Red Sox

Alex Bregman’s contract at first appeared to be the biggest overpay in recent history – but it isn’t

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In my article from last December, Did the Mets overpay for Juan Soto?, I shared an analysis of all the signings of the biggest free agents (3.0+ WAR) going back to 2018. I compared the expected annual WAR of recently signed position player free agents (or free-agent-eligible players who were extended) to the average annual salary they got in their contracts. (I used the average of bWAR and fWAR, and because some players missed parts of seasons, I adjusted everyone’s WAR to a 150 game season.) I plotted the values of millions of dollars per WAR for each player against the year in which they signed or extended. I adjusted everything to 2024 dollars.

Juan Soto was the biggest overpay according to that plot.

After making that plot, and noticing a strong age-related trend, I made another plot that adjusted for age at the time of the signing. This was a plot of millions of dollars in annual salary per WAR over expected. Soto was not the highest on this plot, but near it, and he seemed to reset the market a bit. Most players this offseason have signed at “the high end of normal”.

And when I then heard that Alex Bregman had signed with the Red Sox for $40M a year, I added him to the plot, and said “Alex Bregman just blew all that out of the water”. But, I was wrong.

Here is the age-adjusted plot as I initially updated it, with Christian Walker, Teoscar Hernandez, and Alex Bregman added.

Yikes. This isn’t even close. Everyone else is within $2M/WAR of their expected value, whether above or below. Bregman was more than $3.5M/WAR over.

However, I then learned that much of his salary would be deferred, making his salary in terms of 2024 dollars around $31.7M per year. When I updated my charts with this new number, things became reasonable again. Here is the corrected version:

He’s near the top, but no longer an extreme outlier – almost not an outlier at all.

Things look even better for Bregman in the non-age-adjusted plot. Here is the initial, non-age-adjusted plot, with Bregman, Walker, and Hernandez added. Bregman’s contract had been the biggest overpay even without the age adjustment …

… but after switching from the nominal $40M AAV to the Competitive Balance Tax value of $31.7M a year, he’s down into the pack:

And given the very short term of the contract, being older at the time of signing matters less, because they’re all prime years.

If you want to see the numbers behind this plot, here is the updated chart of data that I worked from, with Christian Walker, Teoscar Hernandez, and Alex Bregman added.

I had Bregman’s expected pay per year at $24M to $25M, based on his trend in WAR values. So the $40M number was shocking. But the $31.7M sounded reasonable, especially given the short 3-year term for the deal, and the opt-outs. And the fact that the big contracts for Masataka Yoshida and Trevor Story would be due to come off the books at the same time – it makes it look as though the Red Sox are aiming to get back under the luxury tax threshold for 2028.

What I didn’t factor in, though, is that Bregman is worth more to a team than his WAR indicates. He is the ultimate unofficial player-coach, on a team with so many young, new players who can use exactly that. He challenges young players to prepare in ways they’d never imagined before. He talks a ton to every player and has a lot of good advice.

So what I’d initially called the “biggest overpay in recent history” by far, now looks like a completely reasonable contract.

I’m sorry Red Sox, and Alex Bregman, for my previous harsh words on this.

Who was the “most .500” team of 2024?

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Of course, one could say that the “most .500” Major League Baseball team in any given year is the one whose record is closest to .500, or 81-81 in a full season. But even a hypothetical team that always had exactly a 50% chance of winning would sometimes end up, by luck of the “coin flip”, a few games away from .500.

And what about a team that’s great for the first half of the season, then awful for the second half, ending up with a .500 record? They weren’t really a .500 team at any point in the season, in that their chance of winning games wasn’t actually close to 50% at any point, nor were they winning about half their games in any given week.

So here are a few different ways to measure how .500 a team was, along with the top teams by each method.

Final Record

We can just look at a team’s final record and see how many games away from .500 it was, above or below.

The Boston Red Sox had the only .500 record, but several other teams were close.

Run Differential

This was mentioned in Sarah Langs’ 2020 article What does a true .500 team look like?

The run differential of a team is the runs it scores over the entire season minus the runs it allowed in that same time. A small run differential is a good predictor of a team that will have a record near .500. (There is even a stat called Pythagorean expectation which estimates what record a team should have based on it totals of runs scored and runs allowed.)

Whose run differential was closest to 0 in 2024?

Four teams had a run differential close to 0. Of these, again, the Boston Red Sox were the closest to 0, just barely. It seems we have a frontrunner.

Number of times at .500

A team that plays “a .500 brand of baseball” throughout the season is likely to have a winning percentage of exactly .500 at several times during the course of the season. The most times this could possibly happen is 81, though even for a hypothetical team that always has a 50% chance of winning, the odds of that happening 81 times are over 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 against. The most times it’s ever been done, at least before 2020, is 35 by the 1959 Chicago Cubs.

