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8/20-8/21 Red Sox vs. Phillies Series Thread
cdj
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Posts: 13,873
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Post by cdj on Aug 21, 2019 9:34:33 GMT -5
Not questioning the merit of your findings, but Is that total # of men left in scoring position or is it %? Because that does matter. % is the proper way to reflect these stats because the Sox last year mashed and had more ppl in scoring position than terrible teams did. Baltimore had the “best” numbers according to total left in scoring position but we know why that’s the case If you have a terrible offense, it's not going to matter. If you have a great offense, these things tend to pop up as problems when trying to figure out at what this team needs to work on. The Yankees are the second best team at leaving less runners in scoring position. They are finding ways to drive them in. Yeah but again, when you call the Sox the 23rd best team at situational hitting last year are you discussing total #s or %? Because % changes a bunch of things and it’s the most accurate measure of what you’re looking for if you want to compare the number across the league I may be in the minority here too but I think a lot of situational hitting is luck. I don’t think it’s like these guys try harder from one at bat to another. Sure there is stuff like moving the guy over from 2nd with 0 out on a grounder to 2B, but I don’t think things change for the hitter if there’s a guy on 3rd vs if there isn’t a guy on 3rd as far as trying to knock them in goes. I don’t think they focus more
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Post by jimed14 on Aug 21, 2019 9:36:56 GMT -5
What's your genius suggestion? That. The. Sox. Hit. Better. Situationally. I suggest that they win every game. < slightly more useless comment.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Aug 21, 2019 9:37:17 GMT -5
If you have a terrible offense, it's not going to matter. If you have a great offense, these things tend to pop up as problems when trying to figure out at what this team needs to work on. The Yankees are the second best team at leaving less runners in scoring position. They are finding ways to drive them in. Yeah but again, when you call the Sox the 23rd best team situational hitting last year are you discussing total #s or %? Because % changes a bunch of things and it’s the most accurate measure of what you’re looking for if you want to compare the number across the league There's no stat that I can see to look up that.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Aug 21, 2019 9:39:15 GMT -5
That. The. Sox. Hit. Better. Situationally. I suggest that they win every game. < slightly more useless comment. GREAT COMMENT!!
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Aug 21, 2019 9:48:40 GMT -5
If you have a terrible offense, it's not going to matter. If you have a great offense, these things tend to pop up as problems when trying to figure out at what this team needs to work on. The Yankees are the second best team at leaving less runners in scoring position. They are finding ways to drive them in. I may be in the minority here too but I think a lot of situational hitting is luck. I don’t think it’s like these guys try harder from one at bat to another. Sure there is stuff like moving the guy over from 2nd with 0 out on a grounder to 2B, but I don’t think things change for the hitter if there’s a guy on 3rd vs if there isn’t a guy on 3rd as far as trying to knock them in goes. I don’t think they focus more To a degree, it can be. Like you're not always going to put the ball in play, you're not always going to do what you want with hitting the baseball. But there's the good old saying of shortening your swing. Guys are trying to do too much in this regard. If you're one of the worst teams in the league at leaving runners in scoring position, then you need to find ways to fix that. That's all.
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Post by incandenza on Aug 21, 2019 10:56:32 GMT -5
www.teamrankings.com/mlb/stat/runners-left-in-scoring-position-per-gameThe 2019 Boston Red Sox are the second worst team in the majors and have on average left 3.7 runners in scoring position this year. The proof is in the stats. They need to do a better job of this next year. They need to learn to be better hitters situationally. Ya, they need to pitch better too. This has been pointed out to you already, but you do get that having a lot of runners left in scoring position is a function of having a lot of runners on base, right? This is the main reason why, in the list you're citing, Arizona, Houston, Texas, LA Angels, Washington, Milwaukee, Tampa Bay, and Boston are all in the top-10 in RISP left on base - all 8 of those teams are in the top half of the majors in OBP. The bottom 10 on that list includes San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco, Toronto, Kansas City, Miami, Cincinnati, and the White Sox - all 8 of those teams are in the bottom half of the majors in OBP. You're literally citing a stat that correlates with strong offense as evidence of the weakness of the Red Sox offense. Do you see why people are unpersuaded by that argument?
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Aug 21, 2019 11:00:25 GMT -5
www.teamrankings.com/mlb/stat/runners-left-in-scoring-position-per-gameThe 2019 Boston Red Sox are the second worst team in the majors and have on average left 3.7 runners in scoring position this year. The proof is in the stats. They need to do a better job of this next year. They need to learn to be better hitters situationally. Ya, they need to pitch better too. This has been pointed out to you already, but you do get that having a lot of runners left in scoring position is a function of having a lot of runners on base, right? This is the main reason why, in the list you're citing, Arizona, Houston, Texas, LA Angels, Washington, Milwaukee, Tampa Bay, and Boston are all in the top-10 in RISP left on base - all 8 of those teams are in the top half of the majors in OBP. The bottom 10 on that list includes San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco, Toronto, Kansas City, Miami, Cincinnati, and the White Sox - all 8 of those teams are in the bottom half of the majors in OBP. You're literally citing a stat that correlates with strong offense as evidence of the weakness of the Red Sox offense. Do you see why people are unpersuaded by that argument? You don't also see a stat that also connects my point either? The Yankees are in the bottom 10.
