Starting Pitching 2019

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
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So one trip through the rotation and the best - by FAR - pitching line was:

6.0 ip, 5 h, 4 r, 4 er, 2 bb, 9 k, 3 hr (6.00 era)

That's.....not good. And naturally, on that day when the Sox get their "best" start, the offense puts up a complete zero.
 

simplicio

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Apr 11, 2012
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Average Boston starter: 4.1 IP, 10.64 ERA, 2.09 WHIP
Brian Johnson: 4.1 IP, 2.08 ERA, 1.38 WHIP
 

soxhop411

news aggravator
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Dec 4, 2009
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Need a plan. Trade him for Joe Maddon. Im sure the Cubs are ready to get rid of him.

Joe Maddon stinks. The best manager to lead us to the promise land is Bobby valentine.

Hire him and we will go places never seen before!

/s


Seriously though. It’s just a blip. I’m sure our pitching will rebound. We were lucky last year to not have a streak as bad as this, and the season we had last year happens once in a blue moon. Adversity is good for this team.
 

CoffeeNerdness

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@Skinny_Post
A's starting pitchers over the past five games: 30 innings, 1 earned run, .115 batting average against. I can't begin to explain it.

Gonna be tough to even manage a split in Oakland and AZ has started the season OK. I'm concerned that this poor start will lead to guys overthrowing and an injury resulting. Another rocky start tonight from Sale will certainly up the pressure.
 

bosockboy

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Joe Maddon stinks. The best manager to lead us to the promise land is Bobby valentine.

Hire him and we will go places never seen before!

/s


Seriously though. It’s just a blip. I’m sure our pitching will rebound. We were lucky last year to not have a streak as bad as this, and the season we had last year happens once in a blue moon. Adversity is good for this team.
Yes. But we were assured by Adrian’s Dome there was no scenario of this team winning as few as 95 paltry wins.
 

In my lifetime

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@Skinny_Post
A's starting pitchers over the past five games: 30 innings, 1 earned run, .115 batting average against. I can't begin to explain it.

Gonna be tough to even manage a split in Oakland and AZ has started the season OK. I'm concerned that this poor start will lead to guys overthrowing and an injury resulting. Another rocky start tonight from Sale will certainly up the pressure.
I can explain it -- SSS.

And a 1-3 start for a team that is used to the spotlight of the WS and playoff game sevens is not going to be move the barometer much.
 

Adrian's Dome

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Yes. But we were assured by Adrian’s Dome there was no scenario of this team winning as few as 95 paltry wins.
And we were assured the only reason we'll even surpass 90 is because of bottomfeeders. Ask the Yankees how that one turned out in their opening series.

Do you have a valid point, or are you admitting you're overreacting to a SSS?
 

BusRaker

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Aug 11, 2006
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According to statistics, the chance of the Red Sox not finishing either first or worst is close to 0 as well.

edit: sarcasm
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
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Red Sox' starting pitching game log for 2019. You may want to avert your eyes because I've never seen anything like this, ever.

Sale: 3.0 ip, 6 h, 7 r, 7 er, 2 bb, 4 k, 3 hr
Eovaldi: 5.0 ip, 8 h, 6 r, 6 er, 2 bb, 3 k, 3 hr
Rodriguez: 4.1 ip, 8 h, 6 r, 5 er, 3 bb, 5 k, 1 hr
Porcello: 2.2 ip, 6 h, 9 r, 4 er, 4 bb, 3 k, 1 hr
Price: 6.0 ip, 5 h, 4 r, 4 er, 2 bb, 9 k, 3 hr
Sale: 6.0 ip, 3 h, 1 r, 1 er, 2 bb, 1 k, 1 hr
Eovaldi: 5.0 ip, 4 h, 3 r, 3 er, 4 bb, 3 k, 1 hr
Rodriguez: 3.2 ip, 8 h, 6 r, 6 er, 3 bb, 2 k, 1 hr
Porcello: 4.2 ip, 10 h, 7 r, 7 er, 3 bb, 5 k, 2 hr

Only ONE quality start in nine tries. Only twice has a starter gone more than 5 innings. Only twice has a starter given up fewer than 4 earned runs. Six times giving up 6 or more runs. No starter has managed to go without giving up at least one home run.

I mean, this is just an epic disaster from a starting pitching standpoint.
 

Wake49

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Sep 11, 2016
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Joe Maddon stinks. The best manager to lead us to the promise land is Bobby valentine.

Hire him and we will go places never seen before!

