Game 31 - Red Sox v. Yankees (@Fenway)

I read a quote from Mitch Williams today (Mitch had picked the Red Sox to win the division) where he basically said 'you can't win the division in April, but you can lose it, and based on their start, the Red Sox are done'. Call me overly loyal, but even after last night's drubbing and overall mediocre performance to date, I thought it was a bit much to say they're done with so much baseball left to play, but I am inching closer to that realization after today's loss.

I won't even bother with the analysis of Clay's start, he sucked, the offense sucked, the bullpen sucked and the defense sucked. Since the game was on Fox, I got to tune in to see CC Sabathia, despite not having his best stuff or control, keep the Red Sox in check while at the same time, pitcher after pitcher (started with Buchholz, through Schoenweiss and Bard), left meatball after meatball out over the plate. It got so bad that even Tim McCarver realized it (he made a dead on observation about a poor pitch from Buchholz to Mark Teixeira that led to Tex' first home run of the game).

What's most staggering (to me at least) about the Red Sox this year is their team stats and relative positions in the league:

Runs scored: 6th in all of MLB
Runs allowed: 3rd worst in all of MLB

So basically, the team has performed exactly opposite to what everyone (possibly including their own management thought. How does a team with what seems to be a great pitching staff, get such horrid pitching performances over the course of the first 30+ games? Let me try some analysis (disclaimer, I'm typing this as I research it so who knows if this will lead anywhere). Pitching is about keeping the other team from scoring, and the other team scores by getting men on base, so how have the Red Sox pitchers done in keeping guys off the bases:


Opponents AVG: .263 (17th in MLB)
Opponents OBP: .336 (18th in MLB)
Opponents SLG: .766 (23rd in MLB)

While none of those numbers (or their ranks) are good, they also don't imply that the staff would be the 3rd worst in all of MLB at preventing runs. So that leads me to think it's either poor defense, or just really poor pitching 'when it matters' (i.e. with runners in scoring position, or giving up loads of home runs...or worse, both). So let's take a look at that data:

Team defense: I'm not familiar enough with defensive stats to know if there are a set of great indicators for team defense, but I did just spend a few minutes looking at where Boston sits relative to other teams in the AL with respect to the team defense stats reported on baseball-reference.com, and I don't see anything that shows the Red Sox being in the basement defensively (certainly not bad enough to drag down an average pitching staff).

When-it-matters pitching: Boston is 8th in MLB in home runs allowed and 6th in MLB in total baserunners allowed, so while they're slightly below the middle of the pack when it comes to putting guys on base, they are much worse than the field in giving up multiple bases per hitter. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a site that has "opponents average with runners in scoring position", which at this point would seem to be a rather telling stat.

At this point, I'm left to conclude that it's mostly the pitching (which the stats bear out), and that it's probably a lack of clutch pitching that is the driver of the godawful start.

Lets hope the Celtics + Bruins grab a couple of wins over the next two days to give us something else to think about.