2024 Rotation and Bullpen

Pedroia's Itchy Nose · Apr 20, 2024

chrisfont9 said:
The defense is baked into the ERA, so the delta between the two is the defense (and park factors). Have they made all their errors when the relievers are in? Is the outfield D saving the starters a bunch of runs? I guess I'm not shocked because the ERAs are all so low despite the defense. But I don't know why the FIP is significantly higher.

chrisfont9 said:
Yes, right, thanks. So this means their current ERA reflects unsustainable hit sequencing luck?

Rovin Romine said:
Yes and no, I think. Yes in that I don't think there's any way under the sun they collectively sustain their better-than-Pedro ERA throughout the entire season. I think batters will adjust to the new pitching patterns.

But No in that I also don't think that everything outside a strikeout is absolutely-evenly distributed pure luck outcomes (and so FIP reflects a real-world outcome that they're going to trend back to.) It really can't be, can it - given that we know pitchers have tendencies, like Bello, to be FB or GP pitchers. (Or to flip this from the batter's perspective, Yoshida. It's not like weak grounders and hard hit doubles are randomly distributed for him.) BABIP must be fed. But he feeds unevenly. Houck, Whitlock, and Pivetta, for example, are low, but not absurdly so.

Anyway, if you want to see if this is sustainable, there's a place to look. Bailey was the pitching coach for the SF Giants from 2020 to 23. The '21 Giants had just about everyone on the roster take a giant step forward. (Har har.) But then many regressed in '22, but there were aging factors and roster turn over as well. I'd look at Savant to see if pitch mixes changed for individual pitchers between 20 and 21, then 21 and 22.

Just want to add a bit to this discussion -- the defense may or may not be baked into the ERA. Defense should have some impact, of course, but as you've noted in your follow-up hit sequencing does as well, as does BABIP which is more controllable by pitchers but still random.

While BOS has a middle-of-the-road strand rate, the starters are first in baseball with 84.2%. That does almost certainly reflect a significant amount of sequencing luck. I looked back as far as Y2K and no team broke an 80% strand rate other than in the short 2020 season. It was rare to even have a team break 79%.

The starters also have a BABIP against of .250, would also be the lowest since Y2K (I didn't look back any further), although a couple of teams have been in the mid to low .250's. Most years the best teams' rotation BABIP against is in the .260's.

The rotation's HR/FB of 8.2% is also low, with most MLB leading rotations bottoming out in the 10-12% range over the past several complete seasons (I didn't bother looking all the way back to Y2K).

The Sox starters are fairly middle of the road in medium and hard contact %, but are 8th in soft contact %. The Sox starters are 4th in GB% but 10th in LD%, and also 8th in barrel % and 3rd in EV.

So the statcast data seems to suggest that the Sox have been successfully managing quality of contact in addition to their very strong FIP stats, although perhaps not at an elite level.

The team defense, as everyone has noted, has been terrible. That said, I'm not well versed enough in the defensive metrics to understand how to separate out the error rate from other aspects of defense. A team with good to great range that makes a ton of errors is going to likely be bad on the overall defensive metrics, but will still reflect well on the pitcher.

So all in all my conclusion from all of this is that the Sox rotation has been both among the best in the league and also lucky. The ERA is absolutely unsustainable, but how unsustainable is unclear.

The fact that the team is leading the league in FIP- by far and is tied for first in xFIP- is fantastic even if the ERA is also a mirage. The starters have been nothing short of excellent.

Better lucky than good, but best to be both.

Ale Xander · Sunday at 11:37 AM

Can you award a pitching coach MVP?

Because if I had a vote, I'd be tempted to vote for Bailey.

I know it's SSS, but it's been incredible (the SP part).

Maybe him and Breslow know what they're doing, and we shouldn't have been freaked by the alleged lack of aces.

simplicio · Sunday at 12:08 PM

I'm concerned about Winck today, he was not looking sharp in the Cleveland games. It would be nice if Bailey could Gandalf up a little more than of that starter magic.

