Presenting the full list 2017 Roster Recaps, listed with the authors that wrote them. An asterisk denotes a player who has, as of March 13th, dearly departed the Red Sox. We’ll miss them all terribly.

Catchers

• Sandy Leon (Cam Ellis)
• Blake Swihart (Jake Devereaux)
• Christian Vazquez (Brett Cowett)

Infielders

• Xander Bogaerts (Chris Teeter)
• Chase d’Arnaud* (Matt Kory)
• Rafael Devers (Kory)
• Marco Hernandez (Cowett)
• Brock Holt (Devereaux)
• Tzu-Wei Lin (Cowett)
• Deven Marrero (Cowett)
• Mitch Moreland (Cowett)
• Eduardo Nunez (Teeter)
• Dustin Pedroia (Kory)
• Hanley Ramirez (Devereaux)
• Josh Rutledge* (Cowett)
• Pablo Sandoval* (Cowett)
• Sam Travis (Teeter)

Outfielders

• Andrew Benintendi (Ellis)
• Mookie Betts (Kory)
• Jackie Bradley Jr. (Cowett)
• Rajai Davis* (Daniel Poarch)
• Steve Selsky (Ellis)
• Chris Young* (Cowett)

Pitchers

• Fernando Abad* (Ellis)
• Matt Barnes (Cowett)
• Blaine Boyer* (Cowett)
• Roenis Elias (Poarch)
• Doug Fister* (Kory)
• Heath Hembree (Kory)
• Brian Johnson (Teeter)
• Joe Kelly (Ellis)
• Kyle Kendrick* (Poarch)
• Craig Kimbrel (Cowett)
• Austin Maddox (Ellis)
• Kyle Martin (Poarch)
• Drew Pomeranz (Ellis)
• Rick Porcello (Teeter)
• David Price (Ellis)
• Noe Ramirez* (Poarch)
• Addison Reed* (Ellis)
• Eduardo Rodriguez (Cowett)
• Robbie Ross* (Cowett)
• Chris Sale (Cowett)
• Robby Scott (Cowett)
• Carson Smith (Teeter)
• Ben Taylor (Cowett)
• Hector Velazquez (Devereaux)
• Brandon Workman (Ellis)
• Steven Wright (Kory)

Header photo by Winslow Townson — USA TODAY Sports

I’m going by the rotations as listed on Roster Resource, which of course may change during spring training. As for the order, I’ve organized them by their WARP projections.

Rotations

Red Sox:

1. Chris Sale (6.1)
2. David Price (2.1)
3. Drew Pomeranz (2.1)
4. Rick Porcello (1.2)
5. Eduardo Rodriguez (1.2)

(12.7 total WARP)

versus

Yankees:

1. Luis Severino (4.1)
2. Sonny Gray (2.5)
3. Masahiro Tanaka (2.4)
4. Jordan Montgomery (1.0)
5. CC Sabathia (0.6)

(10.6 total WARP)

Not unlike the two team’s lineups, their rotations aren’t too far apart in overall talent. Perhaps the Red Sox enjoy a bit more at the top of the rotation, whereas the Yankees have more overall depth. But the end result is roughly the same, as you can see from their respective WARP totals.

Is Luis Severino as good as Chris Sale? No, probably not, but he’s not wholly far off. Sale is the best player of either group and the one who the Red Sox hope can put them over the top, both during the regular season and in the playoffs. Severino has the potential to be that guy for the Yankees. Still, the advantage is with Sale.

The thing about PECOTA and really all projection systems is its innate pessimism. It’s not really even pessimism though because players get hurt all the time and age gets everyone at some point and then there’s the guys who just have bad seasons because of who knows what. That all said, it’s not difficult to expect more than PECOTA projects from a few guys on each team, and not coincidentally the two I’d expect more from are the same guys I’d point to when discussing the most pivotal pitchers of the rotation. That would be Price for the Red Sox and Gray for the Yankees. Both have been top pitchers before, as recently as 2016. In Gray’s four seasons he’s been above 4 WARP in three of them including last season, so his 2.5 projection seems a tad short. But there it is just the same.

Price likely has a similar issue to Gray, namely injuries. Price spent a significant number of days on the DL last season, the first time he did that in his career. The result was a one-win season after averaging six wins per over the three seasons before that. Still, the Red Sox are depending on Price this season in a way that I’m not sure fans have fully grasped. If Price gives the team 75 innings of 4.50 run ball and then exits stage left, the Red Sox are going to need a lot of quality innings from Steven Wright and/or Brian Johnson. To paraphrase the words of a former Yankee manager, that’s not what you want.

But if Price is healthy, he’s Boston’s second ace, and he changes the completion of the team completely. The same thing could be said for Gray, whose reputation took a hit during an injured and ineffective 2016 season. Peak Gray probably isn’t the equal of peak Price, though it seems that Gray reaching his previous heights is the more likely possibility of the two (though as of this writing both claim to be fully healthy).

Past the top two guys, the Yankees need Tanaka’s arm to remain attached to his shoulder, possibly a difficult ask considering his previous medical history. If he’s healthy though, a caveat that should probably be applied to all pitchers, Tanaka offers what any team would look for in a third starter: namely quality and dependability. The Red Sox are more on the first of those attributes and less on the second with their third starters (yes, two) in Pomeranz and Porcello. Porcello can’t be as bad as he was last season (can he?), but he’s probably not going to win another Cy Young either. As such, sure, two wins seems perfectly adequate, even if you maybe would hope for more given his $20 million salary. Pomeranz is hitting his stride as a starter after a late start to his career, but he’s always been on the fragile side. Together they’re probably in the five-win range, which is what the Yankees will likely get out of the combination of Gray and Tanaka.

