A year ago, the Boston Red Sox arrived at Fort Myers, Florida fresh off the buzz of their third World Championship in ten seasons. Two years ago, the Sox entered training camp fresh off the stench of a last-place finish in 2012: with a new manager and seven free agent signees, a perfect recipe of ingredients led to that improbable title.
Now the Sox are hoping to repeat the magic of 2013 with a new recipe of players, a roster completely re-made from the one that started the last-place 2014 season. 14 of the 25 players from last year’s opening day roster are no longer with the team (Shane Victorino was on the disabled list).
While nobody can know for sure the composition of this year’s 25-man club, the 40-man roster contains over a dozen players who were not with the organization a year ago. General Manager Ben Cherington, through a series of trades and free agent signings, has completely remade both the starting lineup and the starting rotation.
Just months after getting an overall lack of production from the outfield positions, and even after trading Yoenis Cespedes to the Tigers for pitcher Rick Porcello, the Sox are still overloaded with outfield talent, with six major leaguers at the position plus a 27-year old rookie, Cuban defector Rusney Castillo. The other six are Hanley Ramirez, Shane Victorino, Daniel Nava, Allen Craig, Mookie Betts and Jackie Bradley Jr. There’s actually another, Brock Holt, who started 42 games in the outfield last year but is expected to be a mostly a utility infielder in 2015, backing up Pablo Sandoval, Xander Bogaerts and Dustin Pedroia.
So how do all of these pieces fit together into a major league lineup? Having received some early Christmas gifts with free agent signees Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez, Manager John Farrell hasn’t been able to resist the temptation to start thinking about how he would put together his lineup.
He’s talked about Betts as a leadoff candidate, and why wouldn’t he? In his late-season audition, the 22-year old Betts occupied the top spot in the lineup 22 times, and hit .310 with a .388 on-base percentage.
Farrell has also indicated that his preliminary thoughts about the middle of the lineup include putting David Ortiz in the 3-hole with the newly acquired Ramirez in the cleanup role. Forgetting for a moment that this does not account for Shane Victorino (more on this later), the lineup might look like this:
RF – Mookie Betts (R)
2B – Dustin Pedroia (R)
DH – David Ortiz (L)
LF – Hanley Ramirez (R)
3B – Pablo Sandoval (S)
1B – Mike Napoli (R)
CF – Rusney Castillo (R)
SS – Xander Bogaerts (R)
C – Christian Vasquez (R)
Farrell’s reasoning is sound: with Pedroia, Ramirez and Napoli sandwiching Ortiz and Sandoval, opposing teams will have a harder time bringing left-handed relief pitchers into the game (Sandoval, a switch-hitter, is significantly better from the left side).
Looks like a good lineup, but I would do it differently. I would bat Ramirez third and Ortiz fourth. To maintain the lineup balance of avoiding two left-handed hitters in a row, Napoli would hit fifth, Sandoval sixth. The reason that I like this alignment is very simple: while Ortiz is the best hitter of the group (and teams generally benefit by putting their best hitter in the #3 spot to guarantee they’ll hit in the first inning), he is also not much faster than a stationary boulder. Han-Ram no longer has the same speed that generated 261 career stolen bases but, at 31 years of age, is still dramatically faster than the 39-year-old Big Papi, who has never been a threat to win a sprint competition.
As good as Ramirez is with the bat, the only reason to deploy the lineup this way is speed. One of the many excellent statistics that you can find on www.baseballrefernce.com is “Extra Bases Taken.” The default is that, if you’re a runner on first base and the batter gets a single, it’s assumed that the batter will get to second base but an “extra base taken” is credited if the batter makes it to third. The same is true for a double: the runner is assumed to get to third and is credited with an extra base for getting all the way home.
Looking at just the last two seasons (to best reflect a player’s current level of speed), here is the Extra Base Taken % of most of the Red Sox offensive players on the current roster for 2015.
Extra Bases Taken Last 2 Years Extra Bases Taken Last 2 Years Mookie Betts 50% Shane Victorino 42% Jackie Bradley Jr. 50% Mike Napoli 40% Brock Holt 49% Christian Vazquez 38% Hanley Ramirez 44% Allen Craig 33% Xander Bogaerts 44% Ryan Hanigan 23% Dustin Pedroia 43% Pablo Sandoval 22% Daniel Nava 43% David Ortiz 19%
Castillo, incidentally, is at 100%, but it was just four opportunities which is a tiny, tiny sample size. Still, having watched him play ten games, I think it’s safe to assume that he would be high on this list.