The Tampa Bay Rays came close to that this year, tying for 3rd most. The Padres, Red Sox, and Cardinals also had a lot.

For fun: consecutive times at .500

This last one is more about the luck of streaks than anything else. But there was an interesting streak this year in this regard, so I thought I’d throw it in.

When a team is at .500 in the middle of the season, the next game they play takes them off of .500; it’s only 2 games later that they can be back at .500 again. So a streak of consecutive times at .500 means that at the end of every 2 games played after being at .500, they’re back at .500 again.

The Red Sox were at 26-26 on May 25, 2024 – 26 wins and 26 losses. Two games after that they were 27-27, then 28-28, 29-29, and so on up to 35-35. That’s ten times in a row at .500. The likelihood of that happening, once a team has reached a .500 record, is more than 500-to-1 against.

Here are the longest such streaks in the majors in 2024:

The “Winner”

It’s gotta be the Boston Red Sox as The Most .500 Team of 2024. They top every list except number of times at .500, and they did pretty well there, too. Runner up goes to the Tampa Bay Rays.

Interestingly, these two teams played each other in their last 3 games of the season, with the Rays winning the first two but losing the final game. Had they won it, they would have replaced the Red Sox atop the Final Record list, probably solidified the Red Sox hold on the Run Differential list, but strengthened their own position atop the Times At .500 list. That game was something of a battle for Most .500 Team of 2024. Congratulations, Red Sox, on your “victory”!

Lester determined

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Jon Lester has been pitching like an ace of late, in every outing.  Watching him do so, it’s been very apparent how highly motivated he’s been over these past several weeks.

Tonight, he’ll have some extra motivation, being able to clinch the division title for his team with a win.  It would be only the second division title in the last 18 years for the Red Sox.

I pity the poor Blue Jays hitters.

Red Sox: falling in love with the home run loses close games

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I have little patience for seeing a rally squashed by a big swing-and-miss.  I’m talking about hittable pitches here.  My patience for this is especially thin in close games in which runs are at a premium.  The intent of these batters is clear: to hit a “big smash” over the fence, with all the glory, cheering, and maximal dramatic impact that that entails.

I saw this a few times in last night’s Red Sox loss in extra innings.  When all the Red Sox needed was a base hit to break the tie and score the run that would have won the game eventually, I saw two players take big, swinging-for-the-fences types of cuts to strike out.  They’re players who’ve had this problem before, and have overcome it before, so it’s troubling to see them regressing at this time.  Perhaps you know who I’m talking about.

In the fifth inning, the game tied at 2, David Ortiz is up with 2 outs and a runner on 3rd.  On a pretty straight pitch down the middle of the plate and slightly in, the kind of pitch he’ll normally demolish, Ortiz took a bigger cut than usual and completely missed.  Contrast that to his first inning home run, on a very controlled swing in which he looks like a guy who’s trying to make good contact.  He did, and it went plenty far enough, several rows deep into the stands.

In the ninth, with the game tied at 3 and a runner on first, Jarrod Saltalamacchia struck out taking a big cut on a pitch unquestionably over the plate, while slightly down and away.  A pitch he would probably do well to go the other way with for a base hit.  But instead, he tried to yank it over the fence, and shortened what could have been a game-ending half inning for the Red Sox.  Contrast that to his 12th inning leadoff base hit, a controlled swing on which he made good contact and lined one down the right field line.

These guys have both fallen in love with the home run in the past, and it’s gotten them into trouble, causing their on base percentages to plummet.  Thankfully, neither one has been that guy over the latter part of this year.  But with the amazing roll the Red Sox have been on lately, perhaps the feeling that “nothing can go wrong” has set in, and they’ve forgotten two crucial facts:

  1. The hardest part of hitting a baseball is lining up the ball with the sweet part of the bat.
  2. Guys like Papi and Salty are big and strong enough that they don’t need to swing their hardest to send the ball far over the fence – especially when they hit that sweet spot on the bat.

Succeeding at hitting at the major level is hard to do.  The Red Sox have made it look easy lately, and perhaps they’re starting to forget how much effort and focus it takes to make it look easy.  Guys, don’t get carried away now!

Red Sox have a better than 99.99999999999% chance of making the playoffs

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For the Red Sox to not at least tie for a playoff spot, a lot of things would have to go exactly right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) at this point.  3 teams would have to overtake Boston to knock the Red Sox out of both the division title and both wild card spots.  As it turns out, only 3 teams in the American League that can still overtake the Red Sox in the race for the 3 playoff spots available to the Red Sox:  the Rays, the Indians, and the Rangers.  Since Baltimore can only tie at this point by winning all their remaining games, and since doing so would knock the Rays out of contention by giving the Rays at least 4 losses when they can only afford 3 to catch the Red Sox, the only scenario that can work is the Rays beating Baltimore.

