What Losing Streaks Are Made Of

BaseballJones

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After beating Toronto 4-1 on July 28, the Red Sox were a season-high 23 games above .500 at 63-40, and were 2.5 games up in the AL East. Since then, they've gone 6-14 (.300), and now find themselves 6 games back - losing a staggering 8.5 games in the standings in just 20 games played. Their two main AL East rivals (TB and NY), meanwhile, have gone 14-5 (.737) and 16-5 (.762), respectively. So it's been a combination of Boston losing a ton and both TB and NY winning a ton. So the shift in the standings has been sudden and striking.

Now I haven't actually watched that much of this stretch of terrible baseball. But I can still ask the question, "What are losing streaks made of?" Because for the Red Sox, it's been a combination of a lot of different factors.

First, the offense has disappeared except for a few huge outbursts (that make the stats look better but only count as one win in the standings). In these last 20 games, here's the Sox' run distribution:

16-20 runs - 2 games
5-8 runs - 4 games
3-4 runs - 5 games
0-2 runs - 9 games

Put it all together and outside of the two huge outbursts, the Sox are averaging a paltry 3.1 runs a game. In today's baseball, that's simply not remotely going to cut it. I can't find the stat, but at one point during this run the Red Sox were like 0 for their last 30 with runners in scoring position, or something crazy like that. So situational hitting has been atrocious. They have gotten guys on base, they've had wonderful scoring opportunities, and they can't do jack squat with them.

Second, along those lines, their best hitters have slumped. Not counting last night's game (in which they only scored 2 runs), here's how their best hitters have done during this stretch:

Bogaerts:
- pre-slump: .309/.372/.518/.890
- slump: .297/.395/.484/.879

Martinez:
- pre-slump: .296/.365/.552/.916
- slump: .266/.309/.469/.778

Devers:
- pre-slump: .286/.357/.586/.944
- slump: .262/.366/.426/.792

So the key guys you're expecting to carry the offense have all basically crapped the bed at the same time. Verdugo has been better, and Renfroe is okay, but the anchors of the offense have been...well...anchors, weighing the offense down. The offense is constructed such that they need two of these guys going at basically all times, and right now none of them are, at least compared to what they had been doing (though Bogaerts is at least *close*).

Third, it's been terrible base running and fielding. We've seen butchery in the field. We've seen base running that Little Leaguers would be ashamed of. Making outs in silly situations.

Fourth, the bullpen has been worn down by overuse. Part of this is due to decreased effectiveness by the starting pitching, but part of it has to do with Cora's philosophy of not letting guys face the order a third time. He's not 100% strict on that but clearly he leans that way, and he's much more likely to go to the bullpen quicker. Though it must be said, on the days when he doesn't have a quick hook and it bites him, this place blows up with "Why is Cora trying to steal outs?" Barnes isn't nearly as effective as he had been. Taylor has regressed. And they've had several games in hand but the bullpen blew them. Those are demoralizing.

Fifth, the manager. He doesn't seem to be pushing any of the right buttons. Put that on the players, yes, because at the end of the day they are all professionals who have jobs to do. JD Martinez shouldn't need an inspirational speech by Cora to stop swinging at curve balls in the dirt. He's one of the most professional hitters I've ever seen and of COURSE he knows better. But, well, when you're slumping, even pros do things like that. He's in a major funk and that's not on Cora. But Cora doesn't seem to be able to pull them out of this. His decision-making is lacking, and though we don't know what he's doing behind the scenes, whatever he IS doing isn't working.

Sixth, they're doing just enough to lose. During this stretch, when they've gotten good pitching, the offense has disappeared. They lost 3-2 to Tampa, 1-0 to Toronto, and 2-0 to NY. And then when the offense is going (except for their blowup games), the pitching has crapped the bed. They lost 9-8 to Toronto, 9-5 to Tampa, and 8-4 to Tampa (the 4 represents a good offensive showing for them during this stretch).

