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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 16, 2024 4:33:42 GMT -5
Which Red Sox player had 3 PA yesterday, and had EV's of 100.3, 101.7, and 102.5, in that order?
Yup, the new maybe-shortstop.
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It seems ludicrous to declare a 6-0 loss to be a coin toss plus bad luck, but the more I look into the details the more convinced I am that it's true. It's too close to my bedtime (5:30 AM) to break it down now, but if anyone cares, let me know. Teaser trailer: which team's bullpen gave up 7 lucky or cheap hits, versus one by the opposition?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 14, 2024 22:30:17 GMT -5
9-7. Oppositiion is .500. West coast trip outa way. Other than the Devistating news of Story nit terrible No one here (as far as I saw) expected them to compete. Overall mood was off the charts negative. Really they completely pissed away at least two games so they could easily be 11-5. I had their best case as WS champs and their worst (excluding excess injury scenarios) as good enough to make the playoffs in multiple other divisions, but not outs. My rationale was that the starting pitching would be excellent.
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Jansen's expected slash line coming into this game was .117 / .411 /.161. That has started to normalize, as he had just a .225 xBA and .371 xOBA in this outing.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 14, 2024 6:23:08 GMT -5
Bello going at day on 4 days rest, something did three times last year and got killed. At some point he'll find a routine that works ... let's hope it's just now. No outcome will surprise me.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 9, 2024 10:32:43 GMT -5
Big deal at MLB.com over Mile Trout's hot start, after a big game against the Rays.
Against us he was looking at a .111 / .333 / .111 before his garbage-time homer. He has a .308 WPA, but that's .561 against others and -.253 against us.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 9, 2024 0:03:57 GMT -5
Horrendous error by Devers. At this point the sooner he can become a full time DH the better because he is unlikely to ever solve his problems at 3B. Putting that aside, will this team ever start to hit? Duran and O'Neill and the catchers have been great but the rest of the lineup has been a black hole. One day later and the team wRC+ is up to 106.
O'Neill (281) and McGuire (187) will regress, but Casas (88) and Yoshida (92) should improve, and Reyes, Valdez, Abreu, and Dalbec are all at *19* or worse. Lots of potential for improvement there if those guys can be merely bad, rather than Hindenbergian.
Yoshida has had awful luck, and Casas and Devers bad. wOBA / xwOBA:
Y: .304 / .359 C: .298 / .343 D: .361 / .399
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 8, 2024 21:06:55 GMT -5
Finally. I'll guess by this time next year Dalbec will be competing against Franchy Cordero for the home run record in Japan. Come on down Romy Gonzalez.That there is no better alternative, and yet no mention of it yet, suggests that they are looking into trades. Slim possibility, but due diligence.
Re his tremendous start:he had a very good AA partial season in 2021 (.267 / .355 / .502), was promoted to AAA and hit .344/ .382/ .750 in 9 G / 34 PA. That earned him a promotion to the show, where he had a .617 OPS in 33 PA and was sent down ... where hit .409 / .462 / .636 in 26 PA to season's end.
He spent most of 2022 in AAA and had a .620 OPS ... it seems as if he spent the remainder plus all of 2023 in MLB because the Chisox had nothing better.
Given the recent track record of of the ChiSox, it's perfectly credible that they never figure out the difference between his good version and his bad one, if in fact there is an actual difference rather than a hot / cold thing. I think we're all prepped to find out.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 8, 2024 5:58:25 GMT -5
Here's a fun one: the three major bullpen additions, Slaten, Campbell, and Weissert, have each faced 18 hitters. Combined, they have a .217 xwOBA and .163 wOBA.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 8, 2024 5:44:42 GMT -5
Here are the xwOBA's of the 10 best pitching staffs:
.305 .304 .304 .304 .301 .298 .298 .295 .293 ...
That's 12 point difference over 9 teams, so the final entry can be expected to be .292 or maybe .291, right?
.278. You know who. The Braves have the .293, and the gap between us and them matches the one between the them and the #12 Mariners.
Braves have a similar dominance on offense, wOBA. But that was expected.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 8, 2024 0:03:52 GMT -5
When Houck got hurt last year he had the 8th (expected) or 9th (actual) best splitter or changeup among the 126 starters who finished a PA with one 10+ times (he had 16) ...
... in innings 1 to 3.
After that, among 106 pitchers, he was 57th best expected, and 5th worse actual. The big difference can be explained: he was throwing it predictably and some guys were able drop it where the fielders weren't.
Houk is the one guy of the five whose repertoire has been left untouched. He had already dedicated himself to spending the off-season getting into sufficient shape to go six innings + without fading, something he couldn't do the year before while recovering from surgery. They did give all the guys individual workout plans.