Because Cleveland has 69 losses against Boston’s 92 wins, they must win all their 12 remaining games, and the Red Sox must lose all their 11 remaining games, for Cleveland to overtake them.

Tampa Bay, with 67 losses, can afford to lose no more than 2 games and still overtake the Sox; Texas, with 68 losses, can afford to lose no more than 1 game.  These teams are scheduled to play 3 more games against each other, however, so between them they must lose at least 3 more games.  Therefore, for both to overtake the Sox, the Rangers must beat the Rays 2 games out of 3, and both teams must win all their other remaining games (10 each).

So between the 4 teams, Boston, Cleveland, Tampa Bay, and Texas, 43 scheduled games must go a certain way, while the other 3 have a little more flexibility, with 3 of the 8 possible outcomes working to bump out the Red Sox.

If we assume each game has a 50-50 chance of going to one team or the other, that makes (3/8)*(1/2 to the 43rd power) as the chances of this happening: that’s less than one in 23 trillion.

However, the chances of the Red Sox losing any one of their games has to be less than 50% right now, and with Texas scuffling through a 7-game losing streak right now, I’d say the odds are even slimmer.

Yeah, it’s not yet a mathematical gaurantee, but come on, do you really need better odds than that?

Red Sox fans: enjoy what may be the peak point of optimism in this season

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Red Sox fans are probably feeling pretty darn optimistic right now, and rightfully so.

The Red Sox have won 13 of their last 16.  They’ve grown their division lead to 8 1/2 games, with only 16 games to go.

Their two mid-season rally-killing strikeout artists, Napoli and Saltalamacchia, have stopped striking out, have started making contact, and in Napoli’s case, have started mashing the ball.  Middlebrooks’ lost swing has been found again, and is better than ever.  Their backup infielders are performing about as good as, and in some ways possibly better than, their very good starters.

They’re assured that Ellsbury will be back in time for the playoffs.

And there is enough of a lead in the playoff race and enough off days in the schedule that the starters should be able to get ample rest before the playoffs arrive, and start the postseason sharp and fresh.

Lester is Lester again.  Lackey is Lackey again.  They have three other starting pitchers who have been very good for most of the year, and are now getting rest as needed to assure they stay very good into the postseason.

Their closer Koji Uehara is unreal – with his last 28+ innings scoreless, and his last 31 consecutive batters faced retired, a team-record-matching feat.  He just seems to keep getting better, but then how can you do any better than GETTING EVERYBODY OUT?

They’re beating the best teams in dramatic ways, starting with a defeat of this year’s certain Cy Young winner Max Scherzer, who was aiming to tie the record for the most wins with only one loss at 20, thowing John Lester in his path and winning with a 2-1 score, giving Scherzer only his second loss of the season.  Follow that with a record-breaking 20-4 outburst with seven different Red Sox players hitting home runs.  Follow that with a thrilling comeback win against Mariano Rivera with an inning that brought to mind that most pivotal moment in the last 9 decades of Red Sox history, the stolen base heard ’round the world in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS against this very same closer.  And two more thrilling wins to follow that left the Red Sox offense looking like an unstoppable force, scoring 54 runs over 4 games.

And now after Tuesday’s game against the Rays, everyone’s favorite remaining question mark has been answered – Clay is still Clay.  That’s saying a lot.  Clay Buchholz is a guy who was the game’s best starting pitcher through the first 2+ months of the season, with a 1.71 ERA and a 9-0 record in 12 starts, on the best run of his career, a career peppered with some very good runs.  Was his spectacular start to the season just that, another “hot streak”, or has Clay matured into the kind of player who can produce at an elite level consistently?  Did the 3 months off throw him off whatever sweet spot he was in in terms of feel for his pitches and precise mechanics?  We his not-so-elite results in his minor league rehab starts an indication that he hadn’t refound whatever made him so dominant before?

Fans watching Buchholz’ start this Tuesday saw a guy that earned a win against long odds considering the circumstances.  With a pitch limit of 75 to 80 pitches, things would have to go very well for him to complete the number of innings (5) required for a starter to earn the win.  Also, he was facing last year’s Cy Young Award winner David Price in a game with big playoff consequences, a pitcher who, it turns out, brought his best game.  But the Red Sox just happened to string together a few good at bats against him in the fifth, just in time to put Buchholz ahead before exiting the game.  And Buchholz, with some help from his catcher Saltalamacchia gunning down two stolen base attempts to shorten his time on the mound and allow him to go deeper into the game, managed to get through 5 innings in 74 pitches and exit with a 2-0 lead which the bullpen made stand.

