1. You have chosen to ignore posts from YOUKILLUS20. Show YOUKILLUS20's posts

    The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/20/2011 9:01 PM EST

     Last off season, the uneasiness for me started with the Carl Crawford signing. I was very surprised, especially right on the heels of the A-Gon trade. I really thought Jason Werth, would be well, worth it. When the team got off to that attrocious start, the uneasiness took hold a little deeper. Then A-Gon just wasn't hitting the ball to left field as advertised and things just didn't seem right for all of April. JD Drew was a black hole offensively, and Youk struggled as well. Before that got to too big of a concern the team was pitching, hitting, especially Ells and A-Gon and the wins began to pile up.
     The season ended dramatically with an epic collapse and coming from the beaks of Buck's Orioles made it specially gnawing. We need a RH bat some shouted. No, we don't! was the opposing retort, we have the most runs scored, or the highest OPS or whatever they referenced that seemed to make sense numerically, but not in reality. Some of us remembered the lop-sided wins that inflated the numbers our critics turned against us, (that was quite crafty on their part) and we said "see, look here 18-9 one day, 9-13 totaled in the next
    two games, that's 27-22 Boston, why did we lose two out of three?"
     The reason was....consistency, and really the lack thereof. An Iowa Physicist and Cardinals fan Kerry Whisnant says,  "My study shows that runs alone don't tell the whole story," he said. "Consistency is another factor. You want to score runs, and you want to be consistent."

    Across an entire 162-game season, Whisnant said more consistency could mean two additional wins. And that can be the difference between making the playoffs and calling it quits the first week in October.

     This is the validation of what I've been thinking about last year's team and the issues with it's offense. The Sox BTW, scored 8 more runs than the Yankees.


     

  2. You have chosen to ignore posts from UticaClub. Show UticaClub's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/20/2011 9:54 PM EST

    Why not just admit that you live in the Baltimore area and are an Orioles fan but masquerading as a Sox fan on a Red Sox fan on a Boston forum? You work for an Orioles blog / newspaper / station.  Why the pretense? I would respect you ten times more if you just leveled with us. What the he-ll is wrong with being sincere and honest? It is sad to see participants in a Red Sox forum playing games like this. Shame on you.
     

  3. You have chosen to ignore posts from moonslav59. Show moonslav59's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/20/2011 10:06 PM EST

    In Response to The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
     Last off season, the uneasiness for me started with the Carl Crawford signing. I was very surprised, especially right on the heels of the A-Gon trade. I really thought Jason Werth, would be well, worth it. When the team got off to that attrocious start, the uneasiness took hold a little deeper. Then A-Gon just wasn't hitting the ball to left field as advertised and things just didn't seem right for all of April. JD Drew was a black hole offensively, and Youk struggled as well. Before that got to too big of a concern the team was pitching, hitting, especially Ells and A-Gon and the wins began to pile up.  The season ended dramatically with an epic collapse and coming from the beaks of Buck's Orioles made it specially gnawing. We need a RH bat some shouted. No, we don't! was the opposing retort, we have the most runs scored, or the highest OPS or whatever they referenced that seemed to make sense numerically, but not in reality. Some of us remembered the lop-sided wins that inflated the numbers our critics turned against us, (that was quite crafty on their part) and we said "see, look here 18-9 one day, 9-13 totaled in the next two games, that's 27-22 Boston, why did we lose two out of three?"  The reason was....consistency, and really the lack thereof. An Iowa Physicist and Cardinals fan Kerry Whisnant says,  "My study shows that runs alone don't tell the whole story," he said. "Consistency is another factor. You want to score runs, and you want to be consistent." Across an entire 162-game season, Whisnant said more consistency could mean two additional wins. And that can be the difference between making the playoffs and calling it quits the first week in October.  This is the validation of what I've been thinking about last year's team and the issues with it's offense. The Sox BTW, scored 8 more runs than the Yankees.
    Posted by YOUKILLUS20

    Yes, 8 more, but we weren't the only team scoring in bunches...

