Theo
Posted: October 3rd, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 137 Comments »
There is every reason in the world for me to love the Boston Red Sox fan. One, I love Boston. Love it. Love walking around Boston, love being around people from Boston, love the accent, love the Sports Guy, love it. Two, the Red Sox hired two of my absolute favorite people in baseball — Bill James and Allard Baird. Three, the Red Sox play baseball the way I believe in baseball — especially with Fenway Park as the home park. And four, they’re good. Is it so wrong to love a team that is actually GOOD?
Right or wrong, I do not love the Red Sox. I cannot just pick and and decided to love the Red Sox — it doesn’t work that way for me. I believe in sports loyalty. And I was born for sports misery.
This is especially disheartening because I have now found another reason to love the Red Sox: Theo Epstein. I have always liked and appreciated Theo from afar. He’s obviously very smart, very good at his job, and his grandfather and great uncle wrote Casablanca. But it has always been from afar … until I heard him discussing J.D. Drew on the radio show “Felger and Massarotti” this week.
I’ll be honest: I have never been an especially big fan of J.D. Drew. I don’t dislike him, but he has just never been someone I have spent a lot of time thinking about. In many ways, that makes him the perfect subject. When you are looking at baseball players you like, it’s easy (and tempting) to scroll through and find statistics that back up what you want to believe. That’s human nature. But when you’re utterly unmoved about a player, you won’t go through the same effort. J.D. Drew is a good but brittle player. I have nothing invested in him emotionally.
And so when Theo — in a clear effort to steer the conversation toward a point he wanted to make — said that J.D. Drew was second among everyday American League outfielders in OPS (behind only Boston’s Jason Bay), I thought: “Hmm, where is this going?”
As it turned out, it was going to Theo Epstein explaining something that is probably the No. 4 theme on this blog — why RBIs are no way to evaluate baseball players.
“Sometimes you get stuck in the world of evaluating players through home runs and RBIs. And it’s not the way that I think most clubs do it these days. And if you look at underlying performance of a lot of our guys, they bring more to the table than just the counting stats. And J.D.’s certainly having another good year for us. He’s up around a .900 OPS right now, and he’s playing really good defense in right field, he deserves an awful lot of credit for that, he’s been pretty darned good for the three years that he’s been here if you look at the underlying performance.”
The radio guys here protest a little … they point out that while Drew’s OPS is usually good, they aren’t sure that it has led to PRODUCTION — namely runs scored and RBIs. And this is when Theo really takes over. I bold out a few of my favorite thoughts in this wonderful little lesson:
“That’s not true. With RBIs, yes. Based on his skill set, he’s always going to have underwhelming RBI totals. I couldn’t care less. When you’re putting together a winning team, that honestly doesn’t matter. When you have a player who takes a ton of walks, who doesn’t put the ball in play at an above average rate, and is a certain type of hitter, he’s not going to drive in a lot of runs. Runs scored, you couldn’t be more wrong. If you look at a rate basis, J.D. scores a ton of runs.
“And the reason he scores a ton of runs is because he does the single most important thing you can do in baseball as an offensive player. And that’s NOT MAKE OUTS. He doesn’t make outs. He’s always among our team leaders in on-base percentage, usually among the league leaders in on-base percentage. And he’s a really good base runner. So when he doesn’t make outs, and he gets himself on base, he scores runs — and he has some good hitters hitting behind him. Look at his runs scored on a rate basis with the Red Sox or throughout his career. It’s outstanding.
“You guys can talk about RBIs if you want, I just … we ignore them in the front office … and I think we’ve built some pretty good offensive clubs. If you want to talk about RBIs at all, talk about it as a percentage of opportunity but it’s just simply not a way or something we use to evaluate offensive players.”
I have talked many times here about a fan’s desperate wish — desperate wish — to have the team see the game the way the fan sees it. I don’t mean specifics — fire the coach, bench the QB, go for it on fourth down and so on. I mean see it in the macro, in a larger way. If I’m a basketball fan, I would love a team that believes in pushing the ball up the floor. If I’m a football fan, I would love a team that believes in pressuring the quarterback and working the middle of the field. If I’m a baseball fan, I would just love to know that my GM really and truly believes that one thing — that it’s really, really, really important for a baseball player to not make outs.
That seems so simple to me, so utterly basic, so law of gravity. But I know that there are GMs in the league — more than you would ever believe — and lots of other people in and around baseball who do not believe this. It isn’t exactly that they are opposed to players who get on base. They certainly want guys to get on base. No, it is that they believe that OBP — the ability to not make outs — falls behind other more mystical talents such as the ability drive in runners in clutch situations or be a leader in the clubhouse or play the game the right way or whatever. I’m not saying these more mystical skills do not exist. Maybe they do. But I know that if you give me a baseball team of people who do not make outs, that team will score a lot of runs. A team of guys who play the game the right way will score a lot of runs too — assuming that “playing the game the right way” includes not making outs.
Anyway, I thought Theo put it perfectly. There’s no question that the Red Sox have some huge advantages over most teams in baseball. They have and spend a lot more money than most, which allows them to be better in so many ways. But they’re awfully smart too. One argument I have never understood is the one where people say that money doesn’t matter because some big money teams lose: “Oh, if money is so important, how come the Mets haven’t won more? The Cubs spend a ton of money, and they didn’t win. The Astros.” And so on. To me that’s a false argument — people have been wasting money since, well, since the invention of money.
But matching money with solid reasoning and serious brainpower, that’s an awfully tough combination to beat … even in a game as volatile and unpredictable as baseball. The Red Sox win every year. And I suspect they will keep winning every year. And I suspect that it would be a whole lot of fun to be a Boston Red Sox fan.
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I think I just have an issue with Red Sox rightfielders. Trot Nixon used to drive me crazy and it seems every time I see Drew hit, he strikes out. I know the numbers don’t back me up on that, but I always think “Strike out” when he comes up to bat.
A wonderful essay that shows a love for the game (and a legitimate frustration for its idiocies) and makes me even happier to be a Sox fan. I’ll be recommending this post to fellow New Englanders.
PS. I think Theo said in the interview JD Drew has the highest “second-half OPS”, but it’s irrelevant to your point.
If that’s one of my worst mistakes — to sign somebody who has 20 home runs and 97 RBIs — I’ll take it.
Dayton Moore about Jose Guillen
So, are you saying to Theo knows more than this? Saying that Dayton isn’t right? That Jose Guillen isn’t better than JD Drew?
Next thing you are going to tell me is that Megan’s Body isn’t better than Casablanca. That Cuddy isn’t the hottest doctor on House….my whole world is upside down…
I don’t see anything here about J.D. Drew’s clutchiness factor.
“The Red Sox win every year. And I suspect they will keep winning every year.”
Alas, so will the dreaded Bronx Pin Stripers.
Oh, it is generally a lot of fun to be a Red Sox fan, and we’d be happy to have you along – don’t forget it wasn’t long ago that we thought we were born for sports misery, too.
And with Ricciardi shown the door in Toronto, maybe it will be a bit more fun next year if they revisit and consummate a (reasonable) trade for Doc Halladay.
Recently, it has been fun. As you know, it hasn’t always been that way. Theo, the wild card and luck has helped. In Boston, it seems like it all starts at the top – Henry, Kraft, Grousbeck. The Royals need a new owner.
I wish there was anyone in the Astros’ front office who acted like they could comprehend what Theo said…
Here is the audio of the Theo interview, via SoSH: http://bit.ly/9MgkG
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PS. I think Theo said in the interview JD Drew has the highest “second-half OPS”, but it’s irrelevant to your point.
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False, 2nd highest in the AL this full season.
The depth of the committment to not making outs goes well beyond drafting skill-sets and the free agent signings, to whole organizational philosophy. There was a piece on (I think) Lowrie before he came up, in which he was quoted as saying that everyone in the minors knew that “not-making-out” was what got a hitter promoted.
