sports – Coffee Spoons

Revisiting My 2025 Red Sox Predictions

Back in March I posted my predictions for the 2025 Boston Red Sox on my social media feeds. I chose not to post it here, because the images had no real data visualisation and the only real information graphic was my prediction of the playoffs via a bracket. I did, however, write about how the Sox may have found their second baseman of the future in Kristian Campbell.

That prediction looks not so hot. The Sox optioned/demoted Campbell to the minor leagues in June and he has not been seen in Boston since. I still think the kid has long-term potential with his bat, but his globe worries me. It never really came around as I hoped.

But what about all my other predictions for the 2025 Red Sox and baseball more broadly?

Well, since today is Day One of the Postseason, I have nothing to report other than that my prediction of a Red Sox–Phillies World Series wherein Boston wins remains possible. Though the bracket itself, not so much. And as for the awards, we still have to wait and see on those too. The rest of the graphics, which had my predictions for select players and statistics, well, those we can look at here today.

We can start with the divisional standings.

The AL East turned out pretty differently than I thought it would. Baltimore’s young prospects did not have a great year and their rotation was even worse than I thought it would be—and that was not very good, I just thought their young bats would make up the difference.

Similarly, I thought the Yankees would fail to survive some bad injuries to start the year. Unfortunately they did and they host the Red Sox this evening in the Wild Card series.

Toronto finally put it all together after years of failing to do so and Tampa Bay did the opposite, had a bad year where everything fell apart after years of finding a way to put it all together.

In the NL East, the Braves just got hurt and never recovered. But that they were worse than even the Marlins in Miami surprised me. Without Atlanta atop the division, the Phillies and Mets made sense and in that micro-ranking I was spot on.

The West Coast divisions were similarly jumbled. I really thought Texas would dominate, but injuries and poor performances crippled their year. I had thought Houston lost too many big pieces from their roster to remain competitive. And in that I was largely correct as they sputtered out in the final week. As for the Angels and Athletics, the less said about them the better.

The NL West largely went as I expected. The Dodgers did not really dominate the way I and many others expected them to, but they performed well enough to win the division. I thought Arizona, San Diego, and San Francisco would slug it out all year and they largely did, though San Francisco was a bit more disappointing than I thought. And the Rockies were just bad.

As for the two central divisions, what can I say? No notes.

Ultimately I thought Boston would be a better than they were at year’s end. Though they dealt with serious injuries all year and the kids were forced to come up and reinforce the roster a bit too soon then they too all got hurt.

So let us start with the hitters.

The big, glaring, obvious point here is that in the middle of the season, the Boston Red Sox traded away their best player, at least their best hitter, in Rafael Devers. I thought then it was a stupid move. I think now it was a stupid move. In a few years, if I were a betting man, I would bet I still think it a stupid move. Boy did they really miss his bat in this lineup, especially when Roman Anthony, one of the aforementioned kids, went down with a month and a half left to play in the season.

Triston Casas fully ruptured his patellar tendon before he even played 30 games when I and many others counted on him to be our slugging first baseman. Instead of 35 home runs, he hit only 3.

Alex Bregman was hurt for about two months and Trevor Story was ice cold for about the same. Campbell was demoted like I said and Roman Anthony’s callup was later than I thought it would be and then he got hurt. Only Duran really performed as I expected.

The team also started the year running and being aggressive on the base paths, but that stopped during the summer. David Hamilton had an awful season and through the middle months was playing in AAA, only returning to the major league club because of the injuries ripping through Boston’s roster.

As for the two rookies I thought would play. most of the year, Campbell’s triple slash fell short of my predictions. Hence his demotion. Roman Anthony’s bat exceeded my expectations, though he was hitting more grounders and ground ball singles than I would have hoped, leading to a lower slugging percentage.

Finally we have the pitching.

Good lord did things go horribly awry.

