The 6 Man Rotation: A Good Idea

June 18, 2009May 23, 2010Danny Vinik Leave a comment

The Boston Red Sox are in a very interesting situation right now. They have six (well, actually eight) starting pitchers all who should be pitching in the majors. Yet, no staff in baseball uses a six-man rotation; everyone uses five. There is the solution.

Look at the pitchers they have right now:

Josh Beckett – He is 7-3 with a 4.15 ERA and has 81 strikeouts in 82.1 innings. That doesn’t sound great, but then remember that since the beginning of May, he is 5-1 with a 2.52 ERA. Beckett started slowly, but has gone at least six innings in every outing in the last two months and is back to his dominant form.

Jon Lester – Lester is 5-5 with a 4.76 ERA. Like Beckett though, he is finding his form as he given up just 3 runs in his last 22 innings pitched and has a mind-boggling 34 strikeouts during that span.

Tim Wakefield – Maybe the Red Sox most consistent pitcher so far this season, Wakefield is second in the league in with 9 wins and possesses a 4.39 ERA. He’s tied with Beckett for the team-lead with 9 quality starts (tied for 9th in the American League) Continue reading “The 6 Man Rotation: A Good Idea” →

Raul Ibanez and JROD: What Baseball Needs

June 12, 2009May 23, 2010Danny Vinik Leave a comment

Phillies Padres Baseball Raul Ibanez is having a career year, having already hit 21 home runs and driven in 58 runs. Over his career, Ibanez has averaged 23 homers a year and yet this year he has almost hit that many in less than sixty games. Add to the fact that Ibanez is 37 years old, and something seems a little off here. This is what another blogger, JROD, looked in to in his article The Curious Case of Raul Ibanez: Steroid Speculation Perhaps Unfair, but Great Start in 2009 Raising Eyebrows.

JROD examined Ibanez’s year to the finest detail. He looked at the ballparks in which Ibanez homered in and examined their “HR Factors”. He looked at the dimensions of his new home ballpark since he signed this year with the Phillies in the offseason. He looked at the pitchers that Ibanez had homered off of, checking to see if Ibanez had just seen a lot of bad pitchers early on in the season. As he went through these stats though, nothing stuck out as that out of the ordinary. Certainly there was nothing that would explain the increase Ibanez’s home run rate from a homer every 23.9 plate appearances (2006-2008) to a homer every 12.1 plate appearances.

At the end of this specific, well-researched article, JROD threw out one possible explanation for Ibanez’s dramatic increase in home runs: Steroids. He did not claim that he had any first-hand knowledge that the Phillies’ outfielder was on the juice, but he just said that you cannot ignore that it is a possibility. Unfortunately, baseball has reached the point where great starts like this are not something to be in awe of, but something to be suspicious of. JROD never said that Ibanez used steroids, he just said, “it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that “other” performance enhancers could be part of the equation”. Continue reading “Raul Ibanez and JROD: What Baseball Needs” →

Praying for Papi

May 25, 2009May 23, 2010Danny Vinik 2 Comments

Now, I’m a Red Sox fan so of course I’m rooting for David Ortiz to come around at the plate, but I keep asking myself, who doesn’t want Ortiz to find an end to his struggles?

Yankee fans? Probably as well as the rest of the teams’ fans in the AL East, but watching the lovable giant groan and pout after each at bat is grueling to watch. Listening to his sad comments after the game makes it even more painful. After the worst game of his career where Papi went 0-for-7 with 12 men left on base, he commented to reporters “Sorry guys, I don’t feel like talking today. Just put down, ‘Papi Stinks’ “.

Who doesn’t hear that quotation and just feel bad for the guy? If you’re a reporter dying to get a remark from Ortiz, you hear that and you walk away. Who is going to annoy Papi when he is just depressed? Anger is one thing, but once that anger turns into just sadness, human sympathy takes over.

The smile of David Ortiz is one of the most recognizable things in sports. He’s the happy, smiling, always-there-for-you big man who eats opposing pitchers alive. Well the latter part of that statement is already gone, but amazingly enough, that smile has endured.

Ortiz has remained engaged. He still views video of himself between at-bats in the clubhouse. He hugged Manny Delcarmen after his two scoreless innings, and after Mike Lowell crunched a double, his third hit of the day, off the Wall in the eighth inning, Ortiz was the first Red Sox player to greet him in the dugout (Boston.com – Extra Bases Red Sox Blog)

His personality is amazing that even in the worst of times, he is still the biggest cheerleader on the team. Just look at the reaction when Papifinally hit his first home run of the year. The dugout erupted. The fans erupted. He was mobbed by teammates and hugged by everyone who could get to him. This team loves and needs Big Papi. Continue reading “Praying for Papi” →