The back end of the Yankees rotation is C.C. Sabathia and Jordan Montgomery, both of who had stronger seasons in 2017 than you’d have guessed given their respective ages and, in Sabathia’s case, everything else about him. And yet here he is again. Note that PECOTA is as unimpressed with him as you are. The Red Sox back end features the aforementioned Wright and Johnson unless, and this is the key, Eduardo Rodriguez gets healthy. Say what you will about Montgomery, but the Yankees don’t have a pitcher of Rodriguez’s quality in the back half of their rotation. If Rodriguez comes back healthy with no knee troubles, he gives the Sox rotation depth few teams can match.

If there is one place where New York has a step on Boston, it’s in previous injuries. Why are they important? A wise person once said the greatest predictor of future pitcher injuries is past pitcher injuries. With that as a background, the Red Sox are at greater risk with Price, Rodriguez, and deeper down, Wright and Johnson all having missed significant time in recent seasons. Only Gray fits that description with the Yankees (though Sabathia has pitched through injuries, he’s not particularly injury prone).

Bullpens

Predicting what will happen with bullpens is the greatest of impossibilities, like jumping across the country using only trampolines, or drinking an entire bottle of Gatorade without your tongue jumping from your mouth and running screaming down the street. The Red Sox have one of the two or three best relievers in baseball in Craig Kimbrel. That’s a good start. After that, they could have a very deep pen with Carson Smith and Tyler Thornburg splitting eighth inning duties and Matt Barnes and Joe Kelly covering the sixth and seventh. Or all those guys could spontaneously explode like Spinal Tap drummers.

Like the rotations, the Red Sox have that one top guy, but the Yankees have quality and more depth in their pen. And yet, Aroldis Chapman wasn’t so hot last season, and Dellin Betances wasn’t either. Both were fine overall, and very good at times, but showed real moments of shakiness. Tommy Kahnle was less than spectacular after putting up an amazing first half in Chicago, and David Robertson was good, but not amazing either. Still, those guys have track records of (mostly) excellence, so few are likely to flame out. It could easily turn into the Craig Kimbrel And That’s It Show in Boston, whereas the Yankees have too much depth and not enough Craig Kimbrel for that to occur to them.

Where things stand now, the Red Sox have a slight advantage in the rotation, but when you factor in the bullpens, that lead dwindles. Like their offenses, and like the teams of 2003 and 2004, picking which one is truly better is likely a fool’s errand (thus these articles). We never know what will happen over the course of a baseball season, but often times we kinda know, right? Here I legitimately have no idea. Except to say this: even after 162 games it’ll probably be quite close.

Also, the Houston Astros are better than both teams.

Photo by Noah K. Murray — USA TODAY Sports

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Teams always end up using more starters than they anticipate — or maybe I should say we anticipate — and the 2017 Red Sox were no exception. Velazquez adapted quickly in Triple-A, posting even better numbers in Pawtucket than he had in the Mexican League, sporting a 2.21 ERA and 1.00 WHIP over 102 IP. This effective performance was even more impressive because it came off of effectively zero rest. What do I mean by zero rest? After Velazquez was signed by the team in on February 18th, he got right back to throwing. Sounds normal, right? Wrong. He had continued pitching in Mexican Pacific Winter League and the Caribbean series all offseason, and had logged an astonishing 246.1 IP and 46 starts before even making it to spring training. The fact that he held his own was incredible.

Velazquez logged another 24.2 IP of work at the big league level with a four-inning shutout of the eventual World Series Champs on October 1st. It was a great season, albeit a tiring one for the new Red Sox pitcher.

WHAT WENT WRONG

Nothing really went wrong for Velazquez last year, unless you count the fact that he logged 373 IP between April of 2016 and October of 2017. That is a lot of bullets. It proves Velazquez is durable, but also this isn’t an ideal way to do things.

WHAT TO EXPECT

After Brian Johnson — who is out of options — it is likely that Velazquez will be the first starter summoned from Triple-A should an injury occur. It is not a given at this point that Steven Wright or Eduardo Rodriguez will be available to start the season, so Velazquez could see time immediately should he look good during spring training.

Let’s not get carried away, however, as Velazquez is a 29-year-old journeyman, not a prospect or a threat to develop into anything really intriguing. He throws a fastball/slider/changeup mix that is reliable, just not exciting. His fastball has below-average velocity, but it does generate ground balls. You can’t mistake his offspeed or breaking offerings for wipeout pitches, but they are acceptable pitches for what they are. You can expect that Velazquez will come in, be durable, and keep the ball low in the zone. Essentially, he will give the team a chance to win when he’s in the game. This is all you can ask for the 7th or 8th option in the rotation, and Dombrowski paid very little to get him.

Photo by Kim Klement — USA TODAY Sports

That’s your introduction to Steven Wright’s last season! Yet, despite the arrest, despite the surgery, despite the lousy performance last season, there is a very real chance that Steven Wright will be the Red Sox number five starting pitcher in the 2018 season. Is that good? Is that bad? Should it even be happening?

