Josh Beckett

Geoff Young, master of the great Padres blog Ducksnorts (see the most recent post on former Red Sox Cla Meredith), asked me some questions about the Red Sox in regard to my last post about Matt Clement. They're great questions, so I'm going to answer them one by one.

Geoff: --Any theories as to why Beckett's HR rate has increased so much? He was
in an extreme pitchers park when with the Marlins. Maybe there's
something about his style (I seem to recall he works up in the zone a
lot) that lends itself to serving up homers.

Well, the short answer is I have no idea. But that's no fun, so let's delve a bit more.

According to HitTracker, Beckett's 36 home runs against have traveled an average "true" distance of 393.6 feet and the average speed off the bat was 107.8 MPH. This is basically average, though I haven't done any research to see if some pitchers give up bigger blasts than others, or what that might mean if true.

Does the Monster help? Well, Beckett has given up 24 of his 36 home runs on the road, though 8 of his last ten have come at home. And only two of the home HRs were even hit to left field. So it's unlikely that his home park is hindering him that much, though I'm sure he misses Pro Player Dolphins Stadium.

Well certainly the tough AL East is what's bringing him down. It would certainly seem that the Blue Jays have knocked a few out against Josh, and facing the Yankees is never fun. Baseball Prospectus has a handy statistic that tells us the quality of opposition batters faced which might help here.

Oooh, we might be onto something. Beckett's opponents have batted a composite .273/.345/.440 for a .785 OPS, which ranks third among the 125 pitchers with at least 100 IP. He's 1st if we only include pitchers with more than 130 IP.

So, Beckett has had the bad fortune of facing some very good hitters, even in relation to other players on his team and in his division. But has he been 36 HR, 5.01 ERA unlucky? Probably not.

My anecdotal evidence seems to recall a lot of the homers coming on quite frankly bad pitches. He also seems to throw mainly fastballs. The excellent Jerry Remy has noted frequently that it seems Beckett often doesn't have confidence in his curveball, and when he can't get that over for strikes hitters seem to sit on his fastball, which is 97 MPH but doesn't have a lot of movement.

If I'm the Red Sox pitching coaches, and maybe Curt Schilling can lend a hand too, I focus this offseason on working Beckett's secondary pitches into shape, particularly in the control department, and if necessary, simply driving it to him that they don't always have to be perfect as long as they're different from the fastball. Also, his changeup is still very fast (90 mph+ if I remember correctly). A chageup that provides more of a change would help him a lot.

While the Yankees and Blue Jays' lineups aren't going to get any easier, even an ERA closer to 4 than 5 would help the Sox' chances a lot. We know Beckett can perform in the clutch, but we need to get to the playoffs first.

More to come...