2008 MLB Preview/Message from God

I was going to write a detailed preview of the 2008 before seeing this in Over the Monster. There is no need for my prognosticating when it is clear that more powerful forces are favoring the Sox to repeat as World Series champions.

No no-no

I don’t want to take anything away from Curt Schilling's near no-hitter yesterday but if Alex Cora had reached Shannon Stewart's grounder in the 9th and got him out at first, it would have been one of the luckiest and least deserved no-hitters in the last 20 years. It all come down to batting average on balls batted into play. The best way to get a no-hitter is to limit the number of balls put into play by striking guys out. There is a reason why Nolan Ryan has 7 career no-hitters, he was one of the best strikeout pitchers in the history of baseball (#4 all time in strikeouts per nine innings) and had a ridiculously long career. The logic is simple, the fewer balls put into play, the greater the chance that there will not be a hit. A batter that strikes out has a 0% chance of getting a hit but a batter that puts the ball into play has about a 30% chance of getting a hit. Yesterday Schilling struck out just 4 batters. If the averages had held Schilling should have given up at least 7 hits. There have been 24 no-hitters since a pitcher has had less than 4 strikeouts and still had a no-hitter (in 1993 Jim Abbot struck out just 3 Indians and walked 5 in the luckiest no-hitter I could find). In the 24 no-hitters since 1993 the strikeout average is 8.45. So if anyone should be congratulated on yesterday’s 1 hitter it should be the Sox defense which converted 24 of the 25 balls in into play into outs. I can't say enough how happy I am with the Sox improved defense over last year. So far they are converting .709 of balls in play into outs compared to the woeful .683 last season. It was a good performance by Schilling but not even his best of the season. That would have been on May 28th against a much better Cleveland lineup when he struck out 10, walked 0 and gave up no home runs.

Pitching and Defense

Obviously Boston improved their pitching staff with the addition of Matsuzaka but almost a quarter of the way through the season the most noticeable improvement in the team has been their defense. Many argue that Boston was a great defensive team last year and point to their low error total and high fielding percentage. But fielding percentage is a very deceptive stat and can lead someone to think that a poor defense is good and vice versa. The problem with fielding percentage is that it only takes into account errors committed and does nothing to rate the speed of a defense. Putting yourself in a position to make a play is just as important, if not more important than making the play. Take a hypothetical 10 ground balls hit to two different shortstops. Shortstop A (Derek Jeter) is has a great glove and accurate arm but is very slow and has poor reaction time. Shortstop B (Miguel Tejada) is very fast and has great reaction time but occasionally misplays a ball with his glove or makes an errant throw every once in a while. In the 10 balls hit to Shortstop A (Derek Jeter) he fields 6 of them cleanly and throw the runner out at first, pumping his fist after each out. But 4 of the balls hit in his area go for hits. Shortstop B (Miguel Tejada) has 10 balls hit in his area, 8 of which he gets to because of his superior range but one goes for a hit and one he commits an error throwing to first base because he was off balance because he had to run 20 feet to reach a ball that Shortstop A would never have come close to. Now if you only use fielding percentage as a measure of defensive ability you would say that Shortstop A (Derek Jeter) is better than Shortstop B (Miguel Tejada) because his field percentage is 1.000% and Tejada’s is .888%. But you would be ignoring that of the 10 balls hit in his area Tejada turned 8 of them into outs and Jeter only turned 6 into outs. If you only consider the results an error is the equal to a play not made. This can be applied to team defense as well. If you only look at fielding percentage you are missing the more important stat which is the rate in which balls put into play are turned into outs or Defensive Efficiency. This brings me to the Red Sox this season. Last year many said that the Red Sox were a great defensive team due to their fielding percentage being the best in the American League when in fact their defensive efficiency was 12th out of 14 teams. Alex Gonzalez and Mark Loretta had undeserved reputations as great players at their respective positions. To be fair like Jeter both were very sure handed and had accurate arms but were very limited in their range and didn’t get to many balls hit in their area. In effect they were more Jeters than Tejadas. This season we have the much speedier Julio Lugo at short and Dustin Pedroia at second as well as a healthy Coco in center. This has lead to the Sox currently being 2nd in the league in defensive efficiency. At the same time their fielding percentage has dropped to 12th in the American League which makes some say that the loss of Gonzalez and Loretta has hurt their team defense. But the exact opposite is true. So with a great number of balls hit into play being turned into outs the pitching staff’s ERA has been lowered as well. When you look at a pitcher’s stats the ones most often used to judge their abilities are the stats that are the most dependant on the quality of the defense behind them (Wins/Losses/ERA). Taking Josh Beckett as an example I think his 7-0 start can be attributed to 3 things; fewer walks, giving up fewer homeruns, and most importantly a vastly improved defense behind him.

Weekend

Two notable things about my weekend.

After over a week of frustration I finally installed my roof rack. For a brief period I cursed all things Swedish and vowed to never purchase anything from them or their Scandinavian neighbors for the rest of my life. I was convinced that they intentionally shipped their racks with impossible installation instructions in order to infuriated Americans and get back at us for starting that unnecessary war thing. But I successfully completed the installation and the Scandinavian boycott is off except for my continuing embargo of Danish cinema due to my intense hatred of Lars von Trier.

Watched all of the Sox/Yankees series. I was expecting to be more elated than I actually am considering the Sox won every game, some in humiliating fashion. But you could hardly call it domination when we won 2 1-run games and 1 2-run game. Honestly the ball literally bounced our way this time (thinking particularly of Coco’s game winning hit against Rivera on Saturday). This by no means made it any less enjoyable. I was almost giddy when Torre desperately put in Pettitte in long relief on Sunday. He can say as many times as he wants that the Sox/Yankee series isn’t anything special but when he used his $18 million dollar starter on 2 days rest to try to keep you in an April ballgame, he is taking this game more seriously than other games. That said the Sox starters looked far from invincible in this series and that was a seriously banged up Yankees team. Kevin Thompson and Wil Nieves don’t exactly strike fear in my heart. I don’t want to get too dorky and talk about Pythagorean records but in terms of runs score to runs allowed the Yankees are playing about even with the Sox and have a horrible record in 1 and 2 run games (2-8) that will correct itself over the season. Now Yankee fans will say that it is a 162 game season which of course is true but the 162 game season is made up of series and this particular one couldn’t have gone much better. To throw out a sports cliché in order to win you must be good and lucky and the Sox were both this weekend.

I also learned that 2 month old babies don’t like it when I yell at the tv. I’m a little worried I permanently damaged my kid during the 4 consecutive homeruns.

Mythical Manny

Great article on Manny Ramirez in this week’s New Yorker. Two things I learned about him were that both of his sons are named Manny Jr. and that he once requested a trade to the Pawtucket Red Sox while playing for the Boston Red Sox.

The Wisdom of Ichiro Suzuki

In an era when 99% of professional athletes give tired, cliche-ridden drivel when interviewed it is beyond refreshing to hear Ichiro Suzuki's response to an reporter's question on facing Daisuke Matsuzaka tonight.

“I hope he arouses the fire that's dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul,” he said. “I plan to face him with the zeal of a challenger.”
(source: Times of London)

I'm going to repeat those wise words of Ichiro every morning as part of my daily affirmations.