Red Sox still struggling at the plate as they return to Boston
The Red Sox bats went silent once again on Sunday in a 5-0 loss to the Seattle Mariners. The Sox, who finished their 10-game road trip at 5-5, got a 1-for-22 performance from the top six hitters in their lineup.
It was really nothing new for a team whose 151 runs scored leaves them 11th in the American League. They managed just 2.4 runs per game on the 10-game swing through Canada, Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, batting .202 as a team and getting shut out in both the first and last games played on their long journey. They’ve scored fewer than four runs in 13 of their last 16 games and two runs or fewer in 15 of their 38 games on the season.
Since homering last Sunday, first baseman Mike Napoli is 2-for-18 and now sits at .162 with a .551 OPS. The Sox don’t have a lot of options at first base to spell Napoli, a notoriously streaky hitter, but his performance thus far has not justified his regular spot in the heart of the lineup.
Mookie Betts took an 0-for-4 on Sunday, is now 1-for his last 20, and got on base just nine times in 40 plate appearances on the road trip (7-for-38, two walks). That’s not going to cut it for a leadoff man.
Hanley Ramirez returned from his shoulder injury in Toronto last weekend without having to make a trip to the disabled list. But after a four-hit night in Seattle on Thursday that included his first double of the season, he’s currently entrenched in a 1-for-13 slide and his OPS, .949 the night he crashed into that side wall in left field at Fenway Park, has dropped to .816. Ramirez’s 10 homers still leads the team by five, though he hasn’t hit one since April 29.
Pablo Sandoval raked from the left side during the trip as he’s done all year (1.035 OPS facing right-handed pitching). He hit three homers and drove in four runs batting left-handed. But those numbers are mitigated by the fact that he is now an unfathomable 2-for-41 against lefties after another 0-for-4 on Sunday. Are you really a switch-hitter when you’re an automatic out from one side of the plate?
And while Dustin Pedroia is currently tied with Sandoval for the team lead in hitting with a .269 average and is clearly driving the ball better than he has the past two seasons when he was dealing with hand and wrist ailments, he is just 6-for-37 with runners in scoring position. That’s a .162 average and is in keeping with the rest of the roster, which is second-to-last in the majors batting with RISP at .203.
One silver lining for Boston is that the starting pitching has looked better. Steven Wright’s outing on Sunday finished a full turn through the rotation in which each starter gave up three runs or fewer. But a staff comprised of “all No. 1s’’ hardly does any good if the offense can’t manage more than a couple of runs per game.
The Sox open up a six-game home stand against the Texas Rangers on Tuesday. We’ll see if John Farrell has any new ideas on how to shake things up.
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