Red Sox Diaries

The Red Sox were rolling. They were pitching and hitting their way to 11 straight wins. Then, they lost to the Indians. Eleven of their past 12 is incredible. So why should the end of a streak worry Red Sox Nation? The politically correct reason would be that their bullpen faltered and cost them a game that they could have and should have won. The more direct reason: Javier Lopez. In an otherwise stellar effort from the backend of the Sox staff, Lopez cost them the game, has cost them many games in the past and will continue to do so.

Sure, he's looked pretty the past three years in Boston with ERAs of 2.70, 3.10 and 2.43, but looking much deeper gives us a completely different story. Most telling of all numbers is since 2007 to the present day, in 147 appearances, 43 times he has allowed at least as many baserunners as he has gotten outs. Now given his label as a lefty specialist, that's not a very good set of numbers. Looking even further, Lopez has a .BAA of .282 with men on base; nearly three of every 10 batters he faces with men on will record a hit. That's not pretty. It exposes one reason why his ERA is relatively low: the runs that score when he's pitching are sometimes not technically his runners, meaning when they score they count towards someone else's ERA. Then he leaves with runners of his own on base and another reliever has to come clean up his mess.

That's not it, either. From '07-'08, Lopez held a WHIP of 1.33, not including his sky-high 2+ WHIP this year. If you take a further breakdown of that stat, he walked 27 batters while only striking out 38 in 2008. He walks two guys for every three strikeouts. Not too much of a specialist if you ask me.

Now all these numbers are fine and dandy, and I can write all day about how bad he is, but let's put it into context. Look no further than the Rays, J.P. Howell is their "lefty-specialist." How do his 2008 numbers stack up? Howell had a .BAA of .169 with RISP to Lopez's .282. Howell runs a WHIP of just over 1.10, .2 lower than Lopez, while he strikes out nearly three guys for each he walks (39/92 overall with 15 K's and 30 BB's against lefties to Lopez's 19(!)/26.)

Another telling stat is the difference between these two players in FIP. FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching, a personal favorite stat of mine that estimates the ERA of a pitcher if the defense was normalized to a league average. (Here's a great explanation of this stat.) Howell ended 2008 with a strong FIP of 3.39. Lopez? He ended '08 with a FIP of 4.19 and is currently running around with a 6.50 FIP. The difference between a true lefty-specialist and late-inning fireman is clear. Lopez? Not one of them.

Sure, he's only one guy, and he usually only pitches to one or two batters per game. He's at the back end of the bullpen and can be at times buried into oblivion, but the Sox need a strong bullpen to keep in contention out in the AL East. One guy can blow a game here or there for the team and one game is all it takes to miss the playoffs.

All these numbers can be found at either baseball-reference.com or fangraphs.com.

--orangeandblack6