‘Everybody knows’ Sox plan
Team late to adjust pitching strategy
The question was simple and the answer was telling.
Why are the Red Sox getting hit so hard on pitches at the top of the strike zone?
It was asked to catcher Christian Vazquez after the Sox took a 6-2 loss to the rebuilding Royals on Tuesday night.
“I think everybody knows that we pitch up,” Vazquez said. “They make adjustments. They have reports and they look for it.”
Everybody knows. The data shows it. The word is out. And the Red Sox haven’t changed.
In that one sentence, the Sox’ trusty pitch-caller confirmed what seems like a legitimate reason the pitching staff has been horribly underperforming all season.
The whole league knows how they attack hitters, and they’ve known for some time.
Look at last year. The Red Sox ranked No. 1 in the majors in fastballs at the topthird of the zone, with such pitches making up 11 percent of their total pitches on the season. No other team threw fastballs up as often as the Red Sox.
And it worked.
So what did they come out doing this year? Fastballs up.
This time, it hasn’t worked. The starting rotation has flattened out. The bullpen has crumbled.
Official Gameday data from Major League Baseball says the Red Sox have thrown more pitches in the top third of the strike zone than any other team this year, with 2,456 of the 18,516 pitches thrown in the top third. Their 13.3 percent ratio ranks second to only the Dodgers (13.9 percent).
If the data is narrowed to only fastballs up in the zone, the Red Sox also rank No. 1, with 1,867 fastballs in the top third. Their ratio of 10.1 percent ranks third to the Dodgers (10.6) and Rays (10.3).
“We’ve done our research and it’s not to the extreme that it looks,” manager Alex Cora said when asked about Vazquez’ comments before last night’s game. “I think that pitch still plays up in the zone. Actually, there are three teams in the league that pitch up in the zone and they have a better record than we do…It’s Tampa, Houston and the Yankees. It’s just a matter of sometimes executing that pitch. Or actually making it a competitive pitch. Don’t go up just to go up.”
The Red Sox have their own data for everything, and it’s likely their numbers are more accurate and differ from Gameday.
But if it’s that simple for an average fan to recognize how the Red Sox are attacking hitters, and Vazquez said as much on Tuesday, it seems like a strategy worth changing.
“This is the first time I heard about it,” Cora said. “It’s not that I’m upset at him, don’t get me wrong, but we can talk about it and go from there.
“If you look around the league, those three teams, the way they use that fastball up, it works. It’s just a matter if it’s at the top of the strike zone or if it’s an uncompetitive pitch, or it’s a non-competitive pitch. The margin is great there, but there are teams actually executing that pitch and others that are not.”
After the Sox allowed 29 runs in two blowout losses to the Yankees in London, pitching coach Dana LeVangie told the Herald it was time for the team to make some adjustments. Reliever Marcus Walden said the same thing.
“There are scouting reports out,” Walden said on June 30. “It’s not a hidden secret what we’re doing.”
Perhaps the Red Sox made other adjustments, but the Gameday data shows almost no change in the percentage of fastballs thrown up in the zone before and after that series, from 10.2 percent to 9.9 percent.
The reason this is a discussion now is because of how poorly the Red Sox have pitched of late, with a 9.50 ERA for their rotation over the last 10 games (entering yesterday) and a 1-9 record in that span.
On the year, the $90 million starting rotation ranks 20th with a 5.08 ERA.
Velocity is everything these days and Chris Sale’s has been down all season. Former Cy Young winners David Price and Rick Porcello are each in the bottom 25 percent of MLB starters in average fastball velocity. It’s easy to point to those numbers when dissecting the rotation’s struggles.
Pitch execution will always come up in the discussion.
But it’s fair to question the strategy, too. Everybody knows what they’re doing, Vazquez said.
“We’ll show him,” Cora said. “We’ll address it. I’m not mad at him.”
Nobody knows better than the Red Sox about why they pitch the way they do. And as well as it worked in 2018, who could blame them for trying again?
The concern is that nothing has changed and the players themselves have talked openly about how obvious their attack plans have become.
Will there be any change? Or will Cora alter his rotation and find some creative way (openers, change the starting pitchers, etc.) of turning this season around?
“You’ve got to be creative but as far as where the schedule is right now it’s kind of tough to be that creative,” Cora said. “But as of right now we’ll stick to our plan right now and see where it takes us.”