One If By Land

Closing up shop

2010-03-05T19:10:00.005-05:00

This blog will go dark for good effective immediately: I have accepted a job covering the Red Sox for the Providence Journal and will start March 15.

Thanks to those of you who ever made a visit or left a comment or voted in a poll. Thanks in particular to those who have been regular readers over the last 18 months or so. It's been a blast -- and I hope you'll keep reading once I get started at the Journal. Everything I've been doing here independently, I'm going to try to carry over in my new job.

I'll have a new email address once I get started. In the meantime, you can always get in touch with me with criticism, praise or just to talk Red Sox at brianrmacpherson@gmail.com.
Thanks. See you soon.

(By request: My new blog will be here.)

A big year for Junichi Tazawa

2010-03-03T20:25:00.004-05:00

Junichi Tazawa, who pitched a scoreless inning today in his first spring training appearance, almost certainly is destined for Triple-A Pawtucket when the Red Sox head north. Tazawa got his first taste of the major leagues last season, compiling a 7.46 ERA in six appearances and, most memorably, surrendering a walk-off home run to Alex Rodriguez in the 14th inning of an epic game in early August.

Everything that happened last season was about gaining experience -- and every pitch thrown in the major leagues was a bonus.

"I don't know if I would have sat here and said, 'We'll see him pitching in the big leagues,'" Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "Helping our ballclub, that was a lot to ask last year."

Here's the only problem: Tazawa isn't 20 years old. He's not 21, either. He turned 23 midway through last season, and that's the age at which many young pitchers start to blossom. There were 25 players who threw at least as many major-league innings as he did at the age of 22 or younger. Eight of those pitchers, including emerging stars Brett Anderson, Tommy Hanson, Derek Holland and Rick Porcello, threw more than 100 major-league innings.

Other names on the list include Neftali Feliz, Brian Matusz, Jon Niese and Chris Tillman, all pitchers expected to make a significant impact on their respective teams this season at the age of 22 or 23. Heck, Tazawa is three months older than Michael Bowden, the longtime prospect on whom it seems many are ready to give up.

Tazawa will turn 24 in mid-June, and that means the clock is starting to tick a little bit. Prospects who haven't made an impact in the major leagues by the time they're 25 tend not to be considered prospects anymore. Josh Beckett was 23 when he struck out 150 hitters for the first time. Jon Lester was 23 when he won a World Series clincher. John Lackey was, too.

Tazawa, of course, doesn't have the same type of ceiling as Beckett, Lackey or Lester. But even if you look at him as a back-of-the-rotation swingman in the mold of Justin Masterson, well, Masterson was pitching key innings in the postseason at 23 and taking the place of Tim Wakefield in the starting rotation at 24.

The righty remains an intriguing possibility for the Red Sox either as a starter or a reliever. He'll open the season at Triple-A Pawtucket and will have a chance to keep piling up innings and to keep working on his pitches. He'll certainly be in the mix should the Red Sox run into any depth issues with their pitching staff -- but it'll take either a significant injury or a significant step forward in his development for him to make a significant impact at the major-league level.

Like Bowden, if he's going to deliver on his big promise, his window isn't going to stay open forever.

Casey Fien will be in the mix

2010-03-02T11:50:00.004-05:00

(Or, you know, not: Fien was claimed by the Toronto Blue Jays three days after the Red Sox claimed him.)

When the Red Sox claimed righty Casey Fien off waivers on Monday and added him to their 40-man roster, the first number that seemed to jump out was the 7.94 ERA he compiled in his first stint in the major leagues -- an ERA compiled in just 11 1/3 innings of work.

The rest of his numbers look terrific.

Fien made nine appearances with the Detroit Tigers last season, including three outings in mop-up duty in which he gave up at least two earned runs. He struck out nine and walked six. He didn't pitch much at all in high-leverage situations.

Still, though: He only pitched 11 1/3 innings. There's no way to make any type of decision on a player based on 11 1/3 innings.

(The same goes for Michael Bowden, the former top prospect who seems thrown by the wayside because he had a bad relief appearance in New York and a bad start against Toronto three days later. If he was a prospect before last season, a handful of rough outings in less-than-ideal situations doesn't change anything.)

Check out Fien's minor-league numbers:

Single-A (103 1/3 IP): 2.95 ERA, 1.080 WHIP, 6.33 K/BB ratio
Double-A (45 2/3 IP): 2.96 ERA, 1.095 WHIP, 3.5 K/BB ratio
Triple-A (73 IP): 3.21 ERA, 1.151 WHIP, 4.37 K/BB ratio

Any guesses how many Red Sox relievers had a K/BB ratio of better than 3.5 last season? Good guess: None of them.

For the sake of comparison, in the final full season Daniel Bard pitched in the minor leagues, he compiled a K/BB ratio of 3.57 in almost 80 innings split between Single-A and Double-A. That's well under the 4.40 ratio Fien compiled in almost a full season at Triple-A Toledo last season.

The righty has impressed everywhere he's pitched. He looked particularly good last season against righthanded pitching, naturally, limiting opposing hitters to a .212 batting average and compiling a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 9.2.

Baseball America did not rank Fien among its top 10 prospects -- not surprising given that middle relievers don't tend to have much upside and thus not much value in the prospect universe. For the Red Sox, though, a middle reliever with command could be a tremendous asset. Fien likely will start the season at Triple-A Pawtucket but will be in the mix for a promotion and a real crack at the major leagues should a job open up in the bullpen at Fenway Park.

Kalish looks more ready than Reddick

2010-03-02T07:32:00.002-05:00

Mike Cameron, as a Red Sox fanbase prone to panic already is aware, will sit out the team's doubleheader on Wednesday against Boston College and Northeastern. Cameron tweaked his groin on Sunday and is going to take things easy for a few days.

That's the adventure that comes with counting on a 37-year-old center fielder. Good health isn't exactly a guarantee.

(This is why the Red Sox were reluctant to commit $15 million a year for four or five years to Jason Bay, who will turn 36 years old in his final season with the Mets should his $17 million option vest. That's another discussion for another time.)

This tweak might be minor, but another injury might not be so minor. There just aren't many outfielders at Cameron's age who can play every day. Only five outfielders last season played more than 140 games at the age of 35 or older:
* Cameron, age 36
* Bobby Abreu, age 35
* Johnny Damon, age 35
* Jermaine Dye, age 35
* Ichiro Suzuki, age 35
* Randy Winn, age 35

Dye is still looking for a job. Damon had to wait until after Valentine's Day to land a job of his own. Winn will be a part-time outfielder with the Yankees. Older outfielders, especially in an era without the fountains of youth the previous era enjoyed, aren't particularly reliable.

Should Cameron go down, the Red Sox have a capable backup in Jeremy Hermida, a corner outfielder who would push Jacoby Ellsbury back to center field. But the Red Sox all of a sudden would be very thin in the outfield, and it might become necessary to call upon almost-ready-for-prime-time prospects Ryan Kalish and/or Josh Reddick, who both will start the season at Triple-A Pawtucket.

How might they fare?

There are ways to project their performance. One such measure is called "Major League Equivalents," a device invented by Bill James in the mid-1980s that can approximate, to a certain degree, what a player might do in the major leagues.

Here's that approximation for Kalish and Reddick:

(MLEs calculated by MinorLeagueSplits.com.)

Ryan Kalish
Single-A (127 plate appearances): .306/.435/.514
Double-A (419 plate appearances): .263/.336/.772
MLE: .216/.270/.337

Josh Reddick
Double-A (274 plate appearances): .273/.349/.522
Triple-A (77 plate appearances): .127/.190/.183
MLE: .111/.165/.167

Keep in mind that the MLEs don't factor in year-to-year improvement. In other words, while Reddick might have been expected to OPS under .400 if he'd played last season in the major leagues, he wouldn't be expected to do so if he plays this season in the major leagues. Consider the final MLE of Dustin Pedroia before he made the leap to the major leagues:

2006 in Triple-A: .294/.385/.454
2006 MLE: .243/.317/.355
2007 in majors: .317/.380/.442

Pedroia came far closer to his actual Triple-A numbers from the previous season than to his major-league equivalent -- in large part because he'd had almost 493 extra plate appearances at Triple-A Pawtucket and almost 100 more in the major leagues to hone his swing.

But the above numbers still do tell you something. What's most interesting is that Kalish -- who hasn't yet played a game at Triple-A -- had better major-league equivalent numbers than Reddick. His advanced plate discipline has quite a bit to do with that. Reddick walked just 35 times in almost 350 plate appearances while Kalish walked 67 times in under 550 plate appearances.

Reddick got a handful of at-bats at Pawtucket last season as well as in the major leagues. He's on the 40-man roster, too. Kalish hasn't yet climbed that rung of the ladder. Should one or both be needed, though, the above MLE numbers indicate that Kalish might be closer to ready than Reddick is.

Waiting for Casey Kelly

2010-02-27T08:08:00.001-05:00

Red Sox fans have heard plenty about the talents of Casey Kelly in the last year or so, and this spring has been no different. Stories already abound about the maturity and poise the 20-year-old has shown in his first major-league camp.

Fans almost certainly are wondering when they'll see Kelly make his debut at Fenway Park. With the much-ballyhooed prospect probably destined to start at Double-A Portland this spring, a September call-up this season and a major-league job sometime in 2011 doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility. Even the experts at Baseball America and SoxProspects.com have him ticketed for a mid-2011 arrival in the major leagues.

"A future frontline starter, he's ticketed for Double-A and may not need more than another year in the minors," BA's Jim Callis wrote.

Is that a fair expectation? Just for fun, let's look at the paths traveled by the five best young pitchers in the American League, the type of pitchers the Red Sox would be giddy to compare Kelly one day to:

Zack Greinke (debut at age 20)
Single-A: 16 starts
Double-A: 26 starts
Triple-A: 6 starts
Total: 48 starts, 281 innings

This includes an extra stint in the minor leagues after he'd made more than 50 major-league starts thanks to a social anxiety disorder that cost him most of the 2006 season.

Felix Hernandez (debut at age 19)
Single-A: 24 starts
Double-A: 10 starts
Triple-A: 14 starts
Total: 48 starts, 306 1/3 innings

Jon Lester (debut at age 22)
Single-A: 44 starts
Double-A: 27 starts
Triple-A: 25 starts
Total: 96 starts, 482 innings

This includes, of course, an extra season spent working his way back from cancer treatments, a season that included stops at all three levels.

CC Sabathia (debut at age 20)
Single-A: 26 starts
Double-A: 17 starts
Triple-A: 0 starts
Total: 43 starts, 214 2/3 innings

Justin Verlander (debut at age 22)
Single-A: 13 starts
Double-A: 7 starts
Triple-A: 0 starts
Total: 20 starts, 118 2/3 innings

That does not include the three season Verlander pitched in college, making 46 starts and throwing 335 2/3 innings for Old Dominion. Those three seasons skew his numbers a little bit. Had Kelly gone to Tennessee and pitched there, he'd have come out three years from now in position to move much more quickly through the minor leagues -- but it also would be three years from now.

The other four pitchers all made at least 40 minor-league starts and compiled somewhere between 200 and 400 innings in their initial ascent to the major leagues.

Here's what Kelly has under his belt:

Casey Kelly (just turned 20)
Single-A: 17 starts, 95 innings pitched
Total: 17 starts, 95 innings pitched

That's it.

Because of Kelly's indecision at the onset of his professional career, he's a little bit behind where Greinke and Lester -- both, like Kelly, drafted out of high school -- were at the same age. Greinke made five starts the same year he was drafted and 23 starts the year after that. Lester made one start the same year he was drafted and 21 starts the season after that.

Kelly, of course, played shortstop the same year he was drafted and only spent half of last season pitching rather than playing in the field.

Kelly will start this season at Double-A Portland with an eye on making between 20 and 25 starts and compiling somewhere around 125 innings pitched. He might -- might -- get a call-up in September to expose him to the major leagues, but he also might have hit his innings limit by then and find himself shut down for the season.

(It wouldn't be the first time a top pitching prospect has been shut down to preserve his health.)

He then likely would start the 2011 season at Triple-A Pawtucket and make another 15 or 20 starts, minimum, before the Red Sox started to consider him for a role on the major-league roster. Even then, he'd have to crack a rotation that still will include Lester, Clay Buchholz, John Lackey, Daisuke Matsuzaka and maybe even Josh Beckett, depending on how things shake out.

It's going to be tough to be patient with Kelly. Being patient, though, is going to be the best way to get the best out of him.

Victor or Dustin?

2010-02-26T07:03:00.003-05:00

Should the Red Sox decide to move Dustin Pedroia out of his customary No. 2 spot to make room for Marco Scutaro, they'll have to make a decision: Either Victor Martinez or Dustin Pedroia will have to hit in the No. 3 spot with the other bumping down to No. 5. Reports out of Fort Myers had Pedroia ready and willing to hit fifth, but that should be far from a foregone conclusion.

A team typically should slot its best hitter in the No. 3 spot in its batting order. Who's the best hitter the Red Sox have?

Well, actually, that's a trick question. Kevin Youkilis is the best hitter in the Red Sox lineup -- and one of the best hitters in the American League. But because Youkilis hits for more power than either Martinez or Pedroia, he's a natural fit in the No. 4 spot in the batting order.

J.D. Drew, too, ought to be a candidate to hit in the No. 3 spot. He was one of just six players in the American League last season -- Youkilis, Miguel Cabrera, Joe Mauer, Alex Rodriguez and Ben Zobrist were the others -- to compile an on-base percentage of better than .390 and a slugging percentage of better than .500. On a rate basis, he's one of the elite hitters in the American League.

But if the Red Sox didn't hit Drew in the No. 3 spot after David Ortiz was bumped down to the bottom half of the lineup -- that duty fell to Youkilis, with Bay hitting cleanup -- they're probably not going to do so this season.

(Hitting Drew in the No. 3 spot would be the best way for Theo Epstein and Terry Francona to shut up all the "Drew sucks because he hits eighth!" voices, but it's a credit to both that shutting up their detractors is not among their priorities.)

That leaves Martinez and Pedroia -- and that means it's time for a side-by-side comparison:

2009 slash lines
Martinez: .303/.381/.480 (.861 OPS)
Pedroia: .296/.371/.447 (.819 OPS)

Career slash lines
Martinez: .299/.372/.465 (.837 OPS)
Pedroia: .307/.370/.455 (.825 OPS)

Walk rate
Martinez: 11.2 percent
Pedroia: 10.4 percent

Isolated power (ISO)
Martinez: .177
Pedroia: .152

Line-drive rate
Martinez: 21 percent
Pedroia: 18 percent

What does this tell you?

Well, Martinez has better numbers than Pedroia across the board -- not by much of a margin, but, still, better numbers across the board. Martinez probably should hit in the No. 3 hole in the Red Sox lineup -- and this might mean that Pedroia still might be the best fit at No. 2, since dropping him all the way down to No. 5 might be a waste of his on-base skills.

But it's fascinating that this Red Sox team, one whose lineup has caused so much consternation, has options like this.

Red Sox bullpen, best in baseball?

2010-02-25T11:07:00.002-05:00

The Red Sox finished last season with a bullpen ERA of 3.80, second-best in the American League behind the Oakland Athletics' 3.54 and well below the American League average of 4.17. The same group returns intact this season and will be expected to put up similar numbers.

It's fair to wonder, though, if it will.

The Red Sox bullpen looked like one of the best in baseball last season mostly because its pitchers stranded 71 percent of inherited runners last season, second-best in the American League. Only the Yankees (73 percent) were better. The American League average was 66 percent.

That number might not be sustainable. While the American League average has held steady around 66 percent over the last few seasons, the Red Sox strand percentage has bounced around quite a bit:

2009: 71 percent
2008: 68 percent
2007: 77 percent
2006: 62 percent
2005: 61 percent
2004: 66 percent

The smart money has the Red Sox bullpen's strand rate regressing to the mean this season.

"When we had guys on base and guys in scoring position, we actually pitched really well last year," Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein told WEEI this morning. "That’s the type of thing that you can’t really count on year after year."

This is where Epstein's idea of "clutch pitching" comes into play. Stranding inherited runners often can be a byproduct of luck -- or, as Epstein made clear earlier this offseason, lousy defense. One reason Epstein made it a point to upgrade his defense was the fact that he couldn't realistically expect his relivers to pitch as "clutch" as they had last season.

ERA can be a bad way to evaluate relief pitchers because so many outside factors contribute. If a reliever enters a game with a runner on second and promptly gives up an RBI single, that run isn't charged to his record. If a reliever leaves a game with the bases loaded but the next pitcher strikes out the side, no runs are charged to his record.

As elite as the Red Sox bullpen seemed to be last season, its individual pitchers didn't exactly stand out in the statistical categories that have nothing to do with inherited runners:

Strikeout-to-walk ratio (min. 45 IP)
16. Jonathan Papelbon, 3.17
20. Daniel Bard, 2.86
23. Hideki Okajima, 2.52
48. Ramon Ramirez, 1.63
65. Manny Delcarmen, 1.29

(In case you're wondering, there were 67 relievers who qualified.)

Walks and hits per inning pitched
19. Jonathan Papelbon, 1.147
27. Hideki Okajima, 1.262
30. Daniel Bard, 1.277
36. Ramon Ramirez, 1.335
60. Manny Delcarmen, 1.642

Opponents' on-base plus slugging (OPS)
11. Jonathan Papelbon, .600
29. Daniel Bard, .690
34. Hideki Okajima, .704
36. Ramon Ramirez, .711
56. Manny Delcarmen, .796

Other than Papelbon -- and this is the same Papelbon, don't forget, who allowed more baserunners than usual -- the Red Sox bullpen was a middle-of-the-pack team in all three of the above categories. Manny Delcarmen and Ramon Ramirez both finished the season in the bottom half of the American League in WHIP and opponents' OPS, and not one Red Sox reliever finished in the top 10 in any of the above categories.

The revamped Red Sox defense, it seems, wasn't just about the starting pitchers. The revamped Red Sox defense might be a big help to the bullpen, too.

Lowell leaves Red Sox thin up the middle

2010-02-24T06:42:00.002-05:00

CSNNE.com's Sean McAdam reported this week that Mike Lowell likely will open the season with the Red Sox and likely will not be traded during spring training. It makes sense: With so many free agents signing for bargain-basement prices, there's no need for a team to part with prospects for a question mark like Lowell. If Russell Branyan had to settle for a $2 million deal, why would another team assume anything but a fraction of the money owed Lowell?

Should Lowell stick around, the Red Sox bench would seem to be set in stone before exhibition games even begin. Jason Varitek will be the backup catcher. Lowell will back up the two infield corners. Jeremy Hermida will back up the two outfield corners. Bill Hall will back up everywhere else.

But that leaves the Red Sox awfully thin in the middle infield. Hall was acquired as a jack-of-all-trades utility guy. Here's the problem: He last played shortstop in the major leagues four years ago, and he last saw even semi-regular playing time at second base five years ago. He's spent the last three seasons almost exclusively as a third baseman and as an outfielder.

This leaves Hall as an adequate in-game replacement for Dustin Pedroia or Marco Scutaro in the event of a fluke injury like a foul ball off the shin. At the other end of the spectrum, should either Pedroia or Scutaro suffer any sort of long-term injury, Tug Hulett or Jed Lowrie could be called up from Triple-A Pawtucket and jump into the starting lineup.

It's in the middle that things start to get hazy. What happens if Pedroia sprains an ankle and is sidelined for four games? What happens if Scutaro gets the flu and is laid up for a week?

Should either middle infielder suffer an injury that's not quite severe enough to land him on the 15-day disabled list -- and the Red Sox aren't going to deactivate Pedroia for 15 days if he's expected to be back in 10 -- Hall would have to play second base or shortstop every day for a week. He hasn't done that since 2006.

For a team banking its fortune on being able to catch the ball, being so thin at two key defensive positions seems unnecessarily precarious.

Terry Francona doesn't use long relievers

2010-02-23T10:58:00.001-05:00

Boof Bonser arrived in Fort Myers -- well, actually, he never really left Fort Myers -- with an eye on breaking into a Red Sox bullpen with space for just an arm like his. He's been a starting pitcher throughout his career but almost certainly won't be a starting pitcher with the Red Sox unless something goes terribly, terribly wrong.

His background as a starting pitcher, though, makes him a natural fit as a Justin Masterson-esque long reliever, a guy who can eat up three or four innings out of the bullpen in a lopsided game to preserve the bullpen for another day. The Red Sox even will stretch him out as a starter this spring so they'll have the option of using him for multiple innings once the season begins.

Here's the only problem: Terry Francona doesn't use long relievers.

Since his arrival in 2004, Francona has been less and less inclined to use relief pitchers for more than two innings at a time. When Brad Penny got shelled by the Cleveland Indians in late April, sent to the showers in the third inning, Francona used five relief pitchers to finish the game. Only Hunter Jones pitched more than one inning of relief, and even Jones was done after the fifth inning.

Granted, the Red Sox will tend to use long relievers less often because their pitchers tend to pitch deeper into games. A day Josh Beckett starts doesn't tend to be a day any relief pitcher needs to pitch more than one inning. But even comparing the Red Sox to the Yankees, another team that doesn't often need pitchers to do mop-up work, reveals a tendency to spread the workload out:

(For the sake of simplicity, a "long relief appearance" will be defined as a relief appearance lasting three innings or more. All statistics from Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index tool.)

2004
Average American League team: 16.5
Yankees long relief appearances: 16
Red Sox long relief appearances: 6

2005
Average American League team: 14.1
Red Sox long relief appearances: 9
Yankees long relief appearances: 9

2006
Average American League team: 15.1
Yankees long relief appearances: 13
Red Sox long relief appearances: 8

2007
Average American League team: 14.4
Yankees long relief appearances: 10
Red Sox long relief appearances: 3

2008
Yankees long relief appearances: 13
Average American League team: 11.8
Red Sox long relief appearances: 3

2009
Yankees long relief appearances: 19
Average American League team: 12.7
Red Sox long relief appearances: 5

In other words, Francona has asked a relief pitcher to go three or more innings less often in the last three years combined (11) than the average American League team did last season alone (12.7).

Even when he has a starting pitcher who doesn't eat up innings -- and Red Sox starters have failed to get out of the fifth inning at least 20 times in each of the last four seasons -- Francona has shown a tendency to use his relief pitchers in short stints rather than ask one or two guys to finish out the game.

Francona asked his relievers to get more than three outs in an appearance 162 times in 2005. That even was with a team whose starting pitchers averaged 6.2 innings per start, better than its starters have fared in any season since. A year later, that number had tumbled all the way down to 100. It hasn't been back above 125 yet.

Masterson, the quintessential long reliever, made only two relief appearances last season of three innings or longer:
* He relieved the injured Daisuke Matsuzaka in Oakland just a couple of weeks removed from spring training, pitching four full innings;
* He relieved Matsuzaka again in the starter's first game back from the disabled list, pitching three full innings.

That's it. Masterson made 25 relief appearances for the Red Sox before he was traded for Victor Martinez. Only two of those lasted three innings or more, and both of those were directly related to the health of Matsuzaka. Everything else was in short stints.

When a line drive knocked Jon Lester out of a game at Yankee Stadium in late September, Hunter Jones and Michael Bowden only pitched a combined 3 1/3 innings of relief before giving way to Manny Delcarmen and Ramon Ramirez. Bowden, don't forget, had spent the entire season as a starting pitcher -- but Francona only asked him to pitch 2 1/3 innings before he called for Delcarmen.

This isn't meant as a criticism. Francona certainly has earned the benefit of the doubt in his handling of his bullpen.

This simply is meant as a little perspective on what Bonser realistically is going to bring to the table for the Red Sox. The former Minnesota starter will have to earn a roster spot based on what he can do in one- or two-inning stints. His ability to eat up innings out of the bullpen might be a useful skill -- but it's not going to be put to much use in Boston.

Someone needs to talk to Tim Wakefield

2010-02-22T00:16:00.005-05:00

Tim Wakefield again has reiterated his unwavering belief that he would open the starting rotation in the Red Sox rotation.

“I plan to be one of the five starters," he told reporters in Fort Myers on Friday. "As long as I'm healthy during spring training and there are no setbacks, when we start the season, I think I’ll be one of the five. We talked about that. I think Tito (Francona) and Theo (Epstein) and John (Farrell) all think we’re a better team with me in the rotation. I eat up innings, I do whatever it takes to help us win, and I think we agreed on that aspect."

There are three possibilities here:
1. Tito and Theo and John really do believe the Red Sox are a better team with Wakefield in the rotation than with Clay Buchholz or Daisuke Matsuzaka.
2. Tito and Theo and John are not being honest with Wakefield.
3. Tito and Theo and John have been honest with Wakefield but Wakefield chooses to make declarations with no basis in reality.

No matter how you slice it, that's not good for the team.

First things first: The Red Sox are not a better team with Wakefield in the rotation than with Buchholz or Matsuzaka. Both Buchholz and Matsuzaka have shown flashes of top-of-the-rotation potential -- especially Buchholz, who had a 2.37 ERA and a sub-.600 OPS against during a 10-start stretch in August and September.

Matsuzaka might be maddening to watch. Matsuzaka might not have lived up to expectations. The Red Sox have him under contract for three more seasons, though, and his upside far exceeds that of Wakefield. If he's healthy -- and all indications are that he is going to be healthy -- he's going to be the No. 5 starter in the rotation.

Wakefield, meanwhile, has posted an ERA over 4.50 in three of his last four seasons and hasn't had even a decent second half since 2005. He's a perfectly serviceable pitcher for a team that needs to fill out its rotation, but he's not as good as Buchholz and not appreciably better than Matsuzaka. There's no way around it: The Red Sox rotation would not be better if he replaced either Buchholz or Matsuzaka.

The only reason for the Red Sox to keep Wakefield around, it seems, is as insurance -- but he's not talking like anyone has made that clear to him. He believes he has much claim on a spot in the rotation as Josh Beckett, John Lackey or Jon Lester. One can't help but imagine problems surfacing near Opening Day if and when the 43-year-old knuckleballer finds himself on the outs.

Epstein and Francona need to have a conversation with Wakefield -- and soon. Someone needs to tell him that he's pitching for a rotation spot right now belonging to Buchholz or Matsuzaka, and not the other way around.

(There is a slim possibility that Wakefield might be correct and that one of the five rotation spots does belong to him, be it at the expense of Buchholz or Matsuzaka. Should that be the case, well, that's another discussion entirely.)

Jed Lowrie might need more time

2010-02-19T16:03:00.001-05:00

Other than the back end of the bullpen, one could take a pretty accurate crack at what the Red Sox roster will look like on Opening Day. Jason Varitek will be the backup catcher. Mike Lowell likely will be on the disabled list or traded away. Bill Hall and Jeremy Hermida will have spots on the bench.

One of the only toss-ups is in the infield, where either Tug Hulett or Jed Lowrie likely will break camp as the utility infielder who can spell Adrian Beltre, Dustin Pedroia and Marco Scutaro once every couple of weeks apiece.

Hulett got to the plate 19 times with the Kansas City Royals last season but otherwise played most of the season at Triple-A Omaha, playing mostly second base but also a little shortstop, third base and right field. He hit .291 and OBP'ed .384 with 11 home runs and 27 doubles in just shy of 442 plate appearances.

But this doesn't have much to do with Hulett. That has to do with Lowrie and whether the Red Sox believe he could benefit more from regular playing time at Triple-A Pawtucket or whether he's ready now to take over a full-time job should something happen to Beltre, Pedroia or Scutaro.

A wrist injury limited Lowrie to a little over 175 plate appearances combined between the major leagues and minor leagues last season -- and a good chunk of those were rehab plate appearances used less for development than for strength-building. Here's how things break down for Lowrie in the upper levels of the minor leagues:

Double-A: 413 plate appearances
Triple-A: 494 plate appearances

Compare that to another doubles-hitting middle infielder who recently came up through the Red Sox system:

Double-A: 298 plate appearances
Triple-A: 733 plate appearances

In all, Dustin Pedroia played a season and a half at Triple-A Pawtucket before the Red Sox summoned him to the major leagues. He hasn't been back.

Lowrie, on the other hand, made a midseason jump to Triple-A in 2007 and then another midseason jump to the major leagues a year later, finishing with about 400 plate appearances in the process. Even then, though, he was fighting a wrist injury that wasn't resolved until his surgery at the end of April. He hasn't swung a bat without having to think about his wrist for almost two full seasons.

The guess here is that the Red Sox will have him play at least half a season at Triple-A Pawtucket to make up for lost time. He won't turn 26 years old until mid-April, but he's coming off a year in which he didn't get into any sort of rhythm. A full-time bench job this season -- and the irregular playing time that comes with it -- could stunt his development even more.

Three more months in Pawtucket might give him the at-bats he needs to be able to contribute if and when he's called upon.

Update: “You can look at this season as a rebound season, but I’m looking to have a long career. I’m not looking to just have one season,” Lowrie told reporters in Fort Myers. “Every year that I come into camp, I want to be the starting shortstop. I don’t look at it as just this year, all or nothing. I look at it as, I want to build a career. That’s why I want to make sure that I fix this and I get this right. I’m not looking at it from just a this-year standpoint.”

A logjam at the top of the order

2010-02-18T12:34:00.004-05:00

It's almost a foregone conclusion that Marco Scutaro will hit ninth in the Red Sox lineup to create a "second leadoff hitter" effect. By hitting behind Adrian Beltre and his presumably low on-base percentage, Scutaro would become something of a table-setter for Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia as they, in turn, set the table for Victor Martinez and Kevin Youkilis.

(As an aside: There are those who expect Ellsbury to steal 75 or 80 bases this season. Consider, though, how often Nick Green or Alex Gonzalez got on base in front of him last season -- and compare that to how often Scutaro will get on base in front of him this season, taking away some of his opportunities.)

The best way to score runs -- short of hitting home runs, of course -- is to get guys on base, one after the other. From Scutaro straight through until Youkilis and then even David Ortiz, the Red Sox have a chance to put men on base in rapid succession and, naturally, to drive them in. Consider the CHONE projected on-base percentages for the group:

9. Scutaro, .360
1. Ellsbury, .360
2. Pedroia, .379
3. Martinez, .366
4. Youkilis, .384
5. Ortiz, .355

A natural question arises: Why wait?

Why leave Scutaro at the bottom of the batting order? Why not hit Scutaro up near the top, where his on-base percentage will be well above average even if he regresses, and get him on base as often as possible in front of Martinez and Youkilis?

Ellsbury would still hit at the top of the order. He sees himself as a leadoff hitter. Manager Terry Francona said over and over last year that the Red Sox lineup is at its best when Ellsbury is its leadoff hitter.

But Scutaro is a natural leadoff hitter himself. He hit leadoff in all 144 of his starts with the Blue Jays last season. His ability to get on base and his ability to work counts -- he saw a career-best 4.06 pitches per plate appearance last season -- makes him a better candidate for the top of the lineup than the bottom.

The natural move would be to insert Scutaro between Ellsbury and Pedroia and bump everyone down from there, creating something of a logjam of high on-base percentages at the top. It would, as Francona would say, lengthen the lineup, make it deeper and tougher and more of a challenge for opposing pitchers.

It also would be a little bit unconventional:

Ellsbury, LF
Scutaro, SS
Pedroia, 2B
Youkilis, 1B
Martinez, C
Ortiz, DH
Cameron, CF
Drew, RF
Beltre, 3B

Martinez and Youkilis could flip-flop. There's not a huge difference between them. Youkilis does have slightly better on-base and power numbers, so it makes sense in some ways to hit him ahead of Martinez.

Drew and Ortiz could flip-flop, too, though it makes sense to get the power bat of Ortiz into the middle of the lineup where it can do the most damage if and when it catches fire. Even Drew and Beltre could flip-flop, turning Drew into yet another leadoff hitter in the No. 9 spot, though it would incite of the "J.D. Drew is overrated" camp.

Drew, for what it's worth, could fit into that No. 2 spot ahead of Pedroia just as easily as Scutaro, if not more so. Drew is projected to compile an on-base percentage of .372, a number that would look awfully good in front of Pedroia, Youkilis and Martinez.

