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4/25-4/28 Red Sox vs. Astros Series Thread
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Post by Guidas on Apr 26, 2013 14:00:35 GMT -5
Le Lineup, as they say in Paris (Texas): Ellsbury, Gomes (LF), Pedroia, Ortiz, Napoli, Nava (RF), Middlebrooks, Ross, Ciriaco. Dempster.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2013 14:16:52 GMT -5
Lackey's return this weekend, and return to a winning form, is very important. Lester and Buchholz are 9-0. The other Sox pitchers are 6-7. Lester and Buchholz will come back to earth. Someone(s) must pick it up. This is something that I actually did some research on. Assuming that Lester and Buccholz really are this good, what percentage of their starts could the Red Sox expect to win? To do this I looked at several seasons for dominant pitchers on good teams and the percentage of the time their team walked off the field happy when they were on the mound. What I found is that for the most part, good teams won about 2/3 of the time when their dominant pitcher was on the mound. Obviously the Red Sox won't win every time Lester or Buccholz is on the mound. They probably aren't winning 90% of those games or even 80%. No matter how good you think they are, 75% is probably the most optimistic expectation of the percentage of their starts the Red Sox will win. Even 2/3 would be a high number. If the Sox win 2/3 of their starts total they would have 45 wins. They would need at least another 45 wins in the remaining 96 games to get to even the minimum 90 wins needed to consider contending for the playoffs. That's the pace the team is on now by they way. Making the playoffs when winning only 45% of the starts make by the back three of the rotation is going to be a very tall order.
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Post by brianthetaoist on Apr 26, 2013 15:05:10 GMT -5
Lackey's return this weekend, and return to a winning form, is very important. Lester and Buchholz are 9-0. The other Sox pitchers are 6-7. Lester and Buchholz will come back to earth. Someone(s) must pick it up. Dempster's been very solid. He's gotten squeezed out of wins he deserved by our bullpen and/or struggling offense. He was even pretty solid in his last start with those 4 ER vs. the Royals, and if Iggy was at short it'd have been only 2 runs. W-L isn't really a good indicator of starter performance. But yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing how Lack rebounds from this, especially considering the promise he showed in the Toronto start. Yeah, the top guys will come down to earth, but Dempster has been excellent and Doubront has been good. The overall pitching has been good with the exception of Aceves. Sure, Lackey pitching well is important but that's just because every starting pitcher is important and depth is key. Personally, I think the incredibly rapid development of Webster into a viable - even desirable - option to start games in Boston is one of the most important development of the first few weeks here. Having Webster and Morales as 6th and 7th starter options (and Crazy Alfredo as 8th if he gets it together) makes this team really tough to knock too far off course over the whole season.
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Post by jchang on Apr 26, 2013 15:10:23 GMT -5
weren't the sox 25-5 in games with Pedro one year? Is that asking too much? I recall a story where the sox were 20 games over 500, so they were a 500 team without Pedro, making the playoffs.
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Post by jmei on Apr 26, 2013 15:16:54 GMT -5
Small sample size alert, but so far Dempster has a 2.88 xFIP and Doubront has a 3.17 xFIP. Their crazy strikeout rates (12.38 K/9 for Dempster, 11.34 K/9 for Doubront) are likely to come down significantly, but it's really unfair to say that they're dragging down the team or anything. Rather, they've both pitched pretty spectacularly so far and just maintaining their current levels of performance all but guarantees that the Red Sox will be in the playoff race in September.
EDIT: Minimum 15 IP, the Red Sox currently four of the fifteen starters with the lowest xFIP in the American League (5th (Dempster), 6th (Buchholz), 8th (Doubront), and 14th (Lester)).
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Post by thelavarnwayguy on Apr 26, 2013 15:48:58 GMT -5
The Sox are currently 3rd in the league in runs produced. If they can keep that up their #3,4 and 5 guys should have a higher than 50% win ratio I would think. They are all capable of it.
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Post by gregblossersbelly on Apr 26, 2013 16:14:28 GMT -5
I'm going to look at it this way. If Lester and Buchholz are each 10 games over .500, the rest of the staff only has to be .500 to finish with 91 wins and thick in the middle of the playoff picture.
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Post by sammo420 on Apr 26, 2013 16:31:59 GMT -5
Its April people. I like being optimistic as much as the next guy but the most over used term on this site is "small sample size" and that applies here as much as much as it has anywhere. If we're still doing this at the all star break then I'll start to believe.
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danr
Veteran
Posts: 1,871
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Post by danr on Apr 26, 2013 16:37:54 GMT -5
Well, who expected this? I know I didn't. I thought the team would be a .500 team, but not much more. That still may be the end result, but this start makes a better end a better end a greater possibility.
I do think that most prognosticators got the AL East very wrong. Most picked Toronto because of the deals they made. They aren't working out very well. Even if they did, it isn't that good a team.
I still think the Orioles are the team to beat, and it isn't going to be easy.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Apr 26, 2013 16:50:20 GMT -5
weren't the sox 25-5 in games with Pedro one year? Is that asking too much? I recall a story where the sox were 20 games over 500, so they were a 500 team without Pedro, making the playoffs. 1999 Pedro starts: 24-5 All others: 70-63
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Post by brianthetaoist on Apr 26, 2013 18:51:02 GMT -5
Dempster is just striking out a ton of guys, amazing.
