The Dawn of the New Roman Empire

Something a little different today. Baseball! If you’re looking for a great playlist, check my last post or just go listen to Pretty Bitter.

Let’s play ball. Well, no. But let’s talk about a superstar in the making and a very frustrating front office.

First the good news…

Roman Anthony was the #1 prospect in baseball. The only reason he no longer has that title: he’s tearing up the Major Leagues in historic fashion. I ran down to Fenway the night he was called up. It felt like something was About To Happen every time he came to the plate. That night was a dud. He went 0-for-4 with a walk and an RBI, he made an embarrassing error in right field, and the Sox lost in 11 innings.

After 10 games, he was just 3-for-31. That’s a .097 batting average. He did walk four times and hit the first of what will be many big league home runs in that span, but it wasn’t pretty. Of course, no player should ever be judged on 10 games, and certainly not their first 10 games. The team went 8-2 in those games and in many ways his debut was a huge turning point for the team.

Let’s throw those 10 games out. Though he never looked nervous, he surely had some jitters. His 11th game was June 21 in San Francisco. From that date through the end of July, here are his ranks in all of baseball:

He’s already one of the best hitters in the league. At age 21. The power hasn’t quite come yet, but he is hitting the ball hard and hitting lots of doubles. Once he gets the launch angle up, the homers will come. Despite only two homers, he’s still slugging a very respectable .483 and is tied (with Byron Buxton) for 18th in OPS during this window, just ahead of guys like Elly De La Cruz (.921), Shohei Ohtani (.902), and Cal Raleigh (.870). The league will adjust to him and he’ll have to make adjustments to that, but there’s no reason to think a player with his tools can’t continue to be a great hitter. This is a guy who, across four minor league seasons, slashed .285 / .402 / .477 / .879. His OPS was 67 points higher in AAA (2 seasons, 93 games) than AA (2 seasons, 94 games).

A HISTORIC START

Since 1947 (the Integration Era) he is now just the SIXTH player in history age 21 or younger with OBP of .400 or greater through 43 career games. (Per Stathead.com)

As far as Red Sox history goes, he’s #1. No one in Sox history, 21 or younger, has ever had a .400+ OBP through the first 43 games of any season. The previous high was Xander Bogaerts at .378 in 2014.

THE LEADOFF MAN

He’s been batting leadoff lately. It’s only 8 games, but let’s look at what he’s done.
7-for-19 (.368), 2 doubles, 1 triple, 5 walks, 4 strikeouts, 2 hit by pitch, 6 runs, 3 RBI.

You want a leadoff man to get on base. 7 hits, 5 BB, 2 HBP means he’s been on base 14 times in 26 trips to the plate. That’s good for a .538 OBP. Yeah, that’ll do.

HE DID WHAT AGAINST JHOAN DURAN???

Monday, July 28. Target Field. Minnesota. Top of the 9th. 3-3 game. The Twins bring in Jhoan Duran, one of the best relievers in baseball. (He, like most other Twins, has now been traded away.) “Honest” Abraham Toro walks on 5 pitches. David Hamilton pinch runs, steals second and third. But while Hammy is running around the diamond, Roman Anthony was at the plate proving what a great, mature, calm hitter he is. Let’s look:

Pitch 1: 98 mph fastball, ball 1.
Pitch 2: 99 mph fastball, strike, 1-1 count. Roman watches the heat go by.
Pitch 3: 85 mph knuckle curve, ball outside, 2-1.
Pitch 4: 96 mph splitter on the black outside, 2-2. Roman has now watched four pitches and seen all three of Duran’s offerings: fastball, splitter, curve.
Pitch 5: 88 mph knuckle curve near his feet. He doesn’t bite. Full count.
Pitch 6: 98 mph splitter left over the plate, foul.
Pitch 7: 88 mph knuckle curve dotted on the corner down and in, foul.
Pitch 8: After trying the other two pitches, Duran goes back to #1: the fastball. The pitch is inside on the black, surely no 21-year-old rookie is going to get around on it. Wrong. 100.5 mph fastball dumped into shallow center, Red Sox take the lead in the top of the 9th. What an at bat. (We won’t go into the rain delay or how the Twins came back to win after said rain delay. We are moving on.)

Including that hit, lefties are only hitting .181 against Duran for the season with a .529 OPS. He’s actually better against lefties than righties. Impressive stuff from the kid.

CHARTS!!!

Let’s take a look at his spray chart. He hits the ball all over the place. I don’t think it’s too wild to compare him to some other great lefties… here’s his chart between Kyle Tucker and Yordan Alvarez. (Alvarez has been hurt for most of this year so his chart is from last year.)

I picked these guys because they hit lefty and spray the ball around, yet I’m still shocked at how close Tucker and Anthony are with these percentages. Good start, kid.

And while we’re on Savant, let’s look at their radial charts, which combines exit velocity and launch angle. Basically, there are four shades of green, the darker the green, the better your combination of the two is. If you hit the ball hard at the right angle, it’s going to fly very far. As Pool Kids once said, that’s physics, baby!

One more stat: barrel percentage: Alvarez 14.5%, Tucker 10.8%, Anthony 10.7%.