                      Sox   NYY  TB   TX
    15+ runs     5       5      3      2
    11-14        13       8       3    13
    9-10          15      14      7     10

    9+              33      27    13     25

    0-1             23      17    28     19
    2-3             32      32    42     36

    0-4             55       49    70     55

    Runs allowed:
    15+             2        2       0        1
    11-14          4       3        2        9
    9-10           17      9        7        5

    9+              23      14       9       15

    0-1              28     20      38      36
    2-3              39     63      44      39

    0-4               67    83      82      75

    The average runs scored per game is about 4-6 runs:
    Bos: 58
    NY:   68
    TB:   58
    TX:   47

     

  4. You have chosen to ignore posts from Joebreidey. Show Joebreidey's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/20/2011 10:14 PM EST

    It's possible, but you'd need stats to support that.  What were the league averages and what were the standard deviations?
     

  5. You have chosen to ignore posts from JB-3. Show JB-3's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/20/2011 10:15 PM EST

    In Response to The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
    The Sox BTW, scored 8 more runs than the Yankees.
    Posted by YOUKILLUS20


    The Sox also allowed 80 more runs than the Yankees did, allowing the 10th most runs in MLB.
     

  6. You have chosen to ignore posts from JB-3. Show JB-3's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/20/2011 10:28 PM EST

    Also, the more consistent an offense is, the less likely they dealt with injuries to key pieces of that offense.  Which naturally leads to great success when you have your starting 9 out there and healthy every day.
     

  7. You have chosen to ignore posts from moonslav59. Show moonslav59's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/20/2011 10:43 PM EST

    2011:  4+  5+  6+
    Bos:   107  77  62
    NYY:   113  85  60
    Tex:    107  85  64
     

  8. You have chosen to ignore posts from BosoxJoe5. Show BosoxJoe5's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/20/2011 11:50 PM EST

    In Response to Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
    Why not just admit that you live in the Baltimore area and are an Orioles fan but masquerading as a Sox fan on a Red Sox fan on a Boston forum? You work for an Orioles blog / newspaper / station.  Why the pretense? I would respect you ten times more if you just leveled with us. What the he-ll is wrong with being sincere and honest? It is sad to see participants in a Red Sox forum playing games like this. Shame on you.
    Posted by UticaClub

    You are worse than a troll, you are like John Henry's gustapo or Baghdad Bob.
     

  9. You have chosen to ignore posts from hankwilliams. Show hankwilliams's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 6:56 AM EST

    Red Sox offense was inconsistent. Good, but not great or balanced will from top to bottom.
     

  10. You have chosen to ignore posts from Hfxsoxnut. Show Hfxsoxnut's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 7:07 AM EST

    No baseball offense can be truly consistent because that's not how baseball works.  I do think the 2011 offense had a feast-or-famine syndrome, evidenced by the 11 shutouts and the crazy imbalance in the September scoring. 

    Good stats by Moonslav on the distributions of run scoring.
     

  11. You have chosen to ignore posts from YOUKILLUS20. Show YOUKILLUS20's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 7:10 AM EST

    In Response to Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
    Why not just admit that you live in the Baltimore area and are an Orioles fan but masquerading as a Sox fan on a Red Sox fan on a Boston forum? You work for an Orioles blog / newspaper / station.  Why the pretense? I would respect you ten times more if you just leveled with us. What the he-ll is wrong with being sincere and honest? It is sad to see participants in a Red Sox forum playing games like this. Shame on you.
    Posted by UticaClub


     LOL! For the record, yes I do live in the "Baltimore area" if Virginia Beach can be considered that 179 miles away. I have been to Camden twice, both times decked out in Sox gear. Born in Concord NH. Listened and or watched Ken Coleman, Johnny Pesky, Ned and Dave Martin, and the gravelly Jim Woods. celebrated the Fisk HR and the Carbo PH, have a Bernie C autograph baseball.
     The great detective thinks I'm a Birds fan, classic, cuz I watch the Orioles feed on the big screen when they play the Sox, instead of taking the blackout on my MLB.COM package and watching nothing.
     

