LyfLines: Monday Pythagorean

Pretty good beginning to the week seemingly wasted by the lost weekend. 4-3 isn't awful, isn't great.

There's a cry starting to build in certain quarters that the Red Sox are frauds. "They started hot," the storyline goes, "against lousy, injured teams, but they can't play with the good teams like the Tigers and Angels." They did lose three in Detroit this weekend with their 5th and 6th starters making two of the starts, and Matsuzaka having his first rough outing in a month, and a journeyman minor leaguer getting his first two Major League appearances starting at first, but that drops them to 3-4 against the Tigers this year. They're 3-0 against the Angels.

Here's the bottom line. BaseballProspectus runs "Adjusted Standings" in which they adjust for competition, actual performance in terms of runs scored and allowed and component runs scored and allowed. We hit the All Star break with the Red Sox having a .635 third-order winning percentage, far and away the best in baseball. They're tied with the Angels for most wins, tied with the Tigers for fewest losses, and they have the best winning percentage in the game. They've been struggling with injuried themselves for the past few weeks, and they still hit the All Star break with the best record in the game. And they come out of the break with an 11 game home stand against one sub-.500 division competitor, and two of the worst teams in the league.

The Prospectus also runs simulations of the remaining scheduled games, producing play-off odds reports for every team. The Red Sox, at over 97%, are far and away the most likely team to be playing post-season baseball.

None of that means, of course, that there aren't concerns. They have not hit well, as a team. Particularly, they haven't hit for power with runners on. Which means that they don't get big innings. They've left a ton of runners on, which doesn't bother me, though there are people ranting about it on WEEI. Runners left on is a good statistic, because it means that you're getting runners on base. But they do need to do a better job scoring. They're 4th in the league in runs scored, and, given that they're 1st in OBP and 3rd in SLG, they ought to be better.

Ramirez, Ortiz and Drew have combined to hit 31 HR. I would have bet they'd be at 50 by now. Those three, the "murderer's row" three-four-five that we were salivating about have hit a combined .286/.397/.474/.872 through the All Star break. That's not awful, but it's nowhere near what we expected, and, combined with Crisp's awful start and Lugo's dreadful stretch, they've generally had mediocre production from the great hitters in the middle of the lineup, and a couple of automatic outs at the end. I expected better, and still do.

The Red Sox have 75 games remaining. 18 of them are against teams that currently have a winning record. The cumulative winning percentage of their opponents is .476, which translates to a 77-85 record over 162. Something catastrophic in terms of injuries would have to happen for this team to miss the playoffs. If they go 37-38 the rest of the way, they'll finish at 90-72. To tie them, New York would have to got 48-29. Toronto would have to go 47-28. Neither of those is likely. Neither is the Red Sox going 37-38 against the remainder of their schedule...