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Post by jimed14 on Aug 21, 2019 11:09:11 GMT -5
This is like an episode of Big Brother.
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Post by incandenza on Aug 21, 2019 11:47:15 GMT -5
This has been pointed out to you already, but you do get that having a lot of runners left in scoring position is a function of having a lot of runners on base, right? This is the main reason why, in the list you're citing, Arizona, Houston, Texas, LA Angels, Washington, Milwaukee, Tampa Bay, and Boston are all in the top-10 in RISP left on base - all 8 of those teams are in the top half of the majors in OBP. The bottom 10 on that list includes San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco, Toronto, Kansas City, Miami, Cincinnati, and the White Sox - all 8 of those teams are in the bottom half of the majors in OBP. You're literally citing a stat that correlates with strong offense as evidence of the weakness of the Red Sox offense. Do you see why people are unpersuaded by that argument? You don't also see a stat that also connects my point either? The Yankees are in the bottom 10. Okay, this is fruitless. Let me try another tack. If you want to make the case that their situational hitting has been bad, maybe you could say this: - Red Sox are 5th in wRC+, a good overall hitting metric. - Red Sox are 6th in WPA/LI, which I think means their situational hitting overall has been pretty good? (I'm a little confused by this, if someone wants to clarify.) -BUT they are 26th in fangraphs' Clutch stat, which means they've been worse than they ought to be in high leverage situations, given how good their hitters are. - So if I'm getting these stats right - good situational hitting, but not as good as it should be considering how good their hitting has been overall. The question is, how meaningful is this? There seems to be basically no correlation between how good an offense is and their Clutch ranking. Astros are 21st. Red Sox are 26th. Twins are 28th. Rays are dead last. So, okay. You want the Red Sox to have better clutch hitting. What's your suggestion for how they go about that? If you were talking about something like OBP or power you could talk about potential trades or free agent signings. But with this you can only just sort of... hope.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Aug 21, 2019 11:54:44 GMT -5
You don't also see a stat that also connects my point either? The Yankees are in the bottom 10. Okay, this is fruitless. Let me try another tack. If you want to make the case that their situational hitting has been bad, maybe you could say this: - Red Sox are 5th in wRC+, a good overall hitting metric. - Red Sox are 6th in WPA/LI, which I think means their situational hitting overall has been pretty good? (I'm a little confused by this, if someone wants to clarify.) -BUT they are 26th in fangraphs' Clutch stat, which means they've been worse than they ought to be in high leverage situations, given how good their hitters are. - So if I'm getting these stats right - good situational hitting, but not as good as it should be considering how good their hitting has been overall. The question is, how meaningful is this? There seems to be basically no correlation between how good an offense is and their Clutch ranking. Astros are 21st. Red Sox are 26th. Twins are 28th. Rays are dead last. So, okay. You want the Red Sox to have better clutch hitting. What's your suggestion for how they go about that? If you were talking about something like OBP or power you could talk about potential trades or free agent signings. But with this you can only just sort of... hope. Striking out less with runners on base would be a better guess from me. No definitive answers from myself, I'm not a hitting coach outside of stating the obvious about putting the ball in play more. I have suggested Nick Castellanos in the off-season. He would be a good bat to get.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Aug 21, 2019 13:17:59 GMT -5
Thank you, incandenza, for rescuing this without resorting to name calling or other nonsense.
In the hopes of continuing to make this fruitful:
- the Red Sox have scored 16% of baserunners, good for 4th in the game. Rockies are #1 at 17.6%. League avg is 14.9%. - Runner on 3B, <2 out, they score the runner 47.4% of the time, 7th-worst in MLB (They've been in that situation the second-most times - Runner on 2B, 0 out, they advance the runner 47.2% of the time, 6th-worst in MLB - They advance runners in a "productive out" situation as defined by BRef 24.5% of the time. That's 5th-worst in MLB, and they've had the most such opportunities.* (* - defined as any advance of a runner with 0 out, a pitcher advancing runners with a sac bunt with 1 out, or driving in a runner with the second out)
So there is something to the fact that the Red Sox, while they've been second-best in the game at getting on base, have done a poor job of having productive at-bats when there are baserunners, although they have been very good at scoring those baserunners. I'm confused, honestly.