The only games they've won during this stretch are:

- 4-1 over Detroit
- 2-1 over Toronto
- 20-8 over Tampa
- 8-1 over Baltimore
- 16-2 over Baltimore
- 6-2 over Baltimore

That's TWO wins against teams with a winning record during this 20-game stretch. TWO. They've lost *12* games to teams with winning records during this slump.

Seventh, there's been some bad luck. Bad calls by the umps changing the count (and thus the game situation), bad bounces, getting beat by Texas leaguers and infield choppers while their own lasers are finding opponents' gloves. That all comes into play, but the thing is, they've created so little margin for error that these things truly are impacting games. If they were playing better, yeah these bad breaks would annoy us, but they wouldn't be as impactful.

So all in all, it's been basically a total team effort in this slump. Hitting has been worse. Pitching has been worse. Managing has been worse. Fielding has been worse. There's been a bunch of bad luck involved. It's everything, combined with Tampa and New York playing lights out baseball (which makes it all so much worse), and this is what losing streaks are made of.
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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How do you find team BABiP during this time? I've been incredibly busy the past 3 weeks and shoulder some of the blame here since I haven't really been able to watch much.... but from occasionally listening in and reading threads on my phone, it seems that there's a need to sacrifice Danny Santana (or anyone!!!!) to the BABiP Gods to get back on track.

Not to turn this into a thread on Cora... I'm normally very indifferent to what a manager really can or can't do to change the outcome of a game... Barnes 3 consecutive blown saves aren't on Cora in any way shape or form, but he's definitely shit his pants several times in ways that were completely momentum killers. But still... the worst offenders of all this are the players and at all aspects of the game.

I also don't want to turn this into a thread on Bloom.... as I don't buy into this idea that a bunch of people were going to be recharged by replacing Dalbec with Rizzo. Besides, Dalbec has been decent at the plate. I also don't think we really had any chance to get an impact starting pitcher or even a decent bullpen arm.

Again... it's just on the F'in players. They are playing like shit. But that also means to me that there's a good chance they can change that and just suddenly start playing good baseball again and hopefully Cora gets out of their way.
 

Rovin Romine

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bad bounces, getting beat by Texas leaguers and infield choppers while their own lasers are finding opponents' gloves. That all comes into play, but the thing is, they've created so little margin for error that these things truly
Some of this is hitting into the shift or not. Some of this is the result of "aggressive" hitting and not being willing to take walks. In general, too many 1-2-3 innings against shrub starters pits them against one less potentially vulnerable reliever.

When they cluster hits it works. When they don't, they strand men.
 

Petagine in a Bottle

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Yeah, they need to be able to cluster hits because as a team they rarely walk, and there are a group of players (looking at you, Bobby) who almost never walk.

As a team, they’ve largely been carried by a relatively small group of players all year (Devers, Bogaerts, Kiki, JD, Eovaldi, etc.). When those guys struggled, there’s no one to pick up the slack. It seems like the team was at its best when getting contributions from guys like Verdugo, Arroyo, and Renfroe.

I think a lot of the stranding is a result of a lot of mediocre players on any given lineup (get a few men on and sooner or later one of those guys will be up), and likely some pressing. Also seems to be a book out on how to attack in key spots and hitters aren’t adjusting.

23% of the teams PA’s have gone to Dalbec, Duran, Chavis, Santana, Marwin, and Franchy who have combined for -2.5 WAR.

Pitching wise, it’s just a mediocre rotation with an ok bullpen, by today’s standards.They’ve put a ton of baserunners on all year but have gotten away with it because they don’t give up homers (which itself is probably kind of fluky, Ottavino and Whitlock’s xFIP’s are 1.5 runs worse than their ERA’s).

Seems like in the first half, they got the DP or K when they needed it, and always got the big hit and now they are not. Maybe the mood in the clubhouse has changed and thins have changed with increasing expectations, impossible to know without being there.

