A few years back, I was introduced to a simple site on the Internet that gave me a different and useful lens on the baseball season. Doug’s Stats (www.dougstats.com) looks much like it did the day I stumbled on it in 2003. It hasn’t gotten a Web 2.0 facelift, there are no fancy charts or running commentary. In fact, most of the stats can be gotten from any sports site with a “stats” tab in their MLB section. But there was one link on the front door of Doug’s home on the Internet that grabbed my attention.
“2009 Last 20 Game Stats”
Most standings will have the “last 10 games” option somewhere in their layout, but how much can you really tell by looking at the last ten games alone. Often times, a home stand, west coast trip or back to back series against New York and Boston will dictate success or failure over a ten game stretch. But twenty games, twenty games should normalize some of those short term effects. Twenty games feels like a good running pulse of a teams’ relative momentum within a season.
Does it surprise any of you that over the last twenty games, only the Yankees have played as good ball as the Red Sox with both teams playing .750 baseball?
Both of the AL East juggernauts can be found dominating the batting leaderboards over that period. While not quite at “Yankee” levels of production, any doubts in the Red Sox offense that may have existed in the middle of the summer as the team seemingly went through a collective slump have been wiped away of late.
The Yankee offense has been nothing short of monumental over their 15-5 stretch hitting a whopping .309, nineteen more runs scored than the next closest AL team (surprisingly the Oakland As). Powered by 28 home runs and a team OPS of .875, the Yankees have steamrolled teams with their bats.
Here are some of the hottest Yankees, hitting their strides at the right time of the season:
- Alex Rodriguez: .391/.466/.594, 3 home runs, 16 RBI
- Nick Swisher: .333/.432/.681, 6 home runs, 12 RBI
Remarkably, seven of the nine Yankee starters are hitting over .300 over that stretch with seven of nine also slugging over .450. They are mashing.
While not up to those standards, the Red Sox aren’t far behind. As a team, they’ve hit .286 with 26 home runs and 105 runs scored with an OPS .832. They find themselves consistently in second place in major offensive categories behind the Yankees.
Individually, the Red Sox starters certainly stack up pretty well across the board with their divisional rivals. It is safe to say that at no other point this season have the Red Sox bats collectively hit so well up and down the lineup. While there are some individual standouts of late:
- Jacoby Ellsbury: .347/.424/.453, 12 runs, 7 stolen bases
- Kevin Youkilis: .339/.414/.559, 3 home runs, 12 RBI
- JD Drew: .327/.453/.654, 4 home runs, 9 RBI
Like the Yankees, the Red Sox have depth at the plate with six hitters over the .300 mark and seven with ten or more runs scored. Unlike times this season, the Red Sox have had success of late turning over the lineup and getting production from the back half of their order.
As the Red Sox swooned in the middle of the season, it wasn’t only the hitting that had people worried about this team’s post-season potential. With John Smoltz and Brad Penny making their exits from the staff, coupled with injuries to Daisuke Matsuzaka and Tim Wakefield, the rotation wasn’t living up to pre-season expectations.
Over the past twenty games, lead by Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester, the Red Sox pitching staff has been as good as their offense has been with a 3.61 team ERA (3rd in the AL), a league leading 163 strike outs, and third fewest 15 home runs allowed.
Buchholz has done more than solidify the third spot in the rotation, he’s pitched as well as anyone in baseball over his last four starts (3-0, 1.59 ERA, 22 K, 28.1 IP) and Jon Lester has matched him outing for outing (3-0, 1.63 ERA, 30 K (tops in the AL), 27.2 IP).
While Josh Beckett’s performance over his four starts has yielded a 5.09 ERA and 1-1 record, his last two outings would indicate that he’s following Buchholz and Lester’s lead in heating up for the post-season.
With Daisuke’s enigmatic, successful return to the fourth spot in the rotation, the Red Sox have as formidable a rotation as anyone in baseball heading into October.
Aside from struggles from Hideki Okajima and less so from Ramon Ramirez in the bullpen, the Red Sox bullpen has been excellent. Most importantly, the Billy Wagner, Daniel Bard, Jonathan Papelbon connection has been dominant of late.
So what can we gather from the last twenty games? I, for one, come away as convinced as ever that this team is peaking at exactly the right time in nearly every way that you would hope and that, as importantly, they’ve gone toe to toe with the Yankees who have been considered the best team in baseball for the better half of the season. I think this bodes well for the Red Sox chances in October.