Nice piece, Joe.
A G.M. who pays attention to pitcher wins and RBI is a moron.
Happy Red Sox fan who lives in NYC. Joe, I was disappointed I missed your NYC appearance this week. Maybe you’ll come back if the Sox/Yankees meet in the ALCS.
Theo has done a couple things real well during his time here in Boston. 1) awful and very expensive free agent moves 2) grown the Bosox overhead (front office) to an enormous size. Both are major factors in why ticket prices at fenway have been OUT OF CONTROL since he took over. But who will bother him if the fans keep buying the sox into the playoffs. That first WS, which was stocked with talent prior to his arrival, has essentially given him a judgeship or Kennedy seat. KC you can have him, but will you pony up the dough?
Buzz Bissinger does NOT approve of this post.
Hey Buc @13 – Don’t the Red Sox have the longest sell-out streak in MLB History with Theo at the helm? 500+ games? I agree the prices are steep, Hell, we used to be let in free after the third and sit by the field back in the mid-late 70’s. But C’mon man. Two rings, the streak, the brain – Theo’s earned a nice salary, huh?
As a Tiger fan, some years ago (maybe 2002?) I picked up the Red Sox as my “B” team primarily because of what you describe. I consider them the best organization in baseball and I find it difficult to think that I could respect their organization anymore than I do now. They are what I wish the Tigers to be. If the Tigers shirk off their close-to-collapse and end up meeting them in the ALCS, I should hope the Tigers smite them down from the heavens via the 4-0 sweep. However, should the Tigers fail to make it in, or to advance into the second round, then I will be rooting for the Red Sox all the way. Great article! I agree on all points.
Nice article as always Joe. It’s funny because I was having a ‘debate’ with some Met fans about Jeff Francoeur and why he’s not a very good baseball player. I used his OBP, OPS and SLG and also mentioned that his power numbers for a corner OF were very very poor as my arguements. Well what got thrown back into my face? The fact that he had a lot of RBIs so it didn’t matter. Ugh.
For me, the front office has been the best thing about being a Red Sox fan since 2003.
I used to read the free agent/trade/draft speculation about the Red Sox with dread, constantly thinking things like: “Please don’t get Dante Bichette” or “please don’t draft Rick Asadoorian in the first round because he’s athletic and from New England.”
It’s so nice to have utter confidence that your front office will make the smart move. The moves don’t always work out, but (aside from their dogged pursuit of Julio Lugo which I will never understand) you know the process is sound.
Hope you can make it to Boston for a book signing, Joe.
Great Article.
I guess things like RBI’s and Runs scored are so ingrained in media and fans that it’s hard for people to be objective.
Like Theo said, the most important thing for an offensive player is not making outs.
Fans and the Media get hung up on players striking out. Who cares? what’s the player’s on base percentage, slugging percentage, etc.
It most certainly IS a lot of fun to be a Boston Red Sox fan… unless you’re trying to buy tickets
Seriously, it’s great to have such intelligent people in charge, and I’ve really liked what they’ve done not only with the team but with Fenway Park.
However, I would say that something changes when your team is very successful. Your expectations change, the range of what would make you unhappy, neutral, and happy moves up the scale. It’s harder to appreciate things like making it to the postseason, and easier to be frustrated by small things. And yet… day in and day out, there are a lot more successes than failures, and we can listen to the team management make statements like the one you quoted that help us know they’re on the right track, whether or not everything goes our way in a given year. That makes up for a lot.
Now if only I could get some tickets…
Off topic, but here it is: Mauer (and his team) vs. Greinke (and his team) on the big stage (national tv), with the pennant on the line (sort of).
When Red Auerbach’s Celtics drafted Danny Ainge even though he was already playing baseball, one of my friends said, relax, it’s Red, so you know if it’s possible to get down they’ll do it. Theo hasn’t reached this level of confidence yet but it’s comforting to know that there will be a strong component of rationality and research in every decision.
Just read the ticket price comment/2004 was Duquette’s team comment. Two thoughts:
1. Ticket prices at Fenway have steadily increased since 1995. Theo didn’t have much to do with that. As anyone will readily admit, the Sox have the luxury of a lot of money, which gives them many benefits over other teams. That wasn’t enough prior to 2003.
2. The Epstein front office has certainly made some decisions that have gone very poorly and some of the things that have led to their success were pure luck. And if you’d rather have the Duke GM your team than Theo, good luck to you.
Buc @ 13:
Since Theo’s been in the house, the Sox have done five things:
1. Consistently made the playoffs
2. Won 2 World Series. “Reversed the Curse.” Won 2 more than the Yankees. i.e., they’ve done the unthinkable.
3. This is a key for me as a fan…they’ve fielded ENJOYABLE teams to root for, and not just because they’re winning. Despite MannyBManny forcing his way out, the Ortiz steroids revelation, cutting Pedro loose, etc…they have teams that win, and are “fun.” The Sox generally haven’t been a “fun” team. See Rice, Jim…Boggs, Wade….Clemens, Roger…etc. Whether these guys are idiots, cowboys, whatever, they are *fun* to watch. Good god, they’ve lost my two favorite players of ALL TIME–Manny and Pedro–and they’re still fun as hell. And honestly, I don’t think it’s *just* a happy coincedence…the Sox are looking at OBP and OPS and such, but I’ve got to believe that they are also pretty damned concerned with having a good environment, as immeasurable as that is.
4. They’ve built their brand. You might have heard of “Red Sox Nation.” No sports team has made a more concerted effort to increase its branding.
5. And oh yeah, they elected to keep arguably the most historic park in baseball. Stroke of genius in retrospect.
These things were not Theo’s sole doing, and there’s no way to really define how much of a role he played.
But as Joe said, having a guy who thinks the right way, and plenty of money to play with….
All in all:
It’s more enjoyable being a Sox fan right now than rooting for any other team, maybe in all of sports. Could you have even IMAGINED saying that ten years ago?
Theo’s a part of that, and I could give a crap if he gets too much credit. I don’t even know what “too much” could be, given the change in circumstances.
Dayton Moore sounds like the Anti-Theo. However, the number 666 isn’t the Number of the Beast; it’s the average OPS of Moore’s acquisitions.
How am I huge Red Sox fan who thinks that Casablanca is the best film ever made, and this is the first I’ve ever heard of the Theo-Casablanca connection? I feel like a fraud.
A tip o’ the Kangol to #25 Jason. As I read this post all I could think of, in terms of KC, was, “Yea, verily, for this soundeth but the antithesis of the Royals regime.”
On the Duquette issue,
Yes, it’s true that he was responsible for Manny, Nomar, Pedro, Lowe, Tek and other invaluable pieces of the 2004 team. But let’s not forget who Epstein and his squad brought to the table: Ortiz, Schilling, Timlin, Foulke, Mueller and Bellhorn.
I get to have the odd pleasure of being a born and bred Red Sox fan who has lived in Kansas City for years, so I get the yin and yang of baseball. Every idiotic move I see the Royals make is offset by something brilliant the Red Sox do. For every statement by Dayton Moore that announces to the world how little he really understands about baseball, I could find a string of comments from Theo Epstein like the ones Joe highlights above. It’s pretty fascinating. It’s like the Red Sox are a baseball experiment in a good way – “What would happen if a team with unlimited finances embraced objective analysis” – while the Royals are the control group that shows the exact opposite, a club with little money and fewer brains.
Not sure I agree 100% with your detective work there buc (#13)
While prices may have gone up, it probably has very little to do with the cost of the front office (or anything else, really). It probably has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that people will pay for expensive tickets.
Tickets pretty much cost exactly what people are willing to pay for them.