That would leave you with this:

Ellsbury, LF
Drew, RF
Pedroia, 2B
Youkilis, 1B
Martinez, C
Ortiz, DH
Cameron, CF
Beltre, 3B
Scutaro, SS

Either way, that's an unconventional lineup.

Pedroia isn't a prototypical No. 3 hitter, though it's worth pointing out he spent a week hitting cleanup two seasons ago. He OPS'ed .819 last season -- which would be above average among No. 3 hitters in the American League (.805). He's not a home run hitter, but his doubles power would be good enough with the speed on the bases in front of him.

The Red Sox have put together a lineup with six or seven hitters who could hit in the top half of the lineup. Leaving both Drew and Scutaro in the bottom third of the order doesn't seem like the best way to score runs.

What if Bard is the one who goes?

2010-02-17T14:28:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Papelbon has made no secret during the arbitration process that he wants to get paid what he feels he is worth. Given the propensity of Theo Epstein to let his most expensive players walk -- and given the emergence of youngster Daniel Bard as an option to replace Papelbon -- many believe the Red Sox will make little effort to re-sign Papelbon and instead hand the ball to Bard after the 2011 season.

Many have speculated that the Red Sox will trade Papelbon for prospects even before he hits the open market.

Papelbon, as far as most Red Sox fans are concerned, is a lame duck closer with little chance of sticking around after he's eligible for free agency. Papelbon is going to be too expensive for his own good, or so conventional wisdom has it, and Bard has the type of young, electric arm that could make him the next elite closer in the major leagues.

What if we have it all backwards? What if Bard is the likeliest trade chip? What if Papelbon is going to get his money and is going to emerge from the bullpen to "Shipping Up To Boston" for the next 10 or 12 years?

A reporter in Fort Myers, Fla., asked Papelbon this week what he made of the perception that he was all but gone once he hit free agency.

"I think that’s the perception, that I’m going to go somewhere else, but it’s all a perception," Papelbon said. "Right now, this is the way it’s working out. It’s that simple. It’s one year at a time. It’s working out. Both sides are happy. 'Why would you try to do anything else?' is my way of thinking. Of course I’d love to be with Boston for a long term.

"But this is the way it is right now, and I’m happy going one year at a time. This is the organization I started in. This is the organization that gave me the opportunity to play major league baseball. Of course I’d love to stay here for 15 years. Right now, one year at a time is the way it’s working. I’m happy and everyone else is happy, so why not."

Bard, on the other hand, was asked about the possibility of going back to starting pitching at some point in his career. Starting pitchers, after all, tend to be more valuable than relief pitchers.

"Right now, I'm a reliever," Bard said. "The Red Sox have a lot of starting pitching. As long as I'm with the Red Sox, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a reliever."

The "As long as I'm with the Red Sox" part of that ought to raise an eyebrow. Bard is a smart guy. He knows what he can do is valuable whether it's as a starter or as a closer. He knows he's more valuable as a starter than as a reliever but isn't going to start any games in Boston. He also has no particular ties to the Red Sox and has no more reason to sign a team-friendly contract than Papelbon does.

Papelbon, despite all appearances, is a smart guy. He knows what he can do is plenty valuable, too. Over the last few seasons, among American League closers, he's in a class with Joe Nathan and Mariano Rivera and pretty much no one else. He also knows that he has a pretty good thing going for him in Boston.

Epstein, of course, is a smart guy, too. He knows what Papelbon can do. He knows what Bard can do. He knows Papelbon will hit free agency after the 2011 season. He knows Bard will start becoming eligible for salary arbitration after the 2011 season -- and while middle relievers don't make much in arbitration, Bard's salary would spike after a year or two as the closer.

Bard, in other words, might wind up just as expensive as Papelbon -- and he might be at least as willing to go elsewhere as Papelbon.

Papelbon has been one of the best relief pitchers in baseball over the past four seasons. Bard looked great in his first stint in the major leagues. Both know they're talented and that they can make a lot of money playing baseball. Assuming Papelbon is the one who's going to wind up in another uniform might be a little bit premature.

Dustin Pedroia loves the breaking ball

2010-02-17T06:46:00.002-05:00

Subtitle: A voyage through FanGraphs' Pitch Value statistics.

Every hitter has his pitches he loves. Every hitter has his pitches he loves a little less. Thanks to FanGraphs' Pitch Value numbers, we can find out a little bit about what pitches each Red Sox hitter loves or loves less.

The measure here is "Runs created per 100 pitches seen." The calculations are complicated but the idea is relatively simple: A single contributes a certain fraction of a run. A double contributes a certain fraction of a run. A strikeout costs a certain fraction of a run.

Against the fastball
1. Kevin Youkilis, 2.56 runs
2. Victor Martinez, 2.42
3. Jason Bay, 1.8
4. J.D. Drew, 1.73
5. Julio Lugo, 1.03

Against the changeup
1. David Ortiz, 1.92 runs
2. Julio Lugo, 1.39
3. Jason Bay, 1.13
4. Kevin Youkilis, 1.94
5. Jason Varitek, 0.29

(You're probably wondering why Julio Lugo looked so bad if he was so good against fastballs and changeups -- or maybe you've already guessed that he was a minus-2.56 against curveballs.)

Against the curveball
1. Dustin Pedroia, 2.56 runs
2. Alex Gonzalez, 2.44
3. Kevin Youkilis, 1.94
4. David Ortiz, 1.35
5. Jason Bay, 0.76

Against the slider
1. Jason Varitek, 2.67 runs
2. Jacoby Ellsbury, 1.56
3. Jason Bay, 1.14
4. Dustin Pedroia, 0.92
5. J.D. Drew, minus-0.03

Pedroia actually ranked ninth in the major leagues last season against breaking balls, compiling a combined 3.48 runs against curveballs and sliders. He might claim he loves the high, inside fastball, but he was most productive last season against breaking balls.

Two seasons ago, Pedroia ranked 11th against breaking balls, compiling 3.67 runs against curveballs and sliders.

According to the new Red Sox Annual, Pedroia swung and missed at just six percent of curves and sliders against righthanded pitchers -- best in the major leagues. He hit .350 against curveballs last season, including .375 against curveballs from righties.

Kevin Youkilis, on the other hand, loves pitches that come in straight and don't break. He ranked 16th in the major leagues last season with a combined 3.5 runs created against fastballs and changeups. Two seasons ago, Youkilis ranked eighth in the major leagues with a combined 4.48 against fastballs and changeups, nestled right between Albert Pujols and Chipper Jones.

His Achilles' heel over the last two seasons has been the slider. He compiled minus-1.42 runs against the slider last season.

All of this is subject to context: Bay is, by reputation, a fastball hitter who has little success against good breaking pitches. Bad breaking pitches still count on the scale -- and Bay pounds bad breaking pitches.

(Want more context? The best fastball among Red Sox pitchers last season, per 100 pitches, belonged to Tim Wakefield. It only was so effective, though, because he threw it as a complement to his mystifying knuckleball.)

Weaknesses still are weaknesses, and strengths still are strengths. If a pitcher is going to try to get Pedroia out with a breaking ball in a big spot next season, it had better be an awfully good one.

Josh Beckett's fluky home-run rate

2010-02-16T07:34:00.000-05:00

It's easy to forget now that Josh Beckett looked like a Cy Young candidate as late as mid-August last season. The hard-throwing righty had a 3.10 ERA and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.45. His win-loss record was 14-4, for those who care about that sort of thing. He'd thrown three complete games, including a three-hit shutout against Kansas City and a three-hit shutout against Atlanta.

Heck, he'd even hit a home run.

But the longball started to cause problems for him in late August, and his ERA reacted accordingly. By Sept. 2, Beckett had allowed at least two home runs in five straight starts and had seen his ERA jump to 3.87 -- and Jon Lester was the Game 1 started in the ALCS.

Home runs are one of those complicated things pitchers both can and can't control. A pitcher has a degree of control over how hard the ball gets hit, and how hard the ball gets hit has a lot to do with whether it goes over the fence. There's a little bit of luck involved, though, in whether fly balls turn into home runs or whether they end up caught at the warning track.

A look at Beckett's entire season indicates that he probably got a little bit unlucky during his rough patch in August.

(Thanks to FanGraphs' tremendous new splits tool for the data.)

Beckett saw his ground-ball rate stay pretty consistent last season, spiking at 52.2 percent in June but never falling below 46 percent down the stretch. His fly-ball rate wasn't quite so consistent, jumping from 28.3 percent in June to 38.9 percent in August. At the same time, though, his line-drive rate hit a season low in August -- and line-drive rate usually is a better indicator of pitcher success or failure than either of the other two measures.

Even as his fly-ball rate jumped, his home-run rate jumped even higher -- higher than it had in his entire Red Sox career. Check out his HR/FB rates by month last season:

Home runs out of total fly balls
April: 10.0 percent
May: 13.0
June: 3.8
July: 8.1
August: 27.3
September: 8.6

(Cue the outlier music.)

Not once in his Red Sox career has Beckett had a month even close to that bad. Not once in his Red Sox career has Beckett's HR/FB ratio even touched 20. His previous worst came in 2006 when his HR/FB numbers fluctuated between 11.1 and 19.5 percent. More often than not, his HR/FB ratio has been under 10 percent.

In other words, something looks awfully fluky about the rough August that Beckett endured last season -- and that's an encouraging sign for this season.

Cameron could benefit from Drew and Ortiz

2010-02-15T06:20:00.004-05:00

Some still insist that J.D. Drew and David Ortiz will hit back-to-back in the Red Sox lineup, probably right behind Kevin Youkilis.

From one perspective, it makes sense for them to do so. After Youkilis and Victor Martinez, Drew and Ortiz ought to be the two best hitters in the Red Sox lineup. Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron were signed more for their defense than their bats, and it makes sense that they'd hit in the bottom third of the lineup.

But if Terry Francona does what he normally tries so hard to do -- that is, split up his lefties so as to make opposing managers' jobs more difficult -- he's going to hit one of the two between Drew and Ortiz in a lineup that looks something like this:

Ellsbury, LF
Pedroia, 2B
Martinez, C
Youkilis, 1B
Ortiz, DH
Cameron, CF
Drew, RF
Beltre, 3B
Scutaro, SS

A lineup like that could really benefit Cameron in the late innings.

Look at it this way: The point of inserting a buffer between Ortiz and Drew is to prevent an opposing manager from bringing in a lefty specialist to set down both in order before giving the ball back to a righty. Francona knows that. He only hit Drew and Ortiz back-to-back seven times last season. When Ortiz hit third, Drew hit fifth. When Ortiz hit fifth, Drew hit seventh. When Ortiz hit sixth, Drew hit eighth. Either Jason Bay or Mike Lowell almost always was slotted between Drew and Ortiz in the Red Sox lineup.

When the lineup rolls around to its Ortiz-Cameron-Drew-Beltre segment, an opposing manager will have two choices:
1. Employ a lefty-righty-lefty-righty strategy, thus burning a righthanded relief pitcher just to face Cameron;
2. Use the same lefty to face both Ortiz and Drew, allowing him in the process to face Cameron and maybe even Beltre.

Therein lies the beauty. Ortiz might be neutralized by tough lefties. Drew might even be neutralized by tough lefties -- though not as much as you'd think.

Cameron, though, thrives against lefties.

Consider the center fielder's splits:

2009
vs. RHP: .244/.318/.430 (.748 OPS)
vs. LHP: .271/.420/.534 (.954 OPS)

2008
vs. RHP: .231/.309/.452 (.761 OPS)
vs. LHP: .282/.397/.555 (.951 OPS)

Career
vs. RHP: .245/.330/.435 (.765 OPS)
vs. LHP: .267/.370/.489 (.859 OPS)

Over the last two seasons, Cameron has seen his OPS jump about 200 points when he's facing lefthanded pitching. Over his entire career, he's still seen his OPS jump about 100 points when he's facing lefthanded pitching.

(Beltre has a career split that's not nearly as pronounced, but he too has OPS'ed 200 points higher against lefties than against righties in each of his last two seasons.)

Francona says over and over that he wants to do all he can to make the opposing manager's job difficult. By slotting Cameron between Drew and Ortiz, he's does one of two things:
* He makes the opposing manager burn through extra bullpen arms in the late innings; or
* He makes the opposing manager use a lefty to face a righty who treats lefties like punching bags.

Spring training stats all over the map

2010-02-13T14:19:00.000-05:00

Pitchers and catchers report on Thursday. Boston College and Northeastern visit City of Palms Park on March 3. Exhibition games begin in earnest on March 4 against Minnesota in the first bout of the annual Mayor's Cup.

Spring training statistics usually don't mean anything. A 4-for-4 performance for a no-name minor leaguer on a Tuesday afternoon in Clearwater or Port Charlotte usually doesn't mean much. Occasionally, very occasionally, a few big days in a row can be a sign of things to come -- and that's enough to make fans pore through the spring training statistics in hopes of picking up the next player on the rise before he starts rising.

Such was the case last year. At one end of the spectrum:
Jeff Bailey (45 at-bats): .356/.455/.600
Chris Carter (76 at-bats): .355/.380/.658
Nick Green (63 at-bats): .349/.414/.524

None of the three did much at the plate with the Red Sox, though Green started off hot in April and May before his impatience at the plate caught up with him.

At the other end of the spectrum:
Jason Bay (44 at-bats): .227/.364/.545
David Ortiz (40 at-bats): .250/.392/.500
Jason Varitek (51 at-bats): .216/.241/.549
Kevin Youkilis (30 at-bats): .233/.343/.333

Ortiz actually hit worse in April and May than he had in spring training. Varitek actually OBP'ed .348 in April and had hit 10 home runs by May 31 before his numbers went into a tailspin.

Youkilis, for his part, didn't see his batting average drop below .400 until April 30 and didn't see his on-base percentage drop below .500 until after a stint on the disabled list in mid-May.

And then there's:
Lars Anderson (24 at-bats): .208/.321/.208

In far too small of a sample size to make any pronouncements, Anderson nonetheless gave the first indication that he was not about to explode onto the scene as the next elite prospect. He'll be a player whose spring training numbers this season once again will be overanalyzed despite a sample size too small for any actual analysis.

Pitchers' numbers often can be more telling, especially the strikeout and walk numbers that don't depend so much on luck. Among Red Sox pitchers last spring:

Jon Lester (19 2/3 IP): 1.83 ERA, 20 K, 11 BB
Clay Buchholz (25 IP): 2.52 ERA, 19 K, 4 BB
Josh Beckett (27 2/3 IP): 3.25 ERA, 17 K, 5 BB

Buchholz stands out, just as he stood out last spring. His ERA actually was 0.46 at one point before a scuffle at the end of the spring. He then dominated the Triple-A International League until the Red Sox called him up.

On the other hand:

Tim Wakefield (15 IP): 5.40 ERA, 11 K, 8 BB
Manny Delcarmen (13 2/3 IP): 4.61 ERA, 9 K, 6 BB
Ramon Ramirez (12 1/3 IP): 4.38 ERA, 12 K, 3 BB

One could make an argument that the above three pitchers were among the most valuable on the Red Sox staff in April and May. Delcarmen didn't allow his first earned run until May 3. Ramirez didn't allow his first earned run until May 4. Wakefield almost threw a no-hitter in Oakland on April 15 and ended up earning a spot on the American League All-Star team.

All three tailed off later in the season. Their subpar numbers in spring training, though, didn't come close to forecasting pitchers who would throw darts at the start of the season.

The lesson here? There are times when excellent spring training numbers can tell a story, just as they did for Buchholz a season ago. There are times when lousy spring training numbers can be a bad omen, as they were for Anderson a year ago.

Mostly, spring training numbers don't tell much of a story at all. Established players are trying to get into a rhythm. Young players often are trying too hard to impress. Injured players aren't trying to do anything except healthy.

Still, though, it's fun to look at.

Hitting J.D. Drew against lefties

2010-02-12T11:33:00.000-05:00

When J.D. Drew sat out against tough lefties last season, Red Sox manager Terry Francona normally pointed out that he had to get at-bats for Rocco Baldelli and thus was doing so more for the benefit of Baldelli than for Drew.

We'll find out this season if he was telling the truth.

Baldelli is gone. Jeremy Hermida is the new fourth outfielder -- and Hermida is just as lefthanded as Drew is.

Francona still will have to find at-bats for Hermida. The former first-round draft pick still has enormous potential, and the Red Sox wouldn't have traded for him if they didn't think he had something to offer.

Those at-bats, though, will have to come mostly against righthanded pitchers. Hermida spelling Drew against lefties makes pretty much no sense if you look at their career splits:

Against lefties
Drew: .262/.366/.438 (.804)
Hermida: .237/.321/.376 (.697)

Against righties
Drew: .292/.407/.528 (.935)
Hermida: .274/.351/.441 (.792)

Drew, then, is going to have to hit against lefties more often than he has in his first three seasons with the Red Sox.

How will he do? Here's a look at his recent history against lefties:

2004 (167 at-bats): .287/.408/.521 (.929)
2005 (68 at-bats): .235/.416/.279 (.695)
2006 (119 at-bats): .244/.338/.378 (.716)
2007 (116 at-bats): .224/.285/.353 (.638)
2008 (94 at-bats): .284/.426/.500 (.926)
2009 (114 at-bats): .272/.381/.482 (.863)

It's hard to find any sort of consistent pattern. In some ways, the more at-bats he's had against lefties, the better -- except for 2007, a year that was miserable for him all the way around until his grand slam against Cleveland.

He has, for what it's worth, OPS'ed better than .850 against lefties in each of the last two seasons.

The above numbers do have to be taken with a grain of salt. Francona has often picked his spots to use Drew against lefties. He might not have that luxury this season.

For what it's worth, Drew is 2-for-10 (.200) with five strikeouts against CC Sabathia but 13-for-36 (.361) with 13 strikeouts against Andy Pettitte, having drawn one total walk against the Yankees' two best lefthanded pitchers.

How long would you stick with Ortiz?

2010-02-10T11:28:00.003-05:00

With spring training right around the corner -- and kudos to the Herald's Michael Silverman for the first on-the-scene story of the spring -- it's worth taking a look at what might be the question that determines the fate of the Red Sox season: Should David Ortiz endure another epic slump in April and May, how long should the Red Sox wait before pulling the plug?

The murmurs won't take long to grow in volume. You'd better believe there will be those ready to storm the streets should CC Sabathia strike him out in the first inning on Opening Day.

Ortiz, for those with short memories, didn't hit his first home run last season until May 20 and took a .188 batting average and .281 on-base percentage into play on June 6, the day on which he hit his first home run and seemed to get his feet under him for the first time. From then on, though, he hit .266 with a .360 on-base percentage and a .557 slugging percentage -- more than respectable, even for Big Papi.

Ortiz might just endure the same type of miserable slump this season as he did last season. Theo Epstein and Terry Francona then would have to make a difficult decision, especially with the potential-laden Jeremy Hermida waiting on the bench: Stick with Big Papi or cut him loose?

Odds are they'll stick with him -- and here are four reasons why:

Kent Hrbek, 1993
A beefy slugger in the Ortiz mold, Hrbek saw his numbers take their first severe downturn in 1992, his OPS falling from .834 to .765 and his home runs falling below 20 for the first time in almost 10 years. The year after that, Hrbek hit .238/.343/.446 in the first half, going into the All-Star break with a sub-.800 OPS for the first time since 1985.

In the second half, Hrbek posted a line of .246/.370/.487 -- including .295/.434/.689 in September.

Mo Vaughn, 2002
Vaughn missed the 2001 season after undergoing surgery to repair a ruptured tendon in his arm, and he got off to a lousy start after being traded to the Mets, hitting .200 with a .304 on-base percentage in the month of May. He hit for next to no power had a line of .248/.340/.399 at the All-Star break, a .739 OPS.

In the second half, Vaughn posted a line of .271/.360/.520 -- including .314/.442/.614 in September.

Carlos Delgado, 2008
Delgado hit just 24 home runs in 2007, his first season with fewer than 30 home runs and a sub-.500 slugging percentage in more than a decade. He then hit .198/.297/.323 in April and .229/.308/.476 in June, going into the All-Star break with a line of .248/.328/.455.

In the second half, Delgado posted a line of .303/.386/.606 -- including .340/.400/.649 in September.

David Ortiz, 2009
Oh, yeah, that. Some might dismiss the strong second half Ortiz enjoyed as a miracle not likely to happen again, but it's all part of the data set. The slugger went into the All-Star break wtih a line of .222/.317/.416 and had almost twice as many strikeouts (78) as walks (40).

In the second half, of course, Ortiz posted a line of .258/.350/.516, boosting his slugging percentage by 100 points. After hitting just one home run in April and May combined, he hit seven home runs apiece in June, July and August and six home runs in September.

What does it all mean? There's no good time to pull the plug on Ortiz unless he's completely and utterly overmatched at the plate. A year ago, he was OBP'ing .290 on April 30 and .284 on May 31 but still had a walk rate of better than 10 percent and still was seeing as many pitches as any player in the patient Red Sox lineup.

He's still a hitter that changes the way pitchers pitch. He's still a hitter who works counts and draws walks and keeps the line moving. He's still a hitter who forces opposing managers to use their lefty specialists.

There's almost no chance the Red Sox pick up their $12.5 million option they hold on Ortiz for 2011.

That, though, doesn't mean the Red Sox are going to give up on Ortiz midseason if he slumps again. There's too much history of sluggers breaking out of slumps in the second half for them just to cut bait and let him walk.

Wins and losses and relief pitchers

2010-02-09T15:53:00.000-05:00

We've made quite a bit of progress lately toward discounting the value of the "win" as a measuring stick for starting pitchers. Tim Lincecum won the Cy Young Award in the National League last season with just 15 wins, the lowest win total ever by a Cy Young winner in a non-strike season.

Some still make the argument that the job of a starting pitcher is to win games. A pitcher is told to take the ball and bring home a 'W,' and if he hasn't done so, he hasn't done his job. If he loses a 2-1 game, after all, the opposing pitcher did his job better than he did, sort of, except if the two runs he allowed came on errors or on inherited runs scored after he'd left the game.

(No one ever points out that the job of a catcher or a first baseman is to go out and win games, too. No one ever points out that Joe Mauer had a worse win-loss record -- 74-64 -- than Jason Varitek -- 62-47 -- or uses that information to draw any conclusions. That would be absurd, right? But that's another argument for another day.)

Relief pitchers, though, present an entirely separate problem. Relievers earn wins if their team happens to take the lead for good while they're pitching. If they give up the lead in the top half of the inning before their team takes it back in the bottom half? That's ineffective pitching, but that's also deserving of a credited "win."

Maybe this just is a pet peeve. Maybe, though, it's time to stop referencing win-loss records for relievers in the context of anything except meaningless trivia.

You see it everywhere. Here, in a story about Ramon Ramirez filing for arbitration. Here, in a story about Hideki Okajima agreeing to a one-year contract. Here, in a story about Jonathan Papelbon -- a closer, for goodness sake. The first statistic mentioned about each of the above pitchers in each of the above stories is his win-loss record -- something that's about as relevant in evaluating his performance as the name of his fourth-grade teacher.

The winningest Red Sox reliever last season was Ramirez, who finished with the exact same number of wins (seven) as Clay Buchholz and Brad Penny. Okajima wasn't far behind (six), and neither was Manny Delcarmen (five).

What does that tell you? Let's look at a handful of the wins earned by Ramirez last season:

1. On April 17 against Baltimore, Ramirez got Javier Lopez out of a jam in the sixth inning and set down the side in the seventh before running into trouble with a 10-8 lead in the top of the eighth. Cesar Izturis lined to left, but Brian Roberts and Adam Jones followed with back-to-back singles -- putting the tying run on base. Hideki Okajima then relieved Ramirez and retired Nick Markakis and Aubrey Huff to prevent the tying run from scoring.

2. On April 24 against New York, Ramirez pitched a scoreless inning -- just like Delcarmen, Lopez, Papelbon and Takashi Saito had before him. Ramirez even allowed two runners to reach before getting Melky Cabrera to ground into a double play. The difference? His happened to be the scoreless inning before Kevin Youkilis hit a walk-off home run.

3. On May 10 against Tampa Bay, Ramirez threw all of seven pitches, relieving Okajima in the eighth inning with the score tied and the bases empty and getting Ben Zobrist to ground to first. The Red Sox scored the go-ahead run in the bottom of the eighth, and Papelbon finished it out.

And so on.

Let's look at the leaderboard for wins among relievers in the American League last season:
1. Alfredo Aceves, 10 wins (3.54 ERA)
2. Craig Breslow, 8 wins (3.36 ERA)
3. Miguel Batista, 7 wins (4.04 ERA)
4. J.P. Howell, 7 wins (2.83 ERA)
5. Jason Frasor, 7 wins (2.50 ERA)
6. Jesse Crain, 7 wins (4.70 ERA)
7. Zach Miner, 7 wins (4.29 ERA)
8. Ramirez, 7 wins (2.84 ERA)

New York's Jonathan Albaladejo had five wins and a 5.24 ERA. Minnesota's Jon Rauch had five wins and a 1.72 ERA. There's even less correlation between wins and effective performance for relievers than for starters.

(ERA doesn't even tell the story as accurately as WHIP or opponents' OPS given how much inherited runners can skew the numbers. Again, though, that's an argument for another day.)

Maybe this is too harsh. Maybe it doesn't hurt anything to point out that a relief pitcher went 7-4 as long as his 2.84 ERA and 1.335 WHIP are included in the conversation.

On the other hand, saying, "He went 7-4 and had a 2.84 ERA" is just as relevant as saying, "He likes pepperoni pizza and had a 2.84 ERA." Actually, it's even less relevant: Whereas his 7-4 record has little to do with anything but outside factors, his affection for pepperoni pizza might actually affect his future performance.

(This writer, a fan of pepperoni pizza who currently is procrastinating on a trip to the gym, would know all about that.)

Though some are kicking and screaming along the way, many baseball fans and baseball writers now understand the way statistics like ERA and WHIP represent a far better measure of reliever performance than wins. The next step? Eliminating mention of reliever wins entirely.

Ellsbury could be Theo's first arbitration case

2010-02-08T13:40:00.003-05:00

Theo Epstein has never had to prepare an arbitration case. A one-year contract just shy of $10 million for Jonathan Papelbon this winter ensured Epstein's record would remain unblemished.

The next challenge for Epstein, though, is looming over the horizon. The next challenge is Jacoby Ellsbury.

Arbitration and the negotiations that usually precede it only get complicated when two sides disagree wildly on the relative value of a player.

Ellsbury is precisely the type of player with whom a panel of arbitrators might have a field day. Ellsbury is an athletic and speedy outfielder with advanced fielding metrics that make him out to be a lousy defensive outfielder. Ellsbury is the best base-stealer in the major leagues but posted an on-base percentage of just .355, fifth-best on his own team. Ellsbury has speed and gap power but hit just 37 combined doubles and triples last season, fewer than Dustin Pedroia and only one more than David Ortiz.

The thing Ellsbury does best -- stealing bases -- isn't something the Red Sox traditionally value. The thing with which Ellsbury has had the most trouble -- drawing walks and getting on base -- is something the Red Sox do value.

It'll be fascinating to see how a panel of arbitrators values the contributions of Ellsbury should the case get that far next winter. Epstein had a history of avoiding arbitration, but it might be difficult for him to find a middle ground with Ellsbury and agent Scott Boras should the two groups differ widely in their evaluation of his abilities.

While assorted clubhouse attendants and contracted movers pack up the truck on Friday for its trip to Fort Myers, Epstein likely will have an eye on the arbitration case of Tampa Bay Rays center fielder B.J. Upton. The two sides in that case were a mere $300,000 apart but couldn't come to an agreement before the deadline to trade figures came and went. The hearing is scheduled for Friday, and a verdict likely will come before Monday.

(Note: The Rays won the arbitration case.)

A win for Upton might not just mean an extra $300,000 in his pocket. A win for Upton might embolden similar players in the future -- Ellsbury being the first -- to go to a hearing and see if they can convince a panel that their athleticism is worth big money.

So far, it seems, players in the Ellsbury mold have been willing to sign long-term extensions to avoid their arbitration years in exchange for financial security. Carl Crawford signed a long-term deal with the Rays. Chone Figgins signed a deal with the Los Angeles Angels. Curtis Granderson signed a deal with the Detroit Tigers. Jose Reyes signed a deal with the New York Mets. Chris Young signed a deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

All of those deals represented financial concessions in exchange for long-term security, just as the contracts of Jon Lester and Dustin Pedroia with the Red Sox did.

There's a pretty good chance, though, that Boras will rebuff any efforts by the Red Sox at a long-term extension for less money and instead take his chances with a year-by-year approach the way Papelbon has. There's little precedent in arbitration for a player whose best asset is his ability to steal bases -- and Boras undoubtedly will dismiss comparisons to Crawford or Granderson as irrelevant given their context within long-term deals.

Just for the sake of argument, though, here's a look at the deals to which the above players agreed in lieu of going through salary arbitration:

Carl Crawford ($15.25 million over four years)
Arb Year 1: $2.5 million
Arb Year 2: $4 million
Arb Year 3: $5.25 million

Chone Figgins ($10.5 million over three years)
Super-Two: $2.25 million*
Arb Year 1: $3.5 million
Arb Year 2: $4.75 million
Arb Year 3: $5.775 million**
* Figgins had enough service time as a Super Two to qualify for four arbitration seasons rather than three
** Figgins signed a one-year deal to avoid a hearing

Curtis Granderson ($30.25 million over five years)
Arb Year 1: $3.5 million
Arb Year 2: $5.5 million
Arb Year 3: $8.25 million

Jose Reyes ($23.25 million over four years)
Arb Year 1: $2.5 million
Arb Year 2: $4 million
Arb Year 3: $5.75 million

Chris Young ($28 million over five years)
Arb Year 1: $3.25 million
Arb Year 2: $5 million
Arb Year 3: $7 million

(One side note: It's fascinating that Jonathan Papelbon earned $6.25 million in his first arbitration while each of the above players earned $3.5 million or less. Saves might be overvalued in the arbitration process, but stolen bases appear not to be.)

If Figgins, Granderson and Young all earned better than $3 million in their fourth major-league season -- a player doesn't qualify for arbitration unless he has at least three seasons of service time, with the exception of Super Twos -- you can bet Boras and Ellsbury will ask for at least $3 million in arbitration.

If Upton wins his case on Friday, you can bet Boras and Ellsbury will ask for close to $4 million in arbitration. Just look at the numbers for the two players last season:

Ellsbury: .301/.355/.415 with 70 stolen bases
Upton: .241/.313/.373 with 42 stolen bases

On top of that, Upton struck out 152 times while Ellsbury struck out 74 times. It's not difficult to make a case that Ellsbury should be paid more than Upton -- especially to an arbitrator who might or might not be well-versed in sabermetrics or advanced defensive statistics.

Should the panel of arbitrators rule in favor of Upton this weekend, Epstein might have to start bracing for the toughest arbitration fight of his career.

Postscript: They didn't. But an initial arbitration figure of $3.5 million is going to be far from out of line for Ellsbury.

Waiting for Zach Daeges

2010-02-05T17:12:00.005-05:00

News item: "The Red Sox today announced that 20 players will attend the team’s Major League Spring Training camp as non-roster invitees."

Lars Anderson was invited to major-league camp with the Red Sox for the second straight year, his name among those released today by the team. The much-hyped Anderson shared a neighborhood in the far corner of the clubhouse last spring with two other prospects invited to their first major-league camp.

One was Josh Reddick, who jumped ahead of Anderson and didn't have to be invited to major-league camp because he's already part of the team's 40-man roster.

The other was a player who, like Anderson, again will participate in major-league camp despite not being part of the 40-man roster. The other was Zach Daeges.

The 26-year-old Daeges seems to have disappeared from the radar of the Red Sox. He's never been added to the 40-man roster. He was eligible for the Rule 5 draft back in December, in fact, but no team took a flier on him. Should the Red Sox not add him to the 40-man roster this season, he'll be eligible once again next December. SoxProspects.com classifies him as a Post-Prospect, a player who might have something to contribute but who probably isn't going to develop much farther.

He's become the forgotten man in the Red Sox farm system.