What Went Wright

(sorry) (not sorry)

To find something that went right for Wright, you have to skip last season. Go back to 2016 when Wright threw 156 innings for the Red Sox with an ERA of 3.33. He was quite good then! And especially in the first half when he made the All-Star team. Coming in to the 2017 season Wright was expected to hold down a rotation spot… aaaaaand that concludes everything that went right for Steven Wright in 2017!

[hold for applause]

Fine. Whatever. See if I come to your office and clap for you when you finish that memo.

What Went Wrong

Wright lasted five starts into the season before getting shut down with discomfort in his left knee. It was initially thought to be a short-term injury, and he was put on the 10-day disabled list, but that eventually morphed into the 60-day DL and season-ending knee surgery. That was it. That was the end of Wright’s season. Five starts. Five lousy starts. Five crappy, lousy starts.

It’s difficult to take much away from Wright’s work in 2017. He was bad (the aforementioned 8.25 ERA), but he had also been bothered by his knee since spring training. Perhaps in a world where his knee was healthy he would have pitched more effectively. Perhaps in a world where his knee was healthy we’d all be eating muscle-building jelly-beans in a field with unicorns. When you look at it that way it’s really a shame he hurt is knee, right? In any case, Wright’s season was essentially a washout.

What To Expect

This is where things get interesting. The Red Sox already have Chris Sale, Drew Pomeranz, and Rick Porcello. They also have Eduardo Rodriguez and David Price, two pitchers who might be healthy and good, might be healthy and not good, or might not be healthy at all. In a perfect Red Sox season (cough2013cough), Wright wouldn’t touch the mound in the first inning all year, except maybe by accident while walking out to the bullpen before the game started. Except we all know that perfect seasons come along extremely infrequently — unless you’re the Yankees where 24-year-olds who were crap in Triple-A are MVP candidates and 3,000 pound 37-year-old pitchers with chronic knee problems are borderline Cy Young candidates. My point: it’s likely the Red Sox will need Wright on the mound as a starter at some point.

Given the injuries the 2018 Red Sox starting staff has already suffered — and we’re still about two months from spring training — 150 or so innings of 3.50 ERA ball would be a godsend to this team. It doesn’t sound wholly out of the realm of possibility for Wright to replicate something in that vicinity in 2018, either. He’s clearly got it in him. His 2016 season wasn’t full of BABIP luck or a ridiculously lucky home run rate or anything like that. Wright pitched fine and the results were fine. He could absolutely do that again in 2018, and the Red Sox would be all the better for it.

But knuckleball pitchers are like the weather. We study it and study it, and we’d like to think we can predict with some accuracy what will happen. Then we look outside on a day we thought would be 70 degrees and sunny and we find it’s snowing. Despite the awful 2017 season and the injury, Wright might well be a huge asset to the 2018 Red Sox. He could be the best sixth starter in the league, and a legitimate fireman who can give you two or three innings from the bullpen when the rest of the rotation is healthy and the pen needs a breather. Or he could be bad and get injured for the third season in a row. Given the odd proclivities of the knuckleball, and the strange up-and-down that Wright has seen in just a few years time, neither scenario playing out should be surprising. Perhaps a more modest goal, like keeping his ERA below his innings pitched totals, should be set.

Photo by Patrick McDermott — USA TODAY Sports

Johnson’s journey has been tumultuous. He has dealt with physical injuries to his elbow, shoulder, leg, and even his head/brain, after getting hit in the head by a batted ball on more than one occasion. He also battled through a period of depression and anxiety in 2016, and both conditions require persistent attention to manage their impact. As if all of that wasn’t enough, Johnson was held at gunpoint in a car-jacking following the 2015 season. He has been through a lot, but is still fighting for a big league opportunity. One wonders how much time he has left to prove himself.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Similar to how Carson Smith’s big positive in 2017 was getting back out on a major league mound, Johnson’s huge step forward was getting back to competing at a high-level after having dealt with all the physical injuries and mental health concerns I mentioned above. He made 23 starts, totaling 120 innings last year: one at Low-A, 17 at Triple-A, and five with the big league club. That is pretty solid output from a guy whose career was not certain to continue a year ago.

It’s important to note that he didn’t just take the ball 23 times and muddle his way through starts. He often pitched well: in his 17 starts for Pawtucket, he posted a 3.18 RA9. His 4.19 FIP suggests he had some help in posting that nice runs-allowed number, but that is to be expected from a pitcher of Johnson’s ilk. He does not overpower batters. His fastball sits in the high 80s, and at the Triple-A/Major League levels, he has a 19.3 strikeout rate, which places him in the bottom third of the leaderboards. As such, he relies on his defense to keep opposing offenses at bay. This was evident when he got to pitch in front of Mookie Betts and Jackie Bradley Jr. on May 27th at Fenway Park.

Mookie keeping Nelson Cruz in the yard:

Jackie robbing Cruz of a hit:

Johnson’s complete game shutout in May was just the sixth such outing at Fenway Park in the last five years. Interestingly, while I pointed out Johnson’s reliance on his defenders, he recorded eight strikeouts that day; a total he has reached or exceeded only nine other times in his 103 career starts at any professional level. It was a special day, and certainly a high point in Johnson’s career to date.

