Red Sox Diaries

Friday night's 5-4 loss in Seattle highlighted the struggles of another high-profile player key to Boston's World Series chances. After throwing a no-hitter and emerging as a reliable ace last year, lefty Jon Lester is off to the slowest start of his young career.

The 25-year-old gave up five runs in 5.2 innings against the Mariners, raising his ERA to 6.51 for the season. Opponents are hitting .312 against Lester with 10 home runs (only four short of his total during the 2008 season). He has been charged with the loss in four of his eight outings after dropping just eight of his first 60 regular season appearances.

Lester's biggest problems so far have come when trying to work through trouble. He has been especially prone to the big inning this season, allowing three runs or more in a single frame five times. In 2008, at least three runners scored in an inning against him eight times (including playoffs). But it was an issue that got more pronounced as the season progressed--this occurred in six of his final 20 starts (including playoffs), including in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series against Tampa Bay.

What makes Lester's poor performance especially puzzling is that his strikeout rate is higher than it has ever been. He has fanned 54 batters in 47 innings, an average of 10.3 per nine. His previous best ratio was 7.1 K/9 in 2007. He also had two solid starts against the New York Yankees.

Now, Lester's sky-high opponents' batting average figure is mainly a product of their astronomical BABIP of .392--as that regresses to the mean, his ERA should drop. His FIP of 4.78--about a run and a half lower than his ERA--takes that into account and rewards him for his bigger strikeout totals (while also punishing him for his increasing tendency to give up the gopher ball).

The baseline statistics (namely, record and ERA) might make it seem like Lester has been pitching worse than he actually is, but he still is not performing at anywhere near the level that the Red Sox need him to. Lester's velocity and strikeout totals suggest that aftereffects from throwing substantially more innings last season than he had in any other professional season is not at the root of his issues, which is a good sign.

But perhaps no anecdote sums up Lester's series of subpar starts better than this: Ichiro Suzuki had his first multi-home run game in almost four years on Friday, going deep in the fifth and sixth innings. Wondering about when else he has performed this feat? The last time was in a 3-2 win against the Cleveland Indians and C.C. Sabathia (back then he still had the periods in between his initials) on July 30, 2005. He also went yard twice off of Tanyon Sturtze in a 4-3 loss to Tampa Bay on July 13, 2002, and against Kevin Appier in a 8-4 win over the Los Angeles Angels (and I'm pretty sure they still had the "of Anaheim" qualifier then) on June 17, 2003. To put it in context, you are far less likely to see Ichiro hit two homers than you are to see David Ortiz steal a base (10 swipes in his career). Speaking of Ortiz, it REALLY shows you how much he is floundering when even Ichiro is knocking them over the fence. (A quick aside to this aside: bravo to manager Terry Francona for finally sitting him down for a series--it's a little late, and he still should have been dropped in the order before now, but unfortunately it's the right move.)

We should have a better idea after Lester's next few starts about whether these five weeks have been a fluke, or if there is legitimate reason for concern. The Red Sox can't afford it to be the latter.

--Danny Daly (ddaly06)

The Boston Globe's Adam Kilgore wrote an interesting summation of the troubles David Ortiz has been having this year at the plate. Check it out here.

Taking a look at his season thus far, it's clear he's having a ton of problems at the plate. Kilgore highlights his bat speed as the main problem. Ortiz has been diagnosed with a case of late hands, not getting to a loaded position quickly enough -- hence the strikeouts on 87 mph fastballs. Bat speed undoubtedly declines as the player ages, and problems that deal with the wrist (like Ortiz had last year) and hands make it especially difficult to compensate. With Big Papi late on his swings, it becomes common sense for pitchers to pound him on the inside, making it harder for his hands to come through and for him to get his bat around in time. Speaking from experience, both on the mound and in the box, anything looks like it's coming in hard when jammed inside at the wrists.

