Over/Unders

Back in February, I did a little data-entry blog post with the projected stats for all the Red Sox regulars from CAIRO, PECOTA, and ZiPS.  With opening day just a scant hundred hours away, I thought it would be fun to look over those numbers again, and see what we, the fans, think we can add to those numbers. 

For overs, I think that while we shouldn’t expect Jacoby Ellsbury to return to peak form immediately, it’s reasonable to say that the projection systems are expecting lingering ...

Boston Meetbert

A bunch of Therapudlians and assorted folks have been discussing a meetup when overseas Sox fan Mattbert comes into town this week.  They were discussing that in the forums, but the forums are a strange and distant land populated by men most of us thought lost long ago, like Dan Werr.  So, here’s a thread for y’alls to make plans.

Minor League Thread: Placing the Prospects

In the next couple weeks, the Red Sox will announce their minor league rosters.  These announcements, I believe, contain a good bit of useful information for evaluating prospects.  We don’t usually get information about Red Sox prospects from the Red Sox that isn’t stage-managed, for obvious reasons.  When the Sox decide where to place a prospect, whether to challenge him or keep him at a lower level for more instruction, they have to make an objective evaluation, and we see the direct ...

I Think This Is The Lineup

In every full squad game this spring, Francona has batted Ellsbury-Pedroia-Crawford 1-2-3.  The catcher and shortstop have consistently been slotted 8-9.  That leaves basically only one workable lineup against RHP.

Ellsbury
Pedroia
Crawford
Gonzalez
Youkilis
Ortiz
Drew
Saltalamacchia
Scutaro

Batting one of the three worst hitters on the team first is extremely hard to justify.  I guess one could say that the Sox believe in Ellsbury’s batting potential, and that lineups don’t matter all ...

ST at ST: Whose Career Will Jose Ruin This Year?

(Spring Training Observations from our own Jose Can You Seabiscuit)

Greetings from Ft. Myers where I have been attending some Spring Training baseball. The Sox’ facility is actually two facilities with the Major League park (City of Palms) about 3 miles down the road from the minor league complex. I have been able to attend both locations and there is always much to see.  As Darren will gleefully point out after my pimping of Ramon Ramirez last year, my scouting skills are a bit questionable ...

Manager’s Decision: The Bullpen

Most of the internet discussion of the Red Sox bullpen, so far this spring, has concerned the 5th through 7th slots.  Should Aceves be the long man over Wakefield, or should the Sox maintain their depth and use Aceves’ option?  The same question applies, mutatis mutandis, to Reyes and Okajima (and Hill), as well as to Atchison and Albers.  I generally take the position that it makes no sense to give away competent arms in March, so I’d tend toward Wakefield, Reyes, and Albers making the ...

Manager’s Decision: Starting Rotation

Four of the five slots in Terry Francona’s starting rotation are locked in.  Only the fifth starter position will require careful season-long management.  It’s of course possible that any or all of Lester, Buchholz, Lackey, or Beckett could be injured or ineffective, but the only places any of those four will be this year are the starting rotation and the disabled list.  If they can pitch, they’ll be taking the mound every fifth day.  They’re not really subject to the manager’s ...

Manager’s Decision: Position Players

Because the Red Sox are a really good team with lots of really good players, a large chunk of the manager’s job has been done for him before he arrives in Florida.  Sure, there’s managing the personalities and teaching the young guys and constructing a lineup, but the former two are hidden from view for this sort of analysis, and the latter continues to sort of bore me.  What I find interesting are the decisions that a manager has to made in March and April, when he has to determine which ...

The Red Sox and the Other, Lesser Projection Systems

Dan posted the Red Sox ZiPS numbers the same day my Baseball Prospectus arrived in the mail, so I thought it might be interesting to compare three other, lesser projection systems for what they think of the 2011 Red Sox.  I’ve listed the projections in three columns, in alphabetical order - that is, first CAIRO, then PECOTA, then ZiPS.  For hitters I’ve listed the three slash lines, for pitchers IP and ERA.

247/320/403, 237/309/396, 230/308/382 – Saltalamacchia
305/399/555, 283/379/513, ...

CFBPS 2011

Just in time for the first days of full-on spring training, I have finished the yearly renoobulation of the world’s most advanced projection system that is deadly accurate and has other marketable characteristics as well, the Crazy FanBoy Projection System.  This year the CFBPS is better than ever – along with all the usual polishing of grommets and tuning of dials, it has a new steam-powered ooga-chooga, the ability to see through both space and time, and I fitted lasers to the motherboard ...

