Left-handed pitchers have Red Sox twisted in knots
The Red Sox have some serious pitching difficulties. Haven’t you heard?
Adding insult to (possible phantom) injury, there continue to be real issues with their lineup, which has underachieved in a major way en route to the doorstep of the American League East basement.
Look beyond the fact that the Sox (15-18) are 25th in the majors in hitting (.231 team average), 23rd in OPS (.682) and 29th in doubles (40 in 33 games), and you’ll find some numbers that are even more worrisome as the team navigates its current West Coast road trip.
The Sox were completely stymied on Tuesday night by Oakland A’s pitcher Drew Pomeranz. Oakland’s fifth starter entered the game with a 1-3 record and a 5.12 ERA. He’d lasted more than five innings just once since going seven in his first start on April 10, while allowing fewer than five earned runs just once over the same stretch, a stretch in which he was 0-3 with a 6.47 ERA. He’d gone more than six innings only six times in 46 career starts.
Yet against the Red Sox, Pomeranz looked like an ace. He pitched seven strong innings, allowing just two runs on four hits with no walks and faced the minimum thorugh the first five innings, retiring 13 straight Sox between the first and sixth.
Chalk it up to Pomeranz being left-handed. The Sox performance when facing lefties has been woeful thus far, to the point that they are batting a mind-boggling .188 against southpaws. That’s dead last in all of baseball and their OPS against lefties (.638, 26th) is nearly as bad.
Other than Hanley Ramirez, who is batting .333 (8-for-24) with four homers against lefties, every other full-timer on the Sox roster ranges from mediocre to straight lousy in this particular category. Mike Napoli, whose season-opening slump is now over six weeks old, is a career .277 hitter against lefties, but down to .240 this year. Xander Bogaerts is 5-for-25 against lefties with zero RBIs. Even David Ortiz, who has always been solid vs. lefties (.266, 107 career homers) despite batting from the left side of the plate, is struggling mightily this season, with just five hits in 34 at-bats.
The most extreme case of the Sox problems with lefties is free agent-signee Pablo Sandoval, a career switch-hitter who is a jaw-dropping 2-for-34 batting from the right side thus far. Sandoval looks like a completely different player when facing lefties, against whom he’s hit .262 for his career, but just .199 last season as a San Francisco Giant.
The Sox head to Seattle for a four-game set against the Mariners this weekend. It can’t be a coincidence that the M’s have rearranged their rotation so as to send three lefties to the mound in the series, in addition to one of baseball’s best pitchers, Felix Hernandez.
This long road trip feels as though it’s about to get plenty longer.
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