Sox Watch

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Red Sox Monthly WPA Leaders for August

Last month I wrote that the monthly WPA rankings were getting a little bit boring, with Ortiz and Papelbon at the top of the list every month. In August, despite the team's catastrophic slide in the standings, Ortiz and Pabelbon continued to be the most consistent performers on the team, but they were both edged out for the top spot by Manny Ramirez.

Starters
It's hard to say which was worse in August, the stating rotation or the bullpen, but I'd have to give the nod for suckitude to the starters. At least the bullpen had Papelbon to provide some relief (so to speak), but the only decent pitcher in the rotation was David Wells, and by the end of the month he was packing his bags for San Diego. Kyle Snyder was the only other starter to post a positive WPA for the month.

Bullpen
Jonathan Papelbon continued to rule the roost in August, despite blowing three saves. The second-best performance came from Keith Foulke. With Rudy Seánez gone halfway through the month, Julián Tavárez could have had the bottom of the standings to himself, were it not for the inspired lousiness of Mike Timlin, who chose an extraordinarily bad time to call out his teammates for their poor offensive performance.

Position Players
David Ortiz had to share his spot at the top of the list this month with Manny Ramirez, who beat him out by 0.005 WPA to take the top spot on the team for the month. Other notable performers were Mark Loretta and Mike Lowell. At the bottom of the heap, leading the rest of the offense by a wide margin, was the disastrous acquisition Javy López. López managed to put together a -1.748 WPA for the month, despite starting just 15 games. In August, he hit .200 with 15 strikeouts and just two walks. His WPA total of -1.748 was almost twice as bad as the previous worst monthly total, the -0.923 turned in in April by Alex González.

Red Sox Monthly WPA Totals, August 2006

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home