Week 5 observations

• What a weird week of baseball. Going back to the start of the Angels series, the Sox are 5-3 over the last 8 games, pulling within 1 game of .500. In that stretch, we saw two huge rain delays, two extra inning games, 3 players head to the DL, Carl Crawford’s second walk-off hit of the month, the return of Sloth Lackey, the worst umpiring crew in the league, Dice-K’s first relief appearance ever, the continued dominance of Josh Beckett, a beat down of two of the best pitchers in the league this season, and in baseball overall, 2 no-hitters and several other near no-hitters. Perhaps the most exciting news of the week, though, is the debut of…
• Jose Iglesias. With Marco Scutaro heading to the DL, the Sox decided to call up their “shortstop of the future” to get a little taste of big league action despite hitting a poor .253/.278/.253 (by the way, when AVG=SLG that means you have 0 extra base hits). Iglesias, 21, was signed by the Red Sox out of Cuba in 2009 to a Major League contract of over $8 million for 4 years. For those who don’t know, Iglesias is regarded as possibly the best fielding shortstop prospect since Rey Ordonez, who used to draw Omar Vizquel and even Ozzie Smith comparisons. The Red Sox are hoping that Iglesias can be more similar to Vizquel and Smith than Ordonez, because as well as he fielded the position, Rey Rey, as my buddy Decker will protest, could not hit a lick. His minor league numbers have been mixed to this point, but he has been young for every level and scouts like his swing and see a guy who could at least hit for average with doubles power. With his excellent defense he won’t have to hit much to prove valuable (think Elvis Andrus) especially playing with…
• The rest of the slugging Red Sox infield. With Jed Lowrie playing like he is and Derek Jeter slumping like he is, the Red Sox have arguably the best infield in the American League. Dustin Pedroia has also been slumping over the last month since the Yankees series, but assuming he is healthy I would expect him to snap out of it soon. Kevin Youkilis has been only an average defender at 3B, making no one forget Adrian Beltre, but his bat is coming alive and he ranks 5^th in all of baseball in walks and leads the team in On Base Plus Slugging (OPS). Just behind him on that list is the best player on the team, Adrian Gonzalez. After going the first month of the season with just 1 HR, he hit 3 in the last week, 2 of them absolute blasts to left field. There is nobody on this team that is more fun to watch hit. Though he strikes out a little bit, he rarely takes a bad hack and his opposite field stroke is something that should be videotaped and shown to every young lefty (I’m looking at you Curtis). Of course, Gonzalez isn’t the only $20 million man on the Sox heating up. He is joined by…
• Carl Crawford. Crawford is finally crawling out of his early season slump. He has gotten a hit every day this month (9 game hitting streak) including 2 game winning hits. He has exploded past the Mendoza line with his May line of .361/.378/.500. His overall line is still terrible (.551 OPS), but he looks more comfortable and seems to have put all the bad voodoo behind him. Also important is that his fielding is getting back to the superstar level that allowed this non-power hitter to earn such a large contract. Crawford has always been one of my favorite players to watch even with the Rays and it is good to see him having as much fun playing as I am watching him. Boston can be a great place to play if you can get used to the pressure so it’s good to see him slump busting. The same cannot be said for…
• Red Sox catchers. If you combine the OPS’s of Jarrod Saltalamacchia (.522) and Jason Varitek (.466), they would still rank just 6^th in all of baseball. Salty has allowed the most stolen bases in the AL and Varitek ranks third last in caught stealing percentage of all AL catchers with at least 15 starts. We are supposed to believe that Varitek has played a large role in Beckett’s and Dice K’s turn around and apparently Salty is getting much better at calling games. But when do we see some tangible production from this crew? Varitek is hanging on because he’s the captain and Salty is holding it down because he still has promise and is the same age as Varitek when it clicked for him. This is all well and good, and I can live with low production from this spot on offense, but it appears neither are doing anything well, which is just depressing. It becomes even more depressing when we face our next opponent…
