Scheduling Highlights

With opening day less than one month (wooo!) away, I wanted to highlight some points in the season to pay a little more attention to. Every season has easy stretches, tough road trips, and high leverage situations.

Monday April 12th @ Minnesota
The Red Sox play guests of honor at the home opener of Target Field, the new home of the Minnesota Twins. With no contract yet in sight, story-lines will surround the possibility of Joe Mauer’s final year with the Twins, and the coincidence that a potential suitor rolls into town on the heels of stalled or cancelled negotiations. Also, speculations of Target Field’s park factors will be begin to arise. While rumor has it that Target Field is not going to repeat an opening month full of laughable power as Yankee Stadium did last year, the park’s dimensions should be favorable for Minnesota’s right handed power bats. Keep an eye on Cuddyer in fantasy drafts.

Casey Fien addition worth another look

Monday saw the Red Sox claim Casey Fien from the Detroit Tigers. Of little note is the dropping of Gaby Hernandez to clear a spot. I am a bit shocked to see a pitcher with such solid peripherals in the minors given up on by the Tigers. Perhaps there is something they know, but let’s see what Fien adds to the Red Sox.

He’s a two pitch reliever with a 91 mph fastball and a 80 mph slider thrown 25% of the time. His slider did not show well in his small sampling with a run value of -5.47 per hundred thrown, but a much bigger sample is needed to decide if it needs work. This isn’t very exciting as his speed isn’t great and with only two pitches hitters can just wait out the fastball.

His minor league numbers though show he has something to contribute. His ERA in the minors stands at 3.04 and 3.21 in Triple-A. Obviously as a reliever his sample sizes are small, but a minor league FIP of 2.86 and 3.20 in Triple-A. Then why would the Tigers give up on Fien as a reliever?

The All-80s Players

Fooled you!

Anyway, they only 80s I wanted to talk about were the 80 million dimes given to Johnny Damon by the Detroit Tigers, and how it relates to our favorite rivals 210 miles south.

Personally, I was hoping teams would continue to stonewall Damon. With his declining defense, girl-scout level throwing power, and offensive season fueled by a short right field in Yankee Stadium III, the possibility that he couldn’t even scrape by a $5M deal was fueling my schadenfreude. My guess was that he’d eventually cave to Kenny Williams’ $4M deal the White Sox offered. This deal by the Tigers seems panicked, at best.

After trading away Curtis Granderson and Edwin Jackson for prospects, I understand the need to restock the outfield to replace Granderson. However, I’m very curious about the timing.

All-Aughts Team of the Decade Honorable Mention: Mike Lowell

Mike Lowell was the proud winner of the All-Aughts Team of the Decade honorable mention at 30 percent of the vote, and its easy to see why. After all, Lowell not only has provided above-average offensive seasons each year he wore the Boston uniform (and sans 2009, excellent fielding seasons) but his character is off the charts and he nabbed the 2007 World Series MVP award.

Lowell came to Boston after being exiled from Florida following a year where he posted an obscene (in a bad way) .658 OPS, showing no ability to make contact and a lack of power. For the Red Sox to get ace Josh Beckett, Lowell was forced upon them. No one seriously thought Lowell would be worth his salt despite it being just one year.

Lowell found Fenway Park to his liking in 2006 albeit on a team that collapsed late and missed the playoffs. His 47 doubles were a career high, and he set a career high the following year in a different category: RBI. That was the year of 2007, when Lowell stepped up amongst injury and attrition — 31 games batting fourth, 17 fifth and 101 sixth — and became a feared middle of the order hitter. His doubles sank to 37, but he popped 21 home runs and hit .324, the first and only time his batting average has been over .300 in a season.

Measuring Defensive Metrics

I don’t want to use this as another debate about how good or bad Jacoby Ellsbury is or anything, but this is a chance to look at the different metrics and where they come from. I’m going to center on four major metrics and what they attempt to measure as best we know.

First up is John Dewan’s plus/minus measurement from The Fielding Bible. Only leader boards are available for free and the rest is in the yearly Fielding Bible. This has to be one of the most involved as each players ranking involves video scouts watching every play a player makes and grading him against his peers. The resulting plus or minus value is based on how many more or less plays he make than the rest at that position.

