The Yankees AREN'T coming, the Yankees AREN'T coming!

After listening to Red Sox fans over the past two weeks, you’d think that the Yankees had clinched the AL East. Predictions of doomsday and disaster have been pervasive since August 10, when Eric Gagne blew his first save in a Sox uniform and the Yankees finally closed the gap to a mere 5 games. None of it matters. Unlike the British, the Yankees aren’t coming. It may appear that they are, but in this case objects in the mirror are further away, not closer, than they appear.

Yes, the Yankees are a league best 27-12 (.692 winning percentage) since the All-Star break, but the Sox haven’t exactly been slouches themselves at 22-16 (.578 winning percentage). Right now, the Red Sox hold a 5 game lead with 37 games to play. Even if the Yankees play at the same .692 winning percentage over the rest of the season and the Red Sox play at the same .578 winning percentage, the Red Sox will finish with 96.38 wins and the Yankees with 95.6. Round those numbers and you get a virtual tie. If you factor Seattle’s .567 winning percentage post All-Star break into the equation, they’re on pace to win 92.7 games, so both the Red Sox and Yankees would make the playoffs via finishing in a tie and winning the division and Wild Card, a la 2005.

But there is certainly reason to believe that the Yankees won’t hold up their end of the bargain. Since the All-Star Break, the Yankees, until recently, have played a crème-puff schedule. Even including their recent series against Cleveland, Detroit, and Los Angeles of Anaheim, the Yankees opponents’ combined winning percentage is a mere .490. If you weight the winning percentages to account for more games played against certain teams (for example, they’ve played Tampa and Kansas City 8 and 7 time respectively and Cleveland only 3, so weighting them adjusts for actual times playing a team, not just summing wins and losses and dividing), that same opponents’ winning percentage drops to .468. During the same time period, the Red Sox have played many of the same opponents, but the numbers of times they’ve played those opponents have differed. The Yankees played Kansas City seven times and Los Angeles of Anaheim once, while the Red Sox played Kansas City three times and Los Angeles of Anaheim seven. The Red Sox’ opponents’ winning percentage was .494 and .490 weighted. Over the course of a season, the difference in the number of wins between the Red Sox’ opponents and Yankees’ opponents is three wins, so in essence the Yankees have played only 1.5 games better than the Red Sox since the break, not the 4.5 games that the standings would indicate.

Additionally, the Yankees’ schedule moving forward is going to be harder than the Red Sox’ schedule. Both teams have 37 games left to play, including six head-to-head battles. The Yankees’ opponents’ normal winning percentage is .513 and .503 weighted. The Red Sox’ opponents’ normal winning percentage is .479 and .472 weighted. Over the course of a season, Yankee opponents would win 5 games more than Red Sox opponents. Think about that: the Yankees’ schedule is 5 games more difficult than the Sox’, as wide as the current gap between the Red Sox and Yankees. This means that in order to tie the Red Sox, the Yankees will have to play the equivalent of ten games better over the remaining 37 due to their schedule. Do you STILL think they Yankees are coming?

Taking the idea even further, the Yankees have scored an absurd 271 runs since the All Star Break for an average of 7.13 runs per game; wow! Looking at their schedule, it might not be a stretch to say that the Yankees, although they have a terrific offense, might be benefiting from poor pitching. Also, their pitching staff has given up 4.84 runs per game in the same time, against the same bad teams. Granted, bad teams are more often characterized by bad pitching than bad hitting (see Tampa Bay), but in general they are poor in all areas, not just pitching. This would mean that the 4.84 runs per game the Yankees have been allowing might be even higher against better teams while their runs scored might be lower. Coincidently, the Sox have been averaging 5.31 runs scored per game and 4.05 runs allowed per game since the break.

If it’s not already apparent that the Yankees will regress over the final 37 games, here’s another piece of information that Red Sox fans can use to silence those Yankee fans in their lives. This information will likely satisfy even those fans or writers who despise statistics and who would prefer to rely on history. Since 1996, as Yankees fans will surely boast, the Red Sox have not finished ahead of the Yankees. In that eleven year span, the Yankees have averaged a 98-64 record compared to the Red Sox’ 89-73. On August 21, the Yankees have averaged a six game lead over the Sox. By the time the season has ended, the Yankees have averaged a nine game lead over the Sox, meaning they expand their lead by an average of three games from August 21 until the end of the season. Three games hardly seems like the late-August and September swoon that the Red Sox are famous for. Even if history repeats itself, the Yankees will finish two games back.

