Great Expectations for Power-bat Positions

Savin Hillbilly · Aug 18, 2014

Just for starters: RBI, whatever else it may be*, is not a "power number," except in a sense that makes it wholly redundant with legitimate power numbers like HR or ISO.

I hope the Sox FO is sophisticated enough to stay out of the trap of assuming that certain contributions need to come from certain positions. You can win just as many games with a Mark Grace at first and a Rogers Hornsby at second as you can with a more stereotype-friendly duo like Jimmie Foxx and Frank White. Value is value. The trick is assembling enough of it.

*The correct answer appears to be "not much."

kieckeredinthehead · Aug 18, 2014

Bill Mueller hit way more than 15 home runs in his career. I have to assume that's what you meant, because there is absolutely no chance that Brock Holt gets there in a single season.

O Captain! My Captain! · Aug 18, 2014

I can't see your spreadsheet so apologies if this is answered there. Do your team targets reflect the fact that offense has declined leaguewide for at least the past few years?

maxotaur · Aug 19, 2014

I think some good points are made in the post. There are some I disagree with however. Like Hillbilly the first one that struck me was an over reliance upon traditional "power positions". There are excellent numbers to be found at most any position these days.

Besides the idea of X "struggling" a bit is ok so long as he's at SS strikes me as a bit absurd at the moment. Why have him at a key position unless his defense improves dramatically.

I do think your point about rbis was perhaps taken out of context though. No, they are not power numbers but they are a direct result. In general a team with a .800 OPS is going to provide a whole lot more of them than one with .720.

Your best point is that good hitting teams most often win. I get tired of hearing "good pitching wins". Yes it does, but you have to score runs too. One only has to look at the MFY's of the late 90 ' s to see a team that excelled due to being strong on both ends. Of course they spent a billion more then anyone else in that period. Thankfully, they've fucked themselves and I don't have to hate them quite so much. But I digress.

jk333 · Aug 19, 2014

The comparison of this year's offense to teams from 5-10 years ago is unrealistic. Let's look at 3B. The OP suggests that the Sox target a team OPS of 810. If 3B is a "power position" there must be at least 15 players with an OPS of >810, correct?

2014 3B with >810 OPS and more than 300 at bats: Cabrera, Encarnacion, Beltre, Harrison(!),Arrendo, Seager, Gillaspie

There are only 7 players that fit Hurtsogood's criteria that the Red Sox could have had this year. It's unrealistic to expect them to have identified Harrison or Gillaspie who are having career years while Arrendo and Seager are under team control.

Offense is down and expectations need to be adjusted. For qualified batters, there are only 35 players with an OPS of greater than 810. Only nine players have an OPS >900. None of those nine players are on the same team. (someone should tell Ortiz)

Joshv02 · Aug 19, 2014

HurstSoGood said:
What this means to me is that the Red Sox should be targeting a team .279 Avg, .360 OPS, .450 SLG and .810 OPS.

Sorry, I'm having a hard time understanding this thread, or this post. It is likely just me.

Does this quote mean the team should aim for an .810 OPS? There has been one team since 2010 to do the: the 2011 Red Sox.

Do you mean their team totals at 1B, 3B, DH, LF and RF? I averaged (without weighting by PAs, b/c I was being very very very lazy) OPS at those 5 positions for all AL teams, and I only see one team in the AL with a greater than 810 OPS at the corners+DH -- the Tigers (though the Blue Jays are close, and given my q&d math may be there).

The Red Sox -- despite obvious holes -- have a middle of the road OPS at the 1B/3B/DH/LF/RF positions, combined (I see them as ranked 8 out of 16).

On the other hand, they have the second to worst production at each of C, SS and CF positions. It is the up-the-middle production that has killed them. I take that back - its the everywhere production that has killed them, but the up-the-middle has been worse relatively speaking than the corners.

JGray38 · Aug 19, 2014

League best offense in 2014 is somewhere around 270/330/420. Expecting a team to outperform the best offenses (DET, TOR, LAA) by 30 points of OBP and 30 points of SLG is not realistic. Never mind that the players needed to do that are scarcer, and all but locked up by teams that have them, either through massive contracts (Miggy,Cano) or are younger and under team control for a couple more years at least. (Freeman, Abreu, Rizzo).

One thing Cherington said this weekend, "it's not like 10 years ago, we can't just go out and get anyone we want." So to do what you want, they would have to simultaneously develop something like 3-4 Mike Trouts. Good luck with that.

