The Anatomy of Losing (or how good teams play so poorly)

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
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Mods, feel free to merge this with an existing thread if you think that's better.....


At the end of baseball on Tuesday, May 31, the Red Sox were 32-20, with a 3-game lead in the AL East. They were on a 3-game winning streak, having won 7 of their previous 10 ball games. They had just taken the first two games of a four game set with Baltimore, and there were thoughts that the Sox would bury Baltimore right there and perhaps run away with the division.

They promptly lost the next two to the Orioles, and have proceeded to go 9-15 over a 20 game stretch, losing in nearly every way imaginable. They have lost 7.5 games in the standings to Baltimore, and now sit 4.5 games back in second place.

When they were 32-20, they looked like the best team in the league (and they were). Their .615 winning percentage was second in MLB to only the Cubs. Since then, they have looked like one of the worst teams in all of baseball.

How does a really good team (or what we THINK is a really good team) go through a stretch like they have? What's the anatomy of a team slump?

Well first off, in some ways it's just statistical noise. Stretches of poor results happen to even the best teams. Consider the 2013 World Series champion Red Sox, who went 97-65. On May 2, they were 20-8, with a 2.5 game lead in the division. They promptly went 2-9 over an 11-game stretch and found themselves 3 games back. Later in the season, on August 7 they were 70-46, with a 2.5 game lead in the division, and they proceeded to go 5-9 over a 14-game stretch and saw that lead evaporate to zero.

The 2007 World Series champion Red Sox had stretches where they went 3-8 and 5-9.

The 2004 World Series champion Red Sox had stretches where they went 4-10 and 4-7.

Really good teams go through periods where they put up poor results. Baseball is prone to this kind of thing, and over a 162-game season, it will happen even to better teams.

But it may not just be statistical noise. There may be real, significant reasons why a team goes through a stretch of bad baseball.

What has happened? At the end of May, the Red Sox were the top hitting and scoring team in the American League. In the month of June, their offensive production has fallen off.

· #12 in MLB in runs scored (118)
· #8 in MLB in batting average (.274)
· #5 in MLB in on-base percentage (.347)
· #18 in MLB in slugging percentage (.427)
· #11 in MLB in OPS (.774)

So the offense has really taken a significant dip. And that was understandable, considering that as a team they had been hitting at nearly a .300 clip, something totally unsustainable over the course of an entire season.

Individually, some notable players experienced a regression. In April and May, Jackie Bradley had a slash line of .331/.409/.601/1.010. In June, he has hit .215/.333/.481/.814. The OPS is still pretty solid, but it’s nothing like what it was. Hanley Ramirez hit .295/.355/.416/.771 in the first two months, but in June has put up a line of .220/.301/.396/.697. Not that they were counting on much offense from Christian Vazquez, but in April and May he hit .229/.270/.333/.604, but in June he’s only managed a line of .191/.255/.234/.489. Completely fallen off a cliff.

The offense has not been the team’s biggest problem, but it’s clearly declined in June in a significant way. They had scored first inning runs on a regular basis; they haven’t scored a first inning run since June 11. They were starting out most games with a lead. But for two and a half weeks now, they have yet to get going early, and have scored many of their runs when already behind, often times hopelessly so.

Still, they’ve scored 118 runs in June over 24 games, which comes to just under 5 runs a game. That should be enough to win the majority of a team’s games. So ultimately, though the offense isn’t the juggernaut they were earlier in the season, it isn’t the main culprit.

Here are the pitching numbers. Warning: This may be hazardous to your health.

· April: 4.15 era (#21 in MLB)
· May: 4.07 era (#16 in MLB)
· June: 5.02 era (#26 in MLB)

Until his most recent start, Price had been pitching great in June. Wright has been great all year long. Porcello had a 3.68 era at the end of May, and has put up a 4.45 era in June. The back two spots in the rotation have been disastrous. Consider these people who have filled those spots:

· Kelly: 8.46 era
· Buchholz: 5.90 era
· Rodriguez: 8.59 era
· Owens: 5.11 era
· O’Sullivan: 7.94 era
· Elias: 15.88 era

Combined, these pitchers have put up this line: 157.1 ip, 189 h, 131 r, 126 er, 87 bb, 119 k, 7.21 era, 1.75 whip, 6.8 k/9

Those last two spots have been an unmitigated disaster. That has forced the bullpen to pitch more innings than they should, which has decreased their effectiveness.

Moreover, as it turns out, the bullpen is picking bad times to perform poorly. Kimbrel, brought into tie games, has been very shaky. Uehara has looked old (understandable, since he is) and has gotten shelled lately. Barnes has moments where he is good, but cannot be counted on. On top of it, Carson Smith, a major acquisition in the offseason, got hurt and will miss the rest of the year. There is very little help in sight.

But it’s not just poor pitching. It’s poor defense as well.

In April, the Red Sox gave up 105 runs (100 earned, 5 unearned) in 24 games. In May, the Red Sox gave up 123 runs (113 earned, 10 unearned) in 28 games. In June, the Red Sox have given up 136 runs (119 earned, 17 unearned) in 24 games.

All three phases of the game have declined for the Red Sox here in June. The hitting has gotten worse. The pitching has gotten worse. The defense has gotten worse. And it is all compounding the problem.

