Red Sox have 3rd Best Record in All of Baseball - And they are in 3rd place

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<table class="tablehead" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tbody><tr class="oddrow team-10-10" align="right"><td align="left">NY Yankees</td><td>43</td><td>26</td><td>.623</td><td class="sortcell">-</td><td>25-10</td><td>18-16</td><td>376</td><td>275</td><td>+101</td><td>Won 2</td><td>6-4</td></tr><tr class="evenrow team-10-30" align="right"><td align="left">Tampa Bay</td><td>42</td><td>27</td><td>.609</td><td class="sortcell">1</td><td>18-15</td><td>24-12</td><td>360</td><td>268</td><td>+92</td><td>Lost 1</td><td>3-7</td></tr><tr class="oddrow team-10-2" align="right"><td align="left">Boston</td><td>43</td><td>28</td><td>.606</td><td class="sortcell">1</td><td>26-15</td><td>17-13</td><td>390</td><td>325</td><td>+65</td><td>Won 6</td><td>8-2</td></tr><tr class="evenrow team-10-14" align="right"><td align="left">Toronto</td><td>38</td><td>32</td><td>.543</td><td class="sortcell">5.5</td><td>19-15</td><td>19-17</td><td>332</td><td>306</td><td>+26</td><td>Lost 1</td><td>5-5</td></tr><tr class="oddrow team-10-1" align="right"><td align="left">Baltimore</td><td>19</td><td>50</td><td>.275</td><td class="sortcell">24</td><td>11-21</td><td>8-29</td><td>225</td><td>364</td><td>-139</td><td>Lost 1</td><td>3-7</td></tr></tbody></table>
 
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that's why it would suck to be in that division. Even when Tor has decent seasons they have no chance.
 

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All this with their so called Ace, Josh Beckett on the DL or ineffective all season. In the event that by some miracle Josh regains form this season that starting four of Beckett, Jon Lester, John Lackey and Clay Bucholtz will be very dangerous against any team in baseball in a seven game series.

wil.
 

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the way selig and mlb have the playoffs scheduled nowadays, you don't have to worry abt your 4th starter. last yr, with the mlb playoff sked, it was to the yankees favor, cause of too many off days. instead of two games, an off day, then 3 games, and an off day, then the final two games; mlb sked had too many off days, which allowed the yankees to just keep on throwing CC. unfair, to the less powerful teams, imo. the playoff format needs to be fixed, or you just keep seeing aces, and the most powerful ($$) teams will keep winning the championships. last yr was just unfair.

the red sox look like the best in the east. seatlle is going to get a lot for cliff lee. seattle is like the clippers, doesn't matter who you get or sign, there is a dark cloud hanging over the franchise.

orioles have a .275 winning pct. poor saps of the east.
 

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John Lackey - only 29 teams would love to have him in their rotation besides Boston.

FWIW - the 31 year old John Lackey is one of the best pitchers in baseball. In eight and half season all except this 2010 season with the Angels he has 110 wins (8th most among active MLB Pitchers) against 74 loses (8-3 this year so far for Boston) with a career ERA of 3.85 which is excellent in the AL especially.

Career highlights and awards
2002 World Series Champion
All Star selection (2007)
2007 American League ERA Champion

At the end of the 2009 season Lackey became a free agent, widely regarded as the best free agent starting pitcher on the 2010 market. Baseball Prospectus declared, "Lackey stands alone as the best of the best, a relatively young righty who carries significantly less risk than the other high-upside hurlers," additionally noting he faced a tough division and tougher league and his statistics would likely be even better if he were a National League pitcher.

Lackey is one of only 6 major league pitchers who won at least 11 games in each year from 2004–09, the others being CC Sabathia, Derek Lowe, Johan Santana, Javier Vazquez, and Jason Marquis. With 8 wins this year he is a cinch to do it again in 2010.

Everyone of course is entitled to their own opinion and that includes what fans think of any player including Lackey. However homerism is a factor with the casual fan but should never be one with the disciplined handicapper.

Throw out your favorite team bias if you are capping a game in any sport that said team is participating in. Personally I know Lackey is a bulldog and baseball being my specialty I can honestly say I bet on Lackey often (and yes even against Boston) when he was the ace of an excellent Angels staff and overall club over the last five years.

Beckett obviously tried to play hurt and now is paying the price by missing the last 7 weeks and counting of the season with a lower back strain. He played long catch last Saturday and threw ten pitches from the Fenway Bullpen mound but there still is no prognosis as to when he will pitch again.

So far The Sox brass have 1 win to show from Beckett this season for the $12.1M they are paying him..The silver lining here is if Boston can stay in contention for The AL East title or The AL Wild Card playoff spot Josh may all of a sudden be in midseason form come early October instead of worn out from a very competitive 6 month race for an AL Playoff spot.

