Every Single Hitter Is Hitting Worse Than He Did in 2016

[KenTremendous]

OPS+, 2017 vs. 2016

C Leon -47
1B Ramirez -25
2B Pedroia -10
SS Bogaerts -18
3B Holt -52
LF Benintendi -7
CF Bradley -22
RF Betts -26
4th OF Young -29

That's everyone. The entire team -- all of the guys who played last year -- is down. Many of them are drastically down. Moreland is up slightly over his last year in TX but is still below league average. Panda is gone, obviously, and Holt has only played in 35ish games. But the fact remains: except for our back-up catcher, not a single regular player is having even as good a year as he did last year -- forget about a better year.

Why?

 

[Rovin Romine]

Hmm. I didn't realize the season had finished.

 

[drbretto]

Is it crazy to think it's the been the absence of Ortiz? Not for nothing else, but I could imagine a shift in identity would include an adjustment period of some kind. Seems like they're all heating up at the right time at least. At the rate they're running, it really could be a different story by the end of the season.

 

[KenTremendous]

Hmm. I didn't realize the season had finished.

Not sure why that matters. On balance, at any random point in the season -- especially when the sample sizes are good -- you'd expect some to be better, some to be worse, and some to be the same, right? Literally every regular being down -- and in many cases, by a big margin -- is weird.

 

[Reverend]

Not sure why that matters. On balance, at any random point in the season -- especially when the sample sizes are good -- you'd expect some to be better, some to be worse, and some to be the same, right? Literally every regular being down -- and in many cases, by a big margin -- is weird.

Not so weird. I mean, if you decided to take last year as a base line and just call over or under for each as basically a coin flip, this is only as unlike as flipping a coin heads like... nine or ten straight times. Or so.

Which is right around Luke surviving the snow storm on Hoth, so...

 

[Reverend]

Unless R2 made a mistake, I mean.

 

[AbbyNoho]

R2 has been known to make mistakes.


From time to time .

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

Nunez is better than last year I'd bet.

Devers is playing better than Judge.

 

[BroodsSexton]

Not so weird. I mean, if you decided to take last year as a base line and just call over or under for each as basically a coin flip, this is only as unlike as flipping a coin heads like... nine or ten straight times. Or so.

Which is right around Luke surviving the snow storm on Hoth, so...

It's definitely coming up tails next time! We're due!

 

[snowmanny]

Well given that you get to a 3% probability at five hitters it might mean something. Ten straight coin flips of tails is pretty rare.

I wonder about the Ortiz factor. There's no way to prove it and I know he was sixth in MVP voting and fourth in WAR amongst Red Sox position players but it sure seemed as if he was an immense presence in that lineup and on that team.

 

[BaseballJones]

OPS+, 2017 vs. 2016

C Leon -47
1B Ramirez -25
2B Pedroia -10
SS Bogaerts -18
3B Holt -52
LF Benintendi -7
CF Bradley -22
RF Betts -26
4th OF Young -29

That's everyone. The entire team -- all of the guys who played last year -- is down. Many of them are drastically down. Moreland is up slightly over his last year in TX but is still below league average. Panda is gone, obviously, and Holt has only played in 35ish games. But the fact remains: except for our back-up catcher, not a single regular player is having even as good a year as he did last year -- forget about a better year.

Why?

And incredibly...they have a better winning percentage this year than last.

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

How are the married hitters doing?

 

[johnnywayback]

OPS+, 2017 vs. 2016

C Leon -47
1B Ramirez -25
2B Pedroia -10
SS Bogaerts -18
3B Holt -52
LF Benintendi -7
CF Bradley -22
RF Betts -26
4th OF Young -29

That's everyone. The entire team -- all of the guys who played last year -- is down. Many of them are drastically down. Moreland is up slightly over his last year in TX but is still below league average. Panda is gone, obviously, and Holt has only played in 35ish games. But the fact remains: except for our back-up catcher, not a single regular player is having even as good a year as he did last year -- forget about a better year.

Why?