Snodgrass'Muff · Aug 19, 2014

Focusing specifically on power, I'd like to point out that the 2013 Red Sox offense was the best in baseball at producing runs by by .36 runs per game or 57 runs total. They did this while being 6th in MLB (5th in the AL) in home runs, but being 1st in doubles by a huge margin. In other words, there is more than one way to skin a cat and what matters is producing runs, not power numbers or on base percentage or going station to station or success on the base paths or any other thing in isolation.

The Red Sox don't need to aim for a specific team average or number of runs batted in or home runs, and they definitely don't need to aim for any specific numbers from any combination of positions. They need to acquire the best possible talent for each roster spot and assemble a lineup that scores runs as often and as efficiently as possible. I get that it's worth looking deeper to see how runs are scored but an historical look without adjusting for the decline in offense league wide is going to skew any results you might come up with, as has been pointed out by a few posters now.

What we do know is that on base percentage correlates with run scoring better than slugging percentage which is why the Red Sox have been so focused on getting on base over the last decade or so. It also explains why they were able to lead the league in runs scored in 2013, by a comfortable margin, while only being 6th in home runs. Of course, there is also more than one way to hit for power and the 2013 Red Sox led the majors in doubles by a ridiculous 41 over St. Louis and 61 over third place Arizona. Even with a 32 home run deficit in home runs, they still led the majors in slugging percentage. It should be no surprise that in 2014 the team has been terrible at scoring runs given that they have fallen to 14th in on base percentage and 27th in slugging.

That your breakdown above doesn't even mention doubles (or triples for that matter) or other components of run scoring like base stealing, advancing from first to third on a single or taking the extra base when a fielder doesn't make a play cleanly, or any number of other things that happen in a baseball game, just confirms that the numbers you suggested they aim for are only a tiny slice of the whole pie. What the Red Sox need to do, and it appears they are already on that path, is to take a page out of the 2012-2013 off season. Fill in from the bottom and replace your worst players with average or above average free agents, promotions or trade targets. It's much easier to go from 0 wins above replacement to 2 than from 2 to 4 or from 3 to 5 and so on. Worrying about finding a third baseman who can contribute X*.20 home runs per season is much harder than finding someone to replace Jonathan Herrera as the 25th man, or Felix Doubront and Jake Peavy as back of the rotation starters.

Snodgrass'Muff · Aug 19, 2014

Well, they are scoring a touch over 4 runs per game since trading for Cespedes. If Bogaerts takes a step forward, they address center field with either improvement from JBJ or by replacing him (Betts? Castillo?) and Craig gets healthy, they could be scoring 4.5 runs a game in a hurry. It's not out of the realm of possibility that they have a top 10 offense for 2015 already in house. I'm sure Ben will do more to address the problem between now and April as well.

I wouldn't get too worried about the long term health of the offense just yet.

JMDurron · Aug 19, 2014

If an expanded strike zone is a part of MLB's strategy to speed up games (this doesn't seem to be explicitly stated anywhere, but between Farrell's statements at the recent seminar about the strike zone being larger this season, and the MLB-level discussion of the length of games, I think it's a reasonable concern), then I would worry about the long term health of the offense. The franchise will have to effectively reverse a decade or so of institutional instruction throughout the minor leagues on how to approach plate appearances, and players that are currently on the roster that are valuable partly because of their batting eye may become obsolete. It's entirely possible that the current crop of positional prospects will have to adjust on the fly beyond the normal acclimation to MLB pitching, increasing the risk that the entire group washes out. A league that is working to stamp out the effectiveness of plate discipline would have dire consequences for the offense, leading to a need for Cespedes-style mashers at the expense of OBP. Hopefully this season is just a blip, but I'm concerned that MLB may be issuing direction to the umpires that will undermine the strategy that has helped make the Red Sox offense so effective almost constantly since 2003.

Snodgrass'Muff · Aug 19, 2014

That all assumes that hitters who have had a great eye with the old strike zone don't posses the capability to adjust their perception of the zone, and I think that's an unreasonably dim view of the guys on the roster or the system as a whole.

JMDurron · Aug 19, 2014

Snodgrass'Muff said:
That all assumes that hitters who have had a great eye with the old strike zone don't posses the capability to adjust their perception of the zone, and I think that's an unreasonably dim view of the guys on the roster or the system as a whole.

Some subset of them probably will be able to. I think it's unreasonably optimistic to expect a majority of the hitters to be able to do so. Again, I'm hopeful that MLB chooses to focus on timing between pitches instead, or that this year's drop in offense is a fluke, but I don't think we can rule out a deliberate and at least moderately long-lasting change in the strike zone.