Obviously, runs scored and RBI are meaningless statistics. But as a follower of the sabermetrics of baseball, I have to point out that OPS is a fairly meaningless statistic as well. The fact that it values slugging rates on an equal playing field with on base rates is enough to discard the statistic. I mean they have wOBA over at fangraphs which works to fairly combine OBP with SLG, with heavier weight given towards OBP. I’d be willing to bet that 5 years from now people in the sabermetics community will no longer use OPS to evaluate a hitter’s performance.
As a Cub fan, you can’t believe my green-eyed wonder as I read the Epstein quotes. And if Cub’s GM Jim Hendry and his cadre of minions were listening, they’d have been chortling, making jokes, and mocking Theo with exaggerated clown faces, and shouting with glee “Oh yeah…OBP is more important than RBI’s. HA HA HA HA!”
And everyone wonders why the Cubs always underperform, as if it wasn’t the most obvious effing thing in the world.
Joe Poz put it best at the top of the article, when he said something that spoke for a lot of us: “I was born for sports misery.”
I’m really curious what exactly are the specifics of Bill James’s role with the Sawx. Has anything been written detailing exactly to what extent James has directly affected Epstein’s decision-making process in his capacity as consultant to the club?
Chris,
Seth Mnookin’s book “Feeding the Monster” has a lot about James’ tenure with Boston. In addition, the New Yorker profile on James was written while he was with the Sox and examines how his work fits into the organization.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/07/14/030714fa_fact1
I also am a closet lover of the Red Sox. You forgot to mention their loaded minor league system.
However, I’m a Padres fan. And I am equally doomed to misery.
I’ve been a baseball fan for a l-o-n-g time. I’ve given a lot of thought to the question: “What makes a winner?” There’s no one answer to that question. But of course I’ve known for a long time that HRs and RBIs, even for a great many players on one team during the same season, won’t make a winning team. All you have to do is look at decade’s worth of those Rangers clubs, and even the Tigers during the late 80s and early 90s, to know those stats alone won’t make a winning team. As a KC fan you need look no further than the 2000 team.
But, related to this post and the interview, I’ve never heard anyone articulate as well as Epstein the larger picture behind looking at OBP. Of course I reviled Dusty Baker’s ignorant “base-clogging” line about walks, but I’ve never quite understood how prioritizing OBP, plus OPS (despite the comment from Ryan above) as an organizational philosophy works toward a winning team until I saw the phrase: “not make outs.”
What an excellent, succinct, and powerful way of phrasing the goal. Those three words cover a large range of productive baseball activities both inside and outside the batter’s box: HBP, walk, hits (of course), stealing bases well, running well, not getting picked off, and perhaps sacrifice bunts and flys (which are a borderline activity per Epstein’s interview–get out, but maintain high OBP).
Thanks for forwarding this, Joe. This interview should make an appearance at every non-Boston baseball website within the next week. – TL
@ Ryan (#31): I agree. OPS makes it seem that two identical players, except one has a .250/.300/.500 line is just as good as a .250/.350/.450 player just because their OPS are equal.
Oh, and I really like how ESPN appears to have “accepted” sabermetrics by including OPS in a batter’s stat box when they come up to bat. Adding a pair of 3 decimal numbers should have been discovered right when OBP and SLG were created.
@ Chris (#33): All I know is that he’s some sort of advisor to the team. His exact role hasn’t ever been mentioned, though. Hell, even Wikipedia only specifically says that he is “credited with advocating some of the moves that that led to the team’s first World Series championship in 86 years…” such as signing David Ortiz, trading for Mark Bellhorn, and putting emphasis on OBP. Otherwise, James and others don’t release what exactly he does for the Red Sox.
#24 writes “It’s more enjoyable being a Sox fan right now than rooting for any other team, maybe in all of sports.”
I pretty much buy this. I mean, as a Pittsburgh Steeler fan I think that’s a pretty damn fun team to follow too but Red Sox fandom is awesome.
Great ownership, front office, ballpark, manager, city, fans, history. Massive media presence, especially online. Tremendous road trip if you follow the team from out of town.
The only downside I can see is that if you are a local and you attend 20+ games a year I can see how the charm of Fenway would fade quickly.
But other than that, if you could start your baseball fandom over from scratch, why wouldn’t you pick the Red Sox?
Now where’s the Greinke live blog? Come on!
As an Indians fan living in Boston, this post makes me want to slam my head in a door.
Theo Epstein doesn’t really impress me. He chooses good players, but to me he doesn’t seem dominant. Epstein may have won the first Sox WS since 1918, but he doesn’t strike me as the innovator that Branch Rickey was during his peak. Don’t get me wrong, Epstein has innovated and had success but he’s not the managing beast that Rickey was during his reign of dominance.
His team did lose to the Rays last year, so it’s not like he was punching tickets to the World Series.
He reminds me of a left-handed Pat Friday. He has two arms, two legs, and a head.
You Moneyball types just pee your pants around people like Epstein. Pathetic.
“I have to point out that OPS is a fairly meaningless statistic as well.”
I have to point out that you’re basically saying that OBP and SLG are meaningless stats. Good luck arguing THAT.
No, it doesn’t tell you everything you’d want to know, and it can be weighted heavily on SLG to the detriment of OBA, diminishing its value (see Miguel Olivo) somewhat; I imagine most stat savvy people will look at each, though. However, it’s a great starting point, and gives you a pretty concise picture of the player’s value.
“I mean they have wOBA over at fangraphs which works to fairly combine OBP with SLG, with heavier weight given towards OBP”
So it’s a minor improvement on a meaningless stat. Oh, so NOW it’s meaningful. I get it.
Ugh… J.D. Damn good player, but I’ve never been able to forgive him for some of his actions during his lone year as a Brave (which was actually very nearly an MVP caliber season. He was certainly getting it done out there with the bat).
He came in with the rep of being made of glass, and many St. Louis fans screaming that they weren’t all real injuries. Early in the season, he started missing the odd game here and there with little nagging stuff, but nothing more than a day or two.
Then came June. With Chipper Jones, Rafael Furcal, and Andruw Jones all already down with legitimate injuries, J.D. decides to take a week off with a stiff neck he said he got while swimming in friend’s pond. You know, if you’re so delicate that a quick swim means you miss a week, maybe you shouldn’t swim during the season?
After nothing else worked, the Braves did something you almost never see in a Cox clubhouse: They took it public. Chipper, DeRosa, some others talked about his reluctance to play through any little thing. Cox talked about how Drew told him in his office that he wouldn’t play unless he was 100%, and then opined that this was a problem simply because during the long baseball season, no one was 100% once April was gone. It wasn’t pretty.
But Drew suddenly put himself back in the lineup, hardly missed another game the rest of the season, had what was at the time a career year, and left at season’s end to sign a very lucrative contract with the Dodgers.
#13 – this argument has been made and disproved over and over again. There is NO relationship between player salaries and front office overhead and ticket prices. None. In a world of supply & demand, price is determined by the number of seats and the number of people who want seats at a given price. Prices go up when teams do well because more people want to see them play and are willing to shell out more to do it.
If all the players agreed to play for free tomorrow, rest assured that tickets would not go to zero. Conversely, if all the players were paid $1B per year and tickets went to $100,000 per game nobody would buy them. From a macro perspective, it’s actually the other way around – ticket prices determine salaries to a certain extent.
As an additional point, a team that is selling out every single game is probably not charging enough for tickets. IOW, the Red Sox should probably be charging more than they are, however that is a short-term perspective as there are other factors at play besides the gate from an individual game or series of games. . . . .
Sorry for the long post, but this is something I’ve been wondering about and this audience seems like the one to ask.
But first, a quick hit: Did I misread something…seriously, .898 is second in OPS among AL outfielders? What?! Was EVERYONE on steroids?!?