I don't think there's a single cause -- it's tempting to say "Chili Davis sucks," but Chili Davis was the hitting coach last year, too. And, in fact, there are a few different potential causes that make sense:

-- For Leon and Holt, I'd be more than willing to chalk up 2016 (and in Holt's case, 2015) as the outlier. I don't think they are good at hitting baseballs. At least Leon provides some defensive value.
-- Bradley is a streaky hitter: his 2016 happened to include a long hot streak that he hasn't replicated this year. I'd say there's reason to hope he could have another before the year is out and close that gap a bit. That said, even if 2016 is the outlier, his defense is so good that, even at this level of offense, he's a great starting CF.
-- Pedroia and Benintendi are close enough to matching last year's numbers that I wouldn't look too hard for a real, dramatic cause. But you could easily see Pedroia's nagging injuries hurting him a bit, and Benintendi wouldn't be the first rookie to have a bit of trouble adjusting to the league's adjustments. Indeed, the latter is already figuring it out, and I'd bet on him matching or exceeding last year's number by October. And while Pedroia's arrow is clearly pointing down, Benintendi's is pointing up.
-- Ramirez and Young are declining. In Ramirez's case, the shoulder injury has probably hastened the decline, and in Young's, he simply hasn't had a ton of playing time, which makes his error bars a little bigger.
-- That leaves Bogaerts and Betts, the two most important guys and, unfortunately, the two I'm most worried about. With both, there's been a visible change: Bogaerts isn't pulling the ball, and Betts is popping up too many hittable pitches. With Bogaerts, I'd buy (and hope) that it's related to the hand injury (and, indeed, he's already turning it around). With Betts, it feels like something is off mechanically, and I don't know how that gets fixed. I'm willing to bet it does at some point, though.

I'm not sure what the conclusion is here, but I think it's more about roster construction than about coaching -- in other words, we shouldn't have expected these guys to perform as well as they did in 2016. In particular, I'd single out Leon and Holt as guys who I wish weren't getting enough at-bats to make it onto this list.

And as for what to do next, I think fixing Betts is obviously a huge priority, but I also think they need to have a plan for 2018 and beyond that doesn't rely on Ramirez and Pedroia playing like they did in 2016 anymore. To me, that means going after a middle-of-the-order bat who can slot in at 1B (or DH) and having a better middle-infield backup plan under the assumption that we won't get 150 games from Pedroia. You go get a Justin Bour or whoever to replace Moreland, and you don't need Ramirez to be Vintage Hanley (which is good, because we're going to want to ease off of him to avoid triggering his 2019 option).

 

[Reverend]

I'm not sure what the conclusion is here, but I think it's more about roster construction than about coaching -- in other words, we shouldn't have expected these guys to perform as well as they did in 2016. In particular, I'd single out Leon and Holt as guys who I wish weren't getting enough at-bats to make it onto this list.

That's just stating the premise in reverse: that everyone had a better year last year.

So that's not really a conclusion so much as saying the same thing, and the point is that it's weird and interesting.

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

Devers is playing better than Judge.

And he's hitting better than last year even though he's three levels higher.

 

[benhogan]

Rick Porcello- significantly worse
David Price- worse
"2016 All-Star pitcher" Steven Wright- non-existent

The conclusion: John Farrell, Manager of the Year (correction: Dave Dombrowski, Executive of the Year)

Sale, Pomeranz, Kimbrel!!!

High leverage bullpen results probably matter more than they are given credit for.

 

[Sandy Leon Trotsky]

Rick Porcello- significantly worse
David Price- worse
"2016 All-Star pitcher" Steven Wright- non-existent

The conclusion: John Farrell, Manager of the Year

Sale, Pomeranz, Kimbrel!!!

Bullpen results probably matter more than they are given credit for.

Other than the Smith and Thornburgh deals... DD's trades have been the best part of the Sox this season- Kimbrell, Sale and Pom, remove those 3 guys and this team is in last place easily.
I guess we could speculate that if he didn't make those deals he would have made something similar and perhaps those would have worked out just as well.....?

 

[benhogan]

Doesn't sound like Mookie is getting those needed days off. Farrell being short sighted here.

I know it's the Yankees, but with 3 straight RHP and RF not being difficult to defend maybe a day or two would be beneficial.

