The 2011 Red Sox Pitching Staff

So, yeah, the time frame for getting my weighted mean pitching projections was a little bit off - a few days, a couple months, no big difference. Fortunately, there weren't a ton of baseball stories in the meantime and it gave my gingerbread Fenway plenty of time at the top.

Just as with the hitting statistics, I’m using a 5-4-3 weighted mean for the IP, ERA, FIP, and xFIP and am not using any kind of park effects. Depending on which stat you would like to believe (ERA, FIP, xFIP) and whether or not you’d like to believe my rather basic projection system in the first place, the Red Sox pitchers should allow between 637 and 665 runs. That would place them between 5th and 8th in the AL. None of these numbers are defense adjusted. While it would be difficult to make defensive projections with Youkilis moving to 3B for the first time in several years, Ellsbury moving back to center field from left, and Carl Crawford moving to left, but with questions about how he’ll maintain his defensive value in Fenway thanks to the Green Monster, I feel comfortable saying that the defense should be above average.

Another quick note, there are replacement level innings in the mix as well. Games where you lose on the road (and therefore don’t pitch in the bottom of the 9th) and extra innings games about come out in the wash, so I used the nice round number of 1450 innings pitched. Based on who I expected to pitch (and an additional reliever to account for the impressive bullpen depth the Red Sox have accumulated), the innings totaled up to 1344. This left 106 innings of replacement level pitching, split evenly between starting and relief pitching. The replacement level ERA was based on a study by Fangraphs (AL reliever: 4.40, AL starter: 5.63), but may be a bit high if the depressed 2010 offensive levels represent a new run scoring environment as it was written a few years ago.

Without further ado, here are your Red Sox pitchers:

		IP	ERA	FIP	xFIP
SP 1	Lester	207	3.29	3.27	3.44
SP 2	Beckett	167.33	4.51	3.82	3.53
SP 3	Buchholz	122	3.49	4.07	4.18
SP 4	Lackey	189	4.08	3.96	4.10
SP 5	Matsuzaka	125.33	4.26	4.21	4.74
Swing	Wakefield	146.67	4.74	4.64	5.16
Closer	Papelbon	68	2.82	2.97	3.47
SU	Bard	63	2.53	3.37	3.47
RH	Jenks	55	3.7	3.43	3.31
RH	Atchison	60	4.29	4.38	4.01
LH	Okajima	60	3.56	4.19	4.55
RH	Albers	25	4.66	4.2	4.65
RH	Wheeler	55.67	3.26	4.35	4.18
Fill	Replacement	106	5.15	5.15	5.15

A few thoughts on the projections...

1. The exact identity of the left handed pitcher (or pitchers) in the bullpen isn’t a huge deal. Because they’re throwing 50-60 innings and have very similar ERAs, FIPs, and xFIPS swapping out Okajima for other pitchers doesn’t make a big difference in the overall number. The amount of variation surrounding expectations for a relievers performance is easily dwarfed by any kind of variability between pitchers in the back end of the bullpen.

2. Perhaps the biggest impact will be the depth of the bullpen arms available in AAA. Thanks to Andrew Miller’s interesting contract, which causes his option for next year to vest if he is picked up on waivers, the Red Sox can safely stash him in AAA despite the fact that he no longer has options remaining. This was possible because Miller wants to stay with the Red Sox and believe they give him the best shot at becoming a Major League caliber pitcher again.

3. Hopefully the starters can throw more than 800 innings. The weighted means penalize Buchholz for not being an established pitcher until 2010, but with an innings total of 179 last year, Buccholz should have a limit of around 200 or 210 innings, if he has one at all. Beckett and Matsuzaka are hardly sure things, but having a swing man like Wakefield who can throw 150 innings if needed is massive. However, Wakefield is getting older and can’t be relied upon quite as often as he used to. Perhaps with an eye towards a post-Wakefield ERA, the Red Sox snagged Alfredo Aceves off of waivers. While his stuff isn’t spectacular, Aceves has succeeded in both the bullpen and as a starter and could provide a nice insurance policy on Wakefield’s back. As an added bonus, the Yankees let him go and are now basically having to hold open tryouts for their 4th and 5th starting spots.

4. Overall, FIP and xFIP don’t seem to differ substantially from ERA projections, although they do for specific players. Buchholz is probably the most interesting of the bunch; he posted an ERA of 2.33, despite having underlying peripherals that indicate an ERA much closer to 4 (3.62 FIP, 4.20 xFIP). According to scouts, the stuff is still there, but in order to continue to post an ace level ERA, he’ll need to start striking out more batters. Jon Lester made a similar leap between the 2008 season where he was seemingly pitching over his head (3.32 ERA, 4.08 xFIP, 6.5 K/9) to his 2009 breakout (3.41 ERA, 3.13 xFIP, 9.96 K/9). It seems a bit odd talking about a breakout year when a player’s ERA gets worse, but if you saw Lester in 2008 and 2009 or 2010, the improvement is obvious. These types of breakthroughs don’t happen all that often and it would be a huge credit to the Red Sox coaches if they managed to convert two “lucky” pitchers into top tier starters in 5 years.

