I Tweeted out excerpts from two of these documents before the wild card games/first round (a snapshot of each team's current active roster) and before the championship serieses (a summary of each team over the course of the season). But for the World Series, I'm breaking out some info from my most ambitious baseball list yet: a database consisting year-by-year fantasy points for every player from the year 2000 to the present (minimum 200 PA or 40 IP in a season). So starting with the lineup of the home team Red Sox, here's the performance history of every player who might appear in the 2018 World Series:
Mookie Betts burst onto the scene as a 21-year-old center fielder, having been blocked at his natural position of second base by a certain franchise cornerstone named Dustin Pedroia. He barely cracked the 200 plate appearance cutoff that year (he actually had fewer than 200 at-bats), yet he contributed nearly two wins with his bat alone in just 52 games as a rookie (as shown in the oWAR column on the right, which stands for "offensive Wins Above Replacement," a subset of Baseball Reference's proprietary stat for measuring a player's effectiveness, taking into account everything but fielding). Betts's star has only risen from there, to the point where he's the presumptive AL MVP favorite in his fifth MLB season, a 30-30 campaign in which he won a batting title, led the league in overall WAR (10.9), and appeared in his third consecutive All-Star Game.
Andrew Benintendi played significantly more than Betts in his rookie-qualifying year, finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting to the hated rival Yankees' right fielder Aaron Judge in 2017. But it's also important to note that Benny had a 34 game (extended) cup of coffee the prior year, where he put up an .835 OPS over 118 PA. He improved his contact game year over year, raising his batting average nearly 20 points while maintaining almost the exact same walk and strikeout totals, while also showing enough defensive ability to qualify in center field this year.
J.D. Martinez is one of the most compelling rags to riches story of our baseball generation. After playing at net below replacement level with his original team, the Astros unceremoniously cut him loose before what would have been his fourth season. But Houston didn't take into account the fact that Martinez had spent the offseason overhauling his swing with a pair of hitting gurus, which immediately paid dividends for the Tigers when they picked him up off the scrap heap during Spring Training in 2014. JDM ended up helping his new team reach the playoffs in his first year with Detroit (they were swept by the Orioles in the first round) and making the All-Star team the next year - along with winning a Silver Slugger award. In 2017, in a typical last-year-before-free-agency scenario, Martinez found himself dealt to a contender for the stretch run, where he hit an amazing 29 home runs in 62 games with the Diamondbacks, helping them get past the Rockies in the NL Wild Card game, before falling victim to another division series sweep, this time at the hands of the Dodges. His free agent deal with the Red Sox was one of the most widely anticipated transactions of the offseason, and so far it's worked out for both team and player. While "Flaco" has settled in as Boston's primary DH, he hasn't exactly hung up his glove, qualifying at both corner outfield spots, providing versatility to fantasy owners everywhere.
Xander Bogaerts had his first qualifying season in the same year (and at the same age) as Mookie Betts, solidifying the Red Sox's offensive core for years to come. Signed out of the noted baseball hotbed of Aruba, Bogaerts actually already has a World Series ring, by virtue of his 18 game cup of coffee during Boston's championship 2013 season. After winning a silver slugger award in 2015, thanks to a .320 average, but with only seven home runs, "X" unlocked his power potential the next year, smacking 21 homers en route to another silver slugger and his first (and so far, only) All-Star appearance. After a down 2017, "Bogey" returned to his 20-homer pop in his role of cleanup hitter for baseball's winningest team in 2018.
Although his first qualifying season came in 2014, at the age of 31, Steve Pearce had been bouncing around the league since 2007, when he broke in with the Pirates. Pearce's breakout 21-homer season helped the Orioles win a division title, where he then helped eliminate his current teammate J.D. Martinez's Tigers, before losing to the eventual World Champion Royals in the ALCS. His next three seasons were fairly similar in terms of fantasy points, but wildly varying in terms of wins above replacement, which shows that I don't fully understand the inner workings of the WAR system. Maybe his bump in 2016 had to do with his trade between Baltimore and Toronto for some reason? Pearce was actually the most impactful first baseman moved during this season, although only finds himself in the Sox's playoff starting lineup due to a hamstring injury to Mitch Moreland.