Another interesting element of this is that Ortiz has never been able to hit power pitching that well. In his career against pitchers that strikeout or walk more than 28 percent of their batters faced, Ortiz hits just .214 with one home run every 18.9 at bats, both of which are well below his overall averages. (His baseball-reference.com splits can be found here.) He has always fed on guys who so-called finesse pitchers (who strike out or walk less than 24 percent of the batters they face), sporting a career .315 batting average and .584 slugging percentage. But last year, it wasn't just the flamethrowers that gave Big Papi trouble--he also only hit .267 against finesse pitchers (albeit that was depressed by an abnormally low .225 BABIP). It doesn't seem to matter how hard guys throw anymore--if they know to throw it at Ortiz's hands, he doesn't stand much of a chance.

So, with no bat speed and an inability to get to pitches covering half the plate, that spells the end of his career, right? Not necessarily. Big Papi needs to adapt and become a better hitter upstairs. He needs to be smart, lay off the inside pitches and swing at his pitch. Unfortunately, he hasn't been doing that. He's swinging at nearly 30 percent of all pitches outside the zone (28.3 O-Swing%) and over 50 percent of all pitches in general. That's not too bad, until you couple it with the fact that he's making record-low contact on his swings, at 73.7 percent, when he has generally hovered around 80 percent in the past.

Now that all the doom and gloom has been laid out, it should be clarified that his days as a productive cog in the middle of the lineup are not over. He can still drive the ball, the one silver lining in his struggles. In fact, his line drive rate is at 23.7 percent, higher than usual. He just needs to make more consistent contact with the ball, because clearly, he can still hit it hard. Here's an excellent example of how he looks when he's right. At 36 seconds into the clip, when the ball is halfway to the plate, he's loaded. The more important thing here though, is the location. He needs to hit HIS pitch. He's been lured by the fast one inside, when his hands are not quick enough at this stage of his career for that.

MLB.com has gone so far as to say he's heating up. I'm not quite sure about that, yet. He can still hit the ball hard when he gets one in his wheelhouse and he's the single most clutch player in the league. Big Papi just needs a few weeks for his mind to catch up to his body. Once he's at that point, he can start making steps back to the player he once was.

--Orangeandblack6

Well, not a lot of good has come out of Boston's first two series. The team as a whole is hitting .238, while its normal 2, 3 and 5 hitters (Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz and J.D. Drew) are hitting a measly .167. Ortiz has no extra-base hits. And apart from Beckett's start on Opening Day, the rotation has left much to be desired. To be fair, the Red Sox also played about as difficult a first six games as anyone, considering they started off with two playoff teams from a year ago.

The only lasting observation that should be taken from the first week is that Ramon Ramirez is the real deal. In three appearances so far, the 27-year-old righty has faced 14 batters and retired 13 of them. He throws a low-to-mid-90s fastball, which he complements with a curveball and a splitter.

A reliable right-handed power arm was one of Boston's most glaring needs coming into this season. Management had been hoping that Craig Hansen would be the guy for years to come; they gave him plenty of chances, but his 6.07 ERA in 74 appearances over three years finally convinced the Sox he wasn't going to pan out (he was included in the deal that brought Jason Bay to Boston last July). Mike Timlin did the job for five years, but age caught up with him as he posted the worst single-season ERA of his career (5.66) and was relegated to mop-up duty by the end of the year.

Daniel Bard could end up being the long-term solution, but he's down in the minors getting some more seasoning. And while Manny Delcarmen is a useful contributor, he hasn't proved that he is cut out to be the bridge to Jonathan Papelbon: his ERA in games decided by three runs or fewer was an unremarkable 4.19 last season, and his postseason ERA was almost four times higher than that. On the whole, he took a step back from his impressive 2007 campaign--which, looking back, was significantly aided by an insanely low .218 BABIP. Even last year, he was about 40 to 50 points better than the league average in that statistic.

