Stats

Over the past decade, the Red Sox have developed a reputation for getting the best value for their players, and sometimes resurrecting careers in the process. 

With fantasy baseball drafts for the 2010 season in full swing, I indulged a particular question of mine and did a little research. What intrigued me is this question: What is the age of an average Major League Baseball player?

JD Drew is entering the penultimate year of the five-year, $70 million deal he signed with the Red Sox prior to the 2007 season.

While many members of Red Sox Nation believe that he hasn’t been worth the money, others (myself included) have been converted—at least to the point where we do not consider it to have been an outright mistake.

It is undeniable that he hasn’t put up the kind of sexy numbers you would normally equate with a $14 million players, but he has been very consistent (averaging 429 AB, with a .276 BA, 18 HR, 65 RBI, and 82 R per year).

Today's Yankees game against the Atlanta Braves has been rained out, so this is a perfect time to take an updated look at the position battles this spring.

The pitching continues to be a big focus, as Joba Chamberlain has struggled in his two appearances so far. Nick Johnson has come back from a brief injury and is performing well— as is Curtis Granderson. See their battle and the others at Double G Sports.

When the Tampa Bay Rays sent Scott Kazmir to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim last August, Sean Rodriguez was an afterthought in the trade. As a matter of fact, he was the ever so famous “Player To Be Named Later.”

Now it looks like Rodriguez might be paying dividends for the Rays.

Any fan of sabermetrics or the Boston Red Sox knows that Jacoby Ellsbury was something of a defensive liability in 2009.

For those of you who aren’t hip to the latest statistical trends, Ultimate Zone Rating is currently the best available method of measuring fielding, providing an estimate of how many runs a player saved (or cost) his team with his glove.

Rookie Scott Sizemore clearly has the inside track on the starting 2B job vacated by Placido Poloanco’s return to Philadelphia.  Sizmore has never had an at-bat in the big leagues but has been a very good hitter in the minor leagues.  We have a fair amount of statistics on him from his days in the minors, but rookies are just so hard to predict.

In a previous post, I addressed the issue of Pirates' injuries, how they held the team back, and the fact that the club's pitchers were particularly prone to this problem. Following stories about this in the local press, I'm going to develop this theme further.

Paul Maholm apparently had the flu last June, when he started against the Minnesota Twins, and gave up seven runs on 14 hits. This, along with a couple other bad outings when injured, halted the downward (good) progress in his ERA over the previous years, leaving him with a 2009 tally of 4.44.

There has been a lot of hype about the Red Sox and their pitching and defensive upgrades this year, but because of all the focus on the defense, many people are claiming that the Sox will have a lower caliber offensive season. While the Beantown boys may have lost a key player this offseason, they spread the offense out among multiple players, while improving the defense as well. Overall, the offense will not be worse, and may in fact be better than the 2009 version. Ahead is the 2010 Red Sox projected line up, 1-9, compared to their 2009 counterparts.

The Yankees' bats were on fire last season. They led the league with 915 runs as one of only three teams to break 800 runs scored in 2009 (the Red Sox came in second with 872).

Enter John Lackey, who's now a member of a revered Red Sox rotation. With Boston and New York the clear one-two front-runners for the AL East crown, the Red Sox could certainly use some ice-cold pitching to cool down their nemesis in 2010.

But will they get it from Lackey?

Here are his career numbers against some of New York's finest hitters: