Sox Notes: The Return Of Bob Dalb
Sox Notes: The Return Of Bob Dalb
The Red Sox hit the home stretch, with three this weekend against the Orioles; Time to talk about the Wild Card; Fixing the defense; and Bob Dalb's resurgence
The Red Sox are bringing it all home for maybe the last time in 2021. It’s been quite a season. The generally low expectations going in, the inspired first three months and AL-leading record, the return of Chris Sale, the underwhelming deadline, the [unprintably] lousy August, the on-going COVID problems, and a run at a playoff spot including, potentially, a the Wild Card game at home in Fenway Park. It’s a lot to take in. Fortunately we don’t have to take it all in now. That’s what the off-season is for.
For now, it’s just 14 more games. Win enough and they’re in. That’s all that matters now. Well, that and subscribing to this newsletter. If you’re reading and you have subscribed, thank you! If you haven’t yet subscribed, please do so! It’s totally free, all you have to do is press this button and enter your email. Thanks for reading and subscribing!
Ahead of this most-important series against… the Orioles? [checks notes] Yup, the Orioles. Here are your weekend Sox Notes!
What’s Left
Tonight’s game with Baltimore marks the beginning of the final homestand of the season. It’s hard to design a more favorable one, short of every game coming against Baltimore. The Red Sox play three against those Orioles starting tonight, then get a day off, then two against the Mets, then a day off, then three against the Yankees, a scuffling team they’re directly competing against. Then we finish up with six on the road, three against Baltimore and three against Washington.
The Red Sox should go something like 10-4 during this stretch. That would put them at 93 wins and give them an overwhelming shot at one of the Wild Card spots. According to FanGraphs, they have a pretty good at pulling that off. FanGraphs has Boston with the second best chance to make the playoffs of any AL East team behind the Rays, who are at 100 percent. FanGraphs has the Red Sox at 75.4 percent, ahead of Toronto (68.9 percent), New York (50.8 percent), and Baltimore (0.0 percent).
Why? Likely due to the Red Sox remaining schedule as much as anything. The details are listed a few paragraphs above, but the average winning percentage for all remaining Red Sox opponents is .468, the equivalent to facing a 76-86 team every night. The Yankees remaining schedule offers them a .513 opponents average winning percentage. While they face Cleveland and the Rangers at home over their next six games, New York’s next nine games are three-game series at Boston, at Toronto, and home against Tampa.
Right now, the Yankees are playing for their playoff lives. If they don’t do very well in their next six very winnable games, they’re in some serious trouble. The Red Sox will face their biggest remaining challenge and their best chance to vanquish their largest foe in exactly a week from today (Friday, September 17). Mark your calendars!
The Defense Is Still Bad
We’ve been talking about team defense here at Sox Outsider for a while, and with good reason. The Red Sox make a lot of errors. Boston is currently second in baseball in errors with 104, four behind the league-”leading” Marlins’ 108.
They make them at inopportune times, too, although I’ll grant you there isn’t really an opportune time to make an error. Even the potentially less damaging times can get damaging real fast, as we saw against the Mariners last Monday, when a nobody-on-two-outs situation turned into a game-losing three run homer.
So the Red Sox aren’t a good defensive team. On that we can all agree. But it’s not the errors, or more precisely, it’s not just the errors that make them so. To wit:
That, as Red Sox Stats notes in a subsequent tweet, is abhorrent. Insane. Ridiculous. Laughable. Bananapantspoopyfacesillynopenopenope. What this means is the Red Sox are historically bad at turning batted balls into outs. That’s not just errors. That’s range. That’s ability to read, react, and get to batted balls. For infielders, it’s arm strength as well. It’s just total defense, or in this case, a lack of it.
Not to totally let the pitching staff off the hook either, because part of turning batted balls into outs is the opportunity to turn batted balls into outs, and a shot into the corner or off the Monster is a batted ball not turned into an out, and there have been more than our share of those. But that noted, I don’t think this is mostly or even much on the pitching. This is a team-wide defensive problem, one that is going to keep Chaim Bloom and every member of the front office up at night dreaming up ways to remedy it this off-season.