Yankees fans tend to like to rely on history. When my friends and I were at Yankee Stadium in late May watching the Yankees beat the Sox to narrow the Sox’ lead to nine games Yankee fans didn’t want to hear about 2004 or the nine game hole they were in. They only wanted to fall back on the 26 rings their team had won up through 2001 and how the Red Sox hadn’t won a division title since 1995.

Sox fans, get ready to tell your Yankee-loving friends where to stick those rings, ‘cause unlike the British, the Yankees aren’t coming.

The Sox Pitching Staff - Best in the AL (by far)

THE BOTTOM LINE: The Red Sox have the best pitching staff in the AL by far. Based on a formula I’ve developed, the Sox have a 75% chance of making the playoffs from the pitching side of the equation, highest in the AL.

The popular thought in baseball in recent years has been that offense can carry a team through the regular season, but that pitching wins in October. While the actual verity of this thought is debatable (Baseball Prospectus found that only a pitching staff’s strikeout rate, the closers’ wins added (WXRL), and the defense’s quality (FRAA or Fielding Runs added) correlate directly with postseason glory), having very good pitching certainly can hide many flaws that an otherwise good team might have.

Three stats that can summarize the quality of a team’s pitching are VORP, WXRL, and SNLVAR (all of which come from Baseball Prospectus). Allow me to explain in brief what each of these stats means. Bear with me; this will be useful in discussing the 2007 AL pennant race.

VORP (value over replacement player) measures the number of runs a team’s pitching staff (or pitchers individually) prevents beyond replacement level, or basically a staff made up of AAA pitchers. It measures the overall quality of the pitching staff. The higher the VORP, measured in runs, the better the staff. 10 runs is equal to a win, and a team with a combined offensive and defensive VORP of zero would win 48 games in a season. The highest team VORP in the Wild Card era (1995-present) was accumulated by the 1999 Boston Red Sox (361.4 VORP), who helped by one of the greatest pitching performances in baseball history turned in by Pedro Martinez (102.3 all by himself).

WXRL (expected wins added beyond replacement level) is a measure of how many wins a staff adds beyond that of a AAA staff as measured by change in win expectancy, adjusted for the quality of the opposing lineup. It’s a measure of the effectiveness of a team’s bullpen. Win expectancy is a concept that measures a team’s chances of winning a game based on a change in out, base runner situation, inning, and score. For example, based on 2006 play-by-play data, the home team batting in the bottom of the 8^th inning with runners on first and second with one out trailing by 1 run had a .43 (or 43%) chance of winning the game. If the opposing pitcher records an out, so now that the home team is batting in the bottom of the 8^th inning with runners on first and second with two outs trailing by 1 run, the team has only a .3 (30%) chance of winning the game. The pitcher who records the out is credited with the difference, .13 (.43-.3) between the probability of victory. He has effectively reduced the opposing team’s chance of winning the game by 13%. Outs recorded with large differences in the score or early in games have less value than those late in close games under this system. Over the course of the season, WXRL is added and subtracted until a total is reached; the higher the total is the better the team’s bullpen is. The highest total since 1995 was the 2003 LA Dodgers with 21.78, anchored by a historic season by Eric Gagne (9.23 WXRL).

SNLVAR (support neutral lineup adjusted value above replacement) measures the number of wins added by a starting pitcher above a AAA pitcher after making all pitchers have the same run support and face the same quality of opponent. It measures the quality of a team’s starting pitching staff. It places all pitchers on a level playing field, and is measured in wins. The highest SNLVAR since 1995 as a team was recorded by the 1997 Atlanta Braves (33.6), anchored by future Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz.

Now that the explanation is all out of the way, if I haven’t lost you yet, we can look at the data since 1995. Since 1995, teams who rank in the top five in VORP, WXRL, or SNLVAR reach the playoffs 66% of the time. Teams ranking in the top three in the same categories reach the playoffs 74% of the time. A look at the data for the top 5 spots:

Season Rank	% VORP Top 5 Playoffs	% WXRL Top 5 Playoffs	% SNLVAR Top 5 Playoffs
1	83.33%	83.33%	91.67%
2	75%	75%	66.67%
3	66.67%	66.67%	58.33%
4	50%	33.33%	58.33%
5	66.67%	75%	50%
Total	68.33%	66.67%	65%

Being anywhere in the top 5 of any of these pitching categories gives a team a strong chance of making the playoffs.

