“Red Sox, not State”; Or, “No, the W on the Red Cap does NOT stand for Shrub, it stands for the Nationals.”

I’m pleased to say that Mirabelli got two RBIs in his game on the 4th. Hurrah for the backup catcher. (Didn’t do much on the 12th or 15th, but I digress) To continue with the NL:

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Since I do know who’s reading this, and I’m not sure if they know all the numbers I’m using, I thought I might provide a quick explanation of some of the numbers I’m using. They’re the basic baseball numbers - it reads like this:

The first number is the batting average. Pretty basic, used a lot, not as respected by the statisticians these days because it leaves some stuff out (all it covers is hits.)

The next number is OBP. That stands for on-base percentage. To get this number, take the hits a player has, add the walks, and add the hit-by-pitches. That’s the numerator. The denominator is the at-bats plus the walks plus the hit-by-pitches plus the sacrifice flys. Divide the numerator by the denominator* and that is the OBP. It’s a better indication because it doesn’t leave out walks. You don’t want to leave out walks because if the pitcher can’t throw strikes, you don’t want to swing.

The last number is the slugging average. To get that, multiply the number of doubles the player has by two, his triples by three, and his HRs by 4. Add them together then add his singles, and there’s the slugging average.

Anyone who reads baseball blogs already knows this. So why am I posting this? Really, this is just a long and involved way of saying: Hi Mom. (And Hi Dad. And my siblings, hello! And Julius too - such a good dog.)

*My math teachers would be so proud. I’ve retained useful knowledge. Sort of (thanks editor).

It’s almost time for another Wakefield start. Now one of the most prevalent complaints I’ve seen on the Red Sox blogsphere is that with Wake comes Doug Mirabelli. And Dougie…ain’t what he used to be. He can catch the knuckleball (and sometimes fix Wake’s mechanics if he’s running into difficulty,) but he can’t do much else anymore. By much else, I mean hit, run, throw out basestealers, and did I mention hit? (He’s .174/.230/.275 at the moment. Not good, to say the least.)

So we’ve acknowledged that Mirabelli’s bad. I’ll ignore the associated questioning of Wake’s value because that gets my irrationality up*. What I will do is address two questions: 1) Who are the other 29 teams’ backup catchers, and 2) How are they hitting? This will happen in three parts; part one addressing the AL, part two addressing the NL, part three for analysis. So starting with the AL, in alphabetical order: Read the rest of this entry »