WHAT WENT WRONG

Unfortunately, other than that outing against the Mariners, Johnson was not very good for the Red Sox in 2017. Take it out of the equation and you find his other starts amounted to a 6.50 RA9 (6.66 FIP). That is a long way from the strong showings he had at Triple-A. Pitching in the majors is a big jump from the minors and a pitcher who relies on strict control and allowing contact can run into problems quickly against big league hitters.

Johnson’s other issue in 2017 was more injuries and bad luck. The injury problem was to his shoulder, which is never a good thing for a pitcher. He was forced to leave his start against the Phillies after just 2.2 innings due to shoulder discomfort, and things were already not going well: four hits, one walk, and three runs, including a home run. The discomfort was eventually diagnosed as a shoulder impingement and resulted in another trip to the disabled list for Johnson.

After working his way back with a month of solid performances for the PawSox, he was hit on the leg by a batted ball in his August 16th start and forced to leave after just one perfect inning. He made his next start (and two more, pitching well in two of the three), so ultimately, the injury was not serious. Just another example of the sort of bad luck that seems to follow Johnson around.

WHAT TO EXPECT

On another team, Johnson might be slotted into the 4th/5th spot in the rotation, but on the Red Sox, there is no room for him. Even if a spot opens up due to injury, it is not certain that Johnson will be the guy who is called on. He will be competing with Roenis Elias, Hector Velazquez, Jalen Beeks, and maybe even Steven Wright for the chance. As such, Johnson will head into 2018 in much the same way he has started the last few seasons: just on the outside of the big league rotation. Barring a trade this offseason, Johnson will again spend the majority of the season pitching for Pawtucket, working to demonstrate that his crafty stuff can consistently get major league hitters out.

Photo by Bob DeChiara – USA TODAY Sports

What Went Right

For the Red Sox, what went right was Doug Fister being bad for the Astros in 2016 then awful for the Angels Triple-A team to start 2017. The Angels started 13 different pitchers in 2017 (only three of which had FIPs under 4.00) and still somehow none of them were Doug Fister. It was with that background that Fister was cut loose and signed with Boston. There he proceeded to be…okay. There were some disaster starts, especially at the beginning of his time with the Red Sox, but mostly Fister was exactly what the team had (probably) hoped he’d be: a perfectly acceptable back-of-the-rotation guy.

In the end Fister gave the team 90 innings that were worth, depending on which WAR measure you use, somewhere between a win and no wins. Regardless of which number you put on it though, the Red Sox needed someone to pitch innings and Fister did that without getting hurt and generally without setting off the pitching version of a grenade in the first inning. It’s not the type of thing that gets your face mangled on a copper plaque in upstate New York, but it was the minimum requirement for the Red Sox to meet in order to finish the season in first place. Fister met that requirement and the Red Sox met theirs. Fister pitched so acceptably that he got the start in Game Three of the ALDS against Houston. In retrospect, that start went appropriately well as Fister got bazooka-bombed for three runs in an inning and a third. It probably should have been much worse, but the Red Sox won anyway.

I discussed Fister back in September in a piece called The Same Old Doug Fister. The notable thing about Fister’s success was how much it lacked note. It wasn’t based on anything particularly new or noteworthy beyond a slight uptick in velocity. All of that was and remains true. Fister could go to Texas and get cut in May or he could wind up pitching in the All-Star game. It’s pitching. None of those outcomes are off the table.

What Went Wrong

What went wrong was the confluence of events that led to the Red Sox signing Fister in the first place. Eduardo Rodriguez’s injuries, Steven Wright’s season-ending injury, and of course, the pièce de résistance, David Price’s on-again-off-again injury status. All of those guys possibly save Wright would have been upgrades on the pitching Fister gave Boston. In the end though it’s difficult to say it would have made much of a difference in the end though. Perhaps if Price had stayed healthy all season and contended for the Cy Young, the Red Sox might have been able to beat the Astros, but even then that would have been an extremely tall order. But I digress.

As for Fister, what went wrong was pretty much nothing. He came to Boston and pitched well enough and now he has a team to pitch for in 2018. Happy things.

What To Expect

Who cares because he signed with the Texas Rangers so hopefully he’s terrible again. Fister had a bounce-back season in 2017 as pitchers sometimes do. That it was for the Red Sox rather than against them was, I suppose, preferable as these things go. Fister was able to throw pitches and get some outs for our team when we needed someone who could do those things. He did them, and now he’s going to do them elsewhere which, in the end, is probably the best of possible outcomes for the Red Sox, then, now, and in the future.

Photo by Ken Blaze – USA TODAY Sports

The Red Sox are nine games into the 2017 campaign, and generally look pretty good. Sitting at 5-4 and having been dealt some somewhat surprising performances, bad luck, and a fair share of germs, the team looks to steady itself in a weekend series at Fenway against the Rays. There obviously is not too much material to dig deep into this early into the season, so let’s take a gander around the roster and see what’s gone well and what could go better.

Check out these catchers!

Much virtual ink was spilled over the offseason over the catcher spot in the Sox lineup, including on these webpages and by yours truly. Can Christian Vazquez do anything other than throw? Just how fluky was Sandy Leon’s 2016? Well, we’re just over a week in and the two have collaborated to make the position the team’s most valuable thus far. They have combined to go 13-for-31 with a homer, a triple (!) and four doubles. Vazquez made his first out of the season on Thursday, and somehow has a stolen base to his credit. (Can someone please explain how and when this happened?) Alex Speier wrote about their offensive successes in the Globe on Wednesday. And, I haven’t even mentioned the fact that they cannot be run upon. Seven runners have attempted to steal, and just one has been successful. And while much has been made of Vazquez’s arm in particular, the both can throw. I have the gifs to prove it:

(And how about this tag from Pedroia?)