How does this relate to the 2007 AL playoff race? We can make a formula that weighs a team’s pitching playoff chances by factoring in their rank in all three categories and the playoff chances in those categories. The data I’m using here is the same as above. The formula that I’m going to use is as follows:

[VORP Rank x Playoff Chance % + WXRL Rank x Playoff Chance % + SNLVAR Rank x Playoff Chance %]/3= Pitching Playoff Score

Note: There are certainly flaws in this system, such as a team ranking 20^th having a better chance of making the playoffs than a team ranking 17^th. This would probably be fixed using more years of data, but the general guiding principle is still worthwhile.

Ranking only the AL contenders, we get the following chart:

Team	Score	% Chance
BOS	224.99	74.99666667
MIN	133.33	44.44333333
ANA	124.99	41.66333333
SEA	83.33	27.77666667
CLE	74.99	24.99666667
DET	16.66	5.553333333
NYA	8.33	2.776666667

The list really isn’t all that surprising. Let’s analyze each staff, focusing on the starters, setup man, and closer to see how they look going forward towards October.

Boston - Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Curt Schilling, Tim Wakefield, Jon Lester, Hideki Okajima, Jonathan Papelbon

The Sox boast the league’s best pitching staff and are statistically second only to San Diego in all of baseball. The rotation is strong, especially the front end, where they have two young aces and one aging ace with a great playoff track record. Although Okajima has never pitched this much in his career, he’s unlikely to be burned out before October due to suitable replacements in Eric Gagne, Manny Delcarmen, Mike Timlin, and potentially Clay Buchholz. Papelbon has pitched far fewer innings this year than last and is healthy; he’s been lights out for most of the season.

Minnesota – Johan Santana, Boof Bonser, Carlos Silva, Scott Baker, Matt Garza, Pat Neshek/Matt Guerrier, Joe Nathan

Minnesota’s staff has been carried by Johan Santana and the back end of the bullpen, Nathan, Neshek, and Guerrier. Otherwise, they haven’t been spectacular individually, only as a unit. Not having Francisco Liraino really has hurt them this year. At 6.5 games behind, Liriano’s presence could have cut that deficit much lower, perhaps even to the point that they’d have been buyers and not sellers at the trading deadline.

Los Angeles of Anaheim – John Lackey, Kelvim Escobar, Jered Weaver, Joe Saunders, Ervin Santana, Scot Shields, Francisco Rodriguez

Lackey and Escobar have been two of the top pitchers in the league this season and offer no real reason to doubt them going forward. Weaver’s been inconsistent because of injuries, but overall has been an above average third starter. Ervin Santana, whom the Angels refused to trade in a deal for Miguel Tejada only a year ago, was so bad that he was demoted to AAA for a few starts. Saunders’ performance as a fifth starter has given the Angels no reason to worry, and Shields and K-Rod have been as good as ever. This would definitely be a scary pitching staff to face in October.

Seattle – Felix Hernandez, Jarrod Washburn, Miguel Batista, Jeff Weaver, Horatio Ramirez, George Sherrill, JJ Putz

Hernandez has shown the same flashes of greatness this season while also being inconsistent and injured. The starting staff, with the exception of Ramirez, has pitched well since the beginning of July. Sherrill has been scary to watch as a Red Sox fan, and Putz has been dominant.

Cleveland – CC Sabathia, Fausto Carmona, Paul Byrd, Jake Westbrook, Cliff Lee, Rafael Betancourt, Joe Borowski

Sabathia, Carmona, and Byrd make for a formidable front three, especially in a short playoff series. Lee has been awful this year, earning himself a demotion to the minors. While Betancourt has been outstanding (along with Rafael Perez), the rest of the bullpen is a clear weakness and could be a fatal flaw come October.

Detroit – Justin Verlander, Jeremy Bonderman, Nate Robertson, Kenny Rogers, Andrew Miller/Chad Durbin, Fernando Rodney/Joel Zumaya, Todd Jones

Although injury riddled, Detroit has been pretty bad in the pitching department since the All Star break. Their team ERA of 5.57 is second worst in all of baseball during that span. Obviously, this is a talented staff and should turn things around. If healthy, they’d be tough to beat in a short series, as the A’s and Yankees can attest.

New York – Chien-Ming Wang, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Mike Mussina, Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, Mariano Rivera

Let’s get this out of the way: a Chamberlain and Rivera combo at the end of games is a scary thought for Red Sox fans everywhere. Also, most of this staff is playoff tested, so their experience is a positive for them. However, 3/5 of the rotation is older than 35, and Hughes, tremendously talented, has pitched only a handful of games. Their post-All Star break ERA: 4.56, 19^th in baseball. Let’s not kid ourselves: the Yankees could win with pitching if it gets hot, but are winning with offense. No team in recent memory has slugged their way to a championship.