Happy Holidays

I should have a post about the new Red Sox pitching staff up in the next couple days. In the mean time, you'll have to make do with a photo of my holiday project, a gingerbread Fenway Park. And yes, that is a gummi Dave Roberts stealing second base.

No Russel Martin after all...

I've updated the lineup in my original post using Varitek's 3 year weighted means and Saltalamacchia's career numbers. Both decrease the runs scored by the Sox, 25 using Varitek's 3 year weighted means, but only 8 with Saltalamachhia's career numbers. Check out the original post for more information.

Getting to know the latest additions to the Sox bullpen

With the signing of Bobby Jenks and Matt Albers over the last couple of days, the Red Sox bullpen now has at least enough bodies to start the season. Jenks is the much bigger name of the two, and he came with a much bigger price tag ($12 million over two years). Theo has to be happy that he avoided a third year, which has been given to many of the free agent relievers this offseason, such as Joaquin Benoit, Scott Downs, Matt Guerrier, and Jesse Crain. In a recent article, Dave Cameron pointed out that multi-year contracts for relievers just don't work, unless you happen to be signing Mariano Rivera.

At first glance, Jenks looks like a pitcher in decline. Between 2008 and 2010 his ERA has steadily risen from 2.63 to 3.71 to 4.44, and in the end of 2010 he lost the White Sox closer job due to injuries and inefficiency. However, if you look at his underlying numbers, 2010 was one of Jenks' best seasons of his career. Jenks has always had an electric fastball that flirted with triple digits in the early part of his career, but that did not always translate into strikeouts. His strikeouts per nine innings in 2008 was a career low 5.55; he was able to maintain h is good ERA thanks to a low walk rate (2.48/9 IP) and some good luck in the form of a high strand rate and a very low percentage of fly balls that left the yard. Since 2008 his strikeout rate has risen, despite increasing ERAs. In 2009 Jenks was victimized by a high proportion of fly balls that left the park (17%). On average, 10% of fly balls become home runs, and this is considered to be a skill that is outside a pitcher's ability to control (the number of fly balls allowed, on the other hand, is not). In 2010 Jenks posted one of the highest strikeout rates in the major leagues (10.42/9 IP), kept his walks in check (3.08/9 IP), and had a very high groundball percentage. Despite the spectacular strikeout and groundball rates, Jenks had his worst year since becoming the White Sox closer. Quite simply, it doesn't add up. Look for Jenks to have a great bounce back season, and give the Red Sox a trio of power arms that rivals the best top three on any other team. Because Jenks was non-tendered by the White Sox, he also won't cost the Red Sox any additional draft picks, which are needed to restock the farm system following the Adrian Gonzalez trade. As an added bonus, the Red Sox now can comfortably let Papelbon walk as a free agent following the 2011 season. Daniel Bard is still the closer in waiting, but if for some reason he doesn't prove ready the Red Sox have a proven closer as a fall back option.

Matt Albers is a lot less exciting. He's reliable, having pitched more than 67 innings in both 2009 and 2010, and can be stretched out into a long relief role, as shown by his 110 innings pitched for Houston in 2007 and the fact that he led the AL in relief appearances longer than one inning last year. He's also mediocre – he doesn't strike a lot of batters out (5-6 per 9 IP), he walks more than he should (4-5 BB/9), and should be good for an ERA around 4.50. He does keep the ball on the ground, keeping his home run rates low. While he won't be in the mix for the high leverage innings, he should be a good innings eater, which could be key given the injury potential in both the bullpen and the starting rotation. Replacement level pitchers are terrible; it varies from year to year, but often times they have an ERA of 5 or greater. Albers value isn't related to how well he'll pitch, but rather that you can count on him to be better than replacement level. Based on Fangraph's Wins Above Replacement statistic (WAR), the Red Sox had almost -2 wins from individuals with negative WAR. Even if Albers can pitch some of those innings at replacement level, he'll be an asset.

There is definitely room for another bullpen signing, particularly another lefty if the Red Sox was to keep Doubront in AAA as a starter. Right now Doubront is the only left handed pitcher I've projected to be in their bullpen, as both Albers and Jenks are right handed. Alternatively, if Rich Hill and Andrew Miller pitch well in spring training, either of them could snag a spot in the bullpen. As both are left handers, this would allow the Red Sox to send Doubront back to AAA for more seasoning as a starter. Both Hill and Miller are former starters who are trying to remake their career as relief pitchers, so they're hardly a sure thing. One final option might be to simply go with all the righties. As Tony Massarotti points out, both Jenks and Bard had excellent years against left handed batters in 2010, despite being right handed.