Houck was bad then blew out his elbow and had Tommy John surgery, meaning he missed 2/3 of this season and will miss all of next year.

I never wanted Buehler, but thought he would be even more serviceable than he turned out to be. He was just awful. Of the expected rotation, that left just three guys: Garrett Crochet, Brayan Bello, and Lucas Giolito.

Crochet was as advertised, a true ace. He led the American League in innings pitched and all of baseball in strikeouts. He dominated. Period. Bello started the year injured as did Giolito, so whislt Bello did eventually hit the innings I expected him to, Giolito did not. Nor did either player reach the strikeout totals I thought they would, though with Bello that may be more due to a change in approach. It seemed as if last year the Sox wanted him to be a strikeout guy. He has shown flashes of it in the past. But this year he really seemed to buy into the ground ball and weak contact guy.

Then in the bullpen and in the ninth inning Aroldis Chapman was just as dominant as Crochet was at the start. Unfortunately, Justin Slaten had some elbow issues with some kind of a bone spur and he missed significant time. Though in his limited innings he looked as dominant as I hoped. Fortunately he just came back in time for the playoffs.

All in all, a good year for the Red Sox.

As for what happens next, well this time I will leave you with my playoff predictions, though I have edited them to actually include the teams that really did make them.

Let’s go Red Sox.

Credit for the pieces is mine.

MLB’s Realignment

Last weekend, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred created a mild furore when he discussed the sport’s looming expansion and how it would likely prompt a geographic realignment. I am old enough I still recall baseball’s two leagues—the American and National—organised into only two divisions—East and West. In the early 1990s, baseball expanded and created a new Central Division. Afterwards, teams changed divisions, teams changed leagues, the sport expanded again to add new teams. As of today, MLB comprises 30 teams, 15 each in each league divided five teams per division. The only potential downside is whereas for decades the leagues only played amongst themselves, since the late 1990s, the odd numbers of teams have required “interleague” play on a daily basis.

But baseball wants to expand to 32 teams in a process yet to begin. Expansion requires the interested parties to pay an enormous fee, making other owners significant amounts of sweet, sweet cash. The question on everyone’s mind is where will the two expansion teams locate? And once they start play, how will the sport organise its teams?

The Athletic posted an article about this very issue earlier this week and it included two nice and simple maps showing one potential geographic realignment. This image is of author Stephen J. Nesbitt’s idea for the American League. (I care about the American League because as my regular readers by now know, I am an unapologetic fan of the Red Sox.)

As maps go, I think it works well. Personally, I prefer lighter backgrounds to darker, but a grey map is a grey map all the same. I think the colours work well and visually group the proposed divisions clearly. The white box makes clear the new division. (The map for the National League also works well.)

Beyond the information design or data visualisation level, I generally like the realignment proposed here as it offers a decent compromise between those wanting a basketball-style apportionment into two conferences, one eastern and one western, and those traditionalists like myself who still value the distinction between the American and National Leagues.

The biggest issue is where will the teams be? The author assumes one team on the East Coast or at least east of the Mississippi, and one West Coast or west of the Rocky Mountains. But baseball returning to Canada and Montreal would be welcome as would an expansion team in Texas, say Austin or San Antonio. Then of course you have the issue of Oakland. And the longshots have always been expansion into Mexico.

Personally, I have long been in favour of an even larger expansion to 36 teams. For sake of argument: Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Charlotte, Nashville, and Montreal have always made sense to me. Of course six new teams in one quick go would be impractical and thus it would be a long-term goal. But three 6-team divisions would mean 18 teams per league and you could still eliminate or reduce interleague play to special occasion weekends.

Credit for the piece goes to Drew Jordan.

Bring on the Beantown Boys

For my longtime readers, you know that despite living in both Chicago and now Philadelphia, I am and have been since way back in 1999, a Boston Red Sox fan. And this week, the Carmine Hose make their biennial visit down I-95 to South Philadelphia.

And I will be there in person to watch.

