2014 Preview: Boston Red Sox
What will the Red Sox get from Xander Bogaerts this year?
Right now, there are a lot of good things that people are saying about Xander Bogaerts and there is a lot of reason for that. He is a big, strong kid (yes, kid — he is only 21) and he will only grow into his body more and more as time goes on. Many can say that Bogaerts strikes out way too much for a middle infielder, but he is also not your typical middle infielder, as people see 25-plus home run potential from Bogaerts. Also, his walk rate has stabilized in the 10% range, and that is good for a young hitter. As for this year, Bogaerts should grab the shortstop position from the departed Stephen Drew. An average around .270 and somewhere between 15-20 homeruns with a very incongruent fielding season should be a good rookie campaign out of Boegaerts. That would make him about the same value to the Red Sox in 2014 as Drew was in 2013, but in the grand scheme of things, a top 3 Rookie of the Year performance will be a huge boost to the future of the Red Sox.
Who will be the 5th man in the Red Sox rotation by the end of the season?
On the onset of the season, the Red Sox have a very volatile rotation other than Jon Lester. Between the inconsistency of John Lackey and Ryan Dempster and the injury history of Jake Peavy and Clay Buchholz, it is very difficult to say if the Red Sox will have an elite staff like the one that led them to a World Series title or if the injuries and inconsistency will lead to a lot of round trip journeys to Pawtucket. By the end of the season, for one reason or another, Matt Barnes will sneak into a consistent fifth starter in the rotation. The first pick by the Red Sox in the 2011, Barnes has had some issues with walks throughout his minor league career, but he has blown hitters away at each level since being drafted and will prove his worth in AAA before he makes it up to the Boston roster. This is not an indictment of Allen Webster or Henry Owens, but rather it is an endorsement of the skills of Barnes over them. As stated previously, the Red Sox are set up very favorably in the near future with those three ready to join the rotation with Lester and Buchholz.
Will the Red Sox miss Jacoby Ellsbury?
This could be very simple and to the point, Jackie Bradley Jr. should be worth about two wins less than Jacoby Ellsbury this year. That is very cut and paste and that should be enough to say that the Red Sox will miss Ellsbury. This is not the whole story though. There is the fact that Ellsbury has been hurt throughout his career very frequently and his production has been incongruent. Considering the amount of money that the Yankees paid to get him to come to New York, it is not a shock that the Red Sox let him leave. In a vacuum, the Ellsbury move was one that was bad for Boston, as they do not have a sure thing in Bradley and there is nothing in Bradley’s history that shows that he will be anything better than just above average.
When you look at all of the factors, though, the move is a bit better for Boston. The easiest reason to say that the Red Sox will be fine is that all of the money that would have been spent on Ellsbury can now be given to other players and that the Red Sox do not need to pay an aging veteran a lot of money in the next five years. Also, even though the Red Sox are coming off of a World Series win, the team is looking to build for the future with guys like Bradley and Bogaerts and want to see what they have for the future and want to see if they have in house players that could fuel another run and a profitable future.
What should the Red Sox expect out of Clay Buchholz?
A couple times in this post, I have mentioned Clay Buchholz and I feel like I could write 2500 words just explaining him and the enigma that he is as a player. Throughout his minor league career, Buchholz was a big time strikeout guy and looked that way during his brief call up in late 2007. He also pitched a no-hitter late in the 2007 World Series winning season. Since that time, Buchholz’s entire career has been an elevator and at any time that he seems to figure it out, bigger questions are created; specifically looking at his two best seasons, 2010 and 2013.
In 2010, Buchholz was 17-7 and had a 2.33 ERA which were stellar numbers for a 26 year old, making the Red Sox look at him as the ace for the future. He also, though, only had 6.22 K/9 and 3.38 BB/9. There were good numbers that led to the solid “baseball card” numbers of 17 wins and a 2.33 ERA, but none of that was sustained in 2011 and 2012, although there were moments in 2011 when Buchholz was a good player before he got injured.
Suddenly, in 2013, Buchholz was better than ever, posting a career high in K/9, a career low in BB/9, and minimizing home runs, leading to a sub-2 ERA. Unfortunately, this was done in just over 100 innings pitched and his strand rate was at a career high while his BABIP was at a career low. For the 2014 season, the median should be the norm, as Buchholz’s ERA should be in the mid 3’s and he should be able to contribute 25-28 starts for the Sox. As for the walk and strikeout rates, it is probably best for Buchholz to pitch to contact a bit more and let that walk rate get into the high 2’s per 9. A wise suggestion for his future would be to get a bit more sink on his fastball, as his ground ball rate is alarming low for a pitcher obviously focusing on pitching to contact a bit more.
Why are the Red Sox going to win 86 games?