Keep in mind that pitching is only part of the equation when evaluating a team. Plenty of teams with great pitching but poor offenses have failed to reach the postseason.

Next time, I’ll look into how the offenses rate and how the bats might determine who's playing in October and who's golfing.

Big Papi's Big Problems?

If the game is on the line and you’re a typical Red Sox fan, who do you want coming to the plate? David Ortiz. (Or if you’re a typical Yankee fan who don’t you want coming up?) What about this season? Do you still feel that way?

When most Red Sox fans think of David Ortiz, they think of home runs, a big smile, and clutch, game-winning at-bats. In the past, such a description of Ortiz was very accurate, but 2007 has been a strange season for Ortiz. He’s hit only 19 home runs after blasting a franchise record 54 last year, he’s seen his smile disappear at times because of a knee injury that might require surgery after the season and a sore shoulder he hurt flopping into second base, and he’s failed in those clutch situations that he seemed to be thrive on in the past.

Ortiz’s total production, as measured by VORP, hasn’t fallen too much. Since the season isn’t over yet, it’s more useful to compare his VORP rate (VORPr) because it’s easier to compare rate of production than to look at 75% of this season versus 100% of last season and try to compare those totals. Last season, Ortiz produced .494 runs per game, good for 7^th in all of baseball. This year, he’s dropped off only slightly to .486 runs per game, 10^th in all of baseball. That’s only a difference of 2 runs over the course of an entire season, so for all the fuss about Oritz’ production being doing significantly, it’s really not.

The reason Ortiz’ production hasn’t plummeted is that despite a drop in his 2006 SLG from .636 (4^th overall) to 2007’s .560 (14^th overall), his 2006 OBP of .413 (15^th overall) has climbed all the way to .431 (3^rd overall) in 2007. Fans are obsessed with power, and slugging percentage is indicative of power, so fans cringe when they see a drop in SLG. Fans should realize that OBP is more important than SLG; studies, beginning with Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, have repeatedly proven that 1 point in OBP is worth 3 points in SLG. Because on base percentage is more important to scoring runs than slugging percentage, Ortiz has nearly managed to balance his drop in SLG with an increase in OBP. While home runs are sexy, Ortiz has still been helping the team despite not hitting as many as he has in the past. This is probably due in large part to his nagging injuries that may be causing some of the balls he’s hit to travel to the warning track instead of over the wall. Regardless, Ortiz has been productive and fans shouldn’t worry so much about his home run totals and slugging percentage being down.

In today’s Boston Globe, Gordon Edes wrote about Big Papi's struggles in clutch situations this season.

The idea of clutch has long been dismissed in sabermetric circles. The general argument is that numbers in the clutch are skewed either positively or negatively because of a small sample size. When the number of at bats is so low, generally around 30 or so for a season, a difference of three hits in clutch situations leads to a difference of .100 in AVG. While a number of players seem to always come through, it’s generally more perception than reality. Baseball Prospectus did a study on clutch hitting in their Baseball Between the Numbers and found that if anybody is clutch, it’s generally solid contact hitters who have high averages for their careers in all situations, like Mark Grace, formerly of the Chicago Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks. In general, clutch stats will regress towards overall career totals over time. Theo Epstein echoed this sentiment recently when asked about the Sox failure to hit with runners in scoring position; his response was something along the lines of saying that over time, the team would hit in such situations and things would even out.

(Personally, I agree with sabermetricians that clutch stats are overrated because of the small sample size. Mathematically, there’s really no way around that fact. However, I do think that there is an indefinable clutchness surrounding some players. It probably isn’t quantifiable, which is disappointing, but perhaps the aura surrounding a player like Ortiz is enough to shift the balance of power in his favor? Maybe fear inspired by some players actually boosts their performance or hinders that of their opponents? I’m not sure, but it’s a thought.)

In 2007, Ortiz is hitting a mere .154 with an OPS of .385 in 26 at bats in which the Red Sox have been trailing in a game in the 7^th inning or later with at least one man on base when Ortiz came to the plate. He has no home runs and just 2 RBI. In his 4 and a half years with the Red Sox, he has hit 8 home runs, driven in 51, and batted .275 with an OPS of .786 in such situations. This year’s numbers should come as no surprise. Anyone who’s watched the Sox this year has probably seen a situation in which Ortiz has failed to deliver the game tying or game winning hit when everybody expected him to do so. However, over the course of his career, the numbers dictate that this year’s clutch performances aren’t too far from his Sox career norms. Fans were spoiled by last season’s ridiculous 4 home run, 18 RBI, 1.000 OPS performance in such situations. If Ortiz was matching his career averages in clutch situations right now, fans would still be disappointed if viewed in the context of last year’s performance. Additionally, the perception of Ortiz as clutch has probably developed because his biggest hits have come on the biggest stage, the playoffs.

