Random Leury Analysis

[reiks12]

Looking at Legend stats gets me all fired up. Leury Garcia has started 8 games at shortstop this season, lets analyze them! (summary below)

Here are a couple of fun stats I have been looking at:

Quote

RE24 -- Base-Out Runs Added
Given the bases occupied/out situation, how many runs did the batter
or baserunner add in the resulting play.
Compared to average, so 0 is average, and above 0 is better than average

Quote

aLI -- Average Leverage Index
The average pressure the pitcher or batter saw in this game or season.
1.0 is average pressure, below 1.0 is low pressure and above 1.0 is high pressure

Basically RE24 tells you how much a player costs during the game, and aLI determines high leverage spots. Is it accurate? No idea, but it seems to check out when you analyze the games separately. 

We start our Leury journey on April 8th, a game where we lost to the Tigers 5-4. Leury Legend, hitting 6th and protecting Eloy Jimenez (sidenote, Vaughn was hitting 8th this game), went 0-4 with a strikeout. His RE24 was -0.9, which means his performance practically cost us a run. His aLI was 0.63, medium pressure. In his 4 atbats he saw 13 pitches. Not a good performance by Legend here, but its easy to forget with the bullpen implosion.

On April 9th, the Sox came back and won. Leury put up another 0-4 with a strikeout. In his 4 atbats he saw 10 pitches (only 6 for strikes). His RE24 was -0.5, while his aLI was 0.31. Not the highest of leverage for him, which is exactly where we all want him. On the defensive side Leury committed an error that ended up costing us 2 runs. Not a good day for Leury.

On May 17th, we fell to the Royals 1-2. This is a game where you can look right at Leury and say that he cost us pretty big. His RE24 was -0.8 and his aLI was 1.41. Very high leverage here, and with him costing us .8 runs it hurts knowing his role in this game likely cost us a W. He went 0-3 with a strikeout, and only saw 7 pitches this game. Yes, 7 pitches. Why was this a high leverage game for him? In the top of the 5th he had Vaughn on first with no outs, and did his typical Leury grounder. He also led off a big offensive top of the 8th inning for the Sox with a quick out. We had plenty of baserunners after his 1 out, and couldnt score. 

On May 22nd, we beat the Yankees 3-1. This was one of the lineups that broke Soxtalk as Leury was slotted in the 2 spot. He went 0-4 with a strikeout on 21 pitches. His RE24 was -1.1 while his aLI was 1.00, pretty costly even in the win. He left men on 2nd and 3rd in the third inning, 

On June 2nd, we lost to the Blue Jays 8-3. The score was not indicative to how close of a game this was, as poor bullpen management cost 4 runs in the 8th. Leury was our leadoff hitter on this night, and he went 2-4 with a couple of singles on 13 pitches! Go Leury! His RE24 was a positive net of 0.1 and his aLI was 0.85. He did ok here. 

On June 25th, we again lost due typical TLR bullpen management to the Orioles. Leury had a decent day at the plate again, he went 1-3 with a WALK and saw 10 pitches. His RE24 was 0 and his aLI was 0.67. He did commit a costly error that allowed the Orioles to score. Not good!

On July 10th, we beat the Tigers 4-2. Leury once again had a couple of hits! He went 2-4, however his RE24 was -0.2 and his aLI was 1.04. This was a high leverage game for Leury. With 2 men on in the bottom of the 8th, and the score being 4-2, Leury hit a groundout to end the inning. 

On July 23rd, with TA being too exhausted from the Allstar weekend, Leury had to sub in and had his costliest game against the Guardians. It was a losing effort. His RE24 was -1.0 and his aLI was a 1.60. Very high leverage spots for the Legend. He went 0-3 with a sac bunt. He had 2 opportunities with men on base and delivered 2 outs instead. 

Bonus game on June 22nd, Adam Hasley ends Mendick's season by not knowing how to call for a baseball. In comes Leury Garcia to save the day, except he didnt. 0-4 on 14 pitches. His RE24 was a -1.9, and his aLI was -0.79. 2 full runs! Leury came up in big spots during this losing effort and likely cost the game. 6 LOB, which includes leaving the bases loaded in the bottom of the 8th. 

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Summary:

To sum up this experiment, Leury should never play shortstop (or any position). 5 singles in 8 games, 2 costly errors, 34 atbats (while starting) of pure misery at shortstop. This is why it is so important to have Tim Anderson in the lineup, even if hes "tired" or "sore". Leury Garcia's total RE24 was -6.3. That doesn't even account for the runs that scored from his miscues. In just the 9 games above, Leury Garcia possibly cost this team 6-8 runs.

Tim Anderson needs to play whether his tummy hurts, his legs are sore, or hes just tired. Not doing so is costing this team big as there are no replacements that can even come close to a 70% TA. Leury playing at all is like playing at a 1 run handicap. Abreu plays every single game. He refuses to sit. Anderson needs to do the same for this club to claw its way back in the division. 