Just seems like early on it felt like they’d win no matter what, and now it seems like they’ll lose. Even the recent wins vs contenders have felt like slogs.
 

pokey_reese

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Jun 25, 2008
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You guys might be shocked by these stats:

Full season team slash line:
.259​
.324​
.442​
.766​


...and that comes with an 8.0% walk rate.

August team slash line:
.276​
.349​
.457​
.807​


...and that comes with a 9.7% walk rate

So during this losing streak, this team has actually hit better and walked more than they have over the course of the season.

edit: We are actually 8th in the majors in walk rate this month, 13th over the last 30 days, and 24th over the full season. So we were actually walking a lot less when we were winning more.
 

Petagine in a Bottle

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Actually- my bad, they had the 20-8 rays win, an 8-1 loss, and then 8-1 and 16-2 wins over the O’s. 44 runs in three games, but over a four game period.
 

YTF

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After beating Toronto 4-1 on July 28, the Red Sox were a season-high 23 games above .500 at 63-40, and were 2.5 games up in the AL East. Since then, they've gone 6-14 (.300), and now find themselves 6 games back - losing a staggering 8.5 games in the standings in just 20 games played. Their two main AL East rivals (TB and NY), meanwhile, have gone 14-5 (.737) and 16-5 (.762), respectively. So it's been a combination of Boston losing a ton and both TB and NY winning a ton. So the shift in the standings has been sudden and striking.

Now I haven't actually watched that much of this stretch of terrible baseball. But I can still ask the question, "What are losing streaks made of?" Because for the Red Sox, it's been a combination of a lot of different factors.

First, the offense has disappeared except for a few huge outbursts (that make the stats look better but only count as one win in the standings). In these last 20 games, here's the Sox' run distribution:

16-20 runs - 2 games
5-8 runs - 4 games
3-4 runs - 5 games
0-2 runs - 9 games

Put it all together and outside of the two huge outbursts, the Sox are averaging a paltry 3.1 runs a game. In today's baseball, that's simply not remotely going to cut it. I can't find the stat, but at one point during this run the Red Sox were like 0 for their last 30 with runners in scoring position, or something crazy like that. So situational hitting has been atrocious. They have gotten guys on base, they've had wonderful scoring opportunities, and they can't do jack squat with them.

Second, along those lines, their best hitters have slumped. Not counting last night's game (in which they only scored 2 runs), here's how their best hitters have done during this stretch:

Bogaerts:
- pre-slump: .309/.372/.518/.890
- slump: .297/.395/.484/.879

Martinez:
- pre-slump: .296/.365/.552/.916
- slump: .266/.309/.469/.778

Devers:
- pre-slump: .286/.357/.586/.944
- slump: .262/.366/.426/.792

So the key guys you're expecting to carry the offense have all basically crapped the bed at the same time. Verdugo has been better, and Renfroe is okay, but the anchors of the offense have been...well...anchors, weighing the offense down. The offense is constructed such that they need two of these guys going at basically all times, and right now none of them are, at least compared to what they had been doing (though Bogaerts is at least *close*).

Third, it's been terrible base running and fielding. We've seen butchery in the field. We've seen base running that Little Leaguers would be ashamed of. Making outs in silly situations.

Fourth, the bullpen has been worn down by overuse. Part of this is due to decreased effectiveness by the starting pitching, but part of it has to do with Cora's philosophy of not letting guys face the order a third time. He's not 100% strict on that but clearly he leans that way, and he's much more likely to go to the bullpen quicker. Though it must be said, on the days when he doesn't have a quick hook and it bites him, this place blows up with "Why is Cora trying to steal outs?" Barnes isn't nearly as effective as he had been. Taylor has regressed. And they've had several games in hand but the bullpen blew them. Those are demoralizing.