We have Estrada (Tues.), Biagini (Wed.), and then a day off Thursday. Maybe Manager John can package those 3 days together for Mook?

"Although Mookie Betts is batting .242/.324/.328 with 12 extra-base hits (two homers) since the All-Star break, John Farrell hasn't considered giving him a two- or three-day rest, as he did with Andrew Benintendi earlier in the season or Xander Bogaerts this week. "I haven't gone to that point," Farrell said. "(Betts) impacts the game so many different ways, and the defensive side of it is a key component to it. And when he does get on base, he's a threat."

 

[Sampo Gida]

This year seems the opposite of 2013 where it seemed every player exceeded their projections then

I dont know the answer. I wonder if maybe MLB is giving us the dead balls this year. We only have a 22 OPS advantage at home compared to 96 OPS advantage last year. We are still winning at home though.

Maybe something as simple as players playing through injuries. Guys like Pedey Hanley, XB all had significant power drop offs. Betts looks pull happy this year at least to my eye going for the HR Leaving him vulnerable to outside pitches. JBJ just never had that super 4 week hot streak he had last year. Wildly inconsistent hitter he be. Benny Biceps we never really knew what he could do over a full season and he is coming on strong now.

 

[Sampo Gida]

Nunez is better than last year I'd bet.

Devers is playing better than Judge.

Devers batting 167 with a 454 OPS and playing defense like Pablo over the last 14 games

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

You didn't see Panda play 3b this year, I understand, it was painful to watch.

 

[reggiecleveland]

I will; not be shocked if this team misses the playoffs. The lousy offence has been covered by hot streaks from Nunez and Devers, but they are coming back o earth.
Surprised nobody has mentioned Chilli Davis.

 

[Sandy Leon Trotsky]

I will; not be shocked if this team misses the playoffs. They lousy offence has been covered by hot streaks from Nunez and Devers, but they are coming back o earth.
Surprised nobody has mentioned Chilli Davis.

Inversely, I also would not be shocked if they dominated their way into and through the playoffs to a WS victory. I wouldn't be surprised if JBJ and Hanley
put on a clinic starting tomorrow, Betts and X, 10D, Devers and the rest all just click at the same time.
However your proposition seems more likely given the two scenarios here

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

They are 7 games up in the wildcard right now with 25 to play. It would take a 2011-level collapse (they were 9 games up with 25 to play) for the Red Sox to not make the post-season at all. Unless we're expecting the pitching to fall off a cliff over the next three weeks, the doom and gloom, won't-make-the-post-season-at-all scenario seems
remote. The remaining schedule isn't exactly daunting. Half are against Toronto (who they've dominated so far this year), Oakland and Cincinnati (two last place teams).

No, the offense isn't a juggernaut. But it's been good enough (just above league average in runs per game) to get the team to this point, 3.5 games up in the division. While they may not make it to or win the World Series, doing so seems more likely to me than not making it to the post-season at all, by the simple fact that they're most likely going to make the post-season. Once there, anything can happen.

 

[chrisfont9]

Since August 11, they have played the Yankees, Indians, a streaking Oriole team... and the Jays and Cardinals, whom they swept. They are 12-11 over that stretch. Very tough patch of the schedule, plenty of very strong pitching, and had they won one or two more games we would be saying how well they came through it. It's mostly garbage the rest of the way too. So we can chill.

 

[StupendousMan]

The OP provided a list of 9 players, each of whom has a lower OPS+ in 2017 than he did in 2016. Why might that happen?

First, it can happen by pure chance. If we pretend that all players have a fixed baseline of performance, with random variations around it, then the chances that one player has a lower OPS+ this year vs. last year is 0.50. The probability that 9 players have a lower OPS+ this year vs. last is (0.5)^9 = 1/512. Given that there are 32 teams in MLB, we might expect this to happen to _some_ team in the league once every 16 years or so.

But players do not, in general, have the same baseline performance each year. Players tend to improve from age 20 to about age 28, then decline after that. A team with many older players would be more likely to experience this "total-team-decline" (TTD) than a team with many younger players. The Sox have 5 starters under age 28, so this explanation does not apply.

