Red Sox player power rankings: Chris Sale, Craig Kimbrel leading the way
COMMENTARY
The Red Sox had a chance to sniff first place this past week, but after winning three in a row in Baltimore and New York, they closed out the week by dropping three of five. All three losses were of the embarrassing blowout variety. For all the talk of the team’s problems, the main problem seems to be that they just aren’t great in any one area. They’re fifth in the AL in runs scored, and fourth in the AL in runs allowed. Both are good marks, but the Astros and, more importantly, the Yankees, find themselves ahead of Boston in both categories. The Sox remain in the thick of things, but are still not capable of rising above the competition to a degree that gives them any sort of breathing room.
29. Roenis Elias (Last: 28): He still has just the one outing for the season under his belt, on May 7th, when he allowed nine runs in four innings in High-A.
28. Brock Holt (27): Sadly, there hasn’t been any new news on Holt either.
27. Fernando Abad (19): In his last three outings before Sunday night, he allowed six hits and three runs in two innings of work. Certainly less than ideal, and for the season, he is running the worst K% of his career.
26. Blaine Boyer (26): He’s not striking out a lot of hitters, but he’s also not walking them. You, at least, want your low-leverage relievers to avoid self-inflicted wounds.
25. Robbie Ross Jr. (NR): The details surrounding his demotion, which was then changed to a disabled list stint still don’t add up — even if Ross didn’t complain about elbow discomfort, it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to note that something isn’t right when a pitcher’s velocity drops ~2 mph year-over-year. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that he’s not pitching right now, and as such finds himself toward the bottom of the list.
24. Pablo Sandoval (22): It’s still a couple of weeks too early to write off Sandoval entirely — he’s only tallied 95 plate appearances for the season. But realistically, there’s not much left to learn about his time here. In 607 PA with the Red Sox, he’s hit .236/.284/.362. The prudent plan would be to give him until the All-Star break to turn it around. If he hasn’t, then at that time Rafael Devers should be promoted and given until the trade deadline to play and see if he’s ready for the job. If he isn’t, then the team can work out a trade at the deadline or in August. And if he is ready, then the team won’t have to do anything but cut Sandoval.
23. Deven Marrero (21): It’s depressing to watch him hit, but he’s an asset defensively, and a better fielder than Sandoval or Josh Rutledge. The glove alone won’t make him deserving of a roster spot long-term, but for now, it is.
22. Chris Young (18): The power outage has not abated. Young doesn’t have an extra-base hit since May 20th, and he hasn’t homered since May 6th. What’s more, with the Sox needing to get Andrew Benintendi out of his slump and Jackie Bradley Jr. hitting so well, there isn’t really a good time to play Young, unless they want to start giving him starts at designated hitter.
21. Josh Rutledge (25): He has hit better recently, but the “hot” streak still leaves him as a below-average hitter overall. For the season, he’s posted a 84 wRC+, or 16 percentage points below league average.
20. Christian Vazquez (11): Sigh. He stopped hitting. He’s still hitting .318 for the season, across 113 PA. But if we break those PA into relative halves, we see that in the first 59 PA, he hit .364/.407/.491, for a 140 wRC+, and in the second 54 PA, he’s hit .269/.278/.346, for a 58 wRC+. The batting average has masked the drop in on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
19. Sandy Leon (20): He’s not hitting either. And Blake Swihart isn’t hitting well at Triple-A, his ruination at the hands of this organization now very close to complete. As for Leon, he gets the bump over Vazquez only by virtue of the fact that he’s played in five more games.
18. Brian Johnson (NR): Johnson’s complete-game shutout on May 27th will definitely be one of the highlights of the team’s season, but going forward, expect his performances to be more akin to his first and third outings of the season, when he didn’t pitch into the sixth inning. Piggybacking his starts with Chris Sale will be essential in order to give the bullpen a breather.
17. Heath Hembree (24): He hadn’t allowed a run in June until allowing the grand slam Sunday night to Justin Upton, which just barely stayed fair. While he failed then, Hembree is the pitcher most trusted to come in and mop up those situations. For the season, he has inherited 23 runners. Robby Scott is second with 19, and then comes Joe Kelly at 12. They’re the only pitchers in double digits.
16. Matt Barnes (16): Barnes has never had a better strikeout percentage, and his walk rate is down slightly. He’s still not a great pitcher, but he’s having the best season of his career, and that’s something.
15. Andrew Benintendi (13): After five straight 0-fers that lowered his season averages to .259/.333/.378, Benintendi looked like he was getting on track. In three games from June 3-6, he went 6 for 12, with a walk and three homers, and just one strikeout. Then manager John Farrell gave him a day off. In the three following games, from June 8-10, he went 2 for 12, with three strikeouts. So much for that.