The 2013 Red Sox were a team on a mission, both to run the table in the AL East and to win the World Series. This year, though, there are some big question that are still similar from the onset of the 2013 season. No one knows about the health of Clay Buccholz or Jake Peavy or even Shane Victorino or Mike Napoli and a team with those many injury questions cannot be seen as a force going forward. That being said, there is a very strong case for the Red Sox exceeding what the predictions say, as John Farrell is a very good manager. As shown last year in the juggling that was done and all of the correct platoons that Farrell played, there is no reason to expect that the Red Sox will be under 90 wins. It is a catch-22 to say that the same reasons that the Red Sox may succeed is why they may fail, but the Red Sox cannot expect guys like Jonny Gomes, Mike Carp, and Daniel Nava to perform at the same level that they were at during the 2013 season and that is why there is a dose of pessimism in the the forecast for the Red Sox.
5 You Know:
1. David Ortiz
2. Dustin Pedroia
3. Mike Napoli
4. Jon Lester
5. Clay Buchholz
5 You Will Know:
1. Matt Barnes
2. Henry Owens
3. Rubby De La Rosa
4. Allen Webster
5. Brandon Workman
5 You Should Remember:
1. Bryce Brentz
2. Garin Cecchini
3. Blake Swihart
4. Trey Ball
5. Mookie Betts
bogaerts @ss middlebrooks@3b will be fine for the left side of the infield.bradley did not look good in his brief trial and he is at best only a singles hitter. outfield should be victorino in cf nava/gomes platoon in left field and try brentz & carp in right field. get rid of peavy & dempster.starters: lester,buchholz,lackey,doubront & workman. bullpen: uehara, tazawa, mejica, andrew miller, breslow,badenhop. boston will repeat in 2014.gradually bring up trey ball, dela rosa, barnes,britton,owens.
Dan Albano… Middlebrooks isn’t on the team anymore
Yes he is…
I would prefer that they give Bradley at least a month in center before they ship him to the minors. I do not see huge upside with him either but he is cheap and smart. Plus he has a winning attitude from college at South Carolina. Do not discount that; Ellsbury was not only a good player but he came from a winning team at Oregon State.
As for the rotation, it is a bit of a mess and it is shallow minded to think that the rotation you depicted would get out of the cellar of the AL East unless the lineup scores 1000 runs. Matt Barnes and Henry Owens are stars in the making so they need to be patient with them.
You have the Red Sox at 86 wins, the Rays at 89, and the Yankees at 93, that’s pretty laughable
The Red Sox have a very solid team that I see as a playoff team, but there are some positions that I am not completely sold on. The methods that I look at also do not focus on the impact of when the hitting and pitching statistics are accumulated; which is very key for the Red Sox as they have a knack for clutch hitting. It even says in the forecast for the Red Sox that I would not be shocked if they were a lot better than the prediction says. The Rays have a very solid team that I feel will get even better and the Yankees got much better this offseason.
Clutch hitting is not a repeatable skill, and the Red Sox do not need clutch hitting. They are already much better than the Rays and Yankees. Look at the projected standings, the Red Sox are projected to be the 2nd best team in the majors. Why can we not expect Jonny Gomes to be as good? He was way better in 2012. The rotation is not a question mark at all. We have 6 solid starters already, plus Brandon Workman who is probably better than the Yankees #5. Then we have the stacked AAA pitching depth. Also, Will Middlebrooks should rebound in a huge way, as he had a .263 BABIP and a wrist injury last year . Mike Carp might regress, but he was a backup last year. Nava’s BABIP might regress a little, but his career BABIP is .332. The Red Sox have just as many stars as the Yankees + way better depth, and an above average player at every position. You say there are questions for the Red Sox, but there are far more questions for the Yankees. If the Red Sox win 86 games and the Yankees win 93 games, everything went right for the Red Sox and wrong for the Yankees. Projecting the Sox to be 7 wins worse than the Yankees is crazy.
To be fair on all accounts, the raw data on the Red Sox as compared to the Yankees gives the Red Sox the upper hand by quite a margin. In fact, since a part of my analysis has root in what has happened with each team since 2010, the Red Sox have been comparable to the Yankees in talent. Given that as a fact, the Yankees have had a better record than the Red Sox in 2010, 2011, and 2012. In fact, the Yankees of 2013 on paper looked like the 2012 Red Sox that won only 69 games. This is not to say that the Red Sox will be close to the projection put on here, math is fallable and I believe that the Red Sox have the talent of a 90 plus win team.
The Red Sox were a team with very timely hitting in 2013 and there is nothing to say either way if that will continue in 2014. In projection the 2013 Red Sox, there was also time taken on the fact that John Farrell was a coach with the team that a lot of the players enjoyed working with and had an eye for pitching talent; hence the boost in performance of the Red Sox pitching for the 2013 season. As stated earlier, the Red Sox have tremendous pitching depth at the upper levels, but there are even some questions there.
It would not be a shock in the least if the Yankees were closer to 85 wins and the Red Sox were closer to 95 wins, but at this moment, the track record of the Yankees players is very strong to the systems that were used to create the projections.
The Red Sox did not rely on timely hitting last year. They had the best run differential in baseball which does not take into account when the runs were scored. They underperformed their pythag. How are the Yankees players projected better? What system are you using? Because here on Fangraphs, the Red Sox are projected to be the 3rd best team in baseball, and the Yankees are projected to be a little bit above average
Where did you get the idea that the Red Sox had very timely hitting?
