As of this writing Tuesday evening, the 2010 Red Sox stand 20 games into their season. With a record of 9-11, the Red Sox sit in fourth place in the AL East, and this is already the latest they’ve been under .500 since 1996 (a season in which they finished with a respectable but not quality 85-77 record, and third place in the division). They rank 11th in the majors in runs scored (which is a somewhat surprising standing, all things considered) and an almost unthinkable 28th in the majors in runs allowed — only the Reds and Pirates have been worse (quick aside: the Pirates have managed to be outscored this season by an astonishing 85 runs, which comes out to an average of over four runs per game… so it could be worse). By all accounts, this season has begun worse than any in the current era of Red Sox teams.
How much weight, though, can we put on 20 games? Can a team that has been as hopelessly bad as the Red Sox have been, over this long a stretch, possibly compete in the division or for the championship? To find out, I decided to look back at some of the strongest Red Sox teams in recent memory (and one incredibly strong non-Red Sox team) and compare this 20 game stretch to the worst ones I could find. Now, before I go into the details, I know that I’m cherry-picking below. I also know that I can’t equate the first 20 games of a season with a similar stretch later in the year in terms of their emotional impact. However, 20 games are 20 games in the standings, and these first 20 count just as much as the last 20 or a stretch of games in July and August. So knowing that this is all kinds of imperfect but that it’s also at least worth thinking about, let’s proceed.
Over this current stretch, the Red Sox have compiled a 9-11 record, scoring 95 runs and allowing 113. This works out to an expected W-L record of 8-12, meaning the Red Sox have done better in close games than expected. To compare, I took the full seasons of the 2003, 2004, 2007, and 2008 Red Sox teams — the four best in recent memory — and looked for stretches of 20 games where they were 9-11 or worse. For completeness, I also included arguably the best non-Red Sox team of the last 20 years: the 114-48 1998 New York Yankees. What I found here contains both good news and bad news, assuming we can derive any information at all from this.
First, the good news: each of the above teams suffered at least one stretch of play in which their record was equal to the current Sox record. So, as bad as the record looks this late, stretches like this happen all the time, even to the very best teams. This might be an obvious statement, but good teams are not uniformly good; they go through rough stretches just like every other. The 2003 Red Sox, who rode an outstanding offense and serviceable pitching staff to a 94-68 record and an ALCS, had two distinct stretches where they were as bad as or worse than 9-11 (and by ‘distinct’ I mean stretches that do not overlap with each other): from May 16 to June 7, 2003, and again from July 30 to August 19, the Sox went a mere 8-12, worse than the current club. The 2004 team also had two such stretches — 9-11 between May 1 and May 20, and a very painful 7-13 between June 12 and July 4. The 2007 club had an 8-12 stretch mid-season, and the 2008 club had two 9-11 stretches. Even the World Champion 1998 New York Yankees suffered that fate between August 29 and September 20 (though given how far ahead they were in the division at the time, that one’s a bit dubious). So, bad stretches most definitely happen to good teams.
However, you’ll recall I said there was some bad news. The record itself doesn’t tell the full story. This current club has been playing with an expected win percentage of .414, which works out to slightly better than 8-12 overall (with the caveat that with such a small sample size, expected W/L can be thrown WAY off very easily). In nearly every case above, however, the expected win percentage was at worst around .500; only in 2003 did the Sox truly stink, with a .381 expected win percentage in late July/early August. So although the teams I looked at had bad stretches, for the most part they were still scoring as much or more as their opponents, whereas the Sox this year have been doing anything but.
Obviously this isn’t incredibly telling data, and I’m certainly not saying this year’s club is playoff bound (though I still think this ship will be righted and we’ll be in the hunt come September). But it’s important to remember that we’re only looking at a small part of the season here: 20 games represents just about 12 percent of the full 162 game schedule. These types of roadbumps happen to every team; it just feels worse here because it’s our only exposure to them so far, and because the things we thought would work well — namely the pitching — very much have not. A stretch like this in games 1-20 seems like the end, but a stretch like this between games 90 and 110 feels like a lull. Let’s hope that in the final analysis this starting slide is just a bump, and not a brick wall.