YFSF

Paging Nick Johnson

Turns out the Sox might have a need for that 1B bat after all.

The Return of the Large Father

Courtesy the fine bloggers at Fangraphs, we have this little graph:
 

That's the distance of each David Ortz fly ball this season, based on GameDay data points entering yesterday's game (where Ortiz launched a 412-foot blast to dead center field). The straight line is Ortiz's 2008 average, and the wavy line is a rolling 2009 average. It shows that not only are Ortiz's home runs flying farther, so are the balls that aren't getting over the fence.

In fact, Ortiz is averaging 300 feet per fly ball this month -- an average right in line with the 291-foot average he posted in his last true Ortizian season, 2007.

As Dave Allen, who authored this study, notes:

This is a small sample, but things look qualitatively different for Ortiz since the end of May, an encouraging sign for him and the Red Sox.

Clearly, David Ortiz is back on steroids. It's the only logical answer, right?

The answer surely can't be what Dave Cameron, in a post entitled "Let's Stop Burying the Living," describes:

We haven’t figured out what numbers show that a player is truly washed up. We haven’t figured out what it looks like when that happens. We haven’t figured out how to combine scouting and statistical analysis to give us a warning before a player heads off the cliff. All we’ve figured out is how to guess wrong a lot. Young player struggle, old players struggle, middle age players struggle, and we don’t have any good way of figuring out why in most cases. Just because a player experiences a drop in performance, and is old, does not mean that age related decline is the reason for the performance. More often than not, it’s just bad luck.

Let’s stop pretending that we can identify players who have “just lost it” overnight. Too often, they find it again the next morning.

Debating Matsuzaka

Daisuke Matsuzaka is on the disabled list, a victim -- to hear the Sox tell it -- of the World Baseball Classic and the inadequate timing that provided for him to get ready for the season.

That leads Bob Ryan to write in this morning's Globe:

May we agree on one thing?

Daisuke Matsuzaka was not worth $102 million.There's a lot of financial craziness out there in modern professional sport, but we have not yet reached the point where a third or fourth (and in this case, fifth) starter is worth a total investment of $102 million for six years.

There's really not going to be any kind of debate about this, is there?

Well, for one thing, Bob, Matsuzaka isn't dead, so using the past tense on a pitcher with two three years left on his contract (plus the remainder of this season) seems a little unusual.

For another, Matsuzaka to this point has been worth $30 million, according to Fangraphs -- 60 percent of the amount the Red Sox are actually paying him in a contract not yet halfway to completion.

Because I understand, Bob, that there is a lot of the financial craziness out there in modern professional sport, and some of that craziness includes the complexity of Matsuzaka's contract. Since you're paid well by the Globe to analyze said professional sports, I would hope you can understand such complexities: The Red Sox are paying Matsuzaka $51 million, not $102 million. The chances are good that Daisuke will easily end up being worth more than that by the end of his deal.

Now, yes, they did pay the infamous $51.111111111 million posting fee, and to some extent that was a reflection of how much the Red Sox valued Matsuzaka. But it was also a reflection of how much the Red Sox valued obtaining the most famous Japanese pitcher ever, how much the Red Sox valued making inroads into a heavily populated baseball-crazy market theretofore dominated by their fiercest rivals, and how much the Red Sox valued spending money that wouldn't count toward the luxury tax.

No one is going to miss a starter with an ERA of 8.23 and a WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) of 2.20. No one is going to miss someone against whom opponents are batting .378 with an OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) of 1.091. No one is going to miss someone who routinely gives up four- or five-run leads.

True, but the Red Sox will miss -- and have missed so far -- a starter who entered this season with an ERA of 3.72 and a WHIP of 1.32. A lot of people have missed someone against whom opponents batted .222 with an OPS of .679. A lot of people have missed someone who finished fourth in last year's Cy Young voting.

I understand Matsuzaka can be frustrating -- both to watch on the mound and listen to after a poor performance. Ryan later in his piece seems to indicate why he apparently doesn't like Daisuke: He's a "nibbler."