Snodgrass'Muff · Aug 19, 2014

Rudy Pemberton said:
What is the significance of "scoring 4+ runs a game" since acquiring Cespedes? He's been awful, and it's a pretty small sample of games too- I don't know how predictive that number is.

That the extra power threat may be having a positive impact on the lineup even if his OBP has been just under .300. I'm not making a declarative statement. I'm just pointing out that that the fear of this team being years away from having a good offense are very likely overblown because we're not looking at the same lineup that scored well under 4 runs per game before the deadline.

JMDurron said:
Some subset of them probably will be able to. I think it's unreasonably optimistic to expect a majority of the hitters to be able to do so. Again, I'm hopeful that MLB chooses to focus on timing between pitches instead, or that this year's drop in offense is a fluke, but I don't think we can rule out a deliberate and at least moderately long-lasting change in the strike zone.

Based on what? Do you really think they'd have been able to make it to the major league level and been successful for as long as they have without the ability to make adjustments at the plate? And if this is a league wide phenomenon why have the Red Sox been affected so much more than everyone else? They've had the biggest drop in offense from last year to this year and the first half lineup wasn't ridiculously different from the one that won a title last fall.

This doesn't make any sense to me.

nvalvo · Aug 19, 2014

Rudy Pemberton said:
So the presence of Cespedes is causing the team to score more runs, even though Cespdes himself has been terrible? Agree to disagree, I guess. He's got a career SLG 20 points higher than Gomes.

Right, let's compare without adjustment a guy whose career as a platoon slugger began in 2003 and thus encompassed some of the better offensive seasons of all time with a guy who has played against all pitchers since 2012, almost entirely in Oakland.

Al Zarilla · Aug 19, 2014

Rudy Pemberton said:
So you think the Sox are scoring more runs because pitchers are so scared of Cespedes, despite him hitting like Jackie Bradley Jr since he joined the Sox, and not because they have played a bunch of games against the Astros?

Ok.

(Your points about Gomes fair. It was more to demonstrate that Cespedes power is being overrated; he's not Barry Bonds).

Exaggerate much? 3 HR, 2 of them basically game winners, and 12 RBI in 15 games is hitting like Bradley? Yeah, yeah, RBI, archaic stat.

OttoC · Aug 19, 2014

Rudy Pemberton said:
So you think the Sox are scoring more runs because pitchers are so scared of Cespedes, despite him hitting like Jackie Bradley Jr since he joined the Sox, and not because they have played a bunch of games against the Astros?
...

Given that the rest of the Red Sox outfielders have combined for 14 HRs, Cespedes's 3 in 15 games is enormous. However, their respective OBPs are about dismally the same.

OttoC · Aug 19, 2014

Rudy Pemberton said:
What is the significance of "scoring 4+ runs a game" since acquiring Cespedes? He's been awful, and it's a pretty small sample of games too- I don't know how predictive that number is.

Scoring 4+ runs per game is significant because teams that score 3 runs or fewer this season have a sub-.400 winning percentage in those games (.390 for exactly 3 runs). On the other hands, those games in which teams score 4+ runs are won at least 58.1% of the time. This holds pretty well historically. When I find my spreadsheet on this, I'll post more information.

However, I am not saying that Cespedes is or is ot the cause in the case of the Red Sox.

nvalvo · Aug 19, 2014

Rudy Pemberton said:
So you think the Sox are scoring more runs because pitchers are so scared of Cespedes, despite him hitting like Jackie Bradley Jr since he joined the Sox, and not because they have played a bunch of games against the Astros?

Ok.

(Your points about Gomes fair. It was more to demonstrate that Cespedes power is being overrated; he's not Barry Bonds).

We actually agree. Cespedes is a decent player, not a great one, and he has scuffled in Boston. But even setting that small sample aside, I'm not at all sure I would be in favor of extending him considering his on base "skills."

But the idea that he and Gomes are comparable players is laughable. Gomes is awful. Somehow Fangraphs values his baserunning highly enough that he breaks even at precisely replacement level: 0.0 WAR. His work with the bat and glove were both assigned marked negative value. Gomes' sub-.700 OPS and poor defense in LF was a terrible use of a roster spot.

Really, Cespedes is a huge improvement on Gomes just because he can face RHP — not to mention that Cespedes' career line against RHP is better than Gomes' overall line in Boston. The platoon at the bad end of the defensive spectrum sapped the roster of flexibility, and actively impeded the team from assembling a viable OF. It left the team ill-equipped to deal with Victorino's (entirely predictable) collapse in health and performance and Sizemore's unplayable CF defense, and it forced Bradley into starting in CF before he was ready with the bat.

(Also, Mike Carp. WTF?)

Great Expectations for Power-bat Positions

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