I think the recent 17 run outlier game may be skewing your numbers. That one game accounts for over 11% of the Red Sox runs for the season to date. It will be interesting to see if these numbers hold up after another couple months.

How is it "skewing" them? It happened.

I agree the pitching has been substandard. I do think, however, that the 17 runs is an outlier right now. It distorts the runs figure. I'd be interested to see what the runs figure would be if you pulled that one out.

I think by "skew" he means that if you recalculate the wOBA/WAR/OPS+ stats for Boston's position players while ignoring that one 17-run game, you might find a noteworthy difference in the value they provided in all of those other games compared to the additional overall value they provided once you add in the 17-run game.

Let's say I throw some data into a process that always spits out one number as output. If I told you that the process was repeated 10 times and produced 10 output values with an average value of 8, then one list of outputs could possibly be:

3,3,3,2,4,4,3,58

or it could be

8,8,8,9,8,8,7,8

(or infinitely many other combinations that average out to 8)

Given the first list of outputs, if I asked you to predict the next output value for that process, would you pick 8? Even though 8 is the average, I wouldn't pick 8. I would pick something closer to 3 since that is where most of the output values are clustered around. It seems likely that something unusual happened in that last output value of 58, and so the average is skewed by that extreme number. This is where average becomes a flawed statistic, especially in a small sample of numbers. Medians are much more resistant to outliers and are more reliable stats to focus on at that point.

Given the second list of outputs, if I asked you to predict the next output value, would you pick 8? I would pick 8. Almost every value that comes out of that process has been 8. The average is more reflective of this in this case since there is now extreme number to affect it so severely and render it pointless.

So, yeah, the 17-run game happened, like you said, so in the big picture you can't ignore it. But sometimes things that happen do skew final results, especially in a small number of games played. So you can't just ignore the idea of things being skewed. It is a very realistic possibility to consider, especially this early in the season where the stats have yet to stabilize and are still sensitive to extreme results.

So in other words, you might want to consider things like: what was the Red Sox team OPS+/WAR/wOBA in 2010 without that 17-run game and how much did it go up after counting that 17-run game? Was it a large difference? And how much did that 17-run game boost them in those league rankings for these stats? For example, if the Red Sox team OPS+ only ranked 8th without the 17-run game, yet ranked 2nd after considering the 17-run game, then it would seem that the 17-run game skewed things pretty heavily and expecting them to continue to have the 2nd highest OPS+ in the league going forward is probably being too optimistic. But if they ranked 3rd or 4th or 5th in team OPS+ even without considering that 17-run game, then it might be tough to conclude that the 17-run game skewed these numbers in a meaningful way.

Hope that idea/logic made sense.

The idea/logic makes perfect sense. I am just not sure it's as useful an exercise in this context because every team has offensive outbursts. Removing the three highest-scoring game or two or three, even at the 162-gm mark, would have a major impact on any team's offensive numbers. Doing so for the Red Sox without doing so for other teams would offer a murkier picture of where they stand, not a clearer one.

Anyone who thought the Red Sox had the pitching advantage in the Beckett-Hughes matchup hasn't been paying attention. Hughes is the real deal, and his great start isn't an anomaly. He's a lock to win 15 games and have a sub 3.30 ERA.

Beckett, on the other hand, has some major problems. His ERA after the All-Star break last year was 4.53. Throw in this year's terrible performance and he's got a 5.44 ERA over his last 21 starts. He'll improve on those numbers as the season progresses, but this ain't shaping up as a year to remember for Josh.

In evaluating pitching matchups the focus should be on recent performance. Hughes has been dominant so far this year; his 25 innings, 10 hits record coming into the Sox game says it all.

And then there's Beckett's record against the Yankees the last few years - ERA over 7.00 in 42 IP in 2008/09.

The Yanks had the matchup advantage for Friday's game. I know that's easy to say know, but I felt the same way coming into the game.

Cool, so if Dallas Braden was facing CC next time out, he'd have the advantage? Since we're weighing recent results so heavily, that only stands to reason.

Not so, Sully. ARod cuts across CC's mound all the time.

Alex Rodriguez - so great at baseball that even brief exposure to him can turn an average pitcher into a Hall-of-Famer for a short time.

Re the AL East, I guess the only question at this point in the season is how do the Sawx manage to catch the Blue Jays (since they ain't catching TBR or NYY in 2010)....

Sully: "Cool, so if Dallas Braden was facing CC next time out, he'd have the advantage? Since we're weighing recent results so heavily, that only stands to reason."

I noted the stark contrast between Hughes' season to date and Beckett's struggles dating back to the 2nd half of last year. A similar comparison of Braden to Sabathia reveals the following:

Braden, '09: 4-2, 3.33 ERA (good, but not nearly as good as Hughes has been).

Sabathia: 15-3, 2.84 since 2009 All-Star break.

Big edge to Sabathia.

Sully's a Sawx fan, I guess. Hang in there, Sully. The Sawx aren't going to get any better, but it'll be easier on the Nation if they're blown out early. Those annual August/Sept swoons have to be the worst.

Tommy, is Phil Hughes better at baseball than Josh Beckett?

Sully, is Beckett at baseball than Walter Johnson?

The subject was the pitching matchup last Friday. The question was whether the Sawx had the matchup edge. Really, Sully, what was the likelihood that Beckett would suddenly recover his form after losing it last July and suddenly pitch well against a team who's battered him over the last few seasons? In four of Beckett's last seven starts against NY he's had more earned runs than innings pitched. Did you really expect Beckett to pitch well last Friday?

When Beckett's on he's a threat to shut down anybody. But he hasn't been on since last mid-July of last year. He's got serious issues, as does Daisuke.

When a yankee fan dips down into the past saying the sox have annual aug/september "swoons", he's obviously nothing more than an uneducated agitator.

Clearly, he's already forgotten about 2 WS titles the last 6 years. But if he wants to continue to live in the past like most Yankee fans, so be it.