Second, I think part of the hesitancy of a lot of mainstream talking heads (and a bias of mine, I’ll admit) to completely embrace OBP is tangentially captured here. I’m probably opening myself up to a sabermetric death blow to the groin here, but I have my doubts that if you simply put a lineup of guys with good OBP, but poor SLG, that you’d have an offensive powerhouse. And Theo doesn’t just go after those guys…part of why you gotta love Jason Bay isn’t just that he has a nice OBP, it’s that he knocks the crap out of the ball quite often and has the ability to turn a two-men on situation into a three runs on the scoreboard situation.
And there’s the stereotype of “needing RBI guys”…obviously, if you’ve got two guys that are equally likely to walk and get a hit as each other, but one is more likely for that hit to be an extra-base one, if given the choice, not even the village idiot (or say, Dayton Moore) would take the first guy. Dayton would take the second guy…right?!?
As Theo says–”If you want to talk about RBIs at all, talk about it as a percentage of opportunity”…this is EXACTLY the stat I want to see. Someone please tell me–is there an RBI-modified-by-opportunity stat? (And I know that it will be slightly problematic in that you’re then dealing with contextual things out of the batter’s control like the baserunning ability of people on base, etc…but nothing’s perfect…and RBI is so ridiculously flawed it’s just stupid). Because I think that is a stat that captures the difference between players #1 and #2 above, and the conventional wisdom of “knocking in guys is better than not knocking in guys,” but still is factored for opportunity instead of simply being a counting stat, would be something that mainstream thinkers would be pretty interested in.
Call it RBIp, for RBI productivity, call it whatever. Does that stat (and not something with other things mixed in–just a “better” RBI stat) “exist?”
love people from Boston?? You mean cocky sports fans who think they are entitled to championships???
When did Delmon Young learn how to play baseball?
Three more RBI today.
Eight in the past two games.
Thirteen RBI in his last nine outings.
Young, in his past 10 games, is 17 for 42. That’s a .405 average, with eight runs scored, two doubles, a triple, and two home runs.
Delmon Young?
When did Minnesota’s version of B.J. Upchuck turn into a baseball player?
Theo’s Jewish.
Bob Ryan, Danny “Boy” Shaughnessy and the rest of the public relations wing of Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army have been trying to axe Epstein since, oh, about 10 minutes after he was hired.
The same crowd went after Ted Williams, Bill Russell, Face Down Dee Brown, Jim Rice, Mo Vaughn, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, and David Ortiz.
It’s no secret that the Globe sports staff and much of New England proper would trade team names with Chicago’s American League entry in a heartbeat. Beantown likes ‘em white. Very white. That’s why Boston scouts and scribes once called kids named Willie Mays and Ernie Banks unsuitable for Boston.
I have no great love for Theo Epstein. I’m not even Jewish. You have to understand that racism and anti-Semitism define the Boston Globe – not to mention both sports and life in New England.
Jay @46 : Joe coined the term JoeBI (?) (RBI+?) about 3-4 months ago. See if you can find it in the archives. He basically had a plus /minus of a player’s actual RBI’s compared to what they would have been expected to produce given their opportunities.
The only thing I can say to you, Mark, is that you’re an idiot. To say that Boston likes ‘em white – very white – TODAY, is just ridiculous. And why is it that its easier to find columns by Ryan and CHB praising Theo?
I’m going to guess you were never accepted at any of the fine institutions of higher learning for which Boston is so well known.
@#47: If you’ll recall, just 10 years ago all Boston sports fans were MORE than used to losing. Most of us are just taking advantage of what we have before it’s gone – and given the teams we’ve fielded this decade, I think we have every right to do so.
Scott @ 50: Thanks, that was enjoyable reading.
Jeebus H. Christmas, why hasn’t a stat like that become more mainstream? I mean, it’s kind of a no-brainer…Joe, have you ever just written an overarching “RBI-focused” mainstream publication article? I’d love to see that as an SI cover story someday. Gawd, you could break down so many myths…I would love to see a JoeBI type thing be a stat people give more consideration to.
Here’s your slogan, free of charge: “All the fun of RBIs, now with 75% less stupidity.” Well….maybe that’s a bit harsh.
You could sell net-RBI, but I’m not sure who is supposed to be buying.
@49
Unfortunately your post reveals far more about your character than any of the people you accuse of being racist. Have you seen the governor of Massachusetts lately? Or the percentage of vote that went for Obama in Mass?
I’d say you’re just a straight up idiot.
The only thing Bob Ryan’s ever praised is free booze and beating women. Remember the former Mrs. Kidd.
And how Beantown and New England rallied behind Ryan?
Or do you need a reminder, Dan 51?
Mark,
Since you’re such an authority on Boston, I trust you know what side the Globe took during the busing crisis? I have lots of friends from Jamaica Plain and Roslindale who swear that the Globe is a Brahmin institution bent on mocking and trivializing Boston’s Irish community. If the kind of racism you’re thinking about still exists in institutional Boston, you’re far more likely to find it in the Herald than the Gobe.
Joe Morgan has more baseball knowledge in his pinky than Theo Epstein has in his entire brain. Joe PLAYED THE GAME.
@46,
Yup. Bay is the full-time outfielder with the highest season-long OPS at .926, good for 8th among all qualifiers in the league (whatever happened to corner outfielders being the best hitters?), and Drew, the 2nd-best outfielder, is in 10th place in the league.
Bay drops down to 12th in OPS+, and Drew to 24th, with Matsui, the 2nd best outfielder, 14th in the league. Man, there’s a lot of infielders in the top 24. (And catchers leading the league, of course.)
Oops. Matsui’s a DH, not an OF any more, sorry. So Cuddyer is the next outfielder after Bay in OPS+ at #16, and Swisher is the other OF before Drew at #19. And oops, Drew is #21, not #24, in the league.
Speaking of GMs, I assume Joe’s next post will be about Riccardi’s firing? And how it’s all his fault?
Great article Joe. As a Red Sox fan I can concur, it is fun being a fan…and for the reasons you mentioned, as Sox fans have an enormous amount of trust in Theo to do what it takes to win. He’s a brilliant guy with sound philosophies and I trust him all the way. I can’t imagine being a fan of a team whose GM seemingly knew less about baseball than I did!
Buc @13:
Salaries — players, front office, peanut vendors — have almost nothing to do with ticket prices. In fact, it would have absolutely nothing to do with ticket prices except for the fact that the team payroll, as well as all its other expenses, factor into the profit/loss formula.
The Red Sox have sold out every game at Fenway since I can’t remember when, despite their ticket prices. If they discovered they could sell out Fenway with an average ticket price of $150, they’d charge an average ticket price of $150 regardless of their payroll. Anyone who doesn’t understand this basic fact is kidding themselves.
Likewise, if a team can’t sell tickets, it doesn’t matter what their payroll is; they’re going to lower ticket prices until they reach an equilibrium where total ticket revenues reach their highest possible point given the number of people actually willing to come to the ballpark. Well, a sane team will, anyway. Insane teams will panic and shed payroll rather than shave a buck or three off tickets in an attempt to bring their prices down to the “I’m willing to pay that to see them play” level. (Why is it insane? Because generally, shedding payroll creates an additional disincentive to ticket buyers.)
The funny thing is, when it comes to products, nobody fails to understand this. But throw in people making $12 million a year, and all of a sudden they lose their minds…
Epstein has had a good run but he has a couple of notable, high-priced gaffes too. The difference is that the Red Sox have the payroll to absorb a bad contract if needed.
Two quick points that haven’t been mentioned about Drew and Epstein:
1. Only a team with a really upper-echelon payroll could have afforded to sign a guy a 32-year old RF at the time to a 5 yr/$70M deal.
2. Drew is an underrated player but he is also a significant injury risk too. At most he will pay 135-140 G a year for you and there is a real catch he will have an injury-plagued year where he is only on the field for 100-110 G. Pay $14M for a guy who only plays a max of 135-140 G is a luxury that only about 5-6 teams in baseball can afford.
@64
How can it be a “bad contract” and ” a luxury that only about 5-6 teams can afford?”.
