Why Have The Red Sox Gotten Worse Over The Last Six Years?

It's 5:16 am. I'm debugging baseball code while listening to conservative talk radio (aka "NPR"). They just ran a story about multiple climate scientists scrambling to explain why global air temperatures have "dropped over the past 15 years."

I'm flabbergasted. Global temperatures are dropping? That would seem to contradict the opinions of 97.4% of all climate scientists.

As you can see in the graph, 1998 (exactly 15 years ago) just happened to be an extremely hot year. And the graph shows that it was a bit hotter than the most recent year for which we have data. So, technically, global temperatures have dropped over the last 15 years.

However, they have risen significantly over the last 16 years (and also over the last 14 years).

It's no surprise that you can find a temperature drop if you hand-pick the comparison year. This is called confirmation bias: people who want to deny climate change (which apparently now includes NPR) only pay attention to the one single year that supports their bias.

Why didn't they run a story on why temperatures have skyrocketed over the last 13 years, or the last 17 years? There are only three reasons that "scientists" would choose exactly 15 years and not look at any of the other data:

1) They are making shit up to get attention.

2) They are making shit up because the oil companies are paying them to.

3) They are morons.

This is insane. This is the logical equivalent of a New York Times article titled "Why Have The Red Sox Gotten Worse Over The Last Six Years?"

Well, gee. If you hand-pick the year they last won the World Series (2007), you can pretend that the Boston Red Sox are on a "downward trend" (from a winning percentage of .593 to .590).

This line of reasoning is, of course, absurd. The Red Sox have the best record in the American League, just one year after finishing in last place. Everyone in Red Sox Nation knows that the team has righted the ship and are the favorite to win the division.

But if you cherry-pick the data and only look at 2007, then you might think it's time to release Big Papi, trade away Clay Buchholz, and fire John Farrell and Ben Cherington. While you are calling the sports radio shows with this brilliant analysis, I'll be enjoying the Red Sox playoff run.

Varitek Isn't The Weak Link

I don't live in Boston anymore. But I still live in Red Sox Nation. This means that the radio next to my desk gets WEEI. The hot topic this week is how Jason Varitek's offensive drought is hurting the team.

Tek is definitely worrisome. However, his OPS of .672 is only 118 points below his career average.

Manny Ramirez has an OPS of .884 this year: 113 points below his career average of .997.

So you could argue that Manny's "slump" is hurting team offense just about as much as Tek's.

It's an interesting way to look at things. Varitek is getting close to the Mendoza line, so he's the one that stands out. But Manny's "dip" has actually cost the Red Sox more runs (because he gets more at bats, and has played in 11 more games).

Of course, I put "dip" in quotes because the truth is that both Manny and Tek are 36 years old -- so it's likely that this is exactly what we are supposed to expect from these two. Neither of these players is "slumping". They are both just getting old. Unless you are Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens, this is when your stats begin to take a nosedive. It's actually refreshing to see their performance taper off, instead of seeing them "reborn" as 40-year-old superstars because of steroids and HGH.

Varitek stands out to Red Sox as the bigger problem, because you shouldn't pay a guy $10 million to hit .220. But the upside of Tek's problems is that he's more easily replaceable. Assuming for a moment that his "game calling" abilities are over-rated, it can't be that hard to find a catcher that can hit .220. On the other hand, Manny is a future Hall-Of-Famer. Replacing that kind of offense is going to be nearly impossible. So, in the big picture, Manny's drop-off is actually more damaging to the Red Sox playoff hopes than Varitek's.

The downside of Tek's problems is that he's locked up through 2009, but Manny is a free agent after this year. After a season-and-a-half of Manny with a sub-.900 OPS, Theo can be pretty sure this isn't a fluke, which means it's unlikely we'll see him in a Red Sox uniform in '09.

Will The Real Guillermo Mota Please Stand Up?

By now we all know that Mike Lowell and Josh Beckett are headed to the Red Sox in exchange for Hanley Ramirez, Anibal Sanchez, Jesus Delgado and Harvey Garcia. But it was just announced the Red Sox insisted that Guillermo Mota be added to the deal, in exchange for even more players from Boston's farm system.

Mota is an interesting commodity. In 2003, and part of 2004, all with the Dodgers, he had an ERA near 2.00. Since being traded to the Marlines in mid-2004, his ERA has ballooned to 4.74.

So the question is, who is the real Guillermo Mota? The dominating setup man that helped the 2004 Dodgers win the N.L. West? Or the struggling reliever who was relegated to a reduced workload in the 2005 Marlins bullpen.

When I wrote Baseball Mogul, I realized that ERA isn't the best indicator of a pitcher's underlying ability. So I created a stat called Defense Independent Component ERA (aka DICE). DICE looks only at the events within a pitcher's control: Home Runs, Walks, Hit Batters and Strikeouts. It then uses these events to project that player's ERA. This gives us a number that looks like ERA, but with the bloop singles, great defensive plays and other random events removed.

DICE is pretty easy to calculate. We start with an ERA of 3.00 and modify it according to the walks, hit batters, strikeouts and home runs allowed by the pitcher:

DICE = 3.00 + (3*(BB + HBP) + 13*HR - 2*K) / IP

Mota's 2003 ERA was a tiny 1.97. Here's how we calculate his DICE for that same year:

2003 (LA): 26 BB, 1 HBP, 7 HR, 99 K, 105.0 IP

           DICE = 3.00 + (3*(26 + 1) + 13*7 - 2*99) / 105.0   

     = 3.00 + (81 + 91 - 198) / 105.0   

  = 3.00 + (-26) / 105.0 = 2.76   

So we see that Mota's actual 2003 ERA was more than 3/4 of a run lower than what we would expect from how he pitched.

Here's a table of his DICE over the past 3 seasons, along with his real ERA in each season:

Guillermo Mota: DICE

Season	Team	BB	HBP	HR	K	IP	DICE	ERA
2003	LA	26	1	7	99	105.0	2.76	1.97
2004	LA/FLA	37	4	8	85	96.2	3.58	3.07
2005	FLA	32	1	5	60	67.0	3.66	4.70

As we can see, Mota's ERA in 2003 and 2004 was better than what you would expect from the underlying stats. It's no surprise that his ERA went up in 2005.

What is interesting is that Mota's 2005 DICE was virtually the same as his 2004 DICE. In other words, Mota's core ability appears essentially unchanged from 2004 to 2005. It's only the final outcome -- his ERA -- that went up by more than 50%.

Guillermo's struggles in 2005 appear to be due primarily to his defense and bad luck. If the Marlins had stuck with him and given him as many innings as he had in 2004, it's likely that his ERA would have moved closer to the 3.66 figure predicted by DICE.

What does this mean for the Red Sox? Will we see the 2005 Mota? Or a return to the 2004 edition? The question is misleading. Mota was essentially the same pitcher in 2004 and 2005. It's only the ERA that changed. Therefore, we should expect Mota to continue on the same path his been on for the last 2 seasons -- an above average relief pitcher capable of posting ERA's below 4.00.

That said, we should point out that both Dodger Stadium (in L.A.) and Pro Player Stadium (in Miami) are pitcher's parks. Pro Player has about 5% less offense than an average NL stadium. Dodger Stadium is roughly the same, with even a bit less offense. By contrast, Fenway is a hitter's park with about 5% more offense than average. This fact, combined with the shift from the National League to the American League, means it's extremely unlikely for Mota to match the numbers he put up with the Dodgers in 2003 or even 2004.

An ERA just under 4.00 is the most likely projection. Considering the troubles the Red Sox bullpen had in 2005, that still makes Mota a valuable acquisition.