A look at the numbers, though, reveals that Daeges really can hit. Consider his progression through the minor leagues since he came out of Creighton University:

Age 22 (Single-A): .288/.402/.409 in 198 at-bats

Age 23 (Single-A): .330/.423/.579 in 515 at-bats

Age 24 (Double-A): .307/.412/.454 in 394 at-bats

So far, so good, right?

Age 25 (Triple-A): Injured

Daeges missed most of last season with an ankle injury suffered in spring training a year ago. He played in just nine games and was credited with just 29 at-bats for Triple-A Pawtucket before he shut it down. He thought most of the season that he'd sprained his ankle, but he told the Providence Journal back in October that he had an extra bone behind his ankle that had been knocked out of place. He had surgery in September to remove that bone.

In some respects, his window might already have closed. He's 26 years old -- two months older than Jon Lester, for the sake of context -- and doesn't yet have 30 at-bats at Triple-A. He can't play above-average defense at any position. He might not have much development left in him.

He has yet, however, to get on base at a clip less than .400 in the minor leagues. He might be 26 years old, but he's only entering his third full season in the minor leagues. A big season at Pawtucket might propel him back onto the radar.

Besides, if any organization understand the value of waiting for an on-base machine who takes a while to develop and break into the major leagues, it ought to be the Red Sox. Check out this career progression:

Age 24 (Double-A): .330/.487/.465 in 312 at-bats
Age 24 (Triple-A): .170/.295/.248 in 109 at-bats

Age 25 (Triple-A): .266/.350/.403 in 154 at-bats
Age 25 (Boston): .260/.367/.413 in 208 at-bats

Age 26 (Triple-A): .322/.459/.592 in 152 at-bats
Age 26 (Boston): .278/.400/405 in 79 at-bats

Age 27 (Boston): .279/.381/.429 in 569 at-bats

You know that career progression. That's Kevin Youkilis.

When Youkilis was 24 years old, he played the bulk of his games at Double-A -- just like Daeges. When Youkilis was 25 years old, he played the bulk of his games at Triple-A -- just like Daeges would have had he not gotten hurt. Youkilis then bounced back and forth between Triple-A and the major leagues for two seasons until he got his full-time break. Two seasons after that, at the age of 29, Youkilis blossomed into a star.

Developing so late is far from common. Most teams focus more on their 21-year-old prospects than their 26-year-old prospects, and with good reason. Youkilis' feat truly was remarkable.

But before Daeges missed an entire season due to injury, he'd shown himself to be an on-base machine in the minor leagues. If he can hit in Triple-A the way he's hit at every other stop along the way, he might yet follow the path Youkilis blazed for him.

It's not likely, but it's possible.

Verlander deal makes Lester a steal

2010-02-05T11:01:00.003-05:00

Take a look at the American League leaders in ERA+ last season:

1. Zack Greinke, 205
2. Felix Hernandez, 174
3. Roy Halladay, 155
4. Jon Lester, 138
5. Justin Verlander, 133

With the news that the Detroit Tigers have locked up Verlander, three of those five pitchers now have signed contract extensions this winter -- and the other two signed extensions last winter. It's only natural to compare them. It's worth looking again at those five pitchers -- only this time in the context of their contracts:

1. Greinke, $38 million over four years ($9.5 million/year)
2. Hernandez, $78 million over five years ($15.6 million/year)
3. Halladay, $60 million over three years ($20 million/year)
4. Lester, $30 million over five years ($6 million/year)
5. Verlander, $80 million over five years ($16 million/year)

Any one of those stand out to you?

Lester last season ranked second in the American League in strikeout rate, fifth in ERA and sixth in strikeout-to-walk ratio. Among lefties in the American League, he's as good as it gets -- and that includes Cliff Lee, traded from Philadelphia to Seattle as part of the Halladay blockbuster.

The structure of the system, of course, had quite a bit to do with each of the above contracts. Halladay was set to hit free agency after the 2010 season, so his contract had to come close to his value on the open market.

Hernandez was arbitration-eligible last season for the first time and would have had two years left under team control before he got to the free-agent market. Same goes for Verlander. Greinke likewise had just two seasons of salary arbitration left when he signed his contract a year ago.

Lester wouldn't have been arbitration-eligible until this season, meaning his five-year contract really only bought out one or two years of free agency. His annual salaries ($3.75 million in 2010 and $5.75 million in 2011) don't exactly line up with what he'd earn in arbitration, but they're not too far off.

Still, though, in terms of raw production, the Red Sox might as well be stealing from Lester. If the lefty pitches anything like he has since he was pronounced cancer-free, he'll be a perennial Cy Young Award contender -- but he won't even earn $7 million in a season until 2012.

Maybe the Red Sox should buy him a pickup truck.

The value of Victor Martinez

2010-02-03T18:48:00.006-05:00

With rumors on a contract extension for Joe Mauer flying around, it appears more and more likely that the Twins will sign their franchise catcher to a contract extension before he hits the free-agent market.

That would leave Victor Martinez as the best catcher available in an otherwise weak class of catchers whose contracts will expire after the 2010 season. For teams losing catchers in the near future -- and the Yankees and Red Sox both are in that category -- the switch-hitting Martinez could be a prize worth fighting over.

His last four seasons:
2006: .316/.391/.465 (.856)
2007: .301/.374/.505 (.879)
2008: .278/.337/.365 (.701)
2009: .303/.381/.480 (.861)

If you drop the one outlier, Martinez has demonstrated that he's a perennial threat to get on base at a clip of .375 or better and to slug .475 or better. He's a terrific hitter. The number of teams inquiring about his services will reflect that.

His value, though, will depend on the position he's playing. His value will drop precipitously if he's more of a first baseman than a catcher going forward.

Consider again the last four seasons:

2006: 127 starts at C/19 starts at 1B
2007: 118 starts at C/24 starts at 1B
2008: 54 starts at C/9 starts at 1B
2009: 82 starts at C/66 starts at 1B

A year after an elbow injury cost him most of June, July and August, Martinez saw a dramatic upturn in his time at first base. He made almost as many starts at first base in his two months in Boston (22) as he had any any full season to that point.

His 30th birthday is in his rear-view mirror. His days of catching 100-plus games probably are over.

Theo Epstein made clear at the start of the offseason that Martinez will assume the bulk of the catching duties next season. The older Martinez gets, though, the more time he'll spend at first base to diminish the injury risk while keeping his bat in the lineup. For the Red Sox, the development of Luis Exposito, Tim Federowicz and Mark Wagner makes Martinez even less likely to catch every day in 2011 and 2012.

Once the contract of David Ortiz expires, Martinez even could play 40 or 50 games as the designated hitter to minimize wear and tear on his body.

The less he plays catcher, though, the less valuable he becomes. His OPS last season (.856) ranked him second in the major leagues among catchers. Among all players, though, he ranked 47th -- behind, among others, Nick Swisher, Russell Branyan and Michael Cuddyer.

He's an elite hitter as a catcher. He's actually a pretty average hitter as a first baseman. Finding a good-hitting catcher is simply more difficult than finding a good-hitting first baseman -- and the Wins Above Replacement statistic makes that clear in each of Martinez's big seasons at the plate:

2006
Martinez, C (.856 OPS): 4.9 WAR
Justin Morneau, 1B (.934 OPS): 4.4 WAR
Carlos Delgado, 1B (.909 OPS): 2.9 WAR
Todd Helton, 1B (.880 OPS): 2.4 WAR

2007
Martinez, C (.879 OPS): 5.2 WAR
Prince Fielder, 1B (1.013 OPS): 5.1 WAR
Ryan Howard, 1B (.976 OPS): 4.3 WAR
Mark Teixeira, 1B (.963 OPS): 3.9 WAR

(2008 was something of a wasted season for Martinez. so we'll ignore that here.)

2009
Martinez, C/1B (.861 OPS): 4.9 WAR
Ryan Howard, 1B (.931 OPS): 4.8 WAR
Kendry Morales, 1B (.924 OPS): 4.2 WAR
Justin Morneau, 1B (.878 OPS): 3.2 WAR

What does that tell you? Moving from catcher to first base, in terms of value, is about the same as a 100-point drop in OPS. A contract for a catcher with an OPS of .850 should look a lot different than a contract for a first baseman with an OPS of .850.

If Martinez is willing to play for $10 or $12 million a season, the Red Sox should lock him up for the next three or four years. If another team offers Martinez anything close to Mauer money -- or even anything close to Matt Holliday money -- the Red Sox probably will be better off letting him walk.

Bullpen competition just gets deeper

2010-02-02T12:24:00.003-05:00

It doesn't sound like Joe Nelson was in a position to be particularly choosy, but his phone interview with MLB.com certainly revealed an interesting sentiment.

"For me," he said, "(Boston) just looked like the best place to have a legitimate fighting chance in spring training. ... They're not bringing in a whole bunch of guys. They have the two spots they're really looking at. They have internal depth but not as much experience, and, for me, I had multiple teams making multiple offers, and they just seemed like the best fit."

The goal for Nelson appears to be to win the last spot in the bullpen, the spot vacated by Takashi Saito this winter. Saito tended not to pitch in many high-profile situations, making just seven appearances in what could be defined as save situations and facing almost two-thirds of hitters in situations that could be defined as low-leverage.

Any major-league job, though, is a coveted major-league job. The Red Sox appear to have candidates lined up for either one or two bullpen spots, depending upon what happens with Tim Wakefield. Scott Atchison, Boof Bonser, Ramon A. Ramirez, Dustin Richardson and Brian Shouse all figure to be in the mix with Nelson for the final one or two spots in the bullpen.

If Wakefield finds his way onto the Opening Day roster, only one of the above pitchers will join him. The winner probably will be the one who carves the best niche for himself.

Nelson? The journeyman righty, who made three appearances for the Red Sox in 2004, compiled a 2.00 ERA in 54 innings pitched for the Florida Marlins in 2008. His ERA jumped to 4.02 with Tampa Bay last season as his walk rate jumped (from 3.7 to 6.0 per nine innings) and his strikeout rate dropped (from 10.8 to 8.0 per nine innings).

Interestingly, Nelson has a reverse split: He actually tends to fare better against lefthanded hitters than he does against righties. Lefties have OPS'ed .668 against him in his career as compared to .776 for righties, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio last season was almost twice as good against lefties (1.77) as it was against righties (0.93).

In that way, he's a little bit like Manny Delcarmen. Having too much in common with a reliever already on the staff probably isn't good for his chances, as the Red Sox already have a couple of pitchers on staff who historically have had success against lefties. That niche already has been taken.

Several other candidates for the last spot have their own niches:
* Bonser used to be a starter and could fill the Justin Masterson swingman role, throwing hard out of the bullpen but making a spot start or two;
* Ramirez is almost untouchable (.388 career OPS) against righties, though the small sample size and a relatively low strikeout-to-walk ratio (2.5) means that number might be unsustainable;
* Richardson is a young lefty who misses bats at a Daniel Bard-esque rate and could grow into a complement for Bard before too long;
* Shouse is a one-hitter lefty in the mold of Mike Myers.

Nelson doesn't really have the type of distinguishing characteristic -- other than his "Vulcan" changeup -- that makes him a strong candidate to win that last spot.

He's right, though: It's all still up in the air. He'll have a legitimate fighting chance -- and with the way relievers come and go, even starting the season in Pawtucket would give him a chance to get to the major leagues before too long.

Disconnect between Red Sox, fans all winter

2010-02-01T08:24:00.009-05:00

Dustin Pedroia has talked with WEEI hosts every week all winter. Kevin Youkilis made a November appearance at the Lowell Spinners' alumni dinner. Tim Wakefield received an award for community service in New York. New acquisitions John Lackey and Jeremy Hermida joined Youkilis and several minor leaguers at the Boston baseball writers' dinner in mid-January. Reporters have caught up with Daniel Bard, Clay Buchholz and Jonathan Papelbon by phone to find out how their offseasons have gone. There are ways for fans to keep tabs on their favorite players.

Nothing, though, beats seeing them in person. That's been virtually impossible for fans without special access or without the means to fork over a Benjamin Franklin or two. Even the "New Stars for Young Stars" autograph event required fans to purchase a $150 ticket for admission -- and the most prominent player to attend was middle reliever Manny Delcarmen.

(It is important to note that the proceeds from the above events went to charity. A good cause, however, doesn't make the price any less steep.)

The most prominent player to attend the Hot Stove, Cool Music roundtable with Peter Gammons and Theo Epstein was Tampa Bay first baseman Carlos Pena. Not a single Red Sox player was there. Fans purchasing tickets to the Lowell Spinners' dinner even were advised that Youkilis would not be signing autographs.

Is that strange? Should it be?

The Red Sox enjoy one of the largest and most passionate fan bases in the major leagues. Fenway Park has sold out its 38,000-plus seats for more than 500 straight games. Red Sox fans flock to Camden Yards in Baltimore and Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay and the Rogers Centre in Toronto when they can't get tickets in Boston. Even National League stadiums are not immune.

During the season, though, it's not easy for fans to find ways to meet or collect autographs from their favorite players. Batting practice for the home team ends about 10 minutes after the Fenway Park gets open, and players rarely sign more than a couple of autographs on their way off the field. Spring training presents a great opportunity to meet players in an informal environment, but a March trip to Florida isn't exactly a cheap undertaking for a family.

Offseason events, then, seem to be the best chance for fans to get close to the team to which they devote so much time, energy and passion -- but those events start at $150 per person and don't even include the bulk of the players on the Red Sox roster.

Many other teams have the right idea. Here's a quick sampling of offseason events hosted by major-league teams this winter -- and commentary from the big names in attendance:

Baltimore ($10 for adults, $5 for kids): "Both Nick Markakis and Luke Scott used the winter to grow full-length beards, a style prohibited by the team's strict facial hair policy. Markakis took a lot of heat for his beard -- from peers and fans alike -- and said he was glad to be back in Baltimore."
Detroit ($14/$7): "I was here at about 9:15," pitcher Rick Porcello said, "and there was a line of fans wrapped around the corner."
Milwaukee ($15/$9): "All but three Brewers attended -- Craig Counsell already had a commitment for Sunday before he re-signed with the team, Todd Coffey was stuck in North Carolina by a snowstorm and Carlos Gomez has the flu."
Minnesota ($12/$6): "A line of fans stretched nearly 40 yards behind Joe Mauer, following the Twins catcher as he tried to weave his way through the crowd on the Metrodome field on Friday night."
Seattle ($10/$5): "We talked to some of the fans during our autograph session and they were thanking us for what we did last year as a team, how much it meant to them and how it brought a spark into getting into the Mariners," reliever Mark Lowe said. (New acquisition Chone Figgins highlighted the list of attendees.) "That was good to hear. You don't expect something like that to come out of a fan's mouth."
San Francisco (free): Scheduled for Saturday. Attendees to include Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval as well as former players Vida Blue and Will Clark and prospects Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey.
Tampa Bay (free admission, $20 for autographs) Scheduled for Feb. 20. From last year's event: "You can feel the energy in here," said Rays left fielder Carl Crawford, wearing a broad smile as he signed autographs. "You can tell it's different than the past. I hope we can take some of this momentum into the season."

The Atlanta Braves did not hold an on-site festival, but their winter caravan includes appearances by stars like Yunel Escobar, Tommy Hanson, Chipper Jones and Brian McCann. Jones and Tim Hudson, in fact, will be at the Publix Supermarket in Marietta, Ga., at 4:30 p.m. today.

Not every team made it particularly easy for fans to meet their favorite players and collect a few autographs. The St. Louis Cardinals held a widely attended "Winter Warm-Up" program in early January that cost $40 for adults and $10 for kids. An extra autograph ticket was required for 22 of the players in attendance, including Matt Holliday ($100), Chris Carpenter ($50) and -- this is incredible -- Brad Penny ($10).

The Yankees, of course, hold no such event -- apart from taking the World Series trophy on a trip with team executives on a tour of Tokyo, Beijing and Hong Kong. The Mets and Phillies, two other Northeast teams with passionate fan bases, likewise do nothing of the kind in their home cities.

That tends to be the exception.

Instead of anything like the above events, the Red Sox put together the "Red Sox Road Trip" featuring, as its most prominent face, Wally the Green Monster. The point of the caravan into all six New England states was to distribute more than 6,000 ticket vouchers -- vouchers good for "the guaranteed purchase" of two regular-season tickets.

"Similar to last year's highly successful trip, this road trip will give us a chance to visit our loyal fans in their towns and say a special thank you for their unwavering commitment," Red Sox executive Sam Kennedy said in a press release announcing the event. "As we bring the warmth of baseball and thoughts of spring to our fans during these cold winter days, we hope that the ticket vouchers we deliver will enable them to join us at Fenway Park for what promises to be an exciting 2010 season."

That's right: The ticket vouchers are good for the purchase of two regular-season tickets. The tickets aren't free. The tickets aren't even discounted in any way. The vouchers simply allow the holder to purchase full-price tickets in advance of the general public to one regular-season game.

To recap: A Giants fan need only show up at AT&T Park on Saturday to get an autograph from Tim Lincecum -- free of charge. Should a Red Sox fan want to shake the hand of Jacoby Ellsbury or Dustin Pedroia, though, he or she had better book a trip down to Fort Myers, Fla., and hope he or she is in the right place when the right players make themselves available.

The best they can do otherwise is to see Wally the Green Monster and receive a piece of paper that entitles them to buy two tickets at full price. It's a wonder receipt of the voucher doesn't come with a contractual obligation to buy hot dogs and beer.

At least you can listen to Dustin Pedroia on WEEI, right?

Older hitters still valuable in short deals

2010-01-30T09:40:00.006-05:00

In the post-steroid, post-amphetamine, post-supplement era, older players have lost much of their appeal in the free-agent market. Teams are increasingly wary of being burned by 36- or 37-year-old players whose abilities on defense are eroding and whose speed on the basepaths is declining.

Bobby Abreu could barely get a sniff last winter. Former Red Sox outfielder Johnny Damon seems to have overplayed his hand this winter.

FanGraphs, among others, has started to wonder if older players are going to become the next market inefficiency.

The idea of a market inefficiency, after all, isn't to find the best players. The "Moneyball" Athletics worshipped at the altar of on-base percentage not because it was the only way to win games but because it was the way to get the most bang for their buck. The Seattle Mariners got better through improved defense because no one else knew who Franklin Gutierrez even was.

The goal of any team should be to maximize contribution per dollar. The more bang for the buck, the better. Even for a deep-pocketed team like the Red Sox, bang for the buck means something -- and it'll mean even more in coming years when the salaries of Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester, Jonathan Papelbon, Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis all start to climb past $10 million a season.

The issue with older players, of course, is the fear of getting burned. The Detroit Tigers faced this issue with the $18 million option for Magglio Ordonez they tried halfheartedly to keep from vesting. Ordonez OPS'ed .804 last season, a respectable number but certainly not one worth $18 million a season.

According to FanGraphs, Ordonez was worth 1.8 wins above replacement last season. Abreu was worth 2.5 wins above replacement last season. Damon was worth 3.0 wins above replacement last season -- and he hasn't been worth less than 2.2 since the statistic started being compiled eight years ago.

Ordonez is an example of the danger in paying too much to older players. Abreu and Damon are examples of the danger of shying away too much from older players.

Damon still can hit. The 37-year-old outfielder thrived in the friendly confines of Yankee Stadium last season but still OPS'ed .795 on the road, including an on-base percentage of .349. His walk rate stayed above 10 percent for the fourth straight season. He saw more than 4.0 pitches per plate appearance for the fourth straight season.

Damon might be 10 years older than Jeremy Hermida, but the odds are pretty good that he would outproduce Hermida in the same amount of playing time. Even better, he'll probably earn about the same salary. One would like to believe that if the contract of David Ortiz had expired, Theo Epstein already would have snapped up Damon to be his designated hitter next season.

The contract of Ortiz does expire after the 2010 season, and there's almost no chance the Red Sox pick up the $12.5 million team option for 2011. That's when Epstein will have a chance to exploit the new market inefficiency.

Epstein by then might have made a trade for San Diego's Adrian Gonzalez or Detroit's Miguel Cabrera. Instead of investing $100 million in one of those two sluggers, though, it might be worth trawling for older players on one- or two-year contracts, players who can provide two-thirds of the production at one-third the cost.

One such player, actually, could be Ortiz himself.

Adam Dunn could be another. Much like Abreu and Damon, Dunn will be on the wrong side of 30 and bring little defensive value when he hits the open market after the 2010 season. Predicting the market is next to impossible, of course, but there's a good chance Dunn and Ortiz both get the Abreu/Damon treatment in the new defense-is-paramount age of baseball.

Dunn has OBP'ed better than .380 in five of his last six seasons. He's slugged better than .500 in five of his last six seasons. His OPS of .928 last season ranked him ahead of Jason Bay, J.D. Drew and Matt Holliday.

He's been worth just 1.2 wins above replacement in each of the last two seasons, but that number factors in his miserable defense. If an American League team -- say, the Red Sox -- needed a designated hitter, Dunn could provide tremendous production at a fraction of the cost of Cabrera or Gonzalez.

Saving Buchholz saved money long-term

2010-01-29T07:53:00.003-05:00

(A discussion broken out of the Josh Beckett contract post.)

As it turned out, the Red Sox didn't lose much by leaving Clay Buchholz in the minor leagues until late July. Even as well as he pitched down the stretch, it's almost inconceivable that he alone could have made up the eight-win difference between the Red Sox and the Yankees in the regular-season standings -- and thus have changed the outcome of the season in any meaningful way.

And by leaving Buchholz in the minor leagues until late July, the Red Sox probably saved themselves $3 million during the 2011 season and maybe even more beyond that.

Buchholz, of course, is subject to the same salary structure that limits the earning power of younger players in both leagues. Until a player has the equivalent of three full seasons of service time in the major leagues, his salary can be set by his team. That salary normally is close to the major-league minimum, which will be $400,000 during the 2010 season.

Once a player has three full seasons of service time, he can file for salary arbitration -- and with that enjoy increased leverage depending on what an arbitrator might be expected to award him based on his service time and his achievement to date. Arbitration salaries tend to increase over time even if players' production does not: Jeremy Hermida earned $2.25 million last season and will earn $3.345 million next season despite lackluster production, the main reason the Florida Marlins traded him to the Red Sox for next to nothing.

There's one exception to the rule: Super Twos are players who have close to -- but not quite -- three years of service time in the major leagues. To qualify, a player must have two seasons plus 86 days of service time and rank among the top 17 percent of players with between two and three seasons of service time.

One season is defined as 172 days of service time. The cutoff, according to Cot's Baseball Contracts, tends to fall somewhere around two years and 130 days, but it varies year to year.

Super Twos are eligible for arbitration as though they'd completed their third full season -- and, as you can imagine, can cost their respective teams some money. Tim Lincecum might be the best example: The Giants called him up in early May in 2007 and, of course, never sent him back. The righty finished last season with two seasons plus 148 days of service time and thus is eligible for arbitration as a Super Two.

Had the Giants waited another three weeks to call Lincecum up to the major leagues, they'd be paying him less than $1 million in 2011. Instead, though, the two-time Cy Young Award winner filed with an arbitrator for $13 million.

(This is why it's become so trendy for teams to call up their top prospects no earlier than Memorial Day -- and sometimes later. The Atlanta Braves and Baltimore Orioles did it last season with Tommy Hanson and Matt Wieters, respectively. The Washington Nationals likely will do the same this season with Stephen Strasburg.)

Here's where Buchholz becomes relevant: The 25-year-old righty finished last season with one year and 59 days of major-league service time. Even if he spends the entire 2010 season in the major leagues, it's impossible for him to finish with more than two years and 59 days of major-league service time -- well below the Super Two plateau.

Had he started last season in the major leagues, he would have lined himself up for Super Two status in the 2011 season. Another 70 days of major-league service time -- about 2 1/2 months -- would have been enough to get him within striking range of arbitration eligibility.

Instead, though, Buchholz will be paid a salary close to the major-league minimum both in 2010 and 2011 before his service-time clock starts to kick in.

Lincecum, of course, is a special case. Barring a quantum leap forward in performance, Buchholz isn't going to see that type of money. But here's a look at several more similar pitchers eligible for arbitration for the first time and what they'll earn next season -- or, at least, what they and their team will take to the arbitration table should they fail to reach a settlement:

Brian Bannister: $2.3 million
Chad Billingsley: $3.85 million
John Danks: $3.45 million
Matt Garza: $3.35 million*
Jeremy Guthrie: $2.3-3.625 million
Joe Saunders: $3.6-3.85 million
Jered Weaver: $4.265 million
*Super Two

Beckett, for the sake of comparison, agreed to a deal worth $2.4 million in his first arbitration-eligible season and $4.325 million in his second arbitration-eligible season. Before he could get to arbitration again, he signed an extension that paid him $6 million in what would have been his third arbitration-eligible season.

Had the Red Sox missed the playoffs by a game or two, games in which Buchholz could have made a difference in April and May, that $3 million or so wouldn't look like much.

Just ask the Yankees, though, what a difference $3 million can make.

No spot reserved for Wakefield

2010-01-28T07:02:00.001-05:00

"It seems every year, and I don't know why, my name gets brought up like this when I don't feel I need to prove myself every day. I don't know where the rumors are coming from, but I try not to pay attention. I know my role and I know what my approach is going to be when I get to spring training: be a starter and help us win the World Series. Hopefully they respect me enough to give me the ball when we get to spring training as a member of this rotation. I think I've earned the right to be a full-time starter and go from there."
-- Tim Wakefield

With all due respect to Wakefield, a man who can never get enough credit for his contribution to two World Series titles, here's a look at his second-half numbers over the past six seasons:

2004: 5.77 ERA (14 starts)
2005: 4.26 ERA (15 starts)
2006: 7.40 ERA (5 starts)
2007: 5.25 ERA (14 starts)
2008: 5.22 ERA (11 starts)
2009: 6.00 ERA (4 starts)

Not since he turned 40 years old -- and it's important to remember that he turned 40 years old 3 1/2 years ago -- has Wakefield been anything close to effective down the stretch for the Red Sox. He hasn't held up. He hasn't stayed healthy. He hasn't kept runs off the scoreboard.

He hasn't, to put it bluntly, earned the right to be a full-time starter and go from there.

Wakefield generally has pitched well in the first half in the Terry Francona era. His first half last season earned him his first career All-Star nod even though his ERA (4.31) was more than half a run higher than it had been the year before (3.60).

The gems he threw -- he took a no-hitter into the eighth inning in Oakland and threw seven one-hit innings in Cleveland two weeks later -- looked even better when contrasted with the ugly outings endured by Daisuke Matsuzaka and the assorted wreckage at the bottom of the starting rotation.

Wakefield, who underwent back surgery in the offseason, this week pronounced himself healthy and ready to go well ahead of spring training.

"We'll see when we get there, but I plan on being one of the five starters," Wakefield told reporters at an awards ceremony in New York. "I think I've earned that."

Of the five other starting pitchers in the conversation, three are Fort Knox locks to open the season as part of the rotation: Josh Beckett, John Lackey and Jon Lester. The order in which the three will pitch is still open for discussion. Even Wakefield, though, wouldn't argue that any of those three are occupying the spot he's earned.

Beyond that, Clay Buchholz and Daisuke Matsuzaka remain, and the Red Sox have a compelling reason to make sure each is part of the starting rotation:
1. Buchholz looked like one of the best starters in the American League last season during a 10-start stretch in which he compiled a 2.37 ERA and limited opposing hitters to a .572 OPS.
2. Matsuzaka won't turn 30 years old until September, and his body thus is far more likely than that of Wakefield to bounce back from the injuries that torpedoed his season a year ago. (That is, of course, as long as he discloses all of his injuries.) On top of that, he has three years and $28 million remaining on the contract he signed with the Red Sox before the 2007 season.

The most compelling reason for Wakefield?
1. He's earned it.

Well, OK, sure, Wakefield has put up some impressive first-half numbers over the last few seasons:

2004: 4.17 ERA (18 games, including 16 starts)
2005: 4.05 ERA (18 starts)
2006: 4.05 ERA (18 starts)
2007: 4.39 ERA (17 starts)
2008: 3.60 ERA (19 starts)
2009: 4.31 ERA (17 starts)

The Red Sox just have no reason to believe Wakefield can maintain that level of production -- or any level of production, really -- through August and September. If he starts the season with a spot in the rotation, he's inevitably going to have to be replaced.

Even worse, to shoehorn Wakefield into the rotation to start the season, the Red Sox probably would have to send Clay Buchholz back to Triple-A Pawtucket to tear the International League apart for a second straight spring. Buchholz might still bring question marks with him, but he gave every indication last August and September that he's ready to become an elite pitcher in the American League. Like Lester before him, he's in position to take a gigantic step foward in his development -- and the presence of Wakefield only would stunt that development.

Wakefield has earned the undying respect of every Red Sox fan. He hasn't earned, however, a spot in the rotation in perpetuity. Finding a role for him will take some creativity -- but that role shouldn't involve taking the ball every five days.

Signing Beckett long-term a huge investment

2010-01-27T08:23:00.005-05:00

Consensus generally has been optimistic about the chances that Josh Beckett and the Red Sox come to some sort of agreement on a contract extension before he hits the open market next winter.

It's tough, though, to see how it would work.

The hard-throwing righty faded down the stretch but looked like a Cy Young-caliber pitcher for much of the summer, finishing the season with 17 wins and a 3.86 ERA in a career-best 212 1/3 innings. It was the third time in his four seasons with the Red Sox that he's pitched 200 or more innings, and it also was the third time in his four seasons he's recorded an ERA+ of 115 or better.

Beckett has a chance to hit the free-agent market after the 2010 season as one of the few No. 1 starters available, and No. 1 starters get their money no matter what the economic situation.

He already signed one team-friendly contract with the Red Sox. He already was unlikely to sign another team-friendly contract -- and then Theo Epstein lavished more than $80 million on John Lackey in December.

If the Red Sox are going to re-sign Beckett, they're going to have to offer him what they offered Lackey -- if not a little bit more. The only way Beckett could fit into their salary structure would be if he came at the expense of ever acquiring an impact bat for the middle of the lineup.

Consider the money the Red Sox will pay their starters in 2010:
* Beckett, $12 million
* Clay Buchholz, major-league minimum ($0.5 million)
* John Lackey, $18 million
* Jon Lester, $3.75 million
* Daisuke Matsuzaka, $8 million
Total: $42.25 million

If the Red Sox re-up Beckett for something close to Lackey money -- let's say four years, $60 million, just to be conservative -- here's what they'd have in 2011:
* Beckett, $15 million
* Buchholz, major-league minimum ($0.5 million)
* Lackey, $15.25 million
* Lester, $5.75 million
* Matsuzaka, $10 million
Total: $46.5 million

And in 2012?
* Beckett, $15 million
* Buchholz, $3 million* (arbitration estimate)
* Lackey, $15.25 million
* Lester, $7.63 million
* Matsuzaka, $10 million
Total: $50.88 million

By 2014, the Red Sox could be paying four pitchers (Beckett, Buchholz, Lackey and Lester) more than $52 million between them, a hefty sum for a team that hasn't yet opened a season with a payroll of higher than $150 million. Two of those pitchers -- the most expensive two, of course -- would be 34 and 35 years old.

Oh, and the Red Sox already have second baseman Dustin Pedroia under contract for $10 million in 2014, too.

Imagine trying to fit a bat like Miguel Cabrera (due $22 million in both 2014 and 2015) or Adrian Gonzalez (who will have no reason to settle for anything less than that) into the budget while still filling out the rest of the roster.

Best of luck with that.

There's a reason the Red Sox have fought so fiercely to hang onto Casey Kelly. There's a reason the Red Sox have invested so heavily in Junichi Tazawa. Young pitchers give a team the financial flexibility veteran pitchers don't. Buchholz and Lester still are young pitchers, but they won't be young pitchers by the time Beckett gets into the middle of a four- or five-year contract extension. Should Buchholz progress the way he looked last season like he's going to progress, the above arbitration estimate might be on the conservative side.

Investing $15 million in one pitcher in his mid-30s is risky. Investing $30 million in two pitchers in their mid-30s is borderline insane -- even for the deep-pocketed Red Sox.