The bullpen has been … kinda good?

Red Sox fans should by no means be comfortable with the stable of arms lurking between starting pitchers and Craig Kimbrel. Heck, maybe we shouldn’t even be comfortable with Craig Kimbrel. But thus far, everybody out there has done a solid job. It hasn’t always been easy or pretty to watch, but in 26 innings of work the ‘pen has allowed seven earned runs and struck out 11. The group has earned a 2.46 ERA and 1.077 WHIP. Special shoutout to Matt Barnes, who has appeared in five games and thrown 5.2 scoreless frames, striking out seven. On this domain a couple days ago, Brett Cowett dove into greater depth on the bullpen and the generally decent job John Farrell has done managing it in the early going.

Mitch Moreland can’t stop hitting doubles

Seriously, Mitch Moreland can’t stop hitting doubles. He has eight in nine games, and has a two-bagger in each of his last seven contests. He is hitting .324. That’s all I have to say about that.

Everyone got sick

You’ve read about the flu by now. Fortunately, it seems the worst is behind the squad, and those who missed time over the season’s first weekend in Detroit have returned to the lineup this week at Fenway, notably Hanley Ramirez and Mookie Betts. Nick Cafardo of the Globe wrote about the illness plaguing the team and some interesting data about the financial cost of missed games. Aside from the two middle-of-the-order bombers, the bug has at various points since spring training hit Brock Holt, Moreland, Robbie Ross Jr. and Joe Kelly.

Also, both Barnes and Xander Bogaerts missed time over the weekend on bereavement leaves after suffering deaths in their respective families. On top of that, Jackie Bradley Jr. went to the DL with an ankle sprain, Tyler Thornburg started the season there and Carson Smith has a return date TBD from last year’s Tommy John surgery. The Red Sox played with their preferred lineup literally only on Opening Day before various afflictions forced players to miss time.

Oh, and a $30 million pitcher is on the disabled list with elbow issues.

Speaking of David Price …

The lefty is rightfully being treated with caution as he works his arm strength and comfort back up following a five-alarm Tommy John scare. As Jen McCaffrey of MassLive reports, Price completed his second bullpen session Wednesday and is schedule to make a third on Saturday in Boston. He also could face live batters in a simulated game next week. His whole recovery process is like tip-toeing across creaky thin ice while trying to construct a house of cards and trying not to wake up your parents. It feels precarious and dangerous is what I’m saying here.

The knuckleball hasn’t been knuckling

Steven Wright’s start on Wednesday, um, could have gone better. He got four outs. He gave up four home runs. He gave up eight runs. So, yeah, after an All-Star first half of 2016 and an injury-derailed second, Wright’s season hasn’t gotten off to the smoothest of starts. Old friend Matt Collins at Over the Monster writes that it’s no time for panicking about Wright and that, if all the Sox need him to be is a mid- to back-of-the-rotation starter, the team should be fine.

David Ortiz isn’t on the Red Sox

Chris Sale is on the Red Sox

This is gonna be fun.

Looks like Chris Sale’s slider is still as good as ever in Fenway Park. This crossed the entire plate and still landed outside the zone. pic.twitter.com/HcV4OyY3tX

— Pitcher List (@ThePitcherList) April 6, 2017

Photo by Rick Osentoski – USA TODAY Sports

On Saturday, in his first start of the year, Rodriguez did little to instill confidence that he is ready to make the next performance jump and have us forget that Price is still in the early stages of throwing off a mound. Over five innings against the Tigers, Rodriguez allowed four runs on five hits, two of which left the yard, and only struck out five, while walking three. All in all, it was another underwhelming Rodriguez performance that involved the same issues that have affected him throughout his tenure with the Red Sox: lacking aggression in the strike zone, which leads to the walks, and being predictable in certain counts, which leads to the extra-base hits.

Let’s start with the lacking aggression part. On Saturday, he only threw 41 of his pitches for strikes (51.3 percent), which is bad, but also not that far off his career rate of 63 percent. So maybe we should expect this sort of outing from him. His career strike rate is the 30^th lowest since 2015 among starters with at least 200 innings pitched and the guys at the wrong end of that list are primarily those who have not been able to figure out their stuff (e.g., Trevor Bauer [61.7], Carlos Rodon [61.7], and Patrick Corbin [62.8]). Oh and teammates Drew Pomeranz (62.6) and knuckleballer (!) Steven Wright (63.2) are down there with him. Your 2017 Red Sox starting rotation: not exactly a group of strike-throwers. Throwing few pitches for strikes is not in-and-of itself a guarantee that a pitcher is or will be bad. While most of the good/great/elite guys are 65+ percent, there are good pitchers on the wrong end of that list (e.g., Aaron Sanchez [61.4] and Dallas Keuchel [62.9]). But that is likely more a function of deception and movement of their pitches, and Rodriguez’s zone plot from Saturday looks like one from a guy who didn’t really know where the ball was going:

Of course, Saturday is just one start, and he may have lacked feel due it being his first on the season and the cooler temperatures in Detroit (53 degrees at game time; 12 for all you metric [read: correct] folks out there). But the inability to locate pitches in the zone, or fear of doing so, fits with a trend of Rodriguez nibbling and pitching too carefully.