HARD PIVOT. WHAT IS THIS FRONT OFFICE DOING?

Okay now let’s get angry about the trade deadline. The Sox only made two trades. One was good, one was… a trade.

The Sox got lefty Steven Matz deal for Blaze Jordan. This is a good trade! Despite losing an 80 grade name, Jordan is a rule 5 guy and probably wasn’t going to be up on the Red Sox. St. Louis apparently liked him all year, as they were interested in him in the offseason when there were rumors the Sox had interest in third base whiz Nolan Arenado. Former Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom, who is now an advisor in St. Louis, actually drafted Jordan back in 2020. He got his guy again.

The second trade is confounding. The Sox got pitcher Dustin May from the Dodgers in a deal that maybe they did just to do… something? The Dodgers just demoted May to the bullpen. The Dodgers have about 200 pitchers on the IL and yet they’re willing to part with him. That’s not encouraging! The Sox gave up AA outfielder Zach Ehrhard, which would have probably been fine. He’s the Sox #30 prospect. But they also gave up James Tibbs III, one of the four pieces they got in return for dumping Rafael Devers off the Golden Gate Bridge. I mean, trading him to San Francisco. Tibbs is the Sox #10 prospect. This seems like a big overpay for a guy coming off Tommy John whose stuff just isn’t what it used to be.

May’s ERA is 4.85 and the other numbers say that’s just about right. His expected ERA is 4.88 and his FIP is 4.70. One thing you can say is that he’s taken the ball consistently. He’s pitched 104 innings across 18 starts plus a game where he pitched 4.2 in relief of Ohtani. That’s a career high in innings and appearances for May. His previous high in innings (56) and starts (10) both came in 2020 which is forever ago.

Here are some of his ranks out of 360 qualifying pitchers…
- 307 (15th percentile) in whiff percentage
- 305 (15th percentile) in chase percentage. He just isn’t getting swing and miss because he doesn’t have the stuff.
Some other ranks:
- 202 (44th percentile) in K%
- 257 (28th percentile) in walk %
- 271 (25th percentile) in expected batting average
- 271 (25th percentile) in expected slugging

His 4-seam fastball and his sweeper are both slightly plus pitches this year (run value: 4 each) and his cutter (-5 RV) and sinker (-6) are both not good. Guys are slugging .840 off his cutter and hitting .285 against his sinker. His pitch usage this season: sweeper 41%, sinker 36%, fastball 16%, cutter 7%. Maybe the Sox pitching lab thinks they can do something about the sinker/cutter woes.

This continues the Red Sox trend of picking up guys who used to be very good a few years ago. Kyle Harrison (another piece of the Devers dump, who still hasn’t made it up to the major league roster), Lucas Giolito, Walker Buehler, and now May. Giolito has been better lately (3.23 ERA/4.05 FIP in June/July) and Buehler’s 3.57 ERA in July looks fine but it comes with a 4.95 FIP and 1.41 WHIP. The rotation needs help.

Maybe the Sox are planning on calling Harrison up soon, and that’s why they didn’t go hard enough for other starters, but the deadline is still a disappointment and an abdication of duty.

Craig Breslow said yesterday it’s a “two-to-tango” process, which of course is true, but I think what he needs to realize is that he’s the wallflower nerd at the dance. (I was too, but at least I was self-aware enough to know that was me.) He’s standing there, leaning back, one foot up against the wall, drinking Orange Crush because the school didn’t spring for Coke or even Pepsi. Get on the floor, man! This sucks.

Reports said they were in on the biggest bat out there, Eugenio Suarez. Those reports also said they wanted him to play first base. That is not his position! What is their obsession with moving players to first?!

I guess it’s Toro and Romy Gonzalez at first. Ryan O’Hearn (.874 OPS vs RHP, 6 outs above average) would have been nice. Josh Naylor (.849 OPS vs RHP, -2 OAA which is right between Toro and Romy) would have been nice. I point out their vs RHP stats because Toro is about league average against all pitchers, and while Romy mashes lefties (1.041 OPS) he’s just league average against righties. A first basemen who can hit righties made so much sense.

They were in on Merril Kelly, who would have looked great starting a game 2 behind Crochet. The Rangers got him to add to their stable of Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi. If the Rangers get into the postseason with those three guys, they will be tough to get out.

Reports said they went hard after Joe Ryan, but Ken Rosenthal reported that just wasn’t true. He called their efforts to land Ryan “feeble at best” and called their deadline an “epic fail.” Whether it’s John Henry pinching pennies — and there were reports of another team exec saying that money was a factor in negotiating with the Sox this week, or Breslow’s computer models, something held them back this week. I have to agree with Ken.

The Red Sox, and all professional sports teams, deserve owners who care about winning. It appears that John Henry views them as just one part of his portfolio, where making money is the #1 goal. If the savings they got from dumping Devers isn’t spent on improving the team this offseason, that will be verified.

IN CONCLUSION

The new Roman Empire is here. But he’s just one guy.

The Red Sox are in a heated battle for the playoffs. The other teams in the race got better. In some cases, much better.

The Sox stayed about the same, which means they’re big losers today. I would guess their playoff chances took a slight hit, and their chance of matching up against these teams if they get in took a big hit.