Dustin Richardson and Brian Shouse

2010-01-26T07:14:00.001-05:00

Dustin Richardson just turned 26 years old and is a strikeout machine. Brian Shouse is 41 years old and earns his living with top-notch control and by inducing ground ball after ground ball. One of the two likely will break camp as the second lefty in the Red Sox bullpen.

With the starting rotation all but set in stone and the starting lineup likewise ready to go, Richardson and Shouse are competing for one of the few jobs actually up for grabs in spring training. The role either Richardson or Shouse would fill would be the Javier Lopez role -- generally a mop-up role with a chance to face some lefties in big spots on days Hideki Okajima might not be available.

The argument for Richardson
The 6-foot-6 Richardson doesn't throw 98 miles an hour like Daniel Bard does, but his strikeout rate does resemble that of the flame-throwing righty. Like Bard, Richardson was a starting pitcher until a rough season -- in his case, a 6.33 ERA in 22 starts at Double-A Portland -- gave the Red Sox reason to try him out of the bullpen.

He promptly put up a 2.41 ERA with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 4.33 in 18 2/3 innings in the Hawaiian Winter League, and he struck out 97 batters in 74 innings split between Portland and Triple-A Pawtucket last season. He then made 11 appearances in the Arizona Fall League and struck out 18 in 11 2/3 innings pitched.

His strikeout rate alone makes him a candidate to grow into an above-average reliever, and a few mop-up appearances in the back of the Red Sox bullpen would give him a chance to ease into a regular role. It's not as though he's done all he can do at Triple-A -- he only made seven appearances with the PawSox after his promotion from Portland -- but he's demonstrated in the minor leagues that he's capable of missing bats. The more experience he can get in the major leagues, the more quickly he's going to develop into the lefthanded strikeout reliever he potentially c ould be.

The Red Sox will choose Richardson if they want a mop-up reliever who can pitch multiple innings -- he has that background as a starting pitcher, after all -- and if they believe his learning curve would be accelerated by starting the season in the major leagues.

The argument for Shouse
With Boof Bonser in the fold, the Red Sox aren't in desperate need of a reliever who can go multiple innings. Shouse would take over for Billy Wagner as the second option against tough lefthanded hitters -- except, unlike Wagner, he's usually be a one-and-done pitcher who would be called upon to get just one out.

Consider his recent numbers against lefties:
2007: .214/.264/.262 (.526 OPS), 21 K, 6 BB
2008: .180/.197/.290 (.486 OPS), 28 K, 2 BB
2009: .224/.256/.373 (.620 OPS), 14 K, 1 BB

In 267 plate appearances against Shouse over the last three seasons, lefties have struck out 63 times and walked just nine times, a ratio of 7-to-1. Shouse has induced more double plays against lefties (seven) in that time span than he has allowed home runs (five).

If the job involves pitching to righties, Shouse probably isn't the guy: Righties have OBP'ed better than .350 against Shouse in every full season of his career, and he has has walked more righties than he's fanned in each of the last two seasons.

If the job involves retiring a tough lefty, though, it's hard to do much better than Shouse has done -- even at the age of 41.

The Red Sox will choose Shouse if Terry Francona believes he needs a Mike Myers-esque lefty specialist to use against lefties like Curtis Granderson, Adam Lind, Nick Markakis and Carlos Pena.

Lars Anderson crashes back to earth

2010-01-25T06:15:00.000-05:00

In looking at the career statistics for Lars Anderson in the minor leagues, one column stands out more than any other: His batting average on balls in play.

Lars Anderson BABIP
2007: .370
2008: .384
2009: .296

Consensus and statistics have the average hitters' BABIP somewhere in the .300 range. It's easy to jump to conclusions and suggest that Anderson just saw his luck run out last season, a season in which his OPS tumbled from .935 to .669 and his ranking on the Baseball America prospect chart tumbled from No. 1 to No. 4.

But Anderson has always tended to hit the ball hard, a trait that generally correlates with a high batting average on balls in play. A BABIP that high over a two-year period -- he came to the plate more than 1,000 times in that span -- can't be dismissed as a fluke.

What it can be a sign of, though, is a hitter who's not hitting the ball as hard as he once did. From Baseball America's writeup in late December: When Anderson slumped, he tinkered with his swing, which became longer and more mechanical. After previously using the opposite field well, he became more pull-conscious, perhaps pressing to hit homers. Nothing worked, and he hit just .154 with one homer after the all-star break.

The numbers -- hat tip to MinorLeagueSplits.com -- back that up, too. Consider one key indicator:

Infield fly ball ratio (as compared to all fly balls)
2007: 8.4 percent
2008: 7.6 percent
2009: 21.2 percent

(For the sake of comparison, fellow top prospects Ryan Kalish and Anthony Rizzo had infield-fly rates of 8.1 and 7.8 percent last season, respectively. Both recorded BABIPs of better than .335.)

It's just a preposterous jump. By ratio, Anderson hit almost three times as many infield pop-ups as he had the previous season -- and nothing brings down a BABIP like infield pop-ups.

One thing that can cause pop-ups? A long swing -- something that ought to be salvageable with a winter of rest and some good coaching on his side.

Anderson, as often is noted, is still young. If he'd gone to college instead of signing out of high school, he'd have been draft-eligible for the first time last June and might still be entering his first full season of professional baseball. He won't turn 23 until after the upcoming season ends.

If the Red Sox can help him fix the flaw in his swing that prevented him from squaring up the ball, there's no reason they can't get him right back on track.

Kelly taking attention in stride

2010-01-24T07:57:00.002-05:00

The brilliance of the limited media availability during the Red Sox rookie development program is the way it gives some of the team's top prospects a chance to practice an absolutely essential skill for a major-league player: Answering the same questions over and over and over again.

Writers come in waves in search of one-on-ones, but the questions usually all are the same -- especially during the winter when not much changes day to day. Players, then, wind up answering similar questions three times or three dozen times, and part of the unwritten contract with fans and media is that they'll be patient enough to do so.

"We talk about the partnership that needs to be established, that it's part of their role as major-league baseball players to participate in the media," Red Sox director of player development told reporters assembled for the rookie program last Wednesday. "You guys have a job to do, and you guys are here, within your job, to write about them. ... We really impress upon them that it's part of their job and responsibility to be active participants both in the community and with the media."

Consider these two discourses offered by catching prospect Luis Exposito when asked about his competition with fellow catchers Tim Federowicz and Mark Wagner, discourses offered to different writers in different groups no more than 10 minutes apart from one another:

1. "Those two guys are tremendous catchers. They have tremendous tools. We're all after the ultimate goal, to make it to the big leagues. Professionalism, the professionalism of myself, that's all I can worry about."
2. "Those guys, they're tremendous catchers, both of them. They're great players. I try to work hard. They can make me better, and, hopefully, I can make them better. That's all we have, a common goal to try to make it to the major leagues. I try to see it as I'm going to make them better, and they can make me better."

It wasn't going to be word-for-word exact, of course, but it's a sign that Exposito already has started to master the art of handling waves of questions. The second reporter asked almost the exact same question as the first, and yet Exposito answered with the type of thoughtfulness he'd have if he'd never heard the question before in his life.

Exposito, though, doesn't have the high profile that Kelly earned for himself with a spectacular debut as a pitcher in the minor leagues -- along with the added subplot of having to choose between pitching and playing shortstop.

No one really knows Casey Kelly yet. No one has yet written the definitive Kelly story the way one writer wrote the definitive Lars Anderson story a year ago at this time, back when Anderson was the next-big-thing prospect and Kelly was simply a first-round pick who couldn't decide what position he wanted to play.

Anderson, of course, had a rough second season in the minor leagues, and it's tempting to draw a connection between all the hype swirling around him last winter and the way he struggled so badly during the season.

Kelly has had to deal with the same type of hype -- if not more, given the decision he had to make. Kelly talked in September about having to make a decision. Kelly talked in early December about having made his decision. Kelly talked to WEEI earlier this month about what went into his decision. Kelly then talked at the rookie camp last week about, well, what else?

Nothing has changed since December. Kelly still hasn't started his first full season as a pitcher. Still though, the questions keep coming:

On spring training: "I'm competing for a job in Portland. I'm trying to go through spring training and play at the highest level I can, and we'll see what happens. ... You always want to come in and show that you're in good condition, and you're always trying to earn a job. Coming in at top condition and showing off what you can do is the biggest thing."

On his offseason preparation: "It's a lot easier than than last year, trying to train for two positions. This year, it's been great. Knowing what position I'm going to be playing throughout the season has helped my training. I've been training really hard. We started our throwing program a couple of weeks ago, so I'm ready to get the season going."

On potentially jumping to Double-A: "I'm very excited. Obviously, you want to get up to the big leagues as fast as possible, so starting out at Double-A, I hope I start out at Double-A and see what happens. I've worked out hard and have been training hard, so everything else will take care of itself."

On missing playing shortstop: "I'll miss it just like I miss football. Of course, I'm not playing football -- and I'm not playing shortstop. My main focus is on pitching, and that's what I'm going to focus on right now. I'm sure I'll miss it just like I miss watching football on TV, but, at the same time, I'm focused 100 percent with pitching right now."

On hearing his name in trade rumors: "I really didn't know much about any of the trade talks at all. I only found out because my friend was online looking at stuff and heard my name. That's stuff that's out of your hands, out of your control. I'm just trying to focus on what I can control and getting ready for the season."

On the presence of Jose Iglesias as a factor in his decision: "No. He'd just signed when we went to Arizona (for the Arizona Fall League) and then when we came back. I just sat down with the Red Sox, and we had a conversation about what position would be the best for my career and the longest career I was going to have. It came out that pitching was going to be the deciding factor."

On absorbing the decision: "It was definitely a tough decision to make, one of the biggest decisions of my life that I had to make at 20 years old. The year before that, I had to decide whether I wanted to play college football or play professional baseball, so it seems like each year there's been a pretty big question I had to answer."

On which decision was more difficult: "This one definitely was tougher. I knew I loved baseball, and I knew that was what I was going to do. For this one, I had long discussions with my family, and they were going to back me 100 percent with anything that I did. I just came to the sense that I want to be in the big leagues and have a great career in the big leagues, so pitching was that way."

Pitching prospect Weiland still finding routine

2010-01-22T15:54:00.001-05:00

Kyle Weiland -- pronounced WHY-land -- didn't have the experience in college of pitching every five days. Weiland pitched out of the bullpen at Notre Dame, compiling a 2.37 ERA in 49 1/3 innings pitched as a freshman and earning 25 saves in his career, a Fighting Irish record.

No matter. That routine would have had little bearing on the routine the 23-year-old righty is trying to learn now that he's a starting pitcher climbing the ladder with the Red Sox.

"From a preparation standpoint, it's so much different than the amateur game," said Mike Hazen, Red Sox director of player development. "They need to learn that at the professional level as well."

Weiland had trouble with his routine at the start of this season, and it cost him: He had a 12.00 ERA at the end of April and 6.91 ERA at the end of May. It wasn't until he caught fire in June -- he allowed just one earned run in five starts, a span of 27 2/3 innings -- that he started to feel a little more comfortable.

Part of the issue with his routine between starts, a routine he'd never really developed during his transition from relieving to starting.

"We do have a strict program for starters," he said. "With five days, you do have something to do every day. But to have a time schedule -- 'This is when I need to get to the field. This is when I'll do this.' -- instead of getting it in anytime during the day, to have a strict routine, will help me stay more consistent."

By the end of the season, Weiland had started to figure it all out. Not once in his final 10 starts did he allow more than three earned runs, and he struck out 10 in six scoreless innings in one gem of a start in late August.

His 3.46 ERA actually ranked him seventh out of 21 qualifiers in the Carolina League by the end of the season.

"He got off to a pretty rough start last year in Salem and really had to struggle to bail himself out of that valley he put himself in -- and he did," Hazen said. "At the end of the year, if you look at his numbers, they compare with just about anybody in the Carolina League."

Weiland made the transition from relieving to starting during his short-season stint at Single-A Lowell after the Red Sox selected him in the third round in 2008. He made five relief appearances before jumping into the Spinners' rotation for 10 starts down the stretch, compiling a 1.23 ERA in the process and earning Red Sox Minor League Pitcher of the Month honors in the process.

"He's got a very heavy sinker that he gets a ton of ground balls with," Haven said. "But he can also strike guys out with his curveball. That consistency of strike-throwing, especially with his secondary pitches, is going to be needed at the upper levels."

With Weiland having pitched out of the bullpen in college, it stands to reason that he'll eventually end up back in the bullpen with such pitchers as Casey Kelly, Michael Bowden, Felix Doubront and Junichi Tazawa ahead of him on prospect charts -- not to mention Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester already in the major leagues.

Hazen wasn't about to make that type of decision at the rookie development camp this week -- but he wasn't about to discount the possibility, either.

"That's one of the things we talk about here: 'Your role at the major-league level may not be what it is at the minor-league level. The first time you come up, if we have fix to six starting pitchers at the major-league level, you're probably not breaking into that rotation right away. You're probably going to have to start in the bullpen,'" Hazen said. "We try to get them prepared for that mentally now: 'Until you establish yourself as a major-league player and as a major-league starter, you may have to go in (out of the bullpen).'

"Taz had to do it, Bowden's had to do it, (Daniel) Bard was obviously a reliever, Buch has had to relieve at the major-league level, (Justin) Masterson had to relieve at the major-league level. They need to be prepared for that."

Said Weiland, "The fast track is as a reliever, but that option always stays open. Even if you start for most of your minor-league career, you could get called up as a reliever -- as we've seen many times."

Red Sox probably overpaid for Lackey

2010-01-22T00:15:00.001-05:00

With the free-agent market wrapping up for the winter -- pitcher Joel Pineiro has agreed to a two-year, $16 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels -- it's worth revisiting the contract the Red Sox bestowed upon John Lackey in December.

The Red Sox will pay Lackey $82.5 million over the next five seasons, including a team-high $18 million in 2010. They'll pay Lackey more per season than the Angels will pay Piniero for the entire two years of his contract. They probably overpaid.

General manager Theo Epstein cited A.J. Burnett's contract with the New York Yankees in justifying the length of the commitment he made to the former ace of the Los Angeles Angels. He wasn't pressed, however, on exactly why he felt obligated to bid $16.5 million per year even for a pitcher the caliber of Lackey.

Especially in this economic climate -- Johnny Damon, for example, still is waiting for someone to offer him more than $2 or $3 million a year -- it appears Epstein overvalued the pitcher and probably spent money he didn't have to spend.

How can we tell? Consider the other pitchers who have signed multiyear deals this winter:

* Jason Marquis signed a two-year, $15 million contract with Washington, an average annual value of $7.5 million per season. Marquis was worth 3.8 wins above replacement (WAR) last season and 1.8 the season before that, an average of 2.8. The Nationals, looking at it that way, spent $2.68 million per win.
* Piniero has signed a contract worth $8 million per season. Piniero was worth 4.8 wins above replacement (WAR) last season and 0.9 the season before that, an average of 2.85. The Mets, looking at it that way, would spend $2.81 million per win.
* Randy Wolf signed a three-year, $29.75 million contract with Milwaukee, an average annual value of close to $10 million per season. Wolf was worth 3.0 wins above replacement (WAR) last season and 2.5 the season before that, an average of 2.75. The Brewers, looking at it that way, spent $3.64 million per win.

(If you need a refresher on WAR -- the calculated worth of a player, measured in wins added in the standings as compared to an off-the-street replacement -- click here or here.)

Lackey will earn an average of $16.5 million over the five years of his contract. He was worth 3.9 wins above replacement (WAR) last season and 2.0 the season before that.

The Red Sox therefore spent $5.59 million per win -- or slightly less than the Nationals and Brewers spent for Marquis and Wolf combined. If you look only at his 3.9 WAR season of a year ago, the Red Sox still spent $4.23 million per win, well above what the Nationals and Brewers spent.

(Side note: The idea for every team is to pay for future performance, not past performance. Free agency, however, tends to reward past performance at least as much as future performance, and that's why two previous years' worth of WAR numbers are at least as valuable to this exercise as what teams did get or will get out of their free agents. Particularly for veterans like Lackey, the immediate past can be as predictive as anything else available.)

If Lackey is going to be worth $16.5 million a season, he's probably going to need to post a WAR closer to 5.0 or 6.0 -- an accomplishment of which he's more than capable, with his outstanding 2007 season as the most recent evidence -- than 3.9. The market this winter bears that out. The market last winter bears that out, too.

Consider the six pitchers who signed free-agent contracts a winter ago, another winter in wich the market tended to be depressed:

* Jamie Moyer, Philadelphia: $3.02 million per win
* CC Sabathia, New York Yankees: $3.15 million per win
(Don't be shocked: Sabathia had been a seven-win improvement over the average pitcher, and that made his $23 million salary just about right. Even in his first season in New York, Sabathia was a six-win improvement over a replacement pitcher, meaning the Yankees still paid less than $4 million per win.)
* Derek Lowe, Atlanta: $3.66 million per win
* A.J. Burnett, New York Yankees: $4.07 million per win
* Ryan Dempster, Chicago: $4.81 million per win
* Oliver Perez, New York Mets: $6.86 million per win

Only one of those contracts makes Lackey look like a bargain -- and that contract looked like a bad idea even before it was signed.

Even J.D. Drew's much-discussed $70 million contract looks far more reasonable than that of Lackey when viewed through the prism of his production. Drew posted a WAR of 4.3 in his final season in Los Angeles and a WAR of 2.9 the season before that, an average of 3.6. His $14 million average annual salary results in a dollars-per-win of $3.89 million -- still well below what the Red Sox spent for Lackey.

FanGraphs.com, based on an extensive study, has posited that each win-above-replacement was worth $4.5 million on last year's free-agent market -- but those numbers seem a little bit high when you consider that FanGraphs had Drew being worth $21.1 million last season and Jon Lester being worth $28.1 million.

It's probably more reasonable to assume, based on the precedent set last offseason, that teams value wins above replacement at somewhere between $3.5 and $4 million apiece.

Lackey is capable of posting a WAR of 5.0, the type of WAR that would make his $16.5 million annual salary worthwhile. He is, however, 31 years old, and he hasn't posted a WAR of even 4.0 in either of the last two seasons.

Epstein, for his part, can afford to overspend for players. His budget dwarfs that of most of the teams in the major leagues. But when a luxury-tax hit of $2 million becomes so much of an issue that the Red Sox tradedaway a 26-year-old first baseman with an elite defensive glove, it shows that the resources aren't endless.

Unless Lackey pitches like a Cy Young Award candidate throughout the length of his contract, Epstein and the Red Sox probably overpaid.

Lefty Doubront must get more consistent

2010-01-21T11:53:00.003-05:00

Back for his second go-round with the Red Sox's offseason rookie program, Felix Doubront is coming off an impressive year in which he compiled a 3.35 ERA in 26 starts at Double-A Portland. The lefty then made four appearances in the Venezuelan Winter League, compiling a 1.74 ERA in 10 1/3 innings pitched.

He's put himself in position to have a shot at the starting rotation at Triple-A Pawtucket next season and even a shot at a late-season call-up -- as long as he can get to be more consistent.

Doubront saw his walk rate jump from 5.2 percent to 9.7 percent last season, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio tumbled from 4.93 to 1.94. If he's going to succeed at Triple-A and at the major-league level, that number is going to have to start going the other way.

Here's the good news: Doubront didn't turn 22 years old until after the season ended, meaning he's younger even than Japanese phenom Junichi Tazawa. He still has time to develop.

"As a young player in Double-A, he more than held his own last year," Red Sox director of player development Mike Hazen said on Wednesday. "He's got to show more consistency, especially with the strike-throwing. He gets himself in a lot of trouble that he probably shouldn't. That will come with time and repeating the delivery and throwing more strikes, especially early in the count, because he has stuff to get guys out even more consistently than he showed."

Doubront was the only pitcher on the 40-man roster who did not earn a call-up to Boston last September thanks in large part to his heavy workload. He threw fewer innings last season (121) than he had the season before (129 1/3), but he actually faced more hitters in the process, a sign of a pitcher who has to labor through tough spots.

He also saw the length of an average start drop from close to five innings down to less than 4 2/3.

"We expect him to probably haul more innings, which means being a little bit more efficient with his pitch counts," Hazen said. "We're not going to let him go out there and throw 150 pitches in a minor-league game. If he wants to get through six and seven innings, he's got to be able to show us he can do it in 90 to 100 to 105 pitches."

Minor-league catchers jostle for position

2010-01-20T18:57:00.002-05:00

The Red Sox have three catchers -- Luis Exposito, Tim Federowicz and Mark Wagner -- steadily climbing the minor-league ladder with a real shot at making an impact in the major leagues within a couple of years. Catching has always been a defensive-minded position, a position that has as much to do with working with pitchers as producing at the plate.

Red Sox fans are well aware of Jason Varitek's fanatic belief that his defense and his work with pitchers takes priority of his work on his swing. Even when Varitek was hitting the ball -- and it's easy to forget now that he OPS'ed better than .850 in back-to-back-to-back seasons earlier this decade -- his biggest contribution to the Red Sox was widely believed to be his ability to play defense and to work with pitchers.

It might be surprising, then, to hear what it'll take for one of the three to separate himself from the pack in the next couple of years, at least according to director of player development Mike Hazen on Wednesday: "The ability to perform offensively."

It might say something about the confidence the Red Sox have in the defensive ability of each of their three young catchers that they're going to insist on offensive production out of whoever ends up earning regular playing time at Fenway Park.

"Every catcher you look at at the major-league level usually shows some sort of degree of an ability defensively -- throwing, running a game, that type of stuff," Hazen said while meeting with reporters at the rookie program. "You go and look at any major-league catcher that, even in the big leagues, 'Oh, he only hit .220,' but they all hit in the minor leagues. Those guys, if they're going to be everyday catchers, they have to produce offensively."

If that's the case, Exposito would seem to have the inside track.

The 23-year-old, a 31st-round draft pick back in 2005, OPS'ed .778 in a season split between Single-A Salem and Double-A Portland. In 97 plate appearances with the Sea Dogs, Exposito hit .337 with an OPS of .860. His power numbers went down -- he hit 21 home runs in 2008 but only nine in 2009 despite similar playing time -- but that didn't discourage Red Sox evaluators.

"He's got tremendous raw power," Hazen said. "He might have the best righthanded raw power in our system. From that standpoint, it's a very intriguing package he brings to the table.

About the only downside for Exposito was an on-base percentage that didn't separate itself much from his batting average. In his 97 plate appearances in Portland, the catcher walked just four times.

"Theo (Epstein) said that plate discipline is one of the factors that can separate you," the catcher said, "so I'm definitely going to work on that and try to live up to expectations that the organization has for me."

Said Hazen, "He's got to continue to work on refining his plate discipline, approach, managing his at-bats. That's still the biggest thing we're going to impress upon him."

Federowicz and Wagner didn't put up the type of offensive numbers Exposito did. Federowicz -- pronounced Fed-ur-OH-vich -- OPS'ed .825 in his two stops last season but saw his numbers dip quite a bit when he jumped from Single-A Greenville to Single-A Salem. Wagner hit just .214 with an OPS of .619 in more than 150 at-bats after his promotion to Triple-A Pawtucket.

At this stage, though, it's all about getting at-bats.

Trying to juggle three catchers in a minor-league system isn't the easiest thing in the world. The Red Sox don't want to wear down their catchers them by asking them to get behind the plate for 120 or 130 games, but they also don't want to split time so evenly that development gets stunted.

That's why Exposito played for the Mesa Solar Sox of the Arizona Fall League and why Wagner spent part of his winter playing for Gigantes del Cibao in the Dominican Republic.

"We don't catch our catchers every day in the minor leagues," Hazen said. "The wear and tear is extremely difficult. They usually end up with about 350 plate appearances instead of the 500 a typical everyday player would get."

The three catchers likely will start the season at different levels in the minor-league system: Wagner at Triple-A, Exposito at Double-A, Federowicz at Single-A. As the weeks go by and promotions become necessary, however, the Red Sox will have to figure out how best to divide up the playing time. Exposito and Federowicz already overlapped in Salem, and they likely will do so again this season in Portland.

"It gets very challenging," Hazen said. "Everyone always says that it's a great problem to have, but it's a tough problem to manage. It's a challenge. We need to make sure those guys are able to catch four or five days a week and get those (at-bats) in. We always pick it up with the (designated hitter) at-bats for those guys, but we need to get them time behind the plate."

That's the only way, after all, the Red Sox will determine whether any of those three will be able to succeed Varitek and Victor Martinez as a starting catcher in Boston.

"Those two guys are tremendous catchers that have tremendous tools," Exposito said. "We're all after the ultimate goal to make it to the big leagues. Professionalism, the professionalism of myself, that's all I can worry about."

Running the bases with the Red Sox

2010-01-20T07:13:00.000-05:00

The play looked fairly innocuous at the time.

Mike Lowell -- the same Mike Lowell who ran last season as if he was dragging a parachute behind him -- surprised everyone by breaking for third in the second inning of a mid-May game against the Toronto Blue Jays. He'd taken a healthy lead off second base and didn't draw a glance from the pitcher, so he decided on his own to take a shot at third.

Lowell surprised everyone, that is, except J.D. Drew, the runner on first base who broke for second base just as Lowell broke for third. When Jeff Bailey singled to shallow left field, Lowell scored -- and Drew coasted into third base. When George Kottaras followed with a fly ball to left field, Drew scored the second run of the inning.

Had Drew not been paying attention to Lowell, he only would have made it to second base on Bailey's single. He then might or might not have made it to third base on Kottaras' fly ball -- and he certainly would have been stranded when Jacoby Ellsbury lined to first base to end the inning.

You guessed it: The Red Sox ended up winning that game, 2-1.

"We scored a run and J.D. was able to get to third on a ball that probably neither of us (otherwise) advances two bases on," Lowell said after the game. "Georgie got a sac fly, and it ended up being something that worked out for us."

Running the bases doesn't have as much impact as hitting or pitching or even playing defense. Running the bases, though, can turn the tide of a handful of games over the course of a season and even can be the difference between a win and a loss.

With that in mind, here's a look at how the Red Sox have fared -- and might fare next season -- in terms of their baserunning.

(Both BillJamesOnline.net and Baseball-Reference.com compile baserunning statistics. The below statistics are from the latter.)

Going from first to third on a single
American League average: 27.0 percent
2008 lineup: 22.2 percent
2009 lineup: 24.7 percent
2010 lineup*: 24.7 percent

The best: Kevin Youkilis (12 for 32, 37.5 percent)
The worst: David Ortiz (2 for 27, 7.4 percent)

New acquisitions Adrian Beltre (50 percent) and Mike Cameron (41.9 percent) both went from corner to corner last season at an above-average clip. Marco Scutaro, on the other hand, had a brutal year in that area: He got to third base just four times in 38 opportunities, or 10.5 percent.

Scoring from second on a single
American League average: 58.1 percent
2008 lineup: 58.0 percent
2009 lineup: 55.1 percent
2010 lineup*: 54.0 percent

The best: Jason Bay (11 for 12, 91.7 percent)
The worst: Ortiz (2 for 16, 12.5 percent)

Seeing as how picking on Jacoby Ellsbury has become the unofficial theme of the Red Sox offseason, it's interesting to note that the speedster scored from second just 46.2 percent of the time a season ago, third-worst among Red Sox regulars. Ortiz and Jason Varitek were the only other regulars to fail to score from second base on at least 50 percent of their opportunities last season.

Much like his fielding numbers, Ellsbury's baserunning numbers -- his stolen bases aside, of course -- seem to indicate he's not taking full advantage of his speed.

Scoring from first on a double
American League average: 37.9 percent
2008 lineup: 27.5 percent
2009 lineup: 27.2 percent
2010 lineup*: 35.3 percent

The best: Nick Green (5 for 7, 71.4 percent)
The worst: Ortiz/Varitek (0 for 7/0 for 3, 0 percent)

It shouldn't be that surprising that Ortiz is at the bottom of most of these lists. He is, after all, Big Papi. But as the Red Sox try to figure out how often to play him next season, his inability to do anything on the basepaths -- the way he clogs the bases, if you will -- might be a tiny factor in their decision.

Ellsbury? He scored from first on a double just twice on nine opportunities last season, again the third-lowest rate among Red Sox regulars. This time, though, some context is in order: If Ellsbury singles to lead off the game and Dustin Pedroia lofts a high fly ball off the Green Monster -- Pedroia hit 10 first-inning doubles last season -- Ellsbury is going to have to hold at second base until he knows the fly ball won't be caught.

There's little excuse for Ellsbury not being able to score from second on a single more often than he does, but failing to score from first on a double seems to be a function of the ballpark in which he plays.

* based on 2009 numbers

Patriots-Jets: Who would you take?

2010-01-19T16:52:00.005-05:00

It already was a hot topic in this area last week and only will be a hotter topic this week now that the New York Jets have advanced to play the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC title game on Sunday: Are the Jets better positioned on defense going forward -- defense, of course, being the bread and butter of Bill Belichick -- than the Patriots?

A position-by-position breakdown seems to indicate that, yes, the Jets had a significantly more talented defense this season and will have a significantly more talented defense going forward, especially as the Patriots grapple with the uncertain situation surrounding Vince Wilfork and the Jets anticipating the return of their defense almost intact next season:

(In parentheses are the regular-season performance rankings by the film analysts at ProFootballFocus.com.)

Nose tackle
Jets: Sione Pouha (plus-15.2)
Patriots: Vince Wilfork (plus-9.6)
Rex Ryan's defense appears not to have lost much since the injury to Kris Jenkins. Pouha is a terrific run-stopper who can shed blocks quickly enough to make tackles. Wilfork, however, still is a Pro Bowler and one of the top nose tackles in the NFL. Edge: Patriots.

Defensive end
Jets: Shaun Ellis (minus-0.7), Marques Douglas (minus-2.7)
Patriots: Jarvis Green (minus-14.1), Ty Warren (plus-3.9)
Green had a chance to seize control of the job at defensive end upon the trade of Richard Seymour but too often found himself pushed off the line on running plays and unable to get close to the quarterback on passing plays. When Wilfork moved to end in the Patriots' playoff game, it was Green who went to the bench with Mike Wright playing the nose. In a 3-4 defense, the defensive linemen first and foremost must occupy blockers to give the linebackers a chance to make plays, and Douglas and Ellis did that better than Green and Warren. Edge: Jets.

Outside linebacker
Jets: Calvin Pace (plus-6.9), Bryan Thomas (plus-11.8)
Patriots: Tully Banta-Cain (plus-21.8), Adalius Thomas (minus-8.5)
As disappointing as Thomas was, that's how surprising Banta-Cain was. Pace, on the other hand, played a well-rounded game against both the run and the pass, even finishing with eight sacks, while Thomas thrived as a run-stopper off the edge, finishing the regular season with more than 50 tackles for the third time in four seasons. Edge: Jets.

Inside linebacker
Jets: David Harris (plus-6.8), Bart Scott (plus-4.7)
Patriots: Gary Guyton (minus-2.2), Jerod Mayo (minus-3.5)
No contest. While Mayo endured something of a disappointing second season, Harris emerged as a star alongside the veteran Scott, an import from Ryan's Baltimore Ravens defenses. Scott plugged the middle of the line on runs and Harris thrived both in blitzes and in pass coverage, finishing with 5 1/2 sacks, three pass break-ups and two interceptions. Edge: Jets.

Cornerback
Jets: Darrelle Revis (plus-29.1), Lito Sheppard (minus-1.7)
Patriots: Leigh Bodden (plus-6.8), Shawn Springs (plus-1.7)
Quarterbacks just don't throw at Revis. The Patriots haven't had anyone like that since the departure of Ty Law. Edge: Jets.

Strong safety
Jets: Jim Leonhard (plus-5.1)
Patriots: James Sanders (minus-1.4)
Leonhard, another Ryan import from Baltimore, had an uneven season against the run but broke up five passes and thrived in deep pass coverage. Sanders lost his job to Brandon McGowan early in the season and won it back down the stretch, finishing with his lowest tackle total (48) in three seasons. Edge: Jets.

