As the 2008 Boston Red Sox begin to gather in Fort Myers and the upcoming season becomes a very tangible experience for us all, it’s come time for those of us who choose to spend our free time hanging on every pitch to make some real judgments about our expectations.
At some point, you have to hang it all out there and cease living in the safe vacuum of analysis and reactions and make a prediction. I’ve looked at this team from every angle in the previous versions of “For Better or Worse” and now it’s come time to synthesize all that information into a cogent prognostication of the season that lies ahead of us.
For those of you new to “For Better or Worse”, who haven’t hung on my every word thus far, feel free to get caught up here:
- Installment 1: The Infield
- Installment 2: The Rest of the Position Players and Bench
- Installment 3: The Starting Rotation
- Installment 4: The Bullpen
There’s no such thing as perfection in baseball. The season is too long with too many individual items collectively making up the greater canvas that a season’s story is painted on. To that end, no team coming into a season has a roster without holes and no team coming into a season has a roster that won’t see turnover over the course of the season. But as it is with predictions, it’s not possible to foresee each of the potholes or surprises, both positive and negative, that lay ahead.
At the outset of a season, all you can do is look at the team as is currently constituted and make some general statements of expectation of performance. You can then look at the additive collection of those pieces and make some generalizations about where the overall team may or may not be headed over the next eight months.
My tactic to do this was to use 2007 individual performances as a baseline and see if I thought the 2008 versions of those players or positions would fall short of or exceed the performance from the year prior. With all that done, it’s time to put the pieces together and see where this team is likely to end up at the end of the season.
Looking back at the individual pieces, I expected an overall similar performance from the infield in 2008, saw the outfield as a group that we should expect significant increases in performance from at the plate, and the rest of the hitters (David Ortiz, Jason Varitek, and the bench) not far off of 2007’s performances. In aggregate, I fully expect this offensive team to be better and more consistent than they were last year. The Red Sox scored a total of 867 runs in 2007. In my opinion I think it is very reasonable to expect this team to score 10 – 15 more runs in 2008 than they did in 2007.
Let’s compare that to years past and validate whether or not that is a realistic number to expect from this lineup in 2008 predicated for the most part on a much better season at the plate across the outfield with little net change elsewhere.
One thing that jumps out at you is how much a balanced lineup from one through nine increases the overall performance of an offense. Look at the production of the 2003 and 2004 offenses where the bottom of the lineup was Bill Mueller, Jason Varitek, and the likes of Mark Bellhorn, Kevin Millar, Doug Mientkiewicz, and Trot Nixon. Depth throughout a lineup is a deadly offensive force when coupled with table setters at the top and David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez in the middle.
Put in the perspective of Red Sox teams past, I think it’s very fair to expect this team to score 880 or so runs this season.
But the lineup is only half the equation. Last year the pitching staff had the lowest team ERA in the American League with a 3.87 team ERA, giving up 42 less runs (657 total) than the next closest American League team, the Toronto Blue Jays.
Looking back on the 2007 season, the strengths of the Red Sox pitching staff are pretty apparent; a dominant season from their #1 starter Josh Beckett and a killer bullpen. The bullpen’s ERA ended the season at a microscopic 3.10 ERA, a franchise best since 1967.
Can the Red Sox duplicate that high level of performance on the mound in 2008? I don’t think so, but they won’t be a bad pitching team either. I played this one conservative and took into consideration that the Red Sox 2007 staff wasn’t 112 runs better than the 2004 staff. I am not sure how they pulled it off looking back on a season where Julian Tavarez started 23 games for you. So my gut tells me that luck had to go there way to some degree last season to keep those runs down.
Given that however, I totally expect the Red Sox staff to be one of the best 5 in the American League and can easily hover just around the 700 run level next season, giving them a staff equivalent to last years Blue Jays, Indians, or Twins. Not too shabby at all.
From my perspective, the biggest wild cards on the mound this season will be the rate of improvement of Daisuke Matsuzaka and Jon Lester, the efficacy of the round robin of 5th starters they throw out until either Curt Schilling returns or Clay Buchholz takes over the spot permanently in the back half of the year, the health of Tim Wakefield, and the lack of a sophomore slump from Hideki Okajima. I could see any of these items swinging either towards the positive or the negative in 2008.
So with a better lineup and a less dominant pitching staff, where does that leave the Red Sox next season? In the chart above, I turned to Pythagorean Win Expectancy and plugged in my runs scored and runs against ballparks to settle in with 98 wins. You can also see Baseball Prospectus’ slightly more scientific run +/- predictions and outcome using PECOTA numbers.
Realistically, I think Pythagoras does us a bit wrong here and overestimates wins based on this input, but I do think that PECOTA short changes the team by a few wins. So for my final answer, “for better or worse”, I think the 2008 team is every bit as good as the 2007 version.
My gut: About the same. While Pythagoras has me at 98 wins, that feels aggressive, but I think back to back 96 win seasons and A.L. East banners sound pretty good to me. So mark it down. 96-66, 1st place in the American League East, 2nd best record in baseball behind the New York Mets.
Now let’s play some ball!