Felger & Mazz: Are Red Sox Lucky Or Opportunistic?
BOSTON (CBS) -- The Boston Red Sox are either the most opportunistic team in baseball, or the luckiest.
Michael Felger tends to lean with the latter.
One thing that has been consistent for the Red Sox all season long is their ability to take advantage of their opponents' miscues. In their two-game sweep of the Miami Marlins, eight of Boston's 10 runs were unearned, including five of their runs Wednesday night in a 6-3 win.
"The luckiest team in Major League Baseball is the Boston Red Sox, which is scary because they're [four] games under .500," Felger said Thursday. "I point to the unearned runs stat, because it's staggering."
Nobody is better than the Red Sox at taking advantage of those extra opportunities, scoring a major league leading 57 unearned runs -- 30 more than the league average. That's 15.7 percent of their total runs scored, which is also tops in the majors. The league average is seven percent.
What would Boston's record be without all that added assistance from blundering fielders?
"If you bring them back to an average amount of unearned runs, their run differential is 334-433. When you use the Bill James Pythagorean formula for win-loss record, if they had just scored an average amount of unearned runs, their record would be 36-50. They are 10 games better in the standings because of the unearned runs they scored," noted Felger. "That is insane."
Applying that to the Yankees, who have the second fewest unearned runs in baseball, Boston would be 11 games out in the American League East.
"I just ascribe it almost purely to luck," said Felger. "I'm sure it's not all luck, some teams put the ball in play more, some play more aggressively than others and put pressure on the defense. I know the Red Sox run a lot but I don't think the way they run puts pressure on the defense. They run into outs – that's not forcing teams into errors."
Mazz was quick to point to last night as an example of the Red Sox making the most out of the extra outs they're being given. Boston scored all four of their runs in the third inning after Tom Koehler's throwing error, adding their fifth unearned run in the seventh on a throwing error by catcher J.T. Realmuto.
"It's not always the team giving them extra runs, but extra outs," said Mazz. "When they've had the chance, often times, lately especially, they've taken advantage. Earlier in the year when they weren't hitting with guys in scoring position, it felt like teams were chucking the ball down the right field line and people were running around the bases. This has been different, but they've been unbelievably fortunate."
While they're making the most out of these opportunities for now, Felger is curious to see if these extra chances will eventually dry up for the Red Sox.
"You have to wonder if this evens out, or if it's one of these years where they're just going to score a ton of unearned runs and benefit from it all year. That's possible," said Felger. "But if it evens out over 162 games, is this going to catch up to them? Will it start benefiting the Yankees and start hurting you because it goes back to the mean?"