For now though, the team is kinda stuck. Putting their best defensive team on the field also means putting some of their best hitters on the bench. This is a roster construction issue as much as a defensive issue, or at least before it’s a defensive issue. The thing to do now though, as I’ve advocated before, is to, in effect, forgo defense. Play the best hitters and play as many of them as you can shoehorn into the lineup. Play to win games 10-9 rather than 3-2, or more realistically, losing 5-3.
The Red Sox have not only the ability to bludgeon teams with their bats (metaphorically speaking!) but there’s still some upside remaining in their lineup as well. The Red Sox can get from Xander Bogaerts and JD Martinez, both of whom haven’t hit up to their standards during the second half. Since the All Star break, Bogaerts has hit .258/.335/.428, while Martinez has hit .261/.310/.452. Both those guys are better hitters than that. Over that same time period, Rafael Devers has slugged .478, low for one of the best hitters in the game.
This team has its flaws. The way they’re going to win is by doing so much of what they do best - crushing the ball - that the errors won’t matter, or at least they’ll matter less. If they want to go anywhere in the playoffs, let alone make them, Boston is going to have to hit like the Blue Jays, scratch that, better than the Blue Jays. How’s this lineup look?
Enrique Hernandez, CF
Xander Bogaerts, SS
Rafael Devers, 3B
JD Martinez, DH
Kyle Schwarber, LF
Bobby Dalbec, 1B
Hunter Renfroe, RF
Christian Arroyo, 2B
Christian Vazquez, C
To me, that’s a pretty strong lineup. That’s a whole bunch of above-league-average hitters and Christian Vazquez. Is it a good defensive lineup? No. Clearly not. But they should mash. And if they don’t, well, you weren’t going to go far trying to teach pigs to fly anyway.
Bob Dalb
Lost in all this COVID and Wild Card hullabaloo has been the emergence of Bobby Dalbec, or as my son calls him, Bob Dalb (said quickly, this sounds like, “bobdob”). At the trade deadline the Red Sox had a huge first base problem. Dalbec was hitting so anemically that he was barely playable had he been a great defensive shortstop, let alone a below-average defensive first baseman. The Red Sox made a run at star first baseman Anthony Rizzo at the trade deadline in attempt to fix the problem, but were out-bid by the Yankees (Rizzo doesn’t look right in a Yankees uniform, if you ask me). The Red Sox got Kyle Schwarber instead (and inopportune error aside, he’s been fantastic), but as has been pointed out here and elsewhere, Schwarber is not a first baseman. Also, he was injured, both of which gave Dalbec a bit more run at first base because, well, there wasn’t anyone else.
So what has happened since? Dalbec has hit .284/.361/.631. That’s a .992 OPS. Keep in mind, this was a guy who, up to that point, had hit .219/.264/.409. But here’s the crazy thing. Those stats are actually what he’s done since the All Star break. Since August 1, Dalbec is the third best hitter, not on the Red Sox, but in all of baseball! I’m not making this up. Check it out!
There’s some weird names on that list (not the least of which is Dalbec’s!) because of the small sample size involved, but still, the man has been better than anyone could’ve imagined. He’s striking out far less, walking much more. He’s homering more frequently. He’s handling breaking balls outside the strike zone far better than he had earlier in the season, and he’s hitting breaking balls inside the zone far better as well. He’s just a far, far better hitter, or at least he’s been playing one on TV.
He’s still striking out a lot. He’s probably always going to do that, but if he can keep it around 30 percent or less, which he’s done for two consecutive months after four consecutive months at (oddly) 39 percent, he can be a productive hitter, if not quite at the level he’s been at.
The other thing he’s doing really well which he wasn’t doing for the first four months of the season is hitting right handed (same sided) pitching. Since August 1, he’s hitting .311/.400/.852 against right-handed pitching in 70 plate appearances. In fact, he’s hitting .318/.400/.568 against righties, which is better than his line against lefties during that time. Baseball is strange!
Dalbec credits the turnaround to trying to do less, both mentally and physically. There’s also probably a fair bit of good luck in there as well, as his BABIP is sky high, as is the percentage of fly balls he’s hit that have gone for home runs. We can discuss how much of this is luck, how much of it is skill, and how much is repeatable, but regardless Dalbec has been spectacular for going on two months now, and it’s been as welcome as it’s been fun to watch.
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