/s


Seriously though. It’s just a blip. I’m sure our pitching will rebound. We were lucky last year to not have a streak as bad as this, and the season we had last year happens once in a blue moon. Adversity is good for this team.
Still think it’s a blip?
 

uncannymanny

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Jan 12, 2007
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I asked you first.
My screen name isn’t soxhop411 and I didn’t state it was a blip, but you seem to be implying that this is their true talent level now. They have one starter under 8.00 right now. How about $500 to the JF at the end of the year, I’ll take the under on 8.00 combined. Deal?

Edit: I’ll spot you a full run at 7.00.
 

Wake49

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If it wasn’t their true talent level NOW, wouldn’t they be performing better? Sorry, I’m an in-the-moment kind of person. With that being said, I hope they prove my current skepticism wrong.
 

uncannymanny

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Interesting, so you wanted to come in and snarkily rub someone’s face in their post but can’t stand behind yours?

Here’s some interesting stuff from the Athletic regarding how brutal this trip really is:

The only other club in the last 100 years to open a season with 11 or more games as the visiting team was the 1980 Minnesota Twins, who started with 12 road games. Only twice in Red Sox history (1901 and 2003) have they started the year with as many as 10 road games. Add the fact that the Red Sox opened the season in Seattle via Arizona after playing a two-game exhibition series with the Cubs, and this four-stop jaunt (which includes a return trip to the desert to play the Diamondbacks) reaches historic proportions.

...

The only other team in baseball to begin with 11 straight games without an off day is the Toronto Blue Jays. The Blue Jays, however, start with seven at home and four on the road before their first day off. That happens to be right before they play the Red Sox in Boston’s home opener, on April 9.

It’s been 67 years since a Red Sox team played a game on each of its first 10 days of the season. In 1952 they played 11 games in their first 10 days (with a doubleheader on April 19 that year).
This has been miserable to watch but combined with the deep run last season this is a borderline unfair schedule for the team, especially the starting pitching.
 

Wake49

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Interesting, so you wanted to come in and snarkily rub someone’s face in their post but can’t stand behind yours?

Here’s some interesting stuff from the Athletic regarding how brutal this trip really is:



This has been miserable to watch but combined with the deep run last season this is a borderline unfair schedule for the team, especially the starting pitching.
I was asking them a question. It wasn’t even YOUR post so why the F do you care?
 

uncannymanny

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I was asking them a question. It wasn’t even YOUR post so why the F do you care?
This whole message boarding thing doesn’t really work if were only allowed to respond to posts directly to each other.

If it’s not a blip, what is it? I’d say it’s a pretty poor showing on a brutal road trip to start the year, which I’d say is pretty fair to call a blip.
 

Plympton91

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Oct 19, 2008
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Perhaps next season they shouldn’t treat spring training as optional for starting pitchers. Maybe.
 

Adirondack jack

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Is this where we grant every pitcher slack about reduced spring innings but bitch about EdRo and his talented yet unfulfilled ways ?

Someone once said 95 wins ain't anything.
 

Plympton91

bubble burster
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Oct 19, 2008
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Is this where we grant every pitcher slack about reduced spring innings but bitch about EdRo and his talented yet unfulfilled ways ?

Someone once said 95 wins ain't anything.
Well, Edro was treated quite as tenderly in spring training.
 

charlieoscar

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Sep 28, 2014
1,339
It’s really hard to pitch this poorly. Any 5 random AAA starters would probably do reasonably better.
According to the Play Index of bb-ref, the worst season team ERA in the NL was 6.71 by the 1930 Phillies (52-102). That was a season when the league batting average was .303 (and the Phillies led the league at .315). The worst AL team ERA was 6.38 by the 1996 Tigers (53-109). The Baltimore Marylands of the National Association in 1873 had an 8.00 ERA when the club dropped out of the league after 6 games (0-6).
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
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Tampa Bay team pitching 1.58 ERA 0.88 WHIP
Boston team pitching 7.18 ERA 1.72 WHIP

Unreal.
Yep. It's worse when you look just at the starters.

Boston's starting pitching line:

9 g, 40.1 ip (basically 4.1 ip per start), 58 h, 16 hr, 1.107 ops, 9.60 era, 2.06 whip

It's been impossibly bad so far. A couple of years ago, through the first four games, the Patriots were putting up an all-time worst NFL defense. This is....much much worse than that.
 

richgedman'sghost

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Aww I look fondly back at the end of spring training when we worried about the bullpen holding the team back. It's a small sample size obviously, but Barnes, Brasier and Brewer have looked great. At least we did not spend millions resigning Kimbrel. LOL
 

DirtyWater90

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Nov 26, 2018
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Yep. It's worse when you look just at the starters.