Free safety
Jets: Kerry Rhodes (plus-11.0)
Patriots: Brandon Meriweather (plus-5.0)
Despite Meriweather's selection to the Pro Bowl, the last memory one will take into the offseason will be the way Ray Rice blew past him on his 83-yard run on the first play from scrimmage in the first round of the playoffs. Meriweather intercepted five passes and forced two fumbles, but his play generally was more inconsistent than it should have been. Rhodes, on the other hand, didn't have a particularly bad game all season, and he broke up 13 passes in his center-field role for the Jets. Edge: Push.

***

Let's revisit the question: Of the Jets' and Patriots' top 11 defenders, who would you take? In other words, if the rosters were combined, who of the Patriots' defenders would start?

Wilfork would start at nose. Warren would start at end with either Douglas or Ellis at the other end. Banta-Cain would be a third-down pass-rusher behind Pace, probably. Bodden would start at corner opposite Revis. Meriweather might -- might -- start at free safety instead of Rhodes, but that's a toss-up at best.

The Jets' top-ranked defense wasn't a fluke, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. If quarterback Mark Sanchez takes a reasonable step forward in his second season, the Patriots are going to have some serious trouble hanging onto the AFC East title.

How often should Ortiz play?

2010-01-19T06:59:00.001-05:00

"David's a big -- I don't want to say question mark because he's not a question mark, but when David hits, we're different. Same thing when he doesn't hit. When you have a guy who is a full-time DH, he has to hit.'' -- Red Sox manager Terry Francona

Talk about disparate numbers: Here's David Ortiz before and after the All-Star break last season, the most difficult season of his Red Sox career:

Before: .733 OPS
After: .866 OPS

Talk about disparate numbers: Here's David Ortiz against lefthanded pitching and against righthanded pitching last season:

LHP: .716 OPS
RHP: .828 OPS

Against lefties, in other words, he was his first-half self. Against righties, he was his second-half self -- a well above-average hitter capable of hitting in the middle of the Red Sox lineup.

The question begs itself: At what point do the Red Sox start considering playing Ortiz only against righthanded pitchers and sitting him against lefties?

The answer: When a better option presents itself.

The Red Sox have brought righty Bill Hall and lefty Jeremy Hermida on board to provide a little thump off the bench, and righty Mike Lowell -- if he's not traded, anyway -- and switch-hitter Jason Varitek remain options as well.

Terry Francona will have plenty of choices as he makes out his lineups against both righties and lefties this season:

Against righthanded pitching
Hall: .589 last season/.725 career
Hermida: .786 last season/.792 career
Lowell: .784 last season/.798 career
Ortiz: .828 last season/.964 career
Varitek: .666 last season/.759 career

Best option: Ortiz. That seems clear.

Against lefthanded pitching
Hall: .606 last season/.810 career
Hermida: .601 last season/.697 career
Lowell: .867 last season/.850 career
Ortiz: .716 last season/.819 career
Varitek: .807 last season/.828 career

Best option: Lowell. That seems clear, too.

If Lowell is traded, though: Would you believe it's Varitek?

If the goal is to keep Victor Martinez as fresh as possible, it might make sense for him to play first base or serve as designated hitter against lefties as often as possible. If Varitek plays exclusively against lefties, it would mean Ortiz probably would sit against most lefties.

If last season's numbers are to believed, though, replacing Ortiz with Varitek against lefthanded pitchers, either as the catcher with Martinez DH'ing or as the DH himself, would mean a significant upgrade at the plate.

$10 million far from out of line for Papelbon

2010-01-18T12:15:00.000-05:00

Statistics these days certainly can be overwhelming. Wins Above Replacement is a particularly fuzzy stat because it depends on so many factors and is about as easy to calculate as the NFL's quarterback rating. It's easy to say that Jon Lester was worth 6.2 wins to the Red Sox last season while Jonathan Papelbon was worth 1.9, but what does that really mean?

How can you really compare the contribution of a starting pitcher to the contribution of a relief pitcher in a way that makes sense?

Let's figure out a rough but simple measure of pitcher production, then. Every scoreless inning a pitcher throws is a good thing. Every run a pitcher allows is a bad thing. Let's say a pitcher earns one Pitcher Production Point (PPP) for every scoreless inning he pitches, and he loses one PPP for every earned runs run he allows.

A relief pitcher with a 3.00 ERA in 60 innings, for example, would finish with 40 Triple-Ps. A starting pitcher with a 3.00 ERA in 180 innings would finish with 120 Triple-Ps because he would have pitched significantly more effective innings than a relief pitcher with the same ERA.

That's the idea: Just like how hitting .300 over 600 at-bats is more valuable than hitting .300 over 400 at-bats -- there are, after all, 60 more hits involved -- a low ERA is more valuable the more innings a pitcher can pitch. Make sense?

Here are the top five Red Sox pitchers last season as measured in Triple-Ps, including their newest acquisition:

Jon Lester: 126 1/3
Josh Beckett: 121 1/3
John Lackey: 101 1/3
Tim Wakefield: 63 2/3
Jonathan Papelbon: 54

Factoring in salary for 2010 makes the list look a little different:

Lester: $3.75 million
Beckett: $12.1 million
Lackey: $18.7 million
Wakefield: $3.5 million
Papelbon: $10 million?

First things first: It seems clear that Papelbon was less valuable last season than any of the team's front-line starting pitchers. Even Clay Buchholz accumulated 49 Triple-Ps, and he didn't make his first appearance in the major leagues until after the All-Star break. Starting pitchers inherently are more valuable than relief pitchers.

Papelbon finished last season with less than half the production, as measured by Triple-Ps, of Beckett, and he's going to go to arbitration looking for a salary close to what Beckett will earn. Papelbon finished last season with less than half the production of Lester, and he's going to go to arbitration looking for a salary close to three times what Lester will get.

The only salary with which Papelbon might line up is Lackey. He'll earn a little more than half of what Lackey earns after producing a little more than half of what Lackey produced. On the open market, $10 million for Papelbon actually looks relatively reasonable.

But the salary structure of baseball rewards veterans who hit the open market and curtails the earning power of younger players who don't yet have the service time to get to the open market. When you're talking about quantifying the value a player brings to a team, that artificial structure almost becomes irrelevant. No, Papelbon wasn't three times as valuable as Lester was to the Red Sox, but he certainly was just about half as valuable as Lackey was to the Angels.

(For the record, WAR bears that out, too: FanGraphs.com has Lackey compiling a WAR of 3.9 last season. Papelbon, once again, compiled a WAR of 1.9 -- and that was in a relatively bad season by his standards.)

Lester compromised a higher short-term salary for the certainty of $30 million over the next five seasons. That was his decision. Had he chosen to go to arbitration -- he'd be eligible for the first time this season -- he'd have been within his rights to ask for a number similar to the $6.25 million to which Papelbon agreed last season. He's been one of the top pitchers in the American League in each of the last two seasons and the ace of the Red Sox staff.

Lackey, on the other hand, got to the free market and thus will be paid a salary far more commensurate with his value to a team. One can question the deal -- and, given the sport's economic climate, it certainly looks inflated both in years and in value -- but the Red Sox wouldn't be paying Lackey close to $19 million next season if they didn't think they were going to get close to $19 million in value from him.

If the Red Sox believe Lackey's production is worth close to $20 million, Papelbon's production certainly is worth $10 million.

A long journey awaits late-round pick Hassan

2010-01-18T09:12:00.000-05:00

A year ago at this time, not only was Alex Hassan gearing up for his spring semester at Duke, but he was gearing up both to pitch and to play the outfield for the Blue Devils and doing all the work that goes along with playing two ways.

With spring training less than six weeks away, though, Hassan is finishing up as single-minded an offseason as he's ever enjoyed. The Milton, Mass., native was drafted by the Red Sox as a pitcher last June but will be a full-time outfielder when he reports to Fort Myers next month.

"This is really the first time I've been able to concentrate solely on baseball and solely on one position," said Hassan in a conversation before the Boston baseball writers' dinner last week. "Before, it was like, 'Yeah, I have to lift weights, but I also have a bullpen today and I have to pitch a lot.' It was tough to balance those two things. This offseason, I got to really focus -- not only not having school but also having one clear position as what I'm going to do. That's really been beneficial for me this offseason."

Hassan doesn't have nearly the same name recognition as the top Red Sox prospects whose names are bandied about even by those who couldn't pick their faces out of a game program. (He especially doesn't have the same name recognition as another prospect who recently had to make the same type of decision.)

Hassan, a 20th-round pick last June, doesn't enjoy the same chances to make it, either: Mike Lowell came out of the 20th round of the 1995 draft, but only one other player drafted in the same round as Lowell that year ever made an appearance in a major-league game. The vast majority of 20th-round picks flame out before they ever reach the big leagues.

He faces particularly steep odds in a Red Sox system stacked with outfielders. Josh Reddick made his major-league debut last season, and Ryan Kalish isn't far behind him. Che-Hsuan Lin is participating in the Red Sox rookie development program this week in Boston. Ryan Westmoreland and Reymond Fuentes have a ways to go but are expected to be impact players at some point in the future.

That can be intimidating for a player who's not as highly touted as any of the above players. That, though, also can be exciting.

"A big thing with signing with the Red Sox is that they have an outstanding player-development program," he said. "You can just look at the major-league team right now and see how many home-grown guys they have and also see the guys in the organization now that are improving and moving up. I was picked by a team who has a lot of talent, but I was also picked by a team who is really good at developing talent."

He didn't exactly draw the spotlight to himself last week, standing alone against a wall as reporters flocked first to John Lackey and later to John Farrell and Terry Francona. He was barely noticed, let alone recognized -- but he also looked just as in awe of the faces in the same room as he would have been as a teenager at Boston College High School.

But the Red Sox didn't draft him for his ability to attract attention from the media -- a fickle group if there ever was one. The Red Sox drafted him because he hit 17 doubles and accumulated an on-base percentage of .419 during his junior season at Duke and because he struck out more than a batter an inning in his 16 appearances on the mound.

He both pitched and played in the outfield for Orleans of the Cape Cod Baseball League, too, compiling a 1.13 ERA in seven appearances and hitting .289 with a .344 on-base percentage in 114 at-bats.

Once he signed with the Red Sox, though, the Red Sox informed him they wanted him to focus full-time on hitting and playing the outfield. He hit over .328 and OBP'ed .375 in 135 plate appearances split between Single-A Lowell and Single-A Salem, and he then reported to Fort Myers with most of the rest of his draft class for the team's Fall Instructional League program.

All of that work has put himself into position to open his first full season at Single-A Greenville, the first rung on the ladder of full-season minor-league affilates.

"I'm really, really happy I signed when I did," he said. "Had I waited until the signing deadline, I probably wouldn't have gotten that experience, that first taste of professional baseball. Going into my first full professional season, it's good to have an idea of how pro ball works and what the schedule is like and what the grind of the season is like. ...

"I only played 35 or so games, but that will really pay off when I go into my first full season."

He took a couple of weeks off when he got home from Fort Myers -- college teams, after all, get started even earlier than professional teams do -- but threw himself right into his workouts after that. He started hitting again once the calendar turned to January and has been taking swings every day since then. Pat Sandora, the team's strength and conditioning coordinator for the minor leagues, has been his primary contact as he's gone through his offseason workouts.

He met with director of player development Mike Hazen during the Instructional League program in early October to lay out his goals both for the offseason and for the coming season -- goals that can be hard to define at such an early stage of his career. It would be nice if he could hit the ball over the fence a half-dozen times in the early going, but home-run hitters rarely become home-run hitters by focusing too much on that part of their game.

"There are things I'll definitely want to work on and want to do better," he said, "but a lot of this stuff is out of my control. The things I can control are playing hard and working hard. As long as I'm doing that and I continue to work as hard as I possibly can, those things hopefully will take care of themselves and I won't have to sit and worry about what my numbers look like. As long as I come in and play hard every day and work hard throughout the offseason and throughout the year, hopefully, as a result of the hard work, the numbers will get better -- the power, the stuff like that will get better just by working hard.

"That's not something I sit home and am going to worry about or try to force something to happen."

Good pitching beats good hitting

2010-01-17T09:08:00.000-05:00

Those who believe the Red Sox still need another bat in the middle of the lineup make the point that the Red Sox too often were vulnerable against good pitching, too easily beaten by the elite arms in the American League.

In a lot of ways -- even though your small-sample-size alarm should start going off in situations like this -- they're right. Here's how the Red Sox fared last season against the top five opposing pitchers in the American League as ranked by ERA+:

Zack Greinke: 2-for-20 (.100), 0 R in 6 IP, .367 OPS
Felix Hernandez: 7-for-28 (.250), 3 R in 7 IP, .764 OPS
Roy Halladay: 24-for-109 (.220), 9 R in 29 IP, .614 OPS
Justin Verlander: 4-for-28 (.143), 0 R in 8 IP, .440 OPS
CC Sabathia: 17-for-99 (.172), 7 ER in 28 1/3 IP, .467 OPS

Opponents combined for a .641 OPS last season against those five pitchers. The Red Sox managed a .641 OPS last season against just one of them. Most hitters have trouble against elite pitching, but the Red Sox did seem to have more trouble than most.

Let's break it down even farther with the help of the numbers at BillJamesOnline.net, where hitters' statistics are broken down by opposing pitchers' ERA. Here's how each of the Red Sox fared last season against opposing pitchers with a sub-3.50 ERA:

Jason Varitek, C: .480 OPS
Kevin Youkilis, 1B, .642
Dustin Pedroia, 2B: .605
Nick Green, SS: .350
Mike Lowell, 3B: .669
J.D. Drew, RF: .727
Jacoby Ellsbury, CF: .665
Jason Bay, LF: .778
David Ortiz, DH: .766
Roughly calculated average: .631 OPS

Compare that to the expected Opening Day lineup for this season -- still using, of course, last year's statistics:

Victor Martinez, C: .635 OPS
Kevin Youkilis, 1B: .642
Dustin Pedroia, 2B: .605
Marco Scutaro, SS: .881
Adrian Beltre, 3B: .614
J.D. Drew, RF: .727
Mike Cameron, CF: .569
Jacoby Ellsbury, LF: .665
David Ortiz, DH: .766
Roughly calculated average: .678 OPS

Contrary to popular belief, the Red Sox actually will field a team that's better at hitting good pitchers -- again, as defined by a sub-3.50 ERA -- than it was a year ago. Marco Scutaro, for one, was more than twice as productive against good pitchers as Nick Green was.

But is it enough? Just for fun, let's compare it to the Yankees' anticipated Opening Day lineup and how well Joe Girardi's team hits good pitching:

Jorge Posada, C: .842 OPS
Mark Teixeira, 1B: .816
Robinson Cano, 2B: .639
Derek Jeter, SS: .785
Alex Rodriguez, 3B: 1.066
Nick Swisher, RF: .714
Curtis Granderson, CF: .685
Brett Gardner, LF: .727
Nick Johnson, DH: .887
Roughly calculated average: .796

Yeah, there might still be room for the Red Sox to improve.

Lackey used to be a power-hitting outfielder

2010-01-16T10:23:00.002-05:00

John Farrell first met John Lackey a decade ago when the newest Red Sox ace was coming off a National Junior College Athletic Association title with Grayson County College. Farrell wanted to recruit him to play for Oklahoma State but knew he had little chance to do so -- especially after the Angels drafted Lackey in the second round of the June draft.

"I was chasing somebody upstream," Farrell said. "He was long past the thought of going on to (a four-year) school rather than signing a pro contract."

The impression that stuck with Farrell, though, had nothing to do with the way Lackey pitched.

"He was a heck of a hitter," Farrell said.

Lackey pitched and swung a bat as an outfielder as the Vikings won the first of back-to-back NJCAA World Series titles. Lackey didn't participate in the second of those championship runs, however: He by then was climbing from Single-A to Double-A in the Angels' organization and would get to the major leagues two years after that.

Lackey will sit down with Farrell for the first time today to get to know each other and to start to build the relationship necessary for the Red Sox to get the best out of their new pitcher. Lackey worked out at Fenway Park on Thursday and still has some house-hunting to do, but he'll have his first real meeting with his new pitching coach in the meantime.

"I talked to him a little bit today, and we're going to have a meeting tomorrow," Lackey said in a meeting with the media on Thursday night before the Boston baseball writers' dinner. "We're going to start talking about my routines and bounce some ideas off each other."

Farrell isn't exactly going to start off by asserting his own philosophy. Lackey has won more than 100 games and struck out more than 1,200 hitters in his career thus far because he knows what he's doing on the mound.

Still, though, Farrell is considered one of the best pitching coaches in the business for a reason.

"The first and foremost thing will be to listen," Farrell said. "I want to hear from him what his routine entails, what has worked well for him in the past, and I want to do our best to facilitate a plan for him that puts him in the best position to start the season on time and in a very effective way."

One item that will not be discussed? Hitting.

Some might believe that the Red Sox still need one more power bat, but Lackey will not be that bat.

"Not that I'm aware of," Farrell said with a chuckle. "He's an exceptional pitcher and one we're excited to have here, for sure."

Red Sox expect big things from Delcarmen

2010-01-15T11:22:00.000-05:00

The Red Sox have lost Takashi Saito and Billy Wagner from the bullpen they took into the American League Division Series and haven't added any name bigger than Boof Bonser, a former starter with a live arm who seemed to wash out with the Minnesota Twins.

Pitching coach John Farrell, though, has one more move in mind.

"One of the biggest acquisitions we could make is getting Manny Delcarmen back to the form he was for the two and a half years prior to the second half of the '09 season," Farrell said on Thursday night before the Boston baseball writers' dinner. "He was one of the top four or five middle relievers in all of baseball. He's a key part of our bullpen, and getting him back to the form he pitched with for that two-and-a-half-year stretch will go a long way toward putting him in that same type of category of performer that he was."

The disastrous way Delcarmen finished last season does obscure the way Delcarmen had pitched for the Red Sox the two years previous. Only six middle relievers had a lower opponents' OPS than Delcarmen in 2007 and 2008 combined:

(min. 80 IP, max. 20 saves)
1. Carlos Marmol, .508 OPS
2. Russ Springer, .550
3. Heath Bell, .567
4. Joba Chamberlain, .585
5. Hideki Okajima, .586
6. Rafael Soriano, .586
7. Manny Delcarmen, .590

Only four relief pitchers -- Marmol, Soriano, Springer and Pat Neshek -- limited opponents to a lower batting average (.197) in that two-year span.

Delcarmen didn't start the 2009 season off too badly, either -- as evidenced by the 0.00 ERA he took into early May. He didn't allow his first earned run of the season until his 12th appearance, and he didn't allow his third earned run of the season until his 20th. His ERA still was 1.07 on June 9 and as low as 1.93 on July 8.

That's when it all started going downhill. Delcarmen allowed two runs and took the loss against Oakland on July 28 and allowed two more runs in the ridiculous 18-10 game at Baltimore four days later. The low point of his season came in September when he allowed four earned runs in two-thirds of an inning -- and that came on the heels of an appearance in which he allowed two earned runs without recording an out.

The Red Sox had virtually no choice but to leave him off the ALDS roster in favor of Paul Byrd.

That doesn't mean, though, they've given up on him.

"A lot of times, the most recent outings are the most fresh in guys' minds and how they draw confidence," Farrell said. "It'll be important for us to get him into a confident state as we get into spring training and continue to build on that."

Delcarmen and his agent disclosed in December that he'd been pitching through fatigue in his shoulder in the second half, something he hadn't told the team during the season. It couldn't have been a stunning disclosure after he'd made 73 appearances the previous season -- but if he'd told the team ahead of time, they might have made the decision to shut him down sooner.

Either way, with a winter's worth of rest behind him, the righty will have a chance to assert himself once again as the team's best weapon against mix-and-match lineups: In his career, righthanded hitters actually have a higher OPS against him (.719) than lefties (.664).

"There was some fatigue that set on him with his shoulder toward the end of the season, and that's what kept him off the postseason roster," Farrell said. "It wasn't to the extent of a major injury, but it was enough to affect the results in certain outings. At that point, it became a little bit of a confidence issue. He didn't have the need for any repair or anything like that.

"He's still Manny Delcarmen, the guy that was very effective for us, and we anticipate and expect him to get back to that level."

Hermida, Magadan getting to know each other

2010-01-15T09:10:00.000-05:00

Newly acquired Red Sox outfielder Jeremy Hermida had his first session with hitting coach Dave Magadan on Thursday. It was far too early for Magadan to start offering any tips. Instead, it was a pretty basic getting-to-know-you session to kick off what the Red Sox have to hope will be a productive relationship.

"I'm sure he's seen some film and watched me swing," Hermida said on Thursday night before the Boston baseball writers' dinner. "I've talked to him on the phone, but getting a chance to shake his hand and meet him face-to-face is always good. We did that today -- and talked hitting, talking about things I think about, things I go through, and the process that goes on with my swing so he can learn my swing inside and out."

Magadan now will be charged with turning Hermida back into the hitter so many believed he would be.

The former first-round draft pick never lived up to his potential with the Marlins, hitting 18 home runs with an OPS of .870 three seasons ago but seeing a dramatic downturn in his numbers after that. His slugging percentage in 2009 (.392) was more than 100 points lower than his slugging percentage in 2007 (.501).

He's still young enough -- he won't turn 26 until the end of the month -- that the Red Sox are willing to invest in him as a fourth outfielder with tremendous upside. To tap into that upside, though, he and Magadan have to figure out what's been going wrong.

One session wasn't enough to do that, certainly.

"We haven't gotten there yet," Hermida said. "That'll probably be a little bit in spring training. But I'm all for it. If you ever stop learning this game, you've got a big problem. No matter where you're at, going into spring training, every year, everybody's got something to learn."

One thing the Red Sox do is preach patience at the plate, making pitchers work, grinding out at-bats. In talking about Jacoby Ellsbury last season, Magadan said he doesn't want his hitters swinging at the first pitch unless they have a history of doing damage on the first pitch. Kevin Youkilis has a green light to swing at the first pitch because he typically does so much damage. Mike Lowell, too, is a terrific first-pitch hitter. Ellsbury, on the other hand, needed to be more patient because he wasn't doing enough damage on the first pitch.

Hermida came through the minor leagues as a patient hitter. In a full season at Double-A as a 21-year-old, he accumulated more walks (111) than strikeouts (89), a remarkable feat for a hitter so young. He routinely averages more than 4.0 pitches per plate appearance and certainly fits the grind-it-out identity of the Red Sox lineup.

"I've been a guy that's walked a good amount in my career," he said. "I've gotten away from that at certain times, trying to learn to be an aggressive hitter. Sometimes I've been actually too patient, and that's gotten me in trouble a little bit. But coming up through the minor leagues and my first couple of years, I've been a guy that's been a pretty good on-base percentage guy. I know that's what they preach around here, and I think that's part of the reason why, hopefully, I'm going to fit in around here."

But Hermida actually is a terrific first-pitch hitter, too. He has a career OPS of 1.051 when swinging at the first pitch, more than 100 points higher than the major-league average. His career OPS within the first three pitches of an at-bat (.842) is significantly higher than his career OPS beyond the third pitch of an at-bat (.708).

(One would expect any hitter to have more success early in the count than later on the count. The above discrepancy, though, is even more pronounced than that of Youkilis -- .924 early in the count, .843 late in the count.)

Hermida is a patient hitter who, like most, does most of his damage early in the count. That might explain why his swinging percentages have swung so wildly back and forth since his first full season:

Out-of-zone swing percentage
2006: 19 percent
2007: 22.2 percent
2008: 27.8 percent
2009: 23.9 percent

Zone swing percentage
2006: 64.1 percent
2007: 64.2 percent
2008: 59.6 percent
2009: 61.7 percent

Between 2007 and 2008, Hermida swung at more pitches out of the strike zone and fewer pitches in the strike zone. It shouldn't be surprising his production nose-dived the way it did.

Finding a happy medium is an ongoing process.

"I don't know if there's necessarily a rule of thumb to follow," he said. "If there was, I think everybody would do it. It's a tough thing, and Mags, he's got some guys on this team like Youk and (Dustin) Pedroia that do it pretty well, so, hopefully, I can pick a little bit off them and use it for myself."

Farrell: Papelbon to stick with what worked

2010-01-14T16:44:00.006-05:00

Jonathan Papelbon made a subtle but important change to the mechanics of his delivery midway through last season, allowing his hands to fall to his belt buckle when he came set rather than holding them rigidly at his chest the way he had the first half of the season.

Red Sox pitching coach John Farrell said Thursday before the annual awards dinner hosted by the Boston chapter of the BBWAA that Papelbon will start next season with the same mechanics with which he finished last season.

"At this point, he'll stay with what he did in the second half," Farrell said. "The adjustment made in spring training was to help get his legs a little bit more actively involved in his delivery and to take some of the stress off his shoulder. As he made the switch with his hands, the starting point of his hands and how that movement works in his delivery, we saw him regain the well-above-average fastball command that he needs."

It paid dividends. Check out his numbers up until July 28, the day of the implosion against the Oakland Athletics that seemed to prompt the change, and after July 28:

April 7-July 28: 2.09 ERA, 1.372 WHIP, .670 OPS against
July 29-Oct. 4: 1.44 ERA, 0.920 WHIP, .466 OPS against

(This again is where it's important not to make too much out of the Game 3 disaster against the Los Angeles Angels. A 25-inning sample is far more telling than a 25-pitch sample.)

Compare that to the seasons past in which Papelbon had pitched
2008: 2.34 ERA, 0.952 WHIP, .561 OPS against
2007: 1.85 ERA, 0.771 WHIP, .463 OPS against
2006: 0.92 ERA, 0.776 WHIP, .465 OPS against

Suffice to say, Papelbon looked far more like himself in the final two months of last season than he did before he made the mechanical change.

The change in mechanics raises eyebrows, of course, in that the Red Sox have consistently made an effort to protect the shoulder of their All-Star closer. Papelbon almost abandoned closing three years ago for the starting rotation because the once-a-week routine of starting would put less stress on his shoulder than pitching on back-to-back days out of the bullpen.

The Red Sox still are trying to find the best way to minimize wear on the shoulder of Papelbon while, of course, maximizing effectiveness. That process goes back to the start of his major-league career and has had several permutations over the years -- the most recent being the decision last spring to put his hands at his chest when coming set.

"With that change came a little more inconsistency with location," Farrell said, "but we saw the life of the fastball pick up. To counteract and find that balance again of command plus life, he went back to what he did at the end of '08 -- and the numbers directly show that, as well."

That doesn't mean, Farrell insisted, that Papelbon will be more at risk for a trip to the disabled list this spring than he was last spring.

"By using this year what he finished the year with last year, we don't think it's going to be cause for a red flag: 'This is going to put more stress on your shoulder, and we've got to be careful,'" Farrell said. "There's not that involved."

Daniel Bard: "My goal will be to be the best reliever I can be"

2010-01-13T14:49:00.006-05:00

The Red Sox did all they could to make Jonathan Papelbon a starting pitcher, even going to spring training with him in that role after a rookie season in which he'd accumulated a 0.92 ERA out of the bullpen.

The Red Sox did all they could to make Justin Masterson a starter, too, stretching him out in spring training a year ago and only sending him back to the bullpen after Daisuke Matsuzaka came off the disabled list for the first time. When Masterson was traded to Cleveland, he went right into the Indians' starting rotation and even struck out 12 in a complete-game gem in his final start of the season.

Masterson and Papelbon both have the workhorse frame necessarily to be successful starting pitchers. Standing 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-6, respectively, both have the necessary physical traits to withstand the grind of 35 starts and 200 innings in a season.

Since starting pitchers inherently are more valuable than relief pitchers simply because they pitch more innings, the Red Sox did all they could for as long as they could to keep the option open of putting both pitchers in their starting rotations.

That hasn't been the case, though, with Daniel Bard.

Much like Masterson and Papelbon, the 6-foot-4, 200-pound Bard began his ascent in the Red Sox organization as a starting pitcher. He was a starter for three seasons at North Carolina and was seen as a starter long-term -- that is, until he turned in a 7.08 ERA in 22 starts in his professional debut in 2007.

The Red Sox then sent Bard off to the Hawaiian Winter League to get in some work as a relief pitcher. Upon his return, he compiled a 1.51 ERA in 46 appearances split between Single-A and Double-A in 2008, striking out more than one-third of the hitters he faced.

At that point, the Red Sox seemed to abandon the idea of making the live-armed righty a starting pitcher, fast-tracking him to the major leagues as their next power-armed reliever.

It's not as though the Red Sox need another starting pitcher next season. The addition of John Lackey means Terry Francona will go into spring training with six starters expected to be healthy and ready to go, and Bard will have far more of a chance to make an impact out of the bullpen than he would have as a starter.

It's curious, though, that a team that put so much effort into making starting pitchers out of Masterson and Papelbon -- even, in both cases, after they'd had success as relievers at the major-league level -- hasn't done the same with Bard.

"I haven’t talked to the team about it at all," Bard said on Wednesday, reached by phone while en route to the site in Georgia where he'll get married on Saturday. "As far as I know, I’m a reliever, and I’ll prepare that way. But the changes I’ve made and the things I’ve learned over the past two or three years, they’ve made me a lot better of a pitcher and could translate to being either a starter or a reliever. A lot of it is just mentality. If the day came when I was called on to start again, I think I could handle it, for sure. I would be up to the challenge.

"Right now, I’m a reliever, and I’m happy to be where I’m at. Until I hear something different, my goal will be to be the best reliever I can be. ... I don’t see it happening in the near future, but you never know."

Getting the ball to Randy Moss

2010-01-12T12:26:00.001-05:00

"When you get off to a bad start as a quarterback in the National Football League, there's two things, of course, you can do: You can get really conservative and worry about making a mistake, or you go out there and you toughen up and be aggressive and tell your guys, 'I might throw six today. Just be ready.'"
-- Phil Simms, CBS

Analysts predictably were all over Randy Moss after the Patriots' season-ending loss to the Ravens on Sunday, a game in which one of the best big-play wide receivers in the NFL did next to nothing in an offense that already was missing its most prolific wide receiver.

Some of the blame, though, has to fall on the quarterback throwing him the ball. If the Patriots are to remain an elite team going forward, Tom Brady simply has to find a way to get the ball to Moss even if opposing teams are scheming to stop him.

Moss can't just be a decoy receiver. Moss caught more passes for 40 yards or more than any receivers in the NFL other than DeSean Jackson, Andre Johnson and Miles Austin, but he only seemed to be able to go deep against teams without elite safeties.

If Brady isn't going to throw to Moss down the field, he isn't going to throw to anyone down the field -- and he certainly didn't on Sunday.

After a slow start to the season in which he averaged fewer than 10 yards per completion in each of his first two games, Brady averaged 10 or more yards per completion in each of the Patriots' final 14 games, including a loss at Miami in which Brady hit Moss deep downfield in the first quarter and averaged 18.5 yards per completion.

On Sunday against Ed Reed the Ravens, Brady averaged 6.7 yards per completion -- by far his lowest number of the season.

It wasn't a matter of not throwing the ball. It was a matter of not throwing the ball anywhere near Reed -- and that's where his connection with Moss starts to get more than a little scrutiny.

Brady threw the ball in the area of Reed three times in the first quarter, the third being the pass for Sam Aiken that Dominique Foxworth broke up and Reed plucked out of the air, the second of the three interceptions Brady threw on Sunday.

From that point on, he just did not throw at Reed.

Only once the rest of the way -- a total of 39 pass attempts if you include plays nullified in some way by penalty -- did Brady throw the ball even close to the Ravens' ball-hawking safety. Moss caught just five passes in the game, but the only one that could be considered a deep ball came in the final two minutes when Reed was content to sit back in a prevent defense and allow Moss to operate underneath him.

Other than that? Here's what the Brady-to-Moss connection produced:
* In the second quarter, Moss had breathing room in the back of the end zone with Reed four or five yards away from him, but Brady threw the ball away rather than take the chance;
* In the third quarter, Moss curled back toward the sidelines, well in front of Reed, and caught a pass at the first-down marker for 14 yards;
* Later in the third quarter, Moss caught short, quick passes for six yards, five yards and four yards, respectively.