Pitchers and Catchers and Programming Notes

Here’s a spring training video to get everyone excited:

NESN: Cool Ted Williams clips, spring training 1984.

So, I have a couple of goals for Sox Therapy in 2011.  I don’t have any delusions about updating this every day – that would get tremendously boring for all of us.  But I think that it will be possible to upgrade the blog from occasionally and sporadically updated to occasionally and regularly updated.  Something like once a week, sometimes twice a week, seems like a reasonable ...

Watching Spring Training… News

Most of the fun of spring training is just that there’s finally baseball on my teevee again.  Beyond that, though, it becomes very easy to watch a few innings of a game, decide that the backup first baseman is pretty so hard it hurts to watch, and perhaps overreact a little.  We should be humble about what we can determine from watching spring, and we shouldn’t publish first drafts, is what I’m saying.

While it’s difficult to develop intelligent baseball analyses from watching a spring ...

Win the Offseason

I was working on a post about the Red Sox recent minor league signings – they added Alfredo Aceves as the 7th starter and Dennys Reyes as the backup loogy – but I realized pretty quickly it was a boring post.  Three paragraphs all to make the point, “Theo sure is smart for signing good players and also pitching depth is good.”  Really, most of our offseason talk has converged on that point.  The Red Sox did just about everything right.  Even better, the Red Sox did just about everything ...

Sox 2011 payroll = Sox 2010 payroll.  Fact.

Theo has again successfully avoided going to arbitration, and all the projected 2011 Red Sox players who will make significantly more than the MLB minimum have now been signed.  The Sox went big this offseason, going after the top free agent position player and the top position player on the trade market while injecting over $10M into the bullpen.  What I think is interesting, given this set of events, is that the Red Sox have barely increased payroll at all from their 2010 level.

The Red Sox ...

Epstein Interview Contains Actual Baseball Content

Once every presidential administration or so, Theo Epstein gets liquored up before a press conference and proceeds to actually answer the questions he’s asked.  At the Hot Stove Cool Music benefit on Friday, reporters cajoled Epstein into telling them what the team plans to do at both shortstop and catcher.  I like the answers quite a lot.  These quotes are from Evan Dreilich’s article at redsox.com. 

On shortstop:

“The players will ... dictate how they’re best utilized,” Epstein said. ...

A Tale of Two Suckings

John Lackey and Josh Beckett seemed to have two things in common last year – the Red Sox paid them lots and lots of money, and they sucked.  I’m going to argue that these were the only things they had in common, and in fact John Lackey didn’t really suck all that much.

First, Lackey gave the Sox 215 innings of league average pitching, which has value.  (Not nineteen million dollars of value, but value.)  Second, while Lackey’s strikeout and walk rates both got worse, neither was ...

24 Down, One to Go

The Globe is reporting that the Red Sox have agreed to terms with Hideki Okajima on a one-year major league contract.  The fills the bullpen, leaving only the 25th man (Papi’s RHB caddy) to go.  I had some speculation earlier in the offseason about the bullpen, and my presumption was that the club would focus on acquiring a top LH reliever to get big outs in the 7th and 8th.  This made sense, I thought, given that Scott Downs, Brian Fuentes, and Frank Francisco were all available as free ...

The Catching Situation

I got into several distinct arguments yesterday about the Red Sox catchers.  Lots of people seem to think they suck, and I think that they don’t suck.  Here’s why I think that.

First, I think our baselines should be statistical projections and league averages.  A league average AL catcher last year hit for a 245/312/374 line.  In 2009 it was 254/316/408, and it was 258/322/393.  An OPS somewhat above 700 is perfectly average for a catcher.  Given that, the projections on Jason Varitek and ...

2011 Lineup

This post was going to be shortish, just a proposed lineup and a couple notes, but I’m having a hell of a time figuring out what the lineup ought to be.  So instead this is going to be me working through the question, and it’s going to take a while.

Lineups don’t matter too much, but the Tango/Dolphin/MGL research suggests there is a win or so per season to be gleaned here.  Beyond their maxims of maximization – bat your best hitters 2nd and 4th, OBP at leadoff, weaker OBP can hit 3rd ...

In Which I Learn Not to Listen to Theo’s Public Statements

Carl Crawford is a Boston Red Sox for the low, low price of 7 years, ~140M.  Boston acquired the two best players available this offseason – one of whom we didn’t even know was available coming into the offseason.  They have agreed, officially or under the table, to give these players very, very large contracts.  Obviously all that stuff in the previous post about the Red Sox cutting payroll can be happily disregarded.

Likewise, all that bellyaching about whether the team projects to be ...