Fifth, the manager. He doesn't seem to be pushing any of the right buttons. Put that on the players, yes, because at the end of the day they are all professionals who have jobs to do. JD Martinez shouldn't need an inspirational speech by Cora to stop swinging at curve balls in the dirt. He's one of the most professional hitters I've ever seen and of COURSE he knows better. But, well, when you're slumping, even pros do things like that. He's in a major funk and that's not on Cora. But Cora doesn't seem to be able to pull them out of this. His decision-making is lacking, and though we don't know what he's doing behind the scenes, whatever he IS doing isn't working.

Sixth, they're doing just enough to lose. During this stretch, when they've gotten good pitching, the offense has disappeared. They lost 3-2 to Tampa, 1-0 to Toronto, and 2-0 to NY. And then when the offense is going (except for their blowup games), the pitching has crapped the bed. They lost 9-8 to Toronto, 9-5 to Tampa, and 8-4 to Tampa (the 4 represents a good offensive showing for them during this stretch).

The only games they've won during this stretch are:

- 4-1 over Detroit
- 2-1 over Toronto
- 20-8 over Tampa
- 8-1 over Baltimore
- 16-2 over Baltimore
- 6-2 over Baltimore

That's TWO wins against teams with a winning record during this 20-game stretch. TWO. They've lost *12* games to teams with winning records during this slump.

Seventh, there's been some bad luck. Bad calls by the umps changing the count (and thus the game situation), bad bounces, getting beat by Texas leaguers and infield choppers while their own lasers are finding opponents' gloves. That all comes into play, but the thing is, they've created so little margin for error that these things truly are impacting games. If they were playing better, yeah these bad breaks would annoy us, but they wouldn't be as impactful.

So all in all, it's been basically a total team effort in this slump. Hitting has been worse. Pitching has been worse. Managing has been worse. Fielding has been worse. There's been a bunch of bad luck involved. It's everything, combined with Tampa and New York playing lights out baseball (which makes it all so much worse), and this is what losing streaks are made of.
FWIW, I appreciate the time and effort put into this opening post. There is without doubt a lot of moving pieces when it comes to this recent slide. It truly is the perfect storm of a lot of things that have finally caught up to this team.. Near the beginning of the thread you mention the recent play of TB and NY. In that same vein, I'd like to mention something that I've seen little mention of. I think many of us would agree that the Sox were playing much better than any of us hoped that they would. And of that many, I think most would agree that this team might not have been as good as they appeared to be. I mean the deficiencies were obvious and if not corrected that level of play could not be sustained and as we now see it hasn't been. On the flip side I looked at New York and felt that team was never as bad as it was playing. There was just too much talent there for them to continue on the path that they were on. Now some may argue that the Yankees deadline acquisitions have made all the difference and others here present a case that over all it hasn't mattered much, BUT I still contend that the MFY are now playing at a level that most of us felt they were capable of playing at and the Sox have regressed to playing like a team that has the flaws that most of us saw.
 

pokey_reese

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FWIW, I appreciate the time and effort put into this opening post. There is without doubt a lot of moving pieces when it comes to this recent slide. It truly is the perfect storm of a lot of things that have finally caught up to this team.. Near the beginning of the thread you mention the recent play of TB and NY. In that same vein, I'd like to mention something that I've seen little mention of. I think many of us would agree that the Sox were playing much better than any of us hoped that they would. And of that many, I think most would agree that this team might not have been as good as they appeared to be. I mean the deficiencies were obvious and if not corrected that level of play could not be sustained and as we now see it hasn't been. On the flip side I looked at New York and felt that team was never as bad as it was playing. There was just too much talent there for them to continue on the path that they were on. Now some may argue that the Yankees deadline acquisitions have made all the difference and others here present a case that over all it hasn't mattered much, BUT I still contend that the MFY are now playing at a level that most of us felt they were capable of playing at and the Sox have regressed to playing like a team that has the flaws that most of us saw.
Yeah, there is definitely some regression on both sides here. There is a reason that on April 1st the Yankees were expected to win 95 games and the Red Sox were expected to be around .500 by season's end. Even before this slide, the Sox were significantly outperforming their pythag, winning an unreasonable number of 1-run games, etc. The real problem here is that they didn't go from playing like a 95-win team to playing like an 86-win team, it's that they've been playing like a 60-win team for a few weeks. Still plenty of time to turn it around and fight for the wild card, but at the beginning of the year, we all would have been happy with that outcome, before getting beguiled in April/May.
 

