DATA!

Let us delve once again into the numbers. The season is now two months aged and we have more stories unfolding than we have enough digital ink to cover: Will the Red Sox ever find an outfielder? Is Adam Jones the new Matt Kemp? Can the White Sox really make a playoff push in a rebuilding year? And will the 2012 Pirates really go down as one of the worst offenses in modern history?

We will not truly know the answers to these questions for some time, but we can peer into the murky mirror-mirror that is the De-Lucker! and at least get a better feel for the state of everything. Much of the offensive fluctuations in the early part of the season come from strange movements in BABIP. The De-Lucker! attempts to smooth those fluctuations and give us a better guess as to who is doing well and who is not.

And Josh Hamilton, you will see, is in both categories.
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With five outfielders already on the disabled list, the Red Sox were already spread thin in a position once thought to be a strength. Then Cody Ross factured a bone in his left foot in Monday’s game. Adding insult to injury is the promotion of Scott Podsednik just a couple of hours before game time, a move which portends a trip to the 7-Day DL for Ryan Sweeney (concussion).

As a result, the Red Sox have two options: play bad outfielders like Podsednik and Che-Hsuan Lin and wait for the cavalry to return, or get creative. Bolstered by the return of Kevin Youkilis, Bobby Valentine has chosen the latter with his lineup for tonight’s game. Youkilis will man first base, shifting Adrian Gonzalez to right field for his first outfield action in a non-interleague game.

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The injuries keep coming for the Boston Red Sox. The most recent victim is off-season acquisition Cody Ross, who is out indefinitely with a fractured bone in his foot. With Ross now on the disabled list, all three of the Red Sox projected starters in the outfield are currently injured. While the Red Sox have struggled this season, they are only 6.5 games out of first place. But the injuries will make it difficult to close the gap.

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When pressed to name the top offensive catchers in the league, names such as Mike Napoli, Miguel Montero, Brian McCann, Yadier Molina, Carlos Santana, and Alex Avila immediately come to mind. That is only natural, as all six of those players were in the top ten amongst catchers for wOBA last season (min. 100 PA). In addition, young, up-and-coming catchers, such as Matt Wieters and Buster Posey, also likely make the list for many people.

This season, however, none of those catchers listed above lead the league in production at the plate. Surprising names have risen to the top of the rankings through the first month and a half of the season. In fact, none of the top four catchers in wOBA this season (min. 100 PA) had a wOBA above .350 in 2011.
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“In the end,” Thompson wrote, “very few people will remember anything I have done as a baseball player. But hopefully they will remember what kind of person and teammate I am.”

— the Philadelphia Inquirer

For those who missed the Rays and Red Sox game last night, here’s the update: In the bottom of the eighth, moments before a blood-souring hit-by-pitch to Will Rhymes, pinch runner Rich Thompson took over for Luke Scott at second base. Much of the audience was probably — and perhaps rightly — focused on Rhymes.

But at the same time, Thompson standing at second was a spectacle in itself.
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Josh Beckett laid an egg last night, giving up seven runs while facing only 16 batters last night, and he got booed so loudly that the word lustily doesn’t even seem to do it justice. The boos were almost certainly louder than normal due to the recent revelation that Josh Beckett went golfing after he was scratched from his last start due to a strained lat muscle. The story has become that Beckett doesn’t care, and that his struggles are simply due to an apathetic attitude that was also the cause of last year’s late season collapse.

Maybe the story should be that Josh Beckett just isn’t healthy enough to perform up to his usual standards. I know, I know, that’s not nearly as fun as assassinating someone’s character, but it’s the conclusion that best lines up with the evidence.

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After the Red Sox September collapse last season, everyone on Yawkey Way was looking for a fresh start to the season. But between injuries to Andrew Bailey, Carl Crawford and Jacoby Ellsbury, the Kevin Youkilis commitment drama, the seeming indecision over what to do with Daniel Bard, and oh, the continuing and humiliating implosion of the Boston bullpen, the start to the season has been anything but fresh. Still, the team is showing little outward panic, as they are trying to weather the storm with low-key moves.

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99.6%. That was the Red Sox’s win expectancy when Vicente Padilla struck out Andruw Jones to open the seventh inning on Saturday. Freddy Garcia did not make it out of the second inning and rookie southpaw Felix Doubront had handcuffed the Yankees’ lineup through six innings, surrendering only a solo homer to Mark Teixeira along the way. The game was all Boston with eight outs to go, and that’s when the national FOX broadcast cut away to the ninth inning of Phil Humber’s perfect game.

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Friday marks the 100th anniversary of the first baseball game played at Fenway Park. The Boston Red Sox christened their new stadium on April 20, 1912 in a game against the New York Yankees. Those two teams will commemorate that first Fenway Park game by playing on Friday in throwback uniforms evocative of the time.  The game will start at 3:00 in the afternoon, just like that first game 100 years ago.

The Red Sox won the World Series in their inaugural season in Fenway Park, beating the New York Giants four games to three. But the Red Sox failed to makes the playoffs in any significant anniversary year. They missed the playoffs in the years of the 25th, 50th and 75th anniversaries, recording a winning record only in the 25th anniversary year. That year (1937) they went 80-72 but finished fifth out of eight American League teams. They also missed the playoffs in the years of the 20th, 40th, 60th and 80th anniversaries. In all but one of those seasons, they had a losing record. Only in the 60th anniversary year of Fenway Park did the Red Sox have a winning record, going 85-70 in 1972 and finishing second in the American League East.

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Josh Beckett hasn’t looked the same this season. After an off-season as public enemy No. 1 to Red Sox fans, Beckett could have benefited from a strong start this year. Unfortunately for the 31-year-old, he had a disastrous season debut — one in which he allowed five home runs in just 4.2 innings.

Since then, though, Beckett has been pretty effective. While it’s tough to draw conclusions from small samples, Beckett might be using a new approach on the mound. And if his past two starts are any indication, that approach is working.

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