Three Posts in One

I’ve been toying with a few posts for the last day or two, and frankly, I just could not give any of these full-post treatment. Instead, here are all three at once for your consumption.

Bruiser ‘Brook

Jake Westbrook missed all of the 2009 season minus nine minor league innings and only served the Indians with 34 innings in 2008. He’s back. Unfortunately, he forgot to pack something. Namely his control. In three outings, Westbrook has walked 10 batters (none intentionally) and hit four batters – two in each of his first two starts.

Westbrook is no stranger to plunking batters – he average seven per season from 2003-2007 – but that mark leads the league. Amusingly, another starter returning from injury – Rich Harden – also has four with a lot of walks.

The Mariners infielder switcharoo

When Seattle decided to flip Chone Figgins and Jose Lopez, one of the theories was that they wanted the better fielder to get more opportunities on batted balls. Well, that’s worked so far … if Lopez is who they consider the better fielder. It’s early, but Lopez has seen 41 balls in his zone (making plays on 35) and Figgins has only seen 29 (making plays on 26). It’s early, so the numbers don’t mean too much, but Figgins has also made seven fewer out of zone plays than Lopez.

The Boston marathon

You knew this already. Nobody, but nobody, respects the ability of either Jason Varitek or Victor Martinez to throw a runner out. Call the tandem Defensive Indifference, because it’s almost unfair that Carl Crawford is going to be padding his stolen base figures against this group all season. Check out the leaderboards under steals allowed and you’ll find:

Tim Wakefield 10
Josh Beckett 6
Jon Lester 5

Running on the elder knuckleballer is a given, but the other two? Beckett has a combined 36 against him the past three seasons. He’s on a decisively worse path this season. Lester, meanwhile, actually had 19 steals against him last season, but only 21 in his other 59 career starts. Even John Lackey has allowed two steals. This unit is some kind of bad at throwing out runners.





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Josh
13 years ago

and 2 more tonight off Beckett/Varitek

Zack
13 years ago
Reply to  Josh

And Vlad stole 2 last night.
It’s pretty sad to watch, for a team built on pitching and defense you can give bases away like that every game.

When does the Boston media smear job of VMart start though? From ‘catcher-of-the-future,’ ‘great clubhouse guy,’ ‘professional hitter,’ to DH who’s only worth 1yr/3m

DavidCEisen
13 years ago
Reply to  Josh

In a four game series against Boston, Crawford went 3 for 16 with one walk–but managed to steal 4 bases. I’m not sure how many times he actually got on base, due to an error or fielder’s choice, but that a pretty darn efficient base running

B N
13 years ago
Reply to  DavidCEisen

Crawford has been thrown out like 2 times out of 30+ attempts against Boston over the last few years. That’s one heck of a success rate (almost 95%). Unless Crawford hits a double, any time he gets on base you might as well assume he’s going to 2B. I’m rather surprised it’s not more bases than that. I mean, there’s still third base to steal. Crawford could in theory end up with more SB than trips to first against the Red Sox this year.

I would imagine that so-so base stealers in the AL east get the biggest bump though. If Vlad can steal against the Red Sox, you have to assume guys like Granderson and Adam Jones are going to get to pad their SB numbers too. And with 18 games, they could end up with 9 SB just against the Red Sox each.