This morning, I did a quick story for the Wall Street Journal on pace between pitches. So far, the Cleveland Indians look like the stars of working quickly, as all five of their starters have taken less than 20 seconds between pitches. Derek Lowe and Justin Masterson actually rank second and third in baseball in pace so far this year, behind only Roy Halladay and his Two Hours Of Doom approach.

You know who the slowest working pitching staff in baseball is to this point of 2012? The Boston Red Sox, who have taken an average of 24.6 seconds between pitches this year. You know who was the slowest working pitching staff in 2011? The Red Sox. 2010? The Red Sox. 2009? The Red Sox. 2008? The Red Sox.

The last time that Boston didn’t have the slowest working pitching staff in baseball was 2007. That year, they had the second slowest staff, getting edged out by the Yankees by 0.3 seconds per pitch.

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Initiate sleuthing mode!

On Monday afternoon, the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Boston Red Sox 1-0 in a game ended with a called strike three on to Cody Ross. Mr. Ross disagreed with that particular call and felt emboldened to express his sentiments by flipping his bat to the ground and then carefully, deliberately smash his helmet on home plate — making a pop loud enough to hear on the television broadcast.

Scandal! The stadium, the Twitter, the airwaves, the everything contracted Strike Zone Fever! Was it a strike? Was it a ball? Was it a fair call? Did Molina frame it, or had the ump — Larry Vanover — called it all day?

The answer is a little bit of everything, but mostly: Yes, the umpire called a “fair” zone.

Allow me to explain.
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The Red Sox moving Daniel Bard to the rotation has been a hotly debated move in Red Sox Nation this spring. But after two starts, it’s clear that Boston at least had the right idea in letting Bard move from the bullpen back to the starting rotation, where he threw in college and at the outset of his pro career. Bard has had a bit of an issue with issuing free passes, but has otherwise had positive showings in his first two times through the rotation.

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After three games, five teams — the Braves, Giants, Red Sox, Twins and Yankees — are 0-3. You can hear the hair pulling and consternation all over the land. Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine poured a tanker of gasoline on to the “Daniel Bard going back to the bullpen” story, and Giants manager Bruce Bochy is already benching Brandon Belt, using the old “we haven’t won a game yet” rationale as his reasoning. But even in a weekend of seeming disasters, positives abound for each squad.

Several hitters with question marks had good weekends. None were more encouraging perhaps, than Justin Morneau. After posting just a 69 wRC+ in a second-straight injury shortened campaign in 2011, it was an open question as to whether or not Morneau would ever be right at the plate again. Now, three games against the Orioles are not going to erase doubts, but Morneau showed positive signs. He tallied a hit in all three games, including a double each on Saturday and Sunday. Down in Atlanta, Jason Heyward didn’t collect a hit in all three games himself, but he made his two hits count, as both went for extra bases. Heyward also drew two walks, and looked very much like the guy Atlanta needs him to be this season.

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Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago AL
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York NL
#19 – Los Angeles NL
#18 – Colorado
#17 — Miami
#16 — Arizona
#15 — Cincinnati
#14 — Chicago NL
#13 — Milwaukee
#12 — San Francisco
#11 — Washington
#10 — Tampa Bay
#9 – Toronto
#8 – Atlanta
#7 – Detroit
#6 – St. Louis
#5 – Philadelphia
#4 – Los Angeles AL
#3 – Texas

Boston’s 2011 Ranking: #2

2012 Outlook: 63 (4th)

The Red Sox offense has holes, but will be formidable no matter what. Last season, Carl Crawford and Kevin Youkilis missed time, the team got nothing from right field, had a mediocre starting catcher — Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s .319 wOBA was tied for 15th among catchers with at least 300 plate appearances — and still led the Majors in runs scored. The team may have the very same issues this season, as well as weakened production at shortstop, but even if they don’t lead the Majors in runs scored, they will have a top-flight offense. In Jacoby Ellsbury, Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia, the Sox have four MVP-caliber hitters, and if Youkilis is right, he can be a fifth. They will cure a lot of what ails the rest of the lineup, and even at that, it would be difficult to produce worse wOBA’s than the .214 and .275 marks that Mike Cameron and J.D. Drew posted in part-time play last season. Crawford should also rebound from the nightmarish start to his tenure in Boston.

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Henry Owens might be the most intriguing pitching prospect in the Red Sox organization. He may also be the most unique. Drafted 36th-overall last year out of a Huntington Beach, California high school, the 6-foot-7 southpaw wears size-17 shoes, surfs, plays both the piano and the guitar, and can throw a football 80 yards. His powerful left arm can also propel a baseball, as he’s been clocked as high as 94 mph. No less notable is the fact that Owens has an advanced feel for pitching that belies his 19 years.