This is the second series after the All-Star break and as much as I wish it were otherwise, the Red Sox are just not as good as the Phillies. The team my hometown supports is just better than the one for whom I root. The Sox are 54-47 with a .535 winning percentage and the Phillies are 56-43 with a .566 winning percentage. The Phillies have the better rotation, by far. And the Red Sox’ two best pitchers just threw out in Chicago whereas the Phillies’ best toe the rubber over the next three nights.

But…the Boston baseball bats are a bit better and the Bank is a bandbox. Consequently I do not want to say the Phillies sweep the Sox, but my prediction is it will be tough for the Sox.

How does this connect to information design and data visualisation? Last week as the “second half” began, my local rag, the Philadelphia Inquirer, published an article examining the Phillies’ season to date and their road up ahead. It included a couple of graphics I wanted to share, because I found them a nice addition to the type of article usually devoid of such visual pieces.

The first piece looked at the Phillies’ performance relative to recent teams.

You can see the 2025 club is out performing the 2022 and 2023 editions of the team. I have a few critiques, but overall I enjoyed the graphic. I think the heavier stroke and the colour change for 2025 works…but are both necessary? Or at least to the extent the designer chose? And which line is which year?

The chart is too visually busy with too many bits and bobs clamouring for attention. The heaviness of the blue stroke works because the chart needs the loudness. But move the year labels to a consistent location—which, once established helps the user find similar information—and remove the data label annotations—the precise number of games over .500 should be clear through the axis labelling. If I make a couple quick edits in Photoshop to the image, you end up with something like this.

Again, an overall good graphic, but one with just a few tweaks to quiet the overall piece allows the user to more clearly identify the visual pattern—that the Phillies are good and better than two of their three most recent iterations.

The second piece was even better. It looked at the Phillies’ forthcoming opponents, which at the time of publication first included the Los Angeles Angels before the Sox. (For what it may be worth, the Angels won two of three.)

A different graphic, the same critique: overall good, but visually cluttered. Here I revisit the chart, but move some elements around to clear the chart’s visual space of clutter to emphasise the visual pattern in the chart.

I left the annotated point about the Phillies’ winning percentage, because I do think annotations work. But when a chart is full of annotations, the annotations become the story, not the graphic. And if that is the story, then a table or factettes become a better visual solution to the problem.

I will add I do not love how low the line for the opponents falls below the chart’s minimum axis. I probably would have extended the chart to something like .750 and .250, but it is far from the worst sin I see these days. (I keep thinking of writing something about the decline of the quality of data visualisation and information design in recent years, but that feels more akin to a polemical essay than a short blog post.)

Big takeaway, I like seeing my baseball articles with nice data visualisation. It heralds back to a couple of years ago when outlets routinely published such pieces. Baseball especially benefits from data visualisation because the game generates massive amounts of data both within each game and the collective 162-game season.

Good on the Inquirer for this article. I do not usually read the Sports section, because I am not a Philadelphia sports fan, but maybe I will read a bit more of the Phillies coverage if they include visual content like this.

Credit for the original pieces goes to Chris A. Williams. The edits are mine.

Tired of These Motherfcking Sox on This Motherfcking Plane

At least, that’s what I imagine South Siders saying in Chicago as they watch the White Sox team charter plane land at Midway. For those not following America’s Major League Baseball season, the Chicago White Sox are one of two clubs claiming Chicago as their home. (The other being the Cubs.) And the White Sox—not to be confused with your author’s favourite club, the Red Sox—are on track to be one of the worst clubs in the modern (post-1900) history of the sport. They have already tied the New York Mets’ record of 120 losses and there are still six left to play.

Earlier this month the Athletic detailed what has gone wrong for the Pale Hose. One of the things that stood out to me the most in the reporting was the complaints about the club’s charter aircraft, an Airbus A320, as the article points out a 1980s aircraft. The article in particular mentioned how other cheapskate teams—including the Boston Red Sox—opt for nicer aircraft with more first-class accommodations for players and staff. Then they cited a graphic shared on Twitter last year by Jay Cuda and when I saw that, I knew I had to cover it.