Red Sox overall wRC+ last year was 115
wRC+ with RISP was 110
wRC+ with high leverage was 105
The Red Sox were worse with runners in scoring position and in high leverage situations. There is nothing that suggests clutch is a repeatable skill, but the Red Sox did not have timely hitting last year. In fact, their hitting was slightly un-timely
In this thread it has been stated that the Red Sox are a talented team but the method that was used in formulating these projections takes prior performance into account. The Red Sox may indeed be a 95 win team this year, in fact that would be their projection just based on talent, but when you take into account prior performance, the Yankees come out on top.
Okay, what is the method for the projections? Do you weigh the recent years correctly? Are they subjective projections? Because in the projections on this site, which have taken lots of research to make, the Red Sox are better than the Yankees.
The most recent statistics are weighed more heavily, so just as the Red Sox player statistics are weighed more heavily the Yankees team performance metrics are weighed more heavily. If the Yankees played like a 60 win team and were an 85 win team, that has just as much of an effect on the projections as the Red Sox players being extremely good last year. Isolating this conversation to the Red Sox and Yankees, the 2013 Yankees played like the 2012 Red Sox and won 16 more games than the Red Sox did in 2012; the formula takes that into account.
Okay, so teams get bonus points for performing better than their pythag? Because if so, that’s very wrong, as I have never seen a study that shows that teams can consistently outperform their pythag. Are the player projections calculated by weighing the past 3 years 5/4/3. Or declining by 20%? Almost all of the projections do not make the formula available to the public, but in order to know if these projections are valid, we have to know a rough idea of how they are calculated.
Teams do not get bonus points for overperformance, but rather it is a depiction of what input normally produces an output. As I explaining in a previous post, my methods give value at 4/3/2/1.
ok that’s wrong. Just because if the Yankees played like a 60 win team, and won 85 games doesn’t mean they should play 15 games better than their talent next year. That’s luck
I was using that as an example; there are other reasons why the Yankees will have an uptick in performance. As stated through the thread, the Yankees were woeful last year and there is a huge uptick in talent as compared to last year, that is want I am using as a baseline for the Yankees.
As for the Red Sox, John Lackey, Jake Peavy, Ryan Dempster, and Clay Buchholz are all question marks for different reasons. This was not extended upon in the evaluation, but I do feel that Webster, Owens, Workman, Barnes, et al. would do fine in the rotation if needed. Since there is no way to acknowledge which of these pitchers will break down or be inconsistent, there is no way to say where any of the younger Red Sox would fit in the equation. This is a seperate conversation all together, but the Red Sox are extremely well prepared for the worse case scenarios.
In summation of the Red Sox/Yankees analysis, the Yankees projection is a very volitile 93 and the Red Sox projection is a very cautious 86 with a good change to be higher.
I’m a serious baseball fan, a Red Sox fan (oxymoron), and a pretty good former player who has been 180’d by stats geeks a time or two and likes it.
Anyway, the Red Sox, 2013 style, are a one and done type which we see now and again (it’s a good thing), but Cherington knows this because it was Cherington who did the balancing act pretty much on his own. No one knows how he’ll deal his cards this year because he doesn’t even know his hand yet, especially where it counts most, pitching. Pretty much what you said. Except Lackey. There is no reason to think he will not continue to be good post surgery. And Ortiz. He is crucial to their success, and he is one injury away from being a very old ballplayer.
The Sox will be competitive without giving away the farm and even the fans are on board for that. The Yankee’s are causing no envy the way they continue to do business.
James, I could not have said it better myself. Cherington orchestrated a masterpiece last year and his combination of intuition and knowledge of the game is what makes him so good. He learned well from Theo and has built a solid team from top to bottom. The pitching is where I see the Red Sox coming up short. Bluntly, if a full year of Clay Buchholz is guaranteed, 95 wins would be nearly guaranteed
I’d be surprised if Buchholz ever pitched 150 innings again. So, I imagine, would Cherington. And I know he wont be surprised if Uehara comes up lame.
I’m surprised that Trey Ball, though infinitely talented, made the “you should remember list” and Anthony Renaudo was left off. I would think the ball is at least 3 years away and Renaudo should be up at some point in this season.
Trey Ball is someone that the Red Sox will patiently wait on and that is why he is on the “You Should Remember” list. Anthony Renuado is a player that I am very high on, but I am higher on the players that I listed above under the “You Should Know” heading. The Red Sox have truly elite upper level young pitching.
Agreed about the upper level pitching prospects. Even more significantly I have never seen a Red Sox organization loaded on every level from Lowell to Pawtucket with potential top level pitching prospects. Even if the the league norm of 1 in 4 pitching top prospects making an impact on the major league level holds true they will producing at least one top pitching prospect every year for the next 5-6 years. Thats a lot of young potential talent without having to break the bank with expensive free agents or extensions.
The only issue with the Red Sox prospects is that none of them is a slam dunk prospect. That is not to say that the Red Sox are not very well endowed in the pitching department but there are still questions with guys like Owens or Barnes.