This system has a less direct effect on scoring, but how to compare players defensively. Taking a look at 2008 you have Adrian Beltre as the best third basemen in baseball with a +32. On the other end you have Edwin Encarnacion who was a -21. This number is not a run value as I understand it though and more of a comparison tool. It intends to say that Beltre made 53 more plays defensively than Encarnacion in 2008.

The plus/minus system plays into another Dewan system called DRS or Defensive Runs Saved. It takes the the plays that added or subtracted to their plus/minus and assign run values to them. This gain or loss of run values results in a total value based on expected runs. Let’s see the explanation straight from John:

Sox Fans Grab Mallets While Theo Prepares to Be The Whack-a-Mole

This will certainly be a defining offseason when Red Sox historians look back on Theo Epstein’s legacy as Boston GM. If the acquisitions work, fans and media alike will sing high praise – and the untouchable GM will become all the more invincible. If the moves fail, he will be chastised and become vulnerable for the first time in his career.

It’s difficult to give a grade to Theo at this point of the offseason – much less begin to rip him in the media. For one, there’s still so much work to be done that any analysis is incomplete, especially with Mike Lowell hanging in limbo. On the other hand, the fact that there’s been so much contention over every signing thus far means that there’s likely not a single person left in New England that is happy with our GM – and any failure for the free agents in the upcoming season will be overmagnified. Marco Scutaro, John Lackey, Mike Cameron. There is no concensus – lots of very intelligent people have advocated on both sides for all three acquisitions.

Marco Scutaro is the best of a poor class of free agent shortstops. He’ll end up costing the Red Sox a 2nd round pick and is signed to a very favorable 3-year (or some would say 2-year) deal. He’s a late bloomer who some argue is a one-year wonder. Scutaro will have to be every bit as good as his breakout in 2009 for both sides to be satisfied. A good personnel move? Yes. But, it will be hard for Theo to win this one in the media…

New Poll Question: Which reclamation project is the best investment for the Sox this offseason?

It’s a gamble, but which reclamation project is the best investment for the Sox this offseason?

* Justin Duchscherer
* Kelvim Escobar
* Ben Sheets

New Poll Question: Left Field Left-overs

If Boston waves Bay good-bye and Matt Holliday is out of reach, which of these established left-fielders would you like to see play the line at Fenway in 2010?

* Garret Anderson
* Marlon Byrd
* Fernando Tatis
* Randy Winn

The Current State of Baseball Economics

Yesterday, ESPN’s Rob Neyer published an article quoting Commisioner Bud Selig’s thoughts concerning the current state of baseball economics. Says Selig,

Some teams lost money in 2009, baseball commissioner Bud Selig said Thursday after the final owners meeting of the year.

“There was no question about that,” Selig said. “I don’t think the concerns have been ameliorated at all. I think the concerns are still there because all these people have their own economists.”

Selig said final figures for this year are still being calculated and everyone is living in the most difficult economic times since the Great Depression. He declined to identify the teams.

“I think of all the heartache that’s in the world,” Selig said. “We live in this environment. We don’t live in a bubble. And so, I think the clubs in some areas have been hit a lot harder than others.”

This seems to happen every year, where multiple MLB owners allege that their team has “lost money” and therefore needs any number of amenities, including, but not limited to: extra money towards the building of a new stadium, special tax relief, more money from the state, etc, etc, etc.

Sox Interested in Braves’ Gonzalez, Soriano? Reviving the Halladay Trade

Sox Interested in Braves’ Gonzalez, Soriano?

According to George King of the New York Post, the Red Sox have expressed preliminary interest in free agent relievers Mike Gonzalez and Rafael Soriano. The team requested medical records for the two, both of whom have had arm injuries in recent seasons…

Reviving the Roy Halladay Trade

According to Jon Heyman of SportsIllsutrated.com, the Blue Jays’ new general manager, Alex Anthopoulos is “serious” about trading his ace, Roy Halladay…