The nibbling and careful pitching stems from (or perhaps leads to) Rodriguez lacking trust in his secondary offerings, which makes him predictable. Working on his offspeed pitches, specifically his slider, was a focus for Rodriguez this spring. To date he has been good at hitting one specific spot with his slider:

Eventually, major league batters will just lay off pitches they know are not thrown for strikes. And if Rodriguez knows he can’t throw his slider for a strike, then he will come to abandon it in certain counts, as he did on Saturday. Ten of the 13 sliders he threw came as the first pitch of a plate appearance or when the count got to 1-0. Tiger batters could quickly eliminate the pitch from concern, if they were even concerned to begin with. Tipping pitches, as Rodriguez has had issues with, is not just physical. It can also be due to falling into patterns. Is it a coincidence that the two home runs, and one of the two doubles Rodriguez allowed on Saturday came in 2-1 counts and all three were off his sinker? Well yes, of course it could be a coincidence, it was only three events, but similar issues with count-dependent pitch selection were present last year. For example, in two- and three-ball counts the rate at which Rodriguez threw his slider dropped considerably. The Brooks Baseball zone plot above clearly shows why he tended that way: he doesn’t throw it in the strike zone. As such he used it to start plate appearances, and in two-strike counts, hoping to get batters to chase. If I can figure this stuff out, then I suspect a major league team can figure it out and will be telling their hitters.

There is no doubt that Rodriguez has good or even great stuff, but watching him pitch can be remarkably frustrating, and his first start of the 2017 season was another example of that. He did have five strikeouts, but the three walks mitigates much of that excitement. He can be much better. I will note that even in his up-and-down 2016 season Rodriguez was an above average starter (91.9 DRA-). But again, he can be better than slightly above average. The message here is: if his potential is ever going to come to fruition, Rodriguez needs to develop and learn to trust his secondary pitches and then throw them more consistently across all counts. It is great that Rodriguez wanted to put in the work to refine his slider this spring, but (based on his first start) he still seems to lack confidence in the pitch. His new rotation-mate, Chris Sale, might know a thing or two about throwing a slider, so perhaps Rodriguez should check in with him. If Rodriguez manages to get it figured out and remains healthy, he should have the season we have been expecting.

]]> http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/04/11/eduardo-rodriguez-starts-off-struggling/feed/ 0 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/03/24/the-importance-of-being-eduardo/ http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2017/03/24/the-importance-of-being-eduardo/#comments Fri, 24 Mar 2017 13:00:04 +0000 http://boston.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=17439 It’s funny how things change. You look at the world and expect the future to conform based on what you see, then when the time comes for that to happen, something completely unexpected occurs instead. That’s what is happening to Eduardo Rodriguez right now. Chris Sale’s acquisition made Rodriguez the sixth man in a five-man rotation, and, as the only one with minor league options remaining, he was the odds on favorite to start the year in Triple-A Pawtucket. That was about a month ago, and in just that short span of time, Rodriguez has morphed from the most unimportant of the Red Sox starters to, if not the most important, then close enough. 

The Red Sox handled David Ortiz’s retirement and the subsequent loss of his offensive prowess by doubling down on run prevention with the trade for Sale. That deal brought in one of the premier starters in baseball, but it also added a seventh to what had already been six Red Sox starters, though the trade of Clay Buchholz to Philadelphia brought that number back down to six again. Still, six is one too many and Rodriguez, by virtue of his age (23) but mostly his remaining minor league options was the odd man out. Now, oh how things have changed. 

Now David Price is out for the foreseeable future and maybe longer. Now Drew Pomeranz has a sore triceps muscle in addition to any lingering issues from last season’s injury. Now Steven Wright is fully healthy, but is 32 and coming off a shoulder injury sustained from sliding into second while pinch running. He may pitch 200 innings this year, or he may pull a lat stabbing a particularly frisky juice box with a plastic straw and spend the season rehabbing. That’s three-fifths of the rotation that ranges from actively injured to remarkably fragile. 

Of course, that’s the nature of pitching. The next pitch could always be the last one. That speaks to the importance of depth because not every team can be the 2016 Blue Jays and get 29 starts or more from five different guys. This is why Rodriguez has taken on so much importance of late. Not only is he healthy but he’s not any of Boston’s starting pitching depth, which consists of Rockies cast-off Kyle Kendrick and the stalled careers of former prospects Brian Johnson and Henry Owens. Johnson is coming off a lost season due to anxiety issues and, though he seems to be feeling better, his pitching has looked rusty to say the least. For Owens it’s the same old control problems that he’s never been able to shake. Kendrick has looked quite good but, again, it’s Spring Training, and we’re talking about a pitcher who A) hasn’t pitched in the big leagues since 2015, and B) put up an ERA over six that season. Right now the fewer innings pitched by those three, the better the Red Sox will be. 

Every game started by former sixth starter Rodriguez is a game the Red Sox don’t have to dip into that nonexistent depth.

Starting pitching depth not withstanding, it seems fair to say after looking at Boston’s roster that this could be a very good baseball team. PECOTA projects them for first in the East by three games. But the more games Kendrick starts, the more games the bullpen has to soak up after Owens throws 50 pitches and can’t get out of the second, the further down the standings the Red Sox will plummet. Every game started by former sixth starter Rodriguez is a game the Red Sox don’t have to dip into that nonexistent depth. As good as the Red Sox could be, they’re in no position to throw games away.