Is it really a gaffe if they can absorb it? Or is your point really that Epstein made a great move? And I dare say if Ricciardi had done the Drew deal and not the Wells deal, he still might have a job.
I’ve been a Yankee fan since the Fritz Peterson, Horace Clarke days. And there is no getting around the fact that the Red Sox have been the smartest team in baseball since 2003. They have consistntly out-thought, out-planned and out-smarted the league and the Yankees at every turn. Do I like it? No. But I certainly respect it.
I’ve been a Red Sox fan for the past 40 years and it is alot of fun to be one now.
FYI if you include Posada, the Yankees have 8 players in the top 25 in woba in the American League. I think its clear that both the Yankees and Red Sox have meshed their money with brilliant baseball minds. The rest of the league really needs to wake up.
as a phillies fan, the red sox were always my september team. some of it was to spite the yankees, but mostly i liked the creepiness in field of dreams.
Anyone else excited for meaningful baseball on the final day of the season, even if it is the AL Central? Screw the NFL.
Before 04 I was one who would root for the Sawx in the AL but not any more. And no it isn’t because they won in 04.
It was because all of a sudden Sawx fans became so like yankee fans as to defy distinction. As if winning suddenly became their heritage – God I hate the yankees and yankee fans and now I guess the red sox as well.
I also do not understand why MLB allows games to be played in a park that is totally unfair to the accrual of stats in a game where stats border on worship.
However none of that prevents me from seeing that they are a smart, well run team.
I cringe when I (still) see shots at JD from Cards fans. Many of them, including LaRussa BTW, were never able to understand JD’s effective style of play.
Two months ago, Felger and Mazz was not a show.
Off to a swimming start, morons, glad they flipped my favorite radio station in Boston to give you guys 4 hours of airtime a week.
Gene “Stick” Michael said all of these things in the mid-90s when he built the last great baseball dynasty, the 4-time champion New York Yankees. Of course, he’s not with the Red Sox so the Boston-fellating networks abd scribes will talk about Theo as if he re-invented the wheel..typical, isn’t it?
Every GM makes good and bad decisions, and I have noticed people pointing out some bad ones.
At best it is an inexact science, but the point is that when you come from a logical viewpoint, you are successful more often than if you do not recognize OBP, or anything about fielding.
Granted, especially with multi-year, guaranteed contracts, a team like the Red Sox can make up for any mistakes more easily than the Royals.
I still believe that if the Royals and Red Sox switched GM’s the Royals would become respectable and that the Red Sox would fall back to the pack.
Perhaps, (just for a start) we might have Drew instead of Guillen in Right field and that alone would be worth over 100 runs over the last two years (taking into account hitting, fielding and baserunning.)
A man can dream, can’t he?
P.S. A quick check of fangraphs to verify my above number of runs also brings this to mind.
The Red Sox have won 50 more games over the last 2 years than the Royals (actually 49 with one game to go.) If you simply swapped these 2 players, with Drew helping out the Royals, and Guillen weighing down the Sox, that number goes down to 30. (With the Royals winning 10 more over 2 years and the Sox winning 10 less)
That’s one position! Close to the same amount of payroll. Just for a start.
@71 Cardinal Mike: “I also do not understand why MLB allows games to be played in a park that is totally unfair to the accrual of stats in a game where stats border on worship.”
Do you mean Coors Field, which has been a more extreme hitter’s park than Fenway every year of this decade (at least through ‘08)? Or did you mean new Comisky, which has been more extreme than Fenway eight of the last nine years? Or Texas (7 of 9)? Or Arizona (7 of 9)? Or even Kauffman Stadium (5 of 9)?
Or were you talking about one of the extreme pitcher’s parks that skews stats in the other direction? Exactly how many ballparks do you think MLB should blow up and make more stat friendly?
Mark, #49, you are a complete idiot. Thanks for giving people from Boston a bad name with your inane rant on hidden racism in Boston. Shaughnessy hates everyone, Jewish, Catholic, white, black, etc. Real classy. Go back to hiding under the Tobin Bridge, you troll.
I hate the Red Sox but it’s great to hear (or read) Theo put imbeciles in their place.
Funny thing about Drew being in the top 10 for OPS. He’s the only guy on the list who is not also in the top 10 for either OPA or SLG.
A good OBA (.391) plus a good SLG (.508) adds up to a league best OPS. There’s something to be said for a quiet consistency, I guess.
@MG, if you go to baseballreference.com and arrange the AL players, by games played, you’ll see there are just 52 in the league who have played more than your 140 games threshold. (Drew, if he plays Sunday, will be 137.) Meanwhile, you could fill out an all-star team with players who have played fewer than 140 games this year.
Joe, thanks for the great and insightful columns. I am from KC but now live in Switzerland and your thoughts on Sports and life in general are always something which brings me back to good old KC and the US. Keep up the great work. Question, my father died a frustrated Royals and Chiefs fan, having had of course no championship since ‘85. Will I likewise expire in such a dissolute state? Your wisdom on this point is appreciated. bis spaeter
You know what, It’s close, but ‘not making outs’ is not the fundamental part of the game. Scoring runs is. Driving in runs matters. If there’s a guy on third, I’d rather have a high RBI guy with lower OPB but higher batting average there or a guy making a sacrifice fly.
Reminds of an e-mail sent to Rob Neyer.
He talked about OBP, pitch counts, and Griffey running into a wall for a catch, it’s really not worth the risk of injury.
Guy responds,”You favor players who don’t hit the ball, don’t pitch the ball, and don’t go out of their way to catch the ball.”
Great article, Joe. Theo is great. Like many Sox fans it took me a while to like JD Drew and I still wish he could manage to not miss so much time with minor injuries but it’s hard not say that he’s a very good player despite that.
I hope the Royals get better management soon. As far as I’m concerned all baseball fans deserve teams with smart and competent management like the Red Sox are fortunate to have with Theo and Terry.
This is why I love Runs Scored, it takes into account base running ability, speed, and the skill of not making outs.
I am just stunned when I hear people say JD Drew sux. Another thing Theo did not mention (understandably) is that he is not so good against LHP, so you get some other player to sort of platoon with him and kill lefties (which is not hard to find) and he gets his regular rest too.
“You Moneyball types just pee your pants around people like Epstein. Pathetic.”
I do hope you’re kidding, good sir. Epstein’s philosophies get results: at least 95 wins and playoff appearances in 6 out of 7 seasons, 4 trips to the ALCS, two World Series wins.
Hello fans,
Just thought I’d drop you a note to echo my support for Theo’s comments. Plain and simple, OBP is THE best measure of offensive output. Hell, you can pretty much throw the rest out of the window, especially OPS, which is all infected with slugging and such. I am hoping this logic sweeps through the baseball community like wildfire prior to my retirement, and I look foward to Joe’s leading my candidacy for the HOF. After all, I’m a bigger offensive force than A-Rod, Jeter, Ichiro…I could keep going. OK, I will… Vlady, D-Wright, Teixeira. Now I don’t want to toot my horn too loudly, but I’m better at the plate than Joe Dimaggio was.
So thanks for acknowledging my .424 OBP this year, and screw you people who claim somebody slugging .406 shouldn’t be clogging up the easiest position on the diamond. If you don’t think I’ve gone punch in my bat you clearly didn’t see any of my 8 bombs this year. A couple went pretty damn far. And yeah, I may only be good for 65 RBIs or so a year, but RBIs are a sucker’s stat. Sure some fans want to see flash or power, but the smart ones want to see me poke a single the opposite way or draw a walk with runners on.
Also, please encourage Theo to tell every other GM this powerful message so that I can stay put for a while. I’ve played for 4 teams in 8 seasons, and I’m starting to wonder whose cap I’ll wear into the Hall when my time comes…I mean seriously, if OBP is what the offensive game’s all about, and only 54 people ALL-TIME are better than me, I am going to Cooperstown, right? Damn, I wish the Expos hadn’t moved, cause that hat was nice looking.
