Listening To Shakira, Avoiding Doing Work

Sitting here at work, desiring to do anything but work-related activities, I've looked over a lot of baseball and Sox stats/articles. I heard grumblings that the Red Sox have signed a 23-year-old Cuban catcher. Unfortunately, the article is available only to ESPN Insiders. Insiders, in this case, is code for "doofs who actually pay money to ESPN to gain access to an extra fifteen articles a month that don't say much of anything." Either way, I wish I could read this particular Insider article. Instead, I read some blogs on ESPNBoston. There is a cool diary entry written by Daniel Bard on there. I'm not sure how much outside editing goes into these entries of his but, technically speaking, his writing ability overshadows every hack writer that pukes up a sports story for MSNBC. Anyway, here we go:

Josh Wreck-It: That's a terrible topic heading (but better than my second-best option of Buttercup Squash Beckett, which I'd have had a real hard time explaining), but Josh is wrecking his ERA at an alarming rate right now. In fact, if the Sox ace were to throw back-to-back-to-back-to-back complete game shutouts it would only lower his ERA to 3.20. But there's nothing to worry about because after five starts last season his ERA was exactly the same as it is right now (7.22, gross). So, a fantastic rebound is imminent.

Josh Check-It: But there is something to worry about. My continued non-work-related-web-surfing led me to an interesting graph illustrating what one of Beckett's problems might be:

(credit to ESPNBoston or whomever for this image)

Not only is Josh leaving his changeup up in the zone, as you can see from my stolen/plagiarized chart, but he's also throwing this crummy changeup 14 percent of the time (only 8.6% last season). So, maybe if Josh stops throwing the change his numbers will improve? I hope so, but there's another troubling piece of information that I found as well. Beckett's career average for swinging strikes coming into this season was 9.9%. So, essentially, opposing hitters swing and miss at one out of every ten pitches that he throws. And what about this year, so far? Well, now only 7.4% of Josh's offerings are swung on and missed. That is bad news. I mentioned the striking similarities between this season's and last season's awful beginnings: 28 2/3 innings, 23 earned runs, similar hit totals (36 and 37). The 2009 strikeout total, though, was still an impressive 31. Right now Beckett has K'd only twenty batters. Gulp.

Even Scarier: Adrian Beltre leads the team with his .309 batting average?!

The "D" Is For Durability: Don't look now, but J.D. Drew has played in 19 of the Sox' twenty games this season. Okay, some of you out there are thinking, "But I hate that effing loser; he's hitting .182!" I'll counter by saying that his .308/.353/.846 line with runners in scoring position gives him the second-highest OPS on the team in those clutch situations. I'd also like to point out that his 10 runs batted in are third on the team overall.

Roll of the Dice-K: As an owner (once a proud owner) of Daisuke Matsuzaka in two separate fantasy leagues, I'm excited for the return of the nibbling starter. Imagine if he comes back and looks good! How awesome would it be for the Sox (not to mention Momaw Navaughn) if Dice-K looked like WBC Dice-K or even 2008 Dice-K? The answer is very awesome.

Best Team Ever: In the spirit of doling out some V-tek love, I'm going to spit out a fun stat for you all. A team of nine Jason Variteks would score 12.26 runs per game. That's right.