Leury Garcia is killing this ballclub. You could argue his -0.8 WAR doesn't even paint how bad of a baseball player he has been. I am looking at his 2B games as well and they are littered with -1 RE24 games. A real shitstain on this team, and I can't believe he was Hahn's answer. Mendick played so well in TA's absence, I will never forgive Hasely for that as Mendick would have been a real solution at 2B, and we could be 2 or 3 games better for it. 

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by reiks12

[southsider2k5]

That is an awful lot of work to say something that every Sox fan knows, Leury Garcia has been awful this year.

[reiks12]

2 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

That is an awful lot of work to say something that every Sox fan knows, Leury Garcia has been awful this year.

I like to get lost in boxscores here and there, not much work if you enjoy it

[vilehoopster]

In ways that would take me longer than I want to write here, I question that Leary is as harmful as this stat you’ve discovered makes him look. Plus you seem to be cherry picking games. A strong argument could be made that Leary’s homer won the game yesterday. Does that make up for the game where your stats say he cost the Sox 1.9 runs (which seems every bit as subjective as saying his homer won the game yesterday).

With that said, I agree completely with you main point, Leary needs to play a lot less, a lot less. 

I’ve said it here on this forum a few times before: of all the crazy shit TLR does, his obsession with keeping Leary in the lineup seems the most crazy to me; I don’t begin to understand it. You don’t need the stats you quoted above, just look at his pathetic OPS and OPS+.

Serious question, do you think that other coaches and Hahn have talked to TLR about playing Leary way too much, expressing the same questions and stats that we discuss here. I have to believe they have, all of them including Hahn have brought up the Leary situation. I also believe that TLR just politely listens and then follows whatever twisted logic he uses and keep putting him in the lineup.

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by vilehoopster
Wrong word

[bmags]

What are your observational analytics?

[reiks12]

48 minutes ago, vilehoopster said:

In ways that would take me longer than I want to write here, I question that Leary is as harmful as this stat you’ve discovered makes him look. Plus you seem to be cherry picking games. A strong argument could be made that Leary’s homer won the game yesterday. Does that make up for the game where your stats say he cost the Sox 1.9 runs (which seems every bit as subjective as saying his homer won the game yesterday).

With that said, I agree completely with you main point, Leary needs to play a lot less, a lot less. 

I’ve said it here on this forum a few times before: of all the crazy shit TLR does, his obsession with keeping Leary in the lineup seems the most crazy to me; I don’t begin to understand it. You don’t need the stats you quoted above, just look at his pathetic OPS and OPS+.

 

I am merely saying TA taking a breather here and there is hurting this club in pretty big ways and he needs to step up like Abreu has and play banged up. These games aren't cherry picked, they are all the starts by Leury at shortstop. At best he matched a replacement player in 2 of his 9 starts at short. Our record would have been way worse if Mendick didn't do what he did when he came up to replace TA while on the IL. A hurt or allstar weekend exhausted TA is still better than a fresh Leury Garcia. 

[A-Train to 35th]

15 minutes ago, reiks12 said:

I am merely saying TA taking a breather here and there is hurting this club in pretty big ways and he needs to step up like Abreu has and play banged up. These games aren't cherry picked, they are all the starts by Leury at shortstop. At best he matched a replacement player in 2 of his 9 starts at short. Our record would have been way worse if Mendick didn't do what he did when he came up to replace TA while on the IL. A hurt or allstar weekend exhausted TA is still better than a fresh Leury Garcia. 

Not disagreeing, but 8 games is a small sample. It could be the pressure he put's on himself to play a position he's not use to playing  that has affected his BA in those games or caused him to make an error.

[southsider2k5]

1 hour ago, vilehoopster said:

In ways that would take me longer than I want to write here, I question that Leary is as harmful as this stat you’ve discovered makes him look. Plus you seem to be cherry picking games. A strong argument could be made that Leary’s homer won the game yesterday. Does that make up for the game where your stats say he cost the Sox 1.9 runs (which seems every bit as subjective as saying his homer won the game yesterday).

With that said, I agree completely with you main point, Leary needs to play a lot less, a lot less. 

I’ve said it here on this forum a few times before: of all the crazy shit TLR does, his obsession with keeping Leary in the lineup seems the most crazy to me; I don’t begin to understand it. You don’t need the stats you quoted above, just look at his pathetic OPS and OPS+.

Serious question, do you think that other coaches and Hahn have talked to TLR about playing Leary way too much, expressing the same questions and stats that we discuss here. I have to believe they have, all of them including Hahn have brought up the Leary situation. I also believe that TLR just politely listens and then follows whatever twisted logic he uses and keep putting him in the lineup.

 

I do think that putting Leury versus a neutral figure (which is what these numbers are trying to show), versus what other teams are getting off of their benches is an important distinction.

Not many teams have two starting shortstops on their roster, and I am not sure that the difference is as big as we might think it would be otherwise.  So shouldn't be looking at it as how Leury has preformed against would should be about the 15th best SS, we should be comparing him to somewhere between 31 and 60th, which is what a team should be getting off of their bench.

Granted it has definitely been expanded with how much extra play Leury has seen between injuries and Tony wanting to get extra rest for certain guys, he has played a lot more than he should have.