Keep up the good work, gentlemen. The truth will win out.
Best regards,
Nick Johnson
1b, Washington Natio–er–Florida, right?
“…RBIs are a sucker’s stat…”
Well, at least there was one worthwhile statement in that comment.
Nick Johnson, that was totally hilarious and intelligent, except it wasn’t. What a waste of time. If Epstein thought OBP absolutely defined the success of a player, then sure that would be asinine, but he didn’t but you overlooked that because then you couldn’t write your pretty lil Nick Johnson piece.
Buzz: “You despise me, don’t you?”
Joe: “If I gave you any thought I probably would.”
I, like Bullfrog #26, had no idea Theo’s granddad wrote Casablanca. I hope his dad ended the Cold War or something awesome just so he doesn’t feel like the Fredo of the family.
[...] and Abreu’s sheer presence has convinced the previously walk averse Angels of the value of not making outs, the fact is that this Angel’s offense is quite capable. Their team batting average is nearly [...]
I’m surprised no one pointed this out yet, but there is a hole to be punched in Theo’s argument. All his stats are rate stats. Even when he mentions runs, he says to look at runs on a rate basis. But counting stats do, well, count too.
A huge knock on Drew is his ability to stay healthy and, flawed as they are, RBI and home runs reflect playing time. VORP or runs created or win shares would be better, but when you’re evaluating a player you need to look at his ability to stay on the field somehow.
As a Mets fan, I would *gladly* give any of my worldly possessions to have Theo Epstein running the Mets instead of *shudder* Omar.
so, author of #86, you clever satirist you, why didn’t you explain how that high OBP led to all Nick Johnson’s injuries while you were at it?
maybe because obp IS the most important part of offense, Johnson’s career has been harmed by his inability to stay healthy rather than by any lack of power or grittiness, and because you are…….not nearly as smart or amusing as you think you are.
Jeremy Giambi, Ramiro Mendoza, trade Arroyo for Wily Mo, Matt Clement, John Halama, Jay Payton, Edgar Renteria, Alex Gonzales, Mark Loretta, Julian Tavares, Eric Hinske, Alex Cora, Julio Lugo 9Mil per year, Joel Piniero
and $17 million per year for Matsuzaka.
I think there are other managers that would look good if their owners would spend money to trade away their mistakes.
Mike said at 2:52 pm on October 4th, 2009:
“You know what, It’s close, but ‘not making outs’ is not the fundamental part of the game. Scoring runs is.”
Scoring runs IS the most important TEAM goal.
Not making outs is the most important INDIVIDUAL goal that advances that team goal.
@94 Mike: Did it occur to you that Epstein made some of his riskier moves BECAUSE he has an owner who has the finances to absorb a few mistakes? How is that a flaw? Isn’t that a wise exploitation of resources, exploring some higher-risk, higher-reward moves that most clubs couldn’t afford? You only have to hit on a couple of them (Josh Beckett’s and his blister problem, Mike Lowell coming off a terrible year, Takashi Saito’s and Billy Wagner’s arm troubles, etc.) for this to be a really smart strategy if you can afford it. The Red Sox can, and Theo knows it.
Odd that you love Gardy so much, given that he doesn’t believe in that “don’t make outs” thing at all. He’s big on “veteran presence” and “does the little things” and “clubhouse leader” and “productive outs”.
That said, it’s been a fun week!
Frankly, I’ve been trying to figure out why I care, still, about which teams win at all. It’s silly, but I still do.
Dear Mr. Johnson, You are aware the Sox *did* look into acquiring you this season?
Unfortunatly, the kids here call you ‘Mr.Glass’, so we wern’t able to seriously pursue the deal.
Good luck with The Marlins, I see you making the playoffs next year.
PS:If I had nine Nick Johnsons, circa 2006, I’d win the Series everytime.
So JD Drew finished 10th of 75 hitters with over 502 AL PA’s in OPS in 2009…BUT DOZ IT LEAD 2 PRODUCTION ZOMG SO UNCLUTCH JD DREW IS…
WPA: 0.78. To be fair, his fangraphs’ “clutch” rating is -1.21, but ummm, .914 OPS. Very good defense, albeit in a corner spot. Of the 9 guys in front, 4 are 1B’s, and one (Bay) has been a season-long butcher. Though he did get it his UZR all the way up to -12.3 after being as bad as the negative high-teens at one point. Maybe he saw his win value getting crushed via defense and started playing better.
@ 94:
Payton – bad, but we traded him away for Bradford. So really, who cares?
Loretta – A 1 year / $3.25 million dollar contract for a filler year while bridging to Pedroia is a mistake?
Halama – HALAMA? We paid him $850,000. He had been a decent innings eater. An $850k contract on a high-revenue team is a mistake that warrants a black mark?
Hinske – was brought in to be a versatile backup. His ability to play 1B and corner OF kept a roster spot open.
And one more thing for JD Drew haters:
Ichiro, $17 million, 5.1 WAR
JD Drew, $14 million, 4.6 WAR
So yeah, Drew cost $3.04 mil / win in 2009. Ichiro? $3.33 mil / win. Ichiro also had 25% more chances to add value than Drew.
Ichiro EqA/wOBA: .299/.369
Drew EqA/wOBA: .298/.389
I hate the media sometimes.
I read this and realize the Mets are about to offer arbitration and a likely $5-6mm to Jeff Francouer and it makes me sad (as a Mets fan). Omar thinks he’s a gamer.
Theo is the scary thing about the Red Sox. The principle with Moneyball is that you are making smart moves with undervalued stats while everyone else is overpaying for HRs and RBI. Now the Red Sox are playing Moneyball with money. They know the stats and have the money to keep all the good players. It’s hard not to like the Red Sox, and I guess the biggest thing for me is the fans. They were good after 04, but after winning in 07 they became like Yankee fans.
@ 103
/Sox fan
I throughly enjoy the Ellsbury fans that are still convinced he’s a superstar.
Oh yeah, now we treat Varitek like an asshole even though Lowell was 895 innings of defensive suck and a wonderful 6.9% walk rate.
Tek: 1.3 WAR
Lowell: 1.2 WAR
And in the land of bizarre, great thanks for making me look like an asshole for criticizing your acquisition:
Alex Gonzalez: 1.1 WAR (in just 159 PA)
Did ya ever think there may be something wrong with WAR? It has Coco Crisp in 3/4th of a season as more valuable then Mariano Rivera.
Mike Lowell is a slow as molasses guy who isn’t Brooks Robinson, but if you give him a bad pitch he’ll put it on the interstate. Varitek is a slow as molasses guy who couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a fucking boat….now which would you rather have?
I’m thoroughly enjoying being a Red Sox fan.
@ 105
Average MLB 3rd baseman: .265/.335/.421
Average MLB Catcher: .254/.321/.396
Overall MLB average: .262/.333/.418
Red Sox park-adjusted: .276/.347/.444
Lowell: .290/.337/.474
Varitek: .209/.313/.390
So if the average park-adjusted 3B is .279/.349/.447, Lowell’s positional OPS+ is about 103.
A catcher is about .268/.334/.421. Varitek’s positional OPS+ is a bleh 86.
So yes, Lowell is a better hitter, but his defense is horrible. Atrocious. My point wasn’t that Tek is awesome, he’s not. The point was that it’s unfair that Lowell gets a pass for his bad hip, but Varitek doesn’t get the same courtesy; he’s spent 11,316 innings in a squat. Sorry our 37 year old catcher isn’t good enough for you, fellow Red Sox fans.
“I’m surprised no one pointed this out yet, but there is a hole to be punched in Theo’s argument. All his stats are rate stats. Even when he mentions runs, he says to look at runs on a rate basis. But counting stats do, well, count too.
A huge knock on Drew is his ability to stay healthy and, flawed as they are, RBI and home runs reflect playing time. VORP or runs created or win shares would be better, but when you’re evaluating a player you need to look at his ability to stay on the field somehow.”