Speaking of injuries, Rafael Devers only took over as the starter at the hot corner after utility player Eduardo Nunez aggravated his ankle, but he was a hot hitter in the ALCS... just like he was in last year's ALDS loss against Houston. The Dominican Republic native still has some issues in his game to work out (especially defensively and strikeout percentagely), but given that he's only 21 years old, some more development time is to be expected.
I mentioned Dustin Pedroia before as the catalyst for Mookie Betts's shift to the outfield, and his injured status this year was directly responsible for the acquisition of Ian Kinsler from the Angels - just half a season after he was acquired from the Tigers. The veteran has a long history of solid play at the keystone, with just one game at a position other than second base in his 13-year career, and a much more solid defensive reputation than his one Gold Glove (in 2016) would suggest. He's made four All-Star teams in alternating years from 2008 thru 2014, the first three with Texas, and the last after being traded to Detroit, and he's been to the World Series twice before (with the Rangers in 2010 and 2011). Incidentally he also played in that Detroit/Baltimore ALDS along with J.D. Martinez and Steve Pearce.
It's well documented that the Red Sox got some of the worst production league wide from their catchers, which is one half the fault of the recently-extended Christian Vazquez. While his offensive production is unremarkable at best, his line from the database gives me an excuse to talk about some of my notation. The # signal means that the player missed the entire season (whether due to injury or otherwise), while the ^ means that the player did not have enough plate appearances to qualify. For obvious reasons, these symbols only appear if a player has had qualifying seasons before and after.
A well-deserved ALCS MVP award followed a solid season for the Red Sox number nine hitter Jackie Bradley Jr., who along with Betts, Bogaerts, and Benintendi makes up a New England version of the Killer B's. After a breakout campaign in 2016, complete with 26 home runs and an All-Star appearance, JBJ has settled into a two-win player with his bat, which is pretty impressive considering his stellar defensive reputation (although the metrics appear to be somewhat mixed on his work in 2018).
Moving on to the bench (or in this case, a starter with an ill-timed injury), Mitch Moreland has had a mostly unremarkable career as a not-quite-slugging first baseman. The Red Sox liked his left-handed bat enough to sign him to successive short-term free agent contracts, and his presence on the roster made veteran Hanley Ramirez expendable at the start of the year. In terms of postseason experience, Mitchy Two Bags went to the same World Serieses as Ian Kinsler with the Rangers, but he was also around for the Texas's successive ALDS losses to Toronto in 2015 and '16. We'll see how much his balky hamstring allows him to play in this year's Fall Classic.
Eduardo Nunez got his start backing up Derek Jeter in the Bronx, and then briefly took over for the captain before heading to Minnesota as a bench piece. The Twins sold high on Nunez, trading him to the Giants partway through his only All-Star season in 2016, where he couldn't keep San Francisco from falling to the eventual World Champion Cubs in the division series. Following a 2017 trade to Boston, "Nuni" served as the Red Sox's primary second baseman (with some time at third) given the injury troubles of Dustin Pedroia.
The second half of Boston's Pedroia-less second base picture this year, Brock Holt has mostly made his bones as a super-utility player, with proficiency all over the diamond - he's played at every position but pitcher and catcher in his seven year career (including two cups of coffee before his first qualifying season). Both his fantasy point production and his oWAR totals have trended in the wrong direction since his All-Star 2015 season, but he's still a valuable and versatile bench piece.
It took four non-qualifying seasons (the first three with the Nationals) before Sandy Leon broke onto the scene with an .845 OPS in 78 games for the 2016 Red Sox. That number then dropped to .644 the following year, then .511 the year after that (this year), and his point totals and oWAR dropped accordingly. He's been on the bench more often than not after taking the brunt of the timeshare during the regular season.
UPDATE: I didn't initially include an entry on backup catcher/outfielder Blake Swihart, because it seems as though the Red Sox made it to the postseason almost in spite of Swihart's presence on the roster than because of it, based on how little playing time he got over the course of the year. In fact, Swi only has one postseason plate appearance to his credit - a strikeout in the ALDS - but since he's on the active roster, I wanted to say a word about him, but it's still unclear whether he'll survive the offseason roster crunch.
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