Re-envisioning the 2011 Red Sox Lineup

Remember that post I wrote a month ago about the 2011 lineup? If you haven't read it already, you can probably ignore most of what was written after two absolutely massive moves in the last two weeks. If you didn't understand what Theo meant when he said 2010 was a "bridge year", now it has to be clear. After several years of many players moving in and out of roster spots, the core of the Red Sox team is locked up for a very long period of time. Jacoby Ellsbury and Kevin Youkilis are under contract through 2013, Pedroia through 2015, Crawford through 2017, and if the Adrian Gonzalez extension goes through he'll be under contract until after the 2018 season. On the pitching side, Buchholz, Beckett, and Lackey are under team control through 2014, as is Lester, although the Red Sox have an affordable option for the 2015 season. If you're a Red Sox fan who is a hot stove junkie, be ready to get disappointed over the next few years. The team is going to be very similar for a very long period of time.

Left field was a disaster for the Red Sox last year. While Daniel Nava, Darnell McDonald, and Ryan Kalish all did a lot more than the team expected, the offensive bar is set very high for left field. The Red Sox left fielders ranked 28th in batting average, 28th in OBP, and 18th in slugging. Carl Crawford is an obvious improvement offensively, and according to all the advanced metrics his defense is off the charts. Also, catcher was a weak point for the team last year. Current reports indicate that Russell Martin is close to signing with the team. While he is not the All Star he was in 2008 (thanks Joe Torre! Who knew that 449 games in 3 years would harm a young catcher?), Martin still posts an excellent OBP for a catcher (.347 last season, .360 for his career). For a lineup as deep as the 2011 Red Sox, a catcher who can work the count would be a nice addition.

But what does that mean for the 2011 season? With the additions of Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, just what does the Red Sox lineup look like now? Quite simply, it looks pretty damn good.

		Average	OBP	Slugging	OPS+	UZR/150
C	Russell Martin	0.257	0.358	0.347	92	N/A
1B	Adrian Gonzalez	0.286	0.390	0.524	152	1.4
2B	Dustin Pedroia	0.300	0.371	0.478	120	9.6
3B	Kevin Youkilis	0.308	0.406	0.560	150	6.9*
SS	Marco Scutaro	0.275	0.350	0.387	96	-3.5*
LF	Carl Crawford	0.298	0.349	0.457	117	20.6
CF	Jacoby Ellsbury**	0.292	0.347	0.406	93	4.8
RF	JD Drew	0.269	0.375	0.492	124	6.4
DH	David Ortiz	0.258	0.357	0.501	122	N/A

*Kevin Youkilis' UZR/150 is his career at 3B, not a weighted mean. Marco Scutaro's UZR is his career at SS, as a very strong 2008 in a small sample size skewed his 2008-2010 weighted mean.

** Jacoby Ellsbury's statistics are a weighted mean from 2008 and 2009 (5, 4), and his defense is for all outfield positions.

Looking at the weighted averages (5, 4, 3) using 2008-2010 stats for the projected Red Sox lineup you can see how there are no weak spots in the lineup. This is a simple model, and I haven't adjusted numbers for park factors, aging, or similar corrections. While Ellsbury, Scutaro, and Martin have low slugging percentages, no expected starter has an OBP lower than .347. Just how good is this lineup? Baseball Musing's lineup analysis tool predicts that the ideal lineup would score 5.893 runs per game, or 954 for the entire season. While that doesn't quite challenge the 1931 Yankees' record of 1,067, it would have topped the 2010 Yankees' league leading total by almost 100 runs. The lineup tool only looks at OBP and slugging, so the speed of Ellsbury and Crawford doesn't contribute anything. It also typically ends up with some odd lineup results - the "ideal" lineup has Youkilis and Adrian Gonzalez hitting 1/2, followed by Marco Scutaro. Pedrioa and Crawford, who are likely to hit 1/2 according to Buster Olney.

Update December 14, 2010:

Looks like the reports of signing Russel Martin were premature. I suppose it serves me right for actually believing a baseball rumor before the ink is dry on a contract. Re-running the lineup analysis tool with Jason Varitek's weighted means (.259 OBP, .305 slugging) drops the runs scored per game from 5.893 to 5.718, or from 954 to 926. This is a substantial drop, about 3 wins using the rule of thumb of 10 runs are worth a win over the course of a season, although there is reason to believe that Saltalamacchia should beat those numbers. Using Saltalamacchia's career numbers (.315 OBP, .386 slugging) softens the offensive blow substantially, with the Red Sox projected to score 5.851 runs per game, a difference of only 6 runs over an entire season and would still have easily topped the AL in runs scored last year.

