Sox Watch

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.

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