What we’ve seen at his best is a guy who throws in the low 90s and who has decent auxiliary stuff. We have seen that, in common with pitchers in his basic category, he needs to hit spots to be effective. He has got to locate that fastball on the corners. If he can do that, everything else has a chance to work.

In other words, he’s like a hundred other guys.

Really, Bob? Because his results in 2007 and 2008 were like eight other guys -- one of only nine starters in the American League to post an ERA+ over 120 and pitch at least 350 innings in that span. Names like Halladay, Beckett, Kazmir, Sabathia, Lackey. For that matter, let's look at it this way: Only 23 AL starters even managed 350 innings in those two seasons. Only 19 posted an ERA+ over 100. Matsuzaka was sixth.

Later, Ryan contradicts his own opening statement.

Understand that over half the $102 million John Henry paid to obtain Dice-K’s services was a posting fee to his old club. So the just under $9 million he gets in actual salary might be something approximating market value for a pitcher of Dice-K’s caliber.

But that’s not the way he was billed.

Matsuzaka has been worth about $15 million per season so far. In 2007/08 he was one of the 10 best starters in the league. Perhaps Ryan's expectations were a tad high. Because the Red Sox are a much better team with a healthy Daisuke Matsuzaka -- who so far has been easily worth more to this ballclub than what they are paying him.

Cheapies, Contd.

After this morning's post on Nick Green's home run, somewhat in response to a complaint from a YF in an earlier thread about how cheap it was (and how sports media should be berating Fenway Park for allowing so many such home runs), I emailed Greg Rybarczyk, who runs Hit Tracker, the home run tracking site that will waste two hours of your time before you even realize it.

Inspired by Brad's question in that post, I asked Greg basically whether there was a way to see which park's notoriously easy home run spots tended to be utilized more often.

A little debate is developing about the relative “cheapness” of the home runs allowed by the respective ballparks, especially in light of Yankee Stadium’s new title as Coors Field East and yesterday’s walkoff cheap shot by Nick Green.

I’ve read your emails with Yankee bloggers in the past about how the straightening of Yankee Stadiums’ right field wall has effectively shortened the dimensions at that park, and some of us were wondering if that change makes right field at Yankee Stadium an easier place to hit a home run that would otherwise be an out (or non-HR hit) in every other park than down the lines at Fenway. Is there some way for us to figure this out on your site, or do you have a spare moment to run some numbers?

Greg was kind enough to reply with a pair of extremely enlightening diagrams, which follow the jump.

Cheapies

There's been some talk -- seemingly among disgruntled Yankee fans rightly annoyed by the media carping about the unexpected home run proclivities of their own ballpark -- about how "cheap" Nick Green's home run to win yesterday's game against the Braves was.

And, no doubt, it was cheap. Our eyes tell us this because it snaked around the Fenway Park right-field foul pole. Greg Rybarczyk's excellent HitTracker site also tells us this because it traveled just 317 feet, the second-shortest homer in baseball this season (for which there is data; about 10 homers do not).

This raises a fun question: What is the cheapest home run hit so far this year, and how do we define "cheap"?

Going Green

The last time Nicholas Anthony Green made the Major Leagues, he went 0 for 7 with three strikeouts in six September games for the Seattle Mariners.

He never even made it to the big leagues last year, posting an uninspiring .233/.285/.373 line for the Yankees' AAA club in Scranton. At age 29, his career was teetering on extinction.

And it had never been much of a career. In 95 games as a 25-year-old rookie for the Braves in 2004, he managed a 79 OPS+. He was no better the next season with the Devil Rays in 111 games. By 2006, entering what should have been his prime at age 27, he was a journeyman, splitting time between the Devil Rays and Yankees. 

After 17 games with Tampa Bay that season, Green sported the awful line of .077/.200/.077 -- three singles and six walks in 45 plate appearances. After being purchased by the Yankees, he posted a 75 OPS+ in 46 games. His 2007 featured just those seven hitless plate appearances; with no time in the majors in 2008, Green's 272-game career was worth exactly half a win above replacement level.

Then something funny happened on the way to oblivion. 

