Sunday, May 30, 2010

Game 52 - Red Sox v. Royals (@Fenway)

I've been touting individual stats quite a bit over the course of the first 51 games, with lots of comparisons and splits analysis (especially over time) to indicate how hot/cold individual pitchers and hitters have been. But after yet another good start from Jon Lester and yet another (over the past few weeks) day at the plate from David Ortiz I felt that going back to that well of 'Ortiz is the third best hitter in May' stuff would be overdoing it so I'll take a look at team stats over the month of May. Of course the fact that today was their last game in May gave me some good inspiration too :)

Offensively, the Red Sox finished May with the following standings across all of MLB (note that since some teams will be playing on Memorial Day, the positions could very well change, although probably not dramatically):

Runs scored: 1st (tied with 158)
Home runs: 3rd (with 40)
OPB: 5th (at .349)
SLG: 3rd (at .460)
OPS: 2nd (at .810)

So the offense is clicking right along, with numbers heavily influenced by great months from David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis and Adrian Beltre). But since they were ranked in the top 5 in offense in April, this isn't eye opening, just a good sign that the offense we saw early isn't a fluke.

Pitching-wise, we saw the beginning of the turnaround for the staff as a whole:

Wins: 4th (tied with 17...worth noting that they tied Toronto and Tampa Bay)
ERA: 20th (at 4.40)
BAA: 6th (at .239)
WHIP: 15th (at 1.34)

On the surface, only the Wins total looks especially good (which after all is the only number that really matters). The biggest change month-over-month was in the BAA, which went from .262 (18th best) in April to .239 (6th best) in May. The biggest contributors to the improvement? Some expected, and one big surprise:

Jon Lester: .161 BAA (3rd best, and best in the AL)
Daisuke Matsuzaka: .218 BAA (28th best, and 13th best in the AL)
Clay Buchholz: .257 BAA (68th best, and 29th best in the AL)

And in the bullpen, the setup men and closer had very good months:

Manny Delcarmen: .152 BAA (ERA of 1.98)
Daniel Bard: .184 BAA (ERA of 0.79)
Jonathan Papelbon: .189 BAA (ERA of 3.60)

Almost as important as the names that are on the list, are the names that aren't on the list, most notably Josh Beckett and John Lackey. If those two come back to be anything close to what we were expecting at the start of the season, and the rest of the staff continues to deliver at anywhere near what we saw in May, this is going to be a very, very tough team as the weather heats up.

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