Do the Sox Have Better Chemistry Than the Yanks?

Shotgun Spratling of The Blue Workhorse recently shot me an email to alert me to the site's preview of the 2009 Red Sox. As far as conclusions go, it's not too surprising: our team is good, our team has some question marks, if our team overcomes their question marks, they'll probably beccome the best of the best for this year. What did jump out at me was the lede from the second paragraph of the preview: "The Red Sox have better chemistry than the Yankees do and that allows them to play well together."

Whether or not you believe chemistry has an impact on team performance is a contentious issue, but not one that I'm going to address here apart from saying that a congenial workplace is usually a more enjoyable place to get work done and that can lead to better performance. That said, even outside of the world of statheads and traditionalists, people who study management haven't come to a complete agreement about the relationship between chemistry and productivity. However, even if you do happen to believe that players who work together well win more ball games, you have to question whether or not Blue Workhorses's statement is still true in 2009.

In 2003 and 2004, the Sox rode their reputation as a group of fast and loose ballplayers into the annals of Winning Teams With Great Chemistry. The reputation is still there - or so it seems, if a sports blog is including it as part of a team preview - but the steady attrition of players from those teams to other ball clubs makes that judgment feel superficial. Think about it: if you were to name the loosest guys on the Sox, who would you pick beyond Ortiz and Papelbon. Youkilis and Pedroia are more crazy than loose, Lugo/Lowrie is a non-entity, Lowell is laid back, and everyone else - if they've established a presence at all - seems to prefer to let their bat or their glove do the talking. It's not a bad thing, but in terms of measurement I don't think this team has better chemistry than the workmanlike Yankees...I think it's about the same.

J.D. Drew and His Back 'O Stiffness

Look, we all know that J.D. Drew has back problems. So maybe the plan of sending him back to Boston to get an injection for stiffness in his back is just as precautionary as Francona says it is...but I'm a little freaked out by the news. For better or for worse - and I'll admit, for the most part it's really been better - Drew is one of the lynchpins of Boston's offense. There are already a few question marks where offense is concerned for 2009 and adding more unknowns into the equation makes the Sox that much less competitive in the wild world of the AL Beast. I'm not throwing in the season by any means, but the scrunity on Drew will get that much more intense when he comes back on Friday.

No Room for Pedro at Motel Red Sox

Nine years ago, Pedro Martinez had what's arguably the best pitching season of the modern era. Five years ago, he was the flawed but still game half of the one-two rotational punch that helped garner Boston its first World Series victory in far too long. Today, he's hoping to make a good showing pitching for the Dominican team in the World Baseball Classic in order to impress someone (like, say, the Pirates) so he can get himself a contract and keep playing professional baseball. This situation is why I could never be a professional athlete: I can't imagine going from "best in the world at what I do" to "scrapping around for any job I can find" in nine years. Best of luck to ya, Petey.

Did I Hear That Correctly?!

Well, the Sox almost lost to BC for the first time ever before realizing where they were and what they were doing, and then lost pretty soundly to the Twins, but hey, is baseball again, is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes! The games aren't important.

But I'll tell you what's getting me all puffed up with restrained emotion right now: the MLB network's post-game feed, counting down the nine best pitching seasons in baseball history (word to the wise: Bob Gibson in 1968 looks unhittable). Number five was Greg Maddux in 1995 and for a quality measurement they used - get this - ERA+. Yes, that's right, a portion of the advanced baseball statistics tool kit, right there on the league's official network. It was awesome.

And yes, I know: I'm such a nerd.

No Manny? No Problem!

For all afraid of Papi's lack of protection from Manny in 2009, look no further than Paul SF's breakdown of the big man's numbers when he went Ramirez-less in the lineup. Looks like - assuming we've got a health Ortiz returning to form - that we'll have plenty to cheer about from the heart of the order.

And So It Begins...

...for both the Red Sox (first two Spring Training games tomorrow) and for Josh Bard, who will be taking a seat behind the plate when Tim Wakefield starts against the Twins in the evening. I know Bard is fighting for a position with the team, but good on him for taking not only the toughest catching assignment, but one that burned him so badly a mere three years ago. Good luck!

