Red Sox Diaries

So much went wrong Thursday night that it's hard to pick a place to start. Just a sampling:

--Josh Beckett's second straight disaster. I'll expand on this later during the weekend, but Boston needs Beckett and the rest of the rotation to be a lot more effective than it has been so far.

--Just one hit. And not only that, it didn't even leave the infield--had it been somebody like David Ortiz as opposed to Jacoby Ellsbury who hit that ball, the Rays might've had their first no-hitter in franchise history.

--Another Javier Lopez meltdown. Yeah, the game was out of reach, but it just reaffirmed everything talked about in Wednesday's post. One bad outing like this can inflate a reliever's ERA and make it a misleading representation of how he has pitched. In Lopez's case, 9.44 is definitely accurate.

--An outfielder on the hill. After hitting the game-winning home run the night before, rookie Jonathan Van Every was called in from right field to finish up the eighth inning. Francona put Lopez in Van Every's outfield spot, pouring salt on the wound. It's pretty pathetic that the two teams in baseball with the highest payrolls have already been in situations this season where they've sent a non-pitcher to the mound, and equally pathetic that those two players performed better than the pitchers who preceded them.

But the most interesting and puzzling storyline is Matt Garza's continued dominance over the Red Sox. The 26-year-old right-hander sports an unimpressive career record of 23-25, including playoffs. Yet almost one-third of Garza's wins have come in 10 career starts against Boston--he is 7-1 against the Sox with a 2.54 ERA.

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Tampa Bay general manager Andrew Friedman has gotten a lot of credit for turning around the franchise by developing a top-notch farm system that has been churning out great players. That praise is deserved, though having a top-5 pick every year makes it a little easier. What's more impressive to me are the more under-the-radar trades and signings that Friedman has made over the past three years that have transformed the Rays into a legitimate World Series threat.

Shortstop Jason Bartlett, first baseman Carlos Pena, catcher Dioner Navarro and pitcher Edwin Jackson (who was traded to the Detroit Tigers this past offseason for outfielder Matt Joyce, another player who fits the mold) were all former top prospects for other organizations who had never lived up to their potential and fallen out of favor with their respective franchises. Friedman acquired them either off the free agent heap for nothing or through trades in which he capitalized on other team's frustrations and was able to give up less than the player was worth. In Tampa, all four blossomed into the players they were projected to become.

Garza also falls into that category. Originally a heralded prospect for the Minnesota Twins, he went just 8-13 in his first two pro seasons before general manager Bill Smith (who had recently taken over for the retiring Terry Ryan) decided he was willing to part with Garza. He put together a deal with the Rays that sent Garza to Tampa and very talented but very troubled outfielder Delmon Young to Minnesota.

Advantage: Rays. Garza took significant strides last season, raising his ERA+ (120) for the third straight season and lowering his walks per nine innings average (2.9) for the third year in a row. He was 11-9 in 30 regular season starts and averaged slightly more than six innings per outing. And while Young did hit .290, his OPS+ was just 102, due in large part to his poor plate discipline. His strikeout-to-walk ration was an unsightly 3-1.

The main type of pitcher that has given Boston trouble in recent years has been smart lefties who throw fairly hard and can pick up big strikeouts when they need to--Johan Santana, Scott Kazmir, Ted Lilly and Andy Pettitte (during his first stint with the Yankees) all boast sub-4.00 ERAs against the Sox. But Garza, a righty, doesn't fit with that group. He throws a mid-90s fastball with a hard slider and a reliable curve--a nice arsenal of pitches, though nothing that Boston hasn't seen or had success against before. He falls in the curious exception category, along with former Baltimore Orioles right-hander Rodrigo Lopez--who, for a three-year stretch, won more games against the Sox than any other pitcher. His 10 victories over Boston are his second-highest total against any team (the Rays, back before they were still called the Devil Rays and a joke of a franchise, are first on the list).

The Sox eventually figured Lopez out, as he went 0-5 in his last 6 appearances against them after going 10-4 in his first 20. They better hope they do the same to Garza, because he's proven that he has their number. After winning Games 3 and 7 in last year's ALCS, Garza is the one guy Boston doesn't face in a big game right now. But if the Rays right the ship and and challenge for the AL East title or Wild Card again, he's bound to pitch at least one of the six Sox/Rays games in September.

--Danny Daly (ddaly06)

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