Ramirez was acquired from Kansas City this winter in exchange for Coco Crisp, who never really panned out in Boston. There was a lot to like about Ramirez coming in: he averaged more than eight strikeouts per nine innings for his career, his strikeout-to-walk ratio was greater than 2.25 in each of his three seasons and his ERA against 2008 playoff teams was a very respectable 3.38. Perhaps most impressively, he gave up just two home runs in 71.2 innings last season, even though his groundball-flyball ratio was less than one. But even that statistic seems to be on the rise.

Also important is Ramirez's ability to be effective in extended appearances, getting more than three outs on 19 occasions last season and twice thus far in 2009. This gives manager Terry Francona more flexibility, knowing he can go for matchups in the middle of the game and have Ramirez to pitch multiple innings if need be to get the ball to Papelbon. Ramirez does tend to be harder on righties than he does lefties (.584 vs. .739 OPS against him, respectively). But the latter figure still isn't any cause for concern. The other small issue is that he played his home games at Kauffman Stadium, which is slightly more favorable to pitchers. Interestingly enough, Ramirez's career home ERA is more than double his road ERA, but I suspect that first number is inflated because he pitched for Colorado and in hitter-friendly Coors Field roughly half the time.

Obviously there's a lot of baseball left to play, but the early signs for Ramirez are very promising. Hopefully this will allow Justin Masterson to return to the rotation (or at least to a long-relief role until a spot opens up for him), because the bullpen's struggles last year were a major reason why he was converted to a reliever in the first place. The Sox have already made one former starter into a closer (Papelbon); doing the same to Masterson is not a smart move for the future, because quality young starting pitchers are not as common as are their counterparts in the pen. Besides, a middle reliever's production tends to fluctuate more from year-to-year.

Boston has learned the hard way the ramifications of having an unreliable bullpen. Hopefully Ramirez will make sure that isn't a problem come this October.

--Danny Daly (ddaly06)

The Red Sox seemingly have a never-ending supply of prospects. Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury have broken in with the major league club with great fan fare and succeeded not only in their regular season debuts, but in their showings in the second season. Next in line are well-known uber-prospect Lars Anderson and athletically talented, though unrefined Josh Reddick, not to mention the tricky Michael Bowden. Red Sox Nation will undoubtedly know these names, but in such an atmosphere, even some of the strongest prospects will get overlooked.

For an organization that is so skilled at scouting out strong hitting and solid fielding middle infielders, (see Pedroia, Dustin and Ramirez, Hanley) 21-year-old shortstop Yamaciao Navarro only serves to accentuate this impressive trend. His showings in a split year at two A-ball clubs make the Sox Nation drool and give the Rays a run for their money in the youth department. Navarro hit .304 in time with Lancaster, high-A, and Greenville, A, while posting a telling OPS of .904 with Lancaster. More impressive was a 6 percent drop in his K rate after the move to Lancaster. His glove work has been said to be strong enough for a stay at shortstop and with Jed Lowrie looking miserable in his first games of the year, it might not be too long (mid-2010?) before you see this Dominican.

But before you start asking for the Rookie of the Year trophy and telling Selig to engrave Boston on the Commissioner’s trophy for the next ten years, realize Navarro has a long way to go. He was helped by a very hitter-friendly environment in a traditionally offensively slanted league. (Just ask Daniel Bard, still scarred with a 10.12 ERA from pitching in Lancaster.) Most importantly, his BABIP was a whopping .401. In layman’s terms, for every 10 balls he hit in play, four of them were successful hits. That’s more than a hit above league average and luck is a huge factor in such a high statistic. A BABIP coming down to Earth may bring his .BA down quite a bit. (This pessimistic follower thinks he wouldn’t have hit .285 if not for the BABIP of .401)

Yet, Navarro’s skill and talent may easily help him overcome more challenging environments, and Fenway isn’t exactly Petco. There’s no denying his time will come; the ability is there. In time, Sox Nation might even be quoted, “Hanley who?!”

