is the Sox's powerful offense not so powerful?

soxhop411 said:

Alex Speier ‏@alexspeier 6m6 minutes ago
Hence, Sox are just 3-36 trailing after 7, 2-38 trailing after 8. They're not beating other teams' bullpens.

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Who is beating other teams' bullpens?

Bob Montgomery's Helmet Hat said:

Who is beating other teams' bullpens?

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Anyone playing the Red Sox...

flymrfreakjar said:

Anyone playing the Red Sox...

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Fabulous.

They lead the league in context neutral batting metrics (wOBA/wRC+, AVE/OBP/SLG) and are 2nd in the extremely context/clutch/sequencing/grittyness dependent WPA. They are above average (mostly in the top 5) in every relevant offensive component stat.

If you look at those wonderful little tables you posted, you will note that the Red Sox are above average (sOPS+ over 100) in literally every single category there, too.

This offense is pretty fucking powerful.

soxhop411 said:

Alex Speier ‏@alexspeier 7m7 minutes ago
The Sox' offense has been the best in baseball...but in late&close situations, they have a .699 OPS, 10th in AL.

Alex Speier ‏@alexspeier 6m6 minutes ago
Hence, Sox are just 3-36 trailing after 7, 2-38 trailing after 8. They're not beating other teams' bullpens.

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Interesting.

A few obvious questions: why are the Red Sox failing to score runs late in close games, what is that failure attributable to, and can it be fixed?

A person might argue that the Red Sox aren’t scoring runs late in close games due to luck, an explanation that is convenient but not overly convincing. The sample size suggests that something else is going on besides a general randomness.

The reason the Red Sox are a pathetic 2nd place in offensive WPA is that their performance in high leverage situations has cost them just under 2.5 wins, 21st in MLB. The primary culprits of their incompetence? Jackie Bradley Junior (-1.26 clutch), David Ortiz (-0.91) and Mookie Betts (-0.87).

Anyone want to ask David Ortiz why he sucks in the clutch all of a sudden?

To expand on the slightly snarky responses, a huge amount of what appears to be "clutch" is actually just good situational hitting, which usually translates to hitting singles and not striking out in situations where those two things are unusually valuable (such as when a critical runner is in scoring position in the late innings). It's no coincidence that Tony Gwynn, Pete Rose, and Ichiro (among other less prestigious names with similar skillsets) rank very highly on the career clutch leaderboards. On the flip side, the very bottom of that list is loaded with three true outcomes sluggers like Sammy Sosa and Jim Thome. These are still batters you want to see in a high leverage spot, but the things they are best at (walks, dingers) are worth less than they normally would be, while their weaknesses (strikeouts) hurt more.

What does this have to do with the Red Sox? Unlike a lot of the TTO-heavy Red Sox offenses from earlier years, this team can not only draw walks and hit bombs, but they are also excellent at avoiding strikeouts (17.7% K rate, 3rd best in MLB) and getting hits (.289 Batting Average and .327 BABiP, both 1st). These are the broader skills that make for a "clutch" team, and the fact that the Red Sox are already good at them (on top of the fact that their 2nd worst clutch hitter is the bloody king of clutch performances) makes it highly unlikely that this team should be expected to perform poorly in high leverage situations down the road.

soxhop411 said:

Hence, Sox are just 3-36 trailing after 7, 2-38 trailing after 8. They're not beating other teams' bullpens.

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When the Great and Powerful Trump becomes Dictator for Life, hopefully one of his first pronouncements will be to make it a capital offense for sportswriters to present these stats. Teams lose virtually all the time when they're behind late in a game? Well, duh!

The mighty Cubs are 2-35 when trailing after 7 and 1-36 after 8. The Indians, who currently have the best record in the AL, are 3-35 after 7. The Orioles are 2-40 when trailing after 8 (although 8-36 after 7). How do the Red Sox have a unique issue here?

How do the Red Sox have a unique issue here?

