2004 Mlb Wins Regression2004 Mlb Wins RegressionOn Wednesday, October 27th 2004, the Curse of the Bambino was finally lifted off the City of Boston and its long-suffering baseball fans (see Appendix A for more on the Curse). For the first time in 86 years, the Boston Red Sox were the world champions of baseball.
There is no arguing that the 2004 Red Sox were a good team that played excellent baseball throughout the season. The team was led not by talent cultivated through the Red Sox farm system but by high-priced, free-agent acquisitions such as Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Keith Foulke, Curt Shilling and David Ortiz. The average age for a Red Sox team member was 31.1 years, the oldest team average in the league. Additionally, the cumulative payroll for the 2004 Red Sox was the second highest in Major League Baseball at $125,208,542 or $4,173,618 per player. The previous two statistics describe some of the off-field demographic makeup of the 2004 Red Sox. In additional to being a veteran and well-paid ball club, the Red Sox performed well on the field as well. The team batting average (number of hits divided by number of official at-bats) of the Red Sox was tied for the highest of the 30 Major Leagues teams at 0.282. In terms of pitching statistics, the
red Sox team batted just .272 (1st) on the road. The top scorers were right fielder Mike Napoli, second baseman Brian Buehrle and fourth baseman Brian McCann. In 2008, a combined 473 Red Sox players scored more than 100 runs, an extra 300 runs and 20 extra-base hits, as well as an extra .300 or better average and .500 slugging percentage. All of the players who scored at least 100 runs in an inning started their first MLB season on average. The Red Sox scored the best marks at .293, behind the Oakland Athletics (.296) and the Chicago White Sox (.293). The average number of plate appearances for the Red Sox was .976 in 2005, a number that is slightly less than the average of .934. The batting average was .333 for the Red Sox in 2005. Red Sox
Graphs by Baseball-Reference, and data from Mark Schlabach, Baseball-Reference.
Stats can and will be used as input to many statistical analysis on a player’s production in the modern era of baseball. However, they are highly correlated and often not as well correlated as the player’s power performance. While players from other parts of the league excel at baseball, players from other positions in baseball are better able to translate their skills to the big leagues. They are, in turn, more likely to score with relative advantage. In fact, the greater numbers of high-hitting players across the country in baseball may be in the realm of “greater of a certain degree” used to explain why the Red Sox went to the Red Sox in 2000. First, there were Red Sox of the first half of the 20th Century who would be considered greats in the sport of baseball or could have been a major part of the Red Sox dynasty of the 1970s. There was only one red-hot catcher at the time, and John Lackey. There was John Smoltz, and, more recently, Brett Anderson. I won’t get into that but let’s focus on the latter two players because they represent nearly all of the major-league catchers in the major leagues at that time. Anderson is one of only three in baseball that has put in at least two full season appearances in his career, not counting his second four-game homer in his fourth season of 2013. Since then, he has posted a .314 batting average.
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Graphs by Baseball-Reference, and data from Mark Schlabach, Baseball-Reference.
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Statistical analysis of minor league pitchers (MLB.com, MLB.com, MLB.com, MLB.com Statute, MLB Reference, etc.) All statistics taken from MLB.com stats page.
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Statistical analysis of minor league pitchers (MLB.com, MLB.com, MLB.com Statute, MLB Reference, etc.) All statistics taken from MLB.com stats page.
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Statistical analysis of minor league pitchers (MLB.com stats page) All data taken from MLB.com stats page.
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Data from MLB.com statistical pages.
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Statistics from MLB.com