One thing I find fascinating is how the White Sox use United Airlines for their charter. United Airlines operates the charter—as it does for the Cubs and other airlines. That it does so for the two Chicago teams makes all the sense in the world as the company is headquartered in the Loop in downtown Chicago. It is also one of the largest airlines and thus makes sense in that dimension too.

But as those frequent air travellers among you will know, Chicago has two airports: O’Hare and Midway. O’Hare in northwest of downtown and closer to the Cubs and is the city’s primary airport. But the White Sox typically fly out of Midway, which is just a couple miles from (New) Comiskey. (I presume the team bus hops on the Dan Ryan/I-90 to the Stevenson/I-55 then exits on Cicero.)

Weird because United does not service Midway. And so United, which operates out of O’Hare, must fly aircraft to Midway to then transport the White Sox. I suppose the White Sox would not want to charter a Southwest aircraft, though…. In my own lifetime I think I have flown in and out of Midway only twice. And I lived in Chicago for eight years. (And the White Sox were terrible for probably six of them.)

Some non-White Sox things notable from the graphic. One, iAero no longer exists, so I would be curious whom the Texas Rangers and Oakland Athletics used this year. The Rangers probably used a reputable airline. The Athletics probably made their players and staff charter their own transport.

I also did not realise that even last year the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 still carried passengers in the United States. I assume that by 2024, the Detroit Tigers have fully transitioned to that Boeing 737. I find it fascinating that only the Tigers own their own aircraft. I would be curious to know why more teams do not, though of course it has to be money.

With whom else would the Blue Jays fly but Air Canada?

Finally, I am surprised that my Boston Red Sox use Delta, because that’s a normal, non-budget airline. And anyone who follows the Red Sox know the Red Sox are no longer in the habit of spending money. I thought they would use jetBlue, which is the sponsor for Fenway South, formally jetBluePark, in Fort Myers, Florida, where the Red Sox have their spring training and development league complex.

Anyways, happy Friday, all. At least you don’t play or work for the Chicago White Sox. (Though I suppose it is possible you do, because I do have a large number of readers from Chicago. But I doubt it.)

Credit for the piece goes to Jay Cuda.

I Want a Pitcher Not a Back o’ Head Hitter

We’re about to go into the sportsball realm, readers. Baseball, specifically.

Tuesday night, Atlanta Braves batter Whit Merrifield was hit in the back of the head by a 95 mph fastball. Luckily, modern ballplayers wear helmets. But at that velocity, one does not have the most reaction time in the world a number of other batters have been hit in the face. And generally, that’s not good. Merrifield went off in post-game interviews about the lack of accountability on the pitchers’ side. From my perspective as an armchair ballplayer, back in my day, when I walked up hill through the snow both ways to get to my one-room schoolhouse, if you hit a batter, our pitcher was hitting one of yours.

I have noticed in ballgames, however, I see hit-by-pitch (HBP) more often—and I score most ballgames I attend, so I have records. But I also know a handful attended per year makes for a very small sample size. Nonetheless, I know I have talked to other baseball friends and brought up that I think pitchers throw with less command, i.e. throwing strikes, than they used to, because I see more HBP in the box scores. And when I go to minor league ballgames, which I do fairly often, HBP seems on the rise there, which means in future years those same pitchers will likely be in the majors.

So yesterday morning, I finally took a look at the data and, lo and behold, indeed, since my childhood, the numbers of HBPs has increased.

There is one noticeable sharp dip and that is the 2020 COVID-shortened season. Ignore that one. And then a smaller dip in the mid-90s represents the 114-game and 144-game seasons, compared to the standard 162 per year. Nonetheless, the increase is undeniable.

