10/8 Red Sox @ Rays ALDS Game 4 Thread

Who thought 837 would be a good start time?

A rematch from 9/12 (Rays won 4-3). Both Ellsbury and Victorino were sitting. Rubby gave up game winner in 8th.

Peavy has to show better command or else this could quickly become a slugfest.

Hellickson's season breaks down neatly into four chunks.

First, an absolutely bipolar phase of 14 starts, four great, ten awful: game scores of 71 (against us) and 76 back-to-back in his 2nd and 3rd starts, and 69 in each of his 10th and 13th starts, but 21 to 46 in the others. Overall ERA, 5.67.

Next, a 7 game stretch with a 2.07 ERA. That one started against us.

Then a 6 game stretch with a 9.00 ERA. His best game score in this stretch, 44, is worse than his worst in the previous, 49.

Finally, September, with a very good start against the Angels, a meh one against us, and bad ones against the Rangers and Blue Jays. His ERA as a starter was 5.50, so this may be the same as phase 1.

That they're going with him suggests that they have some saberemtric reasons why they think he matches up well against us.

I have to do some errands, but when I get back I'll try to run the components and BABIP luck analyses on those stretches (including separating out the good from the bad of the bipolar phases to see if they match the good and bad stretches) and maybe even look at some pitch/fx data.

It seems to me that the Rays could well start Hellickson and dump him for Moore at some point early in the game to turn the entire Redsox lineup around. The Redsox are designed for platooning in order to optimize performance. This approach can be used against us in this instance and I bet it will. We hopefully put up some good numbers against Hellickson early.

And I would leave Ortiz in the game almost all the time. I know he got on first with no outs and logic would indicate that as an ideal time to put in the pinch runner but our guy is not capable of getting a secure SB on demand, even though his career numbers are perfect. He was actually thrown out in this instance but we got the call and before this he was extremely hesitant to run when everyone knew he was going. We can't count on him to steal an on demand base when needed.

I'd rather have Ortiz in the game, even with no outs in the 8th. Some things defie logic. I'm not taking Ortiz out of the game period unless the stars align to 10,000 year precision.

Papi (1.391) and Salty (1.233) have hit Hellickson well. Pedroia (.597), Ellsbury (.639), Nava (.368), Napoli (.167), and Middlebrooks (.167) have all struggled (min 10 PAs).

Napoli, Pedroia, Victorino, Nava, and Middlebrooks were a combined 2/30 with no XB hits and no BBs this year against Hellickson.

Stating the obvious, you can't let Longoria beat you. I would pitch around him every time, just like the Rays did last night with Ortiz. I would also put Nava behind Ortiz in the lineup to rack up the pitch count for Hellickson. Win tonight.

Want more negative nostalgia? lets hope it doesn't turn out as bad as when Johnny Mac went with Al Nipper in game 4 of the '86 series, who at that time had the worst ERA to start a post season game EVER and put the Mets right back in the thing by promptly getting blown away and allowing the mets to tie the series up after the Sox had taken the 1st 2 games at NY.

Of course the purpose of that decision was to get Hurst and Clemens extra rest for their starts, which looked brilliant until the wee hours of that Saturday night.

Nipper wasn't that bad in game 4 either.

No Carp at 1st. There goes that idea.

Hey's just trying to infuriate us by setting up a situation that calls for a right handed pinch hitter.

Don't think the Sox traded for Peavy to be an ace. They felt he's a quality pitcher and better option than Doubront and certainly better than Dempster and he was. They finished one game ahead of Oakland for home field advantage so the deal probably helped them get over that hump.

I certainly hope he pitches like an ace tonight. The Red Sox could use a shutdown performance from a starter. My concern is that Lackey, Buchholz, and Peavy went a long time without making starts and Lackey and Buchholz didn't look particularly sharp. I hope the two weeks between starts doesn't mess up Peavy particularly with him experimenting with going to his old delivery. Before the change in delivery/arm angle he hardly walked anybody. I don't think his control has been as sharp since the change. Wonder what the layoff does to him.

I think Napoli is key as there's no chance they pitch to Ortiz in a meaningful situation. They need Napoli to hit with power, particularly with runners on base. Other than Ortiz nobody has went deep for the Sox. Hope that happens tonight and hope it's with runners on. Hellickson, like Peavy, is certainly prone to the long ball. I also hope Farrell uses Tazawa and Breslow more smartly this time around.

As we're about to see, there's no resemblance at all between the good games in what I called the bipolar stretches, and the sustained good stretch, or between the bipolar bad games and the sustained bad stretch.

As I pointed out, by game score, all of the second stretch middle was better than all of the third stretch middle. You want to start an analysis like this with the actual results, for which game score is the best quick estimator, rather than making assumptions based on what may have happened underlying the results. Because the latter is precisely what we're trying to determine.

And, yes, the last stretch was just four games (two good, two bad), which is why I want to see if it's the same as the first stretch and can be combined with it.


xFIP is shit.