  12. You have chosen to ignore posts from YOUKILLUS20. Show YOUKILLUS20's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 7:12 AM EST

    In Response to Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
    2011:  4+  5+  6+ Bos:   107  77  62 NYY:   113  85  60 Tex:    107  85  64
    Posted by moonslav59


     How about 9 or 10 plus??
     

  13. You have chosen to ignore posts from hankwilliams. Show hankwilliams's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 12:29 PM EST

    5 + Red Sox comaprison is the real telling number. Not impressive and something that can be approved upon via current market.
     

  14. You have chosen to ignore posts from Hfxsoxnut. Show Hfxsoxnut's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 12:35 PM EST

    In Response to Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
    5 + Red Sox comaprison is the real telling number. Not impressive and something that can be approved upon via current market.
    Posted by hankwilliams


    Agreed, I think the 5+ number is the key one.
     

  15. You have chosen to ignore posts from hankwilliams. Show hankwilliams's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 2:30 PM EST

    Season total numbers are just about meaningless.
     

  16. You have chosen to ignore posts from Joebreidey. Show Joebreidey's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 3:07 PM EST

    In Response to Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
    Season total numbers are just about meaningless.
    Posted by hankwilliams


    The problem, as always, is that just saying it is bad, going by gut feeling, instead of numbers, is also meaningless.

    What is our standard deviation?  What should it be?  How far off are we?  What is real and what is background noise?  How do you address this, aside from your 100x a day suggestion to trade Ellsbury?

    You bring nothing to the table on this subject.

    I'd start with 'how many games do we score 2 or less?  Those are tough to win.

    RS  38
    TX  39
    NY  27
    TB  52
    DE  35
    LA  52
    TO  50

    You basically started off with a sound bite you heard elsewhere.

    It has an intuitive appeal to it, so you decided, without any statistical support whatsoever, that it was important.

    You then decided, again without a shred of statistical support, that this was a weakness for us.  The stuff that Moon and I just gave you is maybe 10% of what you'd need to draw a conclusion.  You'd need to know, at a minimum, the value of scoring 4 v 5, the negative value of 3 or less, 2 or less, 1 or less, and the value of 6, 7, 8, etc.

    You have absolutely nothing right now.
     

  17. You have chosen to ignore posts from hankwilliams. Show hankwilliams's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 3:12 PM EST

    5 + Red Sox comaprison is the real telling number

    Joe, pontificating and personal asside, you are the last person to flout ignorance.

    The notion that baseball is one sided is absurd. The notion that the 2010 and 2011 offense are fine is even more absurd. Market dictates which side of ball value improvments are best made.

    I provided details on every man I would seek and retain on 40 man roster. You and Moonslob offer nothing but snipet cut and paste and general comments that drone the typical "we need pitching" comments. This amounts to nothing! Zero!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

     

  18. You have chosen to ignore posts from SonicsMonksLyresVicars. Show SonicsMonksLyresVicars's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 3:13 PM EST

    In Response to The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
      Some of us remembered the lop-sided wins that inflated the numbers our critics turned against us, (that was quite crafty on their part) and we said "see, look here 18-9 one day, 9-13 totaled in the next
    two games, that's 27-22 Boston, why did we lose two out of three?"
     The reason was....consistency, and really the lack thereof.
    Posted by YOUKILLUS20


    Youk, there was also the Baltimore game preceeding the 18-run game, which we lost 6-5. The third game we lost 7-5, and the fourth 6-4.

    The reason we lost 3 out of 4 seems more like a lack of pitching to me.  We averaged 4.67 runs/game in those losses against a weak Baltimore team....that should be good enough to win most if not all of them.

    Pitching.
     

  19. You have chosen to ignore posts from hankwilliams. Show hankwilliams's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 3:23 PM EST

    Baseball games are like any competition, pressure is always on the team who fails to score early. No stat snipet will reflect that fact. 2011 offense was good but inconsistent and not great on any level.
     