There is a general dip in the curve, which occurs in the late 200s and early 2010s, with its nadir in 2012. Without doing more research, that was probably the peak of pitchers, who could command—throw strikes—and control—put their strikes where they want in the strike zone—their pitches at the sacrifice of velocity.

2014 saw the rise of the dominant Royals bullpen, which changed the course of modern baseball. Stack your bullpen with a number of power arms who throw 100 mph and just challenge batters to hit the speedball. Problem is, not everyone who can throw 100 knows where that speedball is going. And that leads to more batters being hit.

Merrifield is correct in his assessment that until pitchers and teams face consequences for hitting batters, we are not likely to see a decrease in HBPs. Or at least not until velocity is de-emphasised for some other reason. What if there were a rule a pitcher who hits a batter from the shoulder up is immediately ejected? What if a long-term injury for a batter is tied to a long-term roster removal for the pitcher? If, say, the batter hit in the head is out for a month with a concussion, the same pitcher is on the restricted list for a month?

Have I worked through any of these ideas in depth? Nope. Just spitballing here on ye olde blog. But as my chart shows, it does not look like this potentially life-changing problem in the game is going away anytime soon.

Credit for the piece is mine.

A New Downtown Arena for Philadelphia?

I woke up this morning and the breaking news was that the local basketball team, the 76ers, proposed a new downtown arena just four blocks from my office. The article included a graphic showing the precise location of the site.

I have no doubt whatsoever this won’t impact my commutes.

For our purposes this is just a little locator map in a larger article. But I wanted to draw attention to two things in an otherwise nice map. First, if you look carefully on the left you can see the label for the Broad Street Line placed over the actual railway line, which is what makes it so difficult to read. I probably would have shifted the label to the left to increase its legibility.

Second, and this is a common for maps of Philadelphia, is the actual north-south route of said Broad Street Line, one of the three subway lines running in the city. (You all know of the Broad Street and Market–Frankford Elevated, but don’t forget the PATCO.) If you look closely enough it appears to run directly underneath Broad Street in a straight line. But where it passes beneath City Hall you will see the little white dot locating the station is placed to the left of the railway line.

Why is that?

Well when it was built, Philadelphia’s City Hall was the tallest habitable building in the world. Whilst clearly supplanted in that record, the building remains the largest free-standing masonry building in the world. But that means it has deep and enormous foundations. Foundations that could not be disturbed when the city was running a subway line directly beneath Broad Street.

Consequently, the Broad Street Line is not actually straight—ride it heading south into City Hall Station and you’ll notice the sharp turn both in its bend and the loud screeching of metal. The line bends around parts of the building’s foundations, sharply on the north side and more gently on the south side. So the actual station is still beneath City Hall, but offset to the west.

But most of the time it’s easier just to depict the route as a straight line running directly beneath City Hall.

Credit for the piece goes to John Duchneskie.

Boston: Sportstown of the 21st Century

Tonight the Boston Celtics play in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors, one of the most dominant NBA teams over the last several years. But since the start of the new century and the new millennium, more broadly Boston’s four major sports teams have dominated the championship series of those sports. In fact tonight marks the 19th championship series a New England team has played since 2001. And in those 18 series thus far, Boston teams have a 12–6 record.

Of the 12 titles won, the New England Patriots account for half with six Super Bowl victories out of nine appearances. The Boston Red Sox have won all four World Series they have played in since 2001. Rounding out the list, the Celtics and Bruins have each won a single championship with the Bruins appearing in three Stanley Cups and the Celtics in two NBA Finals. Tonight begins their third.

Credit for the piece is mine.

Sports and Games

Well that was a week. Let’s try to stay on the lighter side this Friday. Several weeks ago I was debating with several people about the difference between a game and a sport. I decided that the best way to try and capture our conversation was with a Venn diagram.

So in the interest of furthering that conversation, I’ve digitised that sketch and am presenting it here for everyone else to see and, if they want, comment upon.

