6 posts tagged “david ortiz”
Look at those headline-writing skills. Sometimes I think I should've been a beat writer...
The Red Sox won again today, their 14th win in their last 19 games and 4th straight series win, and the Yankees lost again. Now we have a 4 game lead and the magic number is down to 90. Our bullpen has the best ERA in baseball and our starters, especially Beckett and Lester, are looking great lately.
Of course, the best news from Boston this month has been the return to form of David Ortiz. Even though most people thought he was done forever, he's come back with some big numbers in June. In April, he hit .230 with no homers. In May, he hit .143 with 1 home run. In June so far, Ortiz is hitting .308 with 5 home runs.
By my calculations, if Ortiz keeps hitting as well as he has this month for the rest of the season, he'll finish the season at: .269 AVG, 31HR, 90RBI, .894 OPS
Not Ortiz' best numbers, but very respectable, and if he does that and our pitchers stay healthy, we probably win the division.
Congrats to Terry Francona again for sticking with his guy and letting him get himself out of the slump.
Go Big Papi!
Let's hope he goes on a tear starting tonight. Loved this picture on the Globe web site.
Exactly one year ago today, I called it (in this blog post) the best of times for Red Sox fans.
To be exact, I said this:
We have posted the best record in baseball while leading the American League in OPS (that's on-base plus slugging to non-stat-heads) and leading the American League in ERA. In other words, we are the best hitting team and the best pitching team. And we have strong candidates for the Cy Young (Beckett, Wakefield, Schilling), Rookie of the Year (Okajima, Matsuzaka), and MVP (Big Papi).
But not only are we the best team in baseball, the Yankees are really, really bad. 10th best record (out of 14) in the AL, and only 1/2 game up on #'s 11 & 12. How great is it that, next time the Yankees come into Fenway, when the crowd all chant "Yankees Suck!", it will actually be true?
Little has changed.
The Red Sox have the best record in the American League. We lead the league in batting average, on-base percent, and slugging percent. Unfortunately, only 8th in ERA. Once again, we have a strong Cy Young candidate in Matsuzaka (7-0, 2.15) and for Rookie of the Year in Jacoby Ellsbury (2nd in the league in steals, 1st in runs scored). And after a slow start, Big Papi is once again putting up MVP numbers: .354 avg, 1.140 ops, 5HR, 16RBI in 16 games in May. (And for the whole season, batting .357 with an 1.106 ops with runners in scoring position.)
And while the Red Sox haven't done quite as well as last year, the Yankees are just as bad as they were at this time last year. Today, they have the 12th best record in the AL at 4 games under .500 and last place in the division.
The only difference is this year I don't expect the Yankees to get into the race. No chokewatch needed this year.
Now, how did last year end again? Oh, yeah...
If I remember correctly, every time the Red Sox have played the Angels in the first round of the playoffs, they have made it to the World Series. And every time they've made the World Series in the last 20 years, they've won it all.
Not convinced? OK, here is the real reason the Red Sox will win the World Series...
A couple years ago, renowned cabal of statheads Baseball Prospectus wrote a book called Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about Baseball is Wrong. As a baseball stat geek, I thought it was one of the best baseball books since the old Elias Baseball Analysts of the late 80's.
Anyway, one of the essays in the book named the three, and only three, stats that positively correlate with playoff success in baseball. They ran the numbers on probably every possible statistic in the game and they found only 3 for which, the better a team was in this number, the better they would do in the playoffs. Besides being sort of flabbergasting (though they seem to make common sense), this is a great fact to know for predicting playoff results. (Although, last year, after reading this, I was sure the Twins would win it all and I think they got bounced in the first round.)
#1. Team Fielding Percentage
Makes sense, right? Good defense means fewer runs for the other team.
There was a lot of talk about last year's Red Sox defense, with newcomers Alex Gonzalez making spectacular plays every day and Mike Lowell playing Gold Glove defense at third. They were very good last year, but they might be even better this year. Although they both had a lot of errors early on, Lowell and Pedroia both settled into great defensive seasons, Coco Crisp has played a Gold Glove-worthy centerfield, Drew is solid, and Kevin Youkilis hasn't made a single error at first base.
1, Colorado Rockies .989; 2, Boston Red Sox .986; 3, Philadelphia Phillies .986; 4, Cleveland Indians .985; 5, New York Yankees .985; 6, Chicago Cubs .984; 7, Los Angeles Angels .983; 8, Arizona Diamondbacks .983
#2. Team Pitching K/9 innings
Another essay in the Baseball Prospectus book showed how pitchers can't really control what happens if a batter makes contact with the pitch and puts it in play, which means the most important determinant for good pitching is throwing a lot of strikeouts and very few walks. The team that gets the most strikeouts will probably give up the fewest runs.
1, Chicago Cubs 7.53; 2, Los Angeles Angels 7.25; 3, Boston Red Sox 7.19; 4, Arizona Diamondbacks 6.80; 5, Philadelphia Phillies 6.48; 6, Cleveland Indians 6.44; 7, New York Yankees 6.26; 8, Colorado Rockies 5.91
#3. Closer ERA
In the playoffs, you can't afford to blow even one game. Just ask the 2004 Yankees or the 1986 Angels (or Red Sox). No way the Red Sox win the Series in 2004 without Keith Foulke pitching the way he did. Any closer you'd rather have pitching the 9th inning of game 7 than Sports Illustrated cover boy Jonathan Papelbon?
1, Red Sox (Papelbon) 1.85; 2, Rockies (Corpas) 2.08; 3, Diamondbacks (Valverde) 2.66; 4, Angels (Rodriguez) 2.81; 5, Yankees (Rivera) 3.15; 6, Phillies (Myers) 4.33; 7, Cubs (Dempster) 4.73; 8, Indians (Borowski) 5.07
OK, adding points for position in each stat, and putting them in order:
1, Red Sox (2+3+1=6)
2t, Diamondbacks (11), Rockies (11); 4, Angels (13); 5t, Cubs (14), Phillies (14); 7, Yankees (17); 8, Indians (18)
My prediction: A 3-game sweep over the Angels, a 7-game marathon win over the Yankees, and an anti-climactic 4-game sweep over the NL team in the series. Sound familiar?
We can all breathe a great sigh of relief. A disaster for the Red Sox was narrowly averted, when I found my Red Sox hat that I'd thought I had lost. Losing my Red Sox hat would clearly mean an end to our hopes of winning the World Series -- that's obvious. Luckily, I found it, Clay Buchholz pitched a no-hitter, the Yankees handed back 2 games they'd picked up on us, and we are just a game or two away from making the upcoming 3-gamer with the Yankees completely moot.
While the rookies and Mike Lowell and Josh Beckett and Jon Papelbon get the pub (deservedly), how about a little love for Big Papi?
10th in Batting Average (.316), 4th in Slugging Average (.574), 1st in On Base Average (.431), 3rd in doubles (41), 6th in home runs (26), 7th in total bases (269), 6th in runs scored (99), 9th in RBI (94). (First place in every single one of those stats among designated hitters.)
And this is supposedly a bad year.
