Of the the top 50 teams on the all-time leaderboard for starting pitching home run rate, only one of them ever won 90 games: that aforementioned 2019 Yankees team. This is where things look a little bleak. So let’s think about this in a different way: can the Red Sox win 90 games with starting pitching that gives up so many home runs? Moreover, the postseason is now significantly watered down, with more teams making it in than ever before. But the 2019 Yankees, who won 103 games, came very close their starters gave up 1.76 home runs per nine that season. No team has ever made the postseason with a home run rate as high as 1.81. So a more pertinent question would be: can the Red Sox be successful as a team with starting pitching that gives up so many home runs? In fact, instead of writing that “Red Sox starters have the ninth-highest home run rate of all-time,” I could have instead written that “Red Sox starters have the ninth highest home run rate of the past five years.” Both statements are true! Here’s the current top 10 list: So in that sense, starting staffs all across baseball are historically bad at keeping the ball in the yard right now. And home runs have exploded in the three true outcomes era we currently find ourselves in. As we all know, home runs have been steadily increasing throughout baseball history, pretty much from the very moment Babe Ruth started jogging around the bases with that cute, jaunty little trot he had. Now as a point of order, the phrase “highest home run rate of all-time,” is doing some pretty heavy lifting there. That’s the second-highest home run rate in the baseball this year and (here’s where the historically bad part comes in) it’s the ninth-highest home run rate of all-time. Unfortunately, the Red Sox starting rotation is currently historically bad in one particular area, and that area is pretty damn important in baseball: giving up home runs.Īs of today, Red Sox starting pitchers have given up 1.81 home runs per nine innings. That’s not a bad way of being bad, when you think about it! On the other end of the spectrum, a team can be historically bad, which is the baddest way of being bad there is! You don’t want to be historically bad. A team can be bad, but only relative to high expectations, such that their poor performance isn’t actually all that poor, and to the extent that it appears so, it’s merely an issue of perception. There are levels to being bad, is what I’m saying. So while the Red Sox are bad relative to the rest of the division, they are perfectly mediocre relative to the rest of the American League, with seven teams ahead of them and seven below. The Red Sox are currently in last place in their division, which is bad! But the 2023 American League East is, at this point in the season, historically strong. Well, first we have to clarify that, in sports, the terms “good” and “bad” are relative. Red Sox starting pitching: it’s bad! You’ve probably noticed this already, because it’s pretty obvious.
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