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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What do these fellow batsmen have in common?

• Adrian Gonzalez
• Matt Kemp
• Emilio Bonifacio
• Michael Bourn
• Michael Young

Well, probably a lot, seeing as how they all share a profession, but today let us examine a particularly unique distinction: The fact that they collectively represent the top five BABIPs of the 2011 MLB season.

Let’s find out how much was luck and how much was repeatable.

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Short term injuries litter the landscape of spring training, so it doesn’t usually mean too much when a player is shut down for a few days, as the Red Sox did Monday with Carl Crawford. This time, the consequences appear more serious, as the outlook is less bright for the 30-year-old coming off January wrist surgery. From manager Bobby Valentine, via the Boston Globe:

The Opening Day thing is probably not realistic. It’s not the calendar. He’ll be ready when he’s ready. As we talked about before he got here and we’ve reiterated that Carl loves to do a lot of stuff and it’s probably not in his best interest at this time to overdo it. It’s more work than his wrist needs at this time.

It isn’t known exactly how long Crawford will be out, although the thinking is he may need to start the season on the disabled list in order to take either a minor league rehab assignment or take extra at-bats in extended spring training to ready himself for the season. With just four playoff spots available for five very solid teams in Boston, New York, Tampa Bay, Texas and Los Angeles of Anaheim, how the Red Sox and their newest attempts at outfield depth respond to this first test could be key come October.

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With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

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Dare to dream.

On Thursday, we looked at Fielding Independent Offense (FIO) — as well as the Should Hit formula — and decided to toss stolen bases into the equation. The result were, let’s say, brow-elevating.

Today, we are going to put that result — the FIO formula — into action.

In the timeless words of Sir Samuel Leroy Jackson: “Hold onto your butts!”
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After spending more than 14 years donning the tools of ignorance, Jason Varitek is calling it a career. The veteran backstop will announce his retirement on Thursday according to The Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham, and he’s expected to remain with the organization in some non-playing capacity.

Varitek, 39, was the homegrown Red Sox player that didn’t actually grow up in their farm system. He was originally drafted 14th overall by the Mariners in 1994 and spent more than two years in their minor league system before being traded to Boston along with Derek Lowe in exchange for Heathcliff Slocumb at the 1997 trade deadline. That has to be one of the most lopsided deals of the last 25 years or so. Unlike Lowe, Varitek never played a game for the Mariners, instead topping out at Triple-A.

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