BaseballJones · Sunday at 4:41 PM

Updated from the last two games:

Bello:
5.0 ip, 5 h, 2 r, 2 er, 0 bb, 2 k (W, Sox win 6-4)
5.0 ip, 5 h, 4 r, 4 er, 1 bb, 6 k (ND, Sox win 5-4)
5.1 ip, 4 h, 3 r, 1 er, 2 bb, 3 k (L, Sox lose 7-1)
5.1 ip, 6 h, 2 r, 2 er, 2 bb, 8 k (W, Sox win 5-4)
6.0 ip, 1 h, 0 r, 0 er, 2 bb, 7 k (W, Sox win 8-1)
TOT: 26.2 ip, 21 h, 11 r, 9 er, 7 bb, 26 k, 3.04 era, 1.05 whip, 8.8 k/9

Houck:
6.0 ip, 3 h, 0 r, 0 er, 0 bb, 10 k (W, Sox win 9-0)
6.0 ip, 4 h, 0 r, 0 er, 2 bb, 7 k (W, Sox win 12-2)
5.2 ip, 12 h, 7 r, 4 er, 0 bb, 2 k (L, Sox lose 7-0)
9.0 ip, 3 h, 0 r, 0 er, 0 bb, 9 k (W, Sox win 2-0)
TOT: 26.2 ip, 22 h, 7 r, 4 er, 2 bb, 28 k, 1.35 era, 0.90 whip, 9.4 k/9

Crawford:
6.0 ip, 3 h, 1 r, 0 er, 1 bb, 7 k (ND, Sox lose 4-3)
4.2 ip, 2 h, 1 r, 1 er, 3 bb, 5 k (ND, Sox win 8-6)
5.0 ip, 2 h, 0 r, 0 er, 4 bb, 6 k (ND, Sox lose 7-5)
5.2 ip, 2 h, 0 r, 0 er, 0 bb, 6 k (ND, Sox lose 6-0)
6.0 ip, 7 h, 1 r, 1 er, 3 bb, 6 k (W, Sox win 4-2)
TOT: 27.1 ip, 16 h, 3 r, 2 er, 11 bb, 30 k, 0.66 era, 0.99 whip, 9.9 k/9

Whitlock:
5.0 ip, 3 h, 1 r, 1 er, 0 bb, 8 k (W, Sox win 5-1)
4.1 ip, 4 h, 0 r, 0 er, 4 bb, 4 k (ND, Sox lose 2-1)
5.0 ip, 4 h, 1 r, 1 er, 2 bb, 4 k (ND, Sox lose 9-4)
4.0 ip, 3 h, 2 r, 2 er, 1 bb, 1 k (ND, Sox lose 10-7)
TOT: 18.1 ip, 14 h, 4 r, 4 er, 7 bb, 17 k, 1.96 era, 1.15 whip, 8.3 k/9

Pivetta:
6.0 ip, 3 h, 1 r, 1 er, 0 bb, 10 k (L, Sox lose 1-0)
5.0 ip, 5 h, 0 r, 0 er, 1 bb, 3 k (W, Sox win 1-0)
TOT: 11.0 ip, 8 h, 1 r, 1 er, 1 bb, 13 k, 0.82 era, 0.82 whip, 10.6 k/9

Bernardino:
2.0 ip, 0 h, 0 r, 0 er, 3 bb, 10 k (ND, Sox lose 5-4)

Criswell:
4.0 ip, 5 h, 2 r, 2 er, 1 bb, 4 k (ND, Sox win 7-2)

Winckowski:
3.1 ip, 3 h, 1 r, 1 er, 0 bb, 1 k (ND, Sox win 6-1)

TOTALS:

119.1 ip, 89 h, 29 r, 23 er, 32 bb, 129 k, 1.73 era, 1.01 whip, 9.7 k/9

Petagine in a Bottle · Sunday at 9:36 PM

Pretty phenomenal. Can’t really argue with a 13-10 record; of course the pitching has been better than anyone’s wildest dreams, but the offense has been fairly middling in the opposite direction. At this point, I imagine most folks have to be pretty happy while acknowledging that it’s going to be difficult to continue winning unless some guys get healthy (er). Feel like the fewer (less?) opener games, the better.

flymrfreakjar · Monday at 1:17 AM

Time to start giving Slaten more high-leverage opportunities no? Love that he can go multiple innings but he's probably the best reliever on the team and may well be one of the very best in the AL.

BaseballJones · Monday at 9:25 AM

Chris Martin's 2024 game log. Pretty great except for one horrendous outing.

Guess which game I actually attended in person?

LOL

simplicio · Wednesday at 5:52 PM

Jacques was claimed by Arizona.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/40011141/diamondbacks-acquire-inf-sergio-alcantara-claim-lhp-joe-jacques

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2024 Rotation and Bullpen

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