That's it. Statisticians said Brady threw the ball in the direction of Moss seven times on Sunday, but two of those attempts were throw-aways either at Moss' feet or well over his head. In terms of passes with actual intention, Sam Aiken and Sammy Morris were targeted just as much as Moss was.

Even on Reed's interception, Brady was throwing the ball to Aiken. Moss just happened to be on the same side of field as Aiken, giving Reed an opportunity to get over quickly and snatch the deflected pass out of the air.

(Just to be clear: Aiken had never had more than 11 receptions in an entire season before injuries and ineffectiveness forced him into an expanded role with the Patriots this year. Only once before this season had Aiken ever caught more than two passes in an NFL game.)

This isn't a "Good pitching always beats good hitting" situation. Hall of Fame-caliber wide receivers ought to be able to compete with Hall of Fame-caliber safeties. San Diego's Vincent Jackson certainly found his share of seams against Reed when the Chargers met the Ravens in Week 2.

That means Moss has to find ways to get open against safeties like Reed -- but that also means Brady has to trust Moss to come away with the ball even when he's going up against Reed.

Automatic outs in the Red Sox lineup

2010-01-11T17:57:00.000-05:00

The Red Sox, conventional wisdom has it, have upgraded their defense while allowing their offense to get a little bit worse. Mike Cameron has replaced Jason Bay. Adrian Beltre has replaced Mike Lowell. The Red Sox might prevent more runs than they did a year ago, but they're not going to score as many runs.

Well, maybe.

The worst thing a player can do at the plate, after all, is make an out. The fewer outs a team makes, the more opportunities it will have to score runs. A home run tends to do the most damage, but the reason walks have become en vogue is because teams have started to realize that a walk beats virtually any result that involves making an out.

(The only exception might be a sacrifice fly or squeeze bunt that wins a game in the bottom of the ninth. Some might argue that a sacrifice fly trumps a walk with a runner on third and less than two outs -- but while a sacrifice fly plates one run and otherwise lets the air out of a rally, a walk puts another runner on base and makes a crooked-number inning more likely.)

And taking a backwards look at the Red Sox lineup -- measuring players' propensity to make outs rather than players' propensity to hit doubles or triples or home runs -- tells an interesting story:

2008
Ellsbury, .685 outs per at-bat
Pedroia, .668
Ortiz, .686
Youkilis, .605
Drew, .631
Bay, .635
Lowell, .715
Varitek, .701
Green, .744
Total: .669

2009 (with 2008 stats)
Ellsbury, .685 outs per at-bat
Pedroia, .668
Martinez, .644
Youkilis, .605
Ortiz, .686
Cameron, .682
Drew, .631
Beltre, .740
Scutaro, .649
Total: .664

(The American League average last season was .693.)

You can look at this a couple of ways:

1. The Red Sox probably are going to make outs at a lower clip than they did a year ago -- not significantly so, but the rate will be lower nonetheless. For all of the hand-wringing about how Theo Epstein has a worse offense next year than he had last year, well, his lineup has the potential to keep the line moving at an even better rate than it did last year.

2. The Red Sox don't have the black holes in their lineup that they had a year ago.

The biggest issue the Red Sox had a year ago was the lack of depth in their lineup. Once an opposing pitcher got past Jason Bay, he could cruise through the bottom third of the lineup. Lowell, Jason Varitek and Nick Green all averaged better than 0.7 outs per plate appearance a year ago.

(This figure does include double plays as well as sacrifice bunts and sacrifice flies. Double plays skew the numbers a little bit given that they, like RBIs, depend on whether runners are on base, but even Lowell -- the Red Sox leader last season with 24 GIDPs -- saw double plays account for a tiny fraction of his 346 outs.)

Of the hitters expected to start for the Red Sox on Opening Day next year, only Beltre averaged better than 0.7 outs per plate appearance last season -- and the potential exists for Beltre to see his numbers improve thanks to his move from Safeco Field to Fenway Park.

Pitchers won't get a break with the Red Sox lineup. No one other than Beltre can reasonably be expected to make outs at an above-average rate. Marco Scutaro is an enormous upgrade on Green even if his numbers regress from his career highs a year ago. Victor Martinez is an enormous upgrade on Varitek. Cameron is no Bay when it comes to avoiding outs, but he's still above average in that department.

Most importantly, as a team, the Red Sox lineup of a year ago got out more often than the Red Sox lineup of next year likely will. Backwards thinking sometimes can tell a fascinating story.

Patriots' dynasty already over

2010-01-11T10:09:00.004-05:00

As has been the case after every season-ending loss over the last five seasons, fans and writers are declaring an end to the Patriots' era of dominance. One reporter -- at least, his presence in the postgame press conference identified him as such -- asked Tom Brady immediately after the loss, "How proud are you that many people consider this team the team of the decade?"

The Patriots might still be the team of the decade -- though a Super Bowl title by the Colts would wrench that title away the same way the Yankees did from the Red Sox with their World Series title in October.

But the era of dominance -- the dynasty, if you will -- ended the moment John Lynch intercepted Tom Brady's deep, desperate heave in the direction of long-forgotten wide receiver Andre' Davis on a mid-January night in Denver in 2005.

The dynasty ended as soon as other teams started winning Super Bowls.

The high-flying Patriots of 2007 had little in common -- coach and quarterback aside -- with the Patriots that were winning Super Bowls earlier this decade. The Patriots that lost to Baltimore on Sunday -- again, coach and quarterback aside -- had almost nothing in common with the Patriots that were winning Super Bowls earlier this decade.

A look at the roster of the Patriots' roster from 2004 makes that obvious. Tully Banta-Cain was a second-year reserve. Jarvis Green was a part-time contributor on the defensive line. Dan Koppen was a second-year starter at center, and Matt Light was a fourth-year left tackle. Stephen Neal was on the roster but wasn't a starter yet. Ty Warren and Vince Wilfork both were emerging as stars but weren't necessarily there yet.

Kevin Faulk was -- well, Kevin Faulk was a multifaceted weapon out of the backfield who could be depended upon in any situation. Some things never change.

The Patriots have maintained their core better than any NFL team this decade -- and for good reason -- but the team that lost to Baltimore on Sunday no longer has much in common with the teams that were winning Super Bowls earlier this decade.

A year from now, the common threads will be even fewer.

"That's the nature of the business," Koppen said. "Things change from year to year -- coaches, players. The guys in this locker room understand that and know that. Bill and the guys upstairs, luckily, that's their job. They've got to decide what to do next year."

Said Adalius Thomas, whose only Super Bowl ring comes from his tenure with the Ravens, "Every year, the team changes. This year's team was different than last year, and next year's team is going to be different than this year. No team is ever going to stay the same."

Thomas likely will be gone next season. Neal hinted on Sunday about retirement. Laurence Maroney might be not be invited back. Wilfork and Logan Mankins are in for awkward contract negotiations that might extend deep into the summer.

Many will term the loss on Sunday as the end of an era. Should the Patriots fail to win the Super Bowl again next season, many again will term that loss as the end of an era.

The Patriots' Super Bowl era, though, ended a long time ago. The Patriots' Super Bowl era ended when they no longer were winning Super Bowls.

Halftime analysis: Ravens 24, Patriots 7

2010-01-10T13:07:00.005-05:00

Halftime observations from a game that could be far more out of hand than it is:

* Ray Rice doesn't waste any time. Center Matt Birk and right guard Marshal Yanda together shoved Vince Wilfork out of the way, and right tackle Michael Oher sealed off Ty Warren to create a seam for Ray Rice on the first snap of the game. Rice waited for a moment for the hole to develop and then cut to his right, back through the line. Left guard Ben Grubbs brushed against Wilfork and then got in the way of linebacker Jerod Mayo.

Only safety Brandon Meriweather was left -- that's Pro Bowl safety Brandon Meriweather, to be specific -- and Rice torched Meriweather as easily as if Meriweather was standing still.

The result was a stadium-deflating 83-yard touchdown run -- and only a sign of what was to come.

* Ed Reed is everywhere. When a fluky turnover on a punt gave the Patriots the ball deep in Baltimore territory, Brady had a chance to throw a dart to Randy Moss in the back of the end zone. Ravens safety Ed Reed was eight or 10 feet from the Patriots' best wide receiver, probably not close enough to make up the distance if Brady really zipped it in there.

Brady instead threw the ball out the back of the end zone -- a sign of just how terrified he is to throw anywhere close to where Reed is.

Reed was in position on Moss when Terrell Suggs turnstiled Matt Light off the edge on the Patriots' first drive of the game, forcing the quarterback to hesitate long enough for Suggs to get there and knock the ball loose. Later in the first quarter, after Brady already had thrown an interception to Chris Carr, Reed pounced on a pass deflected by wide receiver Sam Aiken and intercepted it.

When you consider that the Patriots haven't really thrown a pass in the direction of Moss, presumably the primary assignment given to Reed, it's amazing he's made the number of plays as he has.

(In a related story, Brady looks awful: His first interception was even worse than his first, a short pass thrown right at the hands of Carr. The three-time Super Bowl winner has 38 passing yards so far.)

* Ray Lewis is everywhere, too. The Patriots have had no answer for the linebacker who made a compelling case this week that he has plenty of football left in him. He's making a compelling case today, too.

Lewis dodged Laurence Maroney and drilled Brady for a seven-yard loss on the first snap of the Patriots' second series. He then got back in Brady's face to force an incomplete pass on first-and-10 on the next series. Late in the second quarter, Lewis tore through a gap and dropped Kevin Faulk for no gain on a second-and-8 draw.

Lewis finished the first half with eight tackles, including four solo tackles.

* Julian Edelman is doing everything anyone could expect. The rookie wide receiver -- he was just learning how to play the position a year ago, don't forget -- caught a touchdown pass in the second quarter and broke three different tackles on a nifty 28-yard punt return just a few minutes later.

Injured wide receiver Wes Welker hobbled out for the opening coin flip on crutches and watched the rest of the game from Robert Kraft's box. Edelman, obstensibly his replacement as the Patriots' slot receiver, was dropped for a loss on his first reception but looked in the second quarter like he was starting to find some gaps in the defense.

* Kevin Faulk came to play. Not that this should be a surprise to anyone, but the versatile running back has been the Patriots' most dependable player on the field. Faulk has 36 rushing yards and 25 receiving yards, including an 18-yard catch-and-run to dig the Patriots out of their own end late in the first quarter.

Of the Patriots' 61 yards from scrimmage in the first half, Faulk has 61.

(Brady has lost 16 yards to sacks, and the entire rest of the roster has combined for 16 yards.)

Only "fine-tuning" left for Red Sox bullpen

2010-01-09T20:16:00.003-05:00

For all of the ups and downs the Red Sox endured a year ago, the bullpen remained a virtual constant throughout. Sure, there were exceptions -- a miserable night in late June in Baltimore and an even worse afternoon in early October at Fenway Park come to mind -- but Terry Francona's bullpen tended to do its job as well as any in the American League.

Only the Oakland Athletics finished the season with a better bullpen ERA (3.54) than the Red Sox (3.80) -- though, to play devil's advocate, the Red Sox were a middle-of-the-pack team in the American League in walks and hits per inning pitched (WHIP) and strikeout-to-walk ratio as well as opponents' OPS.

Takashi Saito and Billy Wagner since have departed, both to the Atlanta Braves. Before you overstate the loss of Saito and Wagner, though, consider that the two combined to pitch 69 1/3 innings last season -- a tick less than the total Ramon Ramirez compiled by himself.

There certainly appears to be space to add another proven arm -- a Kiko Calero, for example, whose high strikeout rate might appeal to the Red Sox -- but general manager Theo Epstein said on Friday he doesn't see himself making anything but minor moves to fortify his bullpen.

"We're comfortable where we are," Epstein said. "There may be an opportunity to do some fine-tuning, to add a guy on a non-roster deal or a buy-low-type thing. We'll see what the market bears. But we're pretty comfortable with where we are. The first five guys are probably pretty obvious."

In case it's not obvious, those first five:
* Daniel Bard (R)
* Manny Delcarmen (R)
* Hideki Okajima (L)
* Jonathan Papelbon (R)
* Ramon Ramirez (R)

If the Red Sox go with a 12-man pitching staff, that leaves two spots to fill. One of those, barring an injury, might have to be devoted to a starting pitcher -- likely knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.

"We have six starters, so if everybody is healthy, we may have to save a spot for one of the starters," Epstein said.

The last spot, the spot Saito filled for much of the season, remains up in the air. Veteran righty Scott Atchison signed a one-year contract to come back from Japan, and former starter Boof Bonser was acquired from Minnesota to see if his live arm could translate to the bullpen. Young lefty Dustin Richardson likewise could be a factor -- especially after recording more than a strikeout an inning in a season split between Double-A and Triple-A a year ago.

Michael Bowden can't be dismissed as an option, either. Bowden likely will open the season as a starting pitcher at Triple-A -- the No. 7 starter, if you will -- but might have a better future as a reliever than as a starter.

Bonser is a particularly intriguing option. Much like Justin Masterson over the past couple of seasons, Bonser could have the ability to pitch multiple innings either in a mop-up role or in a game that hasn't yet been decided. The righty missed all of last season with a torn labrum and rotator cuff, but the Twins already had begun converting him to the bullpen.

Bonser had a 5.88 ERA in 35 relief appearances in 2008, but that ERA belies an arm that struck out better than a hitter an inning and accumulated a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.44 -- numbers that compare favorably with any pitcher in the Red Sox bullpen.

(A BABIP of .374 in those 35 appearances didn't help him much.)

"He looked good in the bullpen in short stints when healthy," Epstein said. "He had significant surgery, but he checked out really well in our physical. We're excited to see him in the spring."

"Clutch pitching" bailed out defense last year

2010-01-08T15:29:00.007-05:00

Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein has made clear both through words and actions that he was dissatisfied with the way his team played defense a year ago. The Red Sox actually allowed fewer runs than all but two teams in the American League last season, but several other metrics make it clear upgrades had to be made.

(For more on that side of things, click here.)

Why didn't the team allow more runs?

Part of it was luck, Epstein told a group of reporters after a press conference introducing Adrian Beltre on Friday. Part of it was pitching.

"In looking at last year’s club, we had a real problem with our defense," he said. "We were lucky it didn’t become a more obvious problem, didn’t manifest as much as much as it could have – or would have had we brought back the exact same team this year.

"We were really good at quote-unquote 'clutch pitching' last year. We pitched our way out of a lot of jams, so our pitching performance ended up being a little better than it might have been otherwise if things had turned out a little differently. Our defense really did our pitching staff no favors last year."

A closer look at the numbers:
* With runners on base last season, Red Sox pitchers had the best strikeout-to-walk ratio (2.03) in the American League. Toronto (1.97), Oakland (1.94), Tampa Bay (1.92) and New York (1.92) were close.
* With runners in scoring position last season, Red Sox pitchers had the best strikeout-to-walk ratio (1.94) in the American League. Only Toronto (1.87) was close.

In tough spots last season, in other words, Red Sox pitchers took it upon themselves more often than did pitchers on any other American League team.

Closer Jonathan Papelbon, his ALDS meltdown notwithstanding, might be the best example: His strikeout-to-walk ratio last season jumped from 2.36 with the bases empty to 3.85 with men on base-- and he struck out 10 of the 15 hitters he faced with the bases loaded.

That's not something Red Sox pitchers can be expected to do again this year -- and that's why Epstein felt such urgency to improve the way his team fields the ball.

Epstein optimistic about Hall turnaround

2010-01-08T14:28:00.002-05:00

For as much weight as Theo Epstein puts in statistics, he's not about to dismiss the bat of acquisition Bill Hall just because his production has declined in each of the last three seasons.

Even if Hall doesn't hit 30 home runs -- or, for that matter, 10 home runs -- he brings something to the table that Epstein values highly.

"Bill Hall is someone who, for us, provides tremendous versatility and some pop from the right side," Epstein said after introducing third baseman Adrian Beltre at a press conference on Friday. "We've been looking for years now for someone who can play solid defense at a number of positions -- including in the outfield and in the infield. We think Bill Hall represents that for us. He's really pretty good wherever you put him on the field."

If the Red Sox go with 12 pitchers on their staff -- something they've done just about every year even if it isn't necessarily their preference -- that leaves them with four bats off the bench:

1. Backup catcher (Jason Varitek)
2. Utility infielder (Tug Hulett or Jed Lowrie)
3. Fourth outfielder (Jeremy Hermida)
4. Catch-all reserve (Hall)

The Red Sox a year ago had a fourth outfielder (Rocco Baldelli) as well as a fifth outfielder with the ability to play first base (Mark Kotsay). That, though, left the Red Sox with only one reserve with the ability to play second base or shortstop -- and even that counted on the ability of Kevin Youkilis to play both infield corners.

In this case, though, Hall can spell J.D. Drew against tough lefties -- something Hermida isn't necessarily going to do given that he swings from the left side -- and also play shortstop or third base if the injury bug strikes the Red Sox infield.

The issue, again, is the fact that Hall has seen his OPS tumble from .899 four seasons ago to .598 last season. His OPS+ of 58 last season would have been worst in the major leagues if he'd had enough at-bats to qualify.

Epstein declined to speculate about the reason for the decline.

"There are different theories out there, but I don't want to pick the guy apart before we even have him," he said. "Let's get to spring training and let him work with (hitting coach) Dave Magadan, who's a fan of Billy Hall's, and see what kind of work they can do together. I know Billy is working hard looking for answers himself. ...

"He's pretty darned good at moving all over the field. He's got natural defensive abilities -- athleticism, good hands and a strong arm. If we can get the bat back on track and get him enough playing time to get the bat back on track, which I think is important, you're looking at a pretty valuable player."

Where does Bill Hall fit? Everywhere

2010-01-07T14:26:00.005-05:00

The Red Sox's acquisition of Bill Hall from the Seattle Mariners wasn't just a move to relieve them of the luxury tax associated with Adrian Beltre. Seattle is sending enough money along with Hall to pay not only his contract but a piece of Beltre's contract as well, edging the Red Sox back toward the $170 million threshold at which they have to pay luxury tax.

That helps. What also helps, though, is the ability of Hall to play competent defense at almost every position on the diamond -- and to do so while swinging a righthanded bat.

Make no mistake: Barring a dramatic turnaround, Hall will not produce much at the plate. Consider his OPSes since his 35-home run season four years ago:

2006: .899
2007: .740
2008: .689
2009: .596

When you consider that the average American League hitter compiled an OPS of .764 last year, well, you're not going to have high expectations of Hall.

Mark Kotsay, however, puts those numbers into context.

Kotsay spent the first half of last season as the versatile bat off the bench, the veteran able to play first base as well as all three outfield positions. He OPS'ed .615 in the process -- in other words, not significantly better than Hall -- but gave the Red Sox a chance to rest Kevin Youkilis and all three of their outfielders during long road trips or in day games after night games.

Hall is even more versatile than Kotsay:

(UZR/150 numbers by position)
2B (91 starts): minus-1.9
3B (215 starts): plus-5.7
SS (244 starts): plus-1.6
OF (153 starts): plus-4.6 (including plus-6.3 in CF)

The Red Sox don't need a backup outfielder who hits .300 with 20 home runs. To get someone like that -- a Fernando Tatis, for example -- they'd have to pony up money they aren't going to spend.

(Besides, that's where Jeremy Hermida comes in: Hermida has the ability, if not the track record, to provide some punch in the lineup when Mike Cameron, J.D. Drew or Jacoby Ellsbury is taking a day off.)

Hall is bought and paid for -- and then some -- thanks to the Kotchman deal. He also can spell pretty much everyone. Youkilis appears to be the only real exception -- and Youkilis won't need much time off barring an injury or another beef with Rick Porcello. Even when he does, it'll be a day when Jason Varitek catches and Victor Martinez moves to first base.

If Youkilis lands on the disabled list the way he did early last season, Hall isn't going to be any worse than the since-departed Jeff Bailey and Chris Carter. Aaron Bates will remain an option at Pawtucket. Lars Anderson and Anthony Rizzo might be ready for their cups of coffee by the middle of the year.

Every other position appears set:

C: Martinez (Varitek)
1B: Youkilis (Martinez)
2B: Pedroia (Hall, Hullett/Lowrie)
3B: Beltre (Hall, Hullett/Lowrie, Lowell, Scutaro)
SS: Scutaro (Hall, Hullett/Lowrie)
LF: Ellsbury (Cameron, Hermida)
CF: Cameron (Ellsbury, Hall)
RF: Drew (Hall, Hermida)
DH: Ortiz (Hermida, Lowell)

If Lowell is traded, the Red Sox would be able to open the season with 12 pitchers and not lose too much in the way of depth.

Make no mistake: Hall isn't going to hit 30 home runs. Hall might not even hit 10 home runs. He's going to swing and miss quite a bit and get himself out quite a bit. If the Red Sox have to play him for long stretches, he's not going to do much to contribute at the plate.

That, though, isn't a disaster unless he has to play every day for a long period of time. Bailey came to the plate 91 times for the Red Sox last season, and Kotsay came to the plate 79 times. If Hall gets much more than 150 plate appearances for the Red Sox, there's probably an issue.

But if he plays twice a week and hits eighth or ninth in the Red Sox batting order, that's OK. All he needs to do is field his position well enough that Terry Francona can give his lefthanded regulars some days off.

Ray Lewis is unstoppable

2010-01-06T22:24:00.007-05:00

To his credit, he apologized afterwards.

Comcast's Tom Curran wanted to ask Ray Lewis whether there was urgency for the Baltimore Ravens as they closed out a tremendous decade, a decade that started with a Super Bowl win and has included six playoff appearances, five 10-win seasons and two trips to the AFC title game. He wanted to ask Lewis -- OK, to be more specific, he wanted Lewis to say that, yes, he and Ed Reed and Todd Heap and Kelly Gregg and the veteran members of this Ravens team felt some urgency to make another Super Bowl run before the grains of sand finished their tumble through their respective hourglasses.

They're old, in other words, and their time is running out -- and with their Super Bowl win now almost a decade old, Curran wanted to see if Lewis felt like his chance was about to pass him by.

"Is there a level of, 'Hey, we don't have a lot of time left?'" Curran asked.

That, however, touched a nerve with Lewis. That got Lewis going.

"I don’t know," Lewis said. "I don’t know. I totally disagree with you on that. I think it’s one simple thing: Winning means a lot. The numbers don’t. We’re still the No. 2 or No. 3 defense in the league, no matter how we started. You look around the league and I hear you guys talk about, 'You know, you don’t have a lot of time left.' Brett Favre is probably playing better than any rookie quarterback or any max-year quarterback who’s signed for all of his money. Charles Woodson is probably playing the best football played out of every cornerback in the National Football League, you know?

"You look at all of these old veterans who are the playing the game the way the game is played. I always tell people that you can talk about time winding down, but if you look at championships and you look at the most consistent people, it follows wisdom."

Curran opened his mouth to ask a follow-up question at this point. Lewis didn't pause. Lewis kept right on going.

Curran closed his mouth.

"You look back, you look at the Brian Dawkins, you look at a guy who's probably one of the best safeties in the game at 35, 36 years old," Lewis said. "It doesn’t have anything to do with winding down, winding down."

Curran, meanwhile, was whispering to the other reporters assembled around the speakerphone that he wanted to make sure he got a follow-up in there. Everyone else nodded. We're courteous people.

Lewis kept right on cruising.

"Rod Woodson was 36 when he was playing his best football," he said. "If you get away from listening to all that, you realize you only get better as you get older -- barring injury. Injury is one thing, but that window only closes when you say that you’re done."

"Yeah," Curran said, trying to cut in.

"If something happens tragically that slows you down, that’s something different," Lewis said, pressing on, "but, over the years, I’ve been watching and studying football, the people who are having the most success are the ones that have been in the league a long time and have been very consistent."

Lewis paused to take a breath. Curran pounced.

"Junior Seau would probably be another example of that..."

This wasn't the follow-up question. This was a transition to the follow-up question -- one that probably would have related to the way Seau keeps coming back to the Patriots because he wants so desperately to get a Super Bowl title before he really hangs it up for good, the way Seau feels his time running out and thus plays with the type of urgency a younger player might not.

All Lewis heard was an example of another player capable of playing football at a high level at an advanced age -- and that got him going again.

"Exactly," he said. "Exactly. Junior is another example of that. If you grab all the guys around the league that have had the most success -- even a Peyton Manning with these young quarterbacks and all of these other young people coming in, he’s still the wise one."

"But what I was driving at..."

"He’s still the one that has the most success," Lewis said, steamrolling the question the way he steamrolls quarterbacks. "And as you go down the line and you rate each player, per position, based on the age and based on what they do and how they do it, you will come back every time and say, 'Give me an older veteran player because I know what it is he is going to give me. I know what he's going to give me. I know what he is going to give me later in the season. I know what he's going to give me before the season.' That’s something I have kept in contact with, just how many old guys who are really seasoned veterans just loving the game."

"Do you... team-wide..."

"Like I said," said Lewis, who must have some mechanism by which he breathes while he talks because he hadn't yet taken a breath, "to this day, Charles Woodson, to me, I think, is playing the best football a cornerback has played in a long time. But you look at him, like, 'Oh, man, he's getting old.'"

"Team-wide, Ray..."

"... and then the way he has his defense playing," Lewis finished off. "I just think a lot of that is misconstrued."

"But, team-wide, real quick, the Ravens have had one Super Bowl appearance in this decade and went to the AFC championship last year," Curran pushed ahead, wisely or not. "How urgent is it for guys like you and Ed Reed to get there and really culminate a great decade? How important is this playoff run?"

"This playoff run, I think we just have to -- and this is something that we talk about -- enjoy the ride," Lewis said. "Enjoy the ride. It’s just football. It doesn’t change. It’s just football. Nobody is asking us to go build a rocket or go fly to the moon. No, they're just saying to go play football. Football doesn’t change and that is the beauty of the way us guys understand it."

"R--" another reporter cut in, mistakenly thinking there was an opportunity to ask a question on a different topic.

No dice.

"We went to the AFC championship last year, and we lost it," Lewis said, as unstoppable as ever. "Guess what? We are back in it again for another opportunity to go back, and all you can ask for is an opportunity. That what me and all those guys, all we talk about is just an opportunity. Bottom line: If you can get that opportunity, grab the moment, man. Don’t let everybody push you away from it: 'There's so much pressure. What if this? what if that?' Forget about the 'What if this?' and just go have fun and play football. That’s what we’re focusing on and wherever we end up, that’s where we end up."

Lewis then took a breath.

Three or four different reporters grabbed the moment.

"Ray--"
"Ray--"
"Ray--"
"Ray--"

Curran, meanwhile, looked up and mouthed, "Sorry..."

Putting together the Red Sox lineup

2010-01-06T14:15:00.001-05:00

(For real this time.)

The acquisition of Adrian Beltre almost certainly closes the book on changes to the Red Sox starting lineup on Opening Day. The issue now is figuring out how Terry Francona will slot everyone in.

It's not a random process. Francona has a method to what he does, and he's not unaware of the statistics that make some players better fits at certain spots in the lineup than others.

Below are some of those considerations:

1. J.D. Drew and David Ortiz will not hit back-to-back.
More than a few lineup projections have David Ortiz hitting fifth in the Red Sox lineup and J.D. Drew hitting sixth. Francona, however, has a strict aversion to making opposing managers' jobs easy -- and if Drew and Ortiz are hitting back-to-back, a trained monkey would know enough to bring in a lefty to face both of them in a key spot in the late innings.

Drew and Ortiz played in 137 and 150 games, respectively, last season.

Any guesses how many times they hit back-to-back in the Red Sox lineup?

Seven. All season.

Most of the time they did so, it came in a game in which Jason Bay -- the natural buffer between the two -- was taking a day off. Francona wasn't going to put Rocco Baldelli or Josh Reddick any higher than seventh in the Red Sox lineup when they were playing on such a limited basis.

When Ortiz hit third, Drew hit fifth. When Ortiz hit fifth, Drew hit seventh. In all of those games down the stretch when Drew hit eighth, both Bay and Mike Lowell buffered him from Ortiz.

It might happen once in a while -- it did a year ago -- but there's no chance Drew and Ortiz are going to hit back-to-back on a regular basis next season.

2. Dustin Pedroia is a perfect No. 2 hitter
It's not that anyone is proposing moving Pedroia out of his home between Jacoby Ellsbury and Victor Martinez. He draws walks and hits line drives but doesn't hit the home runs that would make him a No. 3 or No. 4 hitter in a World Series-caliber lineup.

Drew and his inclination to take pitches and get on base likewise would be a better fit at the top of the batting order than in the middle. Some will criticize -- and have criticized -- Drew because he's a $14 million player who can't hit higher than No. 7 or No. 7 in the batting order.

If not for Pedroia, though, Drew would be where he belongs.

3. Mike Cameron is a more productive hitter than Adrian Beltre
It's tough to project the way Beltre will hit next season upon having been liberated from Safeco Field. Just using road splits, however, tell a story by themselves:

2009
Beltre: .279/.324/.393 (.717 OPS)
Cameron: .257/.355/.432 (.787 OPS)

2008
Beltre: .292/.349/.512 (.862 OPS)
Cameron: .258/.346/.548 (.895 OPS)

2007
Beltre: .288/.320/.538 (.858 OPS)
Cameron: .254/.341/.449 (.789 OPS)

On top of that, Cameron is a far better fit for the grind-it-out approach the Red Sox cherish in their hitters. A handful of other numbers:

Pitches per plate appearance (2009)
Beltre: 3.56
Cameron: 3.96

Pitches per plate appearance (career)
Beltre: 3.77
Cameron: 4.05

Pitches swung at out of the strike zone (2009)
Beltre: 36.8 percent
Cameron: 17.4 percent

Pitches swung at out of the strike zone (career)
Beltre: 30.1 percent
Cameron: 16.9 percent

Beltre is a tremendous defensive third baseman and certainly will benefit from being able to pull the ball at the Green Monster.

He's not, however, someone who should be hitting ahead of Drew or Ortiz -- or Cameron -- in the Red Sox lineup.

4. Marco Scutaro is a second leadoff hitter
In the same way some experts have endorsed the idea of National League teams hitting their pitchers eighth in their lineups, it makes sense for the Red Sox to put the least productive hitter in their lineup -- Beltre, most likely -- in the No. 8 spot rather than in the No. 9 spot.

One way to approach lineup construction is to put the No. 6, 7, 8 and 9 hitters in descending order of quality. In a close game in the late innings, after all, it makes sense for a team to have its best hitters in line from best to worst.

The difference between the No. 8 spot and the No. 9 spot in the lineup for the Red Sox a year ago, though, was 19 plate appearances. In exchange for those 19 at-bats, the thinking has it, a team is better off getting a quality on-base guy in front of its productive hitters at the top of the lineup. Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia both are line-drive hitters who are fully capable of driving in runners on base -- and Scutaro is going to get on base at a rate 50 points higher than Beltre will.

***

With all of that said, here's how the Opening Day lineup comes together:

1. Ellsbury, LF
2. Pedroia, 2B
3. Martinez, C
4. Youkilis, 1B
5. Ortiz, DH
6. Cameron, CF
7. Drew, RF
8. Beltre, 3B
9. Scutaro, SS

Beat the drum and hold the phone

2010-01-05T19:49:00.002-05:00

The Providence Journal's Joe McDonald reported Tuesday what many have expected: Mike Cameron will displace Jacoby Ellsbury in center field for the Red Sox, shifting the speedy leadoff hitter to left field on a regular basis.

“He was worried that it was a demotion, which it is not,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona told McDonald. “I kind of (assured) him of that. I just think we’re tying to put guys where we think they can make the biggest impression. Cam was great, for a guy who is 37 years old and played center field his whole life. He said, ‘Hey, I’ll play anywhere,' so it was just a decision based on what’s best for our team.”

Cameron might not make the biggest impression in center field, though. Ellsbury might -- and here are three reasons why:

1. Defensive metrics can be unreliable in small samples
As has been thoroughly documented, Ellsbury had a miserable season both in Ultimate Zone Rating (minus-18.6) and in Fielding Bible plus-minus (minus-14).