So that’s why Rodriguez is important. He’s a starter with an arm attached, a healthy shoulder, a healthy elbow, and his name isn’t Kyle Kendrick or Henry Owens. That’s a good start! But might Rodriguez actually be good in 2017? I should start by noting PECOTA isn’t especially jazzed about him, pegging him for just under a win (0.8 WARP), a 4.18 ERA, and eight quality starts out of 16. Meh. What PECOTA doesn’t know though is that Rodriguez struggled with his command, with pitch tipping, and with just about everything following a knee injury during spring training. After giving up nine runs in 2.2 innings to Tampa in late June, Rodriguez was sent to Pawtucket. At the time of his demotion, he had thrown 29.1 innings on the year and given up 29 runs. 

When he came back, he was a completely different pitcher. In the next 77.2 innings he gave up 28 runs, one fewer than he had in his first six starts. He struck out 79 of 321 hitters he faced, or 24.6 percent. For some context, last season Jon Lester struck out 24.8 percent of the hitters he faced. David Price struck out 24 percent, Jake Arrieta K’d 23.9 percent, and Cole Hamels 23.6 percent. That’s good company. Of course, it means less if comes with a ton of walks and homers. After returning to the bigs, Rodriguez walked 8.7 percent of the hitters he faced (8.4 if you don’t count intentional walks) and he gave up seven homers, or one every other start, which is perfectly reasonable. The guy who went down to Pawtucket was not a major league-quality pitcher, but the guy who came back was a number two in most starting rotations. 

There isn’t anything in those numbers that looks unsustainable either. The BABIP was good but not ridiculous, the batted ball profile matched the results, and so did the strikeouts, walks, and homers. The Rodriguez that spent the second half in Boston was legitimately a very good pitcher.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Rodriguez’s reemergence was the alteration of his pitch mix. When he started the season he was throwing mostly fastballs with the occasional changeup and a very occasional cutter. Only rarely would he employ a slider. Then after coming back from Triple-A, the cutter disappeared, usage of the change dropped from 18 percent to eight percent, and the slider became his favorite off-speed pitch. That changed bit-by-bit, month-by-month until September and October, when the change had reemerged as the preeminent out-pitch, though the slider remained a frequent offering. Overall, Rodriguez seems to have learned not to lean too heavily on any one pitch. 

With the obvious caveat that Spring Training stats aren’t extremely meaningful, we haven’t seen anything this spring to indicate we should expect anything other than the second half Rodriguez, the good Rodriguez, this season. His velocity is good, his strikeouts are there, and his control looks strong. 

He will have bad starts. All pitchers have them. And for all the excitement of this article, Rodriguez has shown a proclivity towards injury in his career, including tweaking a knee in winter ball this past December. While it is fair to be concerned about those injuries, the positive is that none have been arm or shoulder injuries. If one really wants to paint the linings silver, you could say they’ve even functioned so as to limit Rodriguez’s innings over the past few seasons, which should hopefully keep his arm fresher. In reality though, no injury is ever good, but there’s no real reason to think Rodriguez is especially injury prone either.

With the precarious position the Red Sox find themselves with regard to the starting rotation, it’s good they have someone like Eduardo Rodriguez poised to take the next step. In fact, Rodriguez really already took that next step last season. Now he just needs to do it for longer than 77 innings. We already know he is someone who can make up for injuries suffered by his rotation-mates, and keep the team from having to put too many weak band-aids on sweaty hands. This year though a once strong Red Sox rotation had him on the outside looking in, but now the opportunity to be more than just a guy has arisen. Now he may just be the guy who holds this thing together. It’s funny how things work out sometimes. 

Photo by Aaron Doster – USA TODAY Sports

As they did for batters, the great team in the Statcast lab has created leaderboards that allow us to find the pitchers who are the best at limiting batters from barreling up their pitches. These can be defined per batted-ball event (Brls/BBE) or per plate appearance (Brls/PA). So we can look at how often pitchers allow barreled-up balls when their pitches get turned into balls-in-play, but also factor-in the fact that some pitchers allow fewer balls-in-play than others due to things like strikeouts and walks. With our minds now re-oriented to the pitching side of the batter-pitcher matchup, let’s look at how pitchers fared in limiting barrels-against.

Before getting right into things I think it is worth considering that, now more than ever, starting pitching and relief pitching are two very different roles. As such, I evaluated the roles separately. Starters were defined as pitchers who started more than half their games. This is a crude definition, but it provides a decent distinction. With the starter/reliever categorization made, I then limited the data to only include starters who had at least 60 batted ball events, and relievers who had at least 45 batted ball events. 60 BBE was used as the threshold for the starters because it matched the threshold I used for batters last week, and 45 BBE was used for relievers because it was reasonably above the dataset minimum of 30 to provide a strong sample. These thresholds were mostly arbitrarily selected, and therefore can be adjusted if someone thinks there is a reason to do so. In any case, using these BBE thresholds leaves 533 pitchers (216 starters, 317 relievers) in the sample.