This is what happens when a team goes through bad stretches. They pitch well enough to win, but then the offense doesn’t show up (2-1 loss vs SF, 3-2 loss vs Bal, a pair of 3-1 losses to Chicago). The offense has a good day but the pitching is awful (13-9 loss vs Bal, 12-7 loss vs Bal, 13-7 loss vs TB). Too many bases loaded squanders. Too many errors that the pitching cannot overcome and they lead to a huge increase in unearned runs.

What can be done to fix these problems? That is not the scope of this discussion, which is to really examine what has gone wrong. From there we can think about how to address it.
 

uncannymanny

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Jan 12, 2007
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The thing that jumps out about this to me is that John Farrell used Taz in Toronto. Toronto!!!

Seriously, this is an awesome, useful, informative post.

My god the pitching has been bad. The other "slumps" seem like just that to me, but the pitching has been equal parts bad choices and bad performances. I'd really like to know what's been going on in the day to day work with the pitchers. Too bad we don't have people that are paid to ask the coaches about these things.
 

simplicio

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Apr 11, 2012
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This is what happens when a team goes through bad stretches. They pitch well enough to win, but then the offense doesn’t show up (2-1 loss vs SF, 3-2 loss vs Bal, a pair of 3-1 losses to Chicago). The offense has a good day but the pitching is awful (13-9 loss vs Bal, 12-7 loss vs Bal, 13-7 loss vs TB).
The latter's probably a little illusory, but these two play into each other too. When you're giving up a ton of runs in the first few innings all the time, you're effectively giving the opposing starter a longer leash, facing mop up guys instead of relief aces and sure, having a healthy looking offensive box score as a result, but still taking the loss and preserving the best of their bullpen for further games in the series.
 

alwyn96

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Aug 24, 2005
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For what it's worth, if the Red Sox were playing to their pythag, they'd be in first place in the division.

Boston 43-33
Baltimore's 42-33
Toronto 42-36
New York 35-40
Tampa 34-41

It's possible it's just a slump that they'll break out of naturally, although really good teams don't tend to have whole months where they play under .400.
 

santadevil

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Aug 1, 2006
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For what it's worth, if the Red Sox were playing to their pythag, they'd be in first place in the division.

Boston 43-33
Baltimore's 42-33
Toronto 42-36
New York 35-40
Tampa 34-41

It's possible it's just a slump that they'll break out of naturally, although really good teams don't tend to have whole months where they play under .400.
Which is fine to say, but they were scoring a ton of runs early in the season and now they are not.
What is their Pythag in June compared to actual.
 

alwyn96

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Aug 24, 2005
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I guess the super-boring take is that they aren't a wildly different team in June than they were in May, give or take an OF and SP. Maybe they aren't as bad as they've played in June and weren't as good as they played in May.

Crazily enough, the Orioles' starting pitching has actually been worse than the Red Sox in June. It's a weird ERA distribution in the AL this year. Three teams or so have been really good, while the rest of the league is pretty bad.
 
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DeadlySplitter

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Oct 20, 2015
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Assuming the Padres continue to lay over today (4-0 O's in the 4th), the Orioles will have gained either 8 or 9 games on us in June, depending on tomorrow's O's @ Mariners result.

What the fucking fuck.
 

EricFeczko

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Apr 26, 2014
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I guess the super-boring take is that they aren't a wildly different team in June than they were in May, give or take an OF and SP. Maybe they aren't as bad as they've played in June and weren't as good as they played in May.

Crazily enough, the Orioles' starting pitching has actually been worse than the Red Sox in June. It's a weird ERA distribution in the AL this year. Three teams or so have been really good, while the rest of the league is pretty bad.
This apparent discrepancy goes back to the same problem the red sox have had all year. They do not have even a replacement level starter for the fourth and fifth rotation spots. While in aggregate, the red sox have pitched better, the orioles have had a more uniform distribution of performance.
June is a perfect example of this. The red sox have a better aggregate starting ERA because 3 starters for the red sox have performed with an ERA less than 4.1 this month. The orioles don't have one pitcher who has done so. On the other hand, 9 additional starts for the red sox have come from disastrous starters (ERA above 6), compared to only 4 from the orioles.

Factor in some bad luck (offense cooling off to non-Ruthian levels, relievers showing some fatigue), and that basically explains the slide.

To me, what's frustrating is that we just need starters with an ERA around 4.5-5 to stabilize the rotation, nothing else.

I know I used ERA here, but feel free to replace with your favorite metric, the story is the same regardless.
 

LeastSculptedJew

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Jul 3, 2006
14
Really good teams go through periods where they put up poor results. Baseball is prone to this kind of thing, and over a 162-game season, it will happen even to better teams.

But it may not just be statistical noise.
This is something we can estimate! For a team with a true ability of 0.593 (the 2007 series-winning Sox), how likely is it that the team's season will include a 24-game run where they go 9-15 or worse (this dismal June)?

Turns out, simulating lots of seasons, that we can expect a 24-game run this bad or worse somewhere in the season about 44% of the time. Much more than I would have expected. If the true team ability is 0.605 (the 2004 Red Sox) then we can expect this to happen about 37% of the time. (For 0.623, the 2004 Yankees, only about 27% of the time.) So the awful June alone may not be quite the bad news it seems.

(Note, we are calculating the probability that this sort of bad streak will occur *if* the Sox are a 0.593 team. Not the probability that they are truly a 0.593 team given that this streak has occurred, although that would be a lovely thing to know.)