Green signed a minor-league contract with the Red Sox in January, was given a spring-training invitation, and knew he was likely spending the season in Pawtucket. Until Julio Lugo got hurt, and Jed Lowrie also went down. And Green's minor-league deal became a $550,000 Major League contract.

Suddenly, Nick Green with his career 72 OPS+ was the Boston Red Sox' starting shortstop. And he started hitting. He's now hitting .292/.345/.459 -- an .804 OPS in 164 plate appearances, a full 106 points over his previous career high.

More than just the surprising turnaround is the timing of his hits.

Entering today's game, Green was hitting .409/.500/.545 with runners in scoring position, .364/.434/.530 with men on, .373/.418/.549  with two outs, .500/.560/.636 with runners in scoring position and two outs, .308/.379/.500 with the game tied and .330/.390/.479 when the game is within two runs.

And today, on the first pitch in the bottom of the ninth in a tie game, he hit one of the cheapest home runs you'll ever see, wrapping the ball around Pesky's Pole to win the ballgame. One swing, symbolic of a player's entire season.

Nick Green is having a once-in-a-lifetime year for the Boston Red Sox. True, he's not a great fielder, and even in this career year is simply flirting with the league average, but he's living the dream again after it seemed to be over. 

When you root for a team with some of the deepest pockets in baseball, players like Green are some of the most fun to watch. Congratulations, Nick. Keep surprising us.

Least Surprising News Ever

With John Smoltz the new man in, the odd man out is Daisuke Matsuzaka.

For the record, that plugs a future Hall of Famer with a 127 ERA+ (who hasn't posted an ERA over 3.50 in any full or partial season since 1994) into a rotation that features the following ERAs over their last six starts each:

• 1.60
• 2.52  
• 3.12
• 4.82  

We'll take it. 

Theo's Choice

Three items are coming together to produce an embarrassment of pitching riches for the Boston Red Sox. It's the kind of choice any general manager would love to have:

• Beginning yesterday, all players signed this past offseason can now be traded without their permission. This of course includes Brad Penny, whose value has risen steadily this season and may never be higher after he outdueled C.C. Sabathia in his last outing.
• John Smoltz's next start may or may not be for the Red Sox. He's scheduled to pitch Thursday; his rehab assignment ends the next day.
• Clay Buchholz has destroyed AAA hitting and would like everyone to know that he'd sure love a chance to pitch in the big leagues, no matter the team. 

Never mind that Michael Bowden has also been tearing up Pawtucket, and Justin Masterson isn't shabby himself when he takes the hill as a starter.

So do the Sox trade Penny and install Smoltz before Thursday, when the aging ace is expected to next take the mound? That seems unlikely, as pitching needs for other teams have only grown since the beginning of the year -- and are likely only to grow further between now and the trade deadline.

A look at the Red Sox' rotation since May 1 gives us a pretty good idea exactly who should be replaced when Smoltz returns:

• Josh Beckett: 5-1, 2.52 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 50 Ks, 16 BB
• Jon Lester: 4-3, 4.38 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 63 Ks, 18 BB 
• Tim Wakefield: 6-2, 6.13 ERA, 1.72 WHIP, 26 Ks, 22 BB 
• Brad Penny: 3-2, 4.10 ERA, 1.41 WHIP, 38 Ks, 9 BB 
• Daisuke Matsuzaka: 1-3, 6.20 ERA, 1.86 WHIP, 27 Ks, 9 BB

Clearly the best starting rotation at the moment does not include Matsuzaka, who (unlike Wakefield) has shown us nothing positive in his seven starts this season. A second DL stint -- fatigued shoulder, one month for arm strengthening, mechanics work and a bevy of rehab starts -- seems like the most logical choice. If and when a good enough offer for Penny arises, Buchholz can take his place in the rotation. 

It's the only option that makes sense right now. The Red Sox would be foolish to simply dump Penny, a solid pitcher at this point, simply because they can. And they would be foolish to keep Smoltz out of the rotation when he would be a clear improvement over the Sox' worst starter. 

The Abyss

David Ortiz is not alone.