Another factor which causes changes in performance is injury. A player who is injured, but returns to the lineup, will perform less well for some period of time. We can account for this very roughly by assuming that any player who falls into this category will have a lower OPS+ than he did the previous year, leaving only the healthy starters to vary in a random manner. Pedroia, Bogaerts and Ramirez have all suffered from nagging injuries this year, and Bradley has missed quite a few games recently.

Suppose that 3 of the 9 starters on a team suffer some sort of significant injury -- bad enough to lower their performance, but not _so_ bad that they stop playing completely. That would leave 6 players subject to random variation. The probability that 6 healthy players all perform worse than the previous year, due solely to chance, is (0.5)^6 = 1/64. _If_ every team should fall into the "3 starters suffer injuries" category every year (which is not the case), then we'd expect one team every other year to see a TTD.

My guess is that the combinations of nagging injuries and just plain bad luck are responsible for the current situation, rather than some external influence affecting all players (bad coaching, radon in the dugout, etc.). It is an unusual circumstance for the team we follow (though it might not be unusual on a league-side basis), so we notice it and try to find some meaning to explain it.

Now, if this is largely random chance, then it's possible that the situation will change before the end of the year: teams have only played about 85% of the entire season, and so the healthy players may (by chance) get hot for the last few weeks. Challenge to those who see a nefarious influence behind the situation: put your money where your mouth is. I'll wager that at least one of the players listed above DOES finish the 2017 season with a better OPS+ than he did in 2016. If I'm wrong, I'll donate $10 to the Jimmy Fund per poster who bets against me; If I'm right, you donate $10 to the Jimmy Fund. This wager limited to 10 posters.

If you believe that Farrell or Davis is to blame, post in this thread to accept my wager.

 

[KenTremendous]

If you believe that Farrell or Davis is to blame, post in this thread to accept my wager.

I certainly don't think it's as simple as "it's Farrell's fault" or "it's Davis's fault." But the numbers are stark. Forget OPS+ for a second and consider raw OPS (with all its well-documented problems and statistical noise and blah blah blah):

SOX LINE-UP RAW OPS LOSS OVER 2016:

C Leon -193
1B Ramirez -102
2B Pedroia -47
SS Bogaerts -68
3B Holt -228 (only 41 games, but still)
LF Benintendi -34
CF Bradley -64
RF Betts -127
4th OF Young -137

That's brutal.

Some of this you just ignore -- like Holt, and even maybe Benintendi, who is within a couple doubles of being right where he was last year. Maybe you grade on a curve for X given his hand injury. But 24 year-old Mookie Betts, coming off a 9.6 WAR season in which he seemed to center up every ball thrown to him...how has no one on this team helped him adjust to the league's adjustments? How has no one helped Ramirez? How is Farrell still hitting him in the middle of the order, where he is on pace to strand more than eleven thousand baserunners this season? (Estimated. Haven't run the numbers.)

There have been exactly three bright spots the entire season, offensively:

Nunez (trade)
Devers (rookie, currently coming back down to Earth)
Vazquez (and the bright spot is a .737 OPS)

So, two of the only three things that have gone at all right, the entire year, were guys who were not on the team last year. It's odd. Whatever the "reason" for all of this, it's odd, and bad, and does not give me a lot of hope for the team's long-term success as we head into September.

 

[MikeM]

If we pretend that all players have a fixed baseline of performance,

Chris Young turns 34 tomorrow, and hasn't held down a full time job since 2011. Not sure he even deserves to be on this watch list in the same manner as others. Ditto with Holt for that matter, who we already knew at this point was a very iffy bet in full time play to begin with and is coming off an extended serious illness absence at that.

Other then an aging Ramirez/Pedroia, and disqualifying Leon right off the bat as the blatant 2016 fluke, can you really do that highlight with the rest of this group though? Seems one could argue that none of them even have fixed and full time performance baselines to pull reliable data out of yet.

If anything it seems the real potential issue there mostly revolves around the odds on whether some people went into the season drawing in a premature baseline with all 3 of Betts/Xander/Bradley, on top of Ben10's first full season which should still essentially be amounting to a wild card in play. I'm guessing you'd find more takers had you narrowed down the random chance explanation and put that bet on the table.