No, It's Not Time to Let Fenway Go

Yesterday, Boston Herald writer Steve Buckley wrote a column urging the Sox to replace Fenway. Today, someone from Sports Illustrated - although damned if I can find it again - echoed Buckley's statements, calling for the old park to bite the dust in favor something new, modern, and more comfortable. The topic is, of course, one that arouses great passions in partisans of both sides of the debate, but I have to wonder: what set off the hate to begin with? Buckley himself calls Fenway "a palace" when comparing it to the park's appearance a mere 10 years ago and while it's true that it's the team and more than the locale that keeps the ticket sales high, I wouldn't go so far as to say that going to watch a good team in a crappy stadium is fun. The late 80s/early 90s Athletics - for example - might have been excellent teams, but I'd hazard a guess that their fans would have enjoyed the games even more if the team wasn't housed in the Coliseum.

To my mind, there are two reasons why scrapping Fenway is a bad idea:

1. The Practical Reason. Have you seen the economy recently? Think ticket prices at Fenway are bad now? Imagine what they'd be like if the ownership pulled a Steinbrenner and turned most of the park into luxury seating to recoup the losses of construction. In fact, that's probably an optimistic view, because even the Red Sox don't have the resources the Yankees can generate.
   
   
2. The Emotional Reason. To defame Fenway is to forget one thing: Red Sox fans - and in some ways, Bostonians in general - are defined by the history of the team and their city. Do you remember in 2001 when Dan Shaughnessy said the Yankees deserved to win the World Series because the Pheonix newspapers were handing out guides to baseball and the Diamondbacks didn't have the proper sense of history? An asinine thing to say, to be sure, but the point is that his statement was emblematic of how closely Sox fans look at the history of the game. And while some of that historical obsession came from years of near-miss ineptitude, the feeling is still part of the culture of Red Sox Nation. We can't tear down Fenway, the shrine to the successes and failures of our team, our living link with the oh-so-important past: it would be tearing out a piece of ourselves; a piece that could never be replaced with wide-load injection molded seats with three feet of leg room and two cupholders, no matter how comfortable.
   

Smoke and Mirrors

Joy of Sox notes that the Lugo/Lowrie competition for shortstop is just a facade, presumably to keep all us peons jumping while Lugo consolidates his position of power behind the scenes. If this news is true, it certainly explains Lugo's recent comments to the press, but I really hope the brass keep the screws on Lugo through the duration of Spring Training. Robin's "Julio Lugo can eat my nuts" tag got two uses last year and that's two uses more than any of us wanted to see.

Salary Cap or Payroll Zone

The Red Sox have come out in favor of a salary cap of sorts, although the lack of details available - particularly whether or not the program would be a standard salary cap, a payroll zone (where there would be both minimums and maximums on team salary), or something else entirely - makes me wonder about the intention of this announcement.

On the one hand, I can see why the Red Sox would want a cap: they have a reputation for winning and for a devoted fanbase, making them more likely to win the favor of players on the free agent market and giving Boston a better pick of available talent. Coupling that attractiveness with a cap - and the dollars to spend up to that salary limit - eliminates the possibility of losing a player to a higher salary bid, increasing the likelihood that a Mark Teixeira ends up making Fenway his home.

On the other hand, this announcement could just be a ploy: get in a cheap shot at the Yankees, throw in another - with the payroll zone comment - at the Rays, make the ownertship look like it cares for the plight of the common man without having to worry that a cap - which would have to meet the approval of the unsympathetic players union - would become a reality. Sounds like a win for the Red Sox no matter what the intentions.

How Much Do You Love This Picture?

Do they have those grim looks on their faces because they're concentrating on the press conference, or because they're sitting in judgment on A-Rod's lack of True Yankeeness? "You! You've never won a ring! Not once!"

Julio Lugo is a Cocky, Cocky Man

Hey Lugo: your cockiness is certainly a good sign for someone who's about to start fighting their way out of a bench job. However, before you go claiming victory, I'd like to point out one thing: before pulling your quadriceps in July, your line was .268/.355/.330 with an OPS+ of 78, which - besides being the sort of putrescence that made me cheer for your removal on a regular basis - is laughable when you consider that your replacement, Jed Lowrie, hit .245/.337/.384 with an OPS+ of 90...and he had a tear in his wrist.

Let me put this in a separate paragraph, because it's so delicious it has to be tasted by itself: a guy with a bad wrist who was in so much pain by the end of the season that he'd entered a significant slump that dropped his OPS by over 200 points still had better overall numbers than you did when you were healthy. Yeah, I'd say that shortstop job is a lock for you.

Not.

We're Gonna Win!