14. Robby Scott (20): A bad inning for Scott this season represents giving up two singles and then a run scoring on a ground-ball double play, as occurred on Tuesday. He’s still doing just fine.
13. Hanley Ramirez (7): For his career, Ramirez’s weighted on-base average (wOBA) is .369, and last year he posted a .367 wOBA. This year, it’s .331, which is below the league average for DHs (.333), and well below his preseason projection of .356. Ramirez’s underperformance is one of the big reasons the offense is struggling. They need more from him.
12. Joe Kelly (12): April 30th is still the last time Kelly allowed a run. It often isn’t pretty, but he is, for the first time, consistently getting the job done.
11. Rick Porcello (11): Home runs remain Porcello’s Achilles’ heel. In each of his last two starts, he has allowed two homers, bringing his season total to 14, which is just two fewer than the number of batters he has walked. At this rate, he’ll blow past his career-worst in homers allowed, which was 25 in 2015, which was his first year in Boston.
10. David Price (6): He was doing so great. Then he started picking fights with media members and got rocked by the Yankees. Taking the long view, Price has now made three starts with seemingly zero physical issues, so that is great news; but he’s also allowed at least one home run in all three starts. Hopefully that is a trend that doesn’t continue.
9. Eduardo Rodriguez (4): John Farrell chose not to be cautious with Rodriguez. Now, he probably won’t pitch for the rest of the first half, and the Sox will be hard pressed to replicate his 3.54 ERA and 9.59 K/9 in his rotation slot.
8. Drew Pomeranz (15): The big lefty’s string of dominant starts ended Sunday night, but he has been one of the best pitchers on the team lately, and with Rodriguez out and the team still not having a solid footing on what to expect from Price, Pomeranz’s contributions take on added weight.
7. Dustin Pedroia (9): The diminutive Pedroia has hit .297/.373/.390 across 211 PA this season, which is a lot lighter on power than he and his teammates would likely prefer. But in the 61 PA where he wasn’t playing second base, his replacements have hit .193/.246/.281, so you can see that even a less powerful Pedroia is still of paramount importance to this club.
6. Jackie Bradley Jr. (14): Bradley has been red hot over the past two weeks, and for the season he is now hitting at a league-average rate, which is a huge shift from even just two weeks ago. Bradley seems to have these wild swings throughout the season, and it is important to remember that during the bad times. As long as he’s plugged into the lineup every day, good things will happen in the aggregate.
5. Mookie Betts (5): It wasn’t really a good or bad fortnight for Betts, who remains one of the three anchors of this team. He did notch his 10th stolen base though, making him one of just 16 Red Sox players to have three or more 10+ stolen bases seasons since the team integrated in 1959. He’s just the second in that time period to do it by the end of his age-24 season, with Ellis Burks being the other, and just the fifth to do so in team history (along with Burks, Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper and Jim Tabor).
4. Mitch Moreland (8): Moreland and Bradley both hit three homers over the past two weeks, but Moreland did so in 11 fewer PA. With Sam Travis (who was also hitting well) sent back to Pawtucket, Moreland will be counted on to maintain this hot hitting for the foreseeable future.
3. Xander Bogaerts (2): You could make a decent argument that Pomeranz still would have gotten knocked around in the fifth inning Sunday night, but Bogaerts didn’t do him any favors by starting the inning with a wild throw. Nevertheless, it’s hard to find too much fault with Bogaerts’ game. In the inning prior, Farrell had gushed to ESPN reporter Buster Olney about all the defensive improvements Bogaerts had made. By WAR, there is still a clear demarcation between the team’s four best players — Chris Sale, Betts, Bogaerts and Craig Kimbrel — and the rest of the team.
2. Craig Kimbrel (3): By Win Probability Added (WPA), a metric that tracks the changes in win expectancy throughout a game and is especially useful for examining relief pitchers, Kimbrel is on his way to having one of the best seasons in team history. He is one of just 23 pitchers in team history (the stat dates back to 1974) to have a 2+ WPA. Other seasons on that list include Keith Foulke in 2004 (2.67), Jonathan Papelbon in 2007 (3.72), Koji Uehara in 2013 (4.18) and the leader, Tom Gordon in 1998 (5.52). Kimbrel is currently at 2.18 and the season isn’t even half over yet, so he’s got a chance to put his name at the top of this list.
1. Chris Sale (1): He’s managed to go four straight starts without striking out 10 batters, but he hasn’t been any less dominant. Even on May 30 against his old team when he gave up six runs, he still managed to strike out nine batters and keep Boston in the game. That game also represents the only time in his 13 starts this season when he has failed to pitch six innings. Sale has been the rock the team needs start after start, and is well on his way to having the best season of what is an already-great career.
