Jason Bay the designated hitter

There has been talk that Jason Bay has come back to the Red Sox asking if they could resign him. Obviously there are a ton of problems with resigning him, but that isn't what I wanted to discuss here today. There are a few of things to take into account in a move like that. The first is when we discuss designated hitters we are talking about someone who has no need for defensive value so his level of "average" and "replacement" is very different. This has been articulated many times by Tom Tango, but replacement level at DH is actually average. This should make sense as you could find someone with enough of a bat to hit, but often has poor defensive skills. This effect is why the DH has such a large positional adjustment at -17.5. This is why a league average DH is a much better hitter than the league average player. You can also see how poor a defender needs to be before they would be better at DH.

Rethinking Jacoby Ellsbury in left field

Earlier today I heard a bit of an interview with Peter Gammons on WEEI and he discussed some interesting topics, but the one that really caught my attention was the discussion on Jacoby Ellsbury. Gammons believed the Red Sox should and are contemplating a move for Ellsbury to left field. I have done some research into this before, but there was a new argument for doing this. Gammons believes that stealing 70 bases is beating up Ellsbury and making him less effective defensively. His reasoning is a comment he attributed to Rickey Henderson that I have been unable to locate. Henderson claims that his extensive number of steals was beating up his body and effecting his ability to man center field.

Mike Lowell fails physical in Texas

According to Peter Abraham at Boston.com a major league source has said that Mike Lowell has failed his physical to finalize the trade to the Texas Rangers.

According to a major league source, the third baseman needs surgery on the radial collateral ligament in his right thumb and the trade to Texas that was agreed upon 11 days ago is off.

Reviving Michael Bowden’s prospect status

Bowden has lost a bit of his "prospect" status, but he was ranked very high on lists just last year. He continues this year at Minor League Ball being ranked fifth on the Red Sox with a B Grade. He has a comparison of Jeff Suppan, but that is still very valuable. I think his ceiling is higher and PECOTA has his top comp as Kevin Slowey.

Evaluating the 2010 team so far

After adding John Lackey and Mike Cameron the team is starting to take shape. Although most think we need to make another move it's possible we enter 2010 as we stand now. That isn't very likely if the Mike Lowell trade is completed, but to start I'm going to look at the roster without any third baseman. *Here is the explanation of how I calculated the WAR values I will be using. If you want to skip this just know it's an average of several projections. For those that are interested I used Bill James projection, Fangraphs new Fans Projection (where available) and CHONE projections. To calculate WAR for Bill James I used his batting runs above average and the CHONE defensive projection since Bill does not project defense. Fan projections already account for WAR and needed no calculation. CHONE is batting and defense above league average. To complete the calculation to WAR for Bill James and CHONE I used CHONE PA to calculate replacement level runs and positional adjustment. Unfortunately this double weights CHONE on PA and defense projections. Once I have calculated the three WAR values I sum the team totals and average them. Better than 2009 Now that that is out of the way we should get an idea of what are good values. In 2009 the Red Sox had the third most runs scored and their batting runs above average totaled 98.8 which ranked second in the league. This includes the whole team and all season. The good news is that the projections so far are much better than that for our group of 8 (Remember no third basemen). Bill James projects a 133.8 runs above average and CHONE calls for 106.

Pressing reasons to improve the infield defense

There has been a lot of stress placed on the defense this offseason and that looks to continue with the interest in Adrian Beltre to replace Mike Lowell at third base. Other than the obvious value gained from a solid defense is there another reason to make sure you obtain positive gains this year in defense? I think I found it and it starts with Clay Buchholz. With Buchholz taking on the number three spot in the rotation there was an interesting number that seemed in common for our top three. That number is groundball percentage, which Buchholz led the team in during his limited appearances at 53.8%. Jon Lester and Josh Beckett have established new career levels above 47% meaning 3 out of 5 starts by the team should have a large amount of work for the infield.