At least Baseball Prospectus says so. And damned if they didn't call how terrible the Mariners were going to be last year. Anyway, the projections say we're supposed to beat out the Yankees by a game in the win column, setting up a playoffs where we host Oakland for the division series while the Wild Card-winning Yankees play the Indians in Cleveland. Expect 2009 to be another year when the AL East proves its superiority to the rest of baseball: at 92 and 70, the third-place Rays would three other divisions and come in second in the other two.

Heck, much like the Athletics, I think we should just call the season now.

Ruh-Roh...Steroids are Back

Had a dream last night that I was arguing with two Yankees fans about the merits of our respective teams in the upcoming season. I don't remember who won, and I suspect the entire thing was inspired by the A-Rod took steroids firestorm yesterday - good job on his part learning from the mistakes of others with that apology, by the way - but either way, it's a sure sign that baseball is on the brain and only weeks away. And that, my friends, is a happy thing.

I was a little irritated with the title of Mike McDermott's post for ProJo on the steroid culture in baseball - I think fans are as much to blame for the steroid-fueled long ball decade as anyone else because we turned a blind eye, too - but he redeems himself a bit at the end by throwing his thesis out the window and admitting to fan guilt, too. I think in the information-rich age we've developed, particularly in the last eight or nine years, when thousands of people can write up their speculations in blogs like this one and millions more can read them and discuss them in comments, forums, and the like, saying that we not only missed the taint of steroids in our favorite sport but that our supposed ignorance absolves us from guilt is naive at best. Much like housing bubble and the US consumer's free ways with credit, the steroid era was like a huge party replete with strippers, coke, and high-class booze: we might have had a good time while it lasted, but now it's 11 AM the next morning, there's broken furniture in the pool and vomit in the washing machine and we've all - players, owners, media, and fans - got a king-sized hangover. Let's just get on with cleaning up the mess.

Boston Pops Does Red Sox

What do pop classical versions of songs by The Dropkick Murphys, Neil Diamond, and John Phillip Sousa, well-known (if not infamous) writer Mike Barnicle, and the Red Sox all have in common. If you answered "a CD by the Boston Pops" you'd be right...and then, if you were like me, you'd probably wonder how punk rock sounds played by a string section. You might also shudder.

I wouldn't call myself a Boston Pops fan, so I'm not going to say I endorse this product or the concept behind it whatsoever, but I could see some music fans enjoying the concept. Don't get too excited yet, though: unless you have a secret source, you'll have to wait until Opening Day to get this latest piece of the Red Sox marketing coup.

Happy Days are (Almost) Here Again

It's Truck Day. Baseball is almost here. The cold times are almost over.

Finally.

RE: Jason Varitek

Robin and I on the phone, discussing the imminent return of the Captain:

Robin: "This really should have happened months ago."
Me: "Yes, it should. I blame Scott Boras."
Robin: "Yes, blame Scott Boras. He's Satan's minion on Earth."
Me: "It's true. Every time a player signs with Scott Boras, God brutally murders a kitten."

Welcome back to the fold, Varitek. We're glad you got over your four-month hissy fit and returned to where you belonged.

Thoughts on John Updike

RIP John Updike. While most may think of your collected prose and poetry, the volumes that make you a cornerstone of 20th century American fiction, I remember you more for "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," that masterful 1960 recounting of the Splendid Splinter's final Fenway game that mythologized a moment - a heroic home run, a departure of an icon, a momentary light in a decades-long night of baseball incompetence - by encapsulating the end of an era for the Red Sox. Before 2004, Red Sox fans were, in theory if not in reality, the hopeless masses in Fenway that dreary September day: scornful and cynical, yet all too ready, whether in the hunt for a trophy or down in the lowest depths of baseball mediocrity, to throw all to the winds and seize on a possibility of greatness. That, like Williams after his home run, our heroes never returned our adoration in the measure we felt we deserved became part of our collective fan conscience, and you, Mr. Updike, captured that conscience in a way that any fan can read, understand, and adopt as his or her own.

Ha. He Said "A-Fraud"

I guess The Dugout was right after all:

"The Yankee Years" reveals that Rodriguez was called "A-Fraud" by his teammates and the star slugger developed an obsession with shortstop Derek Jeter, the New York Post and the Daily News reported Sunday.
- Boston.com

Any guess on the over/under of the "A-Fraud" chants lighting up Fenway when the Yankees next come to town?

Catching Up With Catchers

I bet Varitek is feeling pretty foolish about that big market talk from late last year right now. I also wonder whether or not Boras finally over-playing his hand - what with there being no other public suitors for Varitek's services besides the Red Sox - on such a high-profile player might bring some equalization to the oh-so-ugly Boras factor.

