Rollercoaster

(for the record, yes I was way too ambitious at the beginning of the season, thinking that I could actually write an entertaining blog for every game in the 2010 season...arguably, I didn't write a single one all season)

Ok so disregarding my total abandonment of this blog for the past few months, I just couldn't resist writing again after the up and downs of the last 24hrs+. Of course I'm referring to the Adrian Gonzalez deal which was announced yesterday, blew up (in the media at least) today, and by tonight appears to be back on. I guess it says alot about my passion (that's my word for the idiocy involved in how much I care about a baseball team) for the Red Sox that when I was reading the reports during the day today about the deal falling apart, I actually cracked open Word and started writing a letter to John Henry, here's how I started:

Boston Red Sox
4 Yawkey Way
Boston, MA 02215-3496
Attn: John Henry

Dear Mr. Henry,

I’m writing to you to make sure that you, as the primary owner and individual responsible for the operation and management of the Red Sox, understand exactly how utterly frustrating and disappointed I am in the organization as of Sunday, December 5th regarding the handling of the Adrian Gonzalez trade. First some context, I’m a 42 year old guy with a family, and kids that I’m raising to be Red Sox fans despite us now living on the West Coast.


I literally got so mad just getting to that part that I had to go in the kitchen and complain to my wife while she was making dinner, that conversation went something like this:

me: "Remember that trade I was so happy about yesterday?"
her: "mm hmm"
me: "Well it's off now, I can't believe they're doing this"
her: "mm hmm"
me: "It's just like with #$%!#@ Teixeira 2 years ago, they get to the point where they've got their guy and then they back out. I mean it's absolutely pathetic."
her: "Is it worse than in 2004 when you were so upset after they went down 3-0 to the Yankees?" (ok so actually she said something more like "is it worse than last time you were so mad", but I know what she means).
me: "This is different, that was players this is management. I mean I can't throw a 90mph fastball, I can't hit a 90mph fastball and I'm pretty sure I couldn't field a ball that was thrown by someone who can throw a 90mph fastball to a guy that can hit a 90mph fastball. This is about negotiating and setting expectations, something I can do to some degree. How in the world does the organization get to the point where they pull the trigger on a guy they've apparently been pursuing ever since the screwed up the Teixeira negotiations, I mean surely they knew what kind of contract he'd want when they made the trade right? Theo is all buddies with the GM from the Padres so are you telling me that at no point during the trade negotiations anyone from the Red Sox asked what it might take to get the contract done? "
her: "mm hmm"

I was so obsessed with this thing today that I actually searched on Twitter for the first time just to get updates...just what I needed, another way to fan the fires.

Games 57, 58 & 59 - Red Sox v. Orioles + Indians (@Camden + Jacobs)

After my 3 game hiatus (without a good reason other than tired, daughter's ballet recital and just catching up today), the Red Sox find themselves 4 games out of first and 2 games behind the Yankees for the Wild Card.

They closed out May with the second best winning percentage (.621) in the AL, only behind Toronto.

So far in June (and yes, it's very early), they have the second best winning percentage in the AL (.714), only behind the Angels. And maybe just as importantly, they're the best team in baseball in run differential so far at +25.

They're first in runs scored in June (also now first for the season!), and only 17th in the majors in team ERA. I'm pretty surprised by both of these since its felt like quite a few relatively close games, or at least shutouts. But I guess those games against the A's to start the month skewed the numbers a bit higher than my brain thought they would be.

I admit this is a pretty boring stretch of games (against not good, or even interesting teams), so it's a bit hard to motivate myself to write about the games one way or another. Maybe I need a no-hitter to get me going...

Game 56 - Red Sox v. Orioles (@Camden)

Clay Buchholz has been one of the two best starters in the AL so far this year.

I can't say that I thought I'd be typing that when I started writing this blog, but there it is, and its true. After his complete game shutout of the Orioles tonight, Buchholz is now tied with David Price for wins (at 8) and trails only Price in ERA for AL starters (to be fair, I definitely didn't think the Price/Buchholz combo would be leading the AL pitching!). Clay's strikes/pitches ratio tonight was 0.643, which correlates nicely with the 5 hitter he threw.