grepal

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Jul 20, 2005
193
FWIW, I appreciate the time and effort put into this opening post. There is without doubt a lot of moving pieces when it comes to this recent slide. It truly is the perfect storm of a lot of things that have finally caught up to this team.. Near the beginning of the thread you mention the recent play of TB and NY. In that same vein, I'd like to mention something that I've seen little mention of. I think many of us would agree that the Sox were playing much better than any of us hoped that they would. And of that many, I think most would agree that this team might not have been as good as they appeared to be. I mean the deficiencies were obvious and if not corrected that level of play could not be sustained and as we now see it hasn't been. On the flip side I looked at New York and felt that team was never as bad as it was playing. There was just too much talent there for them to continue on the path that they were on. Now some may argue that the Yankees deadline acquisitions have made all the difference and others here present a case that over all it hasn't mattered much, BUT I still contend that the MFY are now playing at a level that most of us felt they were capable of playing at and the Sox have regressed to playing like a team that has the flaws that most of us saw.
"Baseball is 90 percent mental, the other half is physical" (Yogi Berra), I think that you state a factual representation in saying the sox were playing better than we hoped and the Yankees were never as bad as they were playing, however I do not think the "mental" boost of showing your them you believe in them as Yankees management did by acquiring players to address weaknesses should be overlooked. Both the Yankees ability physically to be much better than they were combined with added confidence from management are driving forces in their success. By the same token Tampa adding Nelson Cruz but subtracting Rich hill made my head spin. I just do not understand how Tampa seems to always seems to have such an abundance of major league arms available to cover pitching needs. The question before the Sox is can they get back to the formula that got them the lead to begin with. Sale is back, Schwarber has been added. The Sox do have more weapons than they did while they were winning. The Sox have had no major injuries this year, can the team get over the mental funk that losing has created. Yogi knew what he was talking about when he said that baseball is 90 percent mental and that the other 50 percent is physical.
 

cantor44

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How do you find team BABiP during this time? I've been incredibly busy the past 3 weeks and shoulder some of the blame here since I haven't really been able to watch much.... but from occasionally listening in and reading threads on my phone, it seems that there's a need to sacrifice Danny Santana (or anyone!!!!) to the BABiP Gods to get back on track.

Not to turn this into a thread on Cora... I'm normally very indifferent to what a manager really can or can't do to change the outcome of a game... Barnes 3 consecutive blown saves aren't on Cora in any way shape or form, but he's definitely shit his pants several times in ways that were completely momentum killers. But still... the worst offenders of all this are the players and at all aspects of the game.

I also don't want to turn this into a thread on Bloom.... as I don't buy into this idea that a bunch of people were going to be recharged by replacing Dalbec with Rizzo. Besides, Dalbec has been decent at the plate. I also don't think we really had any chance to get an impact starting pitcher or even a decent bullpen arm.

Again... it's just on the F'in players. They are playing like shit. But that also means to me that there's a good chance they can change that and just suddenly start playing good baseball again and hopefully Cora gets out of their way.
Though pitching Barnes 3 times in 2 days IS on Cora, and the need for Barnes in those games traces back to pulling Pivetta out of the first game against Toronto with 73 pitches and dominating, when the cluster of games demanded stealing innings from starters. A mistake he astonishingly REPEATED with Houck about a week later ...

No, I'm not saying we know how Pivetta would have performed if allowed to continue pitching (or Houck for that matter) only that the circumstances (3 games in 24 hours with Toronto and 3 in 30 with NYY) required rationing relievers and attempting to stretch effective starters. He didn't do it either time and, well, that was pretty fucking shitty managing ...
 