At any rate, I still don't get why this is a thing. The issue is so clearly the starting pitching, I don't get why we're having this debate. Start with the 19-27 in games started by Sale and Price, which is just confounding. Flipping that number would have them in playoff position.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Aug 21, 2019 13:35:23 GMT -5
There's been a number of posters who have pointed out that the Sox don't score when they needed to. Combined with the awful pitching, it's lead to this conversation.
Hopefully, it's not a long-term issue and they do a better job situationally next year with runners on base.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Aug 21, 2019 13:42:38 GMT -5
Situational hitting is very luck driven. So, I honestly don't put much credence into it. Perhaps the oddity of the numbers comes from the new approach instilled around baseball which is to focus on launch angles and focusing on either just getting on base or trying to knock it out of the park every single at bat, regardless of the situation? Either way, I'm not blaming the best offense in baseball for their losing.
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ericmvan
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Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,911
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 21, 2019 14:45:21 GMT -5
Another epic great game for the bullpen, compiling 0.32 WPA that no one will remember because the offense couldn't do enough to put the game in the win column. It moved them past the Twins, and they now have had the 7th best bullpen in MLB on the season, when you count all the stuff that doesn't make good copy for sportswriters.
Re the situational hitting: I've broken this down in detail, though I got some details wrong. They have been OK relative to the base / out situation; they rank 12 or 13th in MLB based on FanGraphs data (which seems to be poorly adjusted for this year's hitting, but is still going to be very close to accurate in terms of ranking.)
They have been terrible in terms of inning / score clutch. This is trivial to measure. FanGraphs has REW, which is all of the changes in Run Expectancy, totaled up and then converted into wins at the going rate. They are supposedly 12.49 Wins Above Average in terms of basic hitting performance plus base / out situational karma. But when you total up all the changes in Win Expectancy, it's just 6.20 wins.
Now, the average team has been -2.46 wins when you do this, and it's supposed to be 0.00 by definition. So the scale is wrong, and the actual Sox figure is -3.83 wins.
Which ranks 28th in MLB.
And they were better than average in April, ranking 11th to 13th (there's a tie). Since then they've been -4.13 wins, ranking 29th.
There has been some luck involved -- last night's game ended on a ball with a 92% chance of being a hit -- but it's also clear that the team has been pressing with the game on the line in the last inning or two.
Edit: FanGraphs have MLB offenses as 170 Wins above Average by Run Expectancy, and 96 WAA by Win Expectancy. Defense is negative the same amount. So both tables they're using are off. I'm going to try to normalize them both to 0.00.
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Post by DesignatedForAssignment on Aug 21, 2019 14:45:26 GMT -5
Meanwhile, in afternoon baseball: Tampa Bay goes to the 9th with a lead.
EDit:
Smith tripled to right, Fraley scored and Gordon scored.
Mariners take the lead. !!!!!
Edit 2: Sadness in that dome.
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,911
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 21, 2019 16:29:44 GMT -5
Another epic great game for the bullpen, compiling 0.32 WPA that no one will remember because the offense couldn't do enough to put the game in the win column. It moved them past the Twins, and they now have had the 7th best bullpen in MLB on the season, when you count all the stuff that doesn't make good copy for sportswriters.
Re the situational hitting: I've broken this down in detail, though I got some details wrong. They have been OK relative to the base / out situation; they rank 12 or 13th in MLB based on FanGraphs data (which seems to be poorly adjusted for this year's hitting, but is still going to be very close to accurate in terms of ranking.)
They have been terrible in terms of inning / score clutch. This is trivial to measure. FanGraphs has REW, which is all of the changes in Run Expectancy, totaled up and then converted into wins at the going rate. They are supposedly 12.49 Wins Above Average in terms of basic hitting performance plus base / out situational karma. But when you total up all the changes in Win Expectancy, it's just 6.20 wins.
Now, the average team has been -2.46 wins when you do this, and it's supposed to be 0.00 by definition. So the scale is wrong, and the actual Sox figure is -3.83 wins.
Which ranks 28th in MLB.
And they were better than average in April, ranking 11th to 13th (there's a tie). Since then they've been -4.13 wins, ranking 29th.
There has been some luck involved -- last night's game ended on a ball with a 92% chance of being a hit -- but it's also clear that the team has been pressing with the game on the line in the last inning or two.
Edit: FanGraphs have MLB offenses as 170 Wins above Average by Run Expectancy, and 96 WAA by Win Expectancy. Defense is negative the same amount. So both tables they're using are off. I'm going to try to normalize them both to 0.00.
So, I've got the accurate (normalized) figures. The raw figure is inexact but plenty good enough, the base/out clutch is off just as much in the opposite direction, and the inning/score clutch is accurate.
Note that team inning/score clutch pitching on average is -1.01 for starters and +1.01 for relievers.