So this is why I think the Sox would be better off with Han-Ram in the 3-hole and Big Papi hitting cleanup instead of vice versa: Ramirez is simply more likely to score on an Ortiz single or double than Ortiz would be on a similar event by Ramirez. Also, the only thing that really separates Ramirez from Ortiz as a hitter is in the power department. Now, I’m not claiming that I’ve just discovered a cure to cancer here with the claim that Ramirez is faster than Ortiz, the table above just quantifies the obvious. But let’s also remember that Hanley is a terrific hitter; if he had been on the free agent market a year ago he would have certainly earned a contract well over $100 million. In the last two years, for all players with at least 750 plate appearances, Han-Ram’s OPS+ (adjusted for ballpark effects) is 5th in the majors, behind only Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera, Andrew McCutchen and Andrew Goldschmidt.
So if Ortiz was in the cleanup spot, it would obviously not make sense to bat Sandoval fifth because it would give the opposing manager the opportunity to bring in a left-handed relief pitcher to face the left-handed Ortiz and the switch-hitting Sandoval, whose career OPS is 142 points higher from the left side. But, besides having Napoli keep a menacing right-handed power buffer between Papi and Panda, if you look at most statistical metrics for the last three seasons (post-season results non-withstanding), Napoli has been the superior hitter:
Last 3 seasons HR RBI Runs AVG OBP SLG OPS OPS+ Mike Napoli 64 203 181 .247 .359 .458 .816 122 Pablo Sandoval 42 215 179 .280 .335 .424 .759 116
If we extended this comparison to four years, the results would be the same: both players had their best career seasons in 2011. Now, I’m not suggesting that Napoli is a more valuable player than Sandoval; the Panda plays third base, a more valuable defensive position. But as a hitter, Napoli has been superior and should be hitting higher in the lineup. Also, as we’ve seen in the chart above, Napoli is a surprisingly aggressive and effective baserunner and more likely to take extra bases than Sandoval.
I don’t expect this lineup choice to happen because there is a fairly significant reason why this might be a hard sell: the Sox just signed the Panda to a guaranteed $95 million contract and he’s spent most of the last several years hitting third or fourth in the lineup for the San Francisco Giants. There’s a big psychological difference for a player’s ego between batting fifth or sixth.
Regardless of the order that Farrell chooses to deploy these offensive weapons, there is little doubt that Pedroia will hit 2nd and that Bogaerts and Vazquez will be near the bottom of the lineup. The biggest question about the Sox’ primary starting nine is who will play center field and right field.
Most pundits have assumed that Castillo will be in center with Betts in right. I would urge all not to forget about Victorino. He was arguably the team’s MVP in 2013 (especially since August, when he abandoned switch-hitting). At his best, or even at 80% of his best, there’s no better defensive option in right field than Victorino and he’s a solid offensive contributor and good baserunner not to mention that he is another veteran presence who has two championship rings on his finger. There’s no room for Victorino, Castillo and Betts in two outfield spots and, because they all bat right-handed, there’s no platoon scenario possible. If Victorino, who underwent back surgery last August, looks like he’s at full capacity this spring, the only options are to either trade him (and his $13 million salary) or to have Betts or Castillo start the season in the minor leagues. Farrell and Cherington will have to cross this bridge when they see what the Flyin’ Hawaiian looks like in Spring Training but let’s not forget how critical he was to the 2013 title run and, at 34 years old, should still have a couple of productive years left.
So, if the starting outfield consists of three of the four of Ramirez, Castillo, Betts and Victorino, what happens to Daniel Nava, Allen Craig and Jackie Bradley Jr. All three have been mentioned as potential trade chips for the Sox.
Let’s start with Nava: besides the light-hitting Bradley, he is the only member of the outfield options who can bat from the left side (he’s a switch hitter). He would have by far the best trade value of the three but he’s also the one guy who could occupy a natural role on the 25-man roster. In the last two years, Nava has hit .308 with .393 on-base% and .836 OPS against right-handed pitching so he could get occasional starts at all three outfield positions and at first base. Nava could also be a useful pinch-hitter from the left side in favor of Vazquez or Bogaerts (if he’s struggling with the bat) and a defensive replacement for Ramirez in left field as he adjusts to his new position. Remember also that Han-Ram has been injury prone; a good professional backup is needed here.