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David Laurila: How would you define yourself as a pitcher?

Henry Owens: I’m probably more of a power pitcher. I’m looking to pitch to contact, but in more of an overpowering way. I’m trying to get strikeouts as well as ground balls. My fastball sits 90-92 and tops out at 94, and hopefully I’ll be able to raise my velocity a little bit as the year goes on.

I was taught to not just throw, but to pitch. There’s obviously a difference. Rather than just rearing back every time, you have to pitch with a purpose. I throw a lot of off-speed pitches.

DL: In your mind, pitchability and being a power pitcher aren’t mutually exclusive? Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, the Boston Red Sox optioned Jose Iglesias to Triple-A. Given that he hit .235/.285/.269 in 387 plate appearances during his time in Pawtucket last year, this seems like a pretty obvious decision. While Iglesias has defensive skills that suggest he can have value even if he doesn’t ever develop into much of a hitter, there’s still a level of minimally acceptable offensive performance to make the big leagues, and it’s not clear that Iglesias currently crosses that level.

Even if we accept that Iglesias is a better hitter than his numbers last year indicate, ZIPS still projects him for just a .268 wOBA as a big leaguer this year, or about the same level of production provided by Alex Rios and Adam Dunn in 2011. Even if he was the best defensive shortstop in the game right now, that level of offense would mean he’d still top out as about a +2 win player. The upside for this skillset is basically Alcides Escobar, who posted a .282 wOBA and +10 UZR last year, and was worth +2.2 WAR in 598 PA. In reality, we’re dealing with a hitter who would need to improve significantly to get to a .282 wOBA, and projecting him as a +10 defender as a rookie is extremely aggressive.

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Part two of a two-part series.

In Part I of this series, I dove into some Pitch F/X data to try and tease out how Adrian Gonzalez changed his approach after leaving San Diego in 2011. Overall, pitchers did not appear to adjust their approach to Gonzalez, evidenced by the fact that the distribution of pitches by location in 2011 was almost identical  to 2010. Gonzalez, however, did seem to alter his approach by altering what pitches he offered at, most notably swinging at more balls away and up in the zone. The change in his swing distribution combined with the change in his performance seemed consistent with the theory that the slugger was purposefully being more aggressive on pitches outside of the strike zone in an effort to take advantage of the Green Monster at Fenway Park. But to get a firmer handle on this we needed to split out Gonzalez’s data by home versus away.

That is the focus of this article.

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The Daniel Bard experiment might be over. After the right-hander posted a bloated 7.11 ERA in just 12.2 innings this spring as a starter, the Boston Red Sox reportedly are considering returning Bard to the bullpen. While Boston had big plans for the 26-year-old — the team traded for relievers Andrew Bailey and Mark Melancon this past offseason — the move back to the ‘pen shouldn’t be seen as a failure.

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This is the first of a two-part series on Adrian Gonzalez’s evolution as a hitter.

Writing for ESPN.com last year, Dave Cameron suggested that then-newly-acquired slugger Adrian Gonzalez was displaying a new approach at the plate in Boston. Cameron pointed out that, as of May 14, Gonzalez had significantly reduced his walk percentage (BB%) and increased contact on pitches outside the strike zone (O-Contact %). Like 2010, Gonzalez was back to swinging at more pitches, but was making contact on roughly 85% of his swings. That was a huge jump from his carreer average at the time.

Since we’re on the cusp of a new season, I thought it’d be interesting to revisit Gonzalez’s 2011 to see if those early season trends held for the entire year. Overall, Gonzalez put up a .406 wOBA in 2011, versus a .378 with the Padres in 2010. The smooth-swinging first basemen got on base more often and also slugged for a higher percentage —though his ISO numbers were nearly identical. So the question is this: Was his 2011 success due to a different approach?

To figure that out, I created a series of heat maps based on Pitch F/X data that compare Gonzalez’s performances in 2011 and 2010. For the first part of this series, I’m only focusing on his overall performance. In the second part, I’ll take a deeper look and mine his home-road splits.

The first thing we need to check on is whether opposing pitchers took a different approach with Gonzalez after his move to Boston. As the data suggest, pitchers didn’t appear to approach Gonzalez all that differently:

There are some small changes in certain zones, but pitchers were pretty consistent with Gonzalez. Even if you break out fastballs from off-speed pitches, the percentages are basically the same by zone between 2010 and 2011.

Despite the season-to-season similarities, though, we see striking differences in the slugger’s approach in different zones.

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