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The answer might be this:

The Sox' offense has been the best in baseball...but in late&close situations, they have a .699 OPS, 10th in AL.

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Thus, the best offense in the league turns into a bottom tier offense in late and close games.

FanSinceBoggs said:

The answer might be this:


Thus, the best offense in the league turns into a bottom tier offense in late and close games.

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Well wouldn't that be expected for this iteration of the Red Sox given that (1) I would expect they have more blow-outs, either way, than many teams and (2) given that they are in the race, teams will be pitching their best relievers in late and close games?

Not sure where to look this up but I would be surprised if say TB was facing the same quality of relievers in late and close games.

wade boggs chicken dinner said:

Not sure where to look this up but I would be surprised if say TB was facing the same quality of relievers in late and close games.

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I wouldn't be surprised if TB in particular was facing similar quality relievers, but the other teams in the AL east have some very effective pitchers in the back of their bullpens. Looking at the top 50 relievers by ERA with a minimum of 30 innings (arbitrary cutoff alert!) The Orioles have #1 (Britton), #3 (Brach), and #21 (Worley), The Yankees have #7 (Miller) and #37 (Betances) even after trading #23 (Chapman), the Blue Jays have #18 (Ozuna) and #34 (Biagini), and even the lowly Rays have #26 (Colome). With the exceptions of Worley and Biagini, all of those pitchers have been regulars in "close and late" situations this year.

I suppose considering that none of us have any impact on what the team will do it doesn't matter how real or relevant the things we worry about are, but that's pretty much the only reason to be focusing on the team's close and late performance instead of the bullpen injuries and whatever the hell went wrong with the back of the rotation.

So do the Sox still have a problem with come from behind victories against other teams' bullpens?

Philip Jeff Frye said:

So do the Sox still have a problem with come from behind victories against other teams' bullpens?

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Apparently the Mariners isn't a problem. Need to see how they can do against others but certainly a nice 2 game trend.

A good test will be against the Angels pen

Since July 22 (2-1 loss against Minnesota), the Sox offense has 481 PA, 36 BB, 96 SO, 103 Hits, for an OBP/SLG/OPS of .300/.395/.695. In that time, there's been 81 LOB (hitting double digits 3 times).

During that same time, Sox pitching has 113.1 IP (479 PA), 120 H, 32 BB, and 97 SO. Only 5 times in that stretch has the pitching given up 5+ runs, so the hitting is really what's been hurting during that stretch.

Edit: Fixed. Also, for comparison, league average OBP/SLG/OPS stands at .321/.417/.738.

Zososoxfan said:

Since July 22 (2-1 loss against Minnesota), the Sox offense has 481 PA, 36 BB, 96 SO, 103 Hits, for a slash line of .300/.395/.695.

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Geez, that looks positively Ruthian.

When did "slash line" stop being BA/OBP/SLG? I'm seeing a lot of this lately.

We seem to have the classic baseball problem in which at least one of the rotation, lineup, or bullpen is struggling at any given moment.

Still, we're only two games off our pythagorean record. It feels like it should be more. We're also only two under .500 in one run games. That also feels like it should be more.

nvalvo said:

We seem to have the classic baseball problem in which at least one of the rotation, lineup, or bullpen is struggling at any given moment.

Still, we're only two games off our pythagorean record. It feels like it should be more. We're also only two under .500 in one run games. That also feels like it should be more.

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Over 6 games behind their second order pythagenpat record which means they are leaving runs on the board and/or allowing more runs then they should by a considerable amount.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/

NYCSox said:

Over 6 games behind their second order pythagenpat record which means they are leaving runs on the board and/or allowing more runs then they should by a considerable amount.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/

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And actually they are technically 3 games off their pythag which puts them at 61 wins, not 2 as the previous post mentioned. Not a really big difference, but just for sake of accuracy.

Still, the biggest problem is the Orioles have grossly over performed their pythag and even more on their 2nd and 3rd order win pct. The Rangers and Tigers have grossly over performed too. It's balancing out somewhere and unfortunately for the Red Sox, it's them who is taking most of the crappy run and hit clustering. Toronto and Tampa have absorbed some of that too.