Hopefully this weekend and next week are a bit calmer.

Credit for the piece is mine.

How the Globe’s Writers Voted

Yesterday we looked at a piece by the Boston Globe that mapped out all of David Ortiz’s home runs. We did that because he has just been voted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. But to be voted in means there must be votes and a few weeks after the deadline, the Globe posted an article about how that publication’s eligible voters, well, voted.

The graphic here was a simple table. But as I’ll always say, tables aren’t an inherently bad or easy-way-out form of data visualisation. They are great at organising information in such a way that you can quickly find or reference specific data points. For example, let’s say you wanted to find out whether or not a specific writer voted for a specific ballplayer.

Just don’t ask me for whom I would have voted…

Simple red check marks represent those players for whom the Globe’s eligible staff voted. I really like some of the columns on the left that provide context on the vote. For the unfamiliar, players can only remain on the list for up to ten years. And so for the first four, this was their last year of eligibility. None made the cut. Then there’s a column for the total number of votes made by the Globe’s staff. Following that is more context, the share of votes received in 2021. Here the magic number if 75% to be elected. Conversely, if you do not make 5% you drop off the following year. Almost all of those on their first year ballot failed to reach that threshold.

The only potential drawback to this table is that by the time you reach the end of the table, there are few check marks to create implicit rules or lines that guide you from writer to player. David Ortiz’s placement helps because six—remarkably not all Globe writers voted for him—it grounds you for the only person below him (alphabetically) to receive a vote. And we need that because otherwise quickly linking Alex Rodriguez to Alex Speier would be difficult.

Finally below the table we have jump links to each writer’s writings about their selections. And if you’ll allow a brief screenshot of that…

We have a nicely designed section here. Designers delineated each author’s section with red arrows that evoke the red stitching on a baseball. It’s a nice design tough. Then each author receives a headline and a small call out box inside which are the players—and their headshots—for whom the author voted. An initial dropped capital (drop cap), here a big red M, grabs the reader’s attention and draws them into the author’s own words.

Overall this was a solidly designed piece. I really enjoyed it. And for those who don’t follow the sport, the table is also an indicator of how divisive the voting can be. Even the Globe’s writers couldn’t unanimously agree on voting for David Ortiz.

Credit for the piece goes to Daigo Fujiwara and Ryan Huddle.

558 Dingers

Yesterday baseball writers elected David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox, better known as Big Papi, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I was trying to work on a thing for yesterday, but ran out of time. While I will attempt to return to that later, for now I want to share a simple interactive graphic from the Boston Globe. As the blog title suggests, it’s about the 558 career home runs Ortiz hit between his time with the Twins and the Red Sox. He hit 541 of those during the regular season, tacking on 17 more in the post season including his famous 2013 ALCS grand slam against the Detroit Tigers. (The one where the cop’s arms are in the air alongside Torii Hunter’s legs.)

Now you can see that Ortiz was a left-handed pull hitter with that home run concentration to right field, especially those wrapped around Fenway’s (in)famous Pesky Pole.

But with the number of dots you see inside the grounds at Fenway, you can also see the one downside of a chart like this. The graphic maps home runs at all Major League ballparks to that of Fenway. Not to mention the role that the Green Monster plays in turning a lot of those line drive home runs that when hit to right field leave the yard, but to left simply bounce off the Monster for doubles or the dreaded long single. But in part that’s why Ortiz also had ridiculous season numbers for extra base hits because of all those Green Monster doubles. (Conversely, how many popups a mile in the sky came down into the Green Monster seats?)

You access this interactive piece by scrolling through the experience as the Globe chose 12 home runs to represent Ortiz’s entire career. I’m fortunate enough to remember watching several of them on the television.

Big Papi was a force to be reckoned with and watching him hit was entertainment. I’m very excited to see him enter the Hall of Fame.

This summer? It’s his effing Hall.

Credit for the piece goes to John Hancock.