Jon Lester and Clay Bucholtz are a combined 18-6 already with a combined ERA under 3.00. throw in Lackey and the top three without Beckett are 26-9 on the season. Best of any 3 starters from the same rotation in baeball. Colorado's Ubaldo Jiménez at 13-1 has the best single pitcher's record in baseball but his 2nd and third starters Jason Hammel 5-3 and Jhoulys Chacin 3-6 combine with him to post a 21-10 record YTD.

Coincidently Boston vists Colorado for a three game set starting Tuesday when Lester and Chacin will face off followed by Lackey and Jiménez on Wednesday (should be plenty of interest in that one), and fresh off a brief stint on the DL Daisuke Matsuzaka goes up against big Jason Hammel on Thursday night.


Finally to finish on Lackey, as one of the top free agent starters on the market during this last off season, he was predicted to command a deal worth around $70 to $80 million, similar to the deal A. J. Burnett received from the Yankees. Lackey drew interest from many teams, including the Seattle Mariners, the Milwaukee Brewers, the New York Yankees, the New York Mets, of course the Boston Red Sox, and of all teams the Pittsburgh Pirates. He formally declined the Angels' offer of salary arbitration on December 8.

On December 16, Lackey officially signed a 5 year contract worth $82.5 million with the Boston Red Sox. On April 7, 2010 Lackey made his debut for Boston at Fenway Park against the Yankees, pitching 6 innings of 3-hit shut-out ball. He will turn 32 on October 23rd.

Today is June 21st not even half way into his first season in Boston. His Era is a bit high but that can be attributed to a slow start in April and one start in particular on April 18th at Fenway when he gave up 8 earned runs in 3.1 innings to The Devil Rays, His ERA after that game was 5.62 today it is 4.53.

His last loss was on May 21st at at Philly to Cole Hamels' 3 hit 7 inning shutout and a 5-1 final.

I can't wait to see the Jiménez game tomorrow night at Coors Field.

wil.

PS: John Lackey became the first rookie pitcher to win a World Series Game 7 (the 2002 WS) since 1909.
 
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Maybe not so coincidentally, those top 3 teams are the most entertaining to watch.
 

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Long road trip, doubtful they'll keep up their recent pace

Despite an NL Central outfield, highest scoring offense in baseball. Says a lot about the park as well as the lineup, but that just makes their pitching look fairly decent
 

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Oddity I cannot explain.

Right now The Yankees, DRays and Red Sox are within a game of each other. In fact New York and Boston have 43 wins each and Tampa Bay one back at 42 victories.

The Oddity is The Yankees are 18-9 in day games, the DRays are 11-8 during the day and Boston is 6-12 when playing day games..On top of that Boston is 1-7 in extra innings compared to 1-1 for The Yanks and 4-2 for Tampa.

Boston is not as bad as they usually are on the road 17-13 and 26-15 at Fenway plus 14-5 in June.
Victor Martinez is red hot, hitting .383 in June.

David Ortiz has relegated Mike Lowell to cheer leader with his sizzling month of May when in 23 games, Ortiz hit .363 (29-80) with four doubles, 10 home runs, 16 runs scored and 27 RBI. The 34-year-old also posted a Major League-best .788 slugging percentage and a .424 on-base percentage. Big Papi reached base safely in 21 of his 23 games in May, including nine multi-hit performances and eight multi-RBI outings. On May 14th versus the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park, David earned his 36th career multi-homer game and his 34th with the Red Sox, ranking him third in club history behind Hall of Famers Ted Williams (37) and Jim Rice (35).

In Boston's final game of May, the five-time A.L. All-Star hit his 10th home run, reaching double-figures in a month for the first time since August 2006. That home run, which led the Red Sox to an 8-1 victory over the Kansas City Royals, was the final base hit of his eight-game hitting streak to finish the month of May, marking his longest streak since April 2009. This marks David's fourth career Player of the Month Award (last accomplished: September 2007). He edged out a red hot Vlad Guerrero to win the May Award.

Ortiz started off June slowly but over the last week he is hitting .353 with 3 homers, 8 RBI a .882 SLG and an amazing 1.420 OPS.

May wasn't bad for Jon Lester either as he won AL Pitcher of The Month by posting a perfect 5-0 record in six outings during May, the big lefty allowed just 24 hits through 44.0 innings of work while leading the Majors with 45 strikeouts.

The 26-year-old also posted a 1.84 ERA, the lowest of any A.L. pitcher with more than 27 innings pitched. Lester earned a 6-2 win for the Red Sox in his 100th career start on May 20th against Minnesota at Fenway Park, allowing only one earned run on six hits in the complete-game effort. It marked Jon's fifth career complete game and the first time a Sox pitcher has earned a complete-game win with no walks and at least nine strikeouts since Pedro Martinez accomplished the feat on August 12, 2004.