Speier talks about the offense on the road in today's 108 Stitches:
"The Red Sox remain a good lineup on the road. The team averages 4.89 runs per game away from Fenway, third best in the AL. They have the second-best road batting average (.264), second-best road OBP (.328), and top slugging mark (.440) among AL teams.

But even with those fine marks, they aren’t the offensive juggernaut that they’ve been for much of the year at home, where they average 5.95 runs per game. That run-per-game divide underscores the significance of the idea that the Sox have four more remaining road games (34) than any other team in baseball – four more than the Orioles, five more than the Blue Jays, and 10 more than the Tigers team that just surpassed the Sox for the second AL wild card spot.

In 47 road games, the Sox have been held to two or fewer runs more often (14 times) than has occurred in 59 home games (13). And it is these sorts of low-scoring games that the Sox have been ill-equipped to win this year. They have won just two games (2-25) all year when scoring two runs; they are the only team in the majors without a win when scoring three runs (0-6)."

Looking at the Farrell thread, I got to thinking about the hot offensive start and how at the time, it seemed like so much of the success of the offense was based on the fact that there were no holes in the lineup. Now that there has been some regression team wide, I wonder if the team's slump is due to a relative lack of home runs and/or walks and whether these can be indicators going forward. In other words, this team leads the majors in hits by almost 50 over the 2nd place Marlins (1064 to 1018), doubles (242 to the Rockies' 214), OBP (.351 to the Cubs' .346) and SLG (.469 to the Rockies' .454), but is 11th in HR (135, TOR, SEA, and BAL each have over 150) and 8th in BB (360, with the Cubs at 452 (!) and Blue Jays at 413). Is there any reasonable expectation that the team will improve its HR and/or BB numbers relative to other teams and does it matter? i.e. is this current slump just a matter of ill-timed LOB or a substantive dip in production/road blues?

Savin Hillbilly said:

The Sox' OPS split for +.500/-.500 is quite small (.813/.831), about half the size of the league split (.731/.765). I see nothing in the evidence to suggest their bats have feasted off bad teams or struggled against good ones, at least no more than is normal.

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The quality of opponent may not make the difference, but that doesn't mean that there isn't difference to be made. We did score almost a full run more over the first 50 games as the next 50. Moreover, the distribution of runs in games matters more than the aggregate.

While we are the top scoring team based on average runs per game, that also makes us one of the teams with the highest variance in runs per game. Based on the season to date, higher variance in runs scored per game has a strongish correlation with underperforming pythag record (r = .54 or so), and perhaps more impressive than the raw coefficient, is this: of the 14 teams that have underperformed their pythag, only 2 have a variance below league average, while of the 13 that have over performed, only 1 has exceeded the league average in variance (the three teams that have matched their pythag exactly are all within 1 sd of the mean).

Now, worth noting that there is a correlation between runs scored and variance, because you can always score more runs but the floor is 0, so the downside is limited. Related to this is the fact that the Red Sox lead the league in games scoring 8 or more runs. However, the reason this isn't a total wash is because the marginal value of a run in terms of win probability is not equally distributed. Your 11th run has much less chance of deciding a victory than your 5th run, etc., and despite leading the majors in highest scores, the Red Sox don't enjoy that advantage in terms of having the fewest games of scoring 0-2 runs. So while we have 30 games in which we scored 8-15 runs, we also had 27 in which we scored 0-2 runs.

I would guess that Fenway has something to do with this, as variance correlates to runs, as mentioned, but while normally OBP correlates slightly more to runs scored than slugging (which is why a lot of advanced metrics weight OBP more heavily), variance is more highly correlated to slugging, as they are less common events that add a higher run probability. So a team or home park that generates more XBH should show high variance as well (not surprisingly, the team with the greatest variance is COL, by a significant margin). I would like to keep digging into this, but I really can't spend any more time at work on it than I already have, so it will have to wait...

edit: Just realized that this would be more appropriate in the Sox Offense thread, if a dope wants to move it.