Boston's starting pitching line:

9 g, 40.1 ip (basically 4.1 ip per start), 58 h, 16 hr, 1.107 ops, 9.60 era, 2.06 whip

It's been impossibly bad so far. A couple of years ago, through the first four games, the Patriots were putting up an all-time worst NFL defense. This is....much much worse than that.
Right but they haven’t even played the equivalent of one NFL game in their season yet. It would be like harping on the Pats defense for having a really first three quarters of game one or something.
 

InsideTheParker

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Jul 15, 2005
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Yep. It's worse when you look just at the starters.

Boston's starting pitching line:

9 g, 40.1 ip (basically 4.1 ip per start), 58 h, 16 hr, 1.107 ops, 9.60 era, 2.06 whip

It's been impossibly bad so far. A couple of years ago, through the first four games, the Patriots were putting up an all-time worst NFL defense. This is....much much worse than that.
MLBN just provided a scroll saying RS starting pitching ERA was the highest in first nine games since 1900.
 

absintheofmalaise

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Mar 16, 2005
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If it wasn’t their true talent level NOW, wouldn’t they be performing better? Sorry, I’m an in-the-moment kind of person. With that being said, I hope they prove my current skepticism wrong.
We have game threads for in-the-moment posts. The main board is not the place for those.

As for true talent level, here's a pretty good article that explains it better than I can. Short form, projections are based on a player's history and how that type of player has performed at different ages. You can't look at one game and ask if that's the player's TTL. That's the very definition of randomness. You can't look at one season and ask that either.

Let's take Wake for example. Would you use his 1992 season when he had a 162 ERA+ and think he'd have those numbers for his next season? He only reached that level two more times over his career. The other 16 years of his career he was around league average or a little below. Which set of data would you trust more to show his TTL?

I was asking them a question. It wasn’t even YOUR post so why the F do you care?
To reiterate what uncannymanny said, this is a discussion board. Anyone can ask anyone else a question about a previous post. That's how things work here. If you want to have a discussion with just one other poster do so in a PM>
 

The Gray Eagle

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Yeah, remember that guy E5 Collins who used to post in those game threads so much, he thought he was so funny.
Some other regular posters back then were Cy Old, Lose Kellum, George Nuclear Winter, and Buck Freeman in Paris.
 

geoduck no quahog

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MLBN just provided a scroll saying RS starting pitching ERA was the highest in first nine games since 1900.
Fuck MLBN stats. Why not just pick any 9 game stretch in history and compare to that? Why not compare to another team that started the season with 9 games on the road, 3 time zones away? In other words, stats that rely on the first 9 games are only a little more relevant than any other 9 game stretch.

We get it MLBN. It’s a horrible start.

Better than a horrible finish.
 

johnmd20

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Fuck MLBN stats. Why not just pick any 9 game stretch in history and compare to that? Why not compare to another team that started the season with 9 games on the road, 3 time zones away? In other words, stats that rely on the first 9 games are only a little more relevant than any other 9 game stretch.

We get it MLBN. It’s a horrible start.

Better than a horrible finish.
Probably because it's the first 9 games of the year and is a clear sample size. Every team plays 9 games to start the season. And then they all play another 153. But for the first 9 games of THIS year, the Sox have had historically bad SP.

Why are you so offended by this?
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
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Right but they haven’t even played the equivalent of one NFL game in their season yet. It would be like harping on the Pats defense for having a really first three quarters of game one or something.
That’s true. But three quarters of one game don’t count at all in the standings. The Sox are already 4.5 games back and in dead last. Obviously there’s a ton of games left so it’s not in any way panic time. But it is alarming and concerning and what's happened has actually happened, if you get my meaning.
 

Jerry’s Curl

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Feb 6, 2018
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That’s true. But three quarters of one game don’t count at all in the standings. The Sox are already 4.5 games back and in dead last. Obviously there’s a ton of games left so it’s not in any way panic time. But it is alarming and concerning and what's happened has actually happened, if you get my meaning.
And Tampa Bay looks like a legit WC/AL East contender.
 

OurF'ingCity

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Just imagine how pissed off we would be right now if the Sox had utilized their starters in the playoffs in the same way but had LOST the World Series. (Desperately looking for a silver lining to this horrendous start...)
 

YTF

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And Tampa Bay looks like a legit WC/AL East contender.
I have to admit that even though I think they are a very good team, I didn't think back to back 90 win seasons for the Rays in THIS division was going to happen. Consecutive weekend series against the Sox at the end this month and again vs New York in the 2nd and 3rd week of May will be interesting, especially if they are able to increase their lead heading into those series.
 

OurF'ingCity

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I'm saying it seems like at least some of this poor start is related to babying the starters in spring training, which is related to how much the starters were used in the postseason. Since we won the WS, we can at least say it was all worth it, but it would have really sucked if the starters were used in the same way but we lost and now found ourselves in the same position but without that extra banner.