20 replies to this topic

[The Gray Eagle]

This year, the Sox team walk rate is 7.5%, ranked 27th in all of baseball. And it's not getting better: over the last 30 days, it's been 6.8%.

This is a huge factor in the team having its lowest OBP in 20 years, at .324.

Here's how the team's walk rate has looked in recent years:

2012: 7.5%, 27th
2011: 9.0%, 4th
2010: 9.2%, 6th
2009: 10.4%, 2nd
2008: 10.1%, first
2007: 10.7%, first
2006: 10.4%, first
2005: 10.2%, first
2004: 10.1%, third

At first, I assumed that the drop was due to the way we've been bringing in low-walk hackers for the past couple of years, and it partially is. If you start to fill your team with outmakers, it shouldn't be a surprise when they make a lot of outs.

But even players who used to walk have stopped, and others who walked a little are walking even less than they used to.

Gonzalez: career BB%: 10.8. 2012: 7.2%
Aviles: Career 3.9. 2012: 3.3
Saltalamacchia: career: 7.8. 2012: 7.0
Pedroia: career: 9.2. 2012: 7.1
Sweeney: career: 7.9. 2012: 5.5

After incredibly going over a month without a single walk, Gonzalez at least has walked in three straight games, so there's that. Maybe he'll get back to drawing the occasional walk again, but the team as a whole is not getting on base, not driving up pitch counts, not making pitchers throw from the stretch, not opening holes by making first basemen hold runners, and not getting to the middle relief like we had done for years and years.

The team's biggest problem is starting pitching, but it's not the only problem. The offense still scores runs, because it has good power, and for a while we had Ortiz and Nava in the lineup, drawing walks. Now that both of them are on the DL, it's probably not going to get better soon. (Hopefully Ortiz will be back in a few days, but even so he's just one guy.)

But the offense isn't going to be consistent with a .324 OBP, and is going to have too many games where we score 0, 1, 2, or 3 runs, which is suicidal with our pitching problems. And we're not going to win as many 7-5, 8-7 type games as we have in recent years either.

Is Magadan not emphasizing working counts, laying off pitches and drawing walks anymore? Are the players ignoring him? Is Valentine preaching aggressiveness instead of patience (and if so, why would the players listen to him if they supposedly hate him?) Did the league figure out a way to pitch to the Red Sox to keep them from walking as much as they used to?

What the heck is going on here?

[reggiecleveland]

Replacing Youkilis with Middlebrooks is one way to reduce the number of walks.

[Rudy Pemberton]

They replaced Youkilis, Drew, and Scutaro with WMB, Ross / Sweney, and Aviles which is a major difference, but like you said, it's the guys who are still around too . Pedroia and Gonzalez are obviously the most concerning. I would suspect it's a primarily personnel; you replace a few high walk guys with low walk guys, and everyone starts hacking; it's contagious. I also suspect that having easier outs in the lineup leads to lower pitch counts; which means starters are in games longer. So, perhaps the Sox are facing better pitchers longer into games, who aren't as fatigued. You've also got a lineup that isn't nearly as deep as it was, so the guys who are counted on to drive in runs (Pedroia, Gonzalez, etc) are over anxious and trying to do too much (which means swinging).

[The Gray Eagle]

Replacing Youkilis with Middlebrooks is one way to reduce the number of walks.

True, but even Youkilis wasn't walking when he was here, just 14 walks in 165 plate appearances. Now that he's gone, he's walking again, 19 times in 136 PA.

It sure seems like this hacking is contagious. Is it going to stop? Does the team management even care? Because over the past few seasons, they keep bringing in guys who don't walk, and dumping guys who do.

[SMU_Sox]

TGE - while OBP is important I think the better metric to look at is wOBA+ or wRC+. You'll see the same negative trend for some of the guys you mentioned earlier. However, WMB, is outperforming Kevin Youkilis. Can he continue to do that if/when his .347 BABIP normalizes? We'll see. Guys like Youk, Drew, and Scut were on the downside of their career and no longer as effective.