Zososoxfan said:

Is there any reasonable expectation that the team will improve its HR and/or BB numbers relative to other teams and does it matter? i.e. is this current slump just a matter of ill-timed LOB or a substantive dip in production/road blues?

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Considering the hitters involved, I see no reason to think this Red Sox team should improve its raw HR and/or BB numbers, collectively.

The 2nd half slump has generally been driven by lower BA and OBP. Of the 8 constants in the lineups, 7 aren't hitting as high a batting averages and 6 are getting on base less frequently. Those drops alone will make it far harder to sustain the rallies which create runs in bunches.

1st-Half vs 2nd-Half
- .426 OPS (.105-/.142-/.284-) Ortiz [-.037 isoD]
- .129 OPS (.021-/.045-/.084-) Bradley [-.024 isoD]
- .056 OPS (.049-/.062-/.006-) Bogaerts [-.012 isoD]
- .035 OPS (.003-/.006-/.029-) Holt [-.003 isoD]
- .026 OPS (.060-/.040-/.014-) Shaw [+.020 isoD]
+ .020 OPS (.054-/.077-/.097+) Hanley [-.023 isoD]
+ .046 OPS (.036-/.005+/.041+) Pedroia [+.041 isoD]
+ .118 OPS (.009+/.016+/.102+) Betts [+.007 isoD]

Plus, I hadn't actually noticed for real until putting this together, but Ortiz has seriously fallen off a cliff.

Betts' increased productivity mostly makes up for JBJ coming down to earth, and you hope Leon and Benintendi can continue to give you a boost over what came before them. But Ortiz is suddenly hitting his age, and so I would expect the overall team HR numbers to decline relative to the rest of the league, especially with Hanley now hobbled by a wrist injury, as well.

Buzzkill Pauley said:

The 2nd half slump has generally been driven by lower BA and OBP. Of the 8 constants in the lineups, 7 aren't hitting as high a batting averages and 6 are getting on base less frequently. Those drops alone will make it far harder to sustain the rallies which create runs in bunches.

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The Sox led the league in BABIP by a significant margin (.335 vs the second place Marlins at .324) over the first half. That there is a regression in BA and thus OBP and offense should pretty much be expected. What is unusual is that they have dropped to 22nd in the majors while the vast majority of at bats have gone to the same players. This is a slump, most likely based on luck, and I think the offense will be just fine, even accounting for the affect Fenway has on offense. Even with that bad luck, they've still had a 98 OPS+, so their slump hasn't been horrible, it's just made them an average team.

The Yankees depleted bullpen against the Red Sox's offense from the 7th inning onwards (Aug 9, 10, 11):
8 IP, 0 ER, 2 BB, 9 K, 0.00 ERA

Cowboy up!

I still wonder if having a consistent (hypothetical, obviously) , say... .775 OPS hitter is more productive across a season than a guy who hits .950 for a month, .500 the next, .950 the next , etc... etc... even if it levelled out to a .775 OPS.

Trotsky said:

I still wonder if having a consistent (hypothetical, obviously) , say... .775 OPS hitter is more productive across a season than a guy who hits .950 for a month, .500 the next, .950 the next , etc... etc... even if it levelled out to a .775 OPS.

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Would you rather a team score 16 runs, then 1, then, 1, or 6,6,6? Same number of runs scored, but much different. In the first scenario, you are more than likely 1-2, while in the 2nd, you are more than likely 2-1 or even 3-0. A consistent team is much harder to beat than a streaky one. In the first scenario, you will likely lose the first game, but only need 2 runs per game to win the next 2. In the 2nd, you need 7 to win ANY game. Having consistent hitters would mean a consistent team, which is much better. I know it won't work that way, slumps happen, hot streaks,etc. but i think you would be MUCH better off.