Edit: numbers were right but got screwed up in transcription. Fixed now!
+5.38 Hitting, raw +3.83 Bullpen, raw (MLB average is 0.36)
+2.91 Starters, top 4, raw
+1.12 Hitting, base/out clutch +0.59 Bullpen, inning/score clutch (MLB average is 1.02. Can be inflated by giving up lots of runs in low inning / score leverage. So not quite a true measure of high-lev performance) -0.32, 5th Starters, inning/score clutch (MLB average given BFP is -0.19)
-0.80, Bullpen, base/out clutch (MLB average is -0.85)
-0.91, 5th Starters, base/out clutch (MLB expectation 0.16)
-1.34 Starters, top 4, base/out clutch (expectation 0.69)
-1.39 Starters, top 4, inning/score clutch (expectation -0.82)
-1.96 5th Starters, raw
-3.68 Hitting, inning/score clutch
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If the 5th starters had faced as many hitters as the top 4, they would have had -1.36 inning/score clutch, matching the actual -1.39 of the big 4. That means that Cora had the same hook with both groups of pitchers. That's a slower / worse hook than average, costing the team 0.7 wins, and you can blame that on lack of trustworthy depth in the pen.
Sox starters have faced the 17th most hitters. There's a nice correlation between a team's starters facing more hitters and their inning/score clutch being worse.
--
Excluding all the clutch, the Sox rank 7th in MLB, but just 6th in the AL (the AL has the 2nd through 7th best teams and the five worst). Exclude the 5th starters, and they're ahead of the Yankees, 13.1 to 12.1.
Sox rank 25th in base/out clutch, 26th in inning/score clutch, and dead last in total clutch.
Who ranks first? The Yankees (first in base/out, 7th in inning /score). They have 14.1 wins of clutch on us.
There's no correlation at all between the two type of clutch for teams.
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ericmvan
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Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,911
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 21, 2019 17:09:39 GMT -5
Breakdown, corrected and adjusted for MLB averages and without the annoying second decimal digit!
+5.4 Hitting, raw +3.5 Bullpen, raw
+2.9 Starters, top 4, raw
+1.1 Hitting, base/out clutch +0.0, Bullpen, base/out clutch
-0.4 Bullpen, inning/score clutch
-0.7 Starters, slow hooks
-1.1, 5th Starters, base/out clutch
-2.0, 5th Starters, raw -2.0, Starters, top 4, base/out clutch
-3.7 Hitting, inning/score clutch
Top 3 things that killed the season:
-- Hitting with the game on the line (3.7 wins)
-- Starting pitching prone to big innings, 5th starters even worse than the big 4, who were bad (3.1 wins) -- Fifth starters (2.0 wins)
The bullpen has been 2.4 wins better than the average MLB team, even factoring in the need for slow hooks for the starters and despite a slightlu subpar performance with the game on the line. They have been terrific at keeping is in games.
And the fifth starters, the other thing that supposedly killed the season, have been less than a quarter of the suckage. The rest has been "clutch."
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Post by jerrygarciaparra on Aug 21, 2019 18:00:06 GMT -5
yes...it is the starting pitching...and to a lesser degree (in that they are probably attached at the hip) their home record.
But.....we have a win in us tonight. The magic number is to be 3 or 4 out at the end of August, then we have a non-scientific chance of getting to the playoffs.
And yes !! I want to go to the playoffs. Not concerned with whether they win it again. Would be a crying shame to have this group of guys does not make the playoffs. There are great players on this team. FFS, them not making the playoffs is an all time shock.
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Post by chrisfromnc on Aug 21, 2019 19:02:33 GMT -5
Two nights in a row the world is a better place because of Jackie Bradley!
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Post by jerrygarciaparra on Aug 21, 2019 19:39:15 GMT -5
Come on boys, pick up some more here. This pitcher is terrible isn't he ?
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Post by jerrygarciaparra on Aug 21, 2019 19:42:34 GMT -5
nice bunt by CVaz.....baseball like when they invented this wonderful game.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Aug 21, 2019 19:42:40 GMT -5
At one point earlier Remy said Marco was 3.9 to first base from the left side. He said it when the double play was avoided. No way.
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Post by jerrygarciaparra on Aug 21, 2019 19:47:15 GMT -5
JBJ giveth....JBJ taketh away.
edit; Good Lord.
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Post by kevfc89 on Aug 21, 2019 19:48:10 GMT -5
sac bunt was a horrible decision against a starting pitcher with a 7 ERA, with a guy who's been a good hitter this year at the plate.
I like him, but Cora's gotta get a better hold of this team. Hopefully the phillies don't get off the hook here.
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Post by kevfc89 on Aug 21, 2019 19:50:50 GMT -5
annnd they escape it. really inexcusable sac bunt by Vazquez
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