Sox Watch

Monday, October 29, 2007

Red Sox 2007 Regular Season WPA by Category

After a yearlong hiatus, Sox Watch is back with some fresh new WPA statistics to celebrate the Red Sox' 2007 World Series Championship.

I haven't been publishing Red Sox WPA data on Sox Watch in 2007, since the days of manual WPA data collection are now long past - the fantastic Fan Graphs site now does a fantastic job of automatically collecting and publishing WPA data. However, the Fan Graphs data does not include one of the key aspects that I highlighted here on Sox Watch - the aggregate contributions by the offense, starting pitching, and relief pitching over the course of the season. So I've taken some of the raw WPA data from Fan Graphs and done some further processing to produce the aggregate totals that I had originally been publishing in 2006.

Here are the 2007 regular-season aggregate totals for offense, starting pitching, and relief pitching over the course of the season. The graph shows the WPA contribution from each category on a day-by-day basis.



The graph shows the dominant role the bullpen had in the Red Sox' success this year. The WPA for the relief pitchers was over 8.0 by the end of the year. The total WPA for the starting pitchers was just under 5.0, and the offense totaled just under 2.0.

It's interesting to observe the different patterns for the three categories. The bullpen maintained its strong performance almost throughout the whole season, slowing down slightly through the last two months. The starting pitching had some ups and downs, but generally also made steady progress throughout the season. The offense, on the other hand, had a three-phase season: red-hot for the first two months, ice cold through June and July, and hot again through the end of the year. Note that the total offensive WPA contribution was negative as late as August 6.

2 Comments:

  • Thanks for the graph, it's interesting.

    From looking at the fangraphs site, you got the graph right but the description backwards - the starting pitching was just under 5 and the offense was just under 2, not vice versa.

    By Blogger dfan, at 9:18 AM  

  • Thanks Dan - I had the description backward in the text. Fixed now.

    By Blogger jpo, at 10:23 AM  

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