What does all of this mean?

1) Sox fans should stop worrying about Ortiz’ production. He’s producing, he’ll be fine, and the offense will be fine.

2) Ortiz’ injuries are probably sapping his power, but see #1. Next season, the power will likely be back.

3) Clutch statistics are overrated, so take them with a grain of salt. Maybe perception is greater than reality in this case. Don’t worry about his low production in the clutch right now because it’ll even out.

Questions? Comments? Does anybody have a unique view on the clutch?

The Eric Gagne Trade: Great job, Theo.

Eric Gagne makes the Red Sox a much better team than they had been before the trade. The Gagne trade won’t really add too many additional wins to the team over the course of the regular season, but it will make them a very difficult team to beat come October. This was a move made with the playoffs in mind, much like the Dave Roberts deal in 2004.

Theo Epstein deserves a lot of credit for somehow managing to pull off trading Kason Gabbard (a career 5^th starter), David Murphy (a career 4^th outfielder), and Engel Beltre (17 years old) for one of the most coveted assets on the marker at the trading deadline. Say what you want about Theo and his free agent signings; he knows how to make trades.

I’m still at a loss to explain how Texas only managed to get the Sox’ package and nothing better. (Note: Not only did he get Gagne, but he got probably two picks in the first two rounds of next year’s draft from the team that will sign Gagne this off-season under the CBA compensation rules. The biggest strength of the Epstein regime has to be his drafting. See Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz, Justin Masterson, et al., and he put himself in a position to make more quality choices next June.) It’s possible that Texas had to accept less from the Sox due to the money they had to pay Gagne to get him to wave his no trade clause. The overall cost in prospects and dollars could be viewed as equaling the overall cost of the Yankees giving up Joba Chamberlain or Phil Hughes, whom Texas allegedly wanted.

The trade is even more interesting and appealing to Sox fans because it’s pretty evident that the Yankees’ needed bullpen help much more than the Sox, but actually dumped Scott Proctor rather than adding a reliever. Granted, Joba Chamberlain should be up and in the Mariano Rivera/ Jonathan Papelbon setup role within a week or so, but he’s still going to be a rookie performing in the heat of a playoff race, so a great performance isn’t guaranteed, though I wouldn’t bet against it. Detroit also had interest in Gagne; it was widely predicted that they’d acquire Gagne and essentially book their ticket to the World Series. Their interest probably faded due to the high asking price and also the impending returns of Joel Zumaya and Fernando Rodney.

One of my readers asked me to run Gagne through my trade machine to see how much he’d improve the Red Sox. I ran him through before yesterday’s outing, so basically using his Texas statistics.

The Trade: Red Sox trade David Murphy, Kason Gabbard, and Engel Beltre to Texas for Eric Gagne. Curt Schilling replaces Gabbard in the rotation; Gagne replaces Kyle Snyder or Javier Lopez in the bullpen.

In his last full season, 2004 with Los Angeles, Gagne pitched 26 times from August 1 through the end of the season. Even though he was a closer then and closers are more likely to pitch in pennant races than non-closers, the Sox, who have no obligations to Gagne after the season, will probably rely more heavily on him than Jonathan Papelbon because they have Papelbon under control for at least 3 or 4 more years. Projecting 26 appearances out of Gagne using the method that I had described in previous posts, he should have a VORP of 8 over the rest of the season. By itself, 8 VORP isn’t even a win, but remember the trickle down effect.

Gagne should be 7 run improvement over Javier Lopez or a 6 run improvement over Kyle Snyder. The improvement in the trade comes from Schilling (projected 17 VORP remaining) replacing Gabbard (projected 4.5 VORP remaining). This move would have happened anyways, but Schilling’s return allowed the Sox to deal from a position of strength and complete the trade for Gagne using Gabbard, so the two are not completely unrelated.

By combining the additions of Gagne and Schilling with the departures of Snyder/Lopez and Gabbard, the Sox should gain about 20 VORP over the remainder of the season, or about 2 additional wins. While they might not really need the two wins to win the division, it adds a nice insurance policy.