Rovin Romine

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Though pitching Barnes 3 times in 2 days IS on Cora, and the need for Barnes in those games traces back to pulling Pivetta out of the first game against Toronto with 73 pitches and dominating, when the cluster of games demanded stealing innings from starters. A mistake he astonishingly REPEATED with Houck about a week later ...

No, I'm not saying we know how Pivetta would have performed if allowed to continue pitching (or Houck for that matter) only that the circumstances (3 games in 24 hours with Toronto and 3 in 30 with NYY) required rationing relievers and attempting to stretch effective starters. He didn't do it either time and, well, that was pretty fucking shitty managing ...
He also pulled Erod early on Aug. 15 against the Orioles. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS202108150.shtml

I get that he wanted to give Otter some work, but there was no need to do that until E-Rod was done for the day. Let Erod (83 pitches thrown) face the 6-7-8 batters on the Orioles. Erod was pissed when he was pulled. (Player's manager?) Just tell Otter to be ready and that you're brining him in for the 8th to get some work. With the plan to give the then-shaky Barnes some work in the 9th. It's really not all that complicated.

Instead Otter is wild (and presumably wouldn't have gone 2 innings anyway if this was a tune-up.) So he calls in Whitlock, who does a good job on 20 something pitches, but, looking into August, it was another outing Whitlock simply didn't have to have.
 

cantor44

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He also pulled Erod early on Aug. 15 against the Orioles. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS202108150.shtml

I get that he wanted to give Otter some work, but there was no need to do that until E-Rod was done for the day. Let Erod (83 pitches thrown) face the 6-7-8 batters on the Orioles. Erod was pissed when he was pulled. (Player's manager?) Just tell Otter to be ready and that you're brining him in for the 8th to get some work. With the plan to give the then-shaky Barnes some work in the 9th. It's really not all that complicated.

Instead Otter is wild (and presumably wouldn't have gone 2 innings anyway if this was a tune-up.) So he calls in Whitlock, who does a good job on 20 something pitches, but, looking into August, it was another outing Whitlock simply didn't have to have.
Yep.
 

YTF

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He also pulled Erod early on Aug. 15 against the Orioles. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS202108150.shtml

I get that he wanted to give Otter some work, but there was no need to do that until E-Rod was done for the day. Let Erod (83 pitches thrown) face the 6-7-8 batters on the Orioles. Erod was pissed when he was pulled. (Player's manager?) Just tell Otter to be ready and that you're brining him in for the 8th to get some work. With the plan to give the then-shaky Barnes some work in the 9th. It's really not all that complicated.

Instead Otter is wild (and presumably wouldn't have gone 2 innings anyway if this was a tune-up.) So he calls in Whitlock, who does a good job on 20 something pitches, but, looking into August, it was another outing Whitlock simply didn't have to have.
I totally understand wanting to see E-Rod come out for another inning, especially given who he might be facing, but I also was OK with him coming out given his year last year and the question of "are there any lingering affects" after some of his starts this year.
 

Petagine in a Bottle

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I think the E-Rod situation was different in that the game certainly seemed to be in hand. He could have gone another inning but he had been pretty great to that point, the only upside to keeping him in was saving an inning of relief, downside was he struggles, it’s a tougher spot for a reliever, and his outing ends a bit more negatively than before. I can see either decision but thought there was some value in ending on a high note for a guy who has hit an up and down year.
 

JimD

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So the key guys you're expecting to carry the offense have all basically crapped the bed at the same time. Verdugo has been better, and Renfroe is okay, but the anchors of the offense have been...well...anchors, weighing the offense down. The offense is constructed such that they need two of these guys going at basically all times, and right now none of them are, at least compared to what they had been doing (though Bogaerts is at least *close*).
This. I'd also add Vasquez, because although he was never intended to be an offensive force like those guys, they should be getting more consistent production from their primary catcher.