A year ago, however, both of the same advanced metrics had Ellsbury as an above-average center fielder (plus-3.0 and plus-8, respectively).

Analysts have made clear over and over again that it takes more than one season to assess adequately defensive performance via the new metrics. All we know about Ellsbury so far is that we just don't know.

2. Ellsbury still has a learning curve
Unlike Cameron, who will turn 37 years old this week, Ellsbury has room to improve his breaks on the ball and his routes in the outfield. The 26-year-old has all the speed and athleticism to be an elite center fielder. He just hasn't put it together yet. You could easily make an argument that another season in center field would be just like another year of at-bats -- in other words, just what he needs to keep making improvements.

3. Cameron and the triangle might be trouble
The defensive metrics don't love Cameron unconditionally. Check out the two most recent ballparks in which Cameron has played center field -- images from HitTrackerOnline.com:

Petco Park in San Diego
2006: minus-0.6
2007: minus-10.4

Right-center field: 411 feet
Center field: 396 feet
Left-center field: 402 feet

Miller Park in Milwaukee
2008: plus-15.6
2009: plus-10.3

Right-center field: 374 feet
Center field: 400 feet
Left-center field: 371 feet

Fenway Park in Boston

Right-center field: 383 feet
Center field: 420 feet
Left-center field: 379 feet

At no point does the fence at Miller Park get any farther than 400 feet from home plate. Petco Park's power alleys, on the other hand, have more in common with the triangle in center field at Fenway Park than aspect of Miller Park.

(It's not easy to see relative distance on the diagrams unless you look at where the concentric circles -- 300 feet out and 350 feet out -- are superimposed against the outfield fences.)

If the Fielding Bible's plus-minus numbers are to be believed -- and here we have to pull out the grain-of-salt warning again -- Ellsbury was far better on deep fly balls than on shallow fly balls. He made some of his most memorable catches either up against the fence or back in the triangle in deep center field.

Either way, by replacing Jason Bay with Cameron, the Red Sox have made a dramatic upgrade to their defense in the outfield. Ellsbury, though, might still be a better fit for the triangle in center field than Cameron is.

Adrian Beltre's side-to-side range

2010-01-05T10:52:00.005-05:00

Adrian Beltre did not win a Fielding Bible award for 2009, finishing behind Washington's Ryan Zimmerman in voting by a panel of experts. He did, however, win two Fielding Bible awards in three years, winning in a landslide in 2008 and in a tight race with Scott Rolen in 2006.

He consistently has been one of the best third basemen in baseball for most of his career -- as selected by a group of experts that includes Peter Gammons and statistical pioneer Bill James.

If you go a little deeper into John Dewan's plus-minus scale, the primary metric used by the Fielding Bible, it reveals that Beltre's side-to-side range is the best in the game. For pitchers like Jon Lester who were burned so often last season by ground balls sneaking through the infield, Beltre's side-to-side range will be a tremendous boost next season.

Consider, first, the player Beltre will be replacing:

Mike Lowell, minus-23 in 2009
To his right: minus-3
To his left: minus-17

Even in his prime, though, Lowell wasn't the defensive player Beltre is. Consider Lowell during a 2007 season in which he was perfectly healthy from start to finish:
To his right: plus-6
To his left: minus-6

Even when he was healthy, Lowell was making fewer plays to his left -- to the shortstop side of third base -- than the average third baseman, and he wasn't making up for it with any kind of elite defense to his right.

Compare that to the five best defensive third baseman -- as ranked by Dewan's scale -- in baseball last season:

Chone Figgins, plus-40
To his right: plus-1
To his left: plus-23

Ryan Zimmerman, plus-28
To his right: minus-3
To his left: plus-25

Adrian Beltre, plus-27
To his right: plus-9
To his left: plus-11

Scott Rolen, plus-22
To his right: plus-7
To his left: plus-8

Evan Longoria, plus-21
To his right: plus-3
To his left: plus-10

Notice anything?

No third baseman on that list is as balanced as Beltre. Figgins, Longoria and Zimmerman all were better to their left last season than Beltre -- but no one in that group was as good going to their right as Beltre was. No third baseman in baseball, in fact, is better down the line than Beltre.

Theo Epstein made a point of upgrading his infield defense -- and its side-to-side range in particular. Alex Gonzalez, for example, still had the same sure hands he'd always had, but injuries had diminished his range going to his left or to his right.

No third baseman in baseball has better side-to-side range than Beltre.

Learning a lesson from Seattle

2010-01-05T00:23:00.001-05:00

Theo Epstein completed his offseason overhaul of the Red Sox defense on Monday evening with the acquisition of Adrian Beltre, one of the elite defensive third basemen in the major leagues. In much the same way Mike Cameron arrived to replace Jason Bay, Beltre brings with him an iffy bat but a spectacular glove.

Like Cameron and shortstop Marco Scutaro, Beltre won't hit 30 home runs or drive in 100 runs -- but he will help turn Terry Francona's team into one of the American League's elite defensive units. The Red Sox will send seven above-average defensive players out into the field on a regular basis -- and that number doesn't even include Jacoby Ellsbury, a flashy center fielder who even critics have to concede has all the ability to become an elite defensive player.

Defense isn't as easy to measure as offense is.

One way to measure the impact of the overhaul, however, will be to look at the numbers compiled by the Red Sox pitching staff next season. The more ground balls that get scooped up and turned into outs, the better Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, John Lackey and Clay Buchholz are going to look.

For the uninitiated, batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is a key stat here. BABIP eliminates all plays in which the defense is not involved -- walks, strikeouts and home runs -- and comes up with just what it says it does: The hitter's batting average on balls put in play.

BABIP has a little bit to do with luck. Line drives sometimes find gloves, and line drives sometimes find grass. That's part of the game. A hitter isn't always going to get on base just because he made good contact -- and a pitcher isn't always going to get an out just because he made a good pitch. An average hitter has a BABIP of .300 over the course of a season, and an average pitcher therefore sees opponents compile a BABIP of .300 against him over the course of a season, too.

Defense, though, can affect BABIP. The more range a group of defenders has, the more line drives get caught -- and thus the lower the opponents' BABIP will be.

The Red Sox, widely considered one of the worst defensive teams in baseball last season, saw opponents compile a BABIP of .313 last season, second-highest in the major leagues.

The Seattle Mariners, widely considered one of the best defensive teams in baseball last season, saw opponents compile a BABIP of .274 last season, lowest in the major leagues.

What does that mean? It means that if opponents put the ball in play 4,000 times over the course of a season, the Mariners would allow 156 fewer base hits than the Red Sox would. That's almost a hit per game less -- and that hit per game has almost nothing to do with the quality of the pitcher on the mound.

(The assumuption is that luck evens out over 162 games.)

Let's dig a little deeper into the transformation Seattle made from below-average defensive team to elite defensive team, the same type of transition Epstein is trying to replicate with his team:

2008
UZR: minus-20.9, 20th in the major leagues

2009
UZR: 85.5, first in the major leagues

Here's how it translates to a pitching staff:

2008
Erik Bedard: 3.67 ERA (.272 BABIP)
Felix Hernandez: 3.45 ERA (.316 BABIP)
Jarrod Washburn: 4.69 ERA (.306 BABIP)
Team: 4.73 ERA (.309 BABIP)

2009
Erik Bedard: 2.82 ERA (.271 BABIP)
Felix Hernandez: 2.49 ERA (.280 BABIP)
Jarrod Washburn: 2.64 ERA (.245 BABIP)
Team: 3.87 ERA (.274 BABIP)

Seattle's team ERA ranked first in the American League even while its pitchers' strikeout-to-walk ratio -- the best indicator, normally, of pitching success -- ranked ninth in the American League, ahead only of Kansas City, Texas, Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland.

Most importantly: While the Mariners actually saw their hitters' on-base percentage go down (from .318 in 2008 to .314 in 2009), they saw their win total go up (from 61 wins to 85 wins).

Maybe Seattle pitching coach Rick Adair possesses a genius that was untapped until last season.

Maybe it was the defense.

One more: Check out Lester's splits from last season:

First half (.333 BABIP): 3.87 ERA
Second half (.289 BABIP): 2.82 ERA

In the first half, Lester frequently pitched with Mike Lowell and Julio Lugo on the left side of the infield behind him. In the second half, Lester frequently pitched with Kevin Youkilis and Alex Gonzalez on the left side of the infield behind him.

Starting from Opening Day of next season, Lester will pitch with four Gold Glovers behind him: Youkilis at first base, Dustin Pedroia at second base, Beltre at third base and Cameron in either center field or left field. Scutaro and J.D. Drew aren't too shabby at shortstop and right field, either, and Jacoby Ellsbury has all the tools to be an elite center fielder.

Hernandez morphed from a promising young pitcher into a Cy Young contender almost overnight. His strikeout rate jumped and his walk rate dropped, and that played a big part in his success. So, too, though, did a BABIP of .280 -- the first sub-.300 BABIP he'd seen opponents compile since his rookie season.

If Lester can avoid the type of bad luck that cost him so much success in April and May a year ago, he might just win himself a Cy Young Award.

The same type of leap might await Buchholz, one of the American League's best ground-ball pitchers a year ago, and Beckett and Lackey, potentially dominant pitchers who rank in the top half of that same list.

No, the Red Sox might not score 900 runs the way they have three times since Epstein took over as general manager.

Scoring runs, though, is only half the battle.

Beltre completes Red Sox bridge

2010-01-04T20:35:00.004-05:00

Oh, and you thought a "bridge" meant a third-place season?

Reports indicate that the Red Sox have signed third baseman Adrian Beltre to a one-year deal worth $9 million with a player option for 2011 worth $5 million.

It's a perfect fit for the bridge Theo Epstein is trying to build to the prospects in the lower levels of his minor-league system.

Wait a second, MacPherson, you're already saying. Didn't you just write, a couple of days ago, that Beltre was, in fact, not a fit for the Red Sox bridge?

That's true.

Here's the difference: A one-year deal for Beltre, even with a player option, gives the Red Sox exactly the type of flexibility they crave. Consider this excerpt from the above blog post:

What happens if cancer survivor Anthony Rizzo tears apart Double-A this year and is beating down the door to the major leagues midway through the 2011 season? What happens if Lars Anderson rediscovers the power stroke that generated so much hype last season? Even more likely: What happens if Adrian Gonzalez becomes available in July the way many expect him to be?

The Red Sox can't count on Anderson. The Red Sox can't count on Rizzo. The Red Sox certainly can't count on Gonzalez landing in their laps sometime in July.

What they can count on, though, is tremendous flexibility going forward both with their finances and with their roster. Consider the money coming off the books in the next two seasons:

After 2010
Josh Beckett ($12.1 million)
Adrian Beltre ($9 million, if option is not picked up)
Mike Lowell ($12.5 million)
Julio Lugo ($9 million)
Victor Martinez ($7.7 million)
David Ortiz ($13 million)

After 2011
Beltre ($5 million, if option is picked up)
Mike Cameron ($7.75 million)
J.D. Drew ($14 million)
Jonathan Papelbon ($10 million, maybe)
Marco Scutaro ($5 million, if option not picked up)

The Red Sox have prospects on the way like Anderson, Rizzo, Jose Iglesias, Ryan Kalish, Josh Reddick and Ryan Westmoreland -- and those are just the position players.

When Theo Epstein talked about a bridge year, he was talking about restocking his roster without blocking the talent in his minor-league system and without eliminating the possibility of a trade for Gonzalez or Miguel Cabrera or Prince Fielder.

A one-year deal for Beltre -- a steal, really, considering the numbers Scott Boras was throwing around way back when -- fits that philosophy precisely.

Two things could happen this season with Beltre:
1. Beltre could play terrific baseball;
2. Beltre could play terrible baseball.

Two things could happen this season with the Red Sox:
4. Beltre could become expendable -- be it via a trade for Gonzalez or via a tremendous year out of Anderson or Rizzo, players who conceivably could be ready to play first base in the major leagues in 2011;
2. Beltre could become indispensable when none of the above scenarios play out.

If both No. 1s play out, the Red Sox would find themselves in a great situation. Not only would they be getting a third baseman playing terrific baseball, but they'd have either be bringing him back for a second year at a bargain-basement price or be replacing him with someone even more valuable.

If the Red Sox trade for Gonzalez or make clear their intention to promote Anderson or Rizzo, after all, he'd face the same situation as Jason Varitek did this winter: He'd have to exercise a player option knowing no starting job awaited him.

(Then again, if Ortiz is allowed to walk away, Anderson or Gonzalez or Rizzo could be a designated hitter for a year until Beltre's contract expires.)

If both No. 2s play out, a worst-case scenario, the Red Sox wouldn't have done anything to cripple themselves going forward. Beltre would likely pick up his $5 million player option to rebuild his value, but that's far from a crippling contract. The Red Sox still would have plenty of money -- thanks to the expiring contracts of Lowell, Lugo and Ortiz -- to go out and find a corner infielder either on a short-term deal or a long-term deal.

Epstein has always talked about running his big-market Red Sox like a small-market team.

Small-market teams don't cripple themselves with long-term contracts, instead going short-term with veteran players to allow themselves to infuse young talent whenever possible.

In that way, the one-year deal to which Beltre agreed on Monday is just the type of small-market deal that perfectly fits the Epstein philosophy.

The task of replacing Jason McLeod

2010-01-04T04:32:00.002-05:00

(Update: Amiel Sawdaye was named the new director of amateur scouting on Jan. 6, replacing the departed Jason McLeod.)

Theo Epstein tends to get the credit for the way the Red Sox have infused a roster once populated with retreads and underachievers with impact young talent from within his organization.

More of the credit, though, should go to scouting director Jason McLeod, the executive who had overseen five June drafts -- as far as we can tell so far, all five of them productive -- before his departure for San Diego in early December.

In the three seasons before McLeod became amateur scouting director under Epstein -- including the two seasons in which he was working in various capacities in San Diego -- the Red Sox drafted just three impact major-league players. In just the first two seasons under McLeod, however, the Red Sox drafted Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz, Jed Lowrie, Daniel Bard, Justin Masterson and a slew of highly touted players still working their way through the system.

The next scouting director will have the benefit of a smorgasbord of draft picks: A first-rounder, two supplemental first-rounders and an early second-rounder, all likely to fall within the top 50 overall.

In case you're worried that the Red Sox might miss out on such an opportunity as they're transitioning from McLeod to his successor, though, it's worth looking back at the team's previous three scouting directors and their drafts -- and the way that all three actually had the most success in the draft in their first years at the helm:

* Wayne Britton drafted Trot Nixon and Jeff Suppan in 1993;
* David Chadd drafted Jon Lester in 2002;
* McLeod drafted Jacoby Ellsbury and Clay Buchholz in 2005.

A closer look follows.

(Thanks to SoxProspects.com for making the legwork easy. There is no more comprehensive or easily navigated team-specific prospects site out there. Baseball-Reference.com's easily searched draft database likewise deserves a tip of the cap.)

Wayne Britton (1993-2001)
Best draft: 1993
Major-leaguers: 10
Highlights: Trot Nixon (1), Jeff Suppan (2), Lou Merloni (10)
True, the Red Sox passed on Billy Wagner, Derrek Lee, Chris Carpenter, Torii Hunter and even Jason Varitek to select Nixon. So, too, though, did plenty of other teams -- including the Royals (Jeff Granger), Giants (Steve Soderstrom), Mets (Kirk Presley) and Tigers (Matt Brunson), among more than a few others. Suppan easily is the second-best player to emerge from the second round of that draft behind only Scott Rolen. All in all, coming out of the first two rounds with two impact major-league players is something of which a scouting director can be proud.

Worst draft: 1995-97
Major-leaguers: 7, 9 and 9, respectively
Highlights: Shea Hillenbrand (10), David Eckstein (19), Pat Burrell (43, was ticketed to play third base for Miami and did not sign)
Three straight years of disastrous drafts set the table for the misery that was the 2001 season for the Red Sox. First-rounders Andy Yount, Josh Garrett and John Curtice all flopped. Supplemental first-rounders Corey Jenkins, Chris Reitsma and Mark Fischer weren't any better. Curtice and Reitsma were traded to Cincinnati in 2000 for Dante Bichette. Only Reitsma ever made it to the major leagues, compiling a 4.70 ERA in 609 career innings pitched.

Average major-leaguer output: 8.1
In 2001, Britton's final season in charge of a draft, he yielded just four players who eventually would reach the major leagues. Two of them, however, were catcher Kelly Shoppach and All-Star infielder Kevin Youkilis.

David Chadd (2002-04)
Best draft: 2002
Major-leaguers: 5
Highlights: Jon Lester (2), Brandon Moss (8), Ricky Romero (37), Brian Bannister (45)
Chadd hit a home run with the first pick he ever made as Red Sox scouting director, landing a lefty who has developed into one of the elite pitchers in the major leaguers. He also gets a little bit of credit for seeing something in Romero, a first-round pick out of Cal State-Fullerton three years later, and Bannister, a seventh-round pick out of the Mets out of Southern Cal the very next year.

Worst draft: 2004
Major-leaguers: 4
Highlights: Dustin Pedroia (2)
Had the Red Sox not mishandled Cla Meredith, he, too, might have ended up on the list alongside Pedroia. Besides that, though, the pickings get slim. Third-rounder Andrew Dobies was a 26-year-old at Double-A last season, and fourth-rounder Tommy Hottovy was at the same level at age 27. Michael Rozier commanded a $1.5 million signing bonus to pry him away from a football scholarship to North Carolina but was released last March because his ERA had started to look like a touchdown.

Average major-leaguer output: 4.7
Lester, Pedroia and Jonathan Papelbon all are All-Stars, but there's a precipitous drop-off in impact after that. The next-best player the Red Sox drafted under Chadd either is Brandon Moss or David Murphy, and neither of those two outfielders is a starter on a decent team.

Jason McLeod (2005-2009)
Best draft: 2005
Major-leaguers: 6
Highlights: Jacoby Ellsbury (1), Clay Buchholz (1s), Jed Lowrie (1s)
Like the two scouting directors who preceded him, McLeod appears to have hit a home run with his first pick: Ellsbury already is a fan favorite and established as the leadoff hitter in the Red Sox lineup. Buchholz looks to be on the verge of joining Lester as a home-grown ace. Catcher Mark Wagner, a ninth-rounder in this same draft, still is making his way through the system.

(The 2006 might just challenge this draft before long: Daniel Bard, Justin Masterson, Aaron Bates, Dustin Richardson, Ryan Kalish, Josh Reddick and Lars Anderson all came on board that year, and Matt LaPorta was drafted out of Florida but did not sign.)

Worst draft: 2007
Major-leaguers: Too early to tell
Highlights: Nick Hagadone (1s), Anthony Rizzo (6)
It's harsh even to use the word "worst," but one has to rank at the bottom of the list. It's far too early to judge a draft that's just two seasons old, but it's telling that some of the top picks in that draft have been leapfrogged by the top picks from the draft a season later. Rizzo was the No. 8 prospect on Baseball America's most recent list, but the next-most promising prospect from that class appears to be infielder Will Middlebrooks, a fifth-round selection who hit 25 doubles with a .349 on-base percentage at Single-A Greenville last season.

(Hagadone might yet be a dominant closer in the major leagues, but he was traded to Cleveland in the Victor Martinez deal last July. The lefty had a 2.80 ERA and 59 strikeouts in 45 minor-league innings last season.)

Average major-leaguer output: 6
(That figure includes only 2005 and 2006. No Red Sox draftees from 2007 are in the major leagues yet. Then again, only a handful of players from the entire 2007 draft have made it to the major leagues: David Price, Matt Wieters, Rick Porcello, Jordan Zimmermann and a handful of others who have had cups of coffee.)

McLeod's drafts put Chadd's drafts to shame. Not once in his three seasons did Chadd accumulate a draft that send more than five players to the major leagues -- something McLeod already has done with both his 2005 and 2006 drafts.

Think about that: Only three years out, the Red Sox already have six players from their 2006 draft class who have played in the major leagues. That doesn't even include Anderson or Kalish, who figure to make the leap either in 2010 or 2011.

NFL trades Welker's knee for Week 17 gate

2010-01-04T00:31:00.000-05:00

Solutions exist to the issues that arise when a team loses a key contributor in Week 17 because it doesn't have enough bodies to remove all of its key contributors from its lineup.

Here's one: Expand the rosters. Much like Major League Baseball does in September, the NFL could allow teams to dress 53 players rather than the 45 they're normally allotted. It could go farther and allow teams to dress their practice-squad players, too.

The reason the Patriots played Randy Moss and Wes Welker on Sunday was because they couldn't go 50 or 60 snaps with only Sam Aiken, Julian Edelman and Isaiah Stanback. On top of that, there was little reason to bench Moss and Welker without benching a number of other key contributors on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. An injury to left guard Logan Mankins or middle linebacker Jerod Mayo arguably is just as devastating as an injury to Moss or Welker.

In playing Welker, though, the Patriots exposed one of their most prolific playmakers to the possibility of getting hurt. The torn ligaments Welker suffered in Sunday's first quarter will sideline him for the playoffs, if not a significant chunk of next season, and the meaninglessness of the game only adds insult to the devastating injury.

Had the Patriots played with a roster expanded to its limit, they could have played practice-squad wide receiver Darnell Jenkins in place of Moss or Welker -- and they also could have used several other reserves in place of Aiken and Stanback on special teams so they could have played more snaps on offense.

Same goes elsewhere. Activating offensive linemen Rich Ohrnberger and Ryan Wendell would have given the Patriots the depth to get Mankins or banged-up right guard Stephen Neal out of the game in the second half. Activating linebackers Bruce Davis or Thomas Williams from the practice squad would have allowed them to keep Tully Banta-Cain and Jerod Mayo out of harm's way. Bringing practice-squad quarterback Jeff Howe on the trip with them would have allowed them to keep Brady on the sidelines -- if they so chose -- without worrying about what would happen if backup Brian Hoyer suffered an injury.

Expanded rosters, however, don't make for a very entertaining product on the field. Check out the lineup the Red Sox fielded against Toronto last September on the day after they clinched the wild card -- the "Hangover Special," some called it. Joey Gathright hit leadoff. Casey Kotchman hit third. Outfielder Rocco Baldelli finished the game at third base. Catcher Dusty Brown finished the game on the mound. Roy Halladay surrendered three hits in a watching-paint-dry 12-0 win for the Blue Jays.

Baseball can get away with clunkers like that because its teams play 162 games. Football can't really get away with clunkers like that -- like the Colts' fold-the-tents "effort" against the Jets a week ago -- because it only plays 16 games. When teams pull their starters in one of those 16 games, even with the most noble of intentions, eyebrows get raised around the NFL.

Fans at Houston's Reliant Stadium on Sunday paid $30 for the worst seats in the house and $132 for the best -- not to mention the ever-growing prices for parking and concessions in the stadium. If they did so on a single-game basis, they did so knowing they might get backups. If they did so as part of a season-ticket package -- the best way, it seems, of getting in the door on any kind of regular basis -- they had no choice, just the way they had no choice but to purchase tickets for the fourth game of the preseason, a game in which Tom Brady threw as many passes as the 68,756 poor souls in the stands.

It's easy to see, then, why Roger Goodell and the NFL want so badly for Week 17 to mean something, for teams to play their best players the way they would in a meaningful game.

On the one hand, lousy games breed bad publicity and mess with the sanctity of the playoff race.

On the other hand, if fans don't show up for Week 17 games because they're anticipating clunkers, the teams lose money. (This sham of a game five years ago comes to mind.) If fans don't tune into Week 17 games because they're anticipating clunkers, the teams lose money. Ticket sales aren't about to slow down anytime soon, but parking and concessions and memorabilia and advertising dollars depend on butts in seats and eyeballs on television sets.

If the Patriots lose to Baltimore or San Diego because they don't have Wes Welker running routes, well, the Patriots might lose money. The NFL will keep doing just fine.

That's the underlying issue here: Don't blame Bill Belichick for the injury to Wes Welker. Belichick doesn't have enough players on his roster to bench a perfectly healthy wide receiver when he's got to think about the perfectly healthy -- and less than perfectly healthy -- players at other positions. If Welker sits, why not Mayo? If Moss sits, why not Brandon Meriweather? If Dan Koppen and Matt Light sit, shouldn't Brady?

If the NFL wanted its best players healthy for the postseason, it would allow teams to activate its entire roster -- maybe even including its practice-squad players -- for Week 17 games. Much like the final week of preseason games, star players could take a day off and stand and watch as reserves play out the string.

Losing a star player like Welker -- especially in a sport in which star players can get injured in the playoffs, anyway -- doesn't affect the NFL's bottom line. Putting forth a feeble effort in Week 17 does affect the NFL's bottom line.

That's why the rules are set up the way they are.

That's why Belichick had little choice but to play Welker against Houston on Sunday -- at least in the first quarter, and that was enough playing time to get him hurt.

Don't blame Belichick.

Blame the money.

Brady thrives with Wes Welker

2010-01-03T18:20:00.003-05:00

Before Wes Welker got to New England, Tom Brady had never accumulated a quarterback rating of better than 92.6 in any season. Even as the Patriots went 12-4 in 2006, Brady's quarterback rating of 87.9 ranked him ninth in the NFL -- behind, among others, Damon Huard, Tony Romo, Carson Palmer, Marc Bulger and Philip Rivers.

Wes Welker changed all that.

In the two seasons in which Brady and Welker have played together -- keeping in mind that 2008 was very abbreviated -- Brady has been a significantly better quarterback with Welker on the field than without him.

Welker missed Weeks 2 and 3 and left the Patriots' Week 17 early enough that Brady essentially played the entire game without him. Consider these numbers:

Brady without Welker (Weeks 2, 3 and 17)
Completion percentage: 56.5 percent
TD-INT ratio: 1-2
Quarterback rating: 69.4

Brady with Welker (2007, Weeks 1, 4-16 of 2009)
Competion percentage: 68.5 percent
TD-INT ratio: 77-19
Quarterback rating: 110.9

Playing Tom Brady in the second half

2010-01-03T16:16:00.004-05:00

The Globe's Bert Breer had it right: The Patriots did have a good reason to play Tom Brady in the second half.

The Patriots already have a history of playing Brady extensively in Week 17 games that didn't mean much to them. The Patriots, though, yanked Brady late in the first half, and it looked like they'd already decided to fold the tents and take it to the playoffs.

Brady then reappeared and played most of the second half -- something that has left 98.5 radio personality Gary Tanguay, among others, dumbfounded with disbelief. Brady even endured a couple of big hits and threw an interception before Hoyer once again replaced him for the final drive of the game.

"We didn’t really have anything set," Belichick said when asked about his roster management. "We just went out and played."

Belichick is no idiot. He's won three Super Bowls because he has a reason for what he's doing. There's one pretty good reason to keep Brady in the game as long as possible: Brady had to start to figure out how he was going to run his offense without having Welker as his safety valve. Welker almost certainly is done for the season, and Brady will have only three practices this week to start getting used to playing without Welker.

Yes, Brady already has played without Welker -- but one of those games was his Week 2 disaster against the Jets, a game in which Brady completed 48.9 percent of his passes and compiled a season-worst quarterback rating of just 53.1.

Injuries are freak things. They happen.

If the Patriots are going to advance deep into the playoffs without Welker, Brady has to figure out how to operate the offense without his most prolific wide receiver. Sunday's second half gave him a chance to start that process.

Welker a devastating loss for Patriots

2010-01-03T13:22:00.005-05:00

It was a classic Wes Welker catch: The wide receiver lined up in the slot, faked as if to run a route of the middle and cut back into the flat, catching a pass and planting his left leg in the ground to sprint past the first-down marker.

When he planted that left leg, though, his knee buckled -- and even if it's not a torn ligament, it's something that's going to sideline him for the indefinite future.

(If it is a torn ligament or two, the worst part for Welker is that he might not even be ready to go at the start of next season. Ligament surgery usually is more of a 12-month recovery than a six-month recovery -- and next season starts in eight months.)

Welker finished his season with a team-record 123 receptions. The catch on which he was injured tied him with Detroit's Herman Moore for second on the single-season receptions list. Not even Jerry Rice ever had more than 122 receptions in a season. Only Marvin Harrison's 143 receptions in 2002 is ahead of what Welker did this season -- and Welker even missed two games earlier this season with a knee injury.

Let's get this straight right now: There was no way he was going to sit out this game. There was no reason for the Patriots to sit him in this game. Injuries happen in football -- and this is the type of injury that could have happened just as easily a week from now as today.

It's just the worst luck for a player who ought to get some consideration for the NFL's Most Valuable Player honors.

***

It is, as always, dangerous to jump the gun when it comes to diagnosing the injury. The Patriots, though, aren't going to disclose the extent of the injury to Welker even if it's a season-ending tear of his anterior cruciate ligament -- a tear that would put the start of next season in jeopardy for a wide receiver whose elusiveness has a lot to do with his living.

Check out this study published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine three years ago, a study written by a doctor affiliated with Vanderbilt Sports Medicine.

Among the notes:
* Researchers collected data on ligament injuries suffered by running backs and wide receivers from 1998-2002. Of those 31 players, 21 percent did not appear again in a regular-season NFL game. Of the 79 percent that did return, "most players returned to action 9 to 12 months after an ACL injury."
* "For those players who returned to NFL action following an ACL injury, performance fell by one-third, the researchers found. Power rating per game played decreased from 9.9 pre-injury to 6.5 post-injury. This decline in player production was statistically significant when compared to the 146 players in the control group."
* Welker was the type of player most susceptible to this type of injury: "'High-performance RBs and WRs are more likely to be injured because they compete in more plays per game, carry the ball longer on each play, and attract more defensive attention,' the authors say. 'The same qualities of RBs and WRs that contribute to high performance -- instantaneous decelerations as well as explosive pivoting and cutting maneuvers -- may increase the risk for ACL injury.'"

***

A look at Julian Edelman, the natural replacement for Welker as the Patriots' slot receiver, from today's Union Leader story:

With all the abuse Wes Welker takes every week, it's likely he'll spend some quality time watching from the sidelines today to give his omnipresent bruises a chance to heal. Should Welker take some time off, Julian Edelman might get a chance to play his way back into the Patriots' offense.

Edelman caught eight passes against the Jets in Week 2 and six passes against the Titans in Week 6 before breaking his arm. He's caught just six passes since -- but one of those was a picture-perfect 28-yard catch in the seam against Jacksonville on Sunday.

The Patriots' offense is at its most dangerous with both Edelman and Welker finding creases in the defense. If Edelman -- who was not limited at all at practice this week -- can get going, he'll give Brady an extra weapon come playoff time.

Edelman already has two catches in this game -- including a 25-yard catch-and-run that looked just like Welker's catch-and-runs usually do.

Patriots deactivate Laurence Maroney

2010-01-03T11:31:00.003-05:00

Only two New England running backs have appeared in every game this season: Kevin Faulk and Laurence Maroney. Both are inactive today against Houston.

It's not hard to understand why the Patriots might give Faulk a day off. The 33-year-old multi-purpose back is averaging 6.6 touches per week out of the backfield and is of the age where a week off makes sense to preserve him for the playoffs.

Maroney, though, is younger and healthier and doesn't seem to have been playing through any injuries this season. (He was listed as "probable" on the injury report with a knee injury that didn't pop up until Friday.) The only affliction affection Maroney this season, in fact, seems to be the fumble-itis that struck at the goal line once again last week against Jacksonville.

This has been as roller-coaster a year for Maroney as ever. At times, he's looked like the player the Patriots drafted in the first round out of Minnesota. At other times, he's looked like the player the Patriots contemplated releasing during training camp.

He's certainly in the doghouse now.

There's no guarantee -- especially at this time of year -- he's going to get a chance to play his way out.

Tom Brady's second-best season

2010-01-02T14:21:00.003-05:00

Tom Brady has completed fewer than 50 percent of his passes twice this season. He's thrown at least one interception in four of his last five games -- and seven of his last nine. He's thrown three or more touchdown passes just four times. Barring a big game on Sunday against Houston, he won't come within 20 touchdown passes of the number he put up the last time he played a full season. He's finished with a quarterback rating under 75.0 three times since Thanksgiving.

Suffice to say, this hasn't been Brady's best season.

It has, however, been his second-best.