Shutting out a playoff-quality team, earning a difficult win, hearing the catcher say how all his pitches were working, and actually lowering his already miniscule season ERA, Buchholz exceeded expectations and hopes for this start and gave Red Sox fans something to be thrilled about.  A lot of people have probably stopped worrying about what Buchholz will do in his remaining starts.  But should they?

We all know that pitchers can look great in one start but poor in the next.  A different lineup, a different city, different weather, and suddenly everything that was going right could start going wrong.  We don’t know yet that Buchholz can keep giving the Red Sox what he gave them Tuesday or what he gave them in the rest of the season.  Things could go downhill …

Also, while everyone seems to be hot at the same time, “being hot” doesn’t always last.  Is it the time of year and anticipation of a playoff spot that has them playing at this level now?  Or is it just good timing?

What if the injury bug bites over the remaining 2 and a half weeks of the season?

Things rarely stay as good for a team as they have been going for the Red Sox these last few weeks.  While there’s plenty of reason to believe the Red Sox can keep producing as they have been, there’s also plenty of ways things can get derailed a bit, if only because of “regression to the mean” – return to a more normal level of “good” after the statistical anomaly that is a hot streak.  And if that happens, the optimism of the Red Sox fan could wane a bit.

So enjoy this moment Sox fans.  Enjoy it to its utmost!  It may be the high point of your optimism for the season.

Red Sox could catch the Yankees by this time next week

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Improbable, but not that improbable.

The Red Sox play four in Kansas City. The Yankees play 3 in Anaheim. There couldn’t be much more difference in the strength these opponents. If the Red Sox seep KC, and the Yankees lose 2 to the Angels, that moves the Red Sox to 2 and a half games behind the Yankees. Then a sweep of the Yankees in New York next weekend would put the Red Sox on top.

That last part, of course, is the rather improbably part. Still, even coming a little short of that, the Red Sox could end the week withing striking distance of the division title, with one week to go in the season.

2008 Red Sox vs. 2001 Red Sox?

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It is very interesting to be considering the possibility of a Los Angeles Dodgers – Boston Red Sox World Series.  I have been wondering something, and today I found out it is true:

The Los Angeles Dodgers right now look more like the 2001 Boston Red Sox than the Boston Red Sox do.

Check out the rosters, and you’ll see that while the current Dodgers have 3 players from the 2001 Red Sox (Derek Lowe, Nomar Garciaparra, and Manny Ramirez), the current Red Sox have only 2 (Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield).

What’s extra interesting is that these three Dodgers were 3 of the superstars on that Red Sox team – the kind of guys that you’d see on the cover of the program guide.

What’ll happen if these Dodgers show up in Fenway Park for Game 3 of the World Series?  I expect we’ll hear applause for Garciaparra, and if there’s an appropriate moment, for Lowe; but expect to hear Manny booed as loudly as ever we’ve heard a player booed in Boston.

As for who wins, I hope the Red Sox would demolish the Dodgers if the matchup comes to pass.  Vindication that would be!  And validation for the decision to ditch Manny.

The one thing to make me worry is that Joe Torre would be in the opposing dugout.  If there’s one man who could best coach a National League team on How To Beat The Boston Red Sox, I’m thinking Joe Torre’s gotta be that guy.

But we’re not there yet.  We must wait and watch …

(By the way, though I’d root for a Sox sweep of the Dodgers in the World Series this year, I’d be hoping for a 7 game Sox-Rays ALCS.  The Rays have been fun to watch this year, and I’d like to see them get something for all the effort they’ve made.)

Jacoby Ellsbury, Mr. September

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This year, until recently, Red Sox fans have been a bit let down by the performance of Jacoby Ellsbury, who gave the Red Sox such a huge boost in September and October of last year.  He started the year pretty well, but didn’t produce offensively through the middle of the season with anywhere near what we knew to be his potential.

September has been a different story this year.  He finished out the month of September with an 18-game hitting streak.  It was his best month overall of the year.  He hit .340 in September – and that’s his only month hitting above .300 this year.  His 20 runs are about equal to his totals in each of the first two months of this year.

And all of this sounds strangely familar.

Why?  Last year, as a late-season callup, Jacoby had an outstanding September as well, actually performing better at the major league level than he had been to that point in the year in the minors.  He carried that consistently high level of performance through October, and the World Series, right up to the final victorious game.  It seemed that in every game, he did something to help the team win.

So we seem to have a pattern emerging here.  It’s quite a common thing for players to have their “time of year”.  Johan Santana, for example, though good before the All-Star break, each year is close to unbeatable in the second half of the season.  So I don’t think it’s a stretch, based on just the last two seasons of performance, to give Jacoby Ellsbury the moniker “Mr. September”.

Though, as a Red Sox fan, I can hope that he can start to find that hot streak a little earlier in the season, and still keep it through October.  🙂