 

[grimshaw]

They are 7 games up in the wildcard right now with 25 to play. It would take a 2011-level collapse (they were 9 games up with 25 to play) for the Red Sox to not make the post-season at all. Unless we're expecting the pitching to fall off a cliff over the next three weeks, the doom and gloom, won't-make-the-post-season-at-all scenario seems
remote. The remaining schedule isn't exactly daunting. Half are against Toronto (who they've dominated so far this year), Oakland and Cincinnati (two last place teams).

I was about to post the same thing. I think a realistic worst case scenario is 12-13.
And that's going 7-8 vs. the Jays, Rays and O's, and losing 3 of 4 vs. the Stros. They are going at least 4-2 against the A's and Reds.

If they go 12-13, the wild card team would have to go 19-6 to tie.
I think they'll go around 14-11 - and that's fairly conservative.

 

[BaseballJones]

I certainly don't think it's as simple as "it's Farrell's fault" or "it's Davis's fault." But the numbers are stark. Forget OPS+ for a second and consider raw OPS (with all its well-documented problems and statistical noise and blah blah blah):

SOX LINE-UP RAW OPS LOSS OVER 2016:

C Leon -193
1B Ramirez -102
2B Pedroia -47
SS Bogaerts -68
3B Holt -228 (only 41 games, but still)
LF Benintendi -34
CF Bradley -64
RF Betts -127
4th OF Young -137

That's brutal.

Some of this you just ignore -- like Holt, and even maybe Benintendi, who is within a couple doubles of being right where he was last year. Maybe you grade on a curve for X given his hand injury. But 24 year-old Mookie Betts, coming off a 9.6 WAR season in which he seemed to center up every ball thrown to him...how has no one on this team helped him adjust to the league's adjustments? How has no one helped Ramirez? How is Farrell still hitting him in the middle of the order, where he is on pace to strand more than eleven thousand baserunners this season? (Estimated. Haven't run the numbers.)

There have been exactly three bright spots the entire season, offensively:

Nunez (trade)
Devers (rookie, currently coming back down to Earth)
Vazquez (and the bright spot is a .737 OPS)

So, two of the only three things that have gone at all right, the entire year, were guys who were not on the team last year. It's odd. Whatever the "reason" for all of this, it's odd, and bad, and does not give me a lot of hope for the team's long-term success as we head into September.

And from a positional standpoint, you could add in the loss from Ortiz' bat at DH to whomever the Sox throw out there and it's even more brutal.

It's hard to believe how poorly this offense has performed relative to last year. Just awful.

 

[MikeM]

I will; not be shocked if this team misses the playoffs. The lousy offence has been covered by hot streaks from Nunez and Devers, but they are coming back o earth.
Surprised nobody has mentioned Chilli Davis.

Missing the playoffs would be a shock to me, but I do agree that this lineup is primed to get shut down and see an early exit in the playoffs.

As noted above I just don't see the rational finger pointing to Chili here though, at least below the surface value. The usual suspects of age, injury, and overly optimistic projections seems to reasonably cover everything as whole imo. On top of losing Ortiz's lineup presence, of course.

 

[reggiecleveland]

Missing the playoffs would be a shock to me, but I do agree that this lineup is primed to get shut down and see an early exit in the playoffs.

As noted above I just don't see the rational finger pointing to Chili here though, at least below the surface value. The usual suspects of age, injury, and overly optimistic projections seems to reasonably cover everything as whole imo. On top of losing Ortiz's lineup presence, of course.

This the more likely scenario. I agree.

 

[grimshaw]

Missing the playoffs would be a shock to me, but I do agree that this lineup is primed to get shut down and see an early exit in the playoffs.

As noted above I just don't see the rational finger pointing to Chili here though, at least below the surface value. The usual suspects of age, injury, and overly optimistic projections seems to reasonably cover everything as whole imo. On top of losing Ortiz's lineup presence, of course.

Ya, I mean just about everyone had career years with him last year. He was the shit. Did he forget how to coach them?

Plus they have two hitting coaches.