Unless, like Theo said, a team plans for it and signs a player like Rocco Baldelli who can be very productive for a small amount of games. Because at the end of the day – you think more macro. There are 162 games and what is the best plan to make sure each position is handled through all of them.
So counting stats do count… but not for the individual player as much as the position over the course of the season. And you know what… the highest adjusted OPS for the Sox this season comes from the LF platoon with 125. A few points better than right field. Our combined left fielders touched 315 bases and scored 115 runs.
They also hit 126 RBI’s (highest on the team by position)
There was a story about Bill Lee in the NY Post this weekend, in which Spaceman gets off a great line about J.D. Drew: “Drew can play, all you’ve got to do is put a little bit more caffeine in his coffee. ”
http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/yankees/former_bosox_hurler_still_brings_DmyjVxXDMHsgWFpjVsqfQI
I’d love it if the new Cub owner could lure a Theo clone to Chicago. Jim Hendry has done some good work with the recent big budgets, but his biggest purchase was the total Anti-Theo move: low OBP leadoff hitter Alfonso Soriano locked up for all his decline years.
I liked the fact that the Cubs finally had high OBP in 2008, and then they went after a high-OBP free agent last year. But Bradley’s personal issues made that a disaster, so now I fear that the Cubs will forget OBP and go back to getting clutchy character guys who play the game right. Ugh.
KM @109. What do you think they could put in Bill Lee’s coffee to make him shut the hell up?
Mike,
As others have noted, aside from hitting a HR–which is a very rare activity, at well less than 10% of the time–an individual doens’t generate runs by himself. All that an individual can determine is whether he makes an out. Moreover, by not making an out, one extends the inning, and eventually runners advance. If this process is repeated, crooked numbers appear on the board.
Everyone misses on some FAs/trades. Theo has recently noted that this is hard, because it’s guessing what an individual will do in the future. He hopes to get it right half of the time. He’s been exceptional at knowing when to fold them. I love Nomar, Pedro and WWJDD. However, other than Cabrera, Theo hasn’t let anyone go whom, with the benefit of hindsight, we should have kept. An easy way to get bad is to keep players too long. The jury may still be out on Lowell, but Theo has navigated this area extremely well.
Some teams don’t have payroll to play with. Others do. The Yankees and Sox have done a vastly better job of using their bullets than the Mets and Cubs. The point isn’t that Theo is next to godliness, it’s that the Sox’ strategy since Henry/Theo et al. came on board has been perfect.
There aren’t any guarantees, but it’s preferable to be rational and prudent than not. Fans can live with bad luck/random chance far more easily and happily than they can inane ignorance.
How many free agents worked out again?
What about trading Bronson for Wily Mo?
A bunch of people that leave do well, but that could just be a NL/AL difference.
I earlier said “Scoring runs IS the most important TEAM goal.”
I was wrong — the most important TEAM goal is Wins. Runs Scored (in correlation with Runs Allowed) is the biggest driver of Wins.
@76 Paul White
I believe they have already taken steps at coors – refrigerating the balls. I would not be opposed to changing extreme pitchers parks either.
But no matter how many other “wrongs” you point out doesnt change the fact that only fenway has made reasonably good hitters into HoF’ers and marginal hitters into dangerous hitters.
The monster makes popups into hits. Simple fact.
How many free agents have worked out?
Okay
- Bellhorn
- Millar
- Mueller
- Drew
- Matsuzaka (brought in as a foreign FA, so he counts)
- Saito
- some guy named David
Not to mention that it’s borderline insane to criticize someone for lack of free agents panning out. Want to know a big reason why the Red Sox lack big FA signings like the Yankees have? Because when you’re able to fill your 1B, 2B, and CF internally, 3B, LF, SS, and C through trade, and buy low on a DH and lock him in long term when he’s established, you don’t need to dip in the well very often.
So many of the players you list, Mike, are inexpensive players that didn’t perform very well. And since you were the Nick Johnson comedian, you’re pretty much 0 for this entire post. Would you rather some Bill Bavasi style “I watch the games I don’t need stats or punctuation those stupid nerds” GMing?
@114
And the biggest driver of scoring runs is not getting outs. It is all correlated.
If you get no outs, you will score runs.
“So many of the players you list, Mike, are inexpensive players that didn’t perform very well. And since you were the Nick Johnson comedian, you’re pretty much 0 for this entire post. Would you rather some Bill Bavasi style “I watch the games I don’t need stats or punctuation those stupid nerds” GMing?”
Bingo – when you have extra cash – you also have the luxury to take some small risk on high ceilings. If a couple out of every ten work out it is a success. They are short term contracts and usually short money as well.
At the end of the day, Theo said the FO’s goal was to win 95 games a year and if they did that they would make it to the playoffs. They have averaged almost exactly 95 wins and made the playoffs 6 times, with two WS and two losses in a crazy game 7 in the League Championship series.
Free Agent is just one of many ways to bring talent into the organization and almost always where you overpay for what you receive – unless you find high ceiling guys that have a chance to bounce back. (i.e. Ortiz, Wagner, Mueller, Wade Miller, Scott Williamson, Hinske, Smoltz, Penny, etc).
The ONLY legit knock on Epstein is how he’s seemingly danced around developing anyone at SS. Once again, though, when do hotshit shortstops ever hit the free agent market? They don’t. They become franchise cornerstones. Jeter, Rollins, Reyes, H-Ram, hell, even Furcal got a gigantic contract to stay. The contract on Lugo was terrible, but given the lack of quality normally on the market for SS, there’s even pseudo-justification for that clunker.
@115 Cardinal Mike: “…But no matter how many other “wrongs” you point out doesnt change the fact that only fenway has made reasonably good hitters into HoF’ers and marginal hitters into dangerous hitters…”
Sorry, but that’s just demonstrably not true. Yes, Fenway is a hitter’s park, a somewhat extreme one. But is by no means the “only” place where hitter’s performances are greatly inflated. Taking just one example, here are the career home/road OPS splits of a few current Texas Rangers:
Kinsler: .925/.730
Blalock: .874/.714
Young: .858/.739
N. Cruz: .877/.712
Andrus: .791/.620
Saltalamacchia: .748/.658
I’m not going to go through this exercise for every hitter’s park, because you get the idea. Fenway is simply NOT some super-exceptional case that the commissioner needs to abolish.
I love factual info:
Park factor rankings by year for Fenway in MLB via ESPN.com:
2009: 8th
2008: T5th
2007: 1st (got me there)
2006: 13th
2005: T12th
2004: 6th
2003: 3rd
2002: 17th
2001: 16th
And all but 2 of those seasons (01 and 03) was the HR park factor lower (aka more difficult to hit HR) at Fenway. But no, let’s just pick on Fenway, not Coors, or Chase Field, or Citizens Bank park, or U.S. Cellular, or Yankee Stadium. Fenway inflates the offense.
I’ve always been a counting stats kind of guy, myself. Counting stats tell you what the guy actually did. Percentage stats tend to tell you what he might have done had he been able to be in the lineup. They are truly wonderful if the guy is healthy and inspired but….
It doesn’t matter though. I’m older than dirt and will be dead soon. EVERYBODY will then favor percentage stats. EVERYBODY will then be equally wrong.
- Bellhorn
- Millar
- Mueller
- Drew
- Matsuzaka (brought in as a foreign FA, so he counts)
- Saito
- some guy named David
plus extra credit for a cheap signing.
Okajima.
Matsuzaka for $17 million I’d put on the other list. These aren’t all cheap guys that he took a flier on.
Renteria 8million, then pay him to play elsewhere, etc.
I’m not the Nick Johnson guy.
Mikes:
I don’t think anyone challenges the importance of production. Counting stats don’t tell you particularly useful things by themselves. 50 home runs is excellent, but what about the other 600 ABs that year? It’s a good year when a DE gets 16 sacks in a season, but should we ignore the other 950 defensive snaps?