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Post by mredsox89 on Apr 26, 2013 18:59:36 GMT -5
Ross goes massive with a blast over the Sports Authority sign
Please get him more ABs over Salty
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Post by rangoon82 on Apr 26, 2013 19:01:56 GMT -5
I thought Ciriaco was gonna touch em all there. Would have been a great back to back.
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Post by mattpicard on Apr 26, 2013 19:50:43 GMT -5
2 homers for D-Ross, this time back to back with WMB! Nice to see some power production tonight.
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Post by jmei on Apr 26, 2013 19:55:42 GMT -5
Dempster continues to rack up crazy strikeout numbers. 7 Ks through 4 innings tonight to just 1 BB. It means his pitch counts get a little unwieldy, but I'll take six innings of great pitching any day.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 26, 2013 19:56:16 GMT -5
Another homer for WMB. It would be nice if he could do anything else ever.
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Post by mattpicard on Apr 26, 2013 20:10:31 GMT -5
Bang-bang play at the plate, 5-2. Nava has a very solid OF arm, even in RF. I've seen him overthrow the cutoff man twice since being in RF, but that was a terrific play to almost nail Grossman at home.
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Post by Guidas on Apr 26, 2013 20:42:43 GMT -5
Another homer for WMB. It would be nice if he could do anything else ever. Besides strike out. The at bats in the last couple nights have been better; then again, this is Houston sooooo... Maybe it will get him headed in the right direction, though.
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wcp3
Veteran
Posts: 3,842
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Post by wcp3 on Apr 26, 2013 21:49:53 GMT -5
How does Remy not point out the fact that Middlebrooks was easily back to the bag in time?
I guess he's too busy thinking about the next joke he's gonna make about his hair or Orsillo stealing mustard.
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Post by mredsox89 on Apr 26, 2013 21:56:05 GMT -5
At worst it was simultaneous that WMB was back to the bag, but of course they don't even bother to mention that even after showing the replay 4 times
I love how Bailey is warming up in a 3 run game, but that 4th run, that's what makes the difference. It's the conventional strategy so I'm not going to get on Farrell about it, but the conventional strategy isn't exactly based on statistics and actual evidence as has been discussed on here many times
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 26, 2013 22:26:32 GMT -5
I love how Bailey is warming up in a 3 run game, but that 4th run, that's what makes the difference. It's the conventional strategy so I'm not going to get on Farrell about it, but the conventional strategy isn't exactly based on statistics and actual evidence as has been discussed on here many times Autopilot. One of the things I always hear in defense of various managerial blunders is that managers are acting on information that we don't have. How a guy is feeling physically or emotionally, how he's throwing that day, whatever. And I can never really buy it because so often we see things like this-- four runs, whatever, three runs, time to get The Closer! Who's due up? Doesn't matter, it's a three run lead! So maybe managers are making certain decisions based on special information that we don't have. But man, we see them make an awful lot of decisions that are obviously motivated by nothing more than convention.
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Post by gregblossersbelly on Apr 27, 2013 9:08:01 GMT -5
Last night's game did something that I didn't think was possible. Made Mike Mayock sound entertaining.
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Post by bluechip on Apr 27, 2013 9:25:04 GMT -5
I love how Bailey is warming up in a 3 run game, but that 4th run, that's what makes the difference. It's the conventional strategy so I'm not going to get on Farrell about it, but the conventional strategy isn't exactly based on statistics and actual evidence as has been discussed on here many times Autopilot. One of the things I always hear in defense of various managerial blunders is that managers are acting on information that we don't have. How a guy is feeling physically or emotionally, how he's throwing that day, whatever. And I can never really buy it because so often we see things like this-- four runs, whatever, three runs, time to get The Closer! Who's due up? Doesn't matter, it's a three run lead! So maybe managers are making certain decisions based on special information that we don't have. But man, we see them make an awful lot of decisions that are obviously motivated by nothing more than convention. Yup. Its amazing that stats changed how the game is played in some ways (looking for pitchers with great strikeout to walk ratios, looking at OBP, disregarding rbis), but still has not changed how teams use their bullpen one bit.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Apr 27, 2013 9:44:57 GMT -5
The other argument is that it's political; saves = money, if you take saves away from your closer he's going to be mad and his agent is going to be mad, etc. But Andrew Bailey getting no saves a couple weeks ago despite having the "established closer" tag on him and by all accounts he was fine with it. Ok, fine, you're not going to use Rivera or Papelbon or Nathan in an unconventional bullpen. But really, how many of those guys are out there these days? Was Casey Jansen and his half a season of closer experience really going to bitch about not getting every save opportunity in Toronto? How is it that the Rays are somehow clever enough to take 35-year old washed-out Fernando Rodney and miraculously turn him into a shutdown reliever, but they couldn't get past having to use him in nearly every situation that technically qualified as a "save"? Was Rodney really in a position to dictate how he was used coming into the year? It's been said over and over that you can build a great bullpen out of spare parts and castoffs, and it's true. So if that's possible, shouldn't it be easy to create a closerless bullpen? Is "Hey, cast-offs, journeymen and derelicts, we're giving you all a chance to rebuild your careers, but you're going to have to share the save opportunities" really such a hard sell?
I really, seriously do not understand.
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Post by honkbal on Apr 27, 2013 11:30:02 GMT -5
I can't find a link, but I was listening to Farrell's post-game comments this morning and heard him actually say that the reason the last run was important was because it allowed them to rest Bailey. Because, you know, if it's a three run game you have no choice but to use your closer?
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