Red Sox player power rankings: Hopefully David Price has been worth the wait
COMMENTARY
It used to be that playing the American League West was always a dicey proposition. And when the team was in Oakland two weekends ago, it was. But this past week, the Sox got healthy at the expense of the Rangers and Mariners. Yes, they lost the Sunday finale, but what looked like it was going to be a bad two weeks turned into an 8-4 record in the blink of an eye. What’s more is that the team now has a glimmer of hope in their rotation depth in Brian Johnson. Given the Mariners lackluster play, I’ll need to see it a few more times before I’m a believer, but his performance on Saturday was certainly a step forward, even if he was sent right back down on the Pawtucket Shuttle, and as a result doesn’t appear in this edition’s rankings.
28. Roenis Elias (Last: 30): He has a higher ranking, but only because there are fewer players on the 10-day disabled list right now than there were last time.
27. Brock Holt (23): I’m starting to worry that the story of Brock Holt’s career is not going to have a happy ending. He’s now out indefinitely, and the fear now is that he’ll never be able to play at the same level we all know he is capable of.
26. Blaine Boyer (NR): With his 2/3 of an inning pitched on Sunday, Boyer has now pitched for eight major league teams. You have to respect any player who is willing to deal with the uncertainty that comes with trying to latch on with a different organization every year, as Boyer has done for nearly this entire decade.
25. Josh Rutledge (26): Rutledge has actually shown decent plate discipline this month, but with Deven Marrero making the last 14 starts at the hot corner, Rutledge’s days of seeing regular work on this team appear to be over.
24. Heath Hembree (20): Hembree strung together three scoreless outings before getting touched up on Sunday. With that most recent outing in tow, he’s now allowed runs in six of his 14 May outings. On the bright side, he’s only walked one of the 58 batters he’s faced this month.
23. Sam Travis (NR): Travis came up and made a memorable major league debut, going 2-for-4 and scoring a run. But he hasn’t started since, as for the time being, he’s only getting starting assignments against left-handers.
22. Pablo Sandoval (25): He’s not really hitting well in the minors, but there’s always hope.
21. Deven Marrero (24): He isn’t hitting, but he is playing good defense, and that’s enough to earn him the starting job…for now.
20. Sandy Leon (11): While he hasn’t been a huge disappointment, he certainly hasn’t been the breath of fresh air that he was last season, and as such, has been relegated to the bottom of the batting order. Last season, he hit fifth or sixth in the order on occasion, but this year he has hit seventh, eighth or ninth only.
19. Fernando Abad (16): Abad’s usage still vacillates between very high- and very-low leverage outings, showing that while manager John Farrell is willing to trust him in certain situations, he isn’t ready to do so on a regular basis.
18. Chris Young (13): It’s not exactly fair to pick nits in the game of a utility player who sports a .355 on-base percentage because that is a luxury not usually afforded to major league benches these days, but so far Young is hitting for far less power than he has in the past. His current .137 ISO (SLG – AVG) is well below his career .194 ISO, as well as the .201 and .222 ISOs he posted in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
17. Robby Scott (14): When he came up last season, Scott got two appearances of an inning or more before being deployed as more as a lefty specialist, but this season he has once again been given the chance to spread his wings. In six of his 21 appearances, roughly one third, he’s pitched one or more innings, and shown that he is capable of getting out right-handed hitters.
16. Matt Barnes (21): Bad Matt Barnes disappeared almost as soon as he arrived. Good Matt Barnes is back, and he has not allowed a run or a walk in his last six outings.
15. Drew Pomeranz (17): On the surface, Pomeranz’s 4.70 ERA is not what you want in a starting pitcher. Yet, he’s still generating whiffs at nearly the same rate he has the past two seasons. His K% ranks 10th in the majors (minimum 40 innings pitched), and he’s one of just 16 starters whose K-BB% is 20 percent or higher.
14. Jackie Bradley Jr. (18): As I noted on Friday, Bradley is hitting the ball hard, it’s just not paying off in hits as frequently as it should. It will come. In the meantime, he is still flashing the leather.
13. Andrew Benintendi (7): After hitting .333/.392/.478 in April, the phenom is hitting just .182/.309/.323 in May, in what has become his first extended slump in the majors. If there’s a bright spot, it’s that he’s still taking his walks, but he’ll have to get back to the business of rapping out some hits sooner rather than later.
12. Joe Kelly (19): He still hasn’t allowed a run in May, and seems to have solidified a set-up role. This is most welcome news.
11. Rick Porcello (10): As with Pomeranz, Porcello has pitched better than his 4.21 ERA indicates. Porcello has a career .308 batting average on balls in play, but this year, his BABIP is an unsightly .370, suggesting he has been unlucky. Porcello actually has generated a career-best K%, at 22.6%.
10. Christian Vazquez (12): We’re nearly two months into the season, and Vazquez is still hitting .350. He’s not this good, but you can be forgiven if you now want to believe in his offensive ability.
9. Dustin Pedroia (9): There are few extra-base hits to speak of, but Pedroia did have five two-hit games in the past two weeks.
8. Mitch Moreland (15): Travis was called up to take some of his workload, but it’s come at a time when Moreland has heated up again. He has reached base safely in each of his past 12 games, and he has multi-hit games in four of his last six.
7. Hanley Ramirez (8): According to Statcast, Ramirez is faltering the most against sliders this season. And the word on that appears to be out, as he is seeing a higher percentage of sliders this season than he has the past few seasons. Still, he’s hit better recently.
6. David Price (6): His season debut is finally here. Hopefully it will have been worth the wait. Price has the chance to turn what has been the best starting rotation in the AL into a juggernaut – one that could sustain the team’s middling offense.
5. Mookie Betts (2): He only hit .211 this week, as he only picked up five hits, though he also picked up five walks. That’d be a pretty good week for a lot of hitters, but for Betts, it represents a slow week.
4. Eduardo Rodriguez (5): Rodriguez’s 2.81 ERA is the best on the team for May. Yes, even better than Chris Sale, though Sale has far more strikeouts.
3. Craig Kimbrel (3): Along with Kelly, Kimbrel has also not allowed a run in May. His strikeout percentage still leads the majors, but what has been more impressive is his walk rate. Kimbrel has always been a high-walk pitcher. From 2014-2016, he walked 11.1% of the batters he faced, but this season he has only walked 2.7% of them, a truly impressive feat. That gives him an astonishing 50.7% K-BB%, which also leads the majors.
2. Xander Bogaerts (4): He hit his first home run, so everyone can shut up about that. Bogaerts is finally coming around from his thumb injury, and considering he was hitting in the .330s with an injured thumb that was forcing him to essentially swing one-handed, Red Sox fans could be in for one heck of a summer from him.
1. Chris Sale (1): All four of Sale’s pitches rank in the top 15 among all major league starters, and three of them – four-seam fastball, two-seam fastball and change-up, are top six — which has to be devastating for any team trying to hit him. The next team on that list will be his former team, the Chicago White Sox.