You know: it occurs to me I could probably write pages on why we - who, as fans of a team where prices are driven by demand, have no stake in player salaries - hate on Boras for being so good at his job. Rationalizations by fans of smaller-market teams seem appropriate, as Boras's ability to pull the highest prices for his stars guarantees that many teams won't be able to compete, but the Sox do not fall into this category, and my (and I have no doubt, yours as well) dislike of Boras and his reputation is probably nothing more than irrational musings on abstract measures of "fairness." Point of fact, there is no fairness, only relative ability to play the game and the jealousy of those left in the dust.

Like I said: pages. However, I prefer to contemplate the relative merits of Saltalamacchia, Montero and Teagarden. Assuming a reasonable trade, who would you rather see behind the plate at Fenway? The Herald calls Taylor Teagarden the most well-rounded of the three, but if Miguel Montero is as much of a pitch calling wiz as the article says, I suspect I'd rather have him instead. The 2005 Red Sox and 2008 Yankees both proved how useless a killer offense can be without a strong pitching staff, and we've heard time and time again about how important a strong backstop can be when it comes to managing that staff to victory. With a stable full of young arms, wouldn't a defensive catcher be more of an asset?

Bring Back Manny?

So Charles P. Pierce has an idea: bring back Manny. He's not kidding, either: let bygones be bygones and get a bargain price for a fantastic hitter who's demonstrated he's got plenty of gas left in the tank, filling a potential lineup hole in the process. While the Sox are at it, they can use a Manny signing to offload Jason Bay while he still has value and acquire...well, I don't really know at this point, since Boston is swimming in replacement-level pitching arms, but something.

Madness, you say. Pure idiocy, you say. Turn in your writing license, says irate commenter GEO, who - ironically enough - spends most of his post violating what I do not doubt would be the terms of a "writing license" with his all-caps assault and atrocious grammar. I was all aboard for Mr. Pierce's head, too, until I realized that his statements have a larger context: his post is a poster child (you like what I did there?) for the war between stats types and trad types.

To review, the modus operandi of a pure stat-head is that anything that cannot measured - things like chemistry, drive, fortitude, and all of the other stuff that Fire Joe Morgan lovingly lumped under the term "intangibles" - is irrelevant to the argument of relative value. Pure trad types, on the other hand, pooh-pooh the idea of using what they see as increasingly obscure measurements that cloud the spontaneous aspects of the game, preferring to give equal credence to a player's leadership abilities as they do to his ability to get hits. Pierce's prose suggests that he sides with the former camp in his views:

Cruising the sports pages the other day, I noticed that there is a free agent out there who’s hitting .314 lifetime with 527 home runs and who, last year, almost singlehandedly lifted a mediocre bunch of Los Angeles Dodgers into the playoffs. He hit 17 home runs down the stretch and knocked in 53 runs in as many games. And, almost unbelievably, he’s on the market. Right now.

In other words: screw the circumstances of Manny's departure; he can do the one thing that teams pay baseball players to do, and he can still do it far better than the average player. Indeed, it sounds like we can take things one step further: to focus on Manny's attitude and his performance off the field (or maybe just away from the plate?) is to blind one's self to the truth that baseball players are all replaceable parts of greater or lesser quality. The Sox can use Manny to construct a winning team...and so they should.

Penny versus Burnett

While the Red Sox continue their bargain basement shopping for damaged spare parts, the Herald poses an interesting question: would you rather have Brad Penny or A. J. Burnett? They cite some numbers that favor Penny (of course), but I was curious, so I took a look at each pitcher's historical numbers on FanGraphs.

As you can see, Burnett's numbers make him look like a lot more of an average-to-better pitcher than Penny, who seems to have done a lot of climbing towards mediocrity even before he hurt himself last season. To be honest, I'm impressed: these graphs make Burnett look a lot better - and make New York's investment a lot more reasonable - than I had been previously willing to admit. However, before I tucked off into a bout of green-with-envy misery over what seems like a distant second place splash to New York's $82.5 million acquisition, I happened to read David Golebiewski's analysis of both signings. Golebiewski's take on Burnett isn't too surprising - in short, if he stays healthy, he can dominate - but in his piece on Penny, he makes one crucial point that had me flipping an emotional bitch faster than you can say "2003 Marlins Reunion in Boston": statistical projections have a healthy Penny giving up 58 runs in 127 innings, far outshining the replacement-level starter who statistics project to give up 77.6 runs in the same time period. Couple that projection with a paltry $5 million deal and the Penny acquisition starts to make a lot of sense.