Not completely untouched - he’s dropped the 4FB and the pitch mix is different (throwing the split twice as often at 20%). Indeed! And in fact I suggested earlier that they have him drop the 4-seamer if they couldn't improve it.
What I meant was that he was not adding anything, unlike the other two non-established starters.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 7, 2024 21:34:20 GMT -5
Didn't get to catch the game, but Houck's splitter must be coming along for him to be pitching like this to start the season. When Houck got hurt last year he had the 8th (expected) or 9th (actual) best splitter or changeup among the 126 starters who finished a PA with one 10+ times (he had 16) ...
... in innings 1 to 3.
After that, among 106 pitchers, he was 57th best expected, and 5th worse actual. The big difference can be explained: he was throwing it predictably and some guys were able drop it where the fielders weren't.
Houk is the one guy of the five whose repertoire has been left untouched. He had already dedicated himself to spending the off-season getting into sufficient shape to go six innings + without fading, something he couldn't do the year before while recovering from surgery. They did give all the guys individual workout plans.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 7, 2024 13:41:22 GMT -5
Sox pitchers still lead MLB in both xwOBA (.268) and wOBA (.237). In xwOBA they are 2nd in starting and 4th in relief; in wOBA, 2nd and 1st.
Gaps between them and runner-ups:
xwOBA: Gap to second-place Phlllies (.284) larger than theirs to 6th place Mariners (.299)
wOBA: Gap to second-place Royals (.259) larger than theirs to 4th place O's (.275)
The Phillies are 14th in in wOBA and the Royals are 14th xwOBA.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 7, 2024 3:50:42 GMT -5
First, I trust the powers that are intending to create a thread for Story's injury and move all the appropriate posts there.
Next, I think there's an ironclad argument that the Sox get out of the 6th inning scoreless if not for the two clearly blown strike 3 calls.
Weissert faces Trout and Ward with 2 on and 1 out in the fifth and gets them on 4 pitches, 3 of then strikes.
In the sixth he begins by fanning Hicks on 4 pitches, but the last strike is called a ball. He then strikes him out a second time, without a pause to rest -- which is to say, if you erase the first four pitches, you get an entire second PA that ends the same way.
He then fans the hottest-hitting O'Hoppe on three pitches, and is forced to get him again immediately, on five pitches, via a foul pop on a 1-2 count.
At this point, he has thrown 20 pitches, 16 for strikes. He has never been behind anyone 2-0.
He then gives up the first-pitch cheap single (20% hit probability) to Rengifio. Does that happen if he starts the PA at pitch 12 instead of 21? His actual pitch 12 was the first in the 3-pitch non-K of O'Hoppe. The inning likely ends with Ringifo.
But even if it doesn't, we know Weissert doesn't start tiring until pitches 20 or 21 to 22, where he gets behind 2-0 for the first time. And even then he doesn't collapse until another four pitches, all strikes.
I just can't see a version of this inning where the correct calls are made and he has to leave with the tying run is scoring position.
(Yes, in theory he could have gotten Hicks and O'Hoppe out more quickly ... but in both cases he has revealed to the hitter the identity of the pitch that would have struck him out, so the hitter's not going to take that pitch again. You really can't blame Weissert for taking too long to (unexpectedly) find a second way of getting guys out.)
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 6, 2024 19:59:15 GMT -5
Google source says 6 weeks to 3 months for athletes.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 6, 2024 19:56:47 GMT -5
A crazy fact from last night:
Sox pitching gave up precisely two hard hit balls that were likelier-than-not hits, and one of those was 52% and hit directly at Rafaela (who dropped it). The other of course, is Hoppe's slam, and there is an alternate reality where it broke up a shitout.
The Sox had 7, and two were outs: Casas' liner to left in 9th and Yoshida's homer in 21 parks (which also doesn't seem to count for premature thoughts about his season).
I'd report on the rank of the pitching by xwOBA, but Statcast has no data for the 7 games that ended after 7:00 PM EST. WTF?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 6, 2024 19:16:22 GMT -5
Romy Gonzalez page has him acquired in Jan. 2023.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 4, 2024 11:05:58 GMT -5
Sox pitching leads xwOBA with .257; runner-up Astros are .280. The gap is bigger than the one between the Astros and #10 Reds.
Sox pitching leads wOBA with .223; runner-up Braves are .242. The gap is just about the same size as that between the Braves and #4 O's (.262), but the second-best team that has plated 6 games is the D-Backs, 7th best at .282.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 2, 2024 13:24:32 GMT -5
Sox pitching now has a .247 xwOBA. The runner-up Astros are at .273. That gap is bigger than the one between the Astros and the the number 8 Mets.
Sox pitching and defense now has a .208 wOBA. The runner-up Tigers are at .246. That gap is bigger than the one between the Tigers and the the number 8 Mariners.