For the 216 starters, the average Brl/BBE was 6.96 percent (SD = 2.35). As was the case when looking at the batters, barrels do not happen very often. The starter who was the best at limiting opponents from barreling up his pitches: Alec Asher of the Phillies (1.2%). I was not sure I knew who he was until I looked into this metric, but it turns out he had five nice starts for the Phillies last year. My knowledge of 2016 starting pitchers aside, the list of the top-25 guys at limiting barrels includes many of the pitchers you would expect to be at the top of a list like this: Noah Syndergaard, Gerrit Cole, Jose Fernandez, Kyle Hendricks, Aaron Nola, Rich Hill and Jake Arrieta. Changing things to be on a per-PA basis lowers the average rate to 4.36 percent (SD = 1.61) and flips the top spots, moving Brandon McCarthy (0.6%) into first and Asher to second (0.9%).

How about the Red Sox starters? As a group they had the third best ERA in the American League last year, and this is reflected in the group’s ability to avoid opponents’ barrels. Other than Clay Buchholz and Drew Pomeranz, all of the 2016 Red Sox starters who met the BBE threshold were better than the league average. Note that being better than average means having a low rate. Steven Wright and his dancing knuckler was a standout for the Sox last year; he was ninth best in Brls/BBE and 11^th in Brls/PA. Oh, and just as you expected, Sean O’Sullivan was a top-30 pitcher in terms of barrel-limiting. He will certainly be missed. Fortunately the Red Sox acquired a reasonable replacement, Chris Sale, who was not far behind in limiting barrels-against.

Henry Owens did not have 60 BBE last year, but I included him because this provides another bit of evidence that he is not ready to pitch in the major leagues. He has serious control issues (career 4.66 BB/9) and when he allows contact, it is hard contact more often than anyone would like. Given this, and his struggles this Spring, it might be time to move on from the Henry-Owens-is-a-reasonable-depth-option thought process. The rest of the list – O’Sullivan notwithstanding – shakes out mostly as expected. I am interested in seeing Pomeranz’s San Diego/Boston splits for this metric. From what I recall, and this is likely unfairly biased, he gave up all kinds of rockets during his time with the Red Sox last year; he certainly has this Spring, which doesn’t exactly instill confidence.

On to the relievers. For the 317 relievers included in the sample the average Brl/BBE was 6.3 percent (2.99); relievers allow barrels slightly less often than starters. Joba Chamberlain did not allow a single barrel among his 49 batted ball events. He was one of three relievers to do so last year, along with German Marquez (Colorado) and Xavier Cedeno (Tampa Bay). Accordingly, putting things on a per PA basis does not change the top spots, but as is typical when making this adjustment the average barrel rate drops: 3.71 percent (SD = 1.86). As for the Red Sox’s relievers, much like the starters, they were for the most part better than league average.

Craig Kimbrel is an interesting example of the importance of considering the barrel measure on both a per batted-ball and per PA basis. Per batted ball, Kimbrel was slightly worse than league average, meaning that when opponents managed to put the ball in play he was not much different from the average reliever in having that contact come off the opponents’ barrel. But when you consider how often he strikes out (and walks) batters, his barrel rate is much more palatable. Noe Ramirez did not make the BBE threshold, but I included him here for similar reasons as with Henry Owens: he should probably not be considered a viable major league option. If the 2017 Red Sox have Ramirez and Owens throwing many innings then I suspect something has gone wrong.

As I noted when looking at barrels from the batting perspective, this is supposed to be a process metric. We are interested in finding pitchers who, due to their pitch repertoire, pitch movement, deception, or other factors, are able to consistently avoid having opponents barrel-up their pitches. For batters I suggested this is about swing and approach consistently resulting in contact on the barrel. If it is a process metric we should expect some year-to-year consistency. This was the case for batters, as the year-to-year (2015-to-2016) correlation for barrel rates was quite high (0.747 for Brls/BBE, 0.742 for Brls/PA). This turns out not to be the case for pitchers. The Brls/BBE correlation across 2016 and 2015 for pitchers who met the BBE threshold criteria by pitching role in each year was only 0.13; it was only slightly better for Brls/PA: 0.19. Pitchers changing roles between seasons and survivorship bias (those who frequently give up hard contact are not kept around) likely have an effect here, but this is still interesting. For those interested, here are scatterplots of the batters and pitchers year-to-year Brls/BBE and Brls/PA. Taken together, these correlations suggest that it is the same batters who are barreling the ball year-to-year, but they are not necessarily doing it off of the same pitchers each year.

While the relation between years may not be as clear for pitchers, here are the changes for Red Sox pitchers (grouped by role; negative numbers mean the rate was lower (better) in 2016):

The emergence of Steven Wright is clear, as it is for Fernando Abad. Wait, that seems odd. Perhaps, as for Drew Pomeranz, it would be interesting to see Abad’s team splits for these barrels measures. Otherwise most of the Red Sox pitchers stayed fairly similar across the two seasons.

In the end, the majority of the 2016 Red Sox pitching staff allowed barrels at better rate than league average. This certainly helped them post a top-10 team ERA. The extent to which it is replicable in the coming season is unclear, as the available data suggest the year-to-year barrel-against rates involve a lot of noise. Regardless, barrels-against are not the whole story, but rather just one component, and the additions of Chris Sale and Tyler Thornburg, and improved defense in left field and at third base should keep the run prevention side of the 2017 Red Sox in the top third of the league.

Photo by Kim Clement – USA TODAY Sports