Apres Gonzalez, Le, uh, Payroll

My analysis of the Red Sox offseason plans, so far, has been based on an assumption that the 2010 payroll was not an outlier.  I figured if they ran up to $170M last year, they would stay in roughly that range, not drop most of the way back down to the $130-140M range they were in during the previous three seasons.  Maybe I was wrong.  I have the Red Sox payroll for 2011 projected at $136M, including arbitration raises for Ellsbury and Papelbon.  Theo, during the Gonzalez press conference, said ...

What’s an Adrian Gonzalez Worth?

The Red Sox have agreed to trade some prospects for Adrian Gonzalez.  The deal certainly could still fall apart – one should never bet against Theo approaching the brink and then pulling back – but I nonetheless feel like taunting the gods of the jinx and laying out my thoughts on the (pending) deal.  I think this is pretty great news.  First, Gonzalez is signed to an incredibly cheap contract - $5.5M for 2011.  The Sox will get something in the range of a 5 WAR player for $5.5M.  That’s ...

The Case for Adrian Beltre

It’s difficult to say, with the sort of forcefulness a blog post requires, what the Red Sox absolutely ought to do this offseason.  Their payroll may fall anywhere between $160M and $185M, and the best use of resources is heavily dependent on how many resources exist.  Their outfield situation might already be settled, if Cameron and Ellsbury look fully recovered and the team remains confident in their skills, or they might be in need of at least one new outfielder. 

With those caveats, ...

Now What?

[The reports that the Tigers have signed Victor Martinez look pretty secure right now.  If they fall through, this post will look silly.  That will not be the first time one of my posts ends up looking silly.]

I have figured for a while that the Red Sox offseason plan had to include re-signing Victor Martinez.  He’s an excellent hitter for a catcher, and the free agent market after him is utterly barren.  Jarrod Saltalamacchia is nice as a lottery ticket, not so much as a meal ticket.  Ryan ...

Jonathan Papelbon: Because We’ve Hardly Discussed Him Enough This Year

One of the big decisions facing the Red Sox, this offseason, is what to do with Jonathan Papelbon.  After a disappointing 2010 season, Papelbon is up for arbitration again.  Given the history of closers going to arb, he should be able to command in the range of $12M for his services.  The question, then, is whether he’s the best person to get that money.

I was skeptical that Papelbon would project to be worth the money when I started out, and I remain skeptical.  I compared Papelbon to three ...

Minor League Thread: BA’s League Top 20s

The Red Sox minor league season was, overall, a big disappointment.  Very few prospects had seasons that will move them significantly up any rankings lists.  However, having a poor or uninspiring season doesn’t mean you’re no longer a prospect.  It’s certainly possible to show development in skills and tools without putting up the sort of numbers that excite a fan with an internet connection and the keys to rarely-updated blog.  End-of-season and mid-season prospect lists can be useful ...

a) Carl Crawford, b) Jayson Werth, c) Other

I’m still assembling my thoughts on what the Red Sox should do this offseason, and two of the key questions are whether the Sox should go after one of the big free agent outfielders, and if so, which one.  Some of the variables in this question are unanswerable or practically so – for example, just how healthy are Ellsbury and Cameron going to be?  And how much will other teams be willing to pay for Werth or Crawford?  The question of which of them is better, though, is one we can get a ...

Red Sox Offseason Thread, Early Edition

The Red Sox season is not mathematically over, but it’s been emotionally over for me for a while, and the tenor of the other thread suggests my fatalism has spread.  I enjoyed rooting for this club quite a bit, with all the quadruple-A stars getting their shots and Francona managing like he’s never managed before, but very little of the good stuff from 2010 is likely to help in 2011.  Billy Hall will find a better job elsewhere and Clay Buchholz will come back to earth.  Adrian Beltre is ...

Really?  You haven’t given up yet?

Me, I’ve given up.  The Sox are playing without their two best players, and their $30M 3-4 starters still suck.  But other folks seem to be clinging onto those last strands of hope, angling gnarled knuckles to grasp at a future that still sort of maybe could happen, an early October week in which all values are transvaluated and the Red Sox somehow end up in a one-game playoff.

Obviously it is a silly idea.  Here’s your thread, silly people.

Go Big, or Go Home

The BPro playoff odds numbers have been steadily counting down over the last two weeks.  It’s somewhere between one in twelve and one in six by now, depending on the inputs.  The Sox have played great baseball, especially with their diminished lineup - the problem is the Rays and Yankees have been just as good.  Keeping pace is a moral victory, but moral victories are stupid and suck. 

The last chance the Sox have at a non-moral victory is to throw a sweep on one of the Yankees or Rays in a ...