Not only would this lineup score a lot of runs, there are no major weaknesses defensively as well. Using a weighted mean of UZR/150 (available from Fangraphs, it is the number of runs the fielder would save (positive) or cost (negative) compared to an average fielder over 150 plays, which is about a season's worth of playing time) Marco Scutaro is the only fielder below average.

Where does Jed Lowrie fit in?
After a strong finish to the season, many folks are pushing for Jed Lowrie to be given the starting shortstop job, pushing Marco Scutaro to a super utility role. I agree with this, as Scutaro is a free agent after the 2011 season and in an admittedly small sample size, Lowrie was the best hitting shortstop in the AL. I've put Scutaro in my lineup for a couple of reasons, one of which is based on practicality. The front office has made it clear that they're going to start the season with Lowrie as the super utility player. Also, putting Lowrie in the lineup would make the runs per game calculation a bit tricky; due to his age and injuries Lowrie hasn't accumulated enough MLB at bats to make a good prediction using my admittedly basic model.

What about Ryan Kalish and Josh Reddick?
For 2011, both Kalish and Reddick appear to be blocked. As I wrote in my original post about the 2011 lineup, the Red Sox feel that Kalish could use more time in AAA, despite his strong showing last September. If a major injury occurs to an outfielder, it wouldn't surprise me to see the Red Sox turn to Kalish again. In 2011, the path to the big leagues is clear for at least one of them. JD Drew's contract expires after the 2011 season, and Kalish's great athleticism and arm strength seems like a great fit with the spacious right field in Fenway. The future isn't as clear for Reddick. He is organizational depth for the time being, but may end up as part of a trade package, as the younger Kalish has passed him in front office's mind. His line at AAA (.266/.301/.466) isn't particularly impressive, but the potential is definitely there, as shown by his post All Star Break numbers (.363/.385/.643). Reddick didn't impress in the Dominican Winter League either, although he showed a good approach at the plate (10 BB in 76 PA, much higher than his AAA walk rate). Next year is a make or break year for Reddick with the Red Sox; another mediocre showing in AAA could lead to him getting traded for some in season help.

Right of first refusal?

Based on comments in a recent Boston Globe article, it sounds as if Adrian Beltre is essentially giving the Red Sox the opportunity to match the offer he has on the table from Oakland. Beltre is apparently even willing to leave a bit of money on the table, saying "If everything was close to the same, I would go back to Boston". Granted, Beltre's agent is Scott Boras so this could all be a ruse designed to get better offers from west coast teams, but based on the quotes it sounds like Beltre genuinely wants to come back to Boston.

I've always felt that resigning Beltre was more important than resigning Victor Martinez, mostly because of Beltre's exceptional defense and Martinez's poor defense and a looming positional change. The big question was whether or not Beltre would want to remain on the east coast, as he had played every prior season with either the Dodgers or the Mariners and his family remained in the Los Angeles area after he signed with the Red Sox. The Oakland offer (5 years, $64 million according to ESPN's Jayson Stark) remains on the table. Beltre has said the years are more important than the dollars, so if the Red Sox could sign Beltre for 5 years and $60 million, I'd be ecstatic. I ought to be, considering I felt that he would end up somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 years and $60 million coming into the off season. Right now the Red Sox are offering 4 years, $54 million - a slightly higher salary than Oakland, but a year less.

To top it all off, if the A's are the team to sign Beltre, they'd only have to give up their second round pick, as their first round pick is protected.

Red Sox 2011 Options: 3 no brainers and a mild suprise

The Red Sox announced that they'll pick up David Ortiz' $12.5 million option for next season, as well as the option for Scott Atchison. The decision on Ortiz sounds like it was made awhile ago. It probably is an overpay, but it gives the team the team an enormous amount of flexibility next offseason, if they want to pursue a DH type such as Prince Fielder. They declined the options for Bill Hall ($9.25 million, $500,000 buyout) and Felipe Lopez. While Hall had a solid season as a super sub last year, playing every position but catcher and first base, the $9.25 million option was never really in play. It will be interesting to see if Hall can get a starting job somewhere, or if he'll decide that getting semi-regular PT all over the diamond is the way to go. Declining Lopez' option isn't a surprise either; the Red Sox picked him in late September, most likely hoping to get a compensatory draft pick out of him.

The one potential surprise in here is the Red Sox picking up Scott Atchison's option. The key thing to remember here is that the Red Sox are not necessarily expecting Atchison to be a huge contributor, but instead a solid option in the back of the bullpen. Atchison has a average strikeout rate (6.2 K/9), an average walk rate (2.85 BB/9), which unsurprisingly led to an average ERA on the season (4.50, ERA+=97, where 100 is league average). For $40,000 over the major league minimum, average is actually pretty good.