Going Deep

It’s easy to look at Lackey’s Red Sox tenure with antipathy. The right-hander signed a five-year, $82.5 million contract before the 2010 season, and for three years it looked like an unmitigated disaster. He was average in 2010, among the worst pitchers in baseball in 2011 (oh, and there was that chicken and beer thing) and missed all of 2012 after undergoing Tommy John surgery. The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier, however, argues that Lackey ultimately lived up to that deal with the way he’s pitched since. Speier’s not wrong, either. From 2013-15, Lackey sported a 3.73 FIP and 7.4 K/9 and has pitched in the postseason in each of those three years. He was a key part of the Red Sox’s World Series run in 2013, pitching in the title-clinching game, and has been a top-of-the-rotation starter for the Cardinals over the past year and a half. This season has been arguably Lackey’s most impressive since signing that deal. He posted a 2.77 ERA over 218 innings — his highest total since 2007 — as the ace of St. Louis’ staff with Adam Wainwright on the disabled list for most of the year, all while pitching on a major-league minimum salary. Sure, one could easily argue the contract was still a failure for Boston. The Red Sox only got one good season out of him. However, Lackey held up his end of the bargain. He delivered a championship to Boston, started 2014 strong and has continued to pitch well after being traded to the Cardinals at the 2014 deadline.

This will probably be one of the biggest stories of spring training, so we might as well get a head start on it. Ramirez is expected to be the Red Sox’s starting first baseman next season, and the team sounds convinced he can be a competent one. Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal, however, writes that we shouldn’t buy what Boston officials are selling, because they don’t believe in Ramirez either. The Red Sox are right not to have faith in Ramirez. He was the worst defensive player in baseball as a left fielder last season, and his lack of offensive production — he slashed .249/.291/.426 — only lessened his value. Those aren’t passable numbers for most average position players, and even worse for one who’s still owed $66 million over the next three years. In August I looked at three current first basemen — Miguel Cabrera, Pedro Alvarez and Ryan Zimmerman — who started their careers at other positions and examined how they fared in their transition. For better or worse (mostly worse) their defensive production didn’t improve at first base. Expect that to be the case for Ramirez as well. He was a below-average fielder as a shortstop, owning a -8.8 UZR/150 and -77 DRS at the position, and was a nightmare in left field. Ramirez is simply a bad fielder, and that’s not going to change.

Quick Hits

It’s the middle of October, which means the Red Sox’s offseason is finally under way. It’s clear improvements need to be made for 2016 after three last-place finishes in the last four years. One way change could come is via trade. The Boston Globe’s Peter Abraham looked at the trade value of each Sox player entering Dave Dombrowski’s first offseason in charge of the club. Abraham named catcher Blake Swihart the team’s biggest trade chip. Swihart showed promise in his rookie season, slashing .274/.319/.392 while progressing both at and behind the plate as the year went on. If Christian Vazquez is healthy enough to start next season then perhaps Boston could use Swihart to land the top-tier starting pitcher it needs.

The Red Sox, of course, could always find that top-of-the-rotation guy on the free agent market this winter, but even those pitchers aren’t without flaws. Christopher Smith of MassLive.com wrote about potential pitching targets this offseason and how they’ve fared in the postseason. The picture isn’t pretty. David Price and Johnny Cueto both struggled in their Game 1 starts in their respective ALDS matchups and are building reputations as poor playoff starters. Other upcoming free agents such as Jordan Zimmerman and Yovani Gallardo have been no better over their postseason careers. It could be enough to at least leave Boston second-guessing itself before overspending on an arm.

One starter the Red Sox should expect to have in 2016 is Brian Johnson. The lefty had an impressive season in Triple-A Pawtucket, posting a 3.22 FIP and 8.44 K/9 over 18 starts, but saw his season end prematurely when he experienced elbow discomfort just two starts after making his major league debut. WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford spoke to Johnson about his recovery progress. Johnson said he’s begun throwing again and plans to be a full-go at spring training. That’s good news for Boston, as it gives the team another option as it pieces together its rotation for next year.

Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald looked at the state of each of the Sox’s AL East foes heading into the offseason, and it appears there could be more shakeup throughout the division next year. The Blue Jays and Orioles have notable players entering free agency this winter while the Yankees and Rays will bring back most of their 2015 rosters barring any major trades. It’s evident the Red Sox aren’t the only team with holes to fill. 

In the wake of Chase Utley’s ugly takeout slide on Ruben Tejada in Game 2 of the NLDS, Scott Chiusano of the New York Daily News looked back on some of baseball’s worst takeout slides. The culprits on that list include Hal McRae, Will Clark and, most recently, Chris Coghlan on Jung Ho Kang in September. This story has nothing to do with the Red Sox, but it’s worth noting that one of the biggest plays in the organization’s history was actually a takeout slide attempt. The Red Sox led the Reds 3-0 in Game 7 of the 1975 World Series when Pete Rose broke up what would’ve been an inning-ending double play in the sixth by sliding hard at Denny Doyle and forcing a wild throw to first. Cincinnati’s Tony Perez followed with a two-run homer that sparked a comeback as the Reds won the decisive game 4-3.

