What makes a good offense? Options

[Lucen]

The debate about our offense and whether it's good enough for the playoffs or not seems to be spilling over into multiple threads, so I thought I'd focus the discussion a bit. From my humble perspective, it seems that the historic run of the 2003 and 2004 offenses has altered our perception of what makes a good offense to the point where we don't see it quite clearly any more. This is similar to how Pedro Martinez shifted our idea of what a number 1 pitcher is to the point that we have people complaining that Josh Beckett is an average starter. So why don't we look at where the Sox sit so far, statistically, and then go so far as to compare them to some of the World Series champions of the last decade to see how we stack up.

First, the Sox are averaging 5.14 R/G. That places us fourth in the American League and fifth in baseball. Some have argued that the team we've seen in the last month and a half is the real Red Sox, so we can't use season long stats to gauge how we'll do in the playoffs. And there is some validity to the argument that Lowell probably won't hit like he did in the first half, or that Youkilis might tail off, or that Pedroia may struggle down the stretch, or that Ortiz won't come around, or that Manny is declining, or that Coco won't keep up his recent pace, or any of another dozen things. But what are the chances that all... or even half of these things happen? And what are the chances that as some slump, others might get hot? Baseball is a game of ups and downs. Peaks and valleys. No one stays hot all season. Most players don't stay cold all season. So I'd argue that 5.14 R/G is a pretty good idea of what the Sox are as an offense.

How does this stack up against the most recent World Series champions?

1996: NYY - 5.38 R/G
1997: FLA - 4.57 R/G
1998: NYY - 5.96 R/G
1999: NYY - 5.56 R/G
2000: NYY - 5.38 R/G
2001: ARI - 5.05 R/G
2002: ANA - 5.25 R/G
2003: FLA - 4.64 R/G
2004: BOS - 5.86 R/G
2005: CWS - 4.57 R/G
2006: STL - 4.82 R/G

So, out of the last 10 World Series champions, the Sox are at this point, on pace to average more runs per game than half of them. And we're not far off the pace of 3 more. I don't think this team is in nearly the kind of trouble offensively that some here have been arguing, but this is just one way to look at it. I'm hoping we'll see quite a few different approaches to examining the offense here so we can get a really solid grasp on just how good (or poor) this offense really is.

This post has been edited by Lucen: Aug 1 2007, 02:31 PM