Only 3 other teams are in the top 8 in both metrics: the Tigers 4th and 2nd, the O's 5th and 3rd, and the Dodgers 5th and 6th.
Ranks among all 134 starters (xwOBA, wOBA)
Houck 2, 10 Crawford 14, 12 Whitlock 22, 21 Pivetta 43, 16 Bello 73, 69
The starters have 11.9 SO per 9 innings, and 0.3 walks.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 1, 2024 20:32:05 GMT -5
"Malancon had the biggest [batting order position] splits I've ever seen! He got creamed by No. 3 and 4 hitters! This was the guy they were going to take and put oin the AL East? A sabermetrically astute organization would never have made those trades."
Peter Keating chose that rant of mine as the next-to-last the bit in his story about me in in the 15th anniversary issue (May 13, 2013) of ESPN The Magazine. The last bit was my question "How many times have they won a playoff game since they laid us off?" [The Sox laid off all of their consultants after 2008, against the wishes of baseball ops. I at least got 6 months severance pay.]
I've spent most of my life as a Sox fan ranting against stupidities of various ilks.
I mean… if you gotta go back 12 years for your example…. And MElancon did go on to be a dominant pitcher for many teams in a number of divisions. Is it possible he just sucked in Boston? He was an All Star at 36 in an NL West which featured a shootout between a 106-win and 107-win team. I hated the first Sale trade. Is that better?
Melancon was already a top reliever when they traded for him -- 2.78 ERA, 20 saves for an Astro team that went 56-106. I checked out a favorite metric of mine and it said it was a really bad choice. I was right. A sportswriter later selected that as an example of what good analysis could do for a team. End of story.
Oh, and recently someone involved admitted that they had really gotten away from analytics in that era, to their detriment. That made me feel better -- I did not choose that criticism as the literal end of the story!
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 1, 2024 19:51:00 GMT -5
Not remotely true.
They had all sorts of chances to add a starter from the usual sources when Giolito went down and they chose not to, because they had done something with Cooper Criswell (as planned, no doubt) that makes him a solid sixth starter. They then added Naoyuki Uwasawa whose last three years with the Nippon Ham Fighters had ERA's of 2.81, 3.38, 2.96 in 24, 25, 24 starts -- and it's almost certain that they see something in him that can make him better, because that's how they roll. And they have Richard Fitts whom they are high on (like everyone they have acquired) and is thought to be a couple of months from being MLB ready.
They may be gambling a bit that they don't have to put two guys on the IL before Uwasawa or Fitts fits is ready, but we don't know what the former's time table is.
Hint: one thing that ain't gonna work this year is "the front office made a mistake that I have spotted."
(Case in point: I thought that ownership had vetoed re-signing Duvall, but it's now clear that a) the F.O. had a strong reason to believe that Rafaela would come to ST with hugely better swing decisions, and b) given how late Duvall signed with the Braves, they had him waiting in case they were wrong.) I am glad to see that even with a new cast in the FO, you continue to work from the assumption that they know something no other person or organization does. I call it the “Eric Van/Zach Godley Hypothesis.” I hope you are right, but I’d say, for example, a 30-year old who has never pitched in America and was dumped by the Rays hardly counts as reliable depth. Maybe he is the next Koji-level discovery… but I am nervous to test that. Dumped by the Rays like ... Cooper Criswell?
Did you get that I implied that Uwasawa would be either the #7 or #8 starter? How high is that bar?
Track record of so far with non-established pitchers:
Traded Luis Urías to the Seattle Mariners. Received Isaiah Campbell. Traded Alex Verdugo to the New York Yankees. Received Richard Fitts (minors), Nicholas Judice (minors) and Greg Weissert. Traded Ryan Ammons (minors) to the New York Mets. Received Justin Slaten (minors). Signed Cooper Criswell as a free agent.
they know something no other person or organization does
No, no. The best organizations have figured out ways to make certain types of pitchers better. They have methodologies. It's not a mystic, guy-by-guy thing; it's "this guy fits the profile of guys who would benefit a lot from [X]."
And these teams soon become teams that don't need to add much pitching. So there are likely a few teams saying, damn, that closes the gap some, but we are full up with guys that are as good or better.
A final note ... one thing I have learned of late is that pessimists have no idea how they sound to other, else they would STF up. It's tiresome.
I mean, seriously ... I spend all winter arguing that the alleged bad rotation will be great, and so far it's playing just out as I thought ... and you feel compelled to go after any optimism over the #7 or 8 starter?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 1, 2024 18:45:23 GMT -5
I am glad to see that even with a new cast in the FO, you continue to work from the assumption that they know something no other person or organization does. I call it the “Eric Van/Zach Godley Hypothesis.” I hope you are right, but I’d say, for example, a 30-year old who has never pitched in America and was dumped by the Rays hardly counts as reliable depth. Maybe he is the next Koji-level discovery… but I am nervous to test that. The Red Sox are always smarter than everybody else because they are Eric's favorite team, which sounds like a scientifically valid basis for his assumption, lol Let's hope one day we really can assume that. "Malancon had the biggest [batting order position] splits I've ever seen! He got creamed by No. 3 and 4 hitters! This was the guy they were going to take and put oin the AL East? A sabermetrically astute organization would never have made those trades."