The Sox should rebound in the OBP category because either through lack of at bats, or underperformance, they have Ellsbury, Ortiz, Pedroia, Gonzalez who have traditionally high OBPs. Even Crawford's OBP his last two years in TB was strong. They have a good mix of high slug and OBP guys and once the OBP guys get back to normal and/or get more AB's in because they are healthy the OBP ranking should increase. In the meantime I think we should look at the weighted, or wOBA+ numbers.

[Pearl Wilson]

Walks are partly a function of opportunity. Maybe pitchers are coming at them more?

[wade boggs chicken dinner]

Didn't Theo say or imply that he felt OBP was overvalued so they decided to deemphasize that metric in their player acquisition program? That would have a part.

[Plympton91]

I think it was more that other teams had caught on to OBP being undervalued, so there wasn't the opportunity to get bargains anymore. Hence they were looking for a new "edge"--that in 110 years nobody was able to discern without a spreadsheet--and settled on "defense" being the undervalued trait. The problem is that all undervaluations are not equal. Being one of a few teams to emphasize OBP paid big dividends; being able to better measure defense probably would pay small dividends, but not to the extent the Red Sox capitalized in the contracts they offered to Crawford and Cameron, and in the contract they didn't offer to Matt Holliday.

[SMU_Sox]

In their defense Crawford was a stud defensively for years. No one should have rationally expected him to forget how to play LF.

[kieckeredinthehead]

The strangest part about it is that they're one of the top teams in the league in P/PA. Unfortunately, when that doesn't turn into OBP (i.e. you take a bunch of pitches and then make an out), you don't inflate the starter's pitch count. The value of that is still, unbelievably, undervalued in a sport when you play three game series and you have the chance to cripple a bullpen for the entire series in the first game. So they're working the count but not taking the walk. It's brutal to watch.

[Rudy Pemberton]

They strike out a lot, though. Lot of hitters with low BB, high K rates. Strikeouts tend to be long at bats; obviously at least three pitches, that's a factor in why the team P/PA are so high yet the OBP so low.

[kieckeredinthehead]

They strike out a lot, though. Lot of hitters with low BB, high K rates. Strikeouts tend to be long at bats; obviously at least three pitches, that's a factor in why the team P/PA are so high yet the OBP so low.

It's a reasonable theory, but there's actually zero correlation on the Red Sox between P/PA and K rate. BB rate, on the other hand, is at least slightly correlated with P/PA on the Sox, and more so league-wide.

edit: League-wide this year, for players with more than 100 PAs, r^2 for K-rate and P/PA is 0.213, r^2 for BB rate and P/PA is .333. But again, that doesn't explain why the Red Sox are so patient but walk so little. Sweeney and Nava, for example, see a ton of pitches but rarely K. Ross Ks a lot and sees a ton of pitches, and has one of the better BB rates. The hitters are all over the map in terms of K rate, but their BB rate is really, really low and their P/PA is really high.

Edited by kieckeredinthehead, 04 August 2012 - 06:01 PM.

[sfip]

The strangest part about it is that they're one of the top teams in the league in P/PA. Unfortunately, when that doesn't turn into OBP (i.e. you take a bunch of pitches and then make an out), you don't inflate the starter's pitch count. The value of that is still, unbelievably, undervalued in a sport when you play three game series and you have the chance to cripple a bullpen for the entire series in the first game. So they're working the count but not taking the walk. It's brutal to watch.

All the complaining, body language, etc., by the Red Sox can't be helping their cause.

Edited by sfip, 04 August 2012 - 06:17 PM.

[Savin Hillbilly]

It's a reasonable theory, but there's actually zero correlation on the Red Sox between P/PA and K rate. BB rate, on the other hand, is at least slightly correlated with P/PA on the Sox, and more so league-wide.

This makes sense, for two reasons:

1) the range of P/PA for a K is going to center a bit closer to league average than for a BB, just because it takes one more pitch, at a minimum, to draw a walk;

2) you can K by either swinging or taking; you can only BB by taking. Therefore hackers and high-discipline guys can both show up in the high-K-rate column, but only the latter show up in the high-BB column.