--orangeandblack6

After yesterday's false start, it looks like Boston's season will finally get underway today. According to weather.com, the temperature is around 50 degrees today with wind gusts of 15 to 20 mph and only about a 1-in-3 chance of rain.

Before the game, I thought I'd give a quick rundown of what we can expect from this Red Sox team over the next six (well, hopefully seven) months:

The Lineup

This is undoubtedly the area where the Red Sox have the most question marks, which is interesting because historically this team never seems to have a shortage of guys who can smash the ball. When they won their two World Series in 2004 and 2007, the Sox ranked in the top 3 of just about every major offensive category.

But after failing to reel in Mark Teixeira or swing a trade for Jared Saltalamacchia, Theo Epstein has to hope that some of his stars return to their pre-injury form for the lineup to remain potent in its first full year without Manny Ramirez. A lot of the slack is going to have to be picked up by David Ortiz, who was hampered by a wrist injury most of last year and posted his worst numbers since arriving in Beantown. They're also going to need a healthy, productive year out of J.D. Drew, who has only justified his $70 million contract during two months of his Red Sox career thus far (October in '07 and June of last year). Kevin Youkilis had an MVP-caliber season last year and assumed cleanup-hitting duties after the Ramirez trade--Boston needs an encore performance out of him. And Jason Bay will be relied on to provide those three with some protection.

The middle of the lineup needs people on base to drive in, which means Jacoby Ellsbury needs to show vast improvement in the leadoff spot. He played a lot more like Coco Crisp last year than the sparkplug who hit .353 in a September callup and .360 in the postseason the year before. His .336 OBP of a year ago needs to be at least 20 to 30 points higher, or Terry Francona will be looking for a new table setter even though Ellsbury has the requisite speed (50 stolen bases last season). Perhaps the only sure thing in this lineup is reigning AL MVP Dustin Pedroia, who figures to hit behind Ellsbury in the order. He was also successful on 20 out of 21 stolen base attempts last year and committed just six errors, making him as complete a player as Boston has.

What ultimately doomed this team in the ALCS against Tampa Bay was the ineptitude of the bottom of the order, and that issue doesn't seem to have been addressed. They're hoping Mike Lowell bounces back from his assorted ailments to put up decent numbers in the seventh spot, but he's on the downside of his career and if he shows any lingering effects then Boston could be in trouble. Jed Lowrie got off to a quick start replacing Julio Lugo but only hit .211 in September and October. The struggles of Jason Varitek at the plate last year were well-documented, and even though he is an invaluable clubhouse presence and handler of pitchers, he can't spend another season flirting with the Mendoza line.

The Rotation

Boston's lineup might be lacking in firepower, but they have enough quality starting pitchers for two teams. Josh Beckett, Jon Lester and Daisuke Matsuzaka all have ace-caliber stuff and could headline a lot of team's rotations (especially when you consider that Ricky Nolasco, John Lannan, Aaron Cook, Dallas Braden and Paul Maholm were some of the Opening Day starters).

Hopefully Beckett's injury problems are all sorted out so he can look more like the Cy Young runner-up of 2007. His strikeout-to-walk ratio has increased in each of his three years in a Red Sox uniform, which is a promising sign, but his gopher ball rate also spiked last season. It'll be interesting to see which Josh Beckett shows up, and we'll get a good idea starting this afternoon.

Lester completed his comeback after being non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2006 and rewarded Epstein for not throwing him in a potential deal for Johan Santana last winter. One of the keys to his success last year was that he stopped nibbling around the plate as much, and his walk and pitches-per-inning rates dropped. He's also the only lefty in the rotation.

Speaking of trying to be too exact, Matsuzaka needs to follow Lester's lead. Dice-K has shown flashes of brilliance, but that 2.90 ERA in 2008 is a bit misleading considering how often he had to work out of trouble. Opposing batters only mustered a .211 average with 12 home runs against Matsuzaka last year, but their Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) was .260. This is as much of a luck-based stat as anything--the league average hovers around .290, so Dice-K might not be as fortunate this year.