Therefore, since I'm all too happy to place my faith in the numbers, I'm at ease with the Penny pickup. New York can have its big-money contracts; the Yankees need them to have a shot in 2009. The Sox may be spending far less money, but they're still in a great position to compete.

Finally!

Congratulations to Jim Rice on joining the hallowed in the Hall of Fame! As RedSox.com points out, Rice's election means we're likely to see another retired number ceremony this year in Fenway.

The Sick Man and the Old Man Come to Boston

You can keep your Mark Teixeiras and your C. C. Sabathias and your A. J. Burnetts (seriously, though: that guy will mess up your team), because we've got results where it really counts: The Rocket from Woonsocket, coming to Boston to be the fourth outfielder/minor medical case. And look! Baldelli is excited to be here:

"I would be just fine playing there," he said in an interview with the Journal last November. "I don't have strong feelings one way or another about playing there."

Ok, that was a little out of context. I was going to a clever OPS+ comparison between Boston's 2008 utility crew and Baldelli to compare their relative value, but I see that Rocco only played 28 games, lagging far behind the contributions of The Mayor and Alex Cora. He did match Kotsay's output, though...ok, so Kotsay played 22 games in Boston after the trading deadline, finishing the year with an OPS+ of 65 and proving that he really is not a very good second-half player. Baldelli played 28 games all year, but his OPS+ was a more respectable 113. I think we can call that an upgrade.

And we've got John Smoltz, too, biatches. Sure, he's 41, he's coming back from shoulder surgery and he's never pitched in the AL, but his ERA+ hasn't dropped below 127 since 1994, so he's got a long, long (long) streak of good pitching coming into 2009. Plus, it's not like the Sox can ever have too much pitching coming into a new season...

Note to Andrew Perloff: No More Haterade

I know it's pissy for Boston fans to complain about lack of respect - we've certainly worn out our welcome with the rest of the country with all of the fun we've had in the past near-decade celebrating our wins - but talk about your lack of respect:

I wouldn't be surprised if the Bruins were the only Boston team to win a title for some time. The Red Sox have been thrashed by the Yankees in the hot stove league. The Patriots missed the postseason completely and don't know when Tom Brady is coming back. And the Celtics don't look like they're going to get as lucky against the Cavaliers in this season's Eastern Conference playoffs.

Boston, you had a nice run. Now it's time to go hang out with the Detroits of the world and let another town take over as America's most successful sports city.

Wow. I mean, even without the random Detroit hating - didn't they win an NBA championship in '04, Stanley Cups in '02 and '08, and come within a series of winning the World Series in 2006? How are they a second-run sports city, exactly? - someone's clearly got their facts in a cherry-picked twist. The Red Sox were three runs, a bases loaded situation, and a boatload of key injuries away from going to the World Series this past October, and guess what? Almost all of that team is back for the spring. In other words, the Sox "lost" the Hot Stove League because unlike the Yankees, they didn't really need to play.

The Pats became the first team in 23 years to miss the post-season with an eleven win record and did pretty damn well for a team missing a few key components. "Don't know when Brady is coming back" is deceptive phrasing: the question is whether or not he'll be coming back Week 1 or Week 6. Either way, it sounds like the Pats will still have Cassel, the backup who led the team to an elimination game away from the playoffs.

Finally, as one of the commenters on Andrew Perloff's idiotic post pointed out, the Celtics' current slide dates back to the period before the Starbury rumors...and even if it didn't, what team doesn't have bad streaks over the course of a long season?

In other words, Mr. Perloff, I have two words for you and your factless spin through Boston sports bashing: Epic Fail.

Mark Teixeira's True Colors: A Continuing Saga

Mark Teixeira on becoming a Yankee this off-season:

"In the back of my mind, the Yankees were always the top"

"My wife and I decided two weeks before Christmas the Yankees are where we want to be."

"I would wear a Yankees hat. Back in the '80s and early '90s, that wasn't a safe thing to do in Baltimore."

"Once it really hit me that I was going to be a Yankee, it was just pure joy. It hit me: the excitement of being a Yankee...I can be a Yankee? There's nothing better."

I could give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's just pandering to his new fan base, but even if he is, so what? Those actions would make him a mercenary at best, and if he really did want to go to New York all along, he's set himself up to be the perfect villain for 2009. Either way, I'm glad he's not playing in Boston.