  20. You have chosen to ignore posts from SonicsMonksLyresVicars. Show SonicsMonksLyresVicars's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 4:07 PM EST

    In Response to Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
    Baseball games are like any competition, pressure is always on the team who fails to score early. No stat snipet will reflect that fact. 2011 offense was good but inconsistent and not great on any level.
    Posted by hankwilliams


    19 Sep (1st game of double header) Sox never led
    20 Sep Sox led 5-4 after 4 (and the same after 7)
    21 Sep Sox led 4-1 after 5 innings

    So they scored enough to win all 3 games had the pitching been decent, and "put pressure" on the Os by scoring more runs early in 2 of the 3 games.

    I think it's reasonable to call 875 runs, which led the league and was the 6th highest Sox total since the 1961 expansion, great.


     

  21. You have chosen to ignore posts from UticaClub. Show UticaClub's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 4:36 PM EST

    The statistic that you may be looking for would be median runs per game instead of average. Also useful would be the opponents median runs per game and then look at the differences. My guess is that Bill James and staff must have such information.
     

  22. You have chosen to ignore posts from moonslav59. Show moonslav59's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/21/2011 8:50 PM EST

    The Sox averaged 4 games a month with 0-1 runs scored. In September, we had 4 games with 0-1 runs scored.

    The Sox averaged 5.33 games a month with 2-3 runs scored. They scored that many in 7 September games.  So, for basically scoring 2-3 runs 1.67times more than average, that means our offense was inconsistent in Sept.???

    Please!

    Our staff let up 4 or more runs in 26 of our final 29 games.
     

  23. You have chosen to ignore posts from Joebreidey. Show Joebreidey's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/22/2011 7:51 AM EST

    In Response to Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
    5 + Red Sox comaprison is the real telling number Joe, pontificating and personal asside, you are the last person to flout ignorance. The notion that baseball is one sided is absurd. The notion that the 2010 and 2011 offense are fine is even more absurd. Market dictates which side of ball value improvments are best made. I provided details on every man I would seek and retain on 40 man roster. You and Moonslob offer nothing but snipet cut and paste and general comments that drone the typical "we need pitching" comments. This amounts to nothing! Zero!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
    Posted by hankwilliams


    Nothing in there makes any sense.  What does 'baseball is one sided' even mean?  You whine about the consistency of the offense, but you offer not a shred of objective evidence to show whether we are above-average in consistency, or below-average in consistency, and what the cost is.

    You seem to have developed an allergy to numbers.
     

  24. You have chosen to ignore posts from Joebreidey. Show Joebreidey's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/22/2011 7:56 AM EST

    In Response to Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
    Baseball games are like any competition, pressure is always on the team who fails to score early. No stat snipet will reflect that fact. 2011 offense was good but inconsistent and not great on any level.
    Posted by hankwilliams


    Another sound bite my liberal friend.  No doubt about the fact that the team that scores first usually wins.

    But once again, you fail to provide any data about scoring first.  Are we the best team in BB in scoring first?  Second?
     

  25. You have chosen to ignore posts from Joebreidey. Show Joebreidey's posts

    Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense

    posted at 12/22/2011 8:17 AM EST

    In Response to Re: The Best Offense is a consistent Offense:
    Baseball games are like any competition, pressure is always on the team who fails to score early. No stat snipet will reflect that fact. 2011 offense was good but inconsistent and not great on any level.
    Posted by hankwilliams


    Runs scored in 1st inning

    RS  103
    NY  115
    TB   82
    DE   82
    TX   85
    LA   67

    Dude, this only takes 2 minutes.  So not only were you wrong, you were too lazy to look up the stats.  To compound those errors, you fail to realize that, if you want to score in the first inning, the key guy in your lineup is your leadoff hitter.  Ellsbury was light years ahead of any other leadoff hitter.

    I think you take a breath and figure out what's going on.

    1-Is the issue consistency or scoring first.
    2-When you decide on an issue, decide our ranking.  This might require numbers.
    3-Decide if our ranking is a problem.  If we second in scoring in the first inning, it probably isn't as big a problem as you think.
    4-Conjecture on a solution.  The solution to consistency is probably more speed & OBP to create run scoring opportunities, as opposed to HR hitters.  The solution to scoring first is probably having a better 1-4, which is really unlikely to happen, or getting someone faster in the leadoff slot.