz and Lester" as if the two pitchers were equivalent in terms of potential. The media seemed to fixate on Lester's wins in 2006, disregarding the walks and ERA.
It seems to me to be an extreme mix and not something that suggests future success in MLB.
Don't forget that this includes 4-seamers, cutters, and possibly some 2-seamers, so it's not all just one pitch.
That seems pretty cool of him. The Red Sox probably wouldn't have sent him down if he hadn't agreed to go, but he could have made things a lot more difficult with all the recent roster shuffling. I daresay that's a pretty classy, team-oriented move.
1076 pitches59% Fastball
22% Cut Fastball
13% Curve
4% Change
1% Not charted
0% Sliders (4 total)
Long term wise, wouldn't throwing more fastball and fewer breaking balls GENERALLY be healthier? I think that is the common wisdom.
We can get very worried, as his ERA is probably nothing more than fluke. If he continues to pitch like this, it will end up north of 4.5, even considering the lucky start.
Try to enjoy this.
vi is the winner. The rest of you, thanks for playing.
Then take it to a different thread.
You know what would also be enjoyable? Winning some road games. (Not all of them, just enough of them to keep things respectable.)
I don't need Jeter's head on a platter; I'm happy with the occassional New York Post article calling him and A-Rod out for poor leadership or whatever. As much fun as the "Yankees are washed up" threads can be to read, I take them with a grain of salt.
I can't say I'm really thrilled about watching Matsuzaka take everyone to 3 ball counts, but the fact is he is extremely effective, has a rubber arm's rubber arm, and he seems deadly serious about winning the cy young this year.
Also can we just rename the NL MVP award "The Best Philly Infielder With No Shot to Lead His Team to a Championship Certificate of Accomplishment"? Anyone?
You should watch the Celtics more.
I have to agree with Dan that he's no fun to watch, which is the opposite of what I expected when they signed him.
What's his shoulder made of?
Bakelite.
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