 

[TheoShmeo]

The Sox missing the playoffs would not be a shock to me. It would be surprising because teams rarely cough up 5.5 game leads this late in the season. And they have good starting and relief pitching. But while they still have a good cushion for the AL East, they are what their record says they are: a .562 winning percentage club and hardly any kind of a juggernaut. Without checking, I'm guessing that not many clubs have won the AL East with a winning percentage that low in recent memory.

Just looking at the line-up on the scoreboard at the Toilet last night was disconcerting. As is well known here, only one guy has a batting average over .300. I know that there are better stats and more advanced ways of looking at the offense, and many of them are in this very thread. But still, it seems difficult to sustain a lot of winning with only one .300 hitter (and so few guys even close to .300). And while Nunez is a nice player having a nice year, who would have thought that he would have their best batting average at this point in the season?

 

[Heating up in the bullpen]

Betts is popping up too many hittable pitches... With Betts, it feels like something is off mechanically, and I don't know how that gets fixed. I'm willing to bet it does at some point, though.

The mechanical problem is that he's dropping his hands. How to fix it? Start with asking why he's doing it. Does he feel like he needs to be hitting more homers, so he's swinging for the fences?
Hanley also seems to have a problem with swinging for the fences. He doesn't have a chance when he unleashes that "home run swing" -- you know the one, that swing that makes his helmet fall off -- as he pulls his head and everything else off the ball every time.
I look at both of these situations as approach problems. An approach of trying to hit a home run is usually going to be unsuccessful. An approach of looking for a good pitch and putting a good swing on it will lead to success (I think Ted Williams wrote a book about that). When Hanley stays within himself and stays on the pitch, he drives the ball with the best in the game. When Mookie takes his hands straight to the ball, rather than dropping them in a vain search for the fence, he rips line drives all over the field, including some out of the park.
It could be that the absence of Ortiz and his home run power has prompted Mookie and Hanley to feel like they have to hit more home runs (though Hanley has featured that bad home run swing for his entire time in Boston). Whatever it is, when they adjust their approach, their results will likely improve.

 

[ehaz]

When is firing the hitting coach (or any coach) ever seen as anything more than finger pointing? Maybe it's taken as a wake-up call. Perhaps a new pair of eyes really would help...

 

[grimshaw]

One item that I could maybe sort of see on hitting coaches is if they are on the passive side in turns of assisting players. I know in the past, hitting coaches kind of let hitters hit until the hitter actually decides they need to figure out adjustments.

Another could be indifference in watching film, but that's more on coaching in general.

Something maddening to me about the Sox vs. the Yankees is the lack of adjustments they have made seeing the same starters over and over. For some reason, the Sox have remained baffled by Sabathia (1.04 ERA), Tanaka (2.83), and Severino (3.33 with the one stinker). I realize, those guys are good pitchers, but if you see them 4+ times per season, there should be an edge for the hitters.

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

But while they still have a good cushion for the AL East, they are what their record says they are: a .562 winning percentage club and hardly any kind of a juggernaut. Without checking, I'm guessing that not many clubs have won the AL East with a winning percentage that low in recent memory.

Last team to win the AL East with a .562 or worse winning percentage were the 2000 Yankees at .540. I seem to recall they fared okay in the playoffs (not that it is indicative of anything that will happen to the 2017 Red Sox).

The last couple years, the AL East champ has finished at 93 wins (.574), which is the lowest total since those 2000 Yankees.

 

[AB in DC]

I was about to post the same thing. I think a realistic worst case scenario is 12-13.
And that's going 7-8 vs. the Jays, Rays and O's, and losing 3 of 4 vs. the Stros. They are going at least 4-2 against the A's and Reds.

If they go 12-13, the wild card team would have to go 19-6 to tie.

Remember, to miss the playoffs, the Sox would need to get passed by the Yankees and two other teams.

 

[Buzzkill Pauley]

Remember, to miss the playoffs, the Sox would need to get passed by the Yankees and two other teams.

Lol. One would think, after 2011, that no one here would have the hubris to write such words.

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

Lol. One would think, after 2011, that no one here would have the hubris to write such words.