At the plate, the Red Sox offense continues to hum along at a pace that is certainly surprising me, and probably alot of other people too, especially when you consider how much time they've played with Cameron + Ellsbury on the DL. I shudder when I see a box score that has Bill Hall playing center, but when your starter is as effective as Buchholz was tonight, who's playing where doesn't matter nearly as much as it did earlier in the season when the starters were getting regularly lit up, and guys like Hall were being asked to actually play defense on a regular basis.

This was a good start to the weekend series, a series that the Red Sox should really sweep, and keep putting some early-season pressure on the leaders in the division (would also be nice if Toronto started to fall off the pace a bit, I've been very surprised that they've sustained their winning ways this far into the season).

Game 55 - Red Sox v. A's (@Fenway)

I'm not sure if it's the fact that they've been playing against generally weaker teams, or the break (and eventual poor performance) from the Celtics, too much stuff going on at work, or just a sneak peek at what the dog days of summer will be like, but man is it hard to get up for writing this blog lately.

I flipped over to the MLB network during a commercial break of the Celtics/Lakers game tonight (I needed something to take the pain away from watching the Celtics get manhandled by the Lakers, especially by the Laker's defense....yikes, did I really just type that?). I saw the 'full highlights' including two monster shots from Curt Suzuki and two guys getting thrown out at the plate (first Victor Martinez, then Darnell MacDonald). It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but I feel like this team is pretty uninteresting right now. They've righted the ship since the poor start, but they're not quite red hot either, even the stats from May that I wrote about a few days ago were good, but not spectacular. Maybe it was the fact that after the super slow start (which was a good story in a weird way), I was expecting either a continued decline or a massive turnaround. And while there have been some players with massive turnarounds (Big Papi and Jon Lester to name two), it hasn't happened as a team to the point where it's gripping me to catch the score every day to see who's doing what.

It may actually be related to the Celtics season, where they were completely flat for the last 50 games of the regular season, and then have been on complete fire through the playoffs (well, except for tonight). There's part of me that's waiting for that same kind of explosion from the Red Sox, but it hasn't happened yet.

A weekend series against the Orioles certainly doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that will turn me around...

Game 54 - Red Sox v. A's (@Fenway)

Good news, the Red Sox have now won 4 in a row over teams that they should be beating (Royals and A's) and have moved ahead of Toronto for 3rd in the AL East (and 2.5 games out of the Wild Card).

Better news, Dice-k was actually fairly effective today. He wasn't lights out by any means, but the 7K's and no walks are encouraging coming from a guy that tends to most of his pitches nibble around the plate. He seems to be pitching more aggressively this year, although interestingly enough, his strike/pitches ratio is only 0.61, a number that's a low for him over his 4 year career with the Red Sox. His walks/9innings are down too, which leads me to think that he's getting more movement on his pitches which is leading to getting hitters to swing at more pitches out of the strike zone?

Best news, my team's computers arrived today :)

Game 53 - Red Sox v. A's (@Fenway)

When does John Lackey stop sucking?

Sure he got the win tonight, but he gave up 4 runs and 12 hits against the 4th worst offense in the AL, that's hardly a great start from the guy the Red Sox gave a huge contract to in the offseason.

Thanks to some experiences at work over the past few days, I'm seeing alot of things through corporate tainted glasses, including the Red Sox. For example, I have a couple of developers on my team that need new hardware to start work on a new project. Seems simple enough right? I asked about getting the hardware about 2 weeks ago, and even offered to stroll to the store down the street to buy the machines and bring them back. For some reason (that I'm still not entirely clear on), this was frowned upon so I went through the proper channels figuring that it can't take much more than a week to get the machines since I could order them myself and get them about that fast.

Well it's now 2 weeks later and we're still without the hardware. When I asked for a status update early last week, I was told they had been shipped and was given a tracking number to track the package with UPS. The UPS tracking site showed that they were on the truck for delivery that day, so I figured about 2 more days (since my employer has a rather large mail system) to get to my office.

It's now 1 week after that, and we're still without the hardware. When I emailed the mail services team about it today, they (very politely replied), that it had been delivered to the building, and signed for by someone on my admins behalf. So I sent an email to the person who signed, and my admin to see if the hardware had arrived.

They don't have it.

So I've now spent 2+ weeks waiting for this #$%!^ hardware that I could have just gone down to the store to get 2 weeks ago.

How does this relate to the Red Sox.....actually, hell if I know, I'm just too pissed off about this hardware order (and the incredibly inefficiencies that it exposes in my company's process, and to some degree culture) to write about the baseball game tonight.

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.