Photo by Bob DeChiara/USA Today Sports Images

If you look at the Red Sox rotation’s ERA it’s easy to see how bad they’ve been. They’re last in the AL in starters’ ERA and 28th in baseball ahead of only Colorado and Philadelphia. There! Case closed! But ERA isn’t perfect. So if you look at better indicators of pitcher quality than ERA, like DRA or FIP, you’ll see that Boston’s rotation wasn’t the worst at all. In fact, they were in the middle of the pack amongst their leaguemates. Red Sox starters collectively were 12th in baseball in DRA and 14th in baseball in FIP. That’s about what we were all hoping for at the beginning of the year! A decent pitching staff and a great offense and the Red Sox would be playoff bound, except DRA and FIP are measurements of pitcher quality, not measurements of what happened. What happened was the Red Sox gave up a ton of runs in part because of their pitching staff but in part because their defense is bad. I discussed this before in this space. Boston’s defense is measured in ERA, so a significant component part of “We need an ace!” is “Our defense is awful!”

The truth is Red Sox can win without an ace just as they can lose with one. Think about the teams that had aces this year. The Reds had Johnny Cueto and were forced to deal him because they were terrible. Cueto was very good but he couldn’t fix the rest of Cincinnati’s starting staff. The White Sox have Chris Sale who probably deserves the AL Cy Young Award. The White Sox are 16.5 games out of first place in their division. Sale couldn’t fix the team’s defense or their hitting or, for that matter, the back of their rotation. The White Sox are terrible whether they have Chris Sale or not.

The argument goes, the Red Sox need an ace to improve their starting staff, but if the whole staff is deficient, what will one ace do?

An ace isn’t a cure-all, and it’s being treated as such around these parts. You don’t even have to leave Boston to see this. Last year the Red Sox were awful, but Jon Lester was amazing! The Red Sox ended up dealing him for a variety of reasons but even his awesomeness wasn’t enough to save the team or the rest of the rotation. The team would undoubtedly be better this season with Jon Lester than they are now, but Lester has been worth 1.3 wins by WARP and 3.0 wins by fWAR. Add either to the Red Sox win total now and they’d still be utterly irrelevant in the context of making the post-season. The argument goes, the Red Sox need an ace to improve their starting staff, but if the whole staff is deficient, what will one ace do?

The Red Sox need for an ace is founded upon the idea that the entire starting staff pitched badly this season. It’s almost like we’ve never advanced past our April understanding of the rotation when everyone on the team was awful except Clay Buchholz who was painfully unlucky. Wade Miley has turned the boat around and is pitching fine. He’s been quite good if you don’t count his rough April and perfectly cromulent if you do. Clay Buchholz has been excellent and is now hurt. This is Clay Buchholz. Eduardo Rodriguez, Henry Owens, and Steven Wright have all shown promise. This isn’t the perfect group, and they need to pitch better, either with new blood or through simply doing it themselves, but if the other areas of the team are better, this is staff is more workable than you’d think. Had the staff’s results been more acceptable and had the team hung around the edges of the Wild Card race, there’s a good chance the focus would have shifted to other areas of need, and there are other areas of need. Pablo Sandoval needs to not be terrible. Hanley Ramirez also needs to not be terrible. Someone needs to play first base. Someone needs to play right field. The list is not short! We can ding Cherington all we want for failing to bring back Lester and/or failing to cede to every demand made by Ruben Amaro in the quest for Cole Hamels, but ask yourself how much better would the Red Sox be right now if instead of paying Pablo Sandoval, they’d traded for Josh Donaldson? There are other ways to make the Red Sox better besides paying exorbitant prices for starters.

But it almost seems like it doesn’t matter at this point. The ace train is racing down the tracks without brakes and the only way to stop it is for Johnny Cueto, David Price, or someone else with a scarlet letter A pinned on their chest to hop aboard. Ace trains respond to magic scarlet letter As as everyone knows. So that’s probably where this is all headed. The Sox will, after all, pay big money to David Price or Cueto or someone who will ride in and make us all feel better, and sometime in November or December we’ll all take a sigh of relief and think, ‘Okay, now the team can go out and win.’ That will feel nice, but there will be a ring of falseness to it.

To be clear, this article isn’t intended to be an argument against acquiring an ace. That is a silly argument to make. Every team needs as much good pitching as they can get, including the Red Sox. That one guy can help, and depending on who he is he can help a whole lot. But he’s not going to solve every problem on the team and he’s not single-handedly going to turn a bad team into a World Series contender. Turning over every table and chair to fix one problem while others fester isn’t the way to create a World Series-caliber team.

The goal is to win the most games and it’s much easier to do that with a great pitching staff than with a bad one, or one that piled bad luck on top of their mediocrity. But Boston didn’t lose this season because they failed to acquire an ace. They lost because their whole team wasn’t good enough. That’s a problem too deep for one guy, no matter how good, to solve.

Photo by Kim Klement/USA Today Sports Images