A Successful Series

Success comes in different packages

We don’t get everything we want in life. Sometimes they’re out of vanilla. Sometimes the electricity goes off. Sometimes you go to your adult league baseball practice and there’s another team using the field and you have to play on a nearby softball field and the dirt may as well be cement and there’s no mound and the backstop is so short that every foul ball has to be chased down a hill.

As I’ve gotten older though, I’ve learned how important a positive attitude can be. A bit of positivity, even if it’s forced, can alter the way you look at the world for the better. Sure, they’re out of vanilla, but they have strawberry. Sure, the electricity is off, but it’ll go back on soon enough, and in the meantime we can all sit around and chat. Sure, the field sucks, but it’s a beautiful day and you’re outside playing baseball.

In that vein, I’d like to offer the glass half full view of the just-completed Red Sox/White Sox series. Sure, the Red Sox just split a four game series at home, but

1. We don’t have to look at Tony La Russa anymore!

2. The Red Sox won two games when their starting pitching wasn’t very good. The combined line was 18 innings pitched, 26 hits, 13 runs, four walks, and 19 strikeouts. The walks and strikeouts were quite good, but there was a bit too much of the ol’ runny-runs. Also, only one of the starters made it out of the fifth inning, though that could be in part because two of the games were seven inning affairs and manager Alex Cora managed them as shorter games, thus needing fewer innings from his starters. Still, though, they won two games!

3. And in the two they didn’t win, the Red Sox scored three total runs, so it’s hard to pin them on the pitching, starting or otherwise. Offenses like the Red Sox that aren’t especially on-base heavy are prone to slumps, maybe more so than teams that tend to get on base more. When the power isn’t there, Boston’s OBP can dry up leading to very few baserunners and minimal scoring opportunities and that’s likely what happened in those two games. So even with great starting pitching, those two games were going to be extremely difficult to win without more scoring.

4. But Matt, you might say, the Red Sox are second in on-base percentage by team, just .001 behind the Dodgers. Yes, but they’re towards the bottom of the league in walk rate, 27th in baseball. Their on-base percentage comes from batting average, and that can be fickle.

5. To further illustrate the point and bring us back to the series, yesterday’s shellacking of White Sox ace Lucas Giolito went like this: home run, single, single, single, single, single, ground out, single, walk, pop out, fly out. You’ll note how BABIP-dependent this rally was. That’s not to say the Red Sox got lucky! They hit the ball fine, better than fine in some cases, but singles can be defeated. They can be defeated by good pitching, they can be defeated by good fielding, and they can be defeated by bad luck.
   
   Here is the Red Sox first inning rally with numbers from Baseball Savant. Pay particular attention to the last category, that’s xBA or Expected Batting Average. It compares these hits to similar hits and tells us how often those similar hits were actually hits (if that makes any sense).
   

   

   
   Enrique Hernandez’s homer had an expected batting average of 1.000, which makes sense. That’s a homer everywhere. Verdugo’s single though is only a single .36 percent of the time. J.D. Martinez’s single is only a single .38 percent of the time. Anyway, you can see the numbers, but this is a point I’m bringing up because it’s one that concerns me about the construction of this offense. Things are going well now, but this is the kind of offense that can turn off for stretches at a time. That doesn’t have to be a fatal flaw, but it does mean there can be some series like the first Orioles series in the future.

6. OK, that wasn’t very ‘glass half full’ of me. Here’s something positive: the first four Red Sox hits against Giolito all came on two strike counts. Three of the four came while the batter was down in the count, and the first two came while the batter was down 0-2 in the count. That’s really good hitting! Typically when hitters are down 0-2 in the count, they’re terrible! Mike Trout, to pick a random example, is a career .305/.419/.584 hitter (which is ridiculous, by the way). But after going down in the count 0-2, Trout bats .218/.286.406 for his career. And that’s Mike Trout! Getting down in the count 0-2 isn’t a great idea, but it’s good to see some hard contact even when down in the count. That said, the Red Sox have a team OPS of .574 after being down 0-2 so hopefully a bit less of that in the future.

7. Helping the Red Sox cause was Lucas Giolito who couldn’t get his changeup to work properly. Hernandez’s homer, as well as singles by Devers, Cordero, and Gonzalez call game on changeups that were elevated in the zone (compared to where they were intended to go). Vazquez’s single was on a changeup too, but his was a bunt, so I’m not counting that either way. Giolito’s change was one of the best pitches in baseball in 2019 and was still quite good last season as well. Perhaps he had an off-night, or perhaps this offense, facing a great pitcher throwing a great pitch, and consistently down in the count, just crushed.

8. That was more positive.

   Perhaps the most surprising thing about this offense 17 games into the season is how deep it is. Everyone knows J.D. Martinez is killing the ball, but Bogaerts, Verdugo, Devers, Vazquez, and Arroyo all have OPSs in the .800s or above, and Enrique Hernandez isn’t to far off at .768. That’s seven guys with good offensive production. Are they all this good? I guess we’ll see (I’m going to look at this soon!) but for now at least, it’s a pretty imposing lineup.

   Last point is on Garrett Whitlock, who continues to dominate anyone put in front of him. Here he is putting reigning AL MVP Jose Abreu to bed.

   Red Sox Stats @redsoxstats

   Mr. MVP meet Whitlock

   

   And here he is making Nick Madrigal look silly.

   Red Sox Stats @redsoxstats

   

I hope to have more on Whitlock at some point soon, but for now, “dude is good” will have to suffice.

The schedule doesn’t get a whole lot easier. Boston gets two games against Toronto before four at home against fellow division-leaders Seattle. Then it’s two each against the Mets and Rangers to close out the month (there are two more against the Rangers to finish out that series in May). The baseball season is moving, my friends, and if nothing else, the Red Sox have given us a reason to care.

Happy Patriots’ Day to you and yours. Thanks for reading.