The chances of one team collapsing while the exact right other team surges to make up a sizeable deficit aren't all that out of the ordinary. The chances of one team collapsing and three teams surging at the same time to make up a sizeable deficit are far far smaller. Especially when some of those chasing teams have to play each other.

 

[SydneySox]

Remember, to miss the playoffs, the Sox would need to get passed by the Yankees and two other teams.

It depends on whether you take the one game wild-card playoff as playoffs. I'd reckon most people would assume competing in the ALDS as making the playoffs. I don't just mean semantically, like 'the wild card game is to get into the playoffs', I mean the wild card game is bullshit.

 

[reggiecleveland]

It depends on whether you take the one game wild-card playoff as playoffs. I'd reckon most people would assume competing in the ALDS as making the playoffs. I don't just mean semantically, like 'the wild card game is to get into the playoffs', I mean the wild card game is bullshit.

I don't think of the 78 team as in the playoffs.

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

I don't think of the 78 team as in the playoffs.

They weren't.

There's a significant difference between an extra regular season game that only happens to break a tie and a wildcard game that is scheduled every year. That the wildcard game is just a game and not a series is bullshit, but it's still technically the post-season.

 

[Green Monster]

Remember, to miss the playoffs, the Sox would need to get passed by the Yankees and two other teams.

What playoff team are the Red Sox going to beat right now?

 

[BaseballJones]

What playoff team are the Red Sox going to beat right now?

This is baseball. They could beat any team 4 games to 3 in a 7-game series. They could also lose to any of them. I wouldn't consider them to be the favorites against, say, Houston, Cleveland, or maybe even the Yankees right now, but there's no doubt that over seven games against any of them, they're capable of winning four.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

Last year, the entire team's OPS+ was 112.

This year it's 93. That's shocking to me. The absence of Ortiz isn't enough to make up the huge change.

Mookie is the one most concerning to me. OPS+ of 126, 117, 133, and this year he's all the way down to 99 with no end to the drop in sight. I assume he's playing through some sort of injury, like a typical stupid baseball player, because the alternative, that he might be utterly lost, is too depressing to consider.

 

[reggiecleveland]

I am sure I will get nailed for lack of facts, here, but at what point do we question our hitting coach?
The thread is full of examples of decline. The failure of the coaching staff has to be a possibility. It is entirely possible that the approach of the coaches does not fit this group of hitters. What alarms me is the decline of the young guns.

 

[Cesar Crespo]

Last year, the entire team's OPS+ was 112.

This year it's 93. That's shocking to me. The absence of Ortiz isn't enough to make up the huge change.

Mookie is the one most concerning to me. OPS+ of 126, 117, 133, and this year he's all the way down to 99 with no end to the drop in sight. I assume he's playing through some sort of injury, like a typical stupid baseball player, because the alternative, that he might be utterly lost, is too depressing to consider.

Ortiz's absence isn't enough, but it is a big part of the difference. If you replace Mooreland's PA this year with Ortiz's last year the team's overall line shifts from .259/.332/.408 to .265/.340/.428. Some of that difference is due to Ortiz having 137 more PA but not all of it. That is 28 points in team OPS. If Ortiz had the same amount of PA as Mooreland, the difference in OPS would be 22 points as of 9/5. That is pretty damn huge and the more at bats Mooreland gets, the bigger that 22-28 point gap will get.

 

[geoduck no quahog]

I am sure I will get nailed for lack of facts, here, but at what point do we question our hitting coach?
The thread is full of examples of decline. The failure of the coaching staff has to be a possibility. It is entirely possible that the approach of the coaches does not fit this group of hitters. What alarms me is the decline of the young guns.

I think that in order to make any kind of assessment - we need to know exactly what the hitting coaches and players are doing. Are the coaches working with them beneath the stands on a particular pitch every day? Are they sitting with video? Are small adjustments being proposed and worked on in the cage? Are pitchers throwing live pitches to them on work-out days? Has the season taken a toll and no more instruction is warranted due to injuries and stamina?

These are all just guesses, but to criticize one needs to know what the practices are and if/why they aren't working or even being attempted. Maybe someone else knows.

Also, did I read somewhere that hitters dropping their hands is a sign of some sort of injury or weakness? Can't recall.