Scutaro impressing with contact

I wanted to avoid writing about the pitching staff today, but the lack of strikeouts by our team is starting to get concerning. It's not just a few pitchers, it is all of them. Anyway one thing I found today that I thought shouldn't go unnoticed was Marco Scutaro's start and excellent approach at the plate. Before his at bat in the top of the eighth yesterday he had gone 24 at bats with a strike out. That is very good start although 7 games is nothing when you learn that the record is 84 posted by Ted Williams in 1949. Last year Scutaro had two streaks longer as well. He had one streak of eight games and another of nine.

Lester’s control issues continue

So far this young season Jon Lester has walked six batters in only 10 IP. While an extremely small sample it's a bit concerning. So far his fastball has been poor according to Fangraphs pitch values with a -2.19 runs per 100 pitches. One change I see right now is a sinker being classified by Pitch F/x, but that could easily be a slight change from his two-seam fastball. The one pitch I do see missing is his slider, which was up to 10 percent of his pitches last year. This year though he has yet to throw one according to Pitch F/x.

Sounding the alarms from the pen

I love to preach patience and we have a long season ahead, but I think it's time to question the bullpen. It's only been 4 games, but a team putting big situations in the hands of Scott Schoeneweis and Scott Atchinson might want to start looking for help. Of course we know that isn't the only trouble, but I'm starting to wonder if we have the arms to get to Daniel Bard, Hideki Okajima and Jonathon Papelbon.

Our lefty specialist has already been called on to face left handers and while he has a career xFIP of 3.53, but if you try to stretch him his xFIP jumps to 5.19. This should limit his usage exclusively to lefty hitters and should not be used for any more than that.

John Lackey’s new approach

Sometimes a pitcher will make adjustments and one game will result in a large jump in one pitch or perhaps they can't control it so they just get rid of the pitch. That doesn't seem to be the case as John Lackey made a huge change to his pitch breakdown last night. Lackey has largely been a four seam fastball pitcher throwing more than 50% for three straight years. In 2008 and 2007 it was 59%. Last night though he broke from the mold and became more unpredictable in his approach. He largely stuck to three pitches through the game using his four-seam fastball, curveball and cutter. When I say he stuck to those pitches he threw 100 pitches of which 30 were four-seamers, 29 were curveballs and 29 were cutters. To put those 29 cutters in perspective we can see in 2009 he threw 81 cutters all year long for a 2.6% of total pitches. Before we go to far though we should see if there is any possibility that these are just misclassified fastballs. First we can see that from his 2009 chart his cutters(FC) are similar to the four seamer with less horizontal movement but similar vertical break.

Lee gets Razzed

Although I got some credit I should say it was Lee who did all the heavy lifting on this one. Head over to RazzBall and check out the five questions answered by Lee on the 2010 Boston Red Sox. It's a bit fantasy oriented, but a good bunch of questions. It's already received 197 comments, so jumping in now might be dangerous, but always fun with the RazzBall crowd.

Beckett’s opening day and new contract

I'm never one to jump on single game data, but I'm also never one to pass up a chance to play with Pitch F/x and also test the announcers claims. Sunday and Monday have been full of chatter on Beckett and that it was only one game, but also that his stuff was not under control. Then add in a contract extension the next day and you have the perfect chance for me to pull out my November contract extension commentary. I'll save that for the end though and lets jump right into the data. Here is his pitch chart from last night thanks to BrooksBaseball

Small samples and spring flings

Every spring, we get the March stars who try to earn a roster spot, but hopefully we all know by now that a month or so of at bats is not enough to tell anything.

Half the time, players are facing minor leaguers and the rest are players working on their approach. Any major league team who picks a player based on any statistic over another in March is only setting themselves up to be disappointed.

So far this spring, Josh Reddick has been tearing the cover off the ball with a .400/.429/.700 line in 40 ABs. That sure looks nice and Jeremy Hermedia is matching him with .400/.447/.571 -- but does anyone think either is a better option in right field than J.D. Drew who is currently hitting .154/.241/.231?

You might say that comparing them to an established player making $14 million this year is a silly comparison, but why would that be any different than saying Clay Buchholz is not ready to start this year based on 6.2 IP?

John Lackey walks like a sabermetrician

After pitching a game against minor leaguers yesterday and giving up his first home run, which was also his first earned run, of the spring John Lackey made some very good comments. The topic was raised after striking out six and walking none in the match-up with minor leaguers.

"That’s my game," he said. "Especially coming over here to the East, you can’t walk people. Guys are such good hitters, you’re going to give up hits. If you give them baserunners, that’s when those hits are really magnified."

More evidence for a healthy Ortiz

An idea I’m mad I didn’t think to use as I was looking more at home run power and distance,…

Ellsbury and the devil

As we enter 2010 the Red Sox have made large strides to lock up the core of their young players through their arbitration and early free agency years. That raises the question why the Red Sox have apparently made no attempts to start talks to extend him through arbitration starting next season. Obviously from the title I think the first reason is his agent. Scott Boras as of 2005 had a league average winning percentage in arbitration according to this THT article by Dave Studman. So there isn't a reason to think he will be tougher to handle in front of an arbitrator. As usual though it will be tough to address his free agency years with Boras who stands strong for getting his clients to free agency as soon as possible. Perhaps we think Elsbury will be different, but there is a reason he signed with Boras and it won't be easy. We all know Theo Epstein likes to avoid arbitration, but will he want to lock up Ellsbury and can he? While we make a lot of comments here about Ellsbury's defense and inability to walk it's pretty sure the Red Sox think Ellsbury can be the 3.4 WAR player from 2008 again.