Peter Keating chose that rant of mine as the next-to-last the bit in his story about me in in the 15th anniversary issue (May 13, 2013) of ESPN The Magazine. The last bit was my question "How many times have they won a playoff game since they laid us off?" [The Sox laid off all of their consultants after 2008, against the wishes of baseball ops. I at least got 6 months severance pay.]
I've spent most of my life as a Sox fan ranting against stupidities of various ilks.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 1, 2024 13:12:55 GMT -5
Don’t let anyone get hurt patting themselves on backs… because the rotation has tons of talent and zero depth. If these 5 stay healthy, they will make lots of people eat their words. But my fingers remain crossed. Not remotely true.
They had all sorts of chances to add a starter from the usual sources when Giolito went down and they chose not to, because they had done something with Cooper Criswell (as planned, no doubt) that makes him a solid sixth starter. They then added Naoyuki Uwasawa whose last three years with the Nippon Ham Fighters had ERA's of 2.81, 3.38, 2.96 in 24, 25, 24 starts -- and it's almost certain that they see something in him that can make him better, because that's how they roll. And they have Richard Fitts whom they are high on (like everyone they have acquired) and is thought to be a couple of months from being MLB ready.
They may be gambling a bit that they don't have to put two guys on the IL before Uwasawa or Fitts fits is ready, but we don't know what the former's time table is.
Hint: one thing that ain't gonna work this year is "the front office made a mistake that I have spotted."
(Case in point: I thought that ownership had vetoed re-signing Duvall, but it's now clear that a) the F.O. had a strong reason to believe that Rafaela would come to ST with hugely better swing decisions, and b) given how late Duvall signed with the Braves, they had him waiting in case they were wrong.)
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 1, 2024 5:41:29 GMT -5
I'm repeating myself but that was the highlight. Consider that as a group they outpitched one of the best rotations in MLB. They won two, should have had three, and could have had four if everything fell right. A few more observations; Rafaela just radiates baseball smarts in the field on the basepaths, and even at the plate; the additions to the relief corps are a game changer (of course); it's early but the trade for O'Neill looks like it may have been grand theft. Ultimately, the deal was 2 months of Kiké for a year of O'Neill, plus Victor Santos for Justin Hagemann. The intermediary, Nick Robertson, has a 6.75 ERA in two outings for Memphis.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Apr 1, 2024 4:49:57 GMT -5
Sox pitchers lead MLB in both xwOBA (.276) and wOBA (.226). They are second in expected vs. actual, and some of that is defense.
O'Neill's 2 HR in 10 AB against the 6th / 7th best pitchers (including those 2 homers allowed) is easily the most impressive rate-wise in MLB.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Mar 31, 2024 23:05:47 GMT -5
I'm a little disappointed that Whitlcok allowed the combined starting pitcher ERA to go up.
Yeah, from 1.59 to 1.64.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Mar 30, 2024 12:37:35 GMT -5
We lose one nothing and people are blaming Cora? We start 7 games in a row on the west coast, Winchowski was stretched out a bit and we needed him to go two to try and save the bullpen a bit for the next 5 straight games Not blaming Cora. I am simply pointing out that Winc, after dominating for five batters, lost it. And that high leverage relievers tend only to be good for short stretches. Instead of recognizing that Winc had lost it, and was getting worse, Cora left him in there to flounder with two rested relievers sitting in the pen. Winc did not suddenly regain his stuff, and gave up an absolute rocket, because of course he did. The only reason Winc did not give up multiple runs was because Casas happened to be standing in a lucky spot and the ball hit him in the glove. Leaving Winc in there was a terrible decision. It ultimately did not change the fortunes of this game, but that was due purely to luck. Also, he’s not useable today as a result. Oh, so at the point where Winck had fanned four out of five hitters and needed to get just one more out, you shouted at the TV, "get somebody warmed up here, he might lose it at any moment!"
Whereupon he induced a hard grounder hit exactly halfway between first and second, that's an out more often than not (57% of the time. I scored it as a possible or likely out on my scorecard, just by eyeballs.) Polanco's liner was just a 64% hit, so the the two balls put into play had 1.07 expected hits and 0.93 outs , so, there was no luck involved at all.
Meanwhile, if you started warming someone up after the first walk, when they had the mound conference, it's unclear that the reliever would have been ready after six more pitches had been thrown.
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