Consider the Brady leaderboard in a number of statistical categories:

Passing yards
1. 2007, 4,806
2. 2009, 4,212
3. 2005, 4,110

Completion percentage
1. 2007, 68.9
2. 2009, 65.7
3. 2001, 63.9

Yards per attempt
1. 2007, 8.3
2. 2009, 7.81
3. 2004, 7.79

Interception percentage
1. 2007, 1.4 percent of passes
2. 2009, 2.2 percent
3. 2006, 2.3 percent

Touchdown passes
1. 2007, 50
t-2. 2002, 28
t-2. 2004, 28
t-2. 2009, 28

Quarterback rating
1. 2007, 117.2
2. 2009, 97.4
3. 2004, 92.6

Brady likely will never again have the type of season he had in 2007, a season in which he broke Peyton Manning's single-season record for passing touchdowns (49) and came just short of breaking Manning's single-season record for quarterback rating (121.1). It stands with Manning's 2004 and Dan Marino's 1984 as one of the three greatest seasons ever put together by an NFL quarterback.

By that standard, Brady has had a disappointing season.

By any reasonable standard -- including one in which you consider that he's still barely a year removed from knee surgery -- Brady has had the second-best season of what almost certainly will end up as a Hall of Fame career.

Yankees younger than Red Sox?

2010-01-02T09:31:00.002-05:00

It's amazing, but it might just be true -- or, at least, might have been true.

(Hat tip to NoMaas.org for the idea.)

Baseball-Reference.com can calculate the average age of a team's pitchers and hitters, even weighting its formula by at-bats and games played. Here's how the Red Sox and Yankees broke down a year ago:

Red Sox
Hitters: 30.0
Pitchers: 29.8
Overall: 29.9

Yankees
Hitters: 30.5
Pitchers: 29.3
Overall: 29.9

The Yankees, in fact, have seen the average age of both their lineup and their pitching staff tumble since 2005, the season in which Brian Cashman wrested control of personnel decisions from George Steinbrenner during a contract negotiation.

The Red Sox, on the other hand, have seen the average age of their position players mostly hold steady throughout the tenure of Theo Epstein as general manager.

What happens next season?

The Red Sox have added Mike Cameron (who will be 37 years old next season), John Lackey (31) and Marco Scutaro (34) but also will open the season with Clay Buchholz (25) in the major leagues rather than in Triple-A and Victor Martinez (31) doing the bulk of the catching in place of Jason Varitek.

The Yankees, on the other hand, replace Johnny Damon with Brett Gardner (26), barring a major move for a left fielder, and Hideki Matsui with Nick Johnson (31). Javier Vazquez (33) also steps into the starting rotation full-time.

The end result? It's tough to duplicate the Baseball-Reference.com formula preseason, but if you simply weight relief pitchers as half of starting pitchers, you're at least going in the right direction. Here's how next season breaks down for both teams:

Red Sox
Hitters: 31.2
Pitchers: 28.4
(This presumes a rotation without Tim Wakefield, who right now appears to be the odd man out in a Beckett-Lester-Lackey-Buchholz-Matsuzaka starting rotation.)
Overall: 29.8

Yankees
Hitters: 31.1
Pitchers: 31.0
Overall: 31.1

Youth isn't the end-all, be-all. The Red Sox pitching staff in 2004 was the second-oldest in team history (32.5 years old) -- and the Red Sox pitching staff in 2007 still was the sixth-oldest in team history (31.0 years old).

But for those wondering if the Red Sox were getting too old, well, they're still not going to be an older team than the Yankees.

Beltre not a fit for Red Sox bridge

2009-12-31T10:06:00.007-05:00

As much hysteria as came with Theo Epstein's "bridge" talk earlier this month, the topic is worth revisiting -- if for no other reason than the fact that most analysts seem to have missed the point.

Here's the money quote again:
"We talked about this a lot at the end of the year, that we’re kind of in a bridge period. We still think that if we push some of the right buttons, we can be competitive at the very highest levels for the next two years. But we don’t want to compromise too much of the future for that competitiveness during the bridge period, but we all don’t want to sacrifice our competitiveness during the bridge just for the future. So we’re just trying to balance both those issues."

Here's what Epstein seems to be saying:
1. He has an eye on the arrival of some of his top prospects in the next couple of years, prospects that can re-infuse the Red Sox with talent.
2. He believes his team can be competitive "at the very highest levels for the next two years" without sacrificing all of that talent.

Keep in mind: Sacrificing talent doesn't mean trading talent. Sacrificing talent can mean blocking talent indefinitely -- thus all but forcing a trade. That's where Adrian Beltre comes into play -- not to mention names like Russell Branyan and Adam LaRoche that have been thrown around. The Red Sox still need a bat, or so they're saying, and Branyan, Beltre or LaRoche might be just enough to help them replace Jason Bay.

Beltre, one of the best defensive third baseman in the major leagues, has been rumored to be seeking anywhere from a three-year contract to a five-year contract worth upwards of $10 or $12 million a year.

The 30-year-old Beltre would be a terrific fit for the Red Sox next season: Not only would he replace Bay as the No. 6 hitter in the lineup, but he'd allow Kevin Youkilis to play first base and give the Red Sox four Gold Glove-caliber defenders in their infield.

(The assumption here is that Youkilis is an elite defensive player at first base but, while above average, not quite at that level at third base. Part of that has to do with the fact that it's generally easier to play first base than to play third base.)

Should the Red Sox sign Beltre for three years and $39 million, just as an example, they'd lock themselves into starting him at third base -- and, thus, Youkilis at first base -- for the next three seasons. Unlike outfielder Mike Cameron -- who's signed for just two seasons, by the way -- Beltre isn't exactly going to move around defensively. He's played all of 15 innings at shortstop and second base in his 12-year major-league career. If Beltre signs a three-year deal, he's staying put for three years.

What happens if cancer survivor Anthony Rizzo tears apart Double-A this year and is beating down the door to the major leagues midway through the 2011 season? What happens if Lars Anderson rediscovers the power stroke that generated so much hype last season?

Even more likely: What happens if Adrian Gonzalez becomes available in July the way many expect him to be?

Same goes for a name like LaRoche. The first baseman was a terrific fit during his 3 1/2 hours with the Red Sox last July, slugging .526 in his 19 at-bats and looking every bit like his swing was tailor-made for Fenway Park. He would be a terrific fit in the Red Sox lineup this season.

The reason the Braves made little effort to retain him, though, is because he reportedly was looking for a three-year contract -- and thus would have blocked prized prospect Freddie Freeman, a 20-year-old who Baseball America called "Keith Hernandez and Mark Grace with more power." If LaRoche was unwilling to go back to Atlanta as a stopgap solution -- a bridge, if you will -- it's not likely he'd be willing to go back to Boston for less than three years, either.

It likewise seems hard to believe that the 34-year-old Branyan would accept a one-year deal for short money coming off the best season of his career -- at least, until the market dictactes he has to. If he can get a two- or three-year offer from someone impressed by his 31 home runs and .520 slugging percentage last season, he's going to take it.

Signing Branyan or LaRoche for three years presents you the same issue as signing Beltre for three years does: Gonzalez is going on the market. It's inevitable. It might not happen now because Jed Hoyer doesn't want to give up on his first season in San Diego before it's even started, but unless the Padres somehow are in first place in the National League West come July, Hoyer is going to start fielding offers.

If the Red Sox are obligated to pay LaRoche $8 million a year in 2011 and 2012 -- or Beltre $13 million a year in 2011 and 2012 -- what do they do with him if they're able to acquire Gonzalez? Give another player away and eat his money? Haven't they done enough of that already?

Epstein has options going forward. Gonzalez will be available on the trade market. Victor Martinez will be a free agent, an intriguing issue given the uncertainty about where he's going to play as he gets older. Anderson might develop. Rizzo might develop.

Heck, Albert Pujols is scheduled to hit the open market after the 2011 season -- and while it's a longshot he'd ever leave St. Louis, do the Red Sox really want to eliminate themselves from the Pujols sweepstakes because they're still paying Beltre $13 million a year until 2012 or 2013?

Epstein's much-discussed "bridge" doesn't mean finishing in third place for the next two seasons. It means keeping the team's options open with prospects on the way and parts moving all over the major leagues.

A two-year contract for Cameron fits that philosophy -- especially given that he easily could shift into a reserve role should Ryan Kalish or Josh Reddick be ready to take over in left field in 2011.

A three-year deal for Beltre doesn't fit that philosophy at all.

Bay signing closes book on Red Sox draft picks

2009-12-29T18:40:00.003-05:00

Given their preference, the Red Sox wouldn't have had Jason Bay sign with the Mets. Bay, had he signed with a team in the bottom half of next June's draft order, would have netted the Red Sox a first-round draft pick. Instead, since the Mets are scheduled to draft seventh in the first round, their pick is protected -- and thus the Red Sox receive a second-round pick and a supplemental pick in exchange for Bay.

Unless the Red Sox sign outfielder Matt Holliday (a long shot) or relief Jose Valverde (an even longer shot), the Bay signing closes the book on the adjustments to the Red Sox draft next June. Here's a quick look:

First round: No. 20 overall
* The Red Sox receive the Braves' pick for Billy Wagner;
* The Angels receive pick No. 29 from the Red Sox for John Lackey.

Supplemental first round: Two picks between No. 33-40
* The Red Sox receive a to-be-determined pick for Bay;
* The Red Sox receive a to-be-determined pick for Wagner.
(Baseball America a week ago assigned the Red Sox pick No. 35 for Wagner, but that's pre-Bay and pre-Holliday, so the supplemental picks still might move around a little bit.)

Second round: No. 7 in the round (around No. 50 overall)
* The Red Sox receive the Mets' pick for Bay. With the Type A free agents (Holliday, Valverde) and Type B free agents (among them Adrian Beltre, Fernando Rodney and Marlon Byrd) still out there, it's impossible to know exactly where that pick will land.
* The Blue Jays receive pick No. 70 -- or thereabouts, depending on how the supplemental round shakes out -- from the Red Sox for Marco Scutaro.

After all the wheeling and dealing, the Red Sox will have four picks in the top 50, including No. 20 overall. For the sake of comparison, a year ago, the Red Sox drafted Reymond Fuentes at No. 28 in the first round and did not select again until their scheduled pick -- No. 77 overall -- in the second round.

The last time the Red Sox had four picks in the top 50 was 2006, and they emerged with Jason Place, Daniel Bard, Kris Johnson and Caleb Clay. Only Bard to this point has panned out, but there's still time for Clay and Place.

The year before that, the Red Sox had five picks in the top 50 and came out of it with Jacoby Ellsbury, Craig Hansen, Clay Buchholz, Jed Lowrie and Michael Bowden. Not bad.

Red Sox moment of the year: Wake's ASG pick

2009-12-29T14:01:00.002-05:00

Position players came first when Fenway Park public-address announcer Carl Beane began to read off the Red Sox players who had been selected to the American League All-Star team. The top of the second inning had just ended, and that gave Beane a chance to read off the names for the fans in the stadium who hadn't caught the announcement live.

Jason Bay was in -- a starter, in fact, in left field. Dustin Pedroia was in. Kevin Youkilis was in.

Pitchers came next. Josh Beckett was in. Jonathan Papelbon was in. No surprise there.

Beane then changed the tenor of his voice a little bit. There was one last name to announce, and that announcement had to warm the heart of even the most cynical Red Sox fan.

Tim Wakefield -- a 42-year-old who made his debut with the Red Sox before Jon Lester had finished the fifth grade -- had made his first All-Star team.

The instant the knuckleballer's familiar goateed face showed up on the scoreboard in center field, Fenway Park erupted in cheers. A camera then found Wakefield in the Red Sox dugout so he could wave to the 35,000 fans showing their appreciation. He even got some mid-game face time on NESN -- complete with a bear hug from David Ortiz.

It was about as genuine as a moment gets. Wakefield didn't necessarily have the same numbers as some of the other All-Stars -- his ERA at that point was 4.31 -- but he'd won 10 games and had kept the Red Sox pitching staff afloat almost by himself for the first half of the season.

"I just felt that getting him on the team was the right thing to do," Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon said.

The decision to select Wakefield wasn't a popular one around baseball. Even now, it's tough to argue he was one of the best 10 or 12 pitchers in the major leagues in the first half of the season.

It still was a special moment for a pitcher who has done so much -- from starting to closing to mopping up lost causes to preserve the bullpen -- for the Red Sox over the last 15 seasons.

It might have been even more special than the moment Wakefield shared with Red Sox manager Terry Francona before the game (an excerpt from that day's Union Leader story):

Wakefield stepped into Francona’s office and immediately saw Jason Bay, Josh Beckett, Jonathan Papelbon, Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis waiting for him with All-Star packets in their hands and solemn expressions on their faces.
“He'd said, ‘You guys all made it – and, actually, Wake made it, too, but we’re going to let him sweat it out a little bit,’” Bay said.
The gag actually worked for a moment or two, but it didn’t last long. Francona couldn’t hold it in.
“He sat me down and tried to play it off like it wasn’t good news,” Wakefield said, “and then he couldn’t hold his laughter in any longer.”
Said Francona, “I just cheesed up real fast.”

(Runner-up for Red Sox moment of the year: Jacoby Ellsbury's steal of home against the Yankees.)

The upgrade of Victor over Varitek

2009-12-28T18:45:00.002-05:00

The Red Sox need a bat, or so consensus has made clear. Even David Ortiz says so. Theo Epstein has swapped out Jason Bay and Alex Gonzalez for Mike Cameron and Marco Scutaro -- and, in a vacuum, those two moves don't represent an upgrade for an offense that managed just 15 hits in three games and hit .158 in bowing out meekly in the American League Division Series.

Two points:
1. Using three games -- any three games -- to determine offseason priorities is a mistake. Players endure slumps all the time. Teams endure slumps all the time. Executives have to build teams based on 162 games. Panicking based on a three-game skid is a great way to make mistakes. Heck, in the first three games of the World Series, the Yankees managed to hit just .224. They just happened to win two of those three games -- and, thus, no one cared.
2. Don't forget about Victor Martinez.

Yes, Martinez was part of the group that came up so short against the Angels. Yes, Martinez was a member of the Red Sox for the final two months of the season.

It seems, though, that the impact of having Martinez -- whose on-base percentage last season (.381) was well ahead of every catcher in the major leagues not named Joe Mauer -- starting every day in place of Jason Varitek has been overlooked.

Varitek played catcher almost every day until Aug. 1, coming to the plate 321 times and compiling an OPS of .794. Martinez played catcher almost every day from Aug. 2 on, coming to the plate 237 times and compiling an OPS of .912.

If you prefer advanced metrics, Varitek compiled a WAR -- wins above replacement -- of 1.3 in his full season with the Red Sox. (FanGraphs doesn't break down WAR on a month-by-month level for players who play for the same team all season.) Martinez compiled a WAR of 2.1 in just his two months with the Red Sox -- and 4.9 for the entire season.

The list of catchers who have accumulated a WAR of better than 4.9 in either of the last two seasons is a short one:
1. Joe Mauer (twice)
2. Brian McCann

That's it.

If you prefer traditional statistics, the upgrade still is clear:
* Varitek hit .209 last season, a career low, but he still hasn't hit above .255 in the last four years.
* Martinez hit .303 last season and hasn't hit below .280 in his career.
* Varitek OBP'ed .313 both last season and the season before that.
* Martinez OBP'ed .381 last season and has OBP'ed .370 or better in four of his last five seasons.
* Varitek slugged. 390 last season and hasn't slugged better than .425 in the last four years.
* Martinez slugged .480 last season and has slugged .465 or better in five of his last six seasons.

Varitek has come to the plate an avearge of 460 times per season since 2006 and accumulated an OPS+ of 85 -- in other words, production well below average -- in that span.

Martinez, instead, will get most of those at-bats next season -- and Martinez has an OPS+ of 121 since 2006.

For the sake of comparison, Jason Bay over the last four seasons has an OPS+ of 125. Mike Cameron has an OPS+ of 112. The difference between Martinez and Varitek is almost three times the difference between Bay and Cameron.

The Red Sox still might acquire a hitter. The depressed economic climate might give them no choice but to go back after Bay and hit him in the middle of their lineup -- or the Padres might start feeling generous and shop their power-hitting first baseman before the season starts.

Having Victor Martinez -- arguably the second-best-hitting catcher in the major leagues --behind the plate for a full season should not be underestimated.

A second look at "Organized Chaos"

2009-12-28T09:42:00.004-05:00

Bill Belichick probably didn't take the Jaguars by surprise on Sunday when he deployed his defense in what Adalius Thomas called its "organized chaos" formation for the second straight week. Belichick baffled the Buffalo Bills a week ago with a defensive formation that employed five linebackers and six defensive backs -- and zero defensive linemen -- and brought it back for 10 first-half snaps against the Jaguars.

(They ran it more often in the second half. At that point, with the lead growing to 35-0, it was more of a prevent defense than a strategic tactic.)

The scheme works so well because it allows the Patriots to drop so many linebackers and defensive backs into coverage. A quarterback isn't going to throw the ball into a well-defended pattern deep down the field -- the longer the ball is in the air, the more time defenders have to go get it -- and thus is more likely to settle for a short pass to a running back or tight end who then can be wrapped up and taken down for a meaningless short gain.

Like Miami's Wildcat offense, the Patriots' Organized Chaos defense is going to be a part of opponents' game plans for the rest of the season.

Unlike Miami's Wildcat offense, there's a pretty easy way to gain yards against the Patriots' Organized Chaos defense: Run right at it.

Here's how the Patriots lined up the first time they threw Organized Chaos at the Jaguars on Sunday, a third-and-6 snap late in the first quarter:

(Solid line represents first-down marker.)

Tully Banta-Cain and Derrick Burgess were the only two Patriots to line up with a hand on the ground -- and they both lined up outside the Jaguars' tackles. Gary Guyton, Jerod Mayo and Rob Ninkovich milled around the middle of the field so as not to give the offensive line a chance to identify their blocking assignments.

But the reason teams have always lined up with three or four down linemen is because the lower a player a gets, the better his leverage generally is. In passing situations, teams forgo defensive linemen in favor of faster linebackers or defensive backs. In running situations, though, teams bring in more defensive linemen so they don't get pushed back off the line of scrimmage.

Third and 6 normally is a passing situation.

If the Patriots keep throwing Organized Chaos out there on third and 6, though, it's going to become a running situation -- and that's going to be quite a bit tougher to stop.

The Jaguars did run against it twice. The first time, Maurice Jones-Drew took a draw from David Garrard and was hit almost immediately by Banta-Cain off the edge. On that play, though, Banta-Cain dodged an ill-advised pull block by right guard Uche Nwaneri, trying to seal the back side of the play to the left while the rest of the line blocked right. It was a relatively routine blocking scheme -- but it was too complicated for a line that didn't have a chance to identify the defender each guy was supposed to block.

Simplify, simplify.

Each of the Jaguars' five offensive linemen weighs more than 300 pounds. Not many offensive linemen in the NFL weigh less than 300 pounds. On the other side of the ball, not one of the Patriots' Organized Chaos defenders weighs close to 300 pounds. Burgess is listed at 260, and Ninkovich and Banta-Cain both are listed at 250.

The instructions from the sideline to the offensive line should be simple: Run straight ahead. Block everything in front of you. You're stronger than they are. Push them back as far as you can.

The second time the Jaguars ran the ball against Organized Chaos, a second-and-11 snap in the second quarter, they did just that. No one sealed the back side. Left guard Vince Manuwai pulled to the right, but that was to get out in front of Jones-Drew rather than to do something complicated behind him. Guyton, Mayo, Ninkovich and Brandon McGowan all got pushed back. Jones-Drew gained six yards before tumbling down into Mayo.

On the next play, a third-and-5 snap, the Patriots once again came out in Organized Chaos. Jones-Drew came off the field. Garrard dropped back to pass.

The play never had a chance. Garrard threw a short swing pass to third-down running back Rashad Jennings, and four different Patriots converged on him before he could get within a yard of the first-down marker.

On the Jaguars' first drive of the second half, though, the Patriots deployed Organized Chaos on a third-and-goal snap from the 5-yard line. Not one defensive player put his hand down on the ground.

Instead of audibling to a run, though, Garrard threw into double coverage at the goal line -- and veteran Shawn Springs picked him off.

The Patriots are going to keep running their Organized Chaos formation until someone figures out how to get first downs against it. On third-and-5 or third-and-6, though, the way to get a first down against it is to run the ball.

Meriweather once again playing with instincts

2009-12-27T16:18:00.002-05:00

Brandon Meriweather sat down last week with Patriots coach Bill Belichick and defensive backs coach Josh Boyer to get himself back on track.

Meriweather had started the season on a Pro Bowl-type pace. He earned AFC Defensive Player of the Week honors after he intercepted two passes against Tampa Bay in London, and he even prompted former teammate Rodney Harrison to rank him with Denver's Brian Dawkins as the two best safeties in the AFC.

But the third-year safety had taken it on the chin in recent weeks, getting beat badly on deep passes against both New Orleans and Carolina. One missed read against the Saints gift-wrapped a 75-yard touchdown pass for Devery Henderson, and a bad break against the Panthers did the same for Steve Smith.

Meriweather even made a bad misplay at the end of the Patriots' loss to Buffalo, bouncing off wide receiver Josh Reed and allowing the Bills to turn a short pass into a drive-sustaining 29-yard gain. If the Bills hadn't botched their onside kick, the missed tackle might have cost the Patriots the game.

The series of errors had Meriweather thinking too much, re-evaluating too much, wondering too much if he was doing the right thing. That's what Belichick and Boyer had to get him to stop doing.

"They just told me to get back to the basics, to trust my instincts and to stop trying to go out of my element to make plays," he said.

Meriweather's instincts told him to get himself up to the line of scrimmage when rookie wide receiver Mike Thomas broke toward the middle of the field on a third-and-1 snap in the first quarter. Thomas took a handoff from quarterback David Garrard and tried to get around the edge, needing just a yard to move the chains -- but Meriweather drilled him, knocking him back short of the line.

"I just trusted my instincts," he said. "That's what I was lacking the last couple of weeks."

On Jacksonville's next possession, Meriweather hung deep to guard against the deep ball. Maurice Jones-Drew had just run for an 11-yard gain to get the Jaguars across midfield, and the time was right for Garrard to take a shot. Torry Holt ran a post route down the left sideline, and tight end Marcedes Lewis ran a post route down the middle of the field.

Meriweather split the distance between the two -- and when Garrard overthrew Lewis, the safety had no problem drifting over to pick off the pass.

It was his career-best fifth interception of the season. It also was the play that all but ended the game before the second quarter began, especially after his 56-yard interception return set up a touchdown pass from Tom Brady to Chris Baker.

"I've told them: They need to put me at punt returner, man," Meriweather said with a wide grin. "We need to try some things, but I ain't going to say nothing about that. I think y'all should bring that up with Coach Bill."

It also was just the sort of play Meriweather had been making back before he'd started to allow his confidence to get shaken.

"You trust coaching," he said. "You trusting coaching, and you do exactly what you need to do to get by."

Halftime: Patriots 28, Jaguars 0

2009-12-27T13:41:00.004-05:00

A handful of halftime observations from Gillette Stadium:

* The hats and T-shirts can come out early. Not only are the Patriots crushing the Jaguars, but the Texans are cruising against the Dolphins. Barring an epic turn of events both here and in Miami, the Patriots have won the AFC East and are bound for the playoffs.

That's great news not just for the banged-up Tom Brady, but also for Vince Wilfork (out), Ty Warren and Stephen Neal (still not playing every snap). All four can either leave the game early next week or sit out entirely.

* Maroney coughs it up. For someone who fumbled so rarely early in his career, Laurence Maroney appears to have caught fumblitis lately. The running back let the ball slip away at the goal line -- sound familiar? -- to end what to that point had been as impressive of a drive as the Patriots have put together all year. An 18-yard run by a slaloming Kevin Faulk and a 14-yard pass to Ben Watson in the red zone set up the play that should have ended in a touchdown -- but instead ended in a turnover.

Maroney did not return to the game for the rest of the half. Faulk and Sammy Morris handled the duties in the backfield from that point on, rushing for 36and 83 first-half yards, respectively.

* Patriots' offensive line dominates. For the first time all season, the Patriots debuted their best offensive line all at once: Matt Light, Logan Mankins, Dan Koppen, Neal and Sebastian Vollmer. Not coincidentally, the Patriots marched right down the field -- Light, Mankins and Koppen opened some huge holes on the left side of the line -- on their first drive.

Dan Connolly replaced Neal on the first play of the second quarter, the touchdown pass from Brady to Chris Baker. It seems as though the Patriots decided to be careful with Neal, who sat out for two drives before returning.

That didn't mean Connolly was done, though: The veteran lined up as a fullback and threw a huge lead block to spring Morris on a 55-yard run through the right side. Connolly then led Morris through the left side for a one-yard touchdown run that pushed the Patriots' lead to 21-0 in the second quarter.

* Patriots rotate along defensive line. Likewise, the Patriots have been careful with the snaps played by defensive end Ty Warren. Mike Wright started the game at defensive end with Ron Brace at nose tackle -- but when Brace appeared to get pushed off the line on the Jaguars' first couple of runs, Wright moved to nose tackle with Warren in at defensive end.

That drive ended with safeties Brandon Meriweather and James Sanders coming up from the secondary on back-to-back plays and making huge stops on short-yardage runs.

On the Jaguars' next two drives, Warren went back to the bench and Myron Pryor played nose tackle between Green and Wright.

* Banta-Cain is able. A week after tallying three sacks in Buffalo, outside linebacker Tully Banta-Cain kept building his case for a bid to the Pro Bowl. Banta-Cain, one of the few constants as the Patriots shuffled between their base defense and the mill-around defense they debuted against the Bills, has been the best defensive player on the field.

On back-to-back plays early in the second quarter, Banta-Cain sacked David Garrard and forced a fumble that the Jaguars managed to recover. On the very next play, Maurice Jones-Drew tried to run against that mill-around defense with no down linemen -- and Banta-Cain drilled him after a gain of just two yards. On the first play of the Jaguars' next possession, Banta-Cain and Wright combined to drop Jones-Drew for a one-yard loss.

* Oh, yeah: Moss and Welker. It's not fair to characterize it as Welker doing the dirty work and Moss getting the glory. On the biggest play of the Patriots' fourth scoring drive, Moss cleared out the defensive backs with a deep route down the right sideline, and Welker ran into the vacated team to catch a lob for a 29-yard gain.

(No one gets to gripe about Moss not trying this week.)

Welker has eight catches -- breaking his own single-season record in the process -- for 93 yards, and Moss has caught two passes, both for touchdowns.

Jacoby Ellsbury really is expendable

2009-12-27T10:48:00.004-05:00

"You can never have enough center fielders."
-- Theo Epstein

The Red Sox general manager, about to enter his eighth season, has made it a focus to accumulate as much up-the-middle talent as he can. His captain has been his catcher (Jason Varitek). His first major trade was for a shortstop (Orlando Cabrera). His first impact rookie was a second baseman (Dustin Pedroia). His first out-of-nowhere World Series hero was a center fielder (Jacoby Ellsbury). His first major trade -- even though it was made in his absence -- was built around a shortstop (Hanley Ramirez).

And of the top 15 position-player prospects in the organization, according to SoxProspects.com, 12 play either catcher, shortstop, second base or center field. Five of the team's top 14 prospects, in fact, look like they'll have the ability to play center field in the major leagues: Reymond Fuentes, Ryan Kalish, Che-Hsuan Lin, Josh Reddick, and Ryan Westmoreland.

(Reddick is the most borderline. His future likely is in right field or left field. SoxProspects, though, specifically points out that "Reddick has the range to be a full time major league center fielder.")

That's what makes today's note from the Chicago Tribune's Phil Rogers so interesting:
Worth watching: If the Red Sox wind up with Matt Holliday or Jason Bay, the Cubs immediately would make a major effort to land Jacoby Ellsbury to fill their center field/leadoff hole, according to sources. That scenario helps explain why the Cubs have been so patient in studying their options. The best way to do such a trade might be for GM Jim Hendry to facilitate a three-team deal that sends first baseman Adrian Gonzalez from the Padres to the Red Sox by packaging a group of prospects, possibly including one or two of their top ones, such as third baseman Josh Vitters, shortstop Hak-Ju Lee and pitchers Andrew Cashner and Jay Jackson.

Ellsbury, of course, already has been associated with the Gonzalez trade rumors this winter. Proponents of including Ellsbury in a package generally have focused on his subpar defensive numbers, according to advanced metrics, and his relatively low on-base percentage at the top of the Red Sox lineup.

There's an even better reason for the Red Sox to look hard at moving Ellsbury if it means a big upgrade elsewhere -- especially if that upgrade is Gonzalez.

Epstein has made Ellsbury expendable.

The reason Ellsbury is so valuable is because he can produce so much while earning so little. He won't even be eligible for salary arbitration until next season, and his team then still will have three years' worth of control of his rights until he hits the open market. Even those who believe Ellsbury has become overrated can't deny that his production far outweighs his salary -- and will do so at least until he hits his second year of arbitration.

That's reason enough to hang onto him unless there's a player behind him ready to fill in with similar production at a similarly low salary -- and, thus, similar bang for the buck. The Red Sox have a half-dozen players in their minor-league system with the potential to do just that.

No, none of them are ready yet. Reddick is closest by virtue of his major-league experience last season. Kalish likely will make his major-league debut at some point next season. But it's not unreasonable to imagine the Red Sox opening the 2010 season with Mike Cameron in center field and Kalish and Reddick both waiting in the wings. Fuentes, Lin and Westmoreland all are 21 years old or younger, but all three could come along within the next three or four years.

There's no reason to hoard so much young talent it doesn't fit on the major-league roster. Kalish and Reddick won't do the Red Sox any good if they're tearing apart the International League.

(This, of course, assumes they'll tear apart the International League. You can't ever make that assumption with individual prospects. The odds that both Kalish and Reddick flop, though, seem pretty minimal.)

The Red Sox can get more in a trade for Ellsbury than they can for Kalish or Reddick simply because Ellsbury already has demonstrated he can hold his own at the major-league level. Trading Ellsbury, however, would have left the Red Sox with a void in center field if not for the signing of Cameron -- a bridge, if you will, to the prospects who seem to be on the way.

If the Cubs are willing to offer the Red Sox enough in the way of prospects for Ellsbury that the Padres don't insist on Clay Buchholz in a trade for Gonzalez, that's a move the Red Sox should make without hesitating.

Tully Banta-Cain's Pro Bowl year

2009-12-27T10:24:00.003-05:00

(First things first: Great read from Adam Kilgore in Friday's Globe about the underdog mentality that has driven Tully Banta-Cain since his NFL career began.)

The film analysts at ProFootballFocus.com listed five Patriots on their Pro Bowl cheat sheet this week. Three of them -- Logan Mankins, Wes Welker and Vince Wilfork -- should be no-brainers. Stephen Neal already has been covered in this space.

The fifth? It's not Tom Brady. It's not Randy Moss. It's not Jerod Mayo. It's not Brandon Meriweather or Matt Light or Leigh Bodden.

It's Tully Banta-Cain.

Even before his three-sack effort at Buffalo a week ago, the afterthought of an outside linebacker had earned strong consideration for a trip to Miami for the Pro Bowl. His 8.5 sacks this season rank him sixth in the AFC -- including fourth among outside linebackers, behind only Denver's Elvis Dumervil, Pittsburgh's James Harrison and Pittsburgh's LaMarr Woodley.

According to ProFootballFocus.com, he's been the third-best 3-4 outside linebacker in the AFC this season -- again behind Harrison and Woodley -- and that's despite having played the majority of his early-season snaps as a defensive end rather than as an outside linebacker. He unofficially has been credited with seven hits on the quarterback and 18 quarterback pressures. He consistently has been the Patriots' best defensive player this season, even ahead of run-stuffing nose tackle Vince Wilfork. He's made the offseason trade of Mike Vrabel almost a non-issue.

Banta-Cain was nowhere to be found on the leaderboard when Pro Bowl fan voting was complete. He still, though, deserves to make the trip to Miami.