On May 25th, the second-round selection in the 2002 First-Year Player Draft fanned nine and combined with his bullpen on a one-hitter against the Rays. The southpaw's five wins in May boosted his career record to 48-18, and his .727 winning percentage is the best in M.L.-history (since 1901) among pitchers with at least 50 decisions and the ninth-best winning percentage ever through a pitcher's first 100 starts. This marks Jon's third Pitcher of the Month honor (last accomplished: September 2008).

I am going to stop here, it's no wonder the BoSox made up for such a diastrous start in April when a lot of fans were calling for Theo's scalp.

None of this IMO however sheds any light on the 6-12 day record except perhaps they played a lot of day games in April.

wil.:ohno:
 

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Boston is 1-7 in extra innings, but 12-11 in one-run games. Boston is also third in run differential. With so many ways to break down the results those sort of stats, streaks and splits are just noise. Change four or five pitches and they lose those last two games against LA and they're home record, interleague record and June record all look far different. In baseball it often takes up to 162 games to sort everything out

Ortiz still hasn't hit lefties, so some production out of Lowell would help. Nava would be the ideal 1/3 of a DH, if not for being the ideal scrapheap everyday outfielder
 

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Boston is 1-7 in extra innings, but 12-11 in one-run games. Boston is also third in run differential. With so many ways to break down the results those sort of stats, streaks and splits are just noise. Change four or five pitches and they lose those last two games against LA and they're home record, interleague record and June record all look far different. In baseball it often takes up to 162 games to sort everything out

Ortiz still hasn't hit lefties, so some production out of Lowell would help. Nava would be the ideal 1/3 of a DH, if not for being the ideal scrapheap everyday outfielder

Regarding the change of 4 or 5 pitches, sure it changes results if they are the right pitches but the same can be said about any team, not just the Red Sox. In fact you can say the same thing about game 7 of the recent NBA finals. Change 4 or 5 shots or calls by the refs and it's a different game and maybe a different winner.

Go back to the 2008 super bowl just make David Tyree's 32 yard "Helmet Catch" incomplete and The Patriots are immortal. I met my wife in a pharmacy here in Costa Rica about 12 years ago. This country has pharmacies like cities in the US have bars. I choose a different drug store and in all probability we never meet.

You could use that logic with thousands of circumstances if you wanted to waste your time thinking them up.

Regarding the RedSox playing good baseball for nearly two months. Very simple, you throw Lester, Bucholtz and Lackey thee games out of five and you are going to end up being a very competitive ball club.

Hiroki Kuroda right now behind Clayton Kershaw is The Dodgers most reliable starter but Clay Bucholtz did a better job agains Kuroda's line-up than Kuroda did against Bucholtz's line-up yesterday. The Sox were lucky that Kershaw pitched last Wednesday and beat the Reds 6-1 because he is red hot. Clayton faces the Angels Ervin Santana tomorrow night in what should be a dandy as they say.

Now if Beckett gets healthy and returns to form (a big if I know) Boston will be difficult to win a series from as long as they have those 4 starting back to back to back to back. Dice K. can join if he gets his mechanics right, tell me you know he won't.

Sure asking why is this that or that this when discussing baseball stats is mostly a waste of time but that is part of the beauty of the game. Baseball is a stat lovers dream sport...Guys like Nava create situations in baseball, you have to luv it.

No one has mentioned the loss of one of Boston's most exciting players in Jacoby Ellsbury, losing him for two months and counting has hurt the team IMO. He breaks four ribs trying to catch a dying quail of a popup. Sooner or later he will be back and our junkyard outfield won't be so shabby with J.D. Mike Cameron and Jacoby out there..

Adrian Beltre has been a windfall for Tito. Beltre is hitting .336 with 10 homers and 48 RBIs. Joe Girardi better bring him to Anaheim next month as back-up to Evan Longoria instead of AROD or he loses my respect, not that he gives a crap.

Finally the ultimate what if our fathers never met our mothers then where would we be..:think2:

Have a fine evening, wil.:toast:
 
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Wil, exactly. Life is a sensitive system. Thus day game or extra inning records are mostly random and giving them more than a cursory glance doesn't offer any insight. Like the Tyree catch, sometimes 60 minutes or 162 games isn't enough to balance out all the randomness, but we should give it much closer to that amount, rather than just 8 or 18 game samples
 

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The plot thickens...

Yanks lose Monday night while Rays and Sox idle.

Standings in AL East at top of table.

New York Yanks 43 27 .614
Tampa Bay Rays 42 27 .609 -0.5
Boston Red Sox 43 28 .606 -0.5

You can't get three teams any closer after playing 70 games.

4th place: Toronto Blue Jays 38-32 .543 -5.0 (fading but still no gimme)


wil..
 

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:wink:

records are overrated
 

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