Oops I was looking at fWAR- which has much lower numbers for Sox players; Duran is at 1.8, Abreu and Wong at 1.1.
May: Red Sox discussion, observations and trend tracking...AKA It's not all about the Benjamins
- Thread starter YTF
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He's had a very limited showing against LHP, but yeah, it's been ugly.
The BB% is slashed in half, the K% is doubled. Not good stuff. It's only 30 plate appearances, of course, and guys can improve... but there's not really any reason to do that right now with Rafaela, Refsnyder, and O'Neill all on the team.
He might be a strong-sided platoon guy for his entire career, which doesn't make him bad per se, just the sort of guy you're probably going to keep as long as he's cheap and then let walk.
As for the team as a whole... my sense is that the Sox's woes with runners on base are largely driving their miserable May performance, and on the year, I dove into how it was bad in an earlier post. But it's been extra bad in May. Red Sox are middle of the pack as a team offensively for the month with the bases empty, a 91 wrc+, good for 16th in the league.
With runners on base, they fall to 26th in the league, with a wrc+ of 77.
With RISP, it's even worse, 27th in all of baseball, a wrc+ of 68.
And yeah, I don't think this is predictive, and that they'll do much better in the future. But when I look at the gap between their Pythag and their record, I can't help thinking their performance with RISP is a huge part of it.
Maybe if you think of WAR like batting average it will make more sense. Some guys start hot hitting .350 and up. But they do not stay hot for the whole year.
In Duran's case, playing a 9.5 WAR clip for 1/4 of the year means thusfar he's been as valuable as [Insert Sox Player's full WAR season here.] It gives you a quick and relatable benchmark for performance, which is good if older folks are biased against contemporary players and view "ye olden days" through rose-tinted glasses.
Yes, but unlike cumulative traditional stats, it can go negative. There's no guarantee Abreu will even end the year where he is now.
For sure, Duran or Abreu or Wong could enter a long stretch of playing poorly and their bWAR number will decrease; it won't just remain static until he plays better again. The point I'm making is simply that Duran has been, so far, one of the better players in all of MLB to this point in the season, which is a very nice development, especially as we were all wondering whether 2023 was, for him, a fluke. It appears that he's made the leap to at least "good, solid MLB player".
Yeah, the question with him is if he could survive a drop in BABIP. Last year it was .381, this year it's .348 (which I think is fairly sustainable given his speed and how hard he hits the ball). He's surviving that drop by pumping his walk rate up by 2% (which sounds small but isn't) and cutting the K rate by about 4%. So even though he's hitting almost 20 points lower in batting average, his OBP is virtually the same as last year.
There's so much to like on his savant page, too.