There are any number of different options for the bottom of the rotation. They'll start the year with knuckleballer Tim Wakefield and Brad Penny, but there will almost certainly be a spot for John Smoltz when he returns from rehabbing his shoulder at the beginning of June. If Wakefield (who surprisingly led all Sox starters in WHIP last season) and Penny (who hopes to rebound from a disastrous 2008) are in top form, he might help shore up the bullpen instead. Their minor league system also has a plethora of young arms, including Clay Buccholz.

The Bullpen

Francona could only rely on a few arms down the stretch last season, but he'll have plenty of options this year. Jonathan Papelbon will take care of the ninth inning as usual, though batters hit significantly better against him last year than in the previous two (.223 versus .146 and .167). He'll have Hideki Okajima setting him up again, but Epstein also acquired Takashi Saito (who has closing experience) through free agency and Ramon Ramirez in the Coco Crisp trade. Both should be in the late-inning mix as well. Scouts were apparently particularly impressed with Ramirez this spring. Saito has had some injury problems, but if he stays healthy he might be one of the biggest bargain pickups of the offseason.

Manny Delcarmen and Javier Lopez had nice seasons in 2008, but were also unreliable at times. Delcarmen especially had a poor ALCS against Tampa Bay, but he will be better working the earlier innings. Justin Masterson is also a key contributor and will see his share of innings after emerging as one of the most promising young arms in the game, but he will most likely be a starter in the long run (or at least he should be). In all, it's a very deep group that should keep opponents off the board in the late innings.

The Bench

The Red Sox start the season with catcher George Kottaras, infielder Nick Green and outfielders Chris Carter and Rocco Baldelli riding the pine. In other words, not a very impressive group. Baldelli has the most upside of the bunch and will provide insurance in case (or rather, when) J.D. Drew gets hurt. Mark Kotsay will get some at bats when he comes off the disabled list and will give Francona some flexibility to move Youkilis over to third and sit Lowell because he can play first base. Lugo also starts the year on the DL and could end up starting upon his return if Lowrie struggles, but to this point Lugo has yet to remind anyone why exactly he makes $9 million a year.

Another storyline to keep an eye on is whether Kottaras will be able to handle Wakefield's knuckleball--many catchers (Josh Bard comes to mind, and Varitek has never really worked well with Wake) have had trouble in the past. Epstein might have to go get someone if Kottaras isn't up for the task, like when he had to bring Doug Mirabelli (Wakefield's personal catcher from 2002-2005) back from San Diego just one month into the 2006 season.

The Farm System

Boston's future is definitely bright. Buchholz starts the year in Triple A but should get called up by midseason if he keeps pitching like he did this spring (2-0, 2.52 ERA in six starts) rather than last season (2-9, 6.75 ERA and almost single-handedly costing Boston the division). Michael Bowden is a consensus top-100 prospect and is pretty close to being ready, and 22-year-old Junichi Tazawa was signed over from Japan this winter and will start in Double A. The Sox also have Daniel Bard, a flamethrowing reliever who may allow Masterson to return to the rotation in the future, and Lars Anderson, who could start at first next year if Lowell struggles and Youkilis moves across the diamond to replace him.

Final Thoughts

Ok, maybe that wasn't such a "quick" rundown after all. But if the lineup holds up, Boston is looking at another playoff appearance, even in baseball's toughest division. If it doesn't and the situation becomes dire, Epstein has the pieces to make a midseason trade.

The health of guys like Ortiz, Lowell, Drew, Penny, Smoltz and Saito will play a large role in how this season plays out. But barring any catastrophes, 95-plus wins seems like a pretty safe bet.

The best part is that starting today, we get to observe what happens rather than speculate what might. Let the games begin!

--Danny Daly (ddaly06)