Through several days of discussion about Big Papi's awful season (short may it last), the statement has been made several times, including by me, that he has fallen apart in an unprecedented manner. It's true in a sense: No big-time slugger has collapsed to this extent in one season, though Jimmie Foxx came awfully close.

But there are at least two examples that we've been overlooking, and they both are intricately related to the Red Sox:

• Player A, age 32: .264/.369/.507, 123 OPS+
• Player A, age 33: .198/.288/.322, 56 OPS+

• Player B, age 30: .293/.365/.505, 127 OPS+
• Player B, age 31: .236/.298/.360, 77 OPS+

• Player C, age 29: .287/.374/.481, 131 OPS+
• Player C, age 30: .207/.265/.291, 47 OPS+

Player A, of course, is Ortiz himself, his numbers inching higher as maybe, just maybe, he's begun putting it back together.

Player B is Mike Lowell, whose inexplicable disappearance in 2005 allowed the Red Sox to acquire Josh Beckett. He still has no explanation for what happened that season. Player C is Tony Clark, who fell even further than either Lowell or Ortiz in 2002, his lone season for the Red Sox.

Granted, Lowell and Clark were both younger than Ortiz is now -- and Clark's post-30 career arc is bizarre, to say the least -- but here is what they produced in the seasons after their descent into the abyss. A reason for some long-term hope, perhaps:

• Lowell, 2006: .284/.339/.475, 104 OPS+
• Lowell, 2007: .324/.378/.501, 124 OPS+

• Clark, 2003: .232/.300/.472, 100 OPS+
• Clark, 2004: .221/.297/.458, 95 OPS+
• Clark, 2005: .304/.366/.636, 154 OPS+

Shorter (Longer?) Tony Massarotti

The Red Sox should have signed Mark Teixeira because it would only have cost them a couple of million dollars a year extra, especially in light of the fact that they haven’t dealt with Jason Bay’s free agency yet even though he’s not a free agent and they might not re-sign him (but they might, also). Also, JD Drew is dead while Johnny Damon is not, even though I am going to list statistics that show Drew is better, but all that matters is that Damon is a free agent after this year and Drew is not.  I think that makes sense, but I am not sure. Oh, Coco Crisp is in Kansas City, too. Forgot to mention him. Theo really missed the boat on that guy, right?! I need to list a bunch of guys the Sox obtained thinking they’d be better than they were – let’s see.  Lugo. Wily Mo. Matt Young. Lugo. Jack Clark. Lugo. Nick Esask- no, wait, he had vertigo, he didn’t actually suck. Still, vertigo? Seriously? I mean, that’s weak. I am a “torn ACL” career-ending injury kind of guy, not a “I can’t go up in that Ferris Wheel” kind of career-ending injury guy. But back to Teixeira. This column is about Teixeira and how he would have helped the Sox, especially because Ortiz is struggling. Lars Anderson Lars Anderson Lars Anderson I read SoSH Minor League forums. Oh, wait, you know what? I forgot, Ortiz wouldn’t have been replaced by Teixeira, Lowell would have, my bad, but I have to admit Lowell is really doing well.  Also,the Sox do have a lot of good prospects, and they spend money, and that’s great and all but really it’s a lot less relevant because they have guys on their roster who are dead. Like JD Drew. I wonder if they will find him in the Atlantic Ocean with those other Brazilian and French people. (Just kidding, it’s a metaphor, JD Drew isn’t dead!  He’s alive! Lugo? Not so sure, he might really be dead!). Now, let’s get back to Jason Bay, who might or might not be a free agent. Since we don’t know what’s going to happen in November, I’ll just assume he will be a free agent, it makes things easier to imagine. I also need to mention Hanley Ramirez and how the Sox traded him, in the context of the Teixeira non-deal. Why? It has to do with those two million dollars and prospects like Hanley, who are great players the Sox squandered for noth-- wait, they won a World Series with Beckett? When? 

Anyhow, Ortiz is stuck on the Sox, Teixeira is on the Yankees, and Jason Bay is going to be a free agent at the end of the year. Unless he isn’t.