It doesn’t take long to compare OPS and ABs. Most counting stats only provide part of the picture, or require more legwork. It’s great to know how many hits and RBI a player has, but is it really efficient to then look up how many outs he made, too, or how many ABs he had with RISP?
As far as I know, the concept of ‘clutch hitter’ has never been proven. I love Papi, but ability to reason tells me that his production doens’t change in the playoffs. His career regular season OPS is .922, in the playoffs it’s .944. That’s not ‘turning it on.’ and one could also point out that given the relatively high number of playoffs games he played during his prime, the playoff number should be higher.
Part of Matsuzaka’s value is that the posting fee doesn’t count as salary for revenue sharing purposes. But that aside, as FA pitchers go, he has to be considered a success, doesn’t he? Dice-K hasn’t been a Pavano or a Dreifort, or even a Clement.
Moreover, part of the strategy for Boston should be “we take risks, because we can afford them.” It would be great if Theo could separate the Okie-Dokies from the Gagnes everytime. He can’t, but he doens’t need to. When the Edgar Lugos of the world don’t work out, they get moved along without being albatrosses.
Wasn’t Clement good until he got hit in the face with a batted ball? I mean, he made the All-Star team his first year with the Sox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Clement
Here we go: As a member of the Boston Red Sox in the 2005 season, Clement was named as an All-Star Game selection for the first time in his big league career, replacing injured Blue Jays pitcher Roy Halladay. Clement’s record was 10-2 before the All-Star break, and he finished the season at 13-6 with a 4.57 ERA. On July 26, 2005, Clement was struck in the head by a line drive from Carl Crawford of the Devil Rays.
I mean, I’m willing to criticize any number of Theo’s moves, but Clement was working out just fine. And it’s not like his injury was a Nick-Johnson-who-could-have-predicted-this? kinda injury. It was a freak thing.
@120 Paul White
Any of those rangers HoFers?
Look there are parks that play both ways but that doesn’t really matter when analyzing Fenway – because it isn’t “just” a hitters park. It is an extreme hitters park because of the design of the place. Not due to atmosphere or temperature or humidity, which are all things that it is tough for a human to control short of moving to a different area of the world. Things which make coors and arlington hitters parks, not their size.
Fenway has an unreal short wall in both LF and RF (in case you had forgotten the pesky pole). And walls are things which were designed and could be re-designed.
In fact, every other ancient park with a short field (and there were many) that tried to compensate with really high walls has been torn down and rebuilt in a more fair manner. Except Fenway which instead has taken on some kind of historic, “we do not dare change it” feeling among short-sighted people.
As it happens I do not like the parks in Philly and Cinn and Houst, where the established rules of design were allowed to be subverted by MLB, so I do not expect MLB to come down on my side of things.
That doesn’t make me wrong, however.
@126 Cardinal Mike
But you keep just saying things with out any tangible evidence… meanwhile other posters have listed the park effects for the past decade and it clearly shows that Fenway is typically in the middle of the pack. Where is the evidence? Wait, let me guess… you see it with your own eyes and you have watched baseball since the rest of us were born.
And why are you ignoring an incredibly deep center field (420 in the triangle), the fact that the Green Monster takes away as many home runs as it gives, the fact that the wrapping a home run around the pesky pole is incredibly hard to do and the actual right field at fenway is actually 380.
The old saying is the wall giveth and the wall taketh away… couldn’t be more true. So many lasers off the top 1/3 of the wall are home runs in countless stadiums but end up holding people to singles… and yes, there are plenty of fly balls that would be caught in other parks – but it is idiotic to accept one and not the other.
Anecdotally, I’d guess the Wall killed Nomar in his first couple years with the Sox. All those line drives to left would have been out of, say, Camden Yards. I’m going to go check if that’s true.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?n1=garcino01&year=1997&t=b
Yeah, it checks out. His rookie year, he OPS’d .936 on the road and .819 at home. (To paraphrase Kent Brockman: OPS’d. It’s a word. Look it up.)
[...] he wasn’t bothered by J.D. Drew’s relatively low number of runs batted in (quotes from Joe Posnanski’s blog): “When you’re putting together a winning team, that honestly doesn’t matter. [...]
When people comment about Lugo, Renteria, other fee agent busts…are you actually trying to argue that Theo is not a good GM? Because while debate rages over whether Drew & Matsuzaka were/are good or bad signings, the Red Sox just keep winning. They freely admit to using their financial advantage just as much as any other advantage. What *smart* team wouldn’t?
I’ll say that as a Red Sox fan, especially after decades of having my heart ripped out, it has been as fun and interesting watching the front office as it has been watching the team. It’s an amazing thing to see the way John Henry translated what made him a billionaire into an organizational philosophy for a baseball team. The way they systematically rooted out any and all advantages they could find and funneled them directly into the health of the organization. The money allows for taking risks, but despite the sunk costs they have flourished with their low risk/high reward philosophy. It was a risk to hire Epstein in the first place, and a smart one. All I heard was laughter and incredulity at the hiring of a kid. Who’s laughing now?
It’s sad to see so many fans suffer through ownerships that don’t have the smarts or the finances to truly compete, especially in such historically great baseball towns. What’s worse are the ownerships who make money off subpar teams with no incentive to improve them. Henry, et al, have shown a rare ability to care about the fans, to care about winning – and to actually achieve that – all while growing their business and profitability. Someday they will move on and this era will close, but I’m appreciating the hell out of it while it lasts! Yes, it’s great being a Red Sox fan. Now, anyways.
And criticizing the GM for the moves that did not work out? That’s like criticizing someone with a .750 OBP for the outs he makes 25% of the time. I’ll take a Jeremy Giambi and a Julio Lugo every damn year along with the results we’ve gotten throughout.
[...] In a chat last week, Boston Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein explained why he wasn’t bothered by J.D. Drew’s relatively low number of runs batted in (quotes from Joe Posnanski’s blog): [...]
Last point on the park effect at Fenway – here is excerpt from an article by Clay Davenport over at Baseball Prospectus talking about the exact subject:
“Boston Red Sox and Fenway Park: Fenway’s a legend, one dominated by the Green Monster. Contrary to lore, it is actually a neutral to downright poor park for home runs, and worse if you’re left-handed, with left/right home-run Park Factors of 90 and 100. It is also one of the worst places for singles (92), as the short fields let the outfielders play shallow. But it is the best park in baseball for hitting doubles, by a mile (143; Arizona is second at 129). Surprisingly, the Red Sox don’t take particularly good advantage of their park, with Varitek the biggest beneficiary. Jacoby Ellsbury took a big hit, since singles are his whole game. All of the Angels will benefit from playing in Boston, with Kendry Morales getting a big 20-point jump; the Angels’ biggest guns—Vladi Guerrero, Torii Hunter, and Juan Rivera—will get the least advantage from Fenway”
Great post, Joe. However, while I agree that J.D. Drew is a good player (much better than many Sawx fans I meet will ever admit), his 2nd-highest OPS is a bit misleading. Nick Swisher, for example, has more WAR largely because of defense which is – as they say – half the battle. Also Jason Bay’s UZR/150 is brutal. Even in Fenway.
[...] may have been a tad influenced by this article, but I do respect Theo Epstein as a true genius of the game. He’ll have the Sox winning for [...]
Luke, you might want to check that again, Drew’s a fine defensive outfielder and his WAR is higher than Swisher’s, who’s a very good player as well. And, Joe, you might want to pay a little more attention to Drew, he’s more enjoyable to watch play baseball than you might think.
[...] by triplesalley on October 23, 2009 A tip of the hat goes to Mr. Joe Posnanski for this gem. I must be really out of the loop- this conversation happened about three weeks ago. In any [...]
before it is too late, make tek a bench coach!