[OCD SS]

The value of that is still, unbelievably, undervalued in a sport when you play three game series and you have the chance to cripple a bullpen for the entire series in the first game.

While Moneyball cannon, this seems to be incredibly overstated. When was the last time anyone saw an entire bullpen "crippled" in one game? A good start by the SP saves the bullpen when most RPs can easily go every other night, and a decent manager will hold his good pitchers out of a blow out (especially when he's carrying 12). Just look at the amount of relief pitching in the '04 ALCS: At the height of the Sox/ Yankees OBP race over the start of six games did either 'pen look "crippled?" And we're supposed to believe that it was SOP in a single game and happened all that often?

My guess (without looking up league wide OBP trends) is that with increased steroid testing the threat posed by large chunks of any line-up (where have all the 30 HR SS's gone?) has decreased and the pendulum has swung towards the pitching side of the game. The advantage of defense in an arena where runs are going to be harder to come by makes sense; it shores up the entire pitching staff. Just as a typical minor league punch-less high OBP hitter is eventually going to get challenged and not be able to do anything with hard fastballs, the MLB equivalent is to go after the bottom of the order. At the same time having high OBP hitters only works if it's across the entire line-up; breaks let the pitcher cruise and rest.

From the Red Sox standpoint I've wondered if Magadan hasn't been telling players to be more aggressive, going after their pitch to hit earlier in ABs. This seems like a trend that's been going on since Papa Jack left...

[kieckeredinthehead]

While Moneyball cannon, this seems to be incredibly overstated. When was the last time anyone saw an entire bullpen "crippled" in one game? A good start by the SP saves the bullpen when most RPs can easily go every other night, and a decent manager will hold his good pitchers out of a blow out (especially when he's carrying 12). Just look at the amount of relief pitching in the '04 ALCS: At the height of the Sox/ Yankees OBP race over the start of six games did either 'pen look "crippled?" And we're supposed to believe that it was SOP in a single game and happened all that often?

You mean apart from at least two relief pitchers being literally crippled in the wake of that series?

[OCD SS]

You mean apart from at least two relief pitchers being literally crippled in the wake of that series?

Yes, that's irrelevant hyperbole.

Look at the 1st 6 games. Those bullpens did fantastic jobs against the most OBP & P/PA heavy lineups in baseball. Neither wound up "crippled" for the series and it took playing the equivalent of 2 series plus a lot of extra baseball before the bullpens teetered into game 7. The idea that an entire 'pen gets exposed after one tough game strikes me as fanciful and not really reflective of how the game is played anymore. I can see how having a high OBP correlates to scoring runs, but just parroting Michael Lewis doesn't make it any more true than Joe Morgan yammering on about the importance of bunting and productive outs.

[kieckeredinthehead]

edit: nm

Edited by kieckeredinthehead, 05 August 2012 - 12:05 AM.

[smastroyin]

Obp is way way way more important to crippling a pitching staff to the point that I'm sick of hearing about P/PA. Oftentimes they go together but frankly if you have P/PA without obp you delivering flesh wounds. Sorry kiecker you initial statement overstates the value. Outs are the clock. P/PA slows the clock, a bit, but stopping the clock is much more important.

[Savin Hillbilly]

Obp is way way way more important to crippling a pitching staff to the point that I'm sick of hearing about P/PA. Oftentimes they go together but frankly if you have P/PA without obp you delivering flesh wounds. Sorry kiecker you initial statement overstates the value. Outs are the clock. P/PA slows the clock, a bit, but stopping the clock is much more important.

Poster boy for this effect? Jon Lester. He's actually throwing fewer pitches per PA this year (3.94) than in any other year except 2010. But because he's allowing far more baserunners than in any previous full season, his pitches per out are at a career high of 5.65.

[kieckeredinthehead]

Obp is way way way more important to crippling a pitching staff to the point that I'm sick of hearing about P/PA. Oftentimes they go together but frankly if you have P/PA without obp you delivering flesh wounds. Sorry kiecker you initial statement overstates the value. Outs are the clock. P/PA slows the clock, a bit, but stopping the clock is much more important.

If you reread my initial comment you'll see we're in complete agreement.