Craig is a big mystery. He was clearly bothered all year long by the Lisfranc fracture of his left foot that he sustained in September of 2013. He refused to blame the injury but he had the kind of awful season that can end careers. Craig, who should be in his prime at 30 years old, had a season-long OPS+ of 66 (in 505 plate appearances), which means he was 34% worse than the average hitter. I went back 70 years and looked some really bad seasons by players who Craig’s approximate age (between 25 and 35). Using a minimum of 500 plate appearances, looking at those who played primarily in either left field, right field, or at first base, only one player since World War II had a season worse than Craig’s. That was Brian Hunter, who logged a 48 OPS+ with Detroit and Seattle in 1999. There’s a difference, though: Hunter also stole 44 bases so he created the kind of value that Craig couldn’t touch. If Craig rebounds to his previous excellence, the Red Sox inherited a club-friendly contract from St. Louis ($25.5 million over the next 3 years). That makes him worth keeping around even if it means a trip back to the minor leagues to regain his batting stroke. There’s no point to trade him now, club-friendly contract or not, you couldn’t get much more than a bucket of sunflower seeds for Craig unless he shows in Spring Training that his foot woes are behind him.
As for Bradley, as bad as Craig was last year offensively, Bradley was worse. For players with at least 400 plate appearances, his .531 OPS last year was the worst in the major leagues since Alfredo Griffin’s .512 OPS with the 1991 Dodgers. If he wasn’t such a terrific defensive player, he wouldn’t be worth another chance. But anybody who watched him play centerfield could see that he is Gold Glove caliber defender. There’s no point in trading him now; you don’t sell an asset at low value. A season in Pawtucket is warranted to see if he can re-learn how to hit. Jeff Louderback, on http://baseballnewssource.com/analysis/red-sox-should-stay-the-course-with-jackie-bradley-jr/30931/, compared him to Carlos Gomez, who was traded twice as a good-field, no-hit player before blossoming in his age 26 season with Milwaukee. He’s now an all-star, combining speed, defense and power. This isn’t an entirely fair comparison; Gomez is 6’3”, 220 pounds; Bradley is listed at a generous 5’10”, 195 pounds. So it’s unlikely Bradley will ever turn into a power bat but, at 24, still has time to learn how to hit. If he can even be a passable offensive player, he at least has a future career in the majors as a defensive replacement in the outfield.
So what should the Red Sox do here? The answer is, until near the end of March, nothing. Spring Training used to exist for players to get into shape; today players work out all year round so the purpose is for pitchers to loosen up their arms and for position players to get their hitting grooves back. It’s also an opportunity to evaluate how players are doing after subpar or injury-plagued campaigns.
The Sox (and potential trading partners) need to see how Victorino and Craig are swinging the bat. They also need to determine if Betts and Castillo deserve everyday roles on Opening Day; if they both do, there is no room for Victorino. He was such an integral part of the 2013 championship team that it would be disrespectful and potentially disruptive to relegate him to a bench role. Remember again that nobody will play right field defensively as well as Victorino. He has one year left on his contract; if he’s healthy, he should be the team’s opening day right fielder even if that means the highly touted Betts or highly paid Castillo have to start the season in Pawtucket. Now, if Cherington can get true value in a trade for Victorino (think the bullpen), that’s different but he should not be traded yet just for the sake of clearing the roster clog.
As for Craig, if he shows, during Spring Training, that he’s making progress in returning to his prior excellence but not enough progress to gain any useful return value by trade, I could see holding onto him as a backup. He could give occasional days off to Napoli and Ortiz and be used as a pinch-hitter. While he was used to being a regular player in St. Louis, clearly he would understand that his 2014 performance did not warrant a starting role for 2015.
What I would also not do, under any circumstance, is trade Betts. If you look at the numbers, Betts was Boston’s best player not named David Ortiz for the last quarter of the 2014 campaign. With speed, high on-base ability, a quick stroke with good power, and good defensive instincts, he could easily be one of the top 25 players in the league by 2016. There will be a continual drumbeat from the fans and the media to acquire an “ace” starting pitcher. That would be nice, but Betts should be untouchable. The good news is that Cherington seems to agree; the Phillies’ Cole Hamels might already be in Beantown if he were willing to send Betts to Philadelphia.
For Red Sox fans, it would be a delightful conundrum to have all seven players looking solid in Spring Training. Solutions will present themselves. Cherington’s patience will be rewarded.
I agree with many of your points. And your valid lesser-known stats do make an excellent case for the young Mookie Betts. I also hope they don’t give up on (or trade) Xander Bogaerts. I think he will come around; especially if the attention goes to several of the other new players on the team. This could be just what he needs to get on with the business of leaning to hit without too much distraction. It must be a real challenge being a rookie or young player in such a baseball hungry town like Boston. I don’t mind them being deep in outfielders and feel like come July, the sox may be big players in trying to get a major arm for the second half of the season. It should be very interesting to see how long it takes some good chemistry to kick in.