• The Toronto Blue Jays. The Jays are awash in catchers at the moment. The starter is 25 year old hacker, J.P. Arencibia. Arencibia has struck out in almost a quarter of his at bats but he has a pretty big power stroke, with 4 HR already this year, and his SLG is the exact same as Varitek’s OPS (.466). The backup is the black sheep of the flying Molina’s, Jose, who is combining typical Molina defense with a decent start to the season (.250/.327/.409). The future starter, 22 year old Travis d’Arnaud, is struggling in his first stint in AA, but he was ranked as the 36^th best prospect in baseball by Baseball America this year. If the Blue Jays continue to struggle this year, look for the Red Sox to try and trade for Molina, even though it would be better to make a trade with the team with the best organizational catching depth in baseball…
• The New York Yankees. The Sox’ other opponent this week is hoarding catchers like a 75 year old spinster hoards cats. Sensing the defensive decline of their stalwart Jorge Posada, the Yankees really got to work over the last couple years. They groomed defensive backstop Francisco Cervelli to platoon with Posada in his final year behind the dish. The only bidding war they did win this offseason was for Russell Nathan Coltrane Jeanson Martin (over the Red Sox no less) who has reclaimed the glory of his first 2 years in the league with a surprising power outburst accompanying his typically steady batting eye (though he is coming back to Earth now). Then in the minors, the Yankees had 3 catchers rank on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list before the season. Austin Romine, the oldest of the group at 22 years old and ranked the lowest on the list at 98, has gotten off to a hot start at AA, but may eventually move away from catching. 18 year old Gary Sanchez (30^th on the list) has struggled with the bat in his first full season assignment, but again, he is just 18 years old. Finally, 21 year old Jesus Montero is widely regarded as one of the 5 best prospects in baseball and in his second season in AAA he has not disappointed. Montero may also have trouble sticking behind the plate as he is already listed at 6’3’’ and 235 lbs but may be way more than this. It will be interesting to see if any of these guys turn into the next great Yankees catcher (Berra, Howard, Munston, Posada) or if they get traded for someone like…
• Francisco Liriano. After returning to his dominating form last year following elbow surgery, Liriano has been a shell of a pitching man this year. With pre-season trade rumors swirling, Liriano proceeded to go 1-4 with a 9.13 ERA and giving up as many walks as strikeouts over the first month of the season. Then, last Tuesday, Liriano spun his first ever no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox. The game was also his first shutout AND complete game. Unsurprisingly, after throwing 123 pitches (he rarely even throws 100) Liriano had his next start pushed back. I would say this is the pitcher with the most impact potential who could be traded this year and would definitely draw interest from the Yankees and Red Sox...
• Small ball: As I mentioned earlier there were a lot of great pitching performances last week starting with Liriano’s no-no (although with 6 BBs and just 2 Ks, it was more lucky than good)…Just 4 days later, Justin Verlander threw the second no-hitter of his career against the Jays, which was a perfect game until he walked Arencibia in the 8^th inning. He still faced the minimum batters (27) as Arencibia was erased on a double play by the next batter. The most impressive thing about this start was that Verlander threw harder as the game wore on, throwing 100 MPH on his final fastball…One day after Liriano’s no-hitter, Tim Hudson held the Brewers to just 1 hit and 1 walk. In my opinion, and according to Bill James’ Game Score stat, Hudson’s performance was more impressive than Liriano’s…Two days later, Derek Lowe took a no-hitter into the seventh against the Phillies while his counterpart, Cliff Lee, struck out 16 Braves in just 7 innings. Sadly, it took Lee 117 pitches to get those strikeouts so he was not given a chance to tie the all time single game strikeout record of 20…Also on that day, Jaime Garcia of the Cardinals took a perfect game into the 8^th against the Brewers (where did their bats go last week) losing it with a walk to Casey McGehee, then losing the no-hitter on the next batter as well…To cap the weekend on Sunday, former Red Sox prospect (traded in the Hanley-Beckett deal) Anibal Sanchez took a no-hitter into the 7^th against the Nationals. It would have been his second career no-hitter…Finally, in the matchup to end all matchups thus far, tonight the Phillies-Marlins game will feature Roy Halladay and Josh Johnson on the mound. At the suggestion of Joe Black, I will be making this my Game of the Week and doing a write up about it tomorrow. And as this year has been so cleverly dubbed “The Year of the Pitcher Part 2” (must be the same Ad Wizards who came up with Fast Five), I leave you with a quote from the most mysterious pitcher of all time